Sins Of The Father

by James, Harper

  ‘Anything?’ he said as he got back in the car.

  ‘As far as I can find out, she still lives at home with her parents.’

  ‘At fifty?’

  ‘Maybe she never married. It’s not easy meeting someone when you’ve got baggage like that. Her parents are rich—why put yourself through all that extra hard work trying to bring the kid up on your own?’

  He nodded. It made sense.

  ‘There is another possibility, of course—’

  ‘Don’t even think it.’

  Chapter 38

  AT THE END OF the second day, with only fifteen minutes to go before dark, Floyd’s patience was rewarded. He’d set up a stand in a small Red Maple and had been waiting for the last four or five hours. He was cold and stiff. He’d never admit it, but he wasn’t as young as he once was. Just as he was about to give up and head back for something to eat, a small Whitetail doe walked out of the trees and stopped twenty-five yards away. She was perfect, about sixty pounds in weight.

  It wasn’t an easy shot.

  Making a clean kill with a recurve bow took a lot of skill and practice. Shooting a recurve, you have to come to the same draw length every time or you’ll end up changing the trajectory of the arrow. And when you’re nervous—like you always are when your prey finally comes into range after hours of inactivity—it’s too easy to draw the bow just an inch farther back. A rush of adrenaline will do that to you. And that inch makes all the difference. The shot will go high and you’ll have been sitting cold and uncomfortable for hours for sweet FA.

  It wasn’t a problem for Floyd. He was skilled and he’d had a lot of practice—on all kinds of game.

  He turned the bow horizontal, his heart pumping harder, placed an arrow on the rest, nocked it on the string. It was second nature, he could do it in the dark. Sometimes it had been necessary. He brought the bow back to vertical and drew the string, feeling the familiar pull in the muscles of his back. Try pulling a sixty-pound draw weight with your bicep and see how long you last, pumped up from the gym or not. With the index finger of his pulling hand under his chin, the string kissing his nose and lips, he aimed low. His breathing was steady, his mantra wu wei—try not to try—relaxing him. He opened his fingers, his draw hand still moving backwards to his ear as the arrow flew.

  How long was the arrow in the air? Less than a second? It always felt like forever, his heart in his mouth, a prayer on his lips.

  Thwack.

  A perfect shot.

  The arrow went straight through the deer. With a sixty-pound draw weight, it’d go straight through a Grizzly and a tree behind it. The deer jumped three feet straight up in the air, ran raggedly for eighty yards and dropped stone dead to the ground. As clean a kill as you could wish for. Floyd climbed down from the stand and whistled for Marlene. She came bounding towards him from her position fifty yards downwind and together they trotted across to the dead deer.

  Normally Floyd would field-dress the animal—remove its internal organs to preserve the meat, stop it going off—but not this time. He lifted the deer onto his shoulder, feeling its warmth against his ear, and set off across the fields to Hendricks’ farm. The deer twitched on his shoulder, an involuntary muscle spasm, not a last-ditch bid for freedom. It was a shame he’d never get to eat this one. By the time everything had played out the meat would be ruined.

  Back in Hendrick’s kitchen he laid the deer on the table and put Marlene outside. She was well-trained, but he’d been keeping her hungry these past days. He took off his camo jacket and sponged the blood off the shoulder under the faucet, hung the jacket over the back of a chair to dry.

  Damn.

  The newspaper clipping was in the breast pocket. He pulled it out, limp and soggy and carefully unfolded it, laid it flat on the counter to dry. He should’ve put it in his wallet with the photo of Donna.

  He got the wallet out now, took out the photo, swallowed back an uncharacteristic lump in his throat.

  That’s all it ever took to take him back to that night.

  It was late, he’d just climbed into bed. Then Carl had hammered on the door to his room like he was trying to break it down.

  He got out of bed, opened the door. Carl pushed past him, his eyes wild.

  ‘The bastard raped her,’ he screamed, flecks of spittle flying everywhere.

  ‘Slow down. Who raped who?’

  Carl looked at him like he was a retard. Carl was the one looked like the retard with his mouth hanging open, drool on his lips.

  ‘That prick Burke raped Donna.’

  The words didn’t register. He grabbed Carl by the shoulders, shook him hard.

  ‘Calm down. Tell me what happened.’

  Carl wouldn’t meet his eyes, his head moving side to side like he was looking for something. He saw the half-empty pint of scotch on the table and snatched it up, took a long swallow. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked a lot better for it.

  ‘Donna let that bastard Burke take her to dinner—’

  ‘You two have another fight?’

  Carl looked at his shoes. Seems they told him to take another long pull on the bottle. There wasn’t much left when he put it down. Told him not to answer the question either.

  ‘She can’t resist it when one of those stuck-up bastards—’

  Floyd was getting a bad feeling in his gut. He’d never seen Carl like this before.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘In my room.’

  Floyd pulled on his clothes and they went out into the corridor. Jack Adamson was standing there, wanting to know what the hell all the shouting was about. Carl started ranting again, getting more worked up than before.

  Floyd pushed past them, no time for this, ran down the corridor towards Carl’s room. He’d always been the same. A slow burn. It took a long time to get him going, even longer to stop him again.

  He burst into Carl’s room, saw Donna lying on the bed, her head in her arms, knees tucked up under her. She lifted her head, looked up at him.

  That’s all it took.

  He ran from the room, raced down the corridor, Carl and Adamson trying to keep up. Across the quadrangle, into the officers’ quarters. He slowed, dropped to a fast walk as he read the name on each door, looking for the one he wanted.

  Captain Oliver Burke.

  He paused in front of the door, Donna’s face in his mind, her eyes red, mascara streaked from crying. Except crying doesn’t give you a fat lip.

  He kicked the door in, almost taking it off its hinges. Burke was sitting in an easy chair, a drink in his hand, a smug smile on his lips, like he’d been expecting him.

  ‘Ha! Big brother’s come to avenge the little tramp’s honor, ey? I’d be very careful what you do, Private.’

  Floyd roared, that was the only word for it.

  Burke didn’t say another word because Floyd’s fist was down his throat by then. Floyd dragged him out the chair by his shirt front and butted him in the face, dropped his crumpled body to the floor and kicked him in the head, heavy army boots breaking delicate facial bones.

  And he’d have kept on kicking him, over and over, the red mist enveloping him, until Burke stopped crying and moaning and lay still in a pool of his own blood. But Carl hauled him off, stopped him killing the guy, and dragged him out of the room, screaming at Adamson to call the medics.

  Captain Oliver Burke received an honorable discharge and a fat medical pension. Floyd, Carl and Adamson got a dishonorable discharge and a kick up the butt.

  Floyd would’ve liked somebody to explain to him who exactly it was doing the dishonorable thing here and who was doing the honorable thing, because it seemed to him they had that the wrong way around.

  Floyd put the photo of Donna back in his wallet and went outside to sit on the porch, watch the sun go down. And people wanted to know how come he took things into his own hands these days.

  Carl didn’t have to worry about him forgetting what he owed.

  Chapter 39<
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  EVAN KNEW WHAT FRANCISCO must have felt like. He was glad it wasn’t him got their daughter pregnant. Despite that, the old man was looking at him like he just said that’s why he was here—to do it again.

  He stood on the front step and waited patiently while Colonel Jeffrey Yates, Ret. read his card, holding the very edge between finger and thumb, the other fingers splayed to keep them out of the way as if picking up a dead cockroach by one of its legs. It wouldn’t have surprised Evan if the stuck-up old bastard carried it to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

  ‘A cockroach?’ Yates said.

  Evan’s ears were playing tricks, he didn’t say that. He said private investigator. It was just some days he actually wished he was a cockroach or a water beetle. At least they didn’t choose to be what they were.

  ‘Who is it, dear?’ a woman’s voice said from behind Yates.

  ‘It’s a—’

  ‘My name’s Evan Buckley,’ Evan called over his shoulder.

  Punching Colonel Jeffrey Yates, Ret. on his drinker’s nose wouldn’t get him far and it wouldn’t take too much more of being looked at down it before it happened.

  ‘Invite him in, Jeffrey. Where are your manners?’

  Jeffrey stood reluctantly to the side as Evan stepped in and looked around at the massive entrance hall with its matching staircases curving off to the left and right. He was tempted to try a quick yodel, count how many seconds it took for the echo to come back.

  Mrs Yates held out her hand. Evan thought about wiping his on his pants leg before he took it.

  ‘I’m Deborah Yates. Are you with—’

  ‘I was trying to tell you, he’s a—’

  ‘United Way?’

  ‘Private investigator.’

  The proffered hand dropped like a stone before Evan had a chance to shake it, a look of relief at a near miss on her face. It was for the best. His was a little sticky. Her husband’s face said it all: Now can I throw him out?

  ‘Oh.’

  Evan promised himself he’d practice saying oh like that until he could do it as well as she did. It was quite something, the amount of feeling conveyed in that one small word. He tried it out in his head a few times.

  ‘I was expecting somebody from—’

  ‘United Way? Sorry. I’m actually here to talk to Leighton.’

  Nothing happened at first.

  Then everything happened at once.

  Deborah Yates’ face crumpled, caved in on itself. Before the first squeak escaped her lips, her husband was in Evan’s face, his fists bunching Evan’s lapels. His breath was hot, a faint smell of cigarettes behind breath mints.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing coming here—’

  There was a strangled wail from his wife. He pushed Evan away roughly and went to her, put a comforting arm around her, guided her to a chair near the bottom of the stairs. One of the advantages of a big house, Evan thought idly. Always a chair handy for those surprise moments.

  He straightened his lapels, held up his hands. You’d have thought he held up a middle finger.

  ‘Get out! Now!’

  He backed slowly towards the door, not sure what Yates would do if he turned his back.

  ‘Jeffrey, no,’ Mrs Yates said, her voice more under control than her husband’s. ‘Let him say what he came to say.’

  Yates looked between the two of them. Evan hoped for the sake of the men under his command, he’d been a lot more decisive back in the day.

  ‘What harm can it do?’ Deborah Yates said.

  ‘What harm—’

  ‘Please. And you mustn’t get so excited.’

  He turned on his heel and strode off in the direction of the east or west wing, Evan couldn’t be sure which.

  ‘I need a drink. And I don’t care what fucking time it is.’

  Deborah Yates stood up, gave Evan a polite smile, please excuse my husband and gestured for Evan to follow him. A drink sounded pretty good to him too. By the time they joined Yates in the sitting room—the blue room he assumed from the decor—Yates had lined up three old-fashioned glasses and was filling them with Gin. It wasn’t clear whether they were all for him or it was one each. Given what had happened so far, Evan thought it best to just wait and see.

  But somewhere between the hallway and the sitting room Yates had found those missing manners. He passed the drinks around and offered Evan a seat. Both the Yates sat on the couch opposite. Jeffrey downed most of his drink in one swallow.

  ‘You tell him,’ he said to his wife.

  He slumped back in the over-sized couch and rested his head on the back cushion, stared up at the ceiling, his drink nestled in his lap. His wife perched further forward on her seat as if to compensate.

  ‘Leighton was killed in 1993.’

  Evan wasn’t even surprised. He’d been expecting it even before the outburst in the hallway.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  He also didn’t know how the hell Guillory’s inquiries had failed to pick that up.

  Deborah Yates gave him another polite smile.

  ‘Thank you. There’s no reason you should have.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask what happened?’

  ‘Fucking hit and run,’ her husband said without moving anything but his lips.

  ‘Jeffrey, please.’

  Yates downed the rest of his drink and got up. It had hardly been worth sitting down. He raised his glass in a question to Evan and his wife. They both shook their heads.

  ‘As Jeffrey said, it was a hit and run.’

  Evan couldn’t be sure because Yates’ back was turned, but he thought he heard him mumble fucking hit and run under his breath.

  ‘Leighton was killed outright.’

  Evan held his breath. The next words to leave this woman’s mouth would determine everything. It seemed as if her husband was holding his breath too.

  ‘Luckily Sterling was thrown from the stroller. Babies seem to bounce at that age, don’t they?’

  Evan had no idea whether they did or not. But at least he wouldn’t have to ask the delicate question he’d been dreading: Did your daughter have the baby she conceived with the Mexican half-breed you disapproved of? Or the second one: And did you force her to give it up?—just like the child’s grandmother.

  As is often the case, Deborah Yates simply assumed Evan knew who all the players in her story were.

  ‘We brought Sterling up as our own,’ she said.

  There was a heartfelt grunt from the drinks cabinet. Evan glanced across. Yates was standing with his butt resting against the edge of the cabinet, one arm across his body, the other resting on it, the drink held inches from his mouth. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of sitting down again.

  ‘Was anybody arrested?’

  ‘Police didn’t have a clue,’ came the reply from the drinks cabinet.

  ‘It was very strange—’

  ‘Deborah.’

  Yates had found some of the steel he’d no doubt been renowned for as a leader of fighting men. His wife’s mouth clamped shut. She looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

  ‘My turn,’ Yates said, fixing Evan with his gaze. ‘What are you interested in all this for? It was twenty-five years ago—’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  Yates smiled at his wife, acknowledged his error.

  ‘It’s not actually Leighton I’m interested in,’ Evan said.

  For a moment it looked as if Yates was about to explode again.

  Then what the hell are you doing bringing all this up again?

  ‘I’m interested in Sterling.’

  Neither of them said a word. Yates’ drink stalled on the way to his mouth. His wife searched for something in the folds of her skirt.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything else until I speak to Sterling.’

  ‘Well you’re going to have to wait—’

  ‘What my husband means is Sterling is away at the moment—a conference
in Geneva, won’t be back for another two days. It’s something to do with Médecins Sans Frontières. Sterling’s very committed to helping the less fortunate.’

  Coming out of Deborah Yates’ prim and proper mouth, less fortunate sounded like a particularly nasty communicable disease to be avoided at all costs.

  The way things were going with the case so far, Evan didn’t fancy the chances of the passengers on the plane back from Geneva either. It was bound to crash.

  ‘Damn doctors, ought to spend more time with patients in their own damn country, less time in the bar on conferences. We didn’t have—’

  ‘What Jeffrey means is he’s very proud Sterling’s done so well. That is what you mean, isn’t it Jeffrey?’

  Full of booze or not, Jeffrey had the sense to give an affirmative grunt.

  ‘Have you got a number, an address?’ Evan said, getting an appreciative nod from Jeffrey for diverting his wife’s attention away from him.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Deborah Yates led the way back out to the hallway, over to a small table by the chair at the foot of the mountain, sorry, stairs.

  ‘I really should remember it. My memory’s not what it was.’

  Evan would have bet everything he owned there was nothing the matter with her memory. She wanted to talk, away from the censoring influence of her husband. He made things easy for her.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  She opened a drawer in the table and pulled out an old-fashioned address book, found the page she was after. Evan tapped the details into his phone.

  ‘I suppose I should keep all this in my cell phone,’ she said.

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  She looked quickly behind them, made sure the door to the sitting room was firmly closed. Evan considered suggesting they go in one of the other wings, into the pink room perhaps. She dropped into the chair. Evan sat on the bottom step like a naughty little boy.

  ‘He’ll kill me if he finds out I’m telling you this.’