It strains my eyes to keep the barrel in focus, but I keep them strained. If Bruce Alderman wanted me dead, he’d have done it already, but I feel as though if I take my eyes off the barrel I’m going to die.
‘What do you want?’
“I d-d-don’t know,’ he says, and his answer is a problem. If he doesn’t know, that means he has no plan, and that makes him far more dangerous, and it means maybe he is planning on shooting me. Maybe that’s where his plan is taking him.
His hands keep shaking, the gun rising and falling with minute motions.
‘You must want me for something,’ I say. ‘Probably to tell me something. Right? To tell me you had nothing to do with the dead girl we found?’
‘Why were you t-talking to my f-f-father?’
‘I was looking for you.’
‘You s-started this,’ Bruce says. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, everything w-w-would be okay. It would be okay’
No, it wouldn’t be okay. Hasn’t been okay for Rachel Tyler for some time now.
‘Why is that?’ I ask.
‘What did my father say?’
‘You’re dad’s a real affable guy. He had plenty to say’
He pushes himself back into the seat but keeps the gun levelled at my head.
‘You think I k-k-killed those girls?’
I don’t answer. I look at Sidney Alderman’s house and wonder what he’s doing right now. Could be Sidney knew his son was out here waiting for me and was putting on a show, his own little performance of misdirection. Could be he didn’t know. It’s not like they could have anticipated my coming here. Bruce must have been here all along, or he followed me from the church.
‘Please, “I … I need you to drive away from here.’
I turn back towards him and stare at the gun barrel. ‘Drive?
Where to?’
“I don’t — I don’t know’
‘I’m not a taxi service. I’m not going to take you somewhere where you can kill me in private. You want to do that, you do it here, and maybe your old man can help you dispose of my body. Or you might luck out and the cops will hear the gunshot.
They’re not that far away.’
‘Is that w-what you want?’ he asks, pushing the gun forward a few more inches. ‘You think I w-won’t do it? You think I’ve got something to lose by doing it?’
‘I don’t think that’s your plan,’ I say, trying to sound calm, ‘and I don’t think you’re going to pull that trigger. You’d have done it already. You want to tell me something. Maybe you want to confess. Maybe you want to tell me all about it before putting a bullet in my chest.’ His hands start to shake a little more. I figure I’m only a few shakes away from getting the back of my head splashed on the windscreen. ‘But you don’t want that to happen here.’
‘Maybe you’re wrong.’
I think about my wife. If I’m wrong, I won’t be seeing her again. If I’m wrong — and if I’m lucky — maybe I’ll be seeing my daughter. Only problem there is I don’t believe in an afterlife.
I think of Bridget, already alone and about to become even more so. Except that she’d stare out the window as my death made the newspapers and TV and she’d never feel the loss.
‘So where do you want to go?’
Away from here. N-now.’
I manage to shift my eyes from the barrel to his pale face.
His features have sunken since the afternoon, as if the bubble of paranoia holding them in place is slowly deflating. His eyes dart nervously back and forth, unable to fix on any one thing for more than a fraction of a second, like he’s hyped up on drugs. There are beads of sweat dangerously close to rolling into his reddened eyes. Behind him, further up the road, dead people are being found in other dead people’s places. I look back at the gun, then at his eyes. Back and forth, back and forth, his eyes are looking for something — whether for help or for the demons that have chased him his entire life, who knows? Could be he’s looking for his caretaker father to take care of this.
‘Please,’ he repeats, more begging than demanding.
I turn around, and it’s hard to keep looking ahead with the weight of the gun trying to pull my eyes back. I swing the car around, wondering if the old man is watching any of this from his filth-covered windows, or even if he can see through them. In the rear-view mirror the house in the glow of my brake lights looks like it’s set on Mars. I head past the cemetery, past the dozen or so people helping the dead and ignoring, for the time being, the living. I pass the large iron gates that look like they were sculpted two thousand years ago to guard some Greek mythological fortress. I pass the church parked back from the road. I’m not sure what Bruce Alderman’s plans are, and I wish at least he was.
I pick a direction and stick to it.
We stop at the first intersection behind a beaten-up pickup with a sun-faded bumper sticker on the back saying Oral Me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.’
The caretaker doesn’t answer.
“I can help you.’
‘Help me?’
‘You must want something.’
“Nobody can give me what I want.’
‘How do you know?’