Gibson realized what was different about Swonger. When they had first met, Gibson had dismissed him as one more yard-boy ex-con who talked a whole lot tougher than he’d ever hope to be. It had taken time to recognize the intelligence behind Swonger’s surly, antagonistic posturing. Longer still to respect Swonger as a man, despite his bluster. All that had burned off now. There was a calm, a lean simplicity to the ex–car thief that hadn’t been there before.
“It’s hard to explain,” Gibson said.
“And you so good with words. Why you here? Let’s start with that. This about your house?”
The question caught Gibson by surprise. Maybe it had been na?ve of him not to connect Swonger to the fire. This was going to take an ugly turn if Swonger were mixed up in it.
“Why?” Gibson asked. “You have something to do with it?”
“That what you think?”
“Not until just now.”
Swonger looked away, thinking. “Let’s take a drive.”
“Where?”
“Ain’t far. We’ll take your car.” Swonger finally came down from the porch but gestured with a hand for Gibson to put his hands up. “Cole’s got to search you.”
“Cousin Cole?” Gibson asked.
“Yeah,” Swonger said. “He got released six months ago.”
“Nice to see a man turn over a new leaf,” Gibson said as the man with the rifle frisked him.
“He’s clean,” Cole said, standing back up.
“All right,” Swonger said. “Let’s take that drive.”
Swonger got in the passenger side and rested the gun on his thigh. Cole got in the back beside Duke, who stared daggers at the back of Swonger’s head.
“Go for his gun,” Duke said between gritted teeth. “He was in on it. He’s taking you somewhere to bury your body. Do him before he does you.”
“We don’t know that,” Gibson said sharply to the rearview mirror. He didn’t like this side of his father. Duke had changed since Gibson had decided to go after Ogden. Hardened. It bothered Gibson but not as much as the knowledge of what he might do if Swonger had been involved with the fire.
“Don’t know what?” Swonger asked, glancing at Cole in the backseat, who shrugged in confusion.
“What?” Gibson said dumbly, realizing his mistake.
Swonger gave him a puzzled look. “You all right, dog?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Where are we going?”
Swonger directed him around the big house and deeper onto the farm. Cattle stood glumly in a frozen field and watched the SUV disappear around a bend and down a sloping hill. Swonger glanced back and forth from the road to Gibson. As if Gibson might vanish if Swonger didn’t keep a proper eye on him.
“Here,” Swonger said, pointing to a gap in a tall hedgerow.
Gibson pulled in and stopped before the blackened ruins of a house. Fire had gutted it, collapsing the roof except for a portion in the back corner, which stood defiantly against the elements. The surviving brick walls left some semblance of a floor plan, and the fireplace rose like the charred spine of an animal sacrificed to a primitive god.
“Welcome to Casa Swonger.”
While Longman Farm belonged to Hammond Birk’s family, Gavin Swonger’s father had been the longtime farm manager. Swonger had grown up here. His family had lived on the property and done the lion’s share of the day-to-day work.
“What happened?” Gibson asked, staring out at the house.
“Consequence happened.” Swonger wouldn’t say more.
Mesmerized, Gibson got out and walked up the brick stairs and into the house. Swonger yelled that it wasn’t safe, but Gibson didn’t care. Some part of him needed to stand in the ruined house. He clambered up and over the debris from the collapsed upper floor. Running his fingers across the charred end of a cracked wooden beam that had been seared to a charcoal tip, his hand came away black. He held it to his nose to smell the cold smoke. A stuffed, one-eyed rabbit caught his eye. It was moldy and sodden; Gibson tried to brush the dirt away but succeeded only in knocking loose the rabbit’s remaining eye. He searched the rubble for the eye, and when he couldn’t find it, tossed the toy away. What good was a blind rabbit?
Had anything of Ellie’s survived on Mulberry Court? He imagined that Nicole must have walked the wreckage of their home, scavenging odds and ends from her life while making plans to disappear. For the first time, he felt grateful that she had run, grateful for his ex-wife’s resourcefulness.
Swonger joined Gibson in the ash and surveyed the scene. The gun had disappeared from his hand.
“We made some mess, huh?” Swonger said.
“That we did.”
Swonger swore under his breath as if this were his first time seeing the fire-ravaged house.
“Who?” Gibson asked.
“Who you think?”
“Deja Noble.”
Deja Noble ran a crew out of Virginia Beach. Because Swonger knew her brother from prison, he and Gibson had turned to Deja in desperation in West Virginia. She’d helped them, but her involvement had come at a price. Gibson hadn’t considered her for the arson, but now the symmetry of it made perfect sense.
“Consequence in the flesh,” Swonger said. “Hit us the same day as your ex-wife’s house.”
“Anybody home?”
Swonger shook his head.
“You didn’t go to the police?”
“And tell them what?”
Gibson was familiar with that particular quandary.
“You know I carried Deja out of the hotel during the fire? Saved her life.”
“Good thinking,” Swonger said.
“Guess it didn’t make us even.”
“Not as such, no. Thinks we set her up and sent her and her men into that hotel to die.”
“Which we did.”
“Which we did,” Swonger agreed.
“So she burned down our houses.”
“For starters,” Swonger said.
“What about the money? She didn’t take it, did she?”
Gibson had cleaned out the last of Charles Merrick’s brokerage account and transferred it to the Birks and Swongers. Almost a million and a half dollars. Some of that money had been meant to take care of Judge Birk. It had been about the only good thing to come out of that disaster, and it would hurt to know it had been for nothing.
“No, she don’t know nothing about that,” Swonger said. “Is that why you’re here? The money?”
“Not as long as you took care of the judge like we agreed.”
“Judge doing fine. In a home near Richmond. He’s all the way gone now. Waste of damn money, you ask me, but he has people taking care of him like you wanted. Got the address you want it.”
Gibson nodded, sorry but not surprised to hear the judge’s dementia had worsened. When he had time, he’d stop in and pay his respects.
“Where you been, Gibson?” Swonger asked. “And don’t give me no ‘away.’”
Gibson told Swonger a sanitized version of the last eighteen months, leaving out the part where he’d been driven crazy in solitary confinement. Remarkably, Swonger seemed wholly unsurprised at the mention of the CIA’s involvement, as if the government’s abetting Charles Merrick’s crimes confirmed deep-seated paranoias. Only the end of the story seemed to bother him.
“Motherfuckers just dumped you on the airfield like you was trash? That’s cold, dog. Real cold.”
“Kind of why I’m here,” Gibson said and held out his shopping list. “I need your help.”
Swonger looked it over. “Let’s go back to the house and cut it up.”
CHAPTER TWELVE