She left the room, and he stood there a second, thinking. His eyes fell on Rhett’s car keys, the sound of his brother’s snoring growing louder. Rhett had showed up driving an old blue 1970 Barracuda. The thing spewed black smoke and was rusting along the bottom, but Rhett said he’d picked it up for less than a grand and it hadn’t broken down yet. Josh picked up the keys, as well as the single one, the survey, then walked over to where his brother lay. Rhett’s cell, an old flip phone, lay beside him on the coffee table. Josh pocketed that, too.
Then he left the house, climbed into his Toyota, and headed toward the Bishop place. What was he going to do? What were his options? He could go to the cops and come clean—about everything. That’s what Lee would no doubt tell him to do. There’s power in the narrative. Saying what was, what really happened, so that you can move clean into the future. Lee was 100 percent about the truth, the whole truth, all the time. Lies took too much energy. They drained you and left you vulnerable.
Josh could call the big man, tell him what he told Rhett, that the money wasn’t there. That he needed to leave the house, the people living there alone or Josh was going to tell the police what happened all those years ago. But that was basically like just asking to get killed. No joke. That man, those men, they didn’t care who lived or died, especially not Josh or even Rhett. The fact that they’d been left alive after the mess at the Drakes’ was basically a miracle. Because they’d proved they could keep their mouths shut, never talked, even when the police brought them both in; that was the only reason either of them was still breathing. The second Josh became a liability, a problem, he was going to find himself buried back in the woods, or in a chipper, or a vat of chemicals somewhere. So far, he’d kept secrets, done what he was asked, kept an eye on the place, an ear out for anyone digging around. He met Dilbert once a week or so at Lucky’s. Dilbert—like all cops—was a talker. He had a pet interest in the Drake murders, because Seth Murphy was Dilbert’s best friend. So it came up—people got caught digging, kids broke in. In all these years, no one ever found anything. Still Josh, dutifully called the old man every couple of months, just to say he still had an ear out. More than ten years he’d done that.
Or Josh could go to the Bishop house and try to talk his way in, just see if he could get down into the basement, say he wanted to measure or something. If there was a tunnel, the entrance would definitely be in the basement. And if it was there, it would explain where that money was and why in all these years he’d never found it. In the best case, he found what he was looking for and got out somehow.
Or he could just go to Lee’s, ask for help. They would talk it through. Josh knew he could trust Lee to keep his mouth shut.
He pulled into the lot of the party store and was parked before he even realized he’d done it. It was the beer he’d watched Rhett drink; it kept popping up in his thoughts—the way it smelled, sounded, that pop and fizz, the swallow. He sat in his car, breathing hard. This was a bad moment; a fork in the road with no good turn. He reached for his phone to call Lee, but then he heard another foreign ringing. Rhett’s phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew who it was. He answered.
“It’s Josh,” he said.
There was a pause, an annoyed sniff.
“What are you doing with his phone?” The old man.
“I borrowed his car,” Josh lied. “He must have left it in here.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I’m going over there now,” he said.
“Now.”
“I know her,” said Josh. “I’m helping her renovate. I think I can talk my way in, get it if I can find it, and get out. She doesn’t have to know anything. No one gets hurt. She’s a nice person, has a daughter.”
There was just breathing on the other line. Then,
“I don’t give a fuck how you get it,” he said. His voice was always flat, no matter what he said, always just above a whisper. “Just get it.”
“What if it’s not there?” he said. “You know I’ve been looking all this time.”
“It’s there,” he said. He didn’t sound totally convinced.
“What if it isn’t?”
A sharp inhale like the first drag of a cigarette. “Where’s Rhett?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll be there by midnight,” he said. “You know where to meet.”
“Yeah.”
The old man hung up, and Josh was alone in the car. A big pickup truck pulled in, and a couple of large, young guys got out—jeans and boots, camo jackets. Josh watched them go in, come out with a six-pack of beer and couple of microwave burritos.
Tick tock.
Rhett was going to wake up. What would he do when he found his phone gone, his keys? He’d be white hot, the kind of anger that made him go blank like an animal. He’d call Missy. Rhett would know right where Josh had gone.
His phone rang then, and it was Lee. Josh picked up the slim cell and almost answered. Instead, he just watched until the call went to voicemail. Josh would bet ten dollars that Jane had called him. Surround yourself with people who live right and do right, that was one of Lee’s big things. They’ll help you stay on the path.
The phone buzzed with a text from Lee.
Jane said she thought you might need to talk. Everything okay?
How long did he just sit there, turning over all the scenarios in his mind? The money was there. It wasn’t. He got it and ran with it. He got it and turned it in to the police, came clean about the whole thing, took his chances. He got it and brought it to Rhett, hoped he’d just go away for good. Maybe Claudia didn’t let him in at all. Maybe he told her what was going on, she helped him out. Maybe he told her and she threw him out, called the cops.
If he came clean to the police and went to jail, what happened to Mom? Who would take care of her?
Another chime from his phone. Lee again.
Just let me know you’re doing okay and I’ll stop bugging you.
Josh couldn’t bring himself to answer. He didn’t want to lie. He couldn’t tell the truth. He was trapped. That was the feeling he couldn’t stand, the thing that got him every time. Every time.
What was amazing was, even after seven years of sobriety, how easy it was. He strode into the party store, bought himself a forty. Took it in its brown paper bag out to the car. There was no tearful struggle, no inner battle. It was just one, just for today, just to give him the swagger to do what needed to be done. In fact, he was doing a good thing. If he could get that money and get rid of Rhett, he’d be sparing himself, his mother, maybe even Claudia Bishop and her daughter a lot of heartache. He could call Lee tomorrow, start over. He just popped the tab and took a sip, then another. The cold, bubbling liquid sluiced down his throat, and his body took it in like a river run dry. And it was just a few minutes before that guy show up, the one Lee always warned about, the one who did bad things and asked the “real” Josh to bear the consequences. Josh had never been so happy to see anyone in his life.
? ? ?
RHETT WAS WAITING BY THE entrance to the Bishops’ drive, the Barracuda idling in the shoulder like a junkyard dog. Rhett climbed out as Josh pulled up.