Authors: Tom Piccirilli
“You told the police I’d hit you.”
“Yes. It was Chad’s idea.”
“And you went along.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Honestly, it’s because he was there and you weren’t.”
Flynn nodded again. “Did you leave him after that? Did you kick him out?”
“No, I didn’t.”
They were the kind of questions you could ask someone else but never answer yourself. Why you stayed with someone, or why you left. He felt bold and capable only because he was more afraid than she was. She had struggled to find love and found angry men much weaker than herself. She gave more, she tried harder. She risked her blood and her bones. Flynn had never risked anything. He just beat the hell out of anybody who hurt a kid, keeping himself busy while his wife found Frickin’ Alvin.
“Do you know what’s been happening?” he asked.
“From the papers. I put it together afterward. Your name.”
“Right.”
“Why did you come to see me?”
“I had to.”
She wet her lips. She tended him perfectly but without warmth. He could feel the chill between them.
“Why then?” she asked. “After so much time?”
“Same poor answer. I had to. That doesn’t explain anything, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“I think it might be all I have too.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Starting from when?”
He still had the note in his pocket. He drew it out. “From when you got this.”
“What is it?”
“You had it with you when you came to my door.” Then he realized he was telling her to start in the wrong place, but he couldn’t see asking her to go back thirty years, to the day they’d first met. “No, tell me what occurred after I came to your place. Between you and Chad.”
“He hit me. He thought I was having an affair. He refused to believe that I didn’t know you and hadn’t asked you there. He thought I’d paid you to beat him up. He thought you were going to steal his pot.”
“One of those guys who gets paranoid when he smokes.”
“No, not really. You’re still oblivious to exactly what you did.”
That stopped him. He frowned, knowing it was true. “Tell me.”
“Walking into the house unannounced, a total stranger. The things you said.”
“They were righteous.”
“They were very frightening and embarrassing to me.”
He told her, “I’m sorry.”
“We filed the report and went home. Chad left later that evening. I hadn’t seen him for two days when someone phoned me. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The person spoke in a whisper, with a great deal of”—Her fingers clenched the air trying to grab hold of the proper word—“zeal. It mentioned your name. It told me your address. It begged me to visit you, and in the morning I decided I would.”
Flynn tried to see it. Imagining how Nuddin had researched him online, maybe gotten his hands on Flynn’s file. Would Sierra have brought it home? Yes, in order to protect him. Doing her own investigation into Flynn and Emma’s background. Upset and angry but still looking out for Flynn, worrying over his paperwork. He’d asked her to check up on Emma and she had, and that had given Nuddin the edge.
“How’d you get the note?”
“When I got out of my car in your lot a young retarded man handed it to me. I thought it was one of those cards that say, ‘I’m handicapped, please give what you can.’ I gave him five dollars and he rushed away. I didn’t know what the note said until just now. What does it mean?”
“It’s nothing but a bad joke.”
In her sleep, Kelly wailed once. She quietly called for her mother and father, sat up and immediately fell back on the couch, sobbing into the cushions without awareness. She whimpered for Zero and Nuddin. She said Flynn’s name and he took a strange pride in it.
He sat with her and held her and rubbed her back while Emma Waltz watched him. The girl’s warmth against him moved him toward hope. He knew she’d be able to get past her pain now. It wasn’t quite as bad as he and Sierra had predicted, but this was merely the first wave. It would catch up to Kelly again and again over the next several months and years, but eventually she would make a precarious peace with all that had transpired. He pressed his lips to her brow the way a father might.
He fell asleep on the couch holding her like that and woke hours later in the deep morning with Emma Waltz still watching him, still with her coat on.
He thought, Here it is. Here’s our chance to save each other.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
She tried to say something but didn’t make it. The planes and angles of her face dropped and diverged. She shook her head so that the layers of hair rose and fell and swam, and finally she shrugged. Minor human motions with the unspeakable accents of life behind them. She bent and stroked Kelly’s forehead. He knew she felt the same longing he did and he could find no words of explanation. He thought it might be like this forever, lost in a mire of silent experience.
“I could probably love you, you know,” he said. It was sincere and heartfelt, but sounded weird even to himself.
Embarrassed, he went to his bedroom and lay there, his wounds tight and painful but securing him to the texture of life.
An hour later, as the windows brightened with dawn, she crept into bed with him and lay down with her clothes on, even her coat and shoes. She turned on her side and he reached around and held her, waiting for her to cry. She didn’t. She hadn’t for thirty years. He knew what it had done to him, and thought for her it must be much worse. The years with men like Chad, who bent her arms back until she went to her knees. Driven to endure pain and terror with ignorant, caustic men, young and old. That’s why she was here. She didn’t just want him to smack open her cut lip and give her another shiner.
He was much more special than that. She wanted him to go the extra mile down the midnight road for her. She was here to die and he was supposed to kill her.
THIRTY
In the morning, Kelly Shepard said, “I want to see my dad.”
Flynn threw back a handful of painkillers and took her to the hospital. Emma Waltz riding shotgun, Kelly in the back staring ahead expressionless except for a muted concern. He hadn’t even asked Emma along, she’d simply gotten into the Charger as if it had always been expected. She slid in without hesitation, despite what had happened the last time she’d been in it.
The snow had tapered off but still hadn’t quit. It wouldn’t until he figured out his next move. The plows had been busy all night long and had done a better job than Flynn had expected. Things wouldn’t be quite as rough today.
When they got to the hospital, Emma waited in the little alcove where Flynn had first met Jessie Gray. He held Kelly’s hand and led her to her father’s room. Shepard looked the same except he’d lost a few more pounds.
Kelly moved to the bedside very slowly, took her father’s hand and hugged it to her. She began to cry and Flynn mentally commanded Shepard to wake the hell up, do everybody a fucking favor.
But the man slept on. A nurse walked in and asked if Flynn was family. He said, “Yes, I’m his cousin Ferdinand.”
The nurse wandered off. Kelly’s face was slathered in tears but she almost afforded him the gift of a smile.
They got back out to the Dodge and Kelly asked,
“Where am I going now?”
“To where I work. Child Protective Services. They’ll find you another family to go with for a while, but first I want you to talk with somebody.”
“Can’t I stay with you?”
“No,” Flynn said. “I wish you could, but I’ve got some problems I have to work out first.”
“I don’t know if I want to talk to anybody right now.”
“Well, that’s okay. Maybe you could just listen to him for a while?”
“All right.”
He drove out to the CPS headquarters. More than half the staff was out because of the blizzard, and the rest hadn’t heard about Sierra yet. Raidin must’ve had a hell of a time forcing Jessie Gray to sit on the story, but he’d man aged to swing it. There was too much that had to be worked through, evidence to sift. No word would leak out until Raidin tracked down Flynn and got everything proven, bagged, written up, stamped, and filed.
Kelly walked down the hall between Flynn and Emma, holding their hands. It could’ve been the portrait of a normal family. The promise of possibility reemerged.
When they got to Mooney’s door he told them, “Wait here for a minute.”
He knocked and stuck his head in. Mooney looked up from a folder and sniffed. Flynn entered and shut the door behind him.
He said, “You’ve got your work cut out for you today, Dale, so clear your desk and focus. Sierra was murdered last night. You’ll hear about it later this afternoon. It was ugly. You remember Kelly Shepard. She needs to talk to someone. She may have witnessed Sierra being killed. She’s certainly been through a hell of a lot. She also needs to be placed with a new foster family.”
It was a lot to process. Mooney’s left eye twitched and he swallowed thickly. He started to ask about Sierra and thought better of it. All in all he handled it pretty well. He said, “She’s here now?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a moment.”
“Sure. And thanks, Dale.”
Flynn stepped out, dropped to one knee before Kelly, and said, “Listen, maybe you remember this guy’s name is Dale Mooney. You two are just going to chat some more. If there’s something you don’t want to discuss, you tell him and that’ll be the end of it. But I want you to try.”
“Okay.”
“He’s a pretty up-front person and he’ll do his best to help you.”
Her eyes grew wet but she didn’t cry. “Are you going to stay?”
“No. But I’ll make sure everything works out right this time, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Trust me.”
“I do. Is my father ever going to wake up?”
“I don’t know,” Flynn said.
Mooney opened the door and smiled. “Kelly? It’s so nice to see you again. Will you please come inside?”
Emma Waltz, attractive in her hard way, couldn’t meet his eyes. Flynn moved to her, those bruises a bit less no ticeable than they had been last night. He kissed her and she didn’t respond. He saw she had expected him to be someone else, to say and do other things. The actions of her other men, the actions of his own brother. She was confused by the way he was handling himself. She wavered and said, “I have to leave.”
“Going home to Chad?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a liar, Emma Waltz. What would Patty think of that?”
It got through, hearing her sister’s name. It brought heat into her eyes and her lips firmed. Flynn liked the look. He’d be willing to be hated so long as it fired her up. He kissed her again and she pressed her hands against his chest to shove him away. Good, he liked that too.
Their impasse would soon turn lethal for one or both of them. Flynn had to break it any way he could or give Emma what she wanted.
He turned away and said, “Before I drop you back at your car, I want you to take a ride with me.”
She licked her lips, hoping now might be her chance to get snuffed. “All right.”
He knew the place but not the means of atonement.
PRIVATE BEACH. NO ENTRY EXCEPT FOR RESIDENTS.
They were back where it had all started and ended for them. They couldn’t get away from the sign. It followed them through life. Flynn’s face shifted into a hideous expression of joy and doubt. The great mysteries continued to spin outward and roped him in tighter and tighter.
The old man started coughing in his ear again. His mother sighed. Your family never let go of you, no matter how long they’d been gone.
“Why are you doing this?” Emma asked.
“Why are you here with me?” he said.
“I don’t know. I feel like it was always supposed to be this way.”
“It’s not. We’re not going to die.”
“I don’t care if we do.”
“You’re going to, Emma, you’re going to start caring.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“We’ll see.”
Survivor guilt. Danny hadn’t realized what he was doing when he booted Flynn and Emma from the car. He hadn’t been saving them or setting them free, he’d just been letting the towing cable out. For thirty years the winch had been pulling them closer and closer to the water. Now they were either going in together or cutting loose together.
He gunned it toward the beach, the same way Danny had. It was time to give up the car or give up his life. He saw the stupidity of it all with an intense clarity, but there wasn’t anything he could do alone. He eased down far there on the pedal and the Charger bounced wildly over ice down the snow-covered road. In the distance he watched the tide starting to rise, as if trying to reach the car.