She finished her beer. David handed her another. ‘You know what pisses me off?’ she asked.
‘What, honey?’
‘That fucker,’ she said. ‘He abandoned me with Danny and Gar, maybe he even cut a deal with Zack Simard to get him to leave us behind on the other boat. He knew Gar would kill me, kill Danny. I’m sure he killed Zack Simard at some point, dumped the body, ran the boat aground. He looked like the poor little victim. The whole time he was in with Alex Black. I’m pretty sure Stoney never called Ben that night, apologizing and asking him to come to the warehouse. That was Alex and Ben’s plan: get rid of Stoney, get rid of me since I was pushing on Ben to help the cops, leave the country with the treasure.’
‘He should have stuck with teaching.’
‘Ben molding young minds – I may puke.’ She downed more beer, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t think it would surprise me if he and Alex had planned on getting rid of each other, in the end. Greedy bastards.’
‘Claudia, it’s not your fault.’ David rested his chin on his knees, gave her a sad smile.
‘What?’
‘I know you. You’re pissed at yourself for not having seen through this guy. Listen, his own brother didn’t see through him.’
‘I’m smarter than Stoney Vaughn ever was, please.’ She shook her head. ‘I think my career at the PD just flat-lined. Jesus, he’s ruined a couple of major league pleasant high school memories for me.’
‘Memories?’
‘He was my first, David, back when we were in high school.’
He opened another beer. ‘You mean I wasn’t?’
‘I never told you you were. You were my second.’
‘Well,’ said David, ‘you weren’t my first either.’
‘I think I’ll wear a red dress to Ben’s trial,’ she said, a little drunk. ‘That asshole.’
‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘For you. For Whit.’
‘You can’t stand him.’
‘I’m gonna try to stand him, Claud.’
She smiled for the first time. ‘Now you’re drunk.’
They drank too much, both of them, and they ended up kissing but she wasn’t drunk enough to sleep with him. She wouldn’t let him drive, so David slept on her couch and at one point in the night, dehydrated and hungover, she got up for water and she watched him sleep and to her surprise a little part of her missed him.
Then she went back to bed, hoping it was just the beer.
41
Lucy was buried next to Patch, in Port Leo’s big, grand Catholic cemetery. Afterward, Whit felt as hollow as though his bones had been plucked from beneath his skin. He took a month off from court, got a retired county judge to fill in for him. He did not have to rule on Lucy’s cause of death or see the autopsy papers. He let Gooch take him out on the waters each day after the funeral, the summer roaring into its hottest days, sat and stared at the flat of the bay, watching the waves live and die in their brief existence.
The third week Gooch invited Claudia and she sat with Whit on the stern of the boat, in chairs designed for deep-sea fishing. Gooch stood on the flying bridge, steering out into the Gulf. Helen Dupuy had gotten work in Port Leo, cleaning at a bed-and-breakfast, and could not join them. Whit drank a Coke, not talking much, only saying how the Astros were bound to disappoint again this summer.
‘Lucy enjoyed baseball, didn’t she?’ Claudia said.
Whit didn’t look at her. ‘Yeah.’
She touched his hand. ‘I didn’t love Ben – I hadn’t quite gotten past the infatuation point. We hadn’t been together very long. But you loved Lucy.’
‘Yes, Dr Claudia, I did.’ Sounding a little irritated with her now.
‘But you haven’t grieved for her.’
‘Of course I have.’
‘Tell me, did killing Alex make you feel better, Whit?’
He stared at her, turned away. ‘This is going to be a damn long day fishing.’
‘It was self-defense. But you killed him. You even told me to let him die. Not that anything could have saved him then.’ Her words – unsaid in the long quiet of the past weeks – came in a rush.
‘Claudia, let it go.’
‘Are you worried you’re like him in some way? He killed Lucy, you killed him – you think you’re on his level?’
‘No,’ he said after a pause. ‘I don’t feel anything about killing him yet. That bothers me.’ He looked away. ‘But Lucy. I… yelled at her. I ended it with her. I said terrible things to her.’
‘You had every right to be mad at her, at what she’d done. You can be mad at someone you love.’
‘That only works if you get to say you’re sorry, Claud.’
‘She knows, Whit. She knows.’ She laced her fingers with his.
Gooch stopped the boat, dropped anchor, called down that it was time to fish.
‘Let’s go swimming first,’ she said.
‘You want to get in the water? After you nearly died out here?’
‘Not the water’s fault. What am I supposed to do, avoid the Gulf for the rest of my life?’ Claudia stood, took off her T-shirt, dropped her shorts. She had a swim-suit underneath, a navy two-piece, not cut too brief.
‘Is that a police-issue bikini?’ Gooch called.
She shot him the finger, dove over the edge. She surfaced. ‘Come on, it feels great,’ she called to Whit, who stood at the rail.
He didn’t move.
‘Whit, come on.’
Whit shucked off his shirt, cannonballed over the railing like he thought he’d better before he changed his mind. Broke to the surface, let the gentle wave swell pick him up, settle him back down. Claudia kicked away from him, giving him space.
‘It feels okay,’ he said.
She watched him dive down, surface, again and again, swimming through the waves, and if there were any tears on his face she could not tell.
They swam, they fished, Gooch saying no more than two sentences about what a good job his Washington lawyer had done in keeping his record clean. They talked instead of baseball, of books, of perhaps a trip to Austin for a long weekend to hear Lyle Lovett play. The day was warm and sleepy, the water fine and greenish-blue, the sky smooth as pearl. On the way back in through the bay Whit watched Claudia doze in her chair and he wanted to reach out and touch her hand and say, I know how bad Ben hurt you. I know, and still you worry about me and I can’t believe how you care. But I’ll be okay. Given time, I’ll be okay. I will choose to be okay.
But Whit didn’t say any of these things. He just closed his eyes and let the sun warm him. Knowing that here, with these two people sacred to him on this boat, he had a wealth to outshine rare gold or the most precious gem. More than he could ever need.