“Yeah,” he said, “I know that,” and here was the accusation again, the old thrust, why can’t you be a better father, why can’t you be home nights, why can’t you get strict with him, lay down the law, make him stop this nonsense, why didn’t you show up for the T-ball game, the sing-along, the cake sale, because what meeting is more important than your own son? “And if I didn’t know it I’m sure you’d be there to tell me the next ten thousand times.”
The train moved along at a walking pace, easing across the intersection on Main with its whistle blowing for everybody to hear and take note of, whether they were stalled at the crossing in their cars and campers or hunkered in some ravine halfway up the mountainside ready to take on the world. Sten was dressed like a tourist, in shorts, running shoes and a woolen shirt that concealed the soft body armor Rob had insisted on, though it wasn’t quite clear why since it wouldn’t stop a round from an assault rifle. Slow it down, maybe, depending on how far it had to travel. Or a ricochet, it might stop a ricochet, which, of course, might not necessarily cooperate and strike you where you were protected. It could go anywhere, through your skull, the roof of your mouth, your groin. But he didn’t want to think about that—or the last time he’d laid eyes on Adam, the fight they’d had, how Adam had shoved back with all the sick fury uncoiling inside him, and what had the Norse called their fiercest warriors? Berserkers. They didn’t know fear. They were unhinged. And on the battlefield they went berserk. Adam Stensen. Sten’s son. Son of Sten who was the son of Sten.
There was no one on the deck of the observation car—that would have been suicidal in Rob’s estimation, Rob who’d declined to go on this little expedition because he had a command to oversee—and Sten wondered about that, about the imposture they were trying to pull off here. Various deputies were scattered throughout the two enclosed cars, men and women both, dressed casually, the men in loud shirts and reversed baseball caps, the women in big straw hats and pastels, but if they were really tourists, actual tourists, half of them would have been lounging around the open car, beer bottles pressed to their lips and cameras flashing. Would Adam notice? Would he care? Would he even be anywhere near the rail line in broad daylight? And here, despite himself, he felt a flush of pride: Adam was smart. He was elusive. And he knew his terrain. He would have made a LURP in Vietnam, the ghost in the night who materialized amongst the enemy to cut the throats of the unwary and scare the shit out of the rest.
The train rattled on, picking up speed but still going at half the normal pace because it was a target and make no mistake about it. A lure. A bait. But then why would Adam want to shoot up a train or go anywhere near it? Sten had no answer to that, except that Adam had a rage inside him and that rage had to come up against something, just to rub it, feel it, let the world know what it was to have a thing like that clawing to get out. He’d felt it himself when he was in his teens and after too and he’d seen it channeled through two generations of cynical slouching bullheaded kids at the high school, of which Deputy Jason Ringwald, seated two rows behind him and staring hard out the window, was a prime example. Most of them suppressed it and went out into the world to become cops and corporate raiders, army lifers, mill hands, but some never could get loose of it and they wound up in jail, crippled in motorcycle accidents or scattered across the blacktop in pieces. Or shot. Shot dead.
“Any time now,” a voice was saying and he looked up to see one of the SWAT team honchos, a lieutenant, all eyebrows and a mouth pursed round a set of small even teeth, hovering over the seat.
They were passing along Pudding Creek, which was tidal here, and had been used to float logs during rainy seasons of the past but was now a swampy stretch of nothing you could barely turn a canoe around in. There were houses up on the hills. Roads. The gleam of a parked automobile. “Here?” he said. “We’re barely out of town.”
The man—he was in his late thirties, forties maybe, with flecks of gray stubble along his jawline where he’d shaved hurriedly—just gave him a look. This man didn’t trust him. Didn’t like him. None of them did. He was the father of the shooter and that made him damaged goods, and if he wasn’t a suspect, in their eyes he should have been. “Might as well. You never know where he could be. Didn’t they spot him along here night before last?”
“That’s what I hear.”
The cop held the look. “It’s costing time and money. For the engineer up there, the two of them. And us. All of us.” He gave it a beat. “We got families too, you know.”