The keys had been left in the ignition, but the car was not on. There was no light but that of the stars and what little escaped from the cabin beyond the ridge. Drake’s eyes had long since adjusted and he could see now far away over the grass. Watching the way the moon came down silver and glossy over the fresh shoots of spring. Far away he saw the occasional headlight break over the top of a hill on the county road and then go away again.
“What do you think?” Sheri asked.
“Morgan?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t know what had happened to Morgan and he went on watching the ridge before him and thinking about the morning. Drake leaving Morgan to go west over the mountains and the old man simply turning to walk back out into the grasslands to set his snares. Every day seeming to repeat itself like the one before.
“I can’t say,” Drake finally said, though he knew it was probably too much to hope for. And he thought what little time they had left owed a lot to Morgan.
It took Drake a second to notice the figure come up over the ridge, the head visible first, backlit by the pale light of the cabin. Then the shoulders came into view. A black figure standing there looking at the cruiser. He watched and waited. Drake’s face still at the window and then when the man turned in profile to look out at something far away on the county road, Drake saw it was Bean.
The chill went down Drake like ice on the skin. He fell back against the seat, covering Sheri as much as possible. Listening now to Bean’s footsteps as he came down off the ridge and made his way to the car.
Drake looked around but there was nothing for him to use. There was nothing he could do but wait it out and hope somehow to escape notice. Though he knew it wasn’t a possibility and Bean knew exactly where they were.
Drake heard the shuffle of gravel under Bean’s shoes and then he didn’t hear anything anymore. The warmth of Sheri’s body under his, the strangled breathing as they both tried to make themselves as small as possible. Drake looked up and Bean stood outside the door, just his body visible through the glass, the Walther tucked into the front of his pants next to Drake’s own pistol. The black sides of his jacket outlining the white belly of Bean’s shirt.
Drake’s eyes ran along the walls of the cage but there was no escape. Both he and Sheri moved all the way across the seat, as far away from Bean as they could get. Nothing to prevent Bean from just reaching in and pulling them out one at a time.
But then Drake saw what had taken up Bean’s attention on the county road. Blue and red light now beginning to flicker on the white of Bean’s shirt. Drake rose and looked behind down the gravel road. The first halo of flashing light showed over the horizon and then the grille lights came into view over the far ridge.
The car was a long way off but it was moving fast, running down the road with the gravel popping beneath the tires. Drake turned and saw Bean had backed away into the grass. He stood there now with his body toward Drake, both guns loose in his hands by his thighs, and his face turned to the oncoming blaze of light.
Drake watched Bean until he took one step back and then another. He was looking at both of them now, the guns still in his hands and the light growing on his face. Drake watching Bean there in the grass, his legs dipped into the prairie like a man wading backward into a swimming pool, first one foot, then the other.
And then Bean was gone. A few hesitant steps before he turned and disappeared over the ridge, the black jacket waving behind him as he cut down through the grass and went from sight.
PART V
THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS
Chapter 24
DRISCOLL WALKED OVER FROM the Impala and told them a body had been found in Maurice’s house. Drake and Patrick were sitting on the stairs and Patrick looked up when Driscoll mentioned the house but didn’t say anything. Driscoll went on and told them the coroner was waiting on a set of dental records to make a positive ID, but the body looked to be Maurice’s.
After a while Patrick turned to Drake. “Did you see anything when you were there?”
Drake looked over at his father and then looked away again. There were flashlights moving out over the grass. Driscoll had called two marshals in and they worked as a team with four deputies from the local sheriff’s department, their flashlights swelling up over the landscape and then moving off again. “I don’t know,” Drake said. He shook his head. He didn’t want to tell his father about it.
They were sitting on the front stairs of Morgan’s cabin. Patrick’s wrists were cuffed behind him and Gary, Driscoll, and Sheri stood in a half circle around them. All with their arms crossed to ward off the cold.
There had been three shots. The first two—Drake guessed—were from Morgan’s bird gun and the last from a pistol. Thirty minutes later Bean had come up the hill and stood next to the cruiser. Drake was thinking about it now. He was thinking about it all and trying to put it back together but nothing seemed to fit.
The first thing they’d seen when they’d come down the hill was John Wesley where he lay just inside the door. He’d taken a load of shot to the shoulder and then another load in his chest and stomach. He was dead and Drake looked around the small cabin for any other sign. The bird gun was gone and so was Morgan. There was a piece of firewood on the floor and the broken glass of the window fallen all around it. The iron stove still had some warmth to it but the room was cold with the window busted in and the door open on its hinges. A single chair had been knocked on its side, another one close by the stove sat alone.
Patrick was still waiting on some sort of answer from him, but Drake didn’t have anything to say. He was angry with his father. Just yesterday he’d sat on this same porch with Morgan like nothing would happen. Drake somehow believing this, knowing now how wrong he had been.
The difference between what he wanted and what would actually happen complete as two passing worlds up there somewhere in the stars. Mostly, though, Drake was angry with himself for letting Patrick convince him they could have some kind of normal life; drinking beer on the back porch and watching the apple orchard with the smell of barbecue and smoke in the air.
The saddest part about it all was that Drake still wanted those things. Only now he knew they would never be. For a long time Drake watched the flashlights out there in the grass. The deputies were taking their time, working their way down the hill with the night wind moving the grass. Soon they’d be into the cottonwoods and up the other side. He wondered how far they would take it.
“Was it Maurice?” Patrick asked.
Sheri stirred. “I’m sorry, Patrick. I know he was a friend of yours.”
Drake wouldn’t look at his father. Anything his father touched seemed to turn to blood on the floor—pools and pools of it.
He shook his head and looked up to Sheri. He didn’t know what there was left to say. Nothing was how it was supposed to be and Drake pushed himself up and walked the few steps toward her. He hugged her, holding her close, her chin resting on his chest and her forehead to the bottom of his jawline. Drake kissed the top of her head, feeling one of the welts that had risen close to the bone, and then taking her hand, he asked her to step away.
In that moment he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care that his father was sitting there on the stairs watching them. He didn’t care about Driscoll or Gary or what they might want. Drake only wanted his life with Sheri to go back to some form of normality, though he could honestly say he didn’t know what that might be anymore.