I struggle to my feet and walk to the bars. Every step sends a bolt of pain through my torso. “I’m not sure. Maybe because you’re the soulless drone who greases the track for the fat boys on top. The flunky who brings the devil coffee. You shine his shoes and defend him in court, and on TV. Right now the country’s full of empty suits like you. I met them every day in D.C. Buckman and the other big boys will go down in the end. But hacks like you tend to slip through the cracks when payback is handed out. I just want you to know that when that day comes, I’m going to make sure you don’t.”
Pine looks back in silence for maybe ten seconds. Then he raps on the door, which is opened from without. After he goes through, it closes behind him with a heavy clang.
I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait for freedom, but there’s no point sitting here trying to figure out who my “accomplice” is. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough. Half my ribs feel cracked or broken. All I want to do right now is forget what it means to drown in a small room on dry land. Curling into a fetal position on the hard, piss-smelling shelf, I blank my mind to everything I saw or heard over the past twelve hours.
The nightmares that come in the fetid darkness of the drunk tank are horrible. Drowning dreams, drowning and sinking, my brother and my son. Nothing I haven’t endured before, only now I have a more visceral understanding of the experience. But at some point, I find myself flying low over the big river at night, like a gliding bird. Ahead, in the moonlight, something floats in the shining water, half-submerged. It’s a man, floating faceup. I swoop lower, accelerating as I descend, expecting to see the face of my brother frozen at eighteen, like the young Elvis on his postage stamp. But as I come even with the body, it’s my father’s face I see staring skyward from the water. His eyes are open but lifeless, or else they’re looking far beyond me, to a sight I’ll be denied until I, too, undergo the final transformation. Passing above his supine form, I realize that—like Paul Matheson—I know something I did not realize I knew. I know what my mother meant when she asked me if I’d punished my father enough. What I don’t know is whether he’ll live long enough for me to ask his forgiveness.
Chapter 43
Cool air hits me like a spray of water as I push through the doors to leave the sheriff’s department. My Flex is parked out front, halfway up the block. A female deputy gave me back my keys and cell phones as I left, both phones powered up. She didn’t give me back my father’s gun.
My iPhone reads 3:17 a.m. The moon has fallen behind the downtown buildings. Paranoia tells me to power down both phones before I leave this area, but as my thumb moves to do it, a text from what appears to be a blurred out email address pops up on my iPhone. It reads: There’s probably a tracker on your vehicle. Maybe even someone waiting to follow. Shut off your phone. Pretend to go to Flex, then cut through the alley at middle of block. Run it! I’ll be waiting. You’ll know.
Unless the Poker Club is about to have me murdered, the text must be from my unknown “accomplice.” Instead of standing on the sidewalk second-guessing myself, I walk up the block toward the Flex, switching off my phones as I go. The alley mentioned in the text is ahead on my left, opposite my vehicle. Using my key fob, I remotely unlock the Flex, which also turns on its interior lights. But as I come even with the door, I break left at a sprint.
I can still run. A hundred yards will take me to the end of the alley, and I can cover that in twelve seconds, even in street clothes. Halfway down the alley, I see a car pull across the opening at the end, its headlights switched off. I guess that’s my ride.
Churning my legs as hard as I can, I recognize the waiting car as a Mazda Miata convertible with its top up. I don’t know anyone who drives that make of car, but beggars can’t be choosers. I run full-out until my hands slap into the fabric top.
“Get in!” shouts a male voice.
When I open the door, dual shocks of recognition and confusion go through me. The driver is Tim Hayden, Adam’s old tennis coach.
“You?” I say, astonished.
Hayden grins like a teenager playing a prank on the police. “Every second you stand there you’re risking our lives.”
I get into the convertible. Hayden guns the motor, which slams the door and pushes me back against the seat.
“You have the cache?” I ask, staring at him in disbelief.
His eyes glued to the rearview mirror, Hayden wrenches the Miata through a ninety-degree turn, then slows as if looking for a turn. “I’m about to turn again, then slow down. When I say ‘go,’ climb through the window. If you open your door, the light will come on. Just go as fast as you can. I’ll make sure you don’t kill yourself.”
“Where am I going?”
He brakes hard, turns sharply left again. “Five seconds. You won’t see me again tonight.”
“Where are you going?”
“To lead a wild-goose chase. Go!”
He slows but doesn’t stop. Stuffing my long frame through the small window is no easy task, but I manage it by going headfirst. Hayden brakes just enough for me to land without killing myself. Then his motor whines, the Mazda fishtails, and he’s flying down the remainder of the alley.
There’s so little light here, he might as well have left me on the seafloor. Somebody has obviously knocked out some bulbs.
“Marshall!” comes an urgent hiss. “Over here.”
I can’t place the source of the voice. Then a tiny LED flashes like a supernova in the dark. Abandoning caution, I move toward the blue-white flare. As I near it, a soft hand grabs my wrist and says, “Through here.”
A vertical bar of light opens in the blackness. The hand pushes me through it and the door shuts behind me. Then the snick of a cigarette lighter precedes the bloom of a candle flame. By its light I see Nadine Sullivan looking up at me.
“Are you all right?” she asks. “Did they hurt you?”
I can just make out the inventory room of the bookstore. “You got me out? You sent that blocked text?”
She nods, her eyes filled with worry.
“How?”
“I sent it from my computer, using a special app.”
“No, I mean how did you get me out? Free from those bastards.”
“With Sally’s cache.” Nadine gives me an apologetic smile. “I’ve had it from the beginning.”
Of course she has. “Because of your mother,” I say softly.
“And the book club. Sally and I got very close during those two years.”
“But . . . why didn’t you tell me? My God. Didn’t you trust me?”
“Honestly? No.”
I can’t get my mind around this. “Why not?”
“Marshall, I think you’re a good person. I like you a lot. But you’re also a journalist. A journalist who made his name by breaking big stories. And this story is as big as anything you’ve ever done.”
“Which part? Buck’s murder? The Poker Club? The paper mill?”
“It’s all connected. But the paper mill is the lights-out scandal. I couldn’t risk you ruining the town’s future by going live on CNN three hours after you learned the truth.”
“Do you really think I’d do that?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t? You don’t know yet what’s under all this. Think back three days ago, to Buck’s murder. How would you have felt if I’d handed you a bomb that could destroy the Poker Club?”
She’s right about that. “Okay . . . I get it.”
“By the way, you’re set to meet with the Poker Club in four and a half hours. At Claude Buckman’s bank.”
“What the hell? Why?”
Nadine looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Because if you don’t, you’re as good as dead. They’re not going to let you run around loose if they don’t think we’ll cut a deal with them. Especially after they see the morning paper, which should hit their doorsteps in two or three hours. They are going to freak when they see those stories.”
After what happened to me in the jail, this is too much to absorb. “Ben and those old pressmen are really going to get a paper out?”
She nods in the dim light.
“Well, if you didn’t trust me a few hours ago, at the hospital, why do you now?”
“I’m sorry about that. I was actually on the verge of telling you I had the cache when Jet called. Three minutes later you were outside with her.” Nadine lifts a steaming cup of coffee off a cardboard box and hands it to me. “Maybe this will lessen the sting.”