“That doesn’t make this okay,” Drake said.
“I don’t blame either of them,” Morgan said. “Gary was watching out for your father and your father was watching out for you.”
“Jesus,” Drake said. “I don’t want this. I never asked for this.” His voice held low and the words only a whisper. Drake looked down at the money. “You’ve had this ever since?”
“Yes.”
“Just waiting to give it to me?”
“Yes.”
“So he’s dead?” Drake asked. His eyes still on the open lid of the tackle box, the wind rustling the small folded piece of paper that sat on top; he didn’t want to raise his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Morgan said. He looked away to the road, where a pickup was cresting the far hill and then descending once again, out of sight, beyond the grass. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if we’ll ever see him again, but if those men get ahold of him before you do I know it will mean trouble for both me and you.”
Morgan told Drake all there was to know. He told him Maurice’s full name, how long they’d shared a cell for, where he lived now, how Patrick had asked Maurice for help, and how Maurice had been the one to make the connections with Bean and John Wesley. Patrick doing the rest, trying for protection and making promises he could back up with only the money as a reward.
Drake listened and when Morgan finished, Drake said, “So those men don’t know you have the money?”
“Besides Patrick and myself you’re the only other person who knows.”
“You think my father would bring them here?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“I can’t believe this,” Drake said. “All this time—” The anger in his voice cut into his words. “Do you know what it could mean for Sheri if my father isn’t with Maurice?”
“Outside Silver Lake it’s about the only place I could see him going.”
Drake didn’t have anything more to say. His grandfather didn’t have the answers. But the anger was there still. He couldn’t help it and he knew it wasn’t his grandfather’s fault.
“I had to show you this,” Morgan said. “You had to know. It’s your money.”
Drake bent his hand to the small piece of paper and brought it up. He tucked it within a pocket of his coat. When he was finished he dropped the tackle box back into its hole.
“Telling the truth can be a horrible thing,” Morgan said.
Drake thought that over. He thought about all the things he’d hidden away in his life—all the failings he’d had. “I lied to you last night,” Drake said. “We had a child. A miscarriage. I buried it in a hole behind our house. I never told Sheri it was a little boy. I think about him all the time.”
“Sometimes what you hope is at the end of the rainbow isn’t what you thought it was going to be at all,” Morgan said.
THE ASIAN MAN who came into the room to meet him was about thirty years old and had tattoos running up out of his shirt collar on both sides of his neck. Driscoll waited for him to sit before opening the file the warden had given him. The guard who’d escorted the inmate into the room now stood by the doorway about twenty feet behind.
“John Se,” Driscoll said. He had the file open and he was looking down at the man’s mug shot. The statement was not a question, but merely a fact. “You’re in here for second-degree murder. Correct?”
He leaned back from the table and grinned at Driscoll. “Is it going to surprise you if I say I didn’t do it?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“Well that is the fact,” John said. “They have me in here because they picked me up for being an Asian male.”
“Case closed,” Driscoll said. “You Asians all look the same.”
“Now you’re getting it. I’ve been saying that for years.”
“How long have you been in here?”
“Too long.”
“How long do you have to go?”
“Too long.”
Driscoll flipped through the paperwork a few times and then looked up at John. “You know it says here that several witnesses saw a man of your height and build cave in another man’s head with the heel of his shoe. Says here that the tattoos on this perp’s neck matched yours exactly.”
“I don’t know what to say to that. Neck tattoos are pretty popular these days.”
“Not that popular,” Driscoll said. “Not the best choice either, especially if you want to go around smashing people’s heads in.”
“How does self-defense sound?”
“I’m not your lawyer,” Driscoll said. “I don’t really care. All I care about is how much time you’re doing in here and if you’re willing to reduce that time by helping me out.”
“Who are you?”
“DEA.”
“They didn’t tell me that.” John looked behind him at the guard. “DEA?”
Driscoll snapped his fingers. “You have trouble keeping your eyes on the chalkboard when you went to school, John?”
John turned around and looked Driscoll over. “This is when you make the joke about Asians being good at math.”
Driscoll didn’t say anything. He had the two mug shots of the escaped killers facedown on the table in front of him. Their combined crimes included seven counts of murder, one count of arson, two counts of armed robbery, and one count of kidnapping. One of the men was guilty of killing his parents, his uncle, and his grandmother in their sleep, then burning the house to the ground to cover up the murders. “Until a week ago you were Patrick Drake’s cell mate, weren’t you?” Driscoll asked.
John looked back over at the DEA agent. “Pat? What does this have to do with him?”
“Two people were found murdered a quarter mile from where he was staying in Silver Lake.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“No one is saying you do.”
“Well, you can never be too careful, you know. I’ve been mistaken for things before.”
Driscoll looked past the inmate to the guard who had brought him in. Perhaps just looking for some sign that John could give a real answer from time to time. The guard just shrugged, a smile beginning to show on his face before he dropped his eyes to his shoes.
Driscoll brought his attention back to the man before him. “You know these men?” Driscoll asked. He turned each mug shot over one at a time.
“I know them,” John said. His voice diminished, pulled back somewhere into the shadows.
“These guys scare you?” Driscoll asked.
“What are you offering me here? I’m not too crazy about how this is starting to look if someone finds out I’m talking to you.”
“The warden is the only one who knows what we’re doing here. The guards all think I’m a lawyer here for a meeting with you. Well, they did until you yelled out to that guard back there.”
“Sometimes my mouth gets me into trouble.”
“I can imagine,” Driscoll said. “What I can do is send that guard an early Christmas present this year. You know, the kind that makes sure he keeps his mouth shut.”
“You’re kind of dirty for a DEA agent.”
“I can’t protect you from any others you want to tell about this, but I can help you out if you’re willing.”
“Okay,” John said. “What are you looking for?”
“What’s Patrick’s relationship to these two men?”
“That’s a big question with a lot of zeros behind it.”