Robby the R-Word

By Leif Wright

Robby Turner has been completely paralyzed for forty years. He's a vegetable in a wheelchair - at least, that's what everyone thinks. Then he receives a special computer that allows him to communicate with the world.

Robby's father has been assaulted, with similar beatings and now murders happening across town. The clumsy culprit is leaving clues, and Detective Bain is determined to uncover this mysterious assailant. Meanwhile, Robby has been watching and hearing everything, and he's been doing his own detective work. But can Bain trust Robby? After all, the clumsy clues are starting to point toward him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Promontory Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9781987857726

Book preview

1

ROBBY SMILED. THE QUESTION HADN’T CALLED FOR A SMILE—AND neither had the answer—but smiling was all Robby’s face knew how to do. A big, stupid, toothy, gummy smile with his tongue lolling out the left side of his mouth.

Haaaaaa, his voice said against his will as his eyes rolled around.

His left hand, steadied by the new brace on his arm, trembled with several twitches before it lightly touched the no button on his special keyboard.

No appeared on the nineteen-inch screen, black against white, nice serif font.

You don’t have any idea who might want to hurt your father?

Detective Bain, Amie, Robby’s nurse, interrupted. It’s very difficult for Robby to communicate. Please don’t make him answer the same question more than once. He tires easily.

Bain blinked. My bad, she said. Old habit, sorry. Robby, did you hear anything the night before last, around, say, two in the morning?

Haaaaa, Robby responded, stupid smile infuriating him. His hand trembled on the no button, then using customized predictive technology, he typed out, I sleep hard.

The whole sentence took two minutes to type.

Did your father mention any debts or someone who had a grudge against him, or maybe didn’t like him?

Haaaa, Robby smiled.

Then black-on-white, nice serif: No.

Haaaa, he emphasized.

A bead of saliva dove from his lip, seeming suspended in the air as it stretched ploddingly down for his lap. Amie absentmindedly wiped it away with a folded paper towel. Robby smiled—like always. She smiled back.

Do you have any information at all that might help me find whoever hurt your dad?

I don’t think so.

Bain sighed. She hadn’t known what to expect, but this poor guy was in much worse shape than the uniforms had led her to believe.

He’s a retard, some beat cop whose name she never could remember had told her. My dog is smarter than that guy.

Biting her tongue, Bain’s tight, perfunctory smile had let the uniform know that thinking up more examples might be a mistake. But now that she was here with Robby, she thought his social workers might be giving him one hell of an optimistic benefit of the doubt. It was hard to imagine him doing much other than trying to breathe. His body didn’t appear to obey him at all—except for the trembling left arm, which seemed to have only the most tenuous connection to his brain.

She snuck a look around the room, decorated for a little kid, but filled with the debris of medical mountains moving to keep an adult alive against the best efforts of his body to kill him. Breathing apparatus in one corner, monitoring equipment in another, tubes and wires tucked away haphazardly, feeding machine discreetly hidden next to the closet.

Robby’s wheelchair periodically uttered a mechanical sigh as some piece of hidden machinery sucked in air and exhaled. His head was supported by a headrest that seemed more claw than rest, and his right wrist was curved under his forearm, his fingers nearly touching his elbow. His thick, black thatch of hair refused to be tamed, sticking out at odd angles all over his head. His legs, concealed by a Spider-Man blanket, periodically made the blanket vibrate as they twitched, seemingly involuntarily.

The room, Bain had decided, smelled like an old person’s room; ancient shit and farts, tinged by the scent of urine and mild body odor, carrying with it a faint undertone of Vicks VapoRub.

It was all she could do to not wrinkle her nose.

Robby, she said, mentally reminding herself that his complete lack of acknowledgement was nothing more than his inability to acknowledge her. Thank you for talking to me. I will try my best to find whoever hurt your dad and bring them in.

Haaaaa.

In the front hall of the house—which might once have been acceptably and obscurely middle class, but was now disintegrating down to the neighborhood average on Valhalla Street—Amie explained more as the two women walked outside and slowly strolled down the cracked sidewalk, past the stump of the deceased oak Robby’s dad had haphazardly hacked down with a chainsaw fifteen years earlier after the insurance company had threatened to pull coverage if he didn’t get rid of it. With no money to hire an expert, and no Internet on which to look up instructions, he had borrowed a choppy Craftsman saw from a guy at work and done the job himself, nearly knocking the old tree into the roof, then later coming within inches of trimming his hand right off at the wrist.

Now, the lawn was a patchwork of green and brown, more like camouflage than grass. The edges of the lawn had long ago crept over the straight lines of the driveway and the sidewalk, leaving them scrubby and asymmetrical—an aesthetic that drove Robby nutty. The grass—what there was of it—was a week overdue for a visit from the sputtering Briggs and Stratton—a real push mower, Robby’s dad was fond of saying, not the lazy pulls-itself crap today’s fatties seemed to favor.

In the driveway sat Robby’s dad’s baby blue Ford Escort, hovering on its cracked tires above a smorgasbord of nondescript stains left by it and several generations of its predecessors—all bought from motivated sellers who had placed ads in the newspaper.

Next to it was the flower box full of weeds that served as a hedge—now littered with shards of glass from the broken window above it. Inside the window lay a bed whose sheets hadn’t been washed in God knew how long, a few small bloodstains on the carpet and sheets, and an overturned night stand.

Robby has only been able to communicate for a few months, Amie told the detective as they walked shoulder-to-shoulder along the sidewalk. His entire life, everyone just assumed he was unable to think. If you just look at him, he doesn’t seem to understand anything you say. Several years ago, they apparently tried to give him a keyboard, but he doesn’t have enough motor control and he ended up just pounding on it, so they gave up.

Bain already had learned all this from the uniforms’ report, but she let Amie tell her anyway, to be polite.

She felt a twinge of annoyance with herself as she noticed with smugness all the things around the house that could have been fixed with just a little money. The peeling paint, the cracked cement, the wonky doorbell that took two tries to ring.

Political progressive, my ass, she chided herself. Might as well put on jackboots and get a job at Halliburton.

She despised herself when she caught herself having feelings that disagreed with her political and moral views, like peering over the shoulder of a woman shopping with food stamps and mentally shaking her head at the beer she saw in the basket—as if people on public assistance should, as punishment for needing help, be denied such simple pleasures as having a can of beer. She knew what she believed, but sometimes she withered at her helplessness to stop divergent feelings from sticking their ugly heads up.

She hadn’t expected to get much out of Robby anyway; his room was on the other end of the house from his father’s, and the fans that kept him cool and dry drowned out all but the loudest sounds. And from the looks of him, no matter how much the nurse wanted her to believe it, it didn’t seem like the circuitry was processing much at all there in poor Robby’s head.

Attempted murder wasn’t the biggest crime in the world, but it deserved her attention as much as a successful murder did, she kept telling herself. This case could have been a murder, she kept telling herself. Someone out there was dangerous, she kept telling herself. She wasn’t being assigned this job because the captain didn’t like the fact that he was forced to promote her to detective, she kept telling herself.

Robby Turner’s father, Richard Turner, had been beaten badly enough to cause his brain to swell and do itself permanent damage. He had awakened from the medically induced coma doctors had put him in to save his life, but he apparently was in bad shape nonetheless. He was Bain’s next stop.

Miss Snider, I thank you for your time, she said, handing Amie a business card. Will you call me if Robby thinks of anything?

Absolutely, Amie said, taking the card. I’ll ask him about it again later.

Since Amie didn’t work nights, she hadn’t heard or seen anything, Bain knew, and she had spent that night with her boyfriend watching old movies on DVD. Of course, the case couldn’t be that simple; it would have been much easier if she had been working with Robby and heard the assailant, gotten a glimpse of him and perhaps a tag number from the guy’s car.

And while we’re at it, maybe a snapshot of his face and a written confession. She sighed again.

The nurse was, as The Eagles had said so long ago, terminally pretty. A boyfriend should indicate that she wasn’t interested in what Bain had to offer, but there had been a look—ever so quick and subtle. Bain knew that look. She wallowed in that look, even—as now—when the looker was untouchable because she was a subject in an active investigation, even one as relatively mundane as an aggravated assault.

Attempted murder, she corrected herself. She sighed again. The Look would bring itself to her memory again tonight, she knew.

Bain got into her Dodge unmarked cruiser for the drive over to the hospital. She gunned the 5.7-liter Hemi, loving the rumble as the car shoved her back into the seat as it accelerated. Big cars, big guns—they were the whole reason she had wanted to become a cop. Well, that and busting bad guys, who always seemed to laugh when the petite, five-foot-one blonde told them to keep their hands locked behind their heads and kneel on the pavement. There was certainly a thrill watching huge men having to obey her—and an even bigger thrill when they resisted and realized a tiny woman was kicking the crap out of them.

She also loved detective work, but at times it was jarring. Imagine, she thought, being that poor guy inside the house, stuck inside a body that didn’t work, watching helplessly as life passed by without ever interacting with him, since everyone thought he was just a half-step up from a vegetable. Horrible! Of course, maybe he was just a half-step up from a vegetable. Even so, it must be an awful life. She had noticed he was wearing a diaper, and though he could stand when he was being held up by both hands for brief periods, walking didn’t seem to be within his abilities.

His bedroom had been modified to accommodate a lifetime of a boy growing into a man without the benefit of being able to control his body. Padding was everywhere, ostensibly to keep him from banging his head on objects in the room. His bed was accompanied by rails on the side—and, she had noticed with sympathy, straps to hold him down while he slept. His walls were painted with rocket ships, stars, and spacemen, which matched the sheets on his bed. His room had probably never been changed since his parents had realized the extent of his disability.

The Turners weren’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, and the toll of having a child who needs constant care his entire life must have been devastating. Bain, who desperately wanted children, tried not to think of things like Robby Turner too often, because the fear of having a child with such severe handicaps might scare her away from having one at all.

Ninety-nine percent of children don’t have that kind of trouble, she told herself. Still, irrational fear is powerful, so she tried to think of something else. Amie the sultry nurse? Sponge baths? That brought Robby back to mind, so no good. Maybe the nurse’s boyfriend was hot. She would have to interview him later. Maybe she would get The Look from him, too.

Her car found its own way to the hospital as she daydreamed, pulling into the reserved police spot at the hospital. She killed the growling engine. Richard Turner had been awake a few hours, the uniforms had told her—maybe long enough to clear his head enough for him to answer some questions. And hopefully identify his attacker.

She flashed her badge a few times en route to his intensive care room, and when she saw him, she was struck by how much he now resembled his son. Except for white bandages carefully wrapped around his head, their faces could be identical, down to the half-smile that conveyed absolutely no mirth. The only difference was Richard Turner’s smile wasn’t accompanied by a tongue hanging out.

Turner was restrained in the bed to prevent him from further injuring himself, she noticed, and it looked like he was caught in a spider’s web of tubes, wires, monitors, and other apparatus. When she walked into the room, one of his eyes briefly rolled to her direction, the other eye not quite following. It was a disturbing effect that immediately made her think the damage to this man might be more serious than a bump on the noggin.

Hi, Mr. Turner, I’m Detective Bain, she said, noting no recognition or acknowledgement on his face. His eyes went independent ways, exacerbating the surreal effect. I’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances, but I’m trying to catch whoever did this to you.

Nothing from Turner. Expressionless face, except for the apparently involuntary half-smile and the rolling eyes.

From the book we found on your floor, I’m guessing you were in your bedroom reading when an assailant broke the window and came into your bedroom, she said. Still no expression. From what we can gather, there was a struggle and you managed to wound the subject.

Nothing. Nothing, except eye rolls and that humorless grin.

He apparently hit you repeatedly on the head with a blunt object, she continued. And then he left you for dead. Is any of this ringing a bell?

Richard Turner closed his eyes, grimaced, and uttered a long grunt, maybe even a groan.

Immediately, the room was filled with the pungent smell of human excrement, thick enough to gag Bain, who had smelled some pretty gross stuff in her career—including maggot-infested corpses. Turner’s face went back to the half-smile and he stared into space on opposite sides of him. Behind him, a heart monitor gently beeped, blood pressure and blood oxygen levels standing out importantly on its display screen. A bag under Turner’s bed quietly filled with a chunky brown liquid, while a bag next to it looked ready to overflow with a yellow liquid.

Turner grunted again, but Bain had seen—and smelled—enough. This man’s lights were on, but the house was empty. She didn’t even bother telling him goodbye. Instead, she stood up, using as much willpower as she could muster to keep herself from running out of the room, gasping for fresh air as she did. Instead, she calmly walked out and took discreet but deep breaths as she got out of the room.

Was he able to talk to you? a nurse asked as she left the room. We’re hoping he comes out of his daze.

No, Bain said dismissively as she quickened her pace. I think his bags need changing, though.

She had absolutely nothing to go on in this assault. If no neighbors had seen anything, they’d have to rely on forensics to try identifying the assailant, and that meant waiting in a long line behind homicides and rapes, which received priority from the forensics lab. It was tempting to chalk it up to random violence or a burglary gone bad and wash her hands of the whole mess.

But the problem was the assailant had left plenty of evidence behind—skin under Turner’s fingernails, blood on the broken windowpane. But those things would only help if he had somehow ended up in a DNA database.

One could hope.

Worse than the evidence he left behind was the cash sitting on Turner’s bedside table. It wasn’t a lot—$700 or so—but it was enough to attract a burglar’s attention, it would seem. This guy, however, hadn’t even touched the money. He had just beaten the brains out of this poor guy and gone on his merry way, which made this crime more interesting than a burglary gone wrong. The fact that, after Turner had been beaten unconscious, the assailant hadn’t even bothered to go anywhere else in the house made it seem that Turner was a target, not an inconvenient speed bump in a burglary.

She sighed as she got into her car to do her least favorite bit of detective work—write a report.

2

DAMN SUDOKU.

Pearl Edwards could get every number but 6 in the top row, which meant none of the other damn rows would line up, no matter what she did. It was probably a typo at that damn poor excuse for a newspaper. There probably was no solution.

She set the paper down in disgust, careful not to bump her painful knuckles against the table—the only one in her house that got good enough light to do newspaper puzzles by. Not that any light was coming through the window tonight, but this had become her puzzle place, so she did them here even when it was dark outside.

She was nothing if not a creature of habit, and she had become much worse about it in the decade she had been retired. But it was bad news when she resorted to Sudoku—today’s crossword was laden with pop culture references that made no sense to her, much as she couldn’t fathom who any of the people were that graced the covers of the magazines and tabloids that lined the checkout aisles in the supermarket. They were all pretty—even the boys—but their names were foreign to her. Heidi and Randy’s Weekend ROMP! one proclaimed breathlessly in a typical incomplete sentence.

Who was Heidi? Who was Randy? Why were they famous enough that magazine readers cared about the details of their romp? She shook her head. The world had passed her by, she knew. But in her day, the tabloids had at least used the stars’ full names.

Even The Price is Right, which her VCR had faithfully recorded every day for twenty years, right before Guiding Light, had replaced the adorable Bob Barker with some young guy who smiled too much.

It was hell on earth, she had decided, waiting around to die with no guarantee that she wouldn’t just fade away over two decades of increasing pain, incontinence, and maybe even dementia. Her friends were all too wrapped up in their grandchildren—even great-grandchildren—which only rubbed salt in the wound that Susan had left when she had screamed "Goodbye, Mother!" and had slammed the phone down, never to call again.

Darren was thirty years in the grave, so she was well and truly alone. Sudoku and the crossword were even moving on past her. She guessed she should take up knitting or something.

Retirement was a terrible sucker punch offered up as a carrot to middle-agers who don’t realize how good they’ve got it, having a destination every morning, a purpose. Now, her life was consumed with finding things to fill the void of her day—and hoping her bowel movements stayed regular and healthy. God, ten years ago, bowel movements had been something old people said. Now, they were terrifyingly close to being the center of her world.

Shit, she said quietly out loud, smiling at her naughtiness, using that four-letter word. That’s all it is.

The smile fought against a lifetime of furrows in her skin, forged by disapproving frowns and stern lectures. Downward wrinkles were forced upward, revealing old-lady teeth, properly yellowed by age—another pet peeve of Pearl’s. People’s teeth weren’t supposed to be blindingly white. They were supposed to age just like everything else. Heidi and Randy, she noticed, had brilliantly white—and impeccably straight—teeth, against both God and nature.

She grunted as she pushed against the table, straining to get her knees to stand up. She would return to the Sudoku later, she knew, unable to leave it unfinished. It wasn’t like she slept much anyway. But for now, there was a bowel movement scheduled—a shit, she smiled again—and it couldn’t be avoided.

Maggie, a white toy poodle with brown streaks around her eyes and mouth, dutifully hopped up, her nails clicking on the linoleum as she wagged her tail, which ended in a cotton-ball-shaped poof of Afro. BM time was one of her favorites; she loved lying on the cool tile of the bathroom as Pearl hummed to herself and read magazines.

A noise outside gave Maggie temporary pause, as she stopped and cocked her head. Her hearing wasn’t what it used to be, however, so she couldn’t be sure a noise had happened at all. Pearl, hearing the clicking stop, turned around, waving her hand in front of Maggie to get her attention. The poor dog would have to be put down soon, but Pearl hadn’t been able to bring herself to have it done. Maggie, seeing Pearl waving, wagged again and followed her to the bathroom.

With Maggie safely in the bathroom, already circling the coolest part of the floor, Pearl closed the door—a vestigial habit from when other people had lived there. She just as easily could have left the door open, but it felt wrong, so she closed it, isolating herself from the rest of the house, now alone with Maggie, the pink, fuzzy cover on the stool seat, and a small stack of unread magazines beside it.

Indoor plumbing was a disgusting idea, she had decided long ago. Number Two (shit—she giggled) was intended to be done outside, where humans didn’t also eat and sleep. Still, it was pretty convenient when your bones got too old to bother with the weather for the morning—and evening—constitutional. She didn’t know when it happened, but at some point, the smell of her bowels had changed, and she had acquired Old Lady Shit, the stale smell somehow informing her of her old age more than any other of the myriad indignities that accompanied the passage of time.

She supposed diapers would become her future at some point, simultaneously dreading and resigning herself to the eventuality. She couldn’t remember ever actually being young; even when her years could have justified such a classification. Young people were annoyances, always had been, always would be. It was the cruelty of a male