I almost feel Max standing with us, a chilling incarnation of lust and envy. “Well,” I say softly. “Here goes nothing.”
Inhaling deeply, I lean close to the window glass and exhale a rush of warm air against the pane. Out of the condensation appears the ghostly outline of a nose and forehead, leaving eerie spaces where the eyes should be. To the left and right of this ghostly face float the outlines of splayed hands.
A soft gasp escapes Jet’s throat. “That sick fuck.”
“Goddamn,” Paul mutters.
Though Max Matheson lies dead in my house, his essence is alive here, staring back at us like a demon summoned by my breath. Radiating from the silhouette on that glass is pure obsession, the desire to possess Jet in whatever way he could. How many days and nights did Max stand here watching us make love in blissful ignorance, in the full glare of the bedroom lights?
“This is how he knew,” Jet says. “My God. I told you. I told you both.”
I’m shocked and shamed by the relief I feel.
She turns to Paul. “I told you, damn it. I’m not the poison in the family. He was.”
“Great,” says Paul, bulling his way out of the shrubbery. “Such a relief. I guess I’m supposed to be happy it was only Marshall’s finger up your ass instead of Max’s?”
Jet glares at him with fiery indignation, then pokes him hard in the chest. “Yes. And fuck you for believing otherwise.”
Here we stand, three people stripped of illusions. Three people who have known one another since childhood and now face a future that seems unimaginable. Exhaustion gives Paul’s face a haunted look, and surely mine must look the same. As I try to think of what to do or say next, the clouds open up, and the rain finally comes. Cold, heavy drops smack into my scalp and shoulders, making me want to run. But Paul stands oblivious, his gun in his hand, like a soldier assigned sentry duty. For him the rain doesn’t exist. He probably does feel some relief, but the losses he endured tonight will never be made up. In his mind, he is utterly alone in the world.
“What now?” I ask. “A lot’s happened, I know. But we’ve got an urgent situation in that kitchen.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Paul says. “She still wants Kevin. And you.”
“Oh, come on, man,” I say in frustration. “If we just wanted Kevin, we could have stood there and watched you eat your gun. You were about to do it.”
Paul shakes his head, but at some level he knows it’s true.
“For God’s sake!” Jet cries. “I meant what I said back there. The one thing I’m certain of is that Kevin will never—never—doubt who his father is. He’s your son, Paul, and that’s it. It’s our job to make sure he never thinks different. No matter what happens.”
She’s finally broken his trance. “How do we do that?” he mumbles.
“I don’t know yet. What I do know is that none of us is going to jail over this. Here’s what’s going to happen now. You two are going to get rid of Max and his truck. I don’t know how or where. Just make it happen. I’m going to stay here and scrub that kitchen from floor to ceiling with Clorox.”
“You think that’ll keep us safe?” Paul asks.
Jet nods in the rain. “You’re damn right. Max killed Sally, he lied about the assault last night, and today he jumped bail. For all we know, he’s fled the country. I’ll tell the FBI that he confided to me he was guilty. Max exits stage left, never to return. Now, let’s get out of this damned rain.”
I’m ready, but Paul doesn’t move.
Jet claps her hands as though demanding the attention of toddlers. “Get it together! Come on!”
I look warily at Paul, who’s staring at the bedroom window.
“Paul?” Jet presses, looking fearfully at me.
After fifteen or twenty seconds, Paul says, “I’ll sink his truck in the river. Take backroads to the sandbar below the industrial park.”
Jet’s eyes flicker with hope.
“You call Tallulah,” he goes on. “Tell her Kevin needs to sleep over with her. He’s probably already asleep now. Tell her we’ll pick him up in the morning.”
Jet nods, somehow masking her immense relief.
“What about me?” I ask.
Paul spits on the wet ground, then looks over at me the way he has for most of our lives. “You and me are going down to the swamp.”
Chapter 54
While Jet began scrubbing the blood and tissue from my kitchen floor and walls, Paul and I wrapped Max in a gray tarp and carried him out to Paul’s F-250. I figured we needed at least a car with a sealed trunk, but after we laid Max in the truck bed, Paul pointed to an iron rack in my yard that held most of a cord of firewood from last winter. After ten minutes of steady work, we buried Max under the split logs. No cop without a canine escort would be likely to hassle us, even during a traffic stop.
After making a trip inside to hit the head, Paul went into the kitchen and spoke softly to Jet. I went inside long enough to change into dry clothes, but I avoided making eye contact with her as I passed the kitchen. They were still speaking with quiet intensity when I came back up the bedroom hall, so I exchanged the stink of Clorox for the wet leather smell of the F-250 and waited another five minutes for Paul to emerge from the house. Two minutes after that, we pulled out onto Highway 36, heading west toward the junction with Highway 61 near Bienville.
Instead of turning south and driving through Mississippi—which I’d expected—Paul remained on 36, then crossed the Bienville Bridge into Louisiana and turned south on Whitetail Road. Whitetail Road follows the big levee south toward St. Joseph, Waterproof, and Ferriday. In a few places the road ascends to the crest of the levee, but for most of its length it runs on the landward side. Just over that big wall of land lie the “borrow pits”—swampy, snaky sloughs filled with snakes and gar and alligators that live in the miles-long trench left by the excavators that built the levee. And beyond that trench runs the big river.
The rain has mostly stopped. Our headlights cut through the spring night, catching millions of bugs in the beams. Objects flash out of the night and vanish: a mailbox, an abandoned car, a snake crossing the road, the red eyes of a transfixed possum. The truck’s air-conditioning makes me shiver, partly because my clothes are wet from the exertion of piling logs over Max’s body. But sleep deprivation has also taken its toll. I have that flu-like feeling where any sudden noise makes me jump and curse. I suppose I could be in shock, but since the stress isn’t likely to end any time soon, I have no choice but to gut it out.
Paul turns away from the levee and drives inland into Louisiana, but I don’t question him. When we left Bienville, he tuned the radio to an album-oriented rock station and set the volume low, probably to spare us the awkwardness of sitting in silence that begs to be filled. To keep from confronting the obvious, I focus on the faint strains of Led Zeppelin, Traffic, the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd. Though Paul and I are in our forties, both of us—me through Buck, him through Max—grew up listening to the music of the sixties and seventies. Not many of the later-era bands ever quite took.
At some point during this AOR parade, I must have drifted off, because when I wake up, we’re driving along a levee again. Maybe it’s exhaustion, but I feel like we’ve driven in a big circle.
I’m about to question Paul about this when he says, “How’s your mama doing? Pop kind of freaked out after Mom died.”
After Mom died? I’m not going to touch the question of whether Max murdered Sally. “She seems okay,” I tell him. “Dr. Kirby told me to assume that’s a front, though.”
“Yeah. I imagine so.”
Paul drives another mile in silence. At last I summon the nerve to ask him where we’re headed.
“Boar Island,” he tells me.
A chill runs up my damp back. “Isn’t that the island Wyatt Cash owns?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know where we were headed, but I would never have guessed Boar Island. “Is Wyatt there?”
“Nah, it’s off-season. Just the empty hunting camp.”