Walk laughed. “So he hasn’t spoken to anyone?”
“No. I tell you, it’s like he never left here. Straight back into the old routine. Starting to think he missed the place.”
They made small talk a while, and then Walk heard Martha call.
He stood, left his beer on the deck and made his way into the living room.
Martha didn’t say anything at first, just straightened slightly, then leaned closer to the stack of files, put her glasses on and focused. She’d been the one that made the break, that traced Darke’s name to a company registered in Portland.
“You get something?”
“Maybe. Go bring me some snacks. I need some thinking peppers. You got any Habanero?”
He shook his head.
“Malagueta?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Shit, Walk. Some fucking poblano. I need heat. Jesus. Prepare for me next time.”
Suitably chastised he made his way into the small kitchen, brewed coffee and watched the street. They’d been at it four hours, from dinner to late, both yawning and red-eyed but both knowing they would sooner work than lie restless in their beds. The case was getting to her now, more because of the way Walk looked, like he was being ravaged by the detail.
He handed her the coffee, and a pepper mill.
She fought a smile, then flipped him off.
He watched her pace, in her hand was a corporation tax filing, a statement of registration. The trail was the kind of complex that had already seen her call in favors from a taxation lawyer she knew.
“Fortuna Avenue,” she said.
“The second line homes.”
“All but a couple are owned by the same holding company. When did the report come in, the first one? The eroding cliffs. California Wild.” Martha chewed the cap of her pen.
Walk fished through a heavy stack of papers. “May, 1995.”
Martha smiled, then held up her paper. “This company bought the first house in September 1995. And then they bought another almost every year since. Eight homes, rolling finance, each mortgaged to pay for the next. That worked for the first six, till the rate hikes.”
“And then?”
Martha paced again, walked over to the cabinet, topped off her coffee with whisky and did the same to Walk’s. “So this company bought every house on the second line. California Wild gauged it at ten years, right?”
“Give or take. Then they built the breakwater. The King house is safe.”
“The second line, they’re not worth all that much. Small, family homes. Got them cheap, doesn’t look like they increased much over the years.”
“Until?”
“Until the front line started to fall, and the vacationers started to come. One by one they went down. So all that stood between the company and what …”
“Five million dollars. At least.”
“And all that blocked it was Vincent King and his family home. The land around. It can’t be built on. No one would get a permit while the King house stands.”
“This company, what’s it called.”
“The MAD Trust.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“The name, it doesn’t matter. But guess who the sole director is.”
She handed Walk the paper and he held it tight, trying to steady it.
And there it was, at the top, bold print.
Richard Darke.
25
THAT NIGHT DUCHESS WOKE TO a cold sweat.
She saw shapes, the closet taking Darke’s soulless form.
When she calmed she checked Robin, then slipped from the room and down the stairs. She wore a soft robe. Hal had left it out for her. It was something they had fallen in to. She would still take nothing from him directly. No food or drink, no help with the horses even when she had homework due and the day was draining fast. Instead he left things for her and she took them when he was not around. She marveled at his patience.
She drank water straight from the faucet.
As she turned to head back up she heard it.
Movement on the porch. Maybe the swing of the seat, the chains loud no matter how much Hal oiled them. She ducked low, her heart again, racing away from her.
She fumbled for the drawer, found a decent-length knife and gripped it tight. She crept to the door, saw it open a little as moonlight fell onto her bare feet.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Shit. I was about ready to kill you.”
“That’s a bread knife,” Hal said.
He sat on the swing, reduced to the glow of his cigar, though as she neared she saw the shotgun by his feet.
“You believed me then,” she said.
“Maybe I’m just waiting on a bear.”
“I should’ve got the plates. I picked up the gun and forgot everything else. Fucking rookie.” She spit the words, mouth tight.
“You were protecting your family, not many people brave enough to do that.”
She shook her head. “Does Dolly know?”
After Hal had gently taken the gun from her Dolly had appeared and led her into the safety of the diner beside.
“She’s tough. Thought it’d do good to have another set of eyes out there. She asks after you, every time I see her. I think maybe you remind her a little of her younger self.”
“Why?”
“Dolly’s about the toughest lady you’ll ever meet. She had it rough, she doesn’t tell any of it. Her Bill, though, I was drinking with him one time. Dolly’s father, he was mean. He caught her smoking once.”
“And gave her a hiding.”
“No. He burned her with it. She’s still got the scars on her arms. He told her she’d never have the guts to light one up again.”
Duchess swallowed. “What happened to him?”
“She got older and he put his hands … He went to prison.”
“Oh.”
Hal coughed. “She dressed different back then, I saw photos. She wore boys’ clothes, shapeless, baggy, but he still came.”
“Some people are all dark.”
“They are.”
“James Miller, paid assassin and gunslinger. He went to church regular, didn’t drink or smoke. But rumor was he killed fifty. A mob lynched him. You know what his last words were?”
“Tell me.”
“Let ’er rip.”
“The mob got it right then. If the good stand by idle, are they still good?”
It was starry enough for snow. Hal said winter had not touched them yet, that when it did they’d know it so well they’d forget the colors of fall.
He scooted over.
She did not sit.
They stayed in silence for a long time. When he finished his cigar he lit another.
“The cancer will get you.”
“It might.”
“Not that I care.”
“Of course not.”
Darkness hid his eyes. He watched out, trees and water and the nothing that was slowly becoming something to her.
He stood and walked into the kitchen and she heard the whistle of the kettle.
She took a seat at the far end of the bench and eyed the shotgun.
He returned with cocoa and set her cup down on the porch beside her. Soft light from the kitchen showed marshmallow in hers.
He sipped whisky, a small measure. “There was a storm once. Bad one. I sat right here and watched lightning cross our land. I thought about the devil, I saw his face in the sky, serpent tongue lashing out like that. The barn burned.”
She had seen an acre out where nothing grew, just the soot shape of what had once stood.
“The gray. Her mother was in there.”
Duchess looked over at him, grateful for the dark so that he could not see the panic in her eyes.
“I couldn’t get her out.”
She breathed in that moment, knew well about the haunt of memory.
“We had storms sometimes,” she said. “Back home.”
&nb
sp; “I think of Cape Haven often. I prayed for your mother, for you and Robin.”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“Neither do you, but I know you go to the clearing and you kneel.”
“Just a place to think.”
“Everyone needs one. The storeroom, the guns, that’s where I go to mull things. I sit down there and I shut out the world and I focus on what matters.” He glanced over. “I wrote to him.”
“Who?”
“Vincent King. Over the years I wrote him letter after letter. And I’m not a writer.”
“Why?”
He blew smoke toward the moon. “That’s a big question.”
She rubbed her eyes.
“You should go to bed.”
“My sleep patterns are none of your concern.”
He set his glass down. “At first I wasn’t going to send them. Just, after Sissy, and then all that happened with your mother and your grandmother. I wanted an outlet, maybe. But then I thought why shouldn’t he know. Maybe he thought he’d ruined his life. I wanted him to know about ours. Maybe he had a vision of me, retired here, sitting on beautiful acres. I told him about the work, about the debt, the bills and living under that kind of weight.”
“Did he write back?”
“He did. At first it was all sorrow. I know it was an accident … I do know that. But that doesn’t really mean anything.”
She picked up her cocoa and spooned the marshmallow into her mouth. It was too sweet then, catching her out, like she’d forgotten the good things.
“I went there, to his parole hearings. I went to each one. He could’ve served less. He would have got out with his best years still ahead.”
“So how come he didn’t? Walk never told me. I just figured he got in shit, in that place, he did bad things.”
“He didn’t. Cuddy, the warden, he spoke up each time. But Vincent declined a lawyer. Walk was there too, same every time. And we both saw each other but I never said anything to him. Because that was Walk’s friend up there, close like brothers. I remember that back then. Thick as thieves, of course Vincent did the thieving but Walk always backed him.”
Duchess tried to see Walk as a boy, as Vincent King’s best friend. Instead she saw Walk in his uniform, never out of it, not since she remembered. He was all cop, and Vincent was all bad.
“Toward the end of the hearing they’d always ask that same question. If you get out, are you likely to break the law again?”
“What did Vincent say?”
“He’d meet my eye, and he’d say yes, he would. He was a danger to the people.”
Maybe he thought it was something noble, to serve the whole term, penance like that, small recompense but intent was everything. But now, knowing what she did, he was telling it straight. Vincent was a danger.
“That pain. Losing your mother, losing my daughter, my wife, all that was ever good for me. I know it all. I didn’t think I’d get through it.”
“So how did you?”
“I came here. I took it back to breathing. Montana is good for that. You might see that one day.”
“Star said there’s correlation between suffering and sin.”
He smiled, like he could hear the words direct from his daughter’s mouth.
“What was Sissy like?”
He stubbed his cigar. “Death has a way of making saints out of mortals. But with children … there is no bad. She was small and beautiful and perfect. Like your mother was. Like Robin is.”
He knew better than to mention her.
“She liked to paint. She cried during fourth of July fireworks. She ate carrots but nothing green. She doted on your mother.”
“I look like her. I saw the photo. Me and Star and Sissy.”
“You do. Beautiful like that.”
She swallowed. “Star said you were hard. She said there was nothing soft about you, not after. She said you were a drunk. She said you didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral.”
“We begin at the end, Duchess.”
“If you thought that you’d be alright. You’re full of shit.” She spoke quietly and without malice. “Are all the things she told me true?”
“I am a constant disappointment to myself.”
“I know there’s more. Why you didn’t come back, why she wouldn’t let you see us. What did you do?”
He swallowed. “A few years after. I mean … I heard talk of parole after five. For what he did. My Sissy.”
She heard the hurt there, a lifetime later and it was still so present.
“Maybe I did drink too much. Someone came. He had a brother in there, Fairmont County, with Vincent. He made an offer. He could make it go away, right the wrong. It wasn’t even a lot of money. I … if I could have my time over, would I have been stronger and told him no?”
“The man Vincent killed in Fairmont. It was self-defense.”
“It was.”
She took a long breath, his words so weighted she could not form a response.
“Your mother found out. And that was it. All and everything. A single act on a distant night and here we are because of it.”
She drank her cocoa and thought of her mother. She searched for a memory that might warm the night but found nothing but the white of Star’s eyes.
“Is that why you go to church?”
“Understanding for what we have done and might do.”
When she was done she stood. She felt tired, thought of Darke coming and looked at the old man and the shotgun.
At the door she turned. “Vincent. At the parole hearings. Why do you think he did that?”
Hal looked up at her and she saw Robin in his eyes.
“They’d lead him off, and Walk would look at Cuddy like they couldn’t make sense of it. But he wrote me. He tried to tell me.”
She stared at him.
“After that night, after what he did, he knew none of us would find freedom again.”
* * *
They stood outside the old Radley house. From the moonlight that fell Walk could just about make out Martha, the shape of her face, small nose, hair just past her shoulders. He smelled her perfume, something light. They held flashlights and both flicked them on.
Walk had the record, the time Vincent made the call and the coroner’s estimate of time of death. They could be accurate, Duchess had ridden her bicycle to the gas station on Pensacola, Walk knew she stuck to the main roads, despite the risk, so it took her forty-five minutes. That gave Vincent around fifteen minutes to lose the gun. They had to work the assumption he was the killer, and that assumption had kept Walk awake the night before.
“We’ll head every direction he could have gone.”
Martha had a stopwatch. They’d allow for the fact he could’ve run, sprinted there and back, though Walk didn’t recall if the man appeared out of breath, or sweating, but then Walk couldn’t recall much of the detail of that night, aside from Star’s face, which he knew he’d carry for the rest of his life. The memory loss, it was creeping on him. He’d taken to making notes, pretending he was writing up when really he was just keeping check. The order of his day, the time he took pills, he noted it all now.
They started out into Star’s backyard, stepped over the broken fence, which had been there as long as Walk could remember. Into light woodland, just a copse that separated Ivy Ranch from Newton Avenue. They were methodical, every walkway, every tree and bush and cluster of flowers. They checked drains; knew Boyd and his men and dogs had already run the same routes but Walk was hoping for something more, something only a local would notice. He closed his eyes and put himself into Vincent’s shoes.
They walked seven routes, some slight deviations from the last. They got nowhere at all.
“He didn’t have it. If he had we would’ve found it, or more likely Boyd would have.”
“It’s a hole in their case. A big one,” Martha said. “The D.A. will be pissed.”
They found their way back to the Radley house and stood o
n the sidewalk.
She reached out and grasped his hand. He was close to breaking. Every way he turned, he couldn’t figure it. He’d lost Darke, tried his cell over and over and left so many messages he filled up the mailbox.
He felt it. Darke killed Star and pinned the blame on Vincent King in order to get his hands on the house that would save his empire and make his fortune. It was flawed, but that’s all he had to work on. As for the girl, he took comfort in the fact that Hal was a ghost, Radley land was buried, the kids were safe up there.
At the end of Newton she led him down the neighbor’s driveway and then hopped a low fence, hidden by thick barberry.
“You still know all the shortcuts,” Walk said.
“Star showed me that one.”
Twenty minutes and they were by the old wishing tree, stars over the ocean, the tower at Little Brook like an abandoned lighthouse.
“I can’t believe it’s still here. You remember we used to make out under this tree.”
He laughed. “I remember everything.”
“You never could unhook my bra.”
“One time I did.”
“No. I unhooked it before, let you have your moment.”
She sat down, then reached up and pulled him down beside her. Together they leaned back against the wide oak and looked up at the stars.
“I never said I was sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Leaving you.”
“It was a long time ago. We were kids.”
“We weren’t, Walk. Not according to the judge. Do you think about it?”
“What?”
“Me. Pregnant. A baby.”
“Every day.”
“He didn’t get over it, my father. He wasn’t all bad. It’s just … he thought he was doing right by me.”
“And wrong by God.”
She said nothing for a while. The lights of a boat drifted, moving with the tide.
“You didn’t marry,” she said.
“Of course not.”
She laughed gently. “We were fifteen.”
“But I knew it.”
“That’s what I loved about you. That pure belief, in good and bad and love. You never said anything, about my father, about what he did. You never told anyone. Even though I left you behind, and Star went to another school and it was just you, and this thing. This giant fucking sickening thing that Vincent did.”
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