Ben was coming into his last turn and it hit him: He could simply stop kicking and let it all go. He made the turn and dolphin-kicked off the wall. There was nothing but open water in front of him; everyone in the stands was on their feet. He could stop, blow it all up, but he kept pulling through the water, just thirty meters from winning it all. Stroke and a breath, just twenty-five meters from the wall, where Wakeland stood on the pool deck with a stopwatch in hand. It was his body, the power in his muscles, the strength of his mind, but the line on the bottom of the pool led straight to Wakeland. And he didn’t want that anymore. Not anymore.
Then he did it: He let his muscles ease off, let his body sink into the water. He couldn’t believe the relief; the tension seeped out of his body, and his head seemed to fill with clear light. He let the next three swimmers pass him, their wakes lifting him into his next stroke before he kicked into the wall, a disappointing fourth. The end of the scholarship. The end, he thought then, of Wakeland’s hold over him. When he got out of the pool—his shocked teammates murmuring, Wakeland yelling, “What the hell just happened?”—he cocooned himself in a towel and sat on the cement wall. Then Rachel was there, her arms around him, whispering to him that it was all right. “It’s just a race. It’s all right.”
—
BEN STAYED OUT in the barn until nearly 1:00 A.M., the distant sound of helicopters hovering over the mountains, the contents of the box spread before him on the desk. It’s yours to do, he remembered Natasha saying. For years this box had sat duct-taped closed in a dark corner of the attic or in the back of the garage. Wakeland had been stuffed inside the box, too. Reading Wakeland’s letters again, Ben realized they were a form of interrogation—the expressions of care and concern followed by threats and chastisement, the twisting of the facts to get your man to feel guilty, to get him to say what you wanted him to say, to make him do what you wanted him to do, to make him believe what you wanted him to believe. He had fallen for it for years, when he was a six-foot-two child. When he grew up, he believed the man could do nothing more to him, and he was stuck for half of his life between his childhood self and his adulthood. These letters were the proof of that manipulation, of that half-life.
Here was the evidence.
—
THE NEXT MORNING, Ben met Hernandez in his office.
“You supposed to be driving yet?” Hernandez said.
“I gotta talk with you,” Ben said.
“They found the killer’s car,” Hernandez said, flipping through the pages of a report. “You were right. He busted it up just outside of Limestone Canyon.”
“He’s in the Sinks then.”
“What?”
“The Sinks,” Ben said. “That’s what the cowboys called it. It’s got steep cliffs, like the earth just fell away. It was easy to lose cattle in there. My dad hated the place.”
“The sheriff and the Ventura Mounted Enforcement Unit are up there,” Hernandez said. “Thanks for the tip. Sorry, I know you want to be up there, too.”
“I’m not here about the serial.”
“All right,” Hernandez said, setting the report on his desk.
The precinct was filled with cops, filing reports, making phone calls. Ben wanted to close the blinds, but that would only arouse suspicion, so he sat there with his back to the station desks, the murmur of the policemen sounding like whispers behind his back.
Ben handed Hernandez the file folder with the pictures of Lucero inside. When he opened it, Hernandez looked away and shifted in his seat.
“The Mexican kid?” he said, finally. “The suicide?”
“Yeah,” Ben said.
“He was one of Wakeland’s swimmers, right?”
“He was,” Ben said.
Hernandez fanned the pictures out, studying them carefully, and then turned them facedown on the desk. He got up and closed the door and sat back down and stared at the desk, his chin pushed close to his chest. He didn’t look at Ben for a while, something Ben was thankful for. Ben knew, though, that Hernandez was putting the pieces together. Ben’s swimming, accosting Wakeland at the scene, refusing to close Lucero’s case, defying orders the other night when he left his patrol in the hills and almost caught the killer. He could have interrogated Ben, could have asked him all the ugly questions, but Hernandez understood that some things shouldn’t be said between men.
“The case is still open, right?” Hernandez said, looking at him now. “You didn’t sign off on it this morning?”
“No.”
Hernandez nodded slowly. “How’d you get these?”
Ben told him, and Hernandez just kept nodding, his mind chewing on the problem.
“There’re more?”
“That’s what Natasha says,” Ben said. “She thinks he’s grooming another kid, too, a freshman.” He pulled Phillip’s school picture out of his coat pocket—he didn’t want the boy’s picture in the same file that held the ugly ones of Lucero—and slid it across the desk. “Phillip Lambert.”
Hernandez looked at the photo, and then let out a long breath. “We can’t use these to get a warrant,” he said, putting his hand on top of the Polaroids. “They’re gotten illegally.”
“I know.”
Hernandez tapped his fingers against the back of the pictures. “You got enough on this for a warrant?” he asked. “Without these?”
Ben told him what he had—Wakeland letting Lucero’s family use his apartment address, the apartment itself and all that might be hidden there, the testimony of a half dozen people at the school and in the picker’s camp, but he left Tucker out of it—and Hernandez jotted down notes on a legal pad.
Then Ben handed Hernandez the two letters Wakeland had sent to him years ago, and the note he got off Lucero’s body. Blood thrummed in his ears while Hernandez read them.
Ben had sent his own letter soon after Wakeland’s threatening one. He had written it nine days after states, in the middle of the night, at his desk in his room as his mother and Voorhees slept, just one sentence that he remembered as clearly as if he’d written it down yesterday: If you say anything to Rachel, if you even go near her, I’ll tell everything—to the school, to the cops—EVERYTHING. The next morning, he rode his bike over to the post office. He dropped the letter in the slot and then rode down to the beach and spent the school day there. He never went back to the pool, never spoke to Wakeland again, even as his mother and Voorhees begged him not to let his embarrassment at states ruin his relationship with the coach.
Now Hernandez set Wakeland’s letters on top of the Polaroids of Lucero and the picture of Phillip, and ran his hand through his hair. “We can get him another way,” he said, gesturing toward the letters.
Ben thought of Natasha, of her final declaration to him. He wanted to be the kind of man she expected him to be, the man she believed existed in him. Like he said to Tucker, the fear he felt now was Wakeland. Hiding it, living in shame, meant Wakeland still had a grip on him. Unless Ben stopped letting him.
“No,” Ben said. “This other kid, Phillip, is out there. It can’t be about me anymore.”
Hernandez nodded. “This will break wide open,” he said, “especially now that you’ve had your fifteen minutes. You ready for that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You won’t have a choice, if we move forward.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
Hernandez looked at him a few moments.
“All right,” Hernandez said. “I’m going to get a couple patrols to keep an eye on that apartment. The coach walks in there with that kid, we’re going in. It’s my case. I’ll take care of it.”