by Jay Nadal
“Nate. Where the hell are you,” Chief Joseph demanded.
“Chief. I’m over on the west side looking into that vandalism we were getting reported on the civic information signs out there.”
“No, you’re not. Because Sanders just called in to say he saw you heading south on Jacoby Street like a bat outta hell. Now try another one. And while you’re at it, tell me why you have that Texan son of a bitch in the front seat of your patrol car with you.”
“No, Chief. That couldn’t have been me. I’m all alone out here,” Nate said innocently.
“Bullshit. Get yourself back here ASAP. Do you hear me? Now!”
“Chief, you’re breaking up. I didn’t copy that last transmission. Over.”
He hung up and flicked off the radio. “You better be right about everything that’s been going on around here, or I’m out of a job.”
Jimmy watched his brother over the top of his cards. Bobby slouched in the broken old armchair they had found in the front room. There was no roof worth a damn anymore and there was a hole in the ceiling. When it rained, it poured straight down through the hole to create a circle of spattering water in the middle of the floor. Then it trickled and dripped through the gaps between the warped boards to the basement below. Pa had told them that in really bad winters, when the rain seemed to want to wash the house and everything else in the valley into the river, the basement used to flood right over. The storm doors at the side of the house would pop open, and a fountain of filthy water would come boiling out like that old geyser in Yellowstone.
Jimmy didn’t care. Pa went on about where the Dexters came from, about the old farm where Henry Dexter had run his bootlegging business from. Jimmy didn’t understand why Pa kept the place. But saying that to Pa would earn him a bullet. Pa took heritage seriously and idolized old Henry Dexter.
So Jimmy had listened to Pa’s reminiscence and watched Bobby. It sometimes seemed to him like everything bad in his life happened when he took his eyes off Bobby. That was when Bobby did something… impulsive, something without thinking because he thought it would be funny or cool. Or something only he could understand.
He hoped the rain kept coming and that bitch down there drowned. Then the deal would be over. The deal which Pa had been building toward for the past five years, which he devoted his every waking thought to. Jimmy wanted out. Wanted to get out from under Pa Dexter. From all the Dexters. He was sick of being Bobby’s chaperone, Pa’s punching bag. He had his own ideas, his own crew, and his own plans about how to make money with them. But here he sat, making sure that Bobby stayed away from Beth Collins.
A door banged open and Pa Dexter was preceded by the sound of his combat boots thudding against the bare floorboards. He walked into the room, standing beneath the hole in the ceiling, framed in the gray daylight. He carried the hunting rifle.
“We’re about to have company. I want you boys to follow me.”
“Who? No one knows we’re here,” Jimmy said.
“Chief Joseph, our pet policeman, informs me that there’s a State Police arrest warrant out for Bobby here. Seems you left a trail behind you, boy, when you had words with Brandon Collins and Charlie Biggs. I hear they even found fingerprints.”
Bobby didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Jimmy’s loathing seared him.
“You didn’t wear gloves when you went to see Biggs?”
Bobby was backing away. “I… I… Yeah. I did. I… think.”
“They found DNA on the weapon used to kill Brandon Collins. Oh, did I forget to mention? He’s dead.” Pa moved out of the halo of sickly daylight and took measured steps toward his younger son.
“You were supposed to teach Brandon a lesson. You killed him. You were supposed to teach the old man a lesson. You left a calling card, placing you at the scene. Now the State Police are after you. And I don’t own them.” Pa Dexter’s voice was rising with each accusation. Bobby flinched each time, as though Pa’s words slashed him.
“Please, Pa. I can do better. I can learn.”
“But you can’t. You’ve been saying that your whole life, and I’ve been letting you do it. I shouldn’t. I should have taught you a lesson the first time. A lesson you will never ever forget.”
“Pa…” Jimmy began.
“Shut up, Jimmy. Shut your mouth. Don’t speak for him. Not anymore. He’s a grown man, and he’s going to face up to his fuckups.”
Bobby cried. He hit a sodden, damp-infested wall. A piece of drooping wallpaper broke away onto his shoulder. He jumped at the contact, flinging it away from himself with a frightened yell. Jimmy was beyond pity. It sickened him. Bobby was weak. Jimmy had defended him his whole life because part of him said it was his brother, and that’s what brothers did for each other. But he was through with that now. Bobby dragged him down. Dragged them all down. The world was a hard place, and the weak didn’t survive it.
Jimmy pulled his gun and shot his brother in the head. The limp body fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
Pa looked at the body for a long moment. Then he turned to Jimmy. He studied him and then smiled.
“Chief Joseph tells me one of his officers is working with the cowboy and they’re trying to find where we’ve got Beth Collins stashed. They’re heading south, and they were last seen passing the house. I don’t know how, but they’re onto us. So we need no more mistakes. No more weak links.”
“Yes, Pa.”
“We take up positions watching the road, and when we see those two, we kill them. Make sure you get fingerprints from one of them on your gun. Make it the cowboy. He and Bobby shot each other. Nothing to do with us.”
“Yes, Pa.”
33
Nate broke down the door with one kick and swiftly moved inside. Cade followed, carrying Nate’s backup firearm. They moved through the deserted building like a team. For Cade the instincts were still there, the movements trained into muscle memory. It was a mode of thinking that allowed the mind to free itself from distractions and absorb the environment, taking in every detail at a glance but seeing the whole, as well. They were searching a barn just off a back road. The cavernous building had been subdivided with wooden partitions, for some unknown purpose. It had been long abandoned, and it took the two of them ten minutes to clear.
They jogged back to the cruiser.
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this, Tommy.”
“Don’t listen to it.”
Cade followed the path of the road they were on. “Nothing else between us and the farthest Dexter property.”
“There are other places, actual businesses that are still running. They may be in town, but they also have employees to keep a prisoner quiet. The Dexters own bars; plenty of their crews hang out in Dexter bars. I think we may be on a wild goose chase out here.”
“We’re not. And we can cover this distance in about five minutes if you floor it. If these are just shacks in the woods, we can clear them fast and head back to start checkin’ out the bars.”
“Sure, sure,” Nate said, reversing away from the latest strikeout. He turned the car when the road was wide enough and took off.
The road followed the contours of the hills, as though it had been drawn on the very edge of the valley walls with a pen. On one side, trees climbed steep hills. On the other, equally steep slopes led down to open grass and old stone walls. In the distance, the Grey River caught the occasional gleam of sunlight. They saw the copse of trees before they reached it. A bend in the road showed them a clump of dark trees that jutted out across the plain like a many-fingered hand. Here and there amongst the leaves could be glimpsed timber walls or an ivy-choked pile of stones.
Cade went through the ritual before he consciously knew it. Checked his weapon, one in the chamber. Full clip. Checked the fastenings on the spare Kevlar body armor that Nate kept in the trunk. Nate slowed the car, not wanting the snarling engine to advertise their approach. The road passed by above the reaching copse. But a track led down a steep slope to the valley bottom.
They almost missed it. Nate had slowed to a crawl as Cade scanned the ground to their right, looking for the way down.
“If we head down there, we ain’t gettin’ back up again,” Cade assessed as he took in the terrain and the almost invisible track.
They got out. Without warning, Cade took a shot to the back. The impact hit him in the small of his back and almost snapped him in half. He hit the car and bounced off, landing on the ground on his back. Nate took cover on the other side of the car, crouching beneath the level of the windows. A shot from behind shattered the glass above him. He moved without looking to see where the sniper was, weaving a path into the trees that rose above them.
“Cade!” he yelled. He stood with his back to a thick oak, scanning the slope above him for any sign of the shooter that had targeted his partner. “Cade! You still with me, buddy?”
Cade forced a groan out of airless lungs. He flipped over onto his stomach. The road surface in front of his face exploded from another shot. He pulled himself under the car.
“Two!” he wheezed. “Either side.”
Nate moved, leaping bushes as he sought the cover of another tree higher up the slope than the first. Two shots tracked him, keeping close to his heels. Cade moved to the edge of the car, looking up for the telltale flashes that would show the sniper’s location. There. He fired awkwardly. He couldn’t hit anything from this angle, but he could try to flush the guy out. Cade caught a glimpse of khaki flashing between the trees.
He took advantage of the respite from that side to slip from his hiding place. Cade opened a door, positioning himself behind it. The window exploded moments later, but Cade had an idea where the man had stopped. He used the frame to steady his aim and fired three rapid shots back. No visible movement this time, but he heard a crashing through the undergrowth.
“Got him,” Nate called out as he fired.
This time, Cade saw him. Between them, they had flushed a man in hunting gear out of the trees above, forcing him lower. A mask hid the man’s face and revealed just his eyes. He had moved at first with agility and grace. But now he was on the run, Cade could see the strain in running over difficult ground without rest. It was Billy. An older man, not able to sustain the output needed for a sustained burst of running.
“Jimmy. Where the hell are you?” a voice called out. It was Billy Dexter.
Cade realized that there hadn’t been any more shots from the second gunman, Jimmy Dexter.
“They got me pinned down, Jimmy. Where are you?”
There was no answer. Cade tried to look in all directions at once. Jimmy was staying quiet to not give away his position. He could be drawing a bead on him right now. Nothing. A rifle shot from the direction of Billy Dexter’s cover. Answering pistol fire from Nate. Then Billy broke cover again, and Jimmy showed himself. He emerged from cover downslope from the road and was aiming uphill—at his father. Cade aimed at Jimmy instinctively, getting the new target into his sights. Billy Dexter stumbled to a halt, staring toward his son. Then he raised the rifle.
Jimmy was faster. A shot took the masked figure in the head. Blood and matter fountained from the exit wound, and the body whiplashed back. It hit a mossy bank and rebounded, turning as it fell to roll down toward the road. It came to a final stop, sliding the last few feet until it flopped over onto the blacktop. Jimmy was already bounding downhill, sprinting toward the ruins they had glimpsed in the copse of trees below. Where was Bobby? Had Jimmy killed him, too?
Cade knew there was a risk that Bobby Dexter was still out there. That this was an elaborate trick between the two brothers to force the cops out into the open. But if Jimmy was heading for Beth… Cade slid across the hood of the cruiser and hit the ground running. He dimly knew of Nate’s voice calling from behind, but he shut it out. Jimmy was moving fast, and he had a head start.
Beth had heard the shots. They came from somewhere above and a long way off. There had been one explosion of a shot very near, right over her head it had sounded like, followed by a heavy thump. Now this. Her heart hammered. She resumed her struggle with the cords that bound her wrists. Tommy was here. She hadn’t allowed herself to hope for it, had ruthlessly crushed any thoughts of rescue. Now… Tommy was here. She knew it. He had promised, and he had come. The boards above her head clattered with hurried footsteps. There was the sound of someone descending stairs and the bolts being shot back.
Beth wasn’t taking any chances. She had already stood, hunched over with the chair on her back, and taken a position to the side of the door. It scraped open, and a hand appeared holding a gun. Jimmy opened fire before he saw that Beth wasn’t where he had left her. He froze, and Beth swung herself into the doorway. The chair legs struck Jimmy, forcing him back. Beyond the room that had been her cell was another room, long and running at right angles to the cell. At its far end the ceiling was gone, and cold daylight spilled down into the dank darkness. Beth swung and butted, trying desperately to use the wooden chair she was tied to to keep him from getting off a shot at her.
A hand clamped to her throat, hurling her backward. She crashed into the wall, the chair shattering behind her and pain tearing through her left forearm. She screamed and her vision narrowed to a single point beneath the torrent of agony. Jimmy took aim at her. A bullet erupted from Jimmy’s shoulder, spinning him around and flinging him to the floor. He fired back up the stairs. Beth sagged, arms still secured to the remnants of the chair, a pain that was second only to childbirth pulsing through her arm. She sucked in air, feeling cold and knowing she was about to go into shock.
Tommy came down the steps. He was firing. Jimmy lurched away, firing wildly and missing. Spurts of blood exploded from his leg, then his stomach. Jimmy collapsed. Tommy’s gun clicked empty. Without breaking stride, he reached for another clip. Jimmy lay propped up on one elbow. His gun was clutched in the other, which hung at his side. Tommy reloaded. He had Jimmy in his sights. Jimmy grinned and slowly lifted the wounded arm out from his side until the gun pointed at his head. The grin was now a rictus of agony. But he held the pose for a few seconds.
“I’m. The. Strongest,” Jimmy said, and pulled the trigger.
34
The story went viral in a matter of days. No one knew quite where it had started, probably somewhere in the morass of chat rooms and forum threads. Rumors had surfaced about a corporation using local gangsters to obtain land cheaply. Protection rackets. Tax evasion. It was the corporation that was evading taxes. No, it was the gangsters. Like Capone. It was in New York—no, Texas, no, New England. Within twenty-four hours a hundred rumors, all riffs on the same basic theme, had coalesced into one.
It was this one that made it into the in-boxes of selected reporters at the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN. That was when a mining firm called NorEl suddenly made headlines and a German-born, naturalized-American man in his middle fifties named Bernard Janger was found dead in his Washington, DC, hotel room. He had shot himself through the head.
Later stories revealed that Mr. Janger had been on the verge of bankruptcy. His investors had pulled the plug on his fracking project in Burford, New Hampshire, after he’d failed to secure the necessary lands required for access. When the FBI investigated the business affairs of a local attorney named Charles French, those investors became frantic to give evidence against Mr. Janger.
Only the most eagle-eyed analysts made the connection with the murder-suicide of two men from the same Flint County family by a third, of the same family. Or the launch of an Internal Affairs investigation by New Hampshire State Police into corruption in a Flint County small town, which happened to house a branch of the NorEl corporation. Or the decoration for courage awarded to a young police officer who had helped to uncover that corruption.
Rissa had followed the ripples of chaos that had spread out from the story she and Professor Zachary Clarke had put together. It galled her that no one, well, almost no one, would ever know she was the originator of that story, of those far-reaching ripples. She had
wanted recognition, but a friend had persuaded her to make a sacrifice.
Tommy Cade got a text from Rissa. It simply read:
You owe me
xx
35
Sometime later.
Cade hiked up the zipper on his jacket. It was February. His breath was clouding in front of his face, and he had never felt so cold for so long. The sky was a brooding gray, but to Cade, Riverside Drive didn’t seem so oppressive without sunlight to brighten it, as once it had. He pulled on the multicolored, woolly gloves that Madison had picked out for him on a shopping trip to Flint made just for the purpose.
“Don’t leave us alone so long this time, y’hear?” Beth told him as he slung his bag into the cab of his truck.
“Sure won’t. I promise.”
Madison was in school. She had said her goodbyes over the breakfast table. They had been quick and clean, with a ferocious hug and an enthusiastic wave, a brilliant smile and a skipping step. Off she had gone, out the door. Cade had swallowed the lump in his throat.
“We both love you,” Beth said.
“So do I.”
Beth’s face had been changed by the experiences of the previous year. Madison’s had, too. They both smiled a lot less. But they still smiled. They both laughed a lot less. But they still laughed. Beth and Cade had spent many hours on many nights talking about things which he had thought would never be unearthed from the vaults of his subconscious. The need to be a good brother and a better uncle had forced him to. Beth hugged him.
There was a For Sale sign up in the front yard of the house. Beth couldn’t bear to stay there any longer. They weren’t leaving town though, just moving across it. The garage was sold, and Beth had signed the deeds on her new venture. Jones’ Store on Robinson Street was under new management. It hadn’t cost her a cent. The previous owner just asked that he be allowed to stay on in the apartment above the store and continue to raise the American flag over it every morning.