The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  tire iron again, but in the darkness missed and it hit the floor instead. A fist connected with his jaw. Fiske swung out and hit solid flesh as well.

  The guy was on his feet and through the door in a few seconds. Fiske finally lurched up and raced to the door, holding his shoulder. He heard feet clattering down the steps. He hustled after the man and heard the front door to the building crash open. Ten seconds later Fiske was out on the street. He looked right and left. A horn blew.

  Sara rolled down her window and pointed to the right. Fiske sprinted hard through the rain in that direction and turned the corner. Sara put the car in gear, but had to wait for two cars to pass, and then she spun rubber after him. She turned the corner, raced down the next block but didn’t see anyone. She backed the car up and turned down another side street, and then another, growing more and more frantic. She let out a shriek of relief when she saw Fiske in the middle of the street, sucking in air.

  She jumped out of the car and ran over to him.

  “John, thank God you’re okay.”

  Fiske was furious that the man had gotten away. He stomped around in tight circles. “Dammit! Shit!”

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  Fiske calmed down. “Bad guys one, good guys zip.”

  Sara put an arm around his waist and walked him over to the car. She eased him into it. Then she climbed in the driver’s side and they started off. “You need to see a doctor.”

  “No! It’s just a stinger. Did you see the guy?”

  Sara shook her head. “Not really. He came out so fast, I thought it was you.”

  “My size? Distinguishing clothing? White, black?”

  Sara thought hard for a moment, trying to visualize what she had seen. “I don’t know about his age. He was close to your size. He had on dark clothing and a mask, I think.” She sighed. “It happened so fast. Where was he?”

  “In the pantry. I didn’t hear him on my first pass through, but I heard the floor squeak on my way back out.” He rubbed his shoulder. “And now comes the hard part.” He picked up her cell phone and pulled a business card from his wallet. “Telling Chandler what just happened.”

  Fiske paged Chandler and the detective called back a few minutes later. When Fiske told him what he had done, he had to hold the phone away from his ear.

  “Slightly upset?” Sara asked.

  “Yeah, like Mount Saint Helens slightly erupted.” Fiske brought the receiver back to his ear. “Look, Buford — ”

  “What the hell were you thinking, doing something that stupid?” yelled Chandler. “You were a cop.”

  “That’s how I was thinking. Like I was still a cop.”

  “Well, you’re not a damn cop anymore.”

  “Do you want the description of the guy or not?”

  “I’m not finished with you yet.”

  “I know, but there’s plenty of me to go around.”

  “Give me the damn description,” Chandler said.

  After Fiske finished, Chandler said, “I’ll get a squad car over there right now to secure it, and I’ll request a tech team ASAP to go over the place.”

  “My brother’s briefcase wasn’t at his apartment. Was it in his car?”

  “No, I told you we found no personal items.”

  Fiske looked at Sara. “Is the briefcase in his office? I don’t remember seeing it. Or his laptop computer.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing the briefcase. And he usually didn’t bring his laptop to work, since we all have desktops.”

  Fiske spoke back into the phone. “Looks like his briefcase is missing. And so is his computer; I found the power cord to it.”

  “Did the guy maybe have either of the items on him?”

  “He was empty-handed. I know. He clocked me good with one of those empty hands.”

  “Okay, so we got a missing briefcase, missing laptop and a dumb-as-shit ex-police officer who I’ve got half a mind to arrest right this instant.”

  “Come on, you guys already towed my car.”

  “Put Ms. Evans on the line.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Fiske handed the phone over to a perplexed Sara.

  “Yes, Detective Chandler?” she said, nervously twirling a strand of her hair.

  “Ms. Evans,” he began politely, “I thought you were simply going to drive Mr. Fiske to his car and maybe get a little dinner, not engage in filming a James Bond movie.”

  “But you see, his car was towed and — ”

  Chandler’s tone quickly changed. “I don’t appreciate you two making my job even more difficult. Where are you?”

  “About a mile from Michael’s apartment.”

  “And where are you headed?”

  “To Richmond. To tell John’s father about Michael.”

  “Okay, then you drive him to Richmond, Ms. Evans. Don’t let him out of your sight. If he wants to play Sherlock Holmes again, you call me, and I will come directly over and shoot him myself. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Detective Chandler. Absolutely.”

  “And I expect to see both of you back in D.C. tomorrow. Is that also understood?”

  “Yes, we’ll be back.”

  “Good, Tonto, now put the Lone Ranger back on.”

  Fiske took back the phone. “Look, I know it was stupid, but I was only trying to help.”

  “Do me a favor, don’t try to help anymore unless I’m with you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “John, any number of things could’ve happened tonight, most of them bad. Not only to you, but to Ms. Evans.”

  Fiske rubbed his shoulder and glanced over at the woman. “I know,” he said quietly.

  “Give my condolences to your father.”

  Fiske put down the phone.

  “Can we go to Richmond now?” Sara asked.

  “Yes, we can go to Richmond now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  In his friend’s pickup truck, Josh Harms drove along the deserted country road. The dense forest bracketing the narrow lanes gave him a certain comfort. Isolation, a buffer between himself and those who would hassle him, had been Josh’s one constant goal in life. As a carpenter of considerable skill, he worked alone. When he was not working, he was either hunting or fishing, again alone. He did not desire the conversation of others, and he very rarely offered any of his own. All of that had changed now. The responsibility he had just acquired had not yet fully sunk in, but he knew it was considerable. And he also knew his decision had been the right one.

  The truck had a camper and his brother was back there supposedly resting, although Josh had doubts as to whether the man could really be sleeping. The back of the camper was also filled with a month’s worth of food and bottled water, two deer rifles and a semiautomatic pistol in addition to the one he had tucked in his belt. That arsenal was insignificant compared to what would soon be coming after them, but he had faced long odds before and survived.

  He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke cleanly out the window. They were already two hundred miles from Roanoke and he was putting as much distance between it and them as he could. The escape would have been discovered by now, he knew. The roadblocks would be set up, but not out this far, he figured. They had gotten a head start, but that gap would quickly close. The boys in green had a big advantage in manpower and equipment. But Josh had fished and hunted around the area for the last twenty years. He knew all the abandoned cabins, all the hidden valleys, the smallest opening in otherwise solid forest. His survival skills had been honed as much from scraping for an existence in America as from dodging death halfway around the world in Vietnam.

  Even with his outright distrust of all authority, he didn’t break the law lightly. He had never figured his little brother for some crazed killer. Rufus never should have joined the Army, wasn’t cut out for it. Ironically, Josh had been the decorated war hero, and he had been drafted. His brother had volunteered and had spent his c
areer in the stockade. Josh hadn’t been too thrilled about taking up a rifle for a country that had largely failed him and anyone his color. But once in the service he had fought with great distinction. He had done it for himself and the men in his company, and for no other reason. He had no other motivation to fight and kill men with whom he had no personal quarrel.

  Josh slowed the truck and turned down a dirt road that led deeper into the woods. Rufus had filled him in on some of the details of what had happened twenty-five years ago, what those men had done to him. Josh felt his face grow hot as he now recalled an incident he had kept buried. It was principally what drove the anger, the hatred in him. What their little town in Alabama had done to the Harms family after the news of Rufus’s crime. He had tried to protect his mother then, but had failed. Let me meet up with the men who did this to my brother. You hear that one, God? You listening?

  His plan was to hide out for a while and then hit the road again when the pressure died down. Maybe try to get to Mexico and disappear. Josh wasn’t leaving all that much behind. A disintegrated family, a carpentry business that was always on the wrong side of profitability despite his skill. He guessed Rufus was all the family he had left. And he was certainly all Rufus ever would have. They had been cut off from each other for a quarter century. Now, in middle age, they had a chance to be closer than brothers normally were at this time in their lives. If Josh and Rufus could survive. He tossed out the cigarette and kept on driving.

  In the back of the camper, Rufus was, indeed, not asleep. He lay on his back, a black tarp partially over him — Josh’s doing, the tarp designed to blend in with the dark truck bed liner under him. Stacked around him were boxes of food, secured by bungie cords — also Josh’s doing, a wall to prevent anyone from seeing in. He tried to stretch out a little, relax. The motion of the truck was unsettling. He had not been in a civilian automobile since Richard Nixon had been president. Could that really be? How many presidents ago was that? The Army had always transported him between prisons via helicopters, apparently unwilling to let him get this close to the road, to freedom. When you escape from a chopper, there wasn’t much place to go except down.

  Rufus tried to peek between cardboard, out at the passing night. Too dark now. Freedom. He often wondered what it would feel like. He still did not know. He was too scared. People, lots of them, looking for him. Wanting to kill him. And now his brother. His fingers gripped the unfamiliar texture of the hospital Bible. The one his mother had given him was back in the cell. He had kept it beside him all these years, turned again and again to the scriptures as sustenance against all that was his existence. He felt empty of brain and heart without it. Too late now. He felt his heart start to accelerate. He figured that was bad — too much strain on it. From memory he recited comforting words from the Bible’s bounty. How many nights had he mumbled the Proverbs, all thirty-one chapters, the one hundred and fifty Psalms, each one telling and forceful, each one with particular meaning, insight into elements of his existence.

  When he finished his “readings,” he half rose and slid open the window of the camper. From this angle he could see his brother’s face in the reflection of the rearview mirror.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” Josh said.

  “Can’t.”

  “How’s your heart feel?”

  “My heart ain’t troubling me none. If I die, it ain’t gonna be because of my heart.”

  “Not unless it’s a bullet ripping through it.”

  “Where we headed?”

  “A little place in the middle of nowhere. I figure we stay there a bit, let things die down, and then we head out again when it’s dark. They probably think we’re shooting south, going for the Mexican border, so we’re going north to Pennsylvania, at least for now.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Hey, you said Rayfield and that other sonofabitch — ”

  “Tremaine. Old Vic.”

  “Yeah, you said they’ve been watching over you all this time. After all those years went by, how come they were still hanging in there? Didn’t they figure if you remembered what happened you would’ve said something before now? Like maybe at your trial?”

  “Been thinking about that. They maybe thought I couldn’t remember nothing then, but maybe I might one day. Not that I could prove nothing, but just me saying stuff might get them in trouble or at least get people looking around. Easiest thing was to kill me. Believe me, they tried that, but it didn’t work. Maybe they thought I was messing with ’em, playing dumb and hoping they’d give up the guard, and then I start talking. With them at the prison, they pretty much had me under their thumb. Read my mail, checked out people coming to see me. Anything look funny, then they just take me out. Probably felt better about doing it like that. After so many years, though, they got a little lazy, I guess. Let Samuel and that fellow from the Court come see me.”

  “I figured that. But I still got that letter from the Army in to you. I didn’t know all this shit was going on, but I didn’t want them having a look-see at it either.”

  The two stayed quiet for a while. Josh was naturally reserved and Rufus wasn’t used to having anyone to talk to. The silence was both liberating and oppressive to him. He had a lot he wanted to say. During Josh’s thirty-minute visits at the prison each month, he would talk and his brother would mostly listen, as though he sensed the accumulation of words, of thoughts in Rufus’s head.

  “I don’t think I ever asked you:You been back home?”

  Josh shifted in his seat. “Home? What home?”

  Rufus started slightly. “Where we was born, Josh!”

  “Why the hell would I want to go back to that place?”

  “Momma’s grave is there, ain’t it?” Rufus said quietly.

  Josh considered this for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, it’s there, all right. She owned the dirt, she had the burial insurance. They couldn’t not bury her there, although they sure as hell tried.”

  “Is it a nice grave? Who’s keeping it up?”

  “Look, Rufus, Momma’s dead, okay? Long time now. Ain’t no way in hell she’s knowing nothing about how her grave looks. And I ain’t going all the way down to damn Alabama to brush some leaves off the damn ground, not after what happened down there. Not after what that town done to the Harms family. I hope they all burn in hell for it, every last damn one of ’em. If there is a God, and I got me some big-ass doubts on that, then that’s what the Big Man should do. If you want to worry about the dead, you go right ahead. I’m gonna stick to what counts: keeping you and me alive.”

  Rufus continued to watch his brother. There is a God, he wanted to tell him. That same God had kept Rufus going all these years when he had wanted to just curl up and sink into oblivion. And one should respect the dead and their final resting place. If he lived through this, Rufus would go see to his mother’s grave. They would meet up again. For all eternity.

  “I talk to God every day.”

  Josh grunted. “That’s real good. I’m glad He’s keeping company with somebody.”

  They fell silent until Josh said, “Hey, what was the name of that fella come visit you?”

  “Samuel Rider?”

  “No, no, the young fella.”

  Harms thought for a moment. “Michael somebody.”

  “From the Supreme Court, you said?” Rufus nodded. “Well, they killed him. Michael Fiske. Anyway, I guess they killed him. Saw it on the TV right before I came to get you.”

  Rufus looked down. “Damn. I figured that would happen.”

  “Stupid thing he did, coming to the prison like that.”

  “He was just trying to help me. Damn,” Rufus said again, and then fell silent as the truck rolled on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  With Fiske directing her, Sara drove to his father’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Richmond and pulled into the gravel driveway. The grass was brown in spots after another heat- and humidity-filled Richmond summer, but fronting the house there were car
efully tended flower beds that had benefited from consistent watering.

  “You grew up in this house?”

  “Only house my parents have ever owned.” Fiske looked around, shaking his head. “I don’t see his car.”