by John Hart
“But that was hours ago…”
Damn. I could have called. I should have. “Uh … hi, guys.”
They turned at the same time, and my mother swept up and across the room, her arms tight on my neck as she squeezed. I tried to disentangle the embrace, but she only squeezed harder, her face hot against my shirt before she pushed back, and let the anger out.
“Where the hell have you been? Do you know how I’ve worried? Do you have any idea?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m okay.”
She pulled me into a second embrace so desperate and maternal I could barely stand it.
“I said I’m okay. Okay?”
Thank God for my father.
“Sweetheart, please. He’s home and safe.” He drew her back, and guided her across the room. “Let me talk to him for a bit. You should rest. How about a hot bath and some tea?”
“Don’t patronize me, William.”
“He’s not going anywhere. Gibson, tell her.”
“I won’t go anywhere.”
I made it sincere, but she pulled away from my father, her eyes wide and dark with worry. “Did you have something to do with that girl? They say you’ve been sleeping with her.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised had she drawn a knife and stabbed me.
“Martinez and Smith,” my father explained. “They’ve been here twice, trying to find you. They made some veiled allegations, asked some unpleasant questions. We’ll talk about it in a bit. And you?” He turned my mother into the circle of his arms. “Don’t let them rattle you. You’re a cop’s wife. You know how this works.”
“I just hate it so much! What they said, what they implied…”
She cut her eyes my way, but my father caught her chin with a finger. “He’s home and safe. I won’t let him leave.” He kissed her forehead, and she relaxed against him. “Now, how about that bath?”
They left me alone with my thoughts, which in essence were, What the hell? When my father returned, he put the kettle on to boil, and offered a pinch-lipped, apologetic smile.
“You’re not angry?” I asked.
“I am, but mostly at Martinez. He’s running early and hot, and knows it, too, the uncaring little shit.” He pulled two beers from the fridge, and handed one to me, a first. “As for your mother’s concerns, it didn’t help that you ditched school, skipped dinner, and told Chance you were coming straight home. She has imagined all kinds of horrible scenarios.”
“What did Martinez say that made her so upset?”
“Oh, nothing much.” My father sat across the table. “Only that you’ve been involved with an older woman of dubious morals, and that he found you, once, half-dressed in her home. That said woman is considered missing, possibly abducted. That you know more about Tyra than you’re letting on, and more about Jason, too, that brothers are brothers, and genes will tell.” My father sat across the table. “Martinez doesn’t like me very much.”
I had no idea what to say. I didn’t even try.
“Let’s talk about Sara.” He gave a keen-eyed look I didn’t much like.
“Burklow told you what happened?”
“That you entered Sara’s home illegally? That you’re the one who found her gone? You should have come to me, son. Are you really that angry with me?”
I stayed quiet again. I didn’t want to answer.
“Listen, Martinez and Smith may be ahead of the curve on this, but they’re not on the wrong road. Any cop would look at you sideways right now. That means you need to talk to me. I need to know everything you know. It’s how I stay ahead of this. Son, look at me. Do you understand the stakes involved?”
“I didn’t hurt anybody.”
“That’s childish thinking. Martinez can ruin your life without convicting you, or even charging you. He can hold you, interrogate you, destroy you in the press.” He turned the beer bottle in his heavy fingers. “Chance said you dropped him off at two o’clock. That was seven hours ago. I want to know where you went afterward, who you were with, and what you were doing.”
My time with Becky made an answer to that question impossible. “Ask a different question.”
“Let’s start with Sara, then. Have you been sexually active?”
“Is that your business?”
“Martinez will ask, so I need to know.”
“No,” I replied coldly. “No sex with Sara.”
“But you’ve been in her condominium.”
“Yes.”
“Her bedroom?”
I looked away.
“Son, I need to know what you touched, when you were there, who saw you there. So let’s try this again. Have you been in Sara’s bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was worried. I went upstairs to check on her.”
“What did you touch? What did you see?”
I told him the same story I’d told his partner.
“What about Tyra Norris?” he asked. “Have you been in her bedroom?”
It went like that for ten minutes. An interrogation. Round and round. Backtracking. Checking for inconsistencies. “When you were with Sara, where would you go?”
“Her place. The car. We didn’t spend that much time together.”
“Were you ever alone with Tyra?”
“No.”
“In her room?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“What about her car?”
“No.”
“Chance mentioned a girl named Becky Collins. Is that who you were with today?”
“What if I was?”
“Does she know you were involved with Sara?”
“No.”
“Could she have guessed?”
I shrugged.
“Why did you go to Sara’s condominium?”
“I wanted information on Tyra. I thought Sara could help.”
“A moment ago, you said you went because you were worried.”
“I guess it was a little bit of both.”
“So this is about Jason?”
I shrugged again. He didn’t like it.
“You said you were done trying to help your brother. This morning in your bedroom, that’s what you said.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“Are you done with this foolishness or not? Because you need to be. And you need to look at me, too. Look at me, and tell me that you’re done trying to play detective. I want to hear it. No more bullshit for your brother. Tell me it’s over.”
I clenched my jaw, as stubborn as I’d ever been. “I went to see him at Lanesworth.”
His eyes narrowed before he got control of his anger. “When?”
“This morning.”
“Son, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. You don’t think Martinez can make hay with your visit? He’s already thinking, Conspiracy. We need to worry about you, your future.”
“What about Jason?” I asked.
“What about your mother?”
He raised his voice, probably from long habit. My mother was the lever that had always worked. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
“From where I sit, you are.”
“I understand that you feel that way. Let me tell you the problem from where I sit.” I stared him down, as cold as the bottom of a cave. “From the time I could speak, what I heard from you was family first. Family first, and then faith and trust and love and everything else. Those were good years and good lessons.”
I stood, and looked down, flush with all the things I wanted to say: that my father lived on the fence, and my mother on the wrong side of everything, that trust was not built into the bones of this house. There were other things to say, too, like Jason’s warning about dangerous people, and what I’d learned about his time in Vietnam, that it explained who he was, and why he was. I wanted to say, too, that Jason knew who’d killed Tyra, that he was protecting me, and that he knew more than the cops, who thought they were so smart. I should have told my fat
her all of those things, but did not.
He should have believed in Jason.
He should have believed from the very start.
In my room, I locked the door. The place was not that big, but I paced it, thinking of Vietnam, Jason, and my father, the thoughts like a dog chasing its tail. Throwing myself on the bed, I pictured Robert’s dive from Devil’s Ledge, the cross of his body nailed to that high, pale sky. He’d been too soft for war.
Jason, though …
His first year in Vietnam had been raw combat from day one: deep-cover recon, search and destroy, cross-border infiltration. In that first year, Jason won a field promotion, two Purple Hearts, and a Silver Star. Darzell’s feelings about it had been pretty plain.
People talked about him even then …
We never heard a thing about it.
Jason must have impressed some important people, though, because when he re-upped for another tour, he was seconded to a Navy SEAL master chief and an ARVN colonel in command of three South Vietnamese rangers, the six of them tasked to run disguised gunboats into the DMZ to rescue downed aviators. In the first six months, they saved eleven Americans, including a marine lieutenant with a bullet in his lung, and two shattered legs. Under heavy fire, Jason dragged him from a crumpled jet, and carried him four miles through dense jungle, getting shot twice for the trouble. That earned him another Purple Heart and, this time, the Navy Cross. None of us knew about that, either, but Darzell had nursed the bitterness for a while.
Should have been the Medal of Honor.
Ask any marine.
No one could doubt my brother’s willingness or courage. He’d won other commendations. Darzell had other stories.
But the rest of it …
What came last …
I rose from the bed, too keyed up to have my head on a pillow. The room was still a box, but I paced it, anyway.
What else could I do?
Seriously.
31
X had Jason brought to the subbasement, and his eyes were keen as the young man entered the cell. It was the last cell in the row, and the one he used to store his completed paintings. Dozens hung at eye level; hundreds more leaned in stacks against the walls.
“Ah, Jason. Good. I want to show you something.” He took a canvas from a stack of others. It was a portrait of Jason, his eyes intent behind strands of dark hair, his face battered and bruised, but set in determined lines. “I call it The Unconquerable Soul. It’s what I see in you when we fight.”
Jason struggled with a sudden surge of unexpected emotion. The painting was … intimate.
“It’s in the eyes,” X said.
For Jason, looking into those painted eyes was like staring into something at once familiar, terrible, and strange, a part of himself he preferred to keep hidden and dark. That a man like X could capture it so perfectly …
“Put it away, please.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Please. If you would.” X seemed surprised and hurt, but Jason didn’t care about that. “When I finished my sentence, you said I was free, that you would stay out of my life.”
“I did say that, yes.” X propped the painting against the wall. “But I have so little time in the world.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
“Hours, Jason, a few days at the end of this life. Is it so hard to imagine that I’d wish to spend that time with a man I admire? There’s no need to respond, of course. I see how angry I’ve made you—it is a selfish desire, but you should be flattered. I say flattered because what I see in you, I see in me. I’m a sociopath, of course, and you are not; but as the world forgets, you will remember.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“As epitaphs go, it’s better than most.”
“An epitaph.” Jason could not conceal the anger.
X didn’t care. “An epitaph. A marker.” He shrugged languidly. “When the time comes, I want you there, an admirable man to bear witness. I’ve asked Warden Wilson to make the arrangements.”
“You did all of this so I could bear witness?”
“I won’t leave this world surrounded by sheep, alone. The last thing I wish to see is your face. As I said, you should be flattered.”
X smiled as if the matter were settled, but that’s not what Jason felt. Rage. Loss. He was a blind man. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Perhaps you should have.”
“I should kill you right now.”
“As always, in this place…” X showed his palms, no smile left. “You are very welcome to try.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, guards dropped Jason onto a table under bright lights, leaving the room as a weary doctor snapped on latex gloves, and cut away Jason’s clothing.
“Can you roll for me?” Jason shifted so the clothing could be removed and discarded. “Now back.”
Jason could recall no conscious decision to try, but staring past the doctor’s shoulder, he remembered X at the end, the last man standing but almost as bloody and almost as broken.
You must understand, Jason. It’s not the dying that bothers me but the idea of doing it front of these people. I know you find me horrible, but tell me you see that …
He’d collapsed into a chair, almost begging.
Tell me you understand …
The troubling thing was that Jason did understand. In three years of war, he’d been shot, stabbed, and burned, and come back to fight so many times that even hardened marines thought him charmed or blessed. And maybe that was true. All Jason knew for sure was that strength mattered, and that he respected it.
Of course, X was insane …
Jason ground his teeth as the doctor worked his narrow fingers, probing and pushing.
“Well, you’ve looked worse.” The old man’s voice was thin as a reed, but his eyes were clear. “Cracked ribs—again—and at least one that’s broken. Dislocation of the left shoulder. I can’t count all the contusions, but he went easy on your face this time. Kidneys are the worst. You’ll pee blood for a few days. Let me know if it lasts longer than that.” He cocked an eyebrow over the sharp, right eye, looking down until Jason nodded, then continuing in the same reedy tone. “Two broken fingers, a dislocated thumb…”
Jason closed his eyes as the doctor droned on.
He’d been here before.
He knew the drill.
In his cell sometime later, he remembered something X had called him.
An admirable man …
But Jason knew the deeper truth: that if he were truly that admirable, he’d have killed X then and there, for Tyra’s sake, if nothing else.
One more day and another night …
Jason shifted on the bunk, wary of the pain.
After that, the bastard dies …
32
In thirty years on the force, Bill French had faced a lifetime of short-cut lives and the disbelieving stares of those who’d somehow survived. What he’d learned in all that time was to watch the eyes, the eyes of the grieving child, the wife, the empty-handed lover. Some could accept the changes life had so cruelly wrought—roadside or blood-spattered, they gathered shards of hope as a child might gather shells. Others would never recover, and when that showed, it did so in the eyes, as well.
French didn’t like what he’d seen in Gibby’s eyes. They weren’t the warm eyes he knew so well, nor were they the thoughtful, deep ones, and not the kind or steady ones, either. Five minutes ago, eyes like that might have peered out from his son’s face, but not anymore. His eyes now were remorseless and unflinching.
Like Jason’s eyes, he decided, and not like Robert’s at all.
French was still at the table when headlights slashed through the window. He recognized the car; checked his watch. Outside, he found David Martin halfway across the driveway, looking haggard in the shadows. “Captain.”
“You know why I’m here?”
“I have a suspi
cion.”
“You’re lucky it’s not uniformed officers, cuffs out.”
They met on the bottom step, and French stuck out a hand. “It’s not exactly great to see you.”
Captain Martin grunted in agreement, and they shook. “You’re not on the top of my list, either.”
“He’s pressing charges?”
“Let’s talk inside?”
“Yeah, sure.” French led the captain into the kitchen. “Beer?”
“You have anything stronger?”
“You still like Macallan?”
“The twelve-year?”
“What honest cop can afford the eighteen?”
“You’re the only one I know.”
“Three hundred a bottle? No thanks. You think that’s why Martinez hates me?”
“Rich wife? Fancy house? Nah, nobody wants that.”
“Funny. Thanks.”
“He does want your job, though. He pretty much asked me for it.”
“Recently?”
“An hour ago.”
French made his own throat noise, then poured three fingers of scotch into a pair of cut tumblers, and gave one to the captain. Martin took a sip and made all the right faces: appreciation, contemplation. That lasted about three seconds. “Did you have to hit him so hard?”
French sat, and sipped, and shrugged. “He made my wife cry.”
“Martinez was right to come here, and was right to ask those questions. Gibby’s whereabouts and movements need to be accounted for, if only to rule him out as a suspect. It’s Cop 101.”
“Yeah, well. He was being an asshole.”
“Oh, an asshole?” The captain faked amazement. “No one told me that. Can you imagine the shock I’m feeling right now?”
“Now you’re being an asshole.”
“Only to make a point. Because I know you’ve pushed hard plenty of times, and suspect that what Martinez did was no different. Right or wrong, my friend, your son is in the thick of things.”
“Only circumstantially.”
“He knew Tyra and Sara. Your other son knew them, too, but that’s not the point. Or, hell, maybe it is. The only thing clear to me is that Martinez was doing his job. You were out of line to interfere, let alone lay him out on your kitchen floor.”