The Unwilling(32)

Please, God …

“Bill, stop walking away from me. I’m talking to you.”

Burklow trailed him to the car, two steps back. French found his keys. “Just wrap the scene, Ken. Whatever it takes. Remind everyone to keep this quiet. I’ll meet you at the station later.”

“The station? Our next stop should be the medical examiner’s office. He’ll have her on the table by now.”

“Fine, I’ll meet you there.”

“Bill. What the hell?”

“Step away, Ken.”

“Not without an explanation.”

“I mean it. Step away.” He put a palm on his partner’s chest, and pushed hard enough to make him stumble back. He wanted to apologize, but was in a river of guilt, and drowning.

Her name is Tyra …

Wrenching at the key, French fired the cruiser and stepped on the gas, spraying dirt and gravel. Watching his partner in the rearview, he felt a twinge, but the river took that, too.

Sooner or later they’d find her name.

Jason’s would be next.

The heavy cruiser blew down the dirt road, but traffic at the four-lane held him up. A city bus. A tractor trailer. When a gap opened, he turned for the quarry, and stepped on it. Jason mattered, but Gibby came first.

It was Friday.

Senior Skip.

French found him in a field above the stony beach, sitting with Chance on the hood of a car. They were laughing and drinking, and terribly young.

Chance saw him first. “Oh shit.” He hid the beer behind his back.

“Chance, I need a moment with my son.” He took Gibby by the arm, and guided him into the field. “Have you seen your brother?”

Gibby’s eyebrows went up. “Why?”

“Yes or no?”

“Then no.”

“I want you to stay away from him.”

“We’ve had this discussion—”

“No, we’ve not, not like this. Stay away from your brother. I don’t have time to explain. Just do it. Spend the night with Chance, if you want. Go home or go to the movies. Go to a party, I don’t care. Anywhere your brother is not.”

“You’re starting to freak me out.”

“Good. Great. That’s what I want. But I have a question, too, and it’s important. Last Saturday, you went driving. Out in the country, you said, you and Jason and two girls.” French took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer. “What were their names?”

“The girls?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Tyra and Sara.”

“Tyra’s a brunette? Five-two, five-three?”

“And Sara’s blond and tall. What does this have to do with anything? Why should I stay away from Jason? Dad, where are you going? Dad…”

The boy continued to speak, but French was underwater now, deep in the current, half-deaf and drowning.

Sweet Lord, help us, he thought.

Gibby knows her, too.





11


I watched my father walk away, then returned to Chance, who handed me a fresh beer. “What the heck was that about?”

I leaned beside him, metal hot where the sun had baked it. “He’s looking for Jason.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

I shook my head. “He was being kind of a dick.”

But that was only part of it. He was still treating me like a kid. I didn’t like it. Sipping beer, I stared out at the water. Twenty kids were rafted up a hundred yards offshore. Beyond them, a lone figure floated on an inner tube, his legs bent at the knees, his head tipped back. “You good for a minute?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Sit tight.”

I walked to the water’s edge, skinned off my shirt, and made a shallow dive. At the raft of kids, people called my name.

Yo, Gibby. Yo …

Jason saw me when I was twenty yards out, but he barely moved. His head turned. His hands made lazy circles in the water. “Gibby in the house.”

Hanging on the edge of his tube, I saw the lazy smile, the sunburn on his prison skin. Half a six-pack hung from plastic rings. “Dad is looking for you.”

Jason’s head rose a few inches. He cracked one eye to stare off at the shore, then shrugged without actually shrugging. It was a vibe, the way he settled his head back against the tube. “He was asking about the girls.”

“What girls?” Jason closed his eyes, a beer can cradled on his chest.

“Tyra, mostly, but Sara, too. I think it was a cop thing.”

“She probably wrecked another car.”

“He told me to stay away from you.”

“How’s that working out for you, little brother?” Jason smiled but kept his eyes closed, as if his joke was the end of it.

“It was weird. He looked scared.”

“That is also not my problem.”

But I played the conversation again: my father’s hands on my shoulders, and how they’d squeezed hard and then fluttered like feathers. “Do you ever get scared?”

“Of what?”

“Anything.”

“Nope.”

“Not ever?”

“Well, that’s the thing about war, isn’t it? Once enough people try to kill you, the little things don’t matter. Cops. The past. Not even dying.”