A Fugitive Truth

by Dana Cameron

  “Okay, pick it up again. C’mon.” His hand was shaking with the gun in it.

  I accelerated and the detective’s car sped up too, never increasing or decreasing the distance between us. Harry was feeling crowded, I could tell, something that would only worsen if we started running into any more cops coming from Monroe. The mere thought of what might happen at a roadblock sickened me.

  “You can understand, can’t you Emma?” Harry almost pleaded; he needed a friend. “Why I had to do what I had to do? They were going to destroy history, and I had to stop them.”

  I stalled. “I…don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “It can’t be worth human lives, can it, Harry?” Just talking hurt my mouth, but that was the least of my troubles. I had to keep him talking, I had to keep him distracted. “And what about Sasha?”

  Harry’s voice softened. “I love Sasha. I’ve never felt like that about anyone before, and what’s more, I’m sure she loves me back. It’s amazing.” Then his face hardened again. “It wasn’t until Faith began to threaten me that I had to think seriously about…keeping her quiet.”

  “Keeping her quiet.” I thought I could simply repeat the words, but something in my voice goaded Harry.

  “Faith brought that on herself! I couldn’t have Sasha find out. I couldn’t lose her. It’s Faith’s own fault she’s dead.”

  I kept my mouth shut, thinking as hard as I could.

  “I took the books. I never meant to hurt anyone.” He nodded, inhaling deeply. “Hell, it seemed like no one would even miss them. It should have been no more than a puzzling loss, perhaps chalked up to poor management or petty theft.

  “But don’t get me wrong, Emma. When we’re dead and dust, there’s nothing left to speak for us. Nothing left of our thoughts. Books are the only legacy of our minds. The only way to touch the past. And they were treating them like they were baseball cards to be traded.” He took an angry drag off his cigarette and coughed a little. “No, baseball cards get more respect.”

  “But you don’t keep everything you buy, do you, Harry?” I reasoned carefully. “You decide what stays, what is exchanged for something more important.” I couldn’t afford to seem like I was challenging him, not with the gun, his frayed nerves, and that dangerous look in his eye. I needed to divert him, however, and continued as evenly as I could, following Kobrinski’s lead in letting him believe he had all the power, which was no real stretch for me.

  While I spoke, my mind raced, trying to form my plan. I’d driven down this road often enough to pick my spot. The trick now was timing. The only problem was that the view I had admired so much before, the great drop to the next valley, now filled me with dread. If I misjudged the distance by so little as a couple of feet…

  “That’s right, I decide,” Harry answered. “That’s why Whitlow, the board, hired me. But they were starting to interfere with the process, with my work, my life, and so I had to act fast to save the books from those Philistines. The board wanted to sell some of the best things, the oddest things, because they didn’t think they were as important as some of the first editions. So I began to move them.”

  I ventured a quick look. I could see the heightened color in his face, where the blood didn’t cover it.

  “But then Sasha came along. She…is special. I thought, maybe, one day, I could tell her. She might understand, and if not, she need never know.” Harry continued, incensed. “But then Faith told me she knew, that she’d seen me heading through the woods one night. At first, she made me believe that she got it, that she could help, in fact. When I saw she was toying with me, she began to…make demands. She’s vile, Emma, you have no idea. And when I finally balked, she threatened to tell Sasha. But I couldn’t afford to let her do that.”

  He wasn’t worried about losing his job or the police, I thought. He was worried about Sasha.

  “Sasha changed the world for me. She was worth any number of Faiths. Emma, you…you have to understand.”

  I didn’t like the tone in Harry’s voice; it was harsh and insistent. “What about Jack? What about my room?” He was talking now, he wanted to talk, and I needed him to concentrate on that and not on me. I kept my eyes carefully on the road. “How could Jack have seen you carrying Faith to the stream? You can’t see it from the house.”

  “Jack never saw me carrying Faith that night; he saw me carrying a tarp from the house—I didn’t want to leave any traces of her in the car. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I’d never…I should have just taken her into the woods. I thought that the water would help…disguise what had happened. When I saw Jack’s note, it was a simple matter to invite him for a drink—drinks—later on. I didn’t know if she’d given you her diary…”

  “You pulled me off the stool.” I kept my voice carefully neutral, inviting him to continue. “And burned the diary?” My humming nerves almost blotted out the pain in my jaw, made the rest of the world outside of the car recede. I had to struggle to keep my plan focused in my head.

  Harry sounded defeated, confused. “I thought that I could implicate Michael by burning the diary at the residence. And I didn’t mean to hurt you that day in the library; I was walking by and I saw you through the door. I just reached in and yanked—but I just wanted to scare you, to get you to leave, I never wanted to hurt you. Because I know you’ll understand, I know you will. I had to do this. I’ve seen you at your work, you know what I’m saying.”

  It was so much worse than when Michael said I should know better, and I knew that Harry must have said the same thing to Faith. I shook my head and slowed the car imperceptibly. I needed a few more moments and took a chance. “Harry, my work is a big part of my life. You do know that, that’s why I couldn’t leave.” I worked hard trying to think of something to distract him. “But it’s only books, only work. I couldn’t…do what you’ve done.”

  “Are you sure?” His voice was different now, not pleading. Scary. I heard a rustling and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harry remove something from his shirt pocket.

  “‘My dear Cousin,’” the librarian read. “‘I am delighted to find myself alive, finally able to tell you that I am free…’”

  There was a sharp turn in the road, and navigating the curve in the fading daylight slowed down my recognition. I couldn’t understand what Harry was saying.

  “‘…My story is a remarkable one and had anyone described such a tale to me, I should have called him a liar.’”

  Recognition dawned, and I turned and stared at Harry. “That’s the beginning of Margaret’s trial letter!”

  “Watch the road!” Harry demanded, brandishing the pistol. He yanked sharply at the steering wheel.

  We swerved suddenly, and fishtailing, the back end of the station wagon screeched, dragging against the guard rail before I straightened us out.

  “You had it all along,” I said shakily. There had been less than an inch of metal between us and the hundred foot drop on the other side of the rail, the view that I’d admired so much driving to Shrewsbury that first day.

  “I wanted to see the look on your face when I was able to ‘discover’ it for you, one day.” Harry’s voice hardened. “What would you give to see the details of her trial, Emma? What does this scrap of paper mean to you?”

  I stared straight ahead and said nothing.

  It was getting darker and more and more difficult to see the road. I felt like shit, I couldn’t think, not with everything that was happening, but more than anything, now, I needed to stay clear-headed. I knew what that letter meant, what it meant to me, what I’d sacrificed for my work. And now I didn’t dare imagine what I had risked by staying to see Margaret’s correspondence.

  Suddenly, I smelled smoke. I looked across to the other seat in horror. Harry held a furled scrap of paper to his lit cigarette and it was catching fire. Slowly, then with increasing hunger, the flames consumed the fragment of paper that contained the answers to so many of my research questions.

  “Jesus, no!” The car careened wildly as I
lunged at Harry, trying to snatch the letter away from him. Again, he yanked the steering wheel back into position, keeping us from veering off the road.

  “Watch the road, Goddamn it! Get your hands on the wheel!”

  I was too late. Not much more than a scrap to begin with, the dry paper burned quickly. Harry let the last two inches of it curl and blacken, until there was nothing left but a wisp of smoke rising from the scrap and a smell of burning cotton thick in the air. He rolled down the window and threw the remainder out.

  I gave him a look, full of malice and heartbreak, and turned to face the road again, gritting my teeth. Very soon now, Harry…I slowed the car again, ever so slightly.

  Harry jammed the pistol in front of my face, emphasizing his words. “Just now you were willing to kill two people in order to save a letter, a sheet of paper, a fragment, written by a nobody, the wife of an insignificant provincial bureaucrat! Now tell me you don’t understand how I feel!”

  It was a long moment before I could choke out the words. “How could you? The way you feel?”

  “It was a small price to pay to make my point, Emma.” His reply was strained, tired and patient, as if he was trying to explain something very unfair to a small child. “I did this so you’ll understand.”

  I glanced away from the road in front of me, as if considering this. I put aside mourning the loss of Margaret’s letter to try and save my life. In the side mirror, I could see the headlights of the police car tailing us.

  “Maybe I do, just a little, Harry.” I ran my tongue around my teeth and tasted the warm slime of my own blood before I continued. “But you don’t want to make this situation worse than it already is. If Sasha loves you, she’ll love you no matter what. You need to—”

  But I’d gone too far. “Nobody tells me what to do, Emma! Not the board, not Faith, and certainly not you!” He waved the gun again. “I’ll be the one to decide what I’m going to do!”

  I passed the mile marker I had been waiting for. It was time, now or never. I took a deep breath, said a short prayer to no one in particular and got ready.

  “But not about me, Harry. I decide for me!”

  And then I did what I knew I was going to have to do all along. I jerked the steering wheel sharply to the right, pulling as hard as I could.

  For a moment, I thought I’d waited too long, that I was going to take us through the barrier and over the cliff into the valley below. I hit the brake and swerved into a stand of trees that stood off the soft shoulder of the road, a scenic lookout. After bumping off the road, the station wagon slammed into a tall pine, and the impact seemed to ripple through the heavy steel frame of the car. It was only the fact that I had been slowing down that kept us from going through the windshield entirely; I felt the steering wheel slam into my chest as my forehead smacked against the glass. All was black.

  When I opened my eyes, it must have been only moments later, for the light outside hadn’t changed. Harry was reaching over me and was trying to get the car to start again, to back the car away from the pine, but half the engine must have been embedded in the trunk. With the last ounce of sense I possessed, I surreptitiously reached for the door handle.

  Harry was crying with frustration, screaming at the car to move, move you son of a bitch, when my hand slipped and the handle snapped back loudly into place. Harry quieted suddenly and then drew the pistol up, staring right at me. His face was even worse than after our fight, blood running down from his nose and forehead, where his glasses smashed in on the impact. He tore them off impatiently, blinking to see through the fresh veil of blood on his face.

  “Get out of the car, Emma,” he said quietly.

  I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and I stared at him. Harry’s eyes looked like they did the day I told him I’d cracked Margaret’s code, except now he looked utterly abandoned, bereft of hope and faith. My hand fell away from the door as I misunderstood his directions.

  “No,” he screamed, “Get out of the fucking car! Get out of the fucking car, or I will kill you, I’ll shoot you here and now! Get out of the car, now!”

  I found the handle and yanked it open. The door fell partly open with a resisting screech of crushed metal, and I had to throw my weight against it so that I could squeeze out. I thought I was going to pass out with the pain stabbing through my left side. “Harry, don’t, you can’t—!”

  “Just once more, Emma. Just once more. Get out of the car, GET OUT—”

  But even before I could squeeze myself through the partly opened door, Harry reached over and shoved me as hard as he could. I fell on to my left side and, expecting to feel the impact of a bullet through my head any second, tried to scurry away. I had just got myself to my feet when I heard the shot, loud and sharp, echoing forever in the cold dusk.

  I flinched convulsively, clutching at myself. It had to have hit me in the shoulder, that’s where all the pain was. But even as I looked down to see how bad the wound was, I realized the truth.

  Harry hadn’t followed me out of the car. He’d shot himself instead.

  My relief at being left alive was only momentary, then the thought of what he’d done to me saturated my consciousness. I staggered forward a foot or two, unable to believe what had just happened.

  “No, no, no, no!” Rage consumed me, ate away even at the agony in my shoulder. I couldn’t believe that he’d burned the letter and then taken away the last of Margaret’s secrets with him to the grave. I couldn’t believe what he’d forced me to do. What he’d forced me to see.

  I spun around, picked up a branch lying near us and swung it like a baseball bat at the windshield. It bounced off uselessly, not even making another crack in the blood-spattered glass. That only made me angrier, but the impact had rendered my arm nearly useless again and I dropped the stick numbly. I was kicking at the driver’s side door with my good hand, in a rage at Harry and the stupid, brutal things he’d done, when Detective Kobrinski pulled up.

  “This isn’t what I wanted!” I screamed at her, pointing at the car. “I didn’t mean it! I just wanted him to stop!”

  “Oh man,” Detective Kobrinski whispered. “There’s an ambulance coming, but—”

  “He’s dead! He fucking shot himself…stupid, stupid! He didn’t have to…! And now he’s dead!” I started to kick the car again, but the detective caught me.

  “Oh God!” I wailed over her shoulder. “He told me to get out! If I’d stayed he wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t…he wouldn’t have—”

  “If you’d stayed in the car, he would have shot you too,” she said quietly. “He would have shot himself anyway, there was nothing left.”

  I struggled to free myself. “No, he wouldn’t! No, he wouldn’t!” I tried to shove her away, but broke down entirely. “He made me decide!” I screamed. “I liked him! And he’s dead and I’m just like him and I killed him!”

  “Emma, don’t. You’re not, you’re nothing like—”

  But I couldn’t hear anything more of what she was telling me. The horror of what I’d just been a part of was too much. I stopped struggling, but sank to my knees, not minding the cold of the ground or the pain in my shoulder, but realizing that at some point, I would have to stop crying and figure out how to cope with what had just happened.

  Pam Kobrinski held me as I sobbed, until the ambulance pulled up beside us.

  Epilogue

  ALMOST TWO WEEKS LATER, I SWIVELED AROUND in my chair, staring at the books on the bookshelf. Outside the house that we lovingly call the Funny Farm, spring was happening and somewhere out there, Brian was fussing in the yard that was just recovering from its winter trauma. Although it was early still, he was planning what would go into the garden this year, his enthusiasm almost compensating for the still-weak sun. Like any new convert, he was attacking the chores with zeal if not finesse, a San Diegan intoxicated by the prospect of making something grow in this hostile climate. He was getting the hang of the seasons’ changes around here, in terms of planting and home r
epairs, and I could see how happy all this was making him. I suppose, too, that raking and pruning allowed him to imagine that I really was working as I’d claimed I had to when he invited me to help.

  Back in the woods, the blood on Harry’s hands had been his own.

  I took a drink. A quick look at the computer screen told me no surprises: I hadn’t written a word since I sat down several hours ago. No matter. People were treading cautiously around me, put off I guess by the bruises that were still visible. “You’ll feel better soon, just give yourself some time,” was what they generally said, and I was dishonest enough to take the excuse they were offering me. I felt okay, I’m a fast healer. I didn’t lose any teeth, my arm was feeling lots better, and all I’d needed was a couple of stitches where my head hit the windshield. Exceedingly small potatoes, considering that I could have been blown away at close range, but I felt as though I could never be carelessly happy again.

  My real problem was that I was troubled with an excess of philosophy.

  It had all been terribly simple. Harry had constructed a weatherproof hidey-hole in the ground in the woods near the library. Detective Kobrinski had found it and guessed that Harry had caught his hand on the heavy door that was covered with leaves. When she opened it and shone her flashlight inside, it was like looking at a separate wing of the library, she said. Harry had tripped the alarm a couple of times in figuring out his plan to remove the books, then tripped it periodically after that to throw the scent off himself. No one knew yet how many he might have moved away to some other location before he’d…

  Outside, I heard the rhythmic rasp of a rake. Every once in a while, Brian would look toward the office to try and catch a glimpse of me, but I knew that he couldn’t see me where I was sitting. At one point, he stopped altogether, chin resting thoughtfully on the wooden handle of the rake, and I could tell he was debating whether to come in and give me a good shake, figuratively speaking. I half wished he would, so that I could yell at him, tell him to leave me alone, make him feel guilty for making me upset after all I’d been through.