I find life vests, fishing equipment, goggles, fins, a wet suit. “Put this on.”
“Where is he?” Rory asks, as if the picture is beginning to take shape for him. “What happened?”
I grab the body bag. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. There’s something I have to do.”
In the wheelhouse, a pool of blood fans out beside Rusty’s head. It’s still spreading. His shirt is drenched, dark red.
I stand over the body, trying to figure out my next move.
I lay the body bag out beside him. I tug at his enormous arms and legs, struggling to roll him into it. He’s so heavy, an awkward weight. It feels like the blood has glued him to the floor. I push with all my strength, trying not to slip. Unable to get him into the bag, I move around to the other side of the body, my feet losing traction, sliding in his copious blood. I brace my legs against the wall for leverage and, with one big shove, roll him in.
I push both of his heavy arms into the bag and zip it up. My hands, feet, and wet suit, are covered in Rusty’s warm, sticky blood. Disgusting, yes, but, in its way, comforting. He can’t hurt us. He can’t hurt anyone.
I grab the two handles of the bag and pull. I need to drag it to the door, to the rear deck, but nothing happens. I push off the wall, trying to slide it in both directions, but it’s too heavy. Rusty is an immoveable force.
How do you handle a dead body on a boat? You call the police, obviously. The Coast Guard. The FBI, for God’s sake. Somewhere, in the MAOP, the bible of all administrative guides, there is probably a procedure, complete with a series of forms, requirements, notifications, and testimony. FD-209g: Large Body Disposal. With one simple call you initiate a long, preordained set of protocols. There will be interviews, casual at first, followed by intricate, weeks-long sessions with attorneys and administrators. There will be photographs, reenactments, computer-generated simulations, a shooting review board, and a simple, determined, unavoidable question about the case: “Who else was there?”
Long interviews with Rory, testimony, more questions, “But how did you find him? How did you get there?” Interviews with George, Nicole, Ivy, my old partner, my whole squad, an internal inquiry, a notification to DOJ, an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, internal criticism, public criticism, newspaper articles, talking heads on TV. Rory’s picture all over the internet. Investigative journalists vying for the story, calling and calling, showing up at Rory’s school, our home. Feds looking into Ivan’s boat, Timofey’s identity blown—the list goes on. If I were younger and more naïve, each step would come as a new surprise, as I slowly dug myself further into a hole, a crater that would consume Rory, me, Caroline, George, my colleagues, my whole world.
Perhaps, in the end, everything would be “fine” for everyone, but by then it might just be too late. But I’m not younger, and I’m not naïve. I’ve followed procedure before, and where did it get me?
Rory has one parent left, and I’m it.
Is there anyone out there who gives a shit about Rusty? Rough circles. Dark web. Would anyone be surprised if he disappeared? Would anyone care? Would anyone even notice?
Rusty was right about one thing: sometimes you just have to handle it yourself.
69
If scientists search for truth and philosophers search for morality, what does a criminal trial search for? In what instances, if ever, can moral necessity serve as a logical rejoinder to justice?
I find a can of motor oil in the cabinet. I’m hunched down on my knees, trying to pour the oil beneath the body bag to reduce friction, when I hear the bridge door open. Rory stands before me in the wet suit. It’s too short for him, and I almost laugh at the sight of him, the sight of my beautiful, awkward boy. Alive.
But then I realize he’s staring at me, staring at the body bag, the blood, a look of horror on his face. So much blood, so much red, warm blood. It’s on my hands, my arms, my legs, my cheeks, my hair. His face goes pale. He doubles over and vomits, the stench mingling with the metallic smell of Rusty’s blood.
I want to say something comforting, but the words don’t come. I want to hug him, but I can’t. I’m covered in blood.
After emptying his stomach, Rory stands to his full height, staring. He is pale, eyes wide. He wipes his mouth, squares his shoulders. “I’ll help.”
“No, Rory. Go back down into the cabin. I’ll call you when I’m finished.”
“I’m going to help.”
My genes, for better, for worse. He steps around me, to the other end of the body bag.
“On three,” he says resolutely. “One, two, three.”
We drag the heavy bag across the oily floor onto the deck. Every few feet we rest, and I pour more oil along our path, the bag sliding along the greased trail. By the time we’ve maneuvered the body to the end of the boat, we’re both exhausted, breathing heavily. Despite the crazy wind and sideways rain, we’re sweating.
I unlatch the gate, and we inch the body bag closer.
Rory is about to give it one final shove when I stop him. “Wait.”
I walk over to the fishing chairs and return with the chain and kettlebell. I loop the chain through the kettlebell and through the two handles at the bottom of the bag.
“One,” I say.
“Two,” Rory says.
“Three,” we say together.
With one final effort, we push Rusty off the boat and into the cold ocean. The bag floats for a second, a whale-like object with none of a whale’s grace, the plastic making a sucking sound as it clings to the form of the body. The chain slides off the deck, the kettlebell drags across the deck and splashes into the water, jerking the body bag down beneath the surface.
Rory and I stand, staring at the water where the bag once was. Rory seems mesmerized by the rocking of the boat, the rhythm of the waves. I put my hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes. No way to protect him from Rusty’s blood now.
“Listen, I need you to go find all of the life vests, two sets of fins.”
He returns a minute later, arms full. I set aside the fins and two life vests and make a pile of the other vests. He looks out across the horizon. “Mom, there’s a boat watching us!”
“That’s the boat that brought me here. My new friend Ivan. That’s where we’re headed.”
He frowns, uncertain. “The water looks rough.”
“It’s okay. I swam here. We can do this. You can do this.”
The storm clouds are darkening. The wind has picked up even more, whipping the spray into a frenzy. The swells continue to rise and fall and rise. The rain turns the blood on my shirt into rivulets. Blood runs down my legs, across my feet, flowing onto the deck. I rummage around, find more oil, a can of gas, matches. I grab the two sets of fins, two vests, the goggles, and I meet Rory at the back of the boat. The Odessa Dream is moving toward us.
“Put these on.”
Rory pulls on the vest over his wet suit, shoves his feet into the fins, and snaps the goggles over his head. “What now?”
“Now, we swim and we don’t look back. Can you do that?”
He looks out across the water, estimating the distance, calm and calculating. He’s determined now, sober, awake. “Yes.”
“I have one more thing to do. I need you to jump into the water and get at least twenty yards away, and then swim toward Ivan’s boat.”
“Are there sharks?”
I look Rory in the eye, but I see Fred, and the promise we made that day so long ago: the promise that we would always tell our boy the truth.
“You’re going to be okay,” I say. “I’ll meet you out there in two minutes.”
With a look of trust that nearly breaks my heart, he pulls his fins on and drops into the water.
I pick up the gas can and run back into the wheelhouse. I grab the phones, the two guns, the six spent shells. I put on my li
fe jacket, pour the gas all along the path where we dragged the body. At the biggest pool of blood, where Rusty first fell, I empty everything left in the oil cans. I turn on the engine, retract the anchor, and slowly angle the boat east, away from the Odessa Dream, away from the shore, off toward the vast ocean. I look to the back of the boat to see Rory and the orange of his life jacket a safe distance away. I disassemble Rusty’s gun, empty the magazine, and scatter the parts in the ocean. I throw Rory’s backpack on the pile of life vests and flotation devices. I turn the final gas can upside down, the contents soaking into the pile, splashing across the boat, rivers and puddles forming.
I strike a match.
The flame ignites and quickly spreads, the heat flaring up, the smoke burning my eyes.
I hold onto the wheel and push the throttle hard, sending the boat lurching out to sea. I race through the door, across the deck, grab the fins, and jump into the ocean, propelling myself toward Rory, the sound of the boat in my ears, speeding away from us.
I pull the fins onto my feet. They’re too small, the rubber cutting into the skin, but as I move my legs back and forth they push me forward, gaining momentum. The water is freezing, but adrenaline keeps me moving. Rory is on his back, ahead of me, his fins moving fast, methodically, like a motor. I call out to him over the sound of the waves. “Keep going, Rory!”
As each wave crests, the Odessa Dream comes closer into view. It’s moving toward us.
Rory picks up speed. I’m grateful for his youth, his strength, his health, grateful that he inherited his father’s broad shoulders and strong arms, grateful for the adrenaline pumping through his veins. A big wave comes from out of nowhere, rushing over me, pushing me down. I tumble in the wave, rolling, disoriented. Salt water gushes into my mouth, I feel my energy draining out of me. I feel lost beneath the dark surface as my body spins. The wave passes, and I pump my arms, searching for the surface, trying to pull myself up. My lungs ache, I need air, there is no light to guide me toward the surface. I’m so tired. I have done such terrible things.
I hear my father’s voice in my head, the words he used to tell me when I was little, and he was teaching me to swim, and I would panic in the water. “Just float,” he would say. “Relax, just float.” I stop fighting the water. I stop struggling against the current. I feel my body buoyed upward, and my head lifts above the surface. I gasp, pulling air into my lungs. I gasp again.
I look around, disoriented. Where is Rory? Where is the boat?
A strange calmness overtakes me. It would be so easy to just be carried away with the current. Lost from view, gone, like my father, like Fred. It would be so easy to just let go. But I hear Rory’s voice. I see him ahead of me, swimming. He has turned around, and he is calling for me.
I lift my arm in a wave, urging him to keep going.
Propelling myself above the wave, I see the splash of Rory’s arms, moving forward. He is thirty yards ahead of me, closing in on the Odessa Dream. I feel a burst of energy. A wave blocks my son from view, then recedes. We are so close now. Minutes later, I feel arms pulling me up, my body slapping against the surface of the boat.
I lie, face up to the sky, panting, my lungs aching, eyes searching for my son. I struggle to catch my breath. Where is Rory? A dark cloud shifts, and a ray of sunlight flashes briefly through the rain, blinding me. I blink, the salt water and sun stinging my eyes.
Then I see him: Rory, standing above me, hands on his knees, still panting. His eyes meet mine. Rory.
“This has been one fucked-up, shitty year,” I sputter.
Rory collapses beside me. “‘Annus horribilis,’ the Queen would say.”
My chest heaves—sobs and laughter, gasping for air. Do you see, us Fred? Can you believe it? We are here, and we are alive.
70
Will the world end in lightness or darkness? Approach from both a philosophical and astronomical perspective.
The cold seawater rinsed the blood from my body. My skin feels raw but clean. I wrap myself in the blanket Ivan gave me. Rusty’s boat is now a speck on the horizon. The shifting winds dissipated some of the smoke, and the gray clouds and dark swells camouflage the rest. Burn, I think. Burn.
I step into the wheelhouse where Ivan is standing, peering through binoculars. The radio is turned up loud. “Small craft advisory in effect,” a voice announces.
“How does it look?” I ask Ivan.
“It’s taking on water. It will disappear in the next ten minutes, give or take. Boat’s empty?”
“Yes.”
“No radio traffic about it. Everyone’s in the harbor.”
A minute later, still gazing through the binoculars, he says, “Well, look at that.”
“What?”
“Fire weakened it. The swell took her apart, should be below surface momentarily. That was quick.” He turns to look at his charts on the counter. “Good timing. The swells are high, and the tide is going out. There is a small chance debris will come ashore to the south.” He looks at his charts, his gauges. He takes a pencil, lines up his compass, and draws a line. “Worst-case scenario, you see debris float up south of Pescadero, north of Davenport. We need to get out of the area. I’ll head north. We can’t go in now.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For staying.”
“It is nothing,” he says. But it is everything.
Ivan uses the full motor to head north, then west. Soon we are out of the area, the beach no longer visible. Ivan focuses on steering, positioning the boat against the larger swells. The dark rain clouds are moving east.
His eyes still fixed on the seas in front of us, Ivan says. “I’m sorry, but—”
“But what?”
“We probably should not go into the harbor empty-handed. Fish, you know. This is a fishing boat. For the sake of authenticity.”
“You’re the captain.”
“There are more clothes downstairs. Why don’t you and the boy get warm, and I’ll get a couple of poles set up.”
I go down below and put on the clothes I left behind when I changed into Ivan’s daughter’s wet suit. I rummage around and find some ill-fitting jeans and a Giants warm-up jacket for Rory. He’s quiet, and I know he is processing everything he has seen. Everything he has done.
He sits on the bunk, facing me. His hands are trembling. “Did you have to kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t they teach you to shoot someone in the shoulder or leg or something?”
“No. They teach us to eliminate the threat. He had a gun, and he planned to use it.”
For a brief moment I see the boy Rory was at seven, the boy who sat on that Central Park Carousel between me and Fred every Sunday afternoon. The teenage years are a puzzle. Rory is so mature, so tall, so seemingly grown-up in so many ways that I sometimes forget the little boy inside.
“I suppose there is a world in which I could have shot him in the shoulder. Maybe he survives, and maybe he gets a chance to shoot me, and worse, much worse, to hurt you. Or maybe I manage to subdue him. Maybe he lives, he gets his day in court. But I couldn’t take that chance.”
“If you could have shot him in the shoulder, if you could have eliminated the threat without killing him, would you?”
Rory will carry this burden forever. When he is an old man, he will still live with what happened today. I don’t want to tell him the truth, but I owe it to him. “No.” I can tell there is more he wants to say.
“The other thing, what happened after you killed him? What we did. Was it like that time with the pizza guy? Did you just lose it?”
I didn’t have to push Rusty overboard. I didn’t have to burn the boat. How do I explain to my teenage son, who is still developing his moral compass, the crucial inner voice that he will carry with him throughout his life, that
the decision to dump the body was not a crime of passion? How to explain to him it was a crime of purpose and intent?
“No, I didn’t lose it. After what he did to Caroline, after what he did to you, he didn’t deserve a burial. I wanted to erase him. I wanted to wipe him off the planet.”
The expression on Rory’s face isn’t anger. It isn’t sadness. It isn’t fear. It’s simply thoughtful, analytical. “I’m glad we did.”
I hand Rory a pair of rubber boots. “We have some fishing to do.”
He looks at me, puzzled, but he pulls the boots on anyway. Up on deck, Ivan sets us up with two deep-sea rods. When it becomes clear that Rory has no idea what to do, Ivan frowns.
“I’ve never been fishing,” Rory admits.
Ivan throws his hands in the air. “This can’t be!”
“Dude, I’m from New York City.”
Ivan laughs, gives Rory a quick primer on deep-sea fishing, and returns to the bridge, leaving us alone. We figure the rest out for ourselves. I remember what my dad used to say, on the few occasions when he took me fishing: “Fish where the fish are.” We sit back in our chairs, side by side, waiting. The wind picks up, the swells grow higher. It feels so unreal to be sitting here fishing after everything. Every few seconds, a burst of freezing, salty air thrashes us in the face. After what we’ve been through, it’s pure heaven—just sitting here, the two of us, together.
“I wish Dad were here,” Rory says.
“Me too.”
The rain subsides, the water calms. When Rory reels in a big red rockfish, I use the net to pull it in. As I slide it off of the hook, it slips out of my hands and onto my lap. I jump up shrieking, the fish flopping about on the deck.
Rory throws it into the bucket, looks at me. “Seriously, Mom? You’re scared of a fish?”
By the time Ivan comes out, we’ve also caught what looks like a striped sea bass. He peers into the bucket. “Nicely done,” he says to Rory. “You learn fast.” He turns to me. “Ready to head in?”
The Wonder Test Page 33