"What have you got there?" Her voice acquired an edge. "I thought you didn't carry a gun."
"Police business."
"Something's wrong," she said, facing him. "What is it?"
He slipped on a windbreaker. "I'm playing God."
"That's a big part. Care to explain?"
"I've never been able to protect my women. About time I did."
Something altered in her eyes, which affected her breathing. "This isn't for me, is it, James? If it is, I don't want it."
"Not only for you," he said.
In the sultry dark Morgan felt like a soldier entering battle, his legs unsteady. In Vietnam he'd looked upon them as temporary, likely to be blown off. Here on the green he cut an uneven path, thwarting imaginary trip mines, and rendezvoused under the red maple, where Ben Sawhill immediately whispered in his ear. "He's here. Same bench."
Reverend Stottle murmured, "He's the wolf, we're the lambs."
Straining his eyes, Morgan made out the shape of Bobby Sawhill's head and the set of his shoulder, nothing else.
"If you're having second thoughts," Ben said, we can walk away. We can do that right now."
A slash of lightning gave the night a lurid moment of daylight, in which the world looked like bone. The thunder that followed was big and bad. Morgan imagined cats hiding in their fur, dogs cringing, babies bawling. In Vietnam he'd participated in kill counts, women and children included in the totals.
Reverend Stottle said, "What if he fires at us?"
"The gun will make a noise, that's all," Ben said. "The shell's empty."
In Vietnam Morgan had been a grunt. Ben Sawhill, whose service had come later, had been a captain on the adjutant general's staff.
Ben said, "Can you do it, Chief?"
"We'll see."
They moved forward in unison, Reverend Stot- tie's bearing more military than theirs. He even seemed taller, a Christian soldier. A voice rang out.
"Who's there?"
Ben responded. "It's me, Bobby. Chief Morgan's with me. And Reverend Stottle."
"What do you want?"
Streetlight stretched in far enough so that Morgan could see half of Bobby's face, panic in it, a fear without a name. Reverend Stottle had raised a hand, as if to bless. Ben said, "Chief Morgan's going to take you in. Lock you up."
They all saw Bobby reach into his jacket pocket. They all glimpsed the revolver. Morgan had his pistol out.
"It's now or never," Ben said.
Another flash of lightning, and the world was lurid again. Years shaved from it, eyes youthful, Morgan's angular face was a naked nerve, a Vietnam face, Bensington-born, the military one thing, his sensibilities another. The weapon was a weight.
"Do it, Chief."
Shifting from one altered state to another, he shook his head and proffered the pistol. "I can't. Can you?"
Bobby fired the revolver high into a roll of thunder. In the same instant a uniformed figure sprang up to the left of him, the figure immediately recognizable to Morgan.
"No, Floyd!"
A schooled officer of the law, legs spread and feet set, young Floyd Wetherfield gripped his ser vice revolver with both hands and fired twice. He was saving the chief's life, justifying the chiefs faith in him.
Both shots missed.
"Bobby, run," Ben hollered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Two days later, the morning brisk and windy, Ben Sawhill and Chief Morgan sat on a bench on the green, the same bench Bobby had occupied. They sat with their shoulders hunched and their coat collars hiked. Each held a paper cup of take-out coffee from the Blue Bonnet. Ben, who sounded bone-weary, said, "I don't know where the hell he is. He hasn't slept in his bed. I don't know if he's been back to the house at all."
Morgan peered into his coffee. "We've had an eye out. No sign of him."
Winds had ripped off the last leaves of the red maple. Small branches soughed, larger ones creaked. Ben said, "What have we done, Chief?"
"I don't know. Probably made it worse."
"We were operating in a moral vacuum. No matter what we did, it wouldn't have been right. Doing nothing wouldn't have been right either."
"You look like hell," Morgan said. "You oughta go home, go to bed."
Ben finished off his coffee and crumpled the cup. When he stood up, the wind yanked at his tie and flipped it over his shoulder. "What could we have been thinking of, Chief?"
"Ourselves."
"You going to be all right?"
"No," Morgan said. "But thanks for asking."
He was sound asleep on the leather sofa in his study when his wife woke him and told him he had a call from Sherwood, from Mr. Grissom. "It's about Bobby," Belle said. "He's there."
"Of course!" Ben said, slapping a hand over his eyes. He went to his desk and took the call. "Thanks for calling, Mr. Grissom. How'd he get there?"
"I have no idea." The voice was professional and aloof. "How do you want to handle this, Mr. Sawhill?"
"I'll come get him."
"I want no trouble."
"I'll bring the local police chief with me, that all right?"
"That's fine. I'll expect you in a couple of hours, no later."
"Mr. Grissom! How is he?"
"I've told him different, but he thinks he can stay."
He cradled the phone and rubbed his brow. Belle, staring at him, said nothing. When he started to speak, she turned her back on him.
Bobby Sawhill napped in his old room, on what had been Dibble's bunk and later his own. In a dream he was a baby again, talcum on his bottom, mother's kisses on his cheek. Each kiss had the weightlessness of a rose petal. Someone tried to roust him, but he refused to wake up. I'm scared, Mommy, he murmured, and his mother soothed him, neatened his hair. He was in short pants now, though unable to tie his shoes. Mommy did it. Someone pulled at his arms, and his eyes snapped open.
"You don't belong here," Jason said. "And that's my cot now, the other one's Billy's."
Bobby blinked. "Who's Billy?"
"He's new. He's me." Jason stood bare-chested in jeans, his belly a quiltwork of muscle, his skin darker than Bobby remembered. "I'm almost you now," he said proudly. "Mr. Grissom's still thinking it over."
"I won't get in your way," Bobby said softly.
"You can't stay- You're too old."
Bobby eased his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up. The writing table, which had always been neat, was cluttered with comic books and girlie magazines. "I was good to you."
"I'm good to Billy."
Bobby smiled. "Do you still have treats?"
"We haven't had none for a while. Mr. Grissom says there's been budget cuts."
"Who's the Ping-Pong champ?"
"We don't have none." Jason backed off. "I gotta go. Mr. Grissom says you can eat in the dining hall. You can sit at my table."
Bobby nodded. "Thank you."
"It ain't me. It's Mr. Grissom."
Alone, Bobby tidied the top of the writing table, placing the comic books and magazines in nearequal stacks. Fishing in the drawer, he came upon a salted cracker and ate it. He found a notepad that had belonged to Dibble and wrote on it. After that, he shuffled a deck of cards and played solitaire.
They drove south from Bensington and well west of Boston, Ben Sawhill at the wheel, Chief Morgan beside him, Reverend Stottle in the rear. The reverend had spent the morning in the nursing home in Andover, where he had visited Malcolm Crandall's father, a diabetic who had undergone an amputation. Leaning forward, his breath on the chief's neck, he said, "A lonely truth is a onelegged man with nowhere to go and no one to take him there. On a bed pan he thinks he's in the driver's seat, though the only traffic is in himself."
Morgan said, "Cool it, Reverend."
Ben had not wanted him to accompany them, but Morgan had insisted, as if the conspiracy were still in force, their mission of mercy still a fact.
"A truth has no need of clothes. A lie dresses itself to the nines."
H
is hand firm on the wheel, Ben increased the speed. "What's your point, Austin?"
"While I was visiting old Mr. Crandall the fellow in the next bed expired. I felt privileged to be there. The shocked eyes of the dead see everything and nothing. In that ratified gaze lies the mystery of the universe. Astrophysicists would do well to forget the stars and pluck those eyes out."
"Reverend, shut up," Morgan said.
"No," Ben said, `let him talk. I'm not listening."
"I think we've done your nephew an injustice."
"We've already come to that conclusion, Austin."
"Pound for pound, an invented fear bulks bigger than a real one. A real one has a name. An invented one has a soul. That's why you acted as you did."
Morgan, staring out at the darkening sky, said, We almost there?"
"Almost," Ben said.
An attendant escorted them to Mr. Grissom's office. Mr. Grissom, clad in a warm-up jacket and sweats, greeted them with professional courtesy and solemnity. He was not happy with the situation. "We've never had a boy come back before," he said.
"Except for the fences," Reverend Stottle said, "it doesn't look like such a bad place."
"I do my best."
Ben said, "Does he know we're here?"
"No." Mr. Grissom came out from around his desk. "He's got it into his head he can stay. I hope he doesn't give us trouble."
"Where is he?"
"In his old room. I'll take you to him." Mr. Grissom led them out of the office and down a corridor. "I can have him subdued if necessary."
"I don't think it will be," Ben said.
Mr. Grissom glanced at Chief Morgan. "Are you armed?"
"No," Morgan said.
"I am," Mr. Grissom said, lifting the bottom of his sweatshirt. They turned a corner and then another. Mr. Grissom opened a door and peered in.
"He's not here, sir," a voice said.
"Where is he?"
Jason rose from his bunk and lowered his voice. "He said he wanted to talk to his pals."
"His pals? What are you talking about?"
"You know, sir." A cryptic look passed between them. Then Jason eased forward with a slip of paper torn from a pad. "Look what he wrote down, sir."
Mr. Grissom held the paper at arm's length. Written in a bold hand was I forgive me. He passed it over. "Sounds like he's coming to terms, Mr. Sawhill. Why don't you keep it?"
They trooped down another corridor, Mr. Grissom in the lead, a bounce to his step, the others a length behind. Reverend Stottle huffed to keep up. Jason and an attendant had joined in. Mr. Grissom glanced over his shoulder.
"He's in the toilets, what we call the toilets. It's a communal washroom. If you hear him talking and no one's there, don't be concerned. It's a game."
Ben lengthened his stride. "I thought he was talking to his pals."
"They're not here anymore. They're gone."
Mr. Grissom threw open the door to the toilets, barged in, and stopped in his tracks.
Ben Sawhill gasped.
Reverend Stottle stared up at the eyes.
"Someone get a knife and cut him down," Chief Morgan said.
EPILOGUE
Living and working in Boston, her daytime mind constantly challenged, Trish Becker felt intellectually fulfilled. Her large pale body, however, seemed in hibernation, wintering toward an uncertain spring. In the spring she became involved with a widower she'd met through a dating service. He was quiet, unoffending, and reasonably well-off, but each had reservations. She did not consider him up to the mark. He doubted she would wear comfortably. They married anyway. The overriding factor was that each wasn't getting any younger. Each knew panic in the night.
Gloria Eisner did not remarry. Her body had pleased three husbands, none deserving. Her feelings for Chief Morgan, warm but ambiguous, did not prevent her from leaving Bensington permanently when her father died. She moved to New Jersey to be with her mother, a situation that gradually grew unsatisfactory. Each got on the other's nerves. Before another winter set in, she drove to Key West, where her friend Barry greeted her exuberantly. "I came back for the sunset," she said. "Is it still here?"
During a Sunday sermon Reverend Austin Stottle caused considerable stir when he posed two questions. How many generations does God go back? And are there monkeys in his past? A great number of men and women in the congregation demanded he step down, but a few loyal supporters, Ben Sawhill among them, pointed out that he was merely passing through one of his phases. The next Sunday, after a long discussion with his wife, he told the congregation that each day of the year, sunny, stormy, whatever, was a poem written by God.
Ben Sawhill took a leave of absence from his law firm and, avoiding mirrors in the morning because his face didn't look plausible, grew a beard. The twins liked it. Belle did not. The twins worried him. They were obsessed with the thought that if one died, the other would die twice. He was also concerned about his relationship with Belle. They seemed to have grown apart. "Do you blame me for anything?" she asked, and he assured her he didn't. She seemed unconvinced. His most peaceful times were during solitary walks in the woods, where he visualized a world in which time could be rewound and lives relived with a sure sense of what to avoid, happiness a given.
Bobby Sawhill was buried next to his mother in Burnham Road Cemetery. Mrs. Perrault, a faithful visitor to her daughter's grave, occasionally visited his. Exhausted, she seemed to have forgiven him, though she still murmured, "Why?"
Mrs. Bullard's old house, standing vacant, once again the property of the bank, caught fire one night and burned nearly to the ground. A few in town believed that Chief Morgan was responsible. They claimed that Officer Floyd Wetherfield, who owed his job to the chief, lit the match.
James Morgan, despite occasional controversy, remained police chief of Bensington.
ANDREW COBURN is the author of twelve previous novels, three of which were made into films in France. His work has been translated into eleven languages. A former investigative reporter, editor, and hook reviewer, he lives in Andover, Massachusetts, with his wife, Casey.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
On the Loose Page 19