The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(92)

I opened my palm, and Bandit stepped forward and rested his head in my lap, looking up at me with a furrowed brow and sad eyes. I lowered my forehead to the bony knob atop his head. I wanted to cry, but I also could not stop a thought swirling in my head. I stood, startling Bandit, who jumped backward, wary. I paced the living room and tried to fill my head with any thought to avoid the one that kept circulating. Eva’s father was coming. He was going to identify her body and fly her ashes back to Los Angeles for a funeral service. Her father was coming. Her father.

I stopped pacing. I remembered Ernie’s two boys racing from their front door to embrace their daddy, gripping his legs.

This was Gary Pryor’s baby girl.

This was something no father should have to do.

“No,” I said aloud. “No.”

I found the paper on which I had written the information and called the number. Gary answered on the first ring. “I’m going over to the morgue tonight,” I said. “I’m going to identify Eva. I’ll have her body transported to a funeral home here in Burlingame, and I’ll ask that she be cremated. We’ll fly her ashes home together.”

Gary did not immediately answer. He sobbed, great gasps and moans that prevented words but that I understood. He’d been bearing up for his wife, for Eva’s sisters, for the entire family. With the details of Eva’s remains taken from him, he could mourn his daughter.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Sam.”

I hung up and called Mickie.

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you all right? I thought maybe you went to your mom’s, but no one answered.”

“I’m going to bring Bandit back tonight,” I said.

“Keep him. Bandit loves it there. He gets a lot more attention, and you two bachelors deserve each other.”

“Eva’s dead, Mickie.” I said the words because part of me needed to hear them to believe them.

“What?”

“I just got off the phone with her father. The freeway crushed her car. She’s dead.”

“I’m on my way,” Mickie said.





4

We got back to my house at one in the morning. Mickie took the key from my hand and inserted it in the lock when I failed the task twice. I sat on the sofa petting Bandit while she opened the liquor cabinet.

“Going to have to be bourbon,” she said. I had drunk all of Eva’s scotch. “Do you have anything to mix it with?”

“Ice,” I said. I heard her pull open the freezer and take the tray to the counter, the ice tumbling into a glass.

Identifying Eva’s body was worse than I anticipated, and I had entered the makeshift morgue anticipating that nothing I would ever do in my life would be worse than this task. I was glad I did it, though, glad that her father would not have to do it, glad that the search-and-rescue team had been able to reach her car and her body. Further reports throughout the night indicated more cars remained trapped beneath the tons of concrete, people still inside, alive.

Eva’s beautiful face had been spared damage, and that was all the attendee showed me. But as a doctor, I understood from the way the sheet draped her body that much of her torso had been crushed and disfigured, bones broken. She’d likely died instantly.

After the attendee had pulled the sheet back over Eva’s face, she had moved to a second body lying beside Eva. “Are you here to identify the man in the car as well?”

It had felt like a stab to the heart.

Mickie had given me a look, but I did not tell her.

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

Mickie walked from the kitchen into the family room and handed me my bourbon. She sat close, just as she used to sit when we drove the Falcon. For a long time, we did not speak. I drank my bourbon until only ice remained. Mickie took my glass and poured another drink. I could feel the effects of the alcohol on my already-tired body and weakened mental state. I took another sip. “Thanks for going with me tonight.”

“Not something anyone should have to do alone,” she said. She took a sip of water. “That’s a brave thing you did, so her father wouldn’t have to.”

I blew out a breath. “I can’t cry,” I said. “Why can’t I cry? What the hell is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Do you know what my first thought was when I found out? When her father told me?”

“Don’t—”

“Relief.”

“Sam, don’t.”

“I felt relief that I wasn’t going to have to confront her; that I didn’t have to tell her it was over and that she needed to move out. What kind of a person thinks that way?”

“A good person.”

“Nice try.”

“I’m serious. A bad person wouldn’t be that honest. They wouldn’t feel any guilt at all. A bad person never would have done what you just did. A bad person would have punted the responsibility and told her family that he wanted nothing to do with any of it. But I know you. And I know that you’ll go to your grave and never tell another living soul that she cheated on you, and neither will I. Her parents will bury the daughter they loved and get to keep all the memories.”

The tears burst from me with a gasp, like a dam exploding. Now I could not control them, could not stop the flood. I felt Mickie pull me to her and place my head against her chest, stroking my hair, letting me sob. She removed the pillow from behind her and leaned back, holding me until I could hear my breathing slow and I drifted off.