“Should I have? Why? What’s up?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t get a job.”
“And what’s unusual about that?”
Ouch. Gibson wanted to say something biting back, but he’d left all his fight back at the polygraph suite.
“I just have a bad feeling.”
Hendricks became serious again; he had a cop’s inbred respect for hunches and bad feelings. “No, everything’s everything. All quiet. What’s going on?”
“Someone came around the diner today, asking about Atlanta.”
“Government?”
“I don’t think so. Toby took his picture. I’ll send it your way.”
“Do that.”
The two men fell silent.
“Gotta go,” Hendricks said at last. “Appreciate the heads-up. Let me know if you get any more bad feelings. Or if, you know, they surface.”
“Will do. Talk to you in a couple weeks?”
The line was already dead.
He paid the check but lingered at his booth. The prospect of facing his sterile, desolate apartment depressed him. Instead, he opened the blue envelope and reread the judge’s letter. It didn’t say much—not like the judge he remembered at all—and it made Gibson long for a little of the judge’s wisdom. Wisdom felt in very short supply right about now.
CHAPTER FOUR
Next morning, Gibson was on the road south. He’d slept fitfully, given up around five a.m., and gone on his morning run rather than stare at the ceiling. Most mornings, he alternated between a five-mile and an eight-mile loop, but today he’d run them both, back to back. Still, no matter how hard he pushed himself, he couldn’t outrun Nick Finelli’s words.
You’re radioactive.
We can’t touch you.
Radioactive.
It was hard not to see fate moving the pieces around the board. Moving him south on Route 29 toward Charlottesville, Virginia—the place of his birth. He’d grown up there, buried his father there, been arrested and tried there, and by all rights should have been sentenced there. Instead, at the proverbial eleventh hour, Judge Hammond Birk had offered him a deal—the Marines instead of prison—in open defiance of then senator Benjamin Lombard. In doing so, Judge Birk had salvaged Gibson’s life from the slag heap. At eighteen, Gibson would have been chewed up by prison, and God only knew what kind of man would have walked out the other side. The judge had saved him from finding out.
The first blue envelope had arrived unexpectedly the day before he’d graduated from Parris Island. He remembered sitting on his bunk, turning the letter over in his hands, only his third piece of mail in thirteen weeks. Family Day on base was a lonely time for a kid with none. Trying but failing not to resent the rest of his platoon as they guided proud mothers and fathers around base. The judge’s twenty-page letter, warm and wise, helped him feel less alone in the world, congratulating him on becoming a Marine but also exhorting him to be still better.
New letters followed every few months, expansive, ranging in topic and tone, but always a needed tonic. The judge’s letters had been the bridge for Gibson’s transition into manhood—philosophical questions, well-timed advice, and encouragement at discouraging times. Gibson answered every letter; it felt good knowing there was someone out there who cared if he lived or died. Eventually Nicole filled that void, but for a time it was down to Judge Birk alone. He often wondered if the judge wrote to all the young people he granted a second chance.
The judge’s letters continued for several years, but there came a point when they arrived less and less regularly, finally stopping altogether. It was about the time that the judge had stepped down from the bench at the end of his last term. Judgeships were voted on in the Virginia General Assembly, and the newspapers had been vague about why Birk wasn’t running again. Gibson had always worried that the decision to defy Benjamin Lombard had cost Birk his career—and that losing his judgeship embittered Birk and caused him to stop writing. As the letters tapered off, Gibson kept up his end, but by then he was married and Ellie was on the way. After four or five letters went unanswered, life overtook him, and he consigned their correspondence to the past.
Until Sunday at the ballpark.
Gibson felt a reverential sense of duty toward the judge. Ironic that they had only ever had the one face-to-face conversation, because he loved the man dearly. The judge had maneuvered him into the Marines instead of prison, but truth was, Gibson had viewed the Marines as a prison itself. It had been the judge who had counseled him to make the most of his time in the Corps. The judge who had helped an angry, troubled kid get his feet under him and find purpose in life.
Nick Finelli might not believe in repaying his debts, but if it were within Gibson’s power, he would do it for Birk. Whatever the judge needed. Unless, of course, he was being set up. The timing of the judge’s letter, Spectrum’s about-face, and the stranger asking questions at the Nighthawk came precariously close to the definition of impossible coincidence. Something was way off here; he just didn’t know what. Gibson would keep an open mind, but he hoped that the judge had nothing to do with his losing the job. That would sorely test his faith in human nature.
When 29 hit Culpepper, he followed Route 15 toward Orange. He was in farm country now, and traffic thinned out. He split off onto Route 20, a winding two-lane, and drove until he realized he’d missed his turnoff and doubled back. From the road, the turnoff for Longman Farm was hard not to miss—just a small break in the trees, a worn yellow sign, and a gravel road that led away into the woods. Gibson followed it for a quarter mile alongside a wide field dotted with baled hay until he came to a rusted gate. He turned in and followed a rutted gravel road up to the big white house on the ridge. It was good land, but Gibson could see disrepair everywhere.
Christopher Birk came out the front door with a cup of coffee, his grass-green polo shirt clashing ever so slightly with his red chinos. He shook Gibson’s hand like they were old friends.
“Thanks for coming,” Birk said.
“Nice place you have here. How many acres?”
Birk looked around as if seeing the farm for the first time.
“Three hundred, all told. Should have seen it when I was a boy. We had more than double that. Dad sold off some to developers in ’09.”
Gibson heard a calcified bitterness in his voice.
“To develop what? I didn’t see anything driving up.”
“Well, that’s the kicker. Developers went out of business in ’10. The land’s been tied up in the courts ever since. Now it just sits there, going to seed. Not sure there’s anything sadder than land going unworked. Feels wrong, know what I mean?”
“You didn’t strike me as a farmer.”
“Because I’m not one,” Birk said. “Doesn’t mean I appreciate my family’s farm falling apart.”
A voice from around the side of the house: “That him?”