We Begin at the End

by Chris Whitaker

  He’d called her early, told her everything, she’d agreed in a second. A truce of some kind, the repercussions could wait, but this could not. And then he’d called Martha, and told her. And in her voice he heard the doubts, and he knew with some certainty that he was jeopardizing everything they both held dear.

  “The system … it’s a running joke. Let’s just say Walk likes things how they were, not how they should be.”

  Martha smiled at Walk, who raised his eyebrows. Juror seven caught it and laughed.

  “So I’ve been trying to overhaul it for years now, trying to get the file room sorted out. See they brought in new templates four years back, new forms and coding. And the way Walk does it … I mean, there is an order. Organized chaos.”

  Deschamps stood, Rhodes moved it on, Martha apologized.

  “So I’ve been at it three months now. I’m up to 1993, and that’s when I found it.”

  Martha held up the paper. Deschamps objected, the judge called them over to the bench. Walk heard heat in Deschamps’s voice, red face as she turned, shook her head once and returned to her seat. Rhodes allowed it into evidence.

  “Can you tell me what it is?” Martha said.

  “It’s a break-in report from November 3rd 1993. Number One Sunset Road, the residence of Gracie King.”

  “Vincent King’s home. The house he returned to after his release.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it say what was stolen.”

  “Yes. Chief Walker was thorough, like always. He went through it with Gracie King, Vincent’s mother. Turned out she forgot to lock the safe. They took two hundred dollars in cash, a gold brooch and some diamond earrings. And a handgun.”

  “A handgun?”

  “Yes. A Ruger Blackhawk.”

  Murmurs, till Rhodes quietened them. Deschamps went back to the bar, argued some more with the judge. It got heated enough for Rhodes to call a fifteen-minute break.

  Walk took the stand next, did not need to introduce himself or run his credentials again. Martha ran him through the break-in. He spoke with calm. He did not meet Vincent’s eye once, though felt the stare.

  And then Deschamps was up. “I feel a little blindsided here.”

  “Leah only found it last night. She works evenings sometimes, when her husband can be home with the kids. It bothers her more than me, the system, I know where everything is.”

  “So, Chief Walker, if you know where everything is, how come you didn’t bring this to attention earlier?”

  “I forgot about the break-in.”

  “You forgot?” She looked at the jury, confusion on her face. “You grew up with Vincent King. You knew the family. You used to visit him in prison. It doesn’t strike me, with all that’s going on, as something you’d forget.”

  Walk swallowed and took a last breath. He knew it would change after. All of it.

  “I’m sick.”

  He looked around the room, reporters at the back, a line of watchers. He felt the quiet, the eyes on him.

  “I have Parkinson’s disease. My memory is not what it was. I haven’t told anyone yet, thought I could deal with it. I guess I … I guess I didn’t want to lose my place.”

  He glanced at the jury and saw compassion. And then across at Vincent, who watched him with sad eyes.

  And then he looked down at the break-in report, and he knew that if they studied it, if they looked hard enough, they’d see a slight lean to the scrawl, like it was written with a shaking hand.

  * * *

  Closing statements began at five, Rhodes said he’d rather give the jury the case late than move into another day. Martha was up first, and she took the floor, every eye on her. She didn’t use notes, Walk could imagine she’d had a late night. She was brief, she’d detailed the facts. She spoke of Star and the tragedy that became of her. She talked of the Radley children, and how they deserved justice, but for the right person. And then Milton, the facts could not be denied. She painted a portrait so tragically accurate that the jurors sat mesmerized. And then on to Vincent. She asked them to imagine entering the prison system at fifteen years old, a frightened child in a prison with the darkest men. She spoke of his regret, his battle to serve the hardest time he could. Maybe he was institutionalized, maybe he did kill a man in self-defense. And maybe he did make the kind of mistake you don’t ever deserve to recover from. But that didn’t mean he’d killed Star Radley. And his silence did not speak of guilt, but rather a crushing self-hatred that burned so fierce he’d rather be punished for another’s crime than take his place in a world where the child he’d killed could not.

  * * *

  A thousand miles from that courthouse, Robin found the yellow flower from a rabbitbrush and brought it back. Duchess helped him flatten it, then pin it to their board, beside Jet. She placed an arm around him, her mind elsewhere. Rick Tide had begun again, trying for a rise, a kid that did not know when to quit. He’d spit on her back, told her that was from Mary Lou. She’d gone to the bathroom and washed her shirt, thought of Walk and how he’d told her to be good.

  That evening after they ate Duchess took Robin out to the swing set in the big garden and pushed him before a sun that sat blazing beyond the trees. He squinted and smiled and she told him he was a prince.

  Then she helped him ready for bed, brushed his teeth and read him a chapter from a story about a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte.

  “He’s an emotional pig,” Robin said.

  “He is.”

  That night they said a prayer. Robin looked over to his sister and she made him close his eyes and steeple his fingers.

  “Why did we pray tonight?” he asked.

  “Just checking in.”

  After he fell asleep she crept from the room. She passed the beds, the forgotten children slept, dead to the world for those precious hours when they could forget their place and occupy another.

  The room in darkness, just the television glow. She flipped channels till she found the right news station, and watched as reporters gathered outside the courthouse.

  She’d called Walk, collect, he sounded beat as he told her the jury would think on it, that they could come back anytime at all. She guessed it was soon.

  Her mind ran to her mother, to the past year and all that came with it.

  She turned and saw her brother standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on her.

  “You’re not in the bed.”

  “Sorry.”

  He walked over and sat beside her, and they watched scenes so distant it was hard to believe their connection.

  They saw reporters fill, cut to commercials. In silence she sat and wondered what was on her brother’s mind. When they retuned they ran through the trial and detailed things they did and did not know about their mother and about Vincent King.

  When the verdict flashed red she sat up, heart beating fast.

  “What does it say?”

  “They said he didn’t kill Mom.”

  She watched, mouth slightly open, as the reporter found a juror. The man looked tired, but still managed a smile. He detailed the testimony of the Cape Haven Chief of Police. How the cop had found a break-in report that showed the suspected murder weapon, a gun once owned by the suspect’s father, could not have been in the possession of Vincent King. The jury had been on the fence, it gave them the out they needed.

  She got a pain in her stomach then, so bad she pressed a fist to it. “Walk. What the fuck did you do, Walk?”

  Robin nestled close and she kissed his head and questioned everything she thought she knew about the world. It had tilted on her again, the concept of truth, the implausibility of fair.

  And then they saw him.

  And Robin stood.

  On the screen, accompanied by a small woman in a smart suit and Chuck Taylors, was Vincent King.

  The room lit with the flash of the city’s camera. An innocent man being led to a waiting car.

  “What is it?” she asked her brother.

>   He shook, his whole body trembled as he struggled for breath.

  He began to cry as dark pooled and spread from his pants.

  She dropped to her knees. “Robin. Talk to me.”

  He shook his head, clenched his eyes closed tight.

  “It’s alright. I’m here.”

  “It’s him.” Breathless. Crying. “I remember.”

  She cupped his face gently. “What do you remember?”

  He stared past her, at the screen. “Vincent was in my bedroom. I remember what he said.”

  She wiped his tears as he finally met her eye. “He told me he was sorry for what he’d done to Mom. He told me to say nothing or I’d regret it.” He closed his eyes and sobbed. She held him tight.

  She led him back to the room, put him in the tub and showered him off, then dressed him in fresh pajamas and tucked him into the bed.

  He slept.

  And then she packed.

  In her bag she found a photo of Star with them, one of so few, in their yard barefoot and laughing. She tacked it to the corkboard, along with a photo of Hal.

  She cracked the blind to stars, and then took her seat at the foot of his bed, where she sat for night hours so long and quick as she recounted their time. She thought of his birth, first steps and words. All the ways he made her laugh. His first day of school, how she taught him to toss a football in their small yard.

  She stayed till first light, he would not wake alone in the dark.

  She pulled her bag to the door and propped it gently open.

  Then she returned once more, and she held back her tears till she could no longer breathe, cursed herself and pulled at her hair like the mad girl she was. Had she a knife she would have cut herself deep. She deserved it to hurt. She deserved all the pain.

  She leaned, kissed her brother’s head, told him to be good as she slipped from his life, like so many before.

  39

  WALK SAT AT HIS DESK, found the bottle of Kentucky in the drawer, unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.

  He closed his eyes to the burn, didn’t feel all that much like celebrating. Vincent had gone right home. He did not speak on the ride, he did not smile, just shook hands with Martha May. Walk told her she did good, met her eye and knew that Martha knew. Victory was hollow. The district attorney had stormed from the courtroom.

  He drank a little more, till the night softened, his shoulders dropped, his body stopped exhausting him.

  He looked over at the stack of papers piled high on his tray, going back a year, mostly routine, he had ignored all but Vincent King and Darke. The one thing they hadn’t lied about at trial was the state of Walk’s office.

  He pulled the stack and began to thumb pages, Louanne’s scrawl, traffic violations, vandalism, possible trespass. He found it hard to focus, hard to recognize what used to be routine. He caught a couple of memos from state, and then, amongst it all, he saw a message from a Doctor David Yuto, returning his call.

  Walk scanned his mind, the frustration growing before he settled on the autopsy of Baxter Logan, the man Vincent had killed in Fairmont.

  He checked his watch, saw it was late but dialed the number.

  The man answered on the first ring, turned out Yuto was working his last week, preparing things for his successor, two decades younger, more than a lifetime less experienced. They made a little small talk. Walk ran over the Logan case, it took Yuto a minute to locate the file, a man who knew the order.

  “What more do you need to know?” Yuto said.

  “I don’t … I guess the detail. I just wondered—”

  “We weren’t as stringent back then. No DNA to look for. I noted cause of death. Head trauma.”

  Walk sipped his whisky, his feet on the old desk. “So that was it. One punch and—”

  “Not one punch. Not the way Logan looked.”

  Walk stared into the glass.

  “I remember Cuddy called. Of course he was young then, he hadn’t yet taken over from his father. But he told me not to waste that much time on Logan. Sex offenders aren’t all that popular at Fairmont. I noted cause of death and moved on to the next.”

  “The beating … was it bad?”

  Yuto sighed. “It’s been a long time but some of them, you just don’t forget some of them. Teeth gone, both eye sockets shattered. His nose was broken so badly it pressed flat to his face.”

  “But it was a fight. Vincent King was fighting for his life.”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say here, Chief Walker. It was a fight, but Logan was beaten long after it was over.”

  Walk’s mind ran to Star, three ribs snapped like that. He thanked Yuto and hung up.

  He swallowed, tasted the whisky still, his throat drying up, heart beginning to race away. He stood, left the station and made the walk, night now, nothing to see but distant light riding the waves, the steady pull of boats crossing the bay.

  He breathed salt wind, moved slow enough, tried collecting his thoughts but they ran and formed pictures he did not want to see. Along Brycewood Avenue, neighbors he knew from the summers before, when the town was his.

  He stopped at the end of Sunset when he saw Vincent across the street, back to him, moving fast, dark jeans and shirt. He thought of calling out, instead followed, far enough back. He wondered how the man felt, death to life.

  Along the street and up, two minutes and Vincent climbed over the gray wall, dry-laid stone, jagged against soft streetlight. He walked up to the wishing tree, not breaking stride, just bent quick, and then he was up, glancing back and around.

  A car at the top of the street, falling headlights up and over the hill. Walk moved into the shadow, Vincent, spooked, moved on, at pace, away from the beams, into the night.

  Walk watched the car pass, and then he climbed the wall and dropped to long grass. At the tree he felt around blind, then took out his cell and lit the base.

  The hole, close to the dirt, small enough to miss.

  He knelt, reached a hand in, and pulled out a gun.

  40

  “THOSE FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON,” Thomas Noble said. “The Apollo astronauts made them and they’ll stay there for at least ten million years.”

  She saw sky no longer endless. She knew about souls and the prophetic, about divine reunion and a world to come. She tried not to think of Robin, if he woke that morning frightened, she swallowed a lump of such bitter shame she almost cried out.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have business to attend to.”

  “You could stay here.”

  “No.”

  “I could come with you.”

  “No.”

  “I’m brave. I took a blue eye for you.”

  “For that I will always be grateful.”

  They lay at the end of his yard, the woodland behind made shadows of them.

  “What you’ve been through,” he said. “It isn’t fair.”

  “You sound like a child. The notion of fair.” She closed her eyes.

  “You know nothing good will come of any of this.”

  A star bled from the sky. She did not make a wish. Wishing on stars was for children, and Duchess knew she was no longer one of those. She wondered if she ever had been.

  “All these people,” Duchess said. “They spend a lifetime looking to the sky and asking questions. Does God intervene, if he doesn’t, why do they still pray?”

  “Faith. The hope that he will.”

  “Because otherwise life is too small.”

  He spoke again quietly. “I worry you won’t find a way back.”

  Duchess watched the moon.

  “I used to ask God about my hand. Why? That kind of thing. I used to pray I’d wake up normal. You know what, those were wasted prayers.”

  “Maybe they’re all wasted.”

  “Stay here with me. I’ll hide you.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “You can’t.”

&n
bsp; “You want me to just let you go alone. Is that brave?”

  She took his good hand and they linked fingers. She wondered what it would be like to be him, his troubles so slight, his mother in the house sleeping, his future so unblemished, so wide open like that.

  “They’ll look for you.”

  “Not all that hard. Another Welfare runaway.”

  “You deserve to be found. And what about Robin?”

  “Please,” she said, so close to the edge. “They might come see you. Cops. They might come ask you where I am and where I’m going. You’ll think about telling, that you know what’s best.”

  “And if I do.”

  “You don’t.”

  She lay till morning. His mother left early, dressed in workout gear, her Lexus creeping silent from the driveway as Thomas Noble opened the back door.

  Duchess went into the Noble house, washed up and ate cereal.

  There was a safe, Thomas Noble took fifty dollars and handed it to her. She fought to say no, he stuffed the bills into her hand.

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  She filled her bag with a couple of cans, beans and soup. She moved fast, saw Shelly was moving faster because the telephone rang and the machine picked it up.

  They listened.

  “She sounds worried.”

  “She has a thousand more like me.”

  At the door she saw bags ready to be packed. Thomas Noble would go on vacation in a few days. He would forget her. His life would go on, she smiled at that thought.

  Outside the street woke, garbage truck at one end, mailman at the other.

  Thomas Noble wheeled out his bicycle and leaned it against the gate. “Take it.”

  She went to say no but he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Just take it. You’ll get further before they pick you up.”

  “I’ll be a ghost. I already am.”

  “Will I see you?”

  “Yeah.” They both knew it was a lie, he let it go, leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  She got on the bike, bag over her shoulder, all she had in the world.

  “Later, Thomas Noble.”

  He raised his good hand as she rode down his driveway and into the street. Then she pedaled hard, not looking back, wind streaking her face as she left the light roads behind and sought out the dark.