But more than any of this it was the slight odor, acrid and deep, that hung in the air that bothered Drake the most. Just beyond comprehension. Like the basement door had been left open and the fetid, black air was slowly beginning to infect the house. Like some unlucky soul had fallen and lay there still. And for the first time Drake wondered if John Wesley had meant it was the first place they’d found tonight, or if it was the first place they’d found a week before when they killed the prison guard and disappeared.
Down the hall there was a muffled scream and something crashed to the floor and moved away, the sound fading until there was only silence again. Drake tried to rise from the seat but was pressed down. He heard the scream again and he knew it was Sheri and then he heard Bean say something Drake couldn’t make out. The sound of a human body being dragged kicking across a floor and then the sound of bed springs depressing under the body of another. And then the screaming started again and did not stop.
Drake fought to get his feet beneath him but there was no moving out from beneath John Wesley’s hold. With his eyes centered down into the darkness he couldn’t do anything but listen.
“Bean wanted you to know you can stop this at any time.” John Wesley was bent down beside Drake now, speaking to him like he was speaking to a stubborn child. “It’s just money. It’s just money and nothing more.”
Drake wished he’d taken the money, he wished he’d hidden it somewhere new. But he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it then, standing there with Morgan, looking down on it like he was looking down on something that had never had the chance to live—a life that had come and gone too soon and now was better left behind. He didn’t know. And he sat there struggling under the weight of John Wesley’s hand as his mind wrestled with the fact that if he was going to keep Sheri alive he would need to give them something. He would have to tell them whatever he knew, directions possibly, Morgan, the property. If he hoped to keep his wife alive he would have to lay it out like crumbs for them to follow, little by little, feeding them and buying time. Because eventually, he knew, there would be nothing left to tell.
“I’M THE ONE who called you, Driscoll,” Patrick said again. He sat with his back resting on the rear bench seat and the yellow lights of buildings and streetlamps passing by in the night outside his window. “I’m the one trying to make things right.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Driscoll said, looking up at the rearview again. Patrick only a shadow, an outline of a human being.
“I called you for a reason, Driscoll. I didn’t call Gary or the marshals. I called you.”
“Once you’re in the lockup downtown we can talk.”
“You want to be right,” Patrick said. “I understand that. After all these years you want to prove you were right all along.”
Driscoll didn’t say anything. He was watching the interstate ahead. At sixty miles per hour they’d reach Seattle in thirty minutes. “You deserted your son twelve years ago and now you’ve done it again,” Driscoll said. “You just don’t change.”
“You’re right. I did those things. But I did them for a reason. You should understand.”
“We’re not anything alike,” Driscoll said. He could feel the blood rise in his face for a moment and the words strain at his lips.
“No,” Patrick said. “I thought maybe we were but I see now that we aren’t.”
“Good.”
Patrick shifted in the back so that he could look out the window, watching the lights of a mall until they were gone. “I messed everything up,” he said. “Do me just one favor. Bobby and Sheri are out there somewhere. If they’re looking for me I want them to know where I am.”
Driscoll looked up at the mirror. “What if they’re not looking for you? What if they were taken because of you?”
“Then I want you to let the men who took them know where they can get their money.”
Chapter 18
BEAN FLIPPED DRAKE’S PHONE open and looked at the text. He smiled a bit to himself and then held the phone to the cage for Drake to see. “What do you think?” Bean said. “Should we call him?” He was having fun with the idea, rolling it around in his head like a marble. Patrick had been picked up by Agent Driscoll, which meant one way or another Patrick was going back in.
He turned and looked behind but Drake had already gone away from him and was looking out on the fields. They drove on the county roads now, keeping to the speed limit, taking Drake’s directions turn by turn and avoiding the highway. What trees they saw on the sides of the road were squat as the grass, everything else nothing but black ink spilled across the landscape.
No one had said anything in a long time. Sheri off to herself now, her head leaned to the window, looking groggy. Bean knew he hadn’t done much to her except throw her around a bit. Perhaps a little too hard at times. Just a little roughhousing, nothing more than he’d do to a dog that had snapped at his hand. Some liked it that way, they saw it as fun. Others didn’t, and Bean was still deciding which one Sheri had been.
“What will we find out here?” Bean asked. He spoke to himself, looking to the back to see if Drake was listening.
Bean toggled down until he found the text message again. A single line from Agent Driscoll to Drake, “I’m with Patrick.” He put the call through and waited. When Driscoll picked up he told him to put Patrick on. “Hello,” Patrick said, and then, “Hello? Hello?” Bean was enjoying himself. He liked listening to the desperation grow in Patrick’s voice.
Bean said Patrick’s name and then listened as Patrick tried to get his bearings. “Hello… Hello? Hello?”
“You didn’t think you’d hear from us so soon,” Bean said. He looked to the back and got a thrill to see Drake watching now, listening to Bean’s half of the conversation, trying to appear as if he wasn’t straining to hear what Patrick had to say on the other end. “I wanted to let you know we’re okay now. Me and John Wesley are just fine. I thought we should clear the air on that one.”
“That’s good,” Patrick said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“Well, I don’t want to take up too much time,” Bean said. “I just thought we owed you a call. We’re sitting here with the deputy and his wife. I wanted you to know that. I wanted to make it very clear to you.”
“I think we all want the same thing.”
“How do you figure?”
“I owe you,” Patrick said. “You know it. I never forgot.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Bean said. “But you know, I can call you back in a couple hours. Don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
“Wait,” Patrick said. “Just hold on. Let me say something to Bobby. That’s all. You understand, don’t you, Bean?”
Bean looked to the back. It was obvious to him that the deputy hadn’t heard anything of what his father was saying. He held the phone off his ear now and he met Drake’s eyes. “You want to tell your father you love him?” Bean asked. “After all these years I know he’d like to hear it.” Bean held the phone to the cage and watched Drake come forward.
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “I guess I just want to say we’ll have to go fishing some other time.” He raised his eyes to Bean and then slipped away from the cage, back to his corner, where he looked out the window again.
Bean studied him for a time. The sound of Patrick breathing on the other end of the line. Bean considered it all, wondering if the risk had been worth it. And then deciding it had not, he closed the phone.
For a long time he sat and watched the centerline come toward them out of the darkness, one yellow dash at a time. “Fuck the speed limit,” Bean said. “Let’s just get there.”