Paranoid(117)

“For starters.”

“Great. It’s not like I’m in trouble enough with what’s going on in school.” He glowered into the computer screen. “And you’re probably pissed because Lila and Lucas are involved. Right?”

“Right.”

She was standing at the foot of his bed, watching the play of emotions on his face in the light from the monitor. It seemed, for now, as if he got where she was coming from. “Okay, Dylan, that about covers it. Almost.”

“But?”

“You want to tell me why you were supplying kids with spy equipment?”

“I already told you: for money, Mom. Duh.” His eyebrows slammed together as he reminded her, “You’re the one who’s always talking about how tight money is, and now that you’re looking for a job, it’s gonna be worse. Right? Harper can’t get a car until she saves up what, like half of the price of it or something. Well, I’m turning sixteen next year and I figure you’ll have the same deal with me. I thought I’d get a jump on it. That’s all. It’s not like you would ever let me get, like, a real job, not yet. Right? So this seemed like an easy way to make some cash. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” she said. “Because, Dylan, you did it behind my back.”

“Yeah. I know.” He sighed through his nose. “But you wouldn’t have let me.”

She didn’t argue, just studied him, this boy who would soon be a man. “So . . . is there anything else I need to know?” she asked and he looked up quickly. Guiltily.

She saw a lie forming in his eyes, then, second-guessing himself, he said, “Nah. Nothin’.”

“You’re sure about that.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.” He was nodding rapidly, as if trying to convince himself.

“Okay. But if you think of something, you’ll let me know.”

A pause. Silence stretching between them.

“Dylan?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Right.” Then, “And you don’t have to say anything. I know I’ve got to tell Dad.”

*

With his phone connected to his favorite hard rock playlist, Ned touched up the final coat of paint on his bathroom, making certain he didn’t leave the tiniest line on the tile he’d so painstakingly laid himself, a subway-patterned backsplash that didn’t look half bad.

Standing back surveying his work, he caught his reflection in the mirror, an aging man with a potbelly, once-blond hair now silver and thin, glasses perched on a nose that showed a road map of blood vessels just beneath the surface. Once a cop with a good reputation, a decent woman for his wife, and a daughter he adored, he was now doing security work, walking the mall in Astoria for the most part; divorced; and living with an ever-replaced half pack of Bud and the ghosts of his past.

A major comedown in life.

All because of a woman.

God, he’d been a fool.

He’d lied to himself and every damned person who meant anything in his life.

Over the beat of Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” he heard a faint noise.

The click of a doorknob being turned?

Odd. Frowning, he cut the playlist and peered into the darkened hallway. “Hello?” he called, feeling like a fool. He was alone. Knew it. But he looked anyway, his cop senses alert. The house was still and he told himself he’d imagined the noise. How could he have heard anything over the haunting lyrics of the song? He hit the play button on his phone and Steven Tyler was singing again, rocking out in the small bathroom.

Ned reached for his half-drunk can of Budweiser, which sat on the lid of the toilet tank next to his Glock, the one he’d gotten years before, taken and pocketed in a raid when Ned had been in his late twenties, an unregistered weapon he’d used only once.

Until tonight.

Possibly.

The cat wandered into the bathroom and actually did figure eights between his legs. “Yeah, you’d better go home if you know what’s good for you.”

But the skinny thing probably didn’t have a home other than this place. He liked the cat. Called him or her—who could tell?—Inky. Who would take care of the scrappy cat when he was gone?

Didn’t matter; the animal was a survivor.

He drained his beer in a long swallow, crushed the can, and let it fall to the floor, where he’d laid a drop cloth.

Again he eyed his work in the bathroom and rubbed his jaw. If he actually had the guts to eat a bullet, could he work it so that the blood and brain spatter wouldn’t mar the job?

Oh, hell, why would that matter? Someone’s gonna find your rotting body, with half your head blown off. Do you think they’ll really give a rat’s ass that your grout lines are perfect?

Again he looked at the grizzled man in the mirror, a guy who looked far older than his age. And a goddamned fool to boot.

Perhaps the gun was the coward’s way out.

It could be that he should grow a pair of balls again. It was time to tell the truth. Long past.

He should lay his soul bare.

Deal with the fallout.

Accept the consequences—every last miserable one of them.

His daughter would hate him, and he wouldn’t blame her. She’d carried the burden of thinking she’d killed her own half brother when it was he, Detective Ned Gaston, who had followed his kids to the cannery, stepped inside to the hellish darkness, and drawn his weapon. He, hidden in the shadows and the chaos, had been standing next to Rachel unseen. He’d fired his gun simultaneously with hers. Real bullets and pellets had been fired. He had made certain his gun, the Glock that was now sitting on the tank of his toilet, was never found, while Rachel’s own weapon had been kicked into the chute leading to the river. It was he who had coerced Richard Moretti into signing the death certificate as DOA and letting Luke die. The kid would have given up the ghost anyway. Ned was certain of it then, even if he wasn’t now. But he’d let his daughter deal with that horrendous guilt of taking her brother’s life for all of her adult life. Jesus, God, maybe he should just end it.