“It was never there,” said Josh. “He set you up. Someone wanted that cop dead. They used us.”
He’d had a lot of time to think about it, turn over and over what they’d done, why, how it had turned out. Josh watched in the rearview mirror as Rhett shook his head, thinking.
“In fact, maybe it never existed in the first place,” said Josh. “Ever think of that?”
“Shut up,” said Rhett. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rhett never gave up on the idea of that money. It was his holy grail, the thing that was going to make every wrong thing right. Even from lockup, he’d call collect with ideas.
Maybe it was inside the walls; look for a seam in the drywall.
What about the attic?
For a long time, the Bishop house was empty. So Josh could just go over there and look around. Over the years, he’d inspected every square inch, never once thinking he’d find it. He knew that night that the money wasn’t there. He could hear it in the cop’s voice. The cop would have given it up to save his family. You’re making a mistake, he’d said, desperation making his voice quaver. What you’re looking for? It’s not here. Let my family go.
“I’ve been all through that house, all over the property, in that barn.”
“Yeah,” said Rhett. “But you’re a fucking moron. And you’re lazy. You give up. Remember when we were kids, we’d play hide and seek? You’d just wind up crying or telling Mom that you couldn’t find me. You could never find me.”
God, thought Josh. He is such an idiot. It was true, though; he never could find Rhett when they played hide and seek. But maybe it was really because he didn’t want to find Rhett. He’d usually just wind up using the time to get to the Nintendo and play by himself for a while.
“I’ll believe it’s not there when I’ve gone through that house,” said Rhett.
Josh didn’t say anything.
“While you’re in there working,” Rhett went on. “I’ll be in there looking. This is a perfect opportunity. It’s like the universe wants us to find that money.”
Josh felt that familiar tingle of unease he always had around his brother. He was a bully; he’d get what he wanted, no matter what he had to do to you to get it.
“She thinks I work alone.” Josh didn’t want Rhett around Claudia, or her daughter. Josh didn’t know them, but he knew what his brother would see when he looked at them.
“Tell her there’s too much work,” said Rhett. “You need another man. And jack up the price. Three-fifty a day? That’s bullshit.”
“With a lunch break, that’s fifty dollars an hour. That’s fair.”
Rhett blew out a breath of disdain. “Tell her five hundred a day with a second man and the work will get done faster. Tell her she’ll actually be saving money. You got to learn how to work people, little brother.”
Josh wasn’t going to do any such thing. But he nodded. How was he going to get out of this? He could already feel the poison of Rhett leaking into the air of his life.
“Didion is dead,” said Josh. “Do you know that?”
Josh pulled onto the main road, hung a right toward town. The weight of his words was heavy in the air, expanding. “Someone broke into his apartment and killed him.”
“How do you know that?” Rhett asked. He sat up and climbed awkwardly into the front seat, knocking Josh in the head, causing him to swerve a little. Christ.
“The old man called,” said Josh.
“Called you?”
Josh didn’t say anything.
“When were you going to tell me this?” Rhett asked.
“I’m telling you now.”
“When did he call?”
“The night you came home,” Josh said. He didn’t want to turn and look at Rhett, those staring eyes turned Josh into a puddle, made him feel like he was a little kid. “He called you, too, right? That’s why you’re here. It’s not a coincidence.”
“No one knows it was us that night,” said Rhett, apropos of nothing, like he was having a whole different conversation in his head. There was a ragged edge to his voice. “We got away with it.”
“Did we?” asked Josh. “We killed a cop and his wife. Left the girl for dead, except she wasn’t dead. All for a pile of cash that wasn’t there. You went to prison for something else. I’m still here working in Dad’s shop. You’re still looking for money that never existed. What did we get away with, exactly?”
“The money’s there,” said Rhett, not listening. “We just have to find it. We have to get into that house and tear it apart. When we find it, everything we’ve been through will be worth it.”
A flutter of fear laced with anger moved up Josh’s throat from his belly.
“Didion was killed with a hunting knife,” said Josh.
“So?” asked Rhett, his expression blank.
Did he not remember that night? What they did to the woman and the girl? Did it mean so little to him, did he not hear their screams at night, like Josh sometimes did?
“So—I think we have a bigger problem than money that may never have existed.”
Still nothing. “What’s that?”
Josh pulled the car over onto the shoulder and turned to look at his brother. Rhett had a raggedness to him, now that Josh was really looking at him—time behind bars, booze and drugs and cigarettes and bad food taking their toll in his pasty complexion, the deep wrinkles around his eyes. There was a strange glistening to his stare, something like desperation residing in the corners.
“We didn’t get away with anything,” said Josh. He’d have to spell it out. “Someone knows.”
Josh expected to see the dawning of fear, a realization that if in fact the universe wanted something for them, it wasn’t a big payday. Josh’s father was right. You don’t get away with a thing like that. It hunts you down, one way or another.
Instead, a kind of steely resolve hardened his brother’s face.
“Well, then, we don’t have any time to lose, do we?” he said.
thirteen
Lately, I have been thinking about how I want to die. I don’t want to slip away, a ghostlike figure disappearing into the mist between trees. I don’t want normal, the things that other people seem to want. I don’t want to fall in love with someone, get married, have children. I don’t want to watch them grow, go away to college, get married, too. I don’t want to then watch my grandchildren grow, then maybe watch my husband die, until something starts to gnaw at my insides, slowly taking me away bit by bit. I don’t want to die like Paul will die, fighting for every last breath, every day an agony of the disconnect between his agile mind and his failing body.