“I know he didn’t kill her. I know that she and Mercante were lovers.” Shephard forced himself to look at something other than his father, choosing a red rose at random. He heard Wade’s glass lift from the table, a gulp, the sound of glass on wood. When Wade spoke again his voice was grainy and soft, as if it belonged to a much older man.
“You’re the only person on earth I’m ashamed to have know that.” After a long pause he spoke again. “Do you understand what I mean?” Shephard’s silence answered for itself. “I mean that I know I have sinned. And I don’t mean against God, but against another man. Every day of my life I’ve thought about confessing that, about telling everyone the truth. Sometimes when I’m home alone at night. Sometimes Sunday mornings on the pulpit. But I couldn’t do it, Tom. I couldn’t let you see that happen.” His voice was soft and distant, as if coming from under the earth.
“Well, it happened, pop.” Shephard looked at his father’s quivering face, then to the glistening Pacific beyond.
“I knew about them for quite some time,” Wade began. “A month maybe. I couldn’t confront her with it. It’s... one of my flaws not to be able to confront people with things. I hoped it would end. I tried to improve myself. But when it just kept going and going, I gave up and drank instead.” Shephard watched his father study the glass in his hand, recollecting perhaps the days when it was filled with bourbon and not lemonade.
“I remember one day I asked a friend on patrol to go by the house and see if his car was there. She was leaving then, so he followed her to a hotel where they met. And the next day I had her followed, too, and this time they went to his studio and they made love on the patio outside under the trees. I don’t know what all my friend saw, but that was all he told me. Then, I decided it was enough and I couldn’t go on any more. I was going to tell her I loved her. Tell her she could go with him if she wanted. I wanted her to be happy, truly. I think only a young man can love so much.
“So I drank a lot that morning when I was on patrol because the liquor made it all seem unreal and almost tolerable, and I drove here, to this house, and I came up the walkway. I remember it was a hot day and clear and I could smell the eucalyptus and the bourbon mixed together. Something inside me just gave out. I remember thinking it would feel good to have it over with, so we could go our separate ways and maybe be happy again with other people. So I walked through the door and there they were, right in there, in my living room. Up under her dress and I saw the underwear at her ankles and her eyes closed and his arm down there and him kissing her neck. She was groaning, I can remember that too.”
Wade’s eyes were pools and his face sagged as if it was being pulled by invisible strings. He was staring out at the water.
“We were friends, you know, Mercante and I. Tennis partners at the Surfside. We drank and made jokes. He was a fine painter, an energetic, funny little man. Your mother admired him very much. She started painting herself, you know.
“But when I saw them against the wall in the living room, I felt so outside them, so violated and betrayed. So foolish. And the look on his face when he saw me wasn’t humiliation or fear, but triumph. He looked at me like I was a fool to let this happen and a dunce to be there to witness it. So... so I pulled my gun and shot him.” Wade’s face succumbed; it shattered. “But she was there instead... Good Christ; she was there instead.”
In the long silence that followed, Shephard searched for something to say. Dr. Zahara’s words came back again. Sometimes when we lose ourselves, we find ourselves, too. When Wade turned to look at him, his face was glazed, his eyes wide, as if in amazement.
“And I lay there on top of her for a long time. I heard Mercante pick up the gun and I felt him holding it to the back of my head. I hoped he would do it. Then he dropped it and ran out the door. Colleen was... not breathing any more. And I breathed into her for a long time but nothing happened. So I stood up and went to the phone to call the watch commander. To tell the watch commander that I had just shot my wife but it was an accident. And I dialed and got him and I said, John, John, my wife’s been killed. Colleen is dead. And he said, good God how did it happen, and I said she was shot. Her lover shot her. Azul Mercante shot her and I watched him do it. And it was then, Tommy, that I knew what it meant to sin, to kill someone you love and make someone else pay for it. It was so easy. So easy to back out. Joe loaned me a little money for a favor and that was that. Later, a few days later I think it was, Joe called on me to return the favor and I took a dead man in my car to Newport Beach. It just got deeper and deeper.”
Shephard looked at his father again, the picture of a man holding himself together by sheer willpower. Everything about him seemed ready to dissolve.
“Every day I thought about changing it. Setting Mercante free. Telling. Confessing. And years later, when I was finished wishing I could die, I thought the next best thing was to help someone else live better. And I prayed and prayed and God asked me to act on his behalf. I felt that He asked me. I wanted it. I wanted to do something I could feel good about, finally. When I heard Azul died in prison, all I could do was double my prayers for him.” His father looked up, and Shephard held his gaze. “That’s why I understand forgiveness,” he said. “Because the hardest thing I ever did was to try to forgive myself. And when I had done as much of that as I could, I started trying to make up for it all. I think everything decent I’ve ever done since that day was for Colleen. I think maybe... she was my God.” Wade’s voice trailed off to nothing, a whisper against the background surge of the sea.
“It was Datilla who hired Harmon, pop. They gave Mercante a car and money. He sent him to Mexico to find you. He wanted you dead.”
It was apparent from the vacant, infant-like expression on his father’s face that Wade didn’t understand.
“Joe told me he was afraid you might make that confession someday. He was afraid he’d finally have to pay for Burton Creeley. He helped Mercante get Hope.”
“Joe did?”
“He did. It’s conspiracy, pop. Conspiracy to commit murder. Do you understand what that means?”
In his confusion, the reverend was a cop for a moment. “More than one person planning, arranging, or intending to bring about the—”
“Not that, pop. Do you understand what it means to you? If I take Joe for conspiracy?”
Wade leaned forward, as if the news to come should be told in secret. Later, Shephard remembered thinking that it was at this instant his father finally broke. Wade slowly shook his head. The evening breeze stirred his father’s hair, much as the breeze on Isla Arenillas had stirred Mercante’s.
“It means that if Joe goes for conspiracy, he’s going to take you with him. Everything you just told me. Colleen, Burton in your car. Everything.” Shephard heard his own voice trembling, and he fought to control the heaving of his heart. And then, in a moment of clarity that all of his previous thoughts had failed to bring to him, Shephard knew what he should do.
No, he thought. Never. I can’t do that to him.
Wade stood up and put his gloves back on. Behind him, the sun had nearly touched the horizon, and the island of Catalina lay balanced like a gray body on the rim of the ocean. The water danced in crimson. It will be better this way, Shephard thought, as his father moved toward the rose bushes. It has to end somewhere, why not here, while something remains.