Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them
Author's Note: This is the last part (for now) of Aftermath—the Weed Randall story cycle. It is set about five years after the episode "The Birthday Present" and follows two stories that deal with Weed's younger brother, Jake ("Death Wish" and "Trust"). It also mentions a neighbor and friend of Hardcastle's, Professor Sturgis, from "A Fork in the Road" and "Dry Heat".
Repose
by L.M. Lewis
Repose: 1. to put or confide something in a person or thing,
2. to lie when dead 3. peace: the absence of mental stress or anxiety,
4. the interval of time between volcanic eruptions.
"Maybe you oughta take your gun." McCormick gave the older man a pensive frown as he slipped his own jacket on.
"Why?" Hardcastle shrugged. "I'm a lawyer."
"You're a lawyer who's going looking for a junkie who hangs out in a cemetery," Mark retorted. "I think that qualifies for personal armament."
This was just the final point of an ongoing discussion they'd been having, ever since they'd found out that their missing witness, Bennie Callisto, was being treated by his ex-associates to a unlimited supply of Mexican brown and had been spotted enjoying his new-found resources over in Evergreen Cemetery.
"It's a kinda dicey neighborhood, Hardcase." Mark crossed his arms. "That cemetery can be a little iffy, too, especially if you're going to roust out some locals. You been over there lately?"
"No," Hardcastle conceded. "Have you?"
McCormick nodded once but didn't elaborate, and something in his expression seemed to ward off any further inquiries. Instead, Hardcastle harrumphed.
"Well, were you carrying a gun?"
"Nope," Mark cocked his head and shook it once, "but I can run faster than you."
A small, thin smile followed this, and he pointed back toward Hardcastle's office. The older man frowned one more time and then conceded. It'd be a helluva thing if McCormick got to say "I told you so" on this one.
00000
He let McCormick drive. He seemed to know the way without consulting a map. Hardcastle thought maybe once they got out of the law clinic, the younger man would perk up a little. That had really been his ulterior motive all along. There'd been too many hours spent cooped up recently, talking to clients and doing paperwork. They both needed a change of pace.
Instead, as they'd approached the gates of the cemetery McCormick seemed to draw a little further into himself. It was nothing too obvious, just a certain air of distraction. It was as if his thoughts were elsewhere.
"You know," Mark finally said, as he pulled over once they were a ways inside, "it's a big place. Any idea how to approach this?"
It was Hardcastle's turn to get pensive. "I dunno—I figured we'd just get out and walk some. Maybe chase the first person who runs away."
This at least got him a brief laugh from Mark, who finally said, "Sounds like a plan."
He put the truck in park and got out, ambling around to join Hardcastle on the lawn. They both cast studied looks at their surroundings. The place had a downtrodden appearance to it. Even the grass looked worn out.
Mark let out a sigh. "Good place to do drugs. No cops around to hassle anybody. Might be a while before anyone noticed if you died, though."
On this note of morbid speculation he started out purposefully toward an area of taller stones, some of them slightly askew. Hardcastle followed along, catching up in a few steps. He caught sight of McCormick's destination, an old, cracked stone with a huddled figure at the base of it. There was no movement to distinguish the man from the monument itself. This one wasn't going to run away.
Still alive, though. On closer exam they could see the man's chest rise and fall perceptibly, though his head had lolled to the side. There was a nearly-empty vodka bottle held in a loose grasp down in his right hand.
"Hey." Mark nudged the man's leg lightly with the toe of his shoe. Surprisingly, the guy opened his eyes and blearily blinked up at them. "You know a guy named Bennie, shoots horse?"
Another wordless blink, and then the guy was sinking down further, this time onto his side, curled up around the bottle with his back against the stone.
"This is gonna be fun." Mark exhaled wearily, looking up and scanning again. "Well," he gave once last glance down before turning away, "at least he's not a mean drunk."
Hardcastle followed again, as they walked on toward the next-closest figure. He had a passing thought, that maybe once you'd seen the absolute worst in people, it somehow became easier to find something good in almost everyone else.
He kept that bit of introspection to himself as they approached a woman, leaning casually against a stone cross that was nearly as tall as she was. She swayed slightly, as if with the breeze, and looked as though she couldn't weigh more than ninety pounds.
"Seen Bennie?" McCormick asked, with an air of casually shared knowledge.
This one smiled, though she was nearly toothless and her skin already belonged to her bones.
"Ben-niee," she keened. "Whatcha want Bennie for?" She leaned forward to touch his arm. It was a parody of seduction.
McCormick didn't flinch. "Just to talk," he said with no particular emphasis.
The woman frowned, as if it were a struggle to remember the question. Then she raised her hand and pointed off to the west.
"He might be over that away." She smiled again. "Thataway," she repeated, with some apparent satisfaction, and her hand floated down to rest on the crosspiece of the monument, as though she might drift away entirely if not freighted down with stone. Mark nodded, and eased out of her reach.
The walk turned into a trudge. They saw no one for at least a half a mile. The taller stones had given way to a more open space. There were a few markers flat to the ground, and some nearly hidden by what grass there was. Then they reached an area where there appeared to be no graves at all. No Bennie, either.
McCormick hadn't said anything since they'd left the woman. Now he stood, hands in his pockets, surveying the emptiness.
"There's nobody here," Hardcastle said, looking back over his shoulder to where they'd come from.
"Hah," McCormick said quietly, "that's what you think."
Hardcastle turned back round. Mark was nudging something in the grass just in front of him—a metal plate almost completely overgrown. It bore only a number.
"This is the potter's field. The unclaimed. They put a thousand of them in here a year. No names, just numbers. I looked it up for Jake Randall."
Hardcastle frowned. "It's been four years . . . no, four-and-a-half."
"Yeah," Mark nodded almost to himself. "They cremate them pretty quick, then they hold the ashes for three years, just in case anyone wants them. After that, they put 'em here. I wonder if they do it alphabetically?" he mused. "Weed and Jake were the same year. They might be side-by-side."
"Stop it."
Mark turned and frowned lightly. "Stop what?"
"It's been almost five years," Hardcastle repeated, a little more insistently.
"Yeah," Mark said calmly. "I know. It's okay. It's just facts." He managed a half smile. "It was a year last December since they put them in, right when I was finishing up law school."
"You came then?" Hardcastle asked with dawning certainty.
"Well . . . yeah." Mark shrugged. "Of course."
Hardcastle frowned, trying hard to beat down a scowl. Mark was giving him a look of innocent credulity that really didn't deserve a raking over. But there were times when the judge just wanted to—
"I told ya, I'm okay now," Mark interrupted his thought, and there was nothing in his tone that belied the words. "It took me a while, but I've got my head wrapped around it." He looked away from the judge, out over the field.
"All those years I was in law school, and Weed was waiting to be put here, what was left of him, I thought about it a lot. What I finally figured was if I hadn't shot him, then he would have shot Sandy, and me, too, probably . . . and what would have happened to you?"
There was nothing but honesty in the question, and they both knew it. And they also both knew there were more ways to be dead than simply being in the ground.
Mark didn't wait for an answer. "And, anyway, I finally realized Weed never would have let them take him alive. Someone would have had to shoot him."
"Didn't I say all that stuff to you?"
"Yeah," Mark smiled a little sadly, "you did. I guess maybe I wasn't ready to hear it then. It took a while before I was ready to bury it."
"Three years?"
"Yeah," Mark looked at him, still pensive, "a couple, maybe three. At first there was just too much other stuff, all at the same time."
Hardcastle nodded; he knew he'd been part of the other stuff.
"Crazy times. Worst month of my life . . . my adult life at any rate."
"Worse than prison?" Hardcastle looked at him speculatively.
"Oh, yeah." Mark nodded. "This was more like a death sentence. Yours, maybe, his definitely." He scuffed his foot against the grass, clearing a little space around the marker. "But some good came out of it."
"Yeah," Hardcastle said a little harshly, "I didn't die and he did."
"Stop it," Mark said firmly.
"All right," the judge acceded, "but I'm not letting you beat yourself up about this thing anymore, and that's that," he added with a sharp nod of his head.
"So, I'm not. I told you; I get it now. I had to do it. I couldn't have lived with the alternative. Literally."
There was a long pause. Hardcastle finally looked at him, mollified, but a little curious.
"And what was the good that came of it?"
"Oh," Mark smiled wisely. "See, there I was, sitting in the hospital, with all that time on my hands, thinking a ton of bad thoughts. Crazy stuff."
"Like what?"
"Like how everybody, and I mean everybody, who has ever meant anything to me, either had the good sense to get out of my life, or wound up dying." The smile had gone a little thin, in recollection. "I know that sounds kinda self-centered, but, man, looking at it from my perspective . . . and then who came up with the evidence that landed you and Weed in the same courtroom?"
"That wasn't—"
"My fault? I know that now. And I'm pretty sure Weed was crazy enough that he would have come after you even if we hadn't forced him back into the courtroom, even if he'd walked out of prison the next week as a free man."
Hardcastle nodded his agreement.
"But then, and there, all I could see was that dark star I'd been traveling under for an awfully long time . . . practically all my life, and I really couldn't figure out how this time was going to turn out any different from the rest." He let out a slow sigh of recollection.
"So, I started dealing deals."
"Like what?" Hardcastle frowned.
"Like maybe if I didn't have the right stuff to be a cop—to be Tonto, really—then I'd make it up by going to law school . . . if they didn't throw me back in San Quentin, or take me off the estate and make me go back to being just another parolee for John Dalem."
"I never expected you to shoot anybody for me," Hardcastle protested, "and nobody thinks it should be easy. That's not what it means to have the right stuff."
"I know. But sometimes that's what a fast gun has to do, and it kinda dawned on me that that was not the approach I wanted to take."
Mark was giving him a look, as if he was seeking understanding. The judge nodded again.
"And maybe . . . maybe I figured if I could do that one thing right, that would make up for all the dumb, stupid, wrong things I'd done up till then."
"But shooting Weed Randall wasn't wrong," Hardcastle insisted.
"I know, I know," Mark held up one hand, "it just felt wrong."
Hardcastle let out a sigh of exasperation. This seemed to be one hump that was not going to be gotten over.
"Sorry," Mark said ruefully. "Can't help it."
"So," Hardcastle said, after a moment had passed, "you made up your mind about law school way back then."
"Yeah," Mark said, a little nervously. "And I talked to Bob Sturgis, at the neighborhood picnic a couple months later. He knew people, helped me with the application process."
"How come you had to keep it all such a big secret?" the judge asked, trying not to sound disappointed.
Mark dropped his chin, appearing to be studying the ground. "Well," he finally said, after a moment or two of nervous silence, "maybe I was worried about jinxing it."
Hardcastle looked at him with mild disbelief. "Come on, even you're not that superstitious. I coulda helped you."
"No," Mark shook his head, very slightly, "getting in had to be mine. My doing, or else it wouldn't have counted. And, anyway, it was already close enough to being yours as it was. Things were getting a little blurry back there." He took a deep breath. "I'll admit, I wanted to be like you, but I didn't want to be you. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah," Hardcastle admitted. "I understand."
"And, come on now," Mark nudged him gently with his elbow, "did you honestly ever think of me as law school material?"
"You never gave me the chance," the judge protested mildly.
"I know," Mark said quietly, "because I couldn't have risked you telling me I wasn't capable of doing it."
"I wouldn't've."
"I know that now. But I didn't have enough faith in myself back then, to think anybody, even you, could believe in me."
"So," Hardcastle said consideringly, "if I'd told you that you could do it, that would've been bad, and if I'd told you that you couldn't, that would've been bad, too."
"That's about it," Mark said with some chagrin.
"Well," he sighed, "then it's probably a good thing you didn't tell me."
"See," McCormick grinned, "I knew you'd get it."
The grin drifted down; the younger man stood, hands still in pockets, rocking back a little on his heels.
"Everything takes time," he said finally. "It wasn't all that long."
"Not from this end, no," Hardcastle admitted. "Nothing's long once it's over and done. There were a few times, back at the beginning, though—"
"But they're past," Mark interrupted gently, "and over, and done."