He was diving to his left when the hood caught him. The impact threw him into the air as the sheriff’s car came to a squealing stop with its front wheels on the road and its back still on the bridge. The side of Wade’s head smacked the top of the windshield and spun him sideways, and he landed on the bridge near Arlen.
The door opened and Paul ran out of the car with the pistol in his hand. He went to Arlen first, but Arlen called him off. There was blood in his mouth when he spoke, but he got the words out.
“Shoot him.”
Paul turned and looked down at the man he’d just hit. Solomon Wade’s neck seemed to point in two directions at once, and the side of his face was a fractured, bleeding mess.
“He’s dead,” Paul said.
“Shoot him,” Arlen said again, and blood dripped from his lips.
Paul shot him. Once in the head. The body jolted and then was still. Paul came back to Arlen and dropped to his knees on the bridge. He looked at the wound and then pulled his shirt off and pressed it against Arlen’s ribs. His face was very pale.
“You’ll make it,” Paul said, but his voice was shaking. “It went in below the ribs. That’s good, isn’t it? You’ll be fine. You’re going to be-”
He was talking too much and hearing too little. Arlen was trying to speak, trying so hard to get the words out, but it had become a terrible strain. Finally the boy heard him trying. He leaned closer.
“What?”
“Camden,” Arlen said.
“Camden?” Paul echoed, his face registering nothing, and then he looked away from Arlen again and back down at the wound, and his lips pressed into a grimace as he began to work with his fingers. He was no longer paying any attention to Arlen, but that was fine.
He’d heard the name.
Camden.
He had heard it. Arlen was sure of that. They would find each other.
Part Five: FAYETTE COUNTY
56
BARRETT WAS IN HIS GARAGE with five federal agents from Tampa, counting the hours until they moved on the Cypress House, altogether unaware of the bloody swath that had already been cut through the county, when Paul Brickhill arrived in Solomon Wade’s Ford with Arlen unconscious in the backseat.
One of those narcotics agents, a tough old-timer named Miller, had been a field medic in France. He took one look at Arlen and told Barrett and the others to shut the hell up and let him focus.
They did.
He was still alive when they got him to Tampa, which surprised everyone but Miller, who was confident in his work. Last thing he’d said before they’d started along the road was “We’re good. Just need blood.”
It was an accurate diagnosis. The internal damage was minimal; the blood loss tremendous. It was a day before he was conscious again. In Tampa, then, in a hospital with guards outside his room.
By then they thought they had the leak figured out. It hadn’t been Cooper, the man in charge of the planned bust in Corridor County, but one of his agents, who’d taken off as soon as word of the disaster came, leaving behind a bank account that was surprisingly well stocked. The manhunt for him ended five days later, when his body turned up in a Louisiana bayou, missing its hands.
All three of the McGrath boys had been arrested at their home. They didn’t put up any struggle. By the time the police got there, the oldest had his leg wrapped with blood-soaked blankets, and Tate McGrath’s body, bloated with venom, was resting on the front porch.
They told Arlen all of this amid their endless questions, and he didn’t care about any of it. What he cared about was missing. They asked about her hundreds of times, with techniques ranging from gentle prodding to outraged shouting, and he gave them nothing. What held him through it was one word, a word that became a talisman for him, a prayer: Camden.
It was Barrett who seemed most dubious of Arlen’s account of the fight in the swamp. He never questioned it in front of the others, but once, he stood at the foot of the bed and asked if Arlen was willing to tell him the truth of what had happened out there.
Arlen looked at him for a long time and then said, “It was a mighty strange journey, Barrett. And I don’t think you’d like to hear the details. Or that you’d believe them if you did.”
Barrett seemed unhappy, but he nodded. “I’ll give you this much,” he said. “I believe they are questions that don’t need answers.”
“You’re right about that,” Arlen said, and then he asked for his reward. Barrett told him he was crazy. Arlen said he didn’t believe that was the case. A lot of blood had been spilled in Corridor County because of the ineptitude of a federal police agency. Arlen could do some talking on that to the press, or he could not. He wasn’t sure yet. A certain reward, a bounty, could impact his decision.
It was only two days later that Paul came in to tell him the incredible news. They were sending him to Pennsylvania once all this was done. To the Carnegie engineering school. Someone had arranged it as a token of gratitude. Arlen did his damnedest to act surprised.
Arlen had been ten days in the hospital when Thomas Barrett returned to Tampa with an envelope in his hand. He tossed it onto Arlen’s bed.
“That was mailed to me direct. Inside another envelope. The one for me came with a note that said she’d trusted me once and saw what had come of it, but she was going to try it again. She asked that I deliver this to you unopened.”
It was unopened. Arlen’s throat felt tight, but he kept his eyes on Barrett.
“I should open it,” Barrett said. “You know that. There’s plenty of people who’d like to talk with her and are probably entitled.”
“I’m sure there are.”
Barrett nodded. “When you talk to her,” he said, “you tell her that I’m sorry.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the room. Arlen waited until his footsteps were no longer audible, and then he opened the envelope. Inside there was nothing but a sheet of stationery with a telephone number.
Rebecca didn’t answer his call. It was a boardinghouse, evidently, and the woman who took the call went wary as soon as Arlen asked for her.
“Tell her it’s Arlen Wagner,” he said, and something changed in the strange woman’s voice, and she went away for a time, and then Rebecca was on the line. At the sound of her voice, Arlen closed his eyes.
“You’re okay,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It made the papers at first, but then it went away. I wanted to come back, but you’d told me not to, and so-”
“You did the right thing. You should never come back here. Barrett didn’t open the envelope either. Nobody saw it but me.”
He was talking low because there were people passing nearby, but no one was interested.
“Paul’s safe?” she said.
“He’s safe, and Solomon Wade’s dead. Tolliver, too. And Tate McGrath.” The weight of it was settling on him now as he put it into words for her in a way it never had when he’d explained it over and over to the police. The memory of the Springfield bucking in his arms and the feel of the mud on his face and the damp heat of the marsh and the whispers of dead men in his head…
“Will you come?” she said.
He laughed. It was all he could think to do. Then he said, “Yes. You better believe I’m on my way. Soon as they let me out of this place, I am on my way.”
The smile left his face then, the first smile he’d worn in many a day, and he added, “I’ve got to make a stop first. Shouldn’t take long, though.”
“A stop where?” she said.
“A place I used to call home. There’s something I’ve left unsettled too long. Then I’ll move on. Did you make it all the way?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m in Camden.”
“How is it?”
“Lonely,” she said. “But when you get here, that will change.”