Iron River

“I’d still rather have a gun.”

Hood looked out the window to where the vast horizon met the blue heat of the sky. “You know an L.A. guy named Mike Fi

“No.”

Hood told Jimmy about the small man hit by a car while changing a flat out on Highway 98, and how this man had Hood’s name and his new post office box number written on a piece of paper folded in his wallet.

“Why would I know him?” asked Jimmy.

“He knows your name and a little about you, and who you work for.” Hood immediately regretted his words.

“Then he’s probably a fucking Zeta,” said Holdstock.

Hood saw the fear on Jimmy’s face and it was genuine. “He’s in bathroom products. He’s in a cast pretty much head to toe. His daughter is an actress.”

“Or maybe a reporter snooping around Blowdown, looking for a scandal.”

“I don’t think he’s that important, Jimmy.”

Jimmy looked at Hood, and Hood could see his fear subsiding. Holdstock sighed and shrugged. “Charlie, just tell me some Blowdown stuff. How are the field interviews going? You tried Hell on Wheels? Did you meet Dragovitch and his weird-ass wife yet?”

Beth Petty and Police Chief Gabriel Reyes sat on either side of Mike Fi

“Come in, Charlie,” said Fi

Petty smiled at Hood, and Reyes nodded. They were both in street clothes. Hood had never seen Beth Petty without a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. A nurse rolled in a chair, and Hood sat at the foot of the bed.

Fi

“There is some problem with the age of the thing,” said Fi

“He means the bullet,” said Petty.

Reyes looked at Hood. “It was manufactured sometime between 1849 and 1862.”

“A cartridge can remain viable for centuries,” said Fi

“What confounds me is how the bullet got into your face,” said Reyes.

“Isn’t that self-explanatory?” Fi

“He said he was shot by his lover,” said Reyes. “He said she just happened to be packing an ancestor’s thirty-one-caliber Colt repeating revolver.”

“Percussion repeating revolver,” said Fi

“Why did she shoot you?” asked Hood.

“Failure to leave my wife. The bullet was deflected by a stout grapevine. Cabernet Franc. Marie was plotting an al fresco suicide scene, I realized later. At any rate, after hitting the vine, the bullet flew with reduced velocity. It knocked me ass over teakettle, but I righted myself and kept ru

“The FBI told me that bullet is over a hundred years old,” said Reyes. “You don’t find 1849 thirty-one-caliber Colts just lying around. You find them in museums and collections. Nobody carries them.”

“Marie dug it out of an old trunk,” said Fi

Hood stood and leaned over the bed and on Fi

“No, you misunderstand,” said Fi

Hood looked into Fi

“You said Marie was the whore I reminded you of,” said the doctor. “At Wyatt Earp’s saloon in San Diego.”

“Is that so?”

“Charlie was in the room.”

“I think you can solve this mystery, doctor. We’re talking about women living roughly a century apart.”

“Two Maries.”

“You’re a sly one.”

“I think almost everything you say is a lie,” said Reyes. “You’re just making it up.”

“I didn’t make up the bullet,” said Fi

Reyes shook his head, then looked at Petty and Hood and back to Fi

“I don’t mean to exasperate law enforcement,” said Fi

“I never told you he was homosexual.”

“I listened carefully.”

Reyes sighed. “We got to talking a few nights ago.”

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Fi

“No, there isn’t. But if that thirty-one-caliber slug entered from the back of your head, it had to pass through your skull and brain to get where Beth found it.”

“I like the way you chew on things,” said Fi

“No, really,” said Reyes. “Your X-rays should show a hole where the bullet went through.”

“I’m sure they would,” said Fi

“I’ll get them,” said the doctor.

A minute later, she was attaching them to the reader that hung from the wall. She clipped a series of three across the top and stood back. Hood looked at the contours of Fi

“There,” said Petty. She pointed out a very faint circle of darkness on the anterior left side of the skull.

“What do I win?” asked Fi

Reyes stood and stepped up close to the X-ray film. “Are you sure that’s a bullet hole? Kind of faint, isn’t it?”

“The bone will heal over time if the wound is small. What we see here is probably regrowth.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know exactly. Years.”

“What about damage to the brain tissue?”

“There is some evidence of disturbance. It appears slight. See the pale finger here?” She tapped her own finger to the film.

“Only slight damage from a speeding bullet?” asked Reyes. “Account for that, doctor.”

“I can’t. But there must have been very little brain damage to begin with because brain cells don’t replicate. The brain is a miraculous organ in the sense that we can live without relatively large parts of it. The compensatory powers are impressive. People live normal lives with bullets and other objects lodged deep in their brains. I’ve seen it.”

Reyes looked at the little man, then back to the film. “You’ve got the worst luck in the world, but you’ve got the best luck, too. You get shot in the back of the head, bullet goes through both skull and brain and should have killed you, but instead the hole heals up just fine. Then you get hit by a two-ton Mercury doing sixty. It breaks your neck and half the other bones in your body and messes up your lungs, kidneys, and liver. It breaks your skull and batters your brains, but you crawl a half a mile through the desert. Now ten days later, you’re offering me advice on how to talk to my son. You’re a strange man.”