Free Rocket Science by Jay Lake Page A

heading back to his patrol car. I watched Truefield open the trunk and get out some rags. He began to clean Dad’s blood out of the back seat. If I wasn’t so angry, I would have gone to help him. I wondered when I was going to get to clean out the trunk of my Hudson.
    “Come inside, watch your dad sleep, and wait for the Sheriff,” said Doc Milliken gently. “Or you can go help Peter clean his car. I know what I would do.”
    I turned to look at the doctor. He held out another rag and a little glass bottle with a sprayer screwed into the top. Disinfectant.
    I thought about Truefield dragging Dad up the stairs. He hadn’t busted my head, he hadn’t taken me in. He’d done right by Dad, regardless of his suspicions about me.
    I took Doc Milliken’s rag and headed for the patrol car. As I bent to work beside the Deputy, neither of us willing to speak the other, I wondered what reliable information Truefield had been given about me and my car.
    Where he had gotten it?
    From whom?

Chapter Five

    W e were in the Millikens’ living room . It was a tasteful version of what Mrs. Bellamy had aimed for out at the farmhouse, wingback chairs and a horsehair couch, with doilies everywhere and a water clock on the hand-carved mantelpiece, where dolphins chased bare-chested mermaids through walnut-grained waves.
    “I’m going to have Deputy Truefield take your father into Wichita to Saint Francis Hospital,” said Sheriff Hauptmann, leaning forward in one of the dining room chairs reversed under him, his hands clutching the chair back to his chest. Hauptmann was a big man, creased skin and folded muscles like a ham out of the can, all crammed into his green uniform. The Sheriff had a tiny little voice for his size, like a kid whispering in church. “That ambulance over at Dunsford Funeral Home won’t be available until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”
    “It’s getting on to evening, Vernon,” said Doc Milliken from the wingback chair next to Hauptmann’s precarious perch. The doc was being gentle with me, as if I was the one who was sick. I had thrown up in the lilac bush after helping clean Dad’s blood out of Truefield’s patrol car, but that was just nausea. Mrs. Milliken was cooking pork roast in the kitchen, and the smell was making me sick all over again even as my mouth watered from hunger. Seated on the couch, I kept an embroidered pillow pressed to my lap to hide the trembling of my bad leg inside my work pants.
    Doc gave me a sidelong stare. “We don’t know how long he was out in the trunk of your car. He might have a concussion, and I still want those X-rays.”
    “We won’t find much out else until he wakes up,” squeaked the Sheriff.
    There was a knock on Doc Milliken’s front door. “Come in,” called the Doc.
    Ollie Wannamaker walked into the room, rubbing his hands together, followed by Truefield who had been outside smoking. With night falling, it was getting a little chilly, even for late September. “Well,” he said. “I’ve been over to the Dunham house.”
    “And...?” asked Sheriff Hauptmann pointedly.
    Ollie glanced at me. He didn’t work for the Sheriff, but Hauptmann outranked him every way there was. He didn’t like being pushed around. The town cop shrugged. “Place is a wreck.” I smiled sadly and shook my head. “More so than usual,” he added.
    “What do you mean?” asked Hauptmann.
    “Furniture’s turned over, couple of busted picture frames, that kind of thing. Not like a search, or a burglary. Looks more like there was a knock-down, drag-out fight. Found some fresh boot prints in the yard that didn’t look like Grady’s size nines, either.”
    I wondered briefly how Ollie would know my Dad’s shoe size, then realized he’d been looking in closets.
    “Your Dad know how to fight?” Hauptmann asked me.
    “Yes sir,” I replied. “He bayoneted three Germans in the Somme during the Great War. That was in one afternoon.” I’d seen the stains on that big