“Thought you might need a ride,” I said, and Aidan climbed in.
“I’m not going home,” he told me. “I’m going to the store. I promised to make dinner tonight, but I need a few things.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can drop you off there, but I could also probably give you a ride to the store and then home, if you’ll go downtown with me first. I’ve got to check in before I leave for the day.”
“Okay with me,” Aidan said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
I accelerated, trying to slide onto the 394 in advance of a moving van traveling at a good clip. When I had, Aidan spoke again. “I just got a job,” he said.
“No kidding?” I said. “That’s great. Where?”
“At a nursery. Of plants, not kids. It doesn’t pay that great, but it’ll help out at home.” He lifted his ponytail and shifted it to the other side of his neck, cooling the skin underneath.
We drove a few miles in silence. The rays of the lowering sun hit the windshield, which turned its new purplish color. “You’ve got a weird haze on your windows,” Aidan said, rubbing it with his finger.
“I know,” I said.
“It’s not coming off.” He was still worrying it.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s permanent.”
“You must really like this car,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
Downtown, Aidan went up in the elevator with me to the detective division. He didn’t say anything while we were up there, but I saw him craning slightly to look around, perhaps surprised at how much it looked like any other office setting. I switched my voice mail over to forward to my pager and spoke briefly to Vang, then Aidan and I left.
At the store, he found what he needed: a cheap whole chicken, several potatoes, an onion. He also bought us each a Coke, and paid with money from the Hennessy household fund. Then we walked back outside, into the early-evening heat, and stopped in our tracks, looking around.
The Nova was nowhere to be seen. Out of laziness, not wanting to cruise the aisles for the nearest possible parking space, I’d simply parked at the edge of the lot. Now the car seemed to be gone.
“What the hell?” I said.
“There it is,” Aidan said.
He was pointing at a truck and horse trailer at the edge of the parking lot. I’d simply assumed that it was parked along the edge of the lot, with no other cars behind it. Now I saw, through the windows of the big Ram truck, a slice of the Nova’s roof was visible.
“I think that guy’s illegally parked,” I said. “I don’t think he’s supposed to have a vehicle this long parked over two spaces. Maybe I should cite him.” We were headed across the parking lot, toward the trailer.
“You have a citation book with you?” Aidan said skeptically.
“I’m an officer of the law,” I said as we circled around the rear of the horse trailer. “Anything I write on will hold up in court. I think.”
“You think?” Aidan said, and snorted with laughter.
“Sure,” I said. “Where’s your receipt for the groceries? I’ll-Jesus!”
I jumped, and a thin brown waterspout of Coke leapt from the can. A dog had sprung up from the bench seat of the pickup truck, barking and snarling, safely behind the closed window, but only inches from our faces.
“Holy shit,” I said. The Doberman continued to bark at us, its sharp-snouted face mashed up against the saliva-smeared glass, teeth bared. Then I got a good look at Aidan. He had dropped his bag of groceries and was half bent at the waist, his hands on his thighs as if for support.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his face pale. “I’m all right.” He tried to laugh. “I’m a real tough guy, eh? Scared of a dog locked in a truck.”
“It startled me, too,” I assured him.
He bent and picked up the grocery bag, taking a deep steadying breath as he did so. “Let’s go,” he said.
When we were out on the road, Aidan spoke again. “I’ve just got a thing about dogs,” he said. “Because of my hand.”
I nodded. “Do you remember the day you lost your finger?” I asked him, steering us onto the highway. “I mean, really remember it?”
“I have this snapshot image,” he said. “I can see my hand with the finger half torn off, and the blood just starting to flow. The dog didn’t take it off cleanly. It was semiattached, but I guess it wasn’t… what’s the word? Viable. So a doctor must have finished the job.”
Aidan checked to see if I was okay with this grisly story, and apparently I wasn’t turning pale, because he went on.
“At the base of the finger, below the main wound, there was a separate tooth mark, I guess from where the dog gripped and let go before biting down again and taking the finger. In my memory, it’s a dent, just starting to fill up with blood. Now it’s a scar.” Aidan extended his left hand, slightly tilted, so I could see the pink mark just below the stump.
“What kind of dog was it?” I asked, returning my gaze to the highway.
“A pit bull, I think,” Aidan said. “That’s what I remember most, the white face with pointed-back ears.”
“Pit bulls just don’t seem to fit with your neighborhood,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s weird, I know.”
After a moment, I spoke again, asking Aidan what most likely seemed to him an unrelated question.
“When you lived in Georgia,” I said, “what did you do for fun?”
“Fun?” Aidan said. “Not a lot. There wasn’t much to do out where Pete lived.”
“Did you ever hunt?” I asked. “Go target shooting?”
“Hunt, no,” he said. “I went target shooting, once. We knocked cans off a fence.”
“How did it make you feel, handling a gun?” I asked.
“It was boring,” Aidan said, shrugging. “Once I’d done it, I didn’t feel like doing it again.”
“Did it make you nervous?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “Why? Are you recruiting for the police academy?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in amusement. “My job isn’t really about shooting, anyway. They make you learn to use the gun before they turn you loose with it, but if you’re lucky, you never have to shoot anyone on the job. I never have.”
“I was going to say, you should be talking to Colm,” Aidan went on. “I think he’d probably have about eight guns by now, if Hugh weren’t so opposed to them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Colm mentioned that, about your father.”
The Hennessys were like a family viewed through a prism. Nothing lined up. Hugh loved his antique pistols and had kept them in his study; no, Hugh hated guns and wouldn’t have one in his house. Marlinchen was afraid of loud noises, but Aidan wasn’t scared of guns. On the other hand, he really was afraid of dogs. It didn’t square with my theory about the study. I didn’t know if I could make sense of it at all.
“What about you?” Aidan said, breaking into my thoughts. “Did you ever hunt?”
“Me?” I said.
“Well, you grew up on the Range,” he said. “Lots of people hunt and fish there.”
I shook my head. “When I lived in New Mexico, for a while I was infatuated with my older brother’s crossbow. Then I shot a deer with it. I can’t even remember if it was deliberate or a whim or even just an accident, but I know after that I never wanted to hunt. Couldn’t stand the idea.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But my anti-hunting morals don’t run that deep. I mean, I eat meat.”
“Good,” Aidan said. “You can stay for dinner, then.”
Aidan’s meal-baked chicken and mashed potatoes with a green salad- was simple and satisfying, not quite as well seasoned as the dishes his twin sister prepared. At the table, the kids talked about final exams, summer coming, and their plans to visit their mother’s grave on her upcoming birthday.