Free The Famous and the Dead by T. Jefferson Parker Page B

long, dark war. But Hood also knew that Rovanna and his men had not discovered the bodies of the soldiers Tucker and Menchaca—that was 2nd Battalion. This atrocity had been reported in agonizing detail as well. As a part of NCIS, Hood had studied both of the terrible incidents as points of both personal and world history. Now these two events occupied dark compartments in his psyche, as Hood figured they must for many of the enlisted men of the 502nd Infantry. So how could Lonnie Rovanna get them mixed up?
    â€œI was earlier,” Hood said.
    â€œThe first deployment was the worst. Misplaced my mind. Still looking for it. Don’t know how I made it through that last rotation. But I got out, got meds and a good doctor. I’ll be fine. I filed my Firearms Rights Restoration application about three weeks ago. Dr. Stren came three days ago to ask questions. He’s assigned by the Superior Court. He had a signed affidavit from a judge. He interviewed me, wrote in a little black notebook, and said he would be writing up his report later that day.”
    â€œWhat did he ask you? What did you talk about?”
    Rovanna went to his kitchen and returned with two large superhero drink containers from Mr. Burger filled with ice and a plastic half-gallon bottle of vodka, new. He sat back down and cracked the seal and unscrewed it and poured half a glass for each of them. They touched the cups and drank. Hood felt the cold liquid burn down. He looked outside to the dirt-speckled Ford Focus in the gravel driveway and the big sycamore looming beyond.
    Rovanna talked about Stren’s prying, know-it-all attitude, and his interest in Rovanna’s state of mind and behavior, his curiosity about the radios that Rovanna had locked away in the toolshed out back, and about his medications and alcohol use. He told Hood that his personal physician at the VA, Dr. Webb, had told Stren many private things about him—hearing voices from unplugged radios and demons in the walls, being followed by five men with identical clothing and faces. Rovanna said that Stren predicted his Firearms Rights Restoration application would be denied. Rovanna shrugged, then drank, then looked out the window to the sycamore standing almost leafless in the waning afternoon light. Hood studied him, trying to vet Rovanna’s words and his grossly faulty remembrance of the war and the thousand-yard stare with which he now gazed outside.
    After a long minute Hood pressed on. “Why did they take your guns away?”
    Rovanna drank again, then told Hood in more detail about his assault on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were quite possibly imposters. People were sometimes not what they pretended, he said with a bitter smile, like this Finnegan or Stren man. Rovanna spoke more informatively about his suicide attempt—flinched at the last second—then brushed aside his thick blond hair to reveal the brief scar above his right ear. “So after the Witnesses they put me in the loony bin for two weeks of evaluation. They always take your guns away when that happens.”
    â€œWhat did you use the guns for?”
    â€œOh, nothing really. They mainly just stayed under the bed in their cases.”
    â€œYou didn’t brandish them to the men posing as Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
    â€œNaw. No time. Slugged one and tackled the other. Neighbors ratted me out.”
    â€œDid you use the bat?”
    â€œI didn’t own a bat until they took my guns.”
    â€œWhat kind of guns?”
    Rovanna declared them, twelve in all, semiauto assault-style rifles, semiauto handguns. He gave makes, model numbers, calibers.
    â€œDescribe Dr. Stren in more detail.”
    Rovanna addressed the navy suit and white shirt, the matching blue tie and patch, the small black shoes, the old-time gangster hat like Virgil Sollozzo wore in
The Godfather.
    â€œYou said he wore glasses.”
    â€œBig ones. Greek billionaire glasses. Or that