He kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. My brain was beginning to stir. The steel inside me was encouraged by this. Lucas hadn’t been caught. Dad’s people hadn’t found the TV safe—and if they had, they knew I didn’t have whatever was inside. This was as scot-free as it got.
It didn’t have to be over. As my father droned on, I realized that I didn’t want this to be over. Hell, with the things we’d found at Grace’s apartment, this was just beginning. I couldn’t let go. Saving him—saving me, maybe?—was what mattered.
I clenched my teeth. I was about to cross a line here, and I didn’t care. Let’s see this to the end and try to save the blind man. I told him I’d help him if it killed me. Hi, world. Watch me call my own bluff.
“No,” I said.
My father stopped in mid-sentence. “What”
“No, Dad. I’m not dropping the case.”
I expected another bout of Defcon-One Dad. I did not expect him to glance first to the left, then to the right—likely looking for cops or peds—and then lunge toward me with such fury that I damned- near regressed and pissed myself.
His dress shoes splashed through the puddle as he rushed me, his hands out of his overcoat pockets now, reaching for—now grabbing and tearing—my shirt. The Cannondale slammed against the gravel. I screamed, stepping back, my hands digging at his wrists. He’d never done anything like this before; not a slap, not a swat, not a spanking, not ever.
“Dad!” I cried. “What the f—”
“Ungrateful,” he hissed, his fingers tight on the fabric now, wrenching me toward him. My emotions were a frantic, swirling hurricane: terror, disbelief, embarrassment, fight or flight.
“I pulled your ass out of the fire,” he snapped, yanking me back and forth. I was suddenly a stupefied doll in his hands, a flopping Raggedy Andy in his Rottweiler fangs. “There is no ‘no’ this time, Zachary. Walk away from this. The stakes are too high, for me, and especially for you. He’ll ruin me… and he’ll kill you. I told you, he hates doc—”
“Dad! Dad!”
“Be quiet and understand. Don’t you understand”
Anger now. My hands lashed out. They crashed against his chest, shoving him away. Dad’s lungs went hooooo, and he staggered back, his feet splashing through the puddle again. He glared back at me with the kind of eyes I’d seen in The Brink, wild and unhinged. “Jesus Christ, Dad. What’s crawled between your ears”
He steadied himself, wheezing. “Let. It. Go.”
Goddamned stubborn bastard. I took a step toward him, two days’ of fury unleashed. I couldn’t stop this train if I’d wanted to, and at that moment, I didn’t want to. In a move that was as inexplicable as it was gratifying, I kicked hard at the gravel, peppering his slacks and shoes. I was a baseball catcher going postal on the ump. I kicked again.
“No fuckin’ way,” I barked back. “You answer me, goddamn it. The hell’s going on, Dad”
My father recoiled. I pressed onward, took another step, kicking a third time, nearly dropping my own shoe into the murk. “What is it”
“He killed her!” he screamed. “He killed her—and goddamnit, I’m going to make it right!”
My father’s words stopped me where I stood. As if blinking from a trance, Dad suddenly became very aware of where he was. He glanced around again, this time like an animal. I watched him, more curious than furious now. His body sagged, suddenly defeated.
“Who, Dad” My voice was calmer, but still insistent.
As I watched his mouth find the words, I thought: If he says the words “Dark Man,” if he says that thing killed Mom, I’ll lose my mind right here.
“No one you know,” he said.
“Not Tanya Gold.”
“No,” Dad muttered. “Sophronia Poole. Last vic. Two years ago. You… you didn’t know her.”
“But you did,” I said. Shame flared inside me as I heard myself. Damn it, even now, I was doing what I do. Dad was wrong about me trying to destroy him—but he was right about second nature and basic instincts. It’s in me, this need to know.
Dad nodded, staring at something far away. He was old, so old, right then. He was beaten, real… human. A tumbler quietly clicked inside my mind. I realized that my father would die someday.
And then his bright blue eyes glimmered. I knew this look. I’d felt it myself minutes ago. Steel. He pointed at me. If a six-shooter were in his hand, we’d be in the Old West, duelin’ time.
“You are dropping this case, Zachary. It’s just like Grace’s lawyer said. Conflict of interest.”
I shook my head. “You’re the one with the conflict, Dad. You′re making this personal.”
“It’s always personal,” he replied. “That is what justice is. Truth and conviction and punishment are always personal.”
I stepped backward. I wasn’t appalled by this, wasn’t frightened. I was saddened.
The man who’d lied to Lucas and me for more than twenty years—who′d erased his brother’s existence from our lives, from his life—was schooling me on justice and truth. I resisted the acidic urge to laugh at him, and tell him what I knew.
Instead, I stepped over to my bicycle and lifted it upright. I didn’t care who Dad was protecting—me or him. I couldn’t care, not anymore, because I couldn’t trust him.
I kicked my leg over its black frame, clomped my Vans onto its scratched, punished pedals.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I said, and rode off.
14
“You know, for this kind of hands-on treatment,” I said, wincing as my brother smeared the Nelsons Cuts & Scrapes cream on my right shoulder, “I prefer the digits of my lady friend over there.”
Lucas snickered as his palms rubbed the last of the ointment on my wounds. He glanced from the comfy chair in which I was sitting to the couch. I glanced at Rachael, who was shaking her head. The living room’s chili pepper lights above made her magenta hair pop like a road flare. For the first time in this white squall of a day, I felt anchored.
“I’ve seen this dude’s wang a thousand times,” Lucas told her. “Not interested.” He turned back to me. “Your girl’s not a traceur, Z. There aren’t enough fingers in the world to count the scrapes and bruises I’ve taken care of. I’m a frickin’ field medic.”
“Hyperbole,” I said.
“Hold still.”
He gingerly spread the Nelsons over the road rash on my right forearm. As he did this, I told my tribe about the day’s events: the failed, second session with Grace; the music from the Casio’s memory card; my arrest and release; Dad’s role in it. As Lucas wrapped a bandage on my cut elbow, I finally explained why Dad was obsessed with burying the blind man.
I did not tell them about his lies, or how he’d damned his brother to Claytonville.
“You ever heard of her?” I asked Lucas. “A woman named Sophronia Poole? Two years back. You were still living at home then.”
Lucas stood up, shaking his head. I pulled myself up and slipped on a fresh T-shirt. I hobbled across the room, gracelessly splashing down beside Rachael. I smelled like a medicine cabinet. She patted my thigh. “Smooth, babe,” she said. “And what have we learned today?”
“Never run from the cops.”