After a long while he rose and crossed the clearing. His muscles cramped from his rest and his body aching. He came to the house and went along its side, peering through the windows at the darkness within.
The smell had grown worse in the day since they’d left and Bean put a shirtsleeve to his nose as he came through the door. He left the door open and walked into the house. When he came to the basement door he eased it open on the hinges and stared down into the depths at the cement floor below. He couldn’t risk the use of a light switch and after a time he went down the stairs. The sound of his shuffling through the darkness the only thing to be heard from the top of the stairs.
After a minute he was back again, standing in what little light fell from above, one hand held to his nose and the limp body of a woman supported on his opposite shoulder. He came up the stairs and walked, carrying the woman through her house and out into the yard. He dumped her there and then went back for her husband. The two lying faceup in the grass. Both in their early seventies, the blood drawn from their faces and the bruises John Wesley had left on their necks now only a slight yellow.
For a long time Bean simply sat there with them. He’d needed their house after he and John Wesley had made their escape and now he needed it again.
In an hour he’d have the couple in the ground, and in another hour he’d sit resting in their tub, windows open to let in the night air, cleaning the last couple days of trouble from his skin.
Chapter 26
FOR MOST OF THE day Patrick sat in the holding cell watching the clock on the wall. He was alone in the cell and it had been two hours since anyone had come by to tell him anything. The empty dinner tray the only thing to say anyone had ever been there at all. Far down the hall he knew an officer sat at a desk but he could not see him, and besides the occasional murmurings of a drunk in a cell two or three doors down, Patrick felt very alone. More alone than he’d ever felt in prison.
He checked the time again. The clock in a metal cage, painted white like the walls. Gray cement floors all the way down the hall and into his cell. A single bench for him to sit on and not even a sink or toilet for Patrick to use if needed.
He stood and walked to the bars and tried to look down the hallway but there was nothing to see, not even a window. He looked to the clock and wondered if the sun had set, or if it was still twilight outside with the pale pink of sunset still in the air and the saltwater smell of Puget Sound drifting like far-off music.
He walked back to the bench and sat again. He’d been told he was going south that night, down to Seattle, where he’d be processed and then eventually sent back to Monroe. He set his face in his hands and rubbed the coarse hair on his cheeks, working his fingers up across his skin until his hands sat behind him, yoked across the back of his neck.
Fucking Bobby, he thought. He shook his head in disbelief. Smiling to himself as he brought his head up and stared for a beat too long at the overhead light. He was proud in a way. It had been a lot of money. But Patrick could see now that Bobby didn’t need it, probably never had, and in that way Patrick was proud of him.
He sat there and watched the hands of the clock go around and around. An hour later he heard a far door open and then something being said to the officer down there. There was the sound of rubber soles on cement and farther on the clack of hard-soled dress shoes. When Driscoll showed he was wearing the same rumpled suit from earlier in the day, the top button on his shirt undone and no tie. The service weapon visible beneath his coat. Two officers came before him, one with the keys and the other holding a shotgun in one hand while reaching for the cuffs on his belt with the other.
“You ready, Patrick?”
Patrick stepped back from the bars, the movement inherent now to who he was. Barred gates opening from one cell to another. He looked out on Driscoll and said he was. The door came open and the officer handed the shotgun to Driscoll and came forward with the cuffs. Patrick letting the man get the bracelets on him.
With the officer leading him, Patrick went down the hall, glancing over into the cells as he passed. The drunk now lay out on his own bench, snoring with his pants wet at the crotch and a pool of liquid beneath him on the floor. Patrick heard the other officer swear and then the keys came out and the door to the drunk’s cell was yanked opened. It was the last thing Patrick heard before they came out of the holding area and made their way to a side door. Driscoll followed while Patrick walked. The officer still leading and Patrick glancing up to check the time before they went out the door and the cool of night came over them like a soft cotton sheet.
Driscoll’s Impala sat there in the loading dock and Patrick heard Driscoll fumble for a moment with his keys. There was nothing around but a line of cars parked fifteen feet away, the headlights facing them, and the blue light of the overhead halogens giving the area a washed-out feel. Moths and small winged insects playing in the light as a single spider dangled from a web catching what it could.
He heard Driscoll grumble about something and then two high beams were on them in a flood. Bright and encompassing as a nuclear explosion. Patrick tried to raise a hand to ward off the light but found his hands pulled down by the officer.
The best Patrick could manage was to close his eyes, the light pink beneath his eyelids and then the rapid pop of gunfire very close and the thump of bullets finding contact. Two bodies dropped to the ground on either side of him, and he no longer felt the officer’s hand holding him back.
Chapter 27
DRAKE CAME IN FROM the garage and found Sheri in the kitchen. The box of Patrick’s clothes had been put away atop a stack of other boxes. Now he crossed the living room and went in after the sides of the crib. It took him two trips to bring the four pieces outside to the garage, leaning them carefully against the wall with bits of cloth nestled between each layer to keep the paint from scraping.
He closed the garage doors and padlocked them. Luke still out there in the patrol car and Drake’s own cruiser now back in the drive. For a while he stood looking in at the inside of his house, golden with light. Sheri putting dinner together in the kitchen and the overhead lights in the hallway leading back into the house.
Drake nodded to Luke and then mounted the stairs. He paused at the top and looked out on the forest. He wondered how long Gary would have Luke or Andy sit outside the house. The two patrol cars in the drive reminding Drake of the crimes committed and how Sheri and he were living in the aftermath.
He opened the door and went inside.
When he’d come through Silver Lake earlier that day he saw the small memorial set up for the girl who had been killed. Flowers and ribbons placed beside the door to the doughnut shop. Candles that were no longer lit but that Drake could see had burned through the night and sat melted in an uneven mass on the pavement. A single picture of the girl, framed, showing her the year before when she was a senior at the local high school. He was thinking about this now, and thinking about Morgan and the way they’d found him sitting against the tree with his eyes on the darkness.
Drake took a seat at the kitchen counter and watched Sheri pour a steaming pot of water into the sink, straining pasta while a red sauce simmered on the burner. He tried to put the days together in his mind but they fell apart in front of him. He wanted to feel something about it all but he kept returning to a selfish thought, that Sheri was still alive, that he was. He looked out on the patrol cars there in the drive. He wondered how the foot of their stairs would look with candles burning, with ribbons and flowers. He wondered if anyone would have cared. He didn’t know if he had the answer.