Lucas slows and turns north, wind gnawing at his sweaty face.
The next bridge is a tall smear of red just visible through the trees. Jaeger is almost there, slowing his gait, getting ready to jump on the stairs.
Varner surges again, lifting himself to a full sprint, just managing to pull around Lucas.
Jaeger looks back, squinting, the wide mouth pulling air in long gulps. Then he turns and leaps, his right foot landing on a pink granite step. And he pauses, calculating distance and his own fatigue before jumping again, breaking into a smooth trot across the bridge.
Varner staggers, stiff legs climbing after Jaeger.
The others bunch up behind.
Lucas gasps, scrubbing his blood before pushing back into the lead. Ash Creek is wide as a river, and the long wooden bridge shakes with the pounding. Jaeger is twenty feet ahead when he reaches the end, leaping over the steps, hitting the ground hard. His posture is surprised. He stands where he landed, glancing back at Lucas and almost talking. Almost. Then he starts running again, not quite trusting his right leg.
Lucas dances down the steps and runs. The next stretch of trail is wide and straight – an old road through what used to be a farmer’s yard. Someone with affection for poplars planted them in rows, skinny white trunks looking sickly without the glittering leaves. Again, the wind pushes the runners. Again, everybody accelerates. The old yard ends with a massive oak and deep woods. For Wade, this was always a traditional turnaround point from the Y. By this route, they have covered a few steps more than seven miles.
Jaeger disappears into the trees.
Lucas slows and says, “There’s another bridge.”
Audrey pushes close. “What about it?”
“It’s closed. Since last summer.”
“We can still cross,” Gatlin says.
“Yeah,” Lucas says. “But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
The bridge rises in the distance. It looks wrong. Four tall posts sag toward the middle. Last June, a flash flood roared down the tributary, cutting at the banks and undermining the foundation. Jaeger is driving hard, pushing away from them. Varner is scared that he might get away, and the adrenaline gives him just enough speed to catch Lucas and trip him by clipping his heel.
Both men tumble. Lucas slaps the ground where an exposed root cuts through a butcher’s glove, ripping into his right palm.
Audrey stops.
Gatlin is past, gone.
Varner groans and finds his feet, giving Lucas an embarrassed but thoroughly pissed look before wobbling away.
“Are you okay?” says Audrey.
Lucas stands, watching the blood soak the cheap white fabric. Wincing, he says, “Come on,” and breaks into a slow trot, eyes down.
DANGER, CLOSED reads the sign nailed to crossed planks.
Jaeger has crawled past the barricade. Steel cables serve as railings, and with arms spread wide, he slowly drops out of view.
“We’re beaten,” says Audrey. “We’re done.”
She sounds nothing but happy.
Gatlin stands on the ramp. Then he lifts an arm and waves at someone on the far bank.
Past the bridge is a trailhead and parking lot. If people ran the road down the west side of the park, following Foster, even a knuckle-walking pace would take them to these trailhead before any greyhound could sprint down these trails. Gatlin and Varner stand at the crossed boards, staring across the slough. The suspension bridge looks tired and old and treacherous, sagging in the middle as if holding an enormous weight. Jaeger stands at the bottom. He doesn’t move. With feet apart, Pete guards the opposite barricade. Masters and Crouse are behind him, and Sarah hovers to the side, nothing but smiles now.
Pete says, “Look at you.” Then he punches the boards, saying, “Unless you sprout wings, we’ve caught your ass.”
“See the news today?”
Lucas was making a fresh pot. “Besides murder stories, you mean?”
The dead man laughed and then fell silent. And out from the silence, he said, “There was a thunderstorm yesterday. In Greenland.”
Lucas didn’t talk.
“You know where Greenland is, don’t you?”
“Well enough,” Lucas said.
The next laugh was smaller, angrier. “It wasn’t a big storm, and it didn’t last. But if rain starts falling hard on those glaciers, it’s going to be a real mess.”
“I thought we had a real mess.”
“Even worse,” Wade said.
Mr. Coffee set to work, happy to prove itself.
“Our weather wouldn’t be this crazy,” Lucas said. “If the Chinese hadn’t burned all that coal.”
“Which authority is talking? You?”
“Masters, mostly.”
“It wasn’t the Chinese, Lucas. It was everybody.”
Lucas said nothing, waiting.
“Smart people can be stupid,” Wade said.
“I guess.”
“And I know guys who can’t read a map, but they still see things that I’d never notice.”
Lucas poured a fresh cup.
“Did I tell you? Climate is the biggest reason I got made. And it wasn’t just the rising oceans and ten-year droughts and those heat waves that hammered the Persian Gulf. Climate does change. Always has, and life always adapts. Except the earth today has two big things that didn’t exist during the Eocene.”
Lucas said the new word. “Eocene.”
“The earth has its money and it has politics. And those very precious things are getting hit harder than anything else. The sultans can fly off to cool wet Switzerland, but the poor people have to die. The Saudi government has to collapse. But meanwhile, engineers get to sit inside their air-conditioned bunkers, using robots to run oil fields cooking at a hundred and fifty degrees. As if this was some other planet, and they were noble astronauts doing good work.”
“I guess,” said Lucas.
“Political stability and wealth,” the voice said. “People depend on those two things more than anything else. And the poverty and riots and little murders and big wars are just going to get worse. Hour by hour, year by year. That’s why I put my savings into this venture. Why Wade did. Sure, we were hoping for fifty years of tweaking, but at least we had enough time to pack up everything about me and put it here. My whole life, safe as safe can possibly be.”
Lucas sipped and looked out the window. Or he didn’t look anywhere. He was thinking, and he had no idea what he was thinking until he spoke.
“Nobody would do that,” he said.
“Do what?” said Wade.
“Take everything.” Lucas wiped the counter with a clean towel. “It’s like this. You’re putting your life into one big bag. But there’s always going to be choices. There’s always embarrassing ugly dangerous shit, and you’ll look at it and say, ‘Hell, that crap needs to be left behind.’ ”
“Think so?”
“I know it.” Lucas watched the coffee wobbling in the mug. “That’s probably another reason why Wade did what he did. Getting free of the past.”
The line was silent.
“And you, the poor backup . . . you can’t even know what’s missing.” Lucas was laughing but not laughing. “Right there, that says plenty.”
Seven
Jaeger stands at the bottom of the slow-swaying curve, turning slowly and staring up at the people on both ends of the bridge. His chest swells, drinking the cold air. The muscles in his bare legs look like old rope, bunched and frayed, and the right knee keeps bleeding, a red snake glistening down the long shin. With filthy butcher gloves, he holds onto the steel cables. Old wood feels his weight, groaning. He doesn’t seem to mind. If the bridge collapses, he falls ten feet into icy mud and nothing happens, nothing but pain and mess. Jaeger spent two months sitting in jail. He was too broke to make bail or find an adequate attorney. The city’s murder rate had exploded in the last few years. A hundred other cases needed to be chased. But a popular citizen had been brutally m
urdered, and that’s why the police and prosecutors threw everything at the suspect, trying to wring a confession from him. But there was no confession. And when key bits of physical evidence were finally attacked by the full powers of modern science, they were found wanting. Witnesses and odd circumstances don’t make a case, and the court had no choice but to order Jaeger released. And that’s why this bridge is no obstacle. None. Nothing will make the man meaner or any harder. That’s what he says with his body and his face and the hard sure grip of his hands. That’s what he says to Lucas, staring at him with those fierce green eyes.
And then Jaeger blinks.
He takes another breath and holds it. His head tips on that long neck. Maybe he feels cold. Anyone else would, dressed as he’s dressed and standing still. Then he exhales and makes a quarter turn, wrapping both hands around the same fat steel cable.
Pete says, “Hey, prick. Tell the truth, and we’ll let you go.”
Jaeger stares at the slough. With a plain voice, not loud but carrying, he says, “That’s what I am. A prick. And Wade was this righteous good guy, and everybody liked him, and dying made him perfect.”
Nobody talks. Except for the wind in the trees and a slow trickle of water, there is nothing to hear.
“No, I wasn’t with him when he died,” says Jaeger. “But I know how he died. Even after the rain, there were clues: a big chunk of skin was found south of here, down near the water. It came out of his shoulder, and it was the first wound. Somebody was swinging a piece of rebar with a lump of concrete on the end, and they clipped Wade from behind, on his left side, probably knocking him off his feet. Giving his attacker the chance to grab his phone, leaving him bloody and cut off from the world, but mobile.
“That’s when the chase began,” he says. “There was a blood trail. DNA sniffers and special cameras showed where he ran, where he was bleeding. Twice, Wade tried doubling back to the nearest trailhead, but his enemy clipped the shoulder again and then bashed in one of his hands. The experts could tell that from the clotting. They know how fast the blood flowed and where Wade collapsed. He was up on the abandoned rail line, probably trying to get back to town. That’s where his killer used the club to bust one of Wade’s knees, crippling him. Then his jaw was broken, maybe to keep him quiet. After that, his killer dragged him down into the brush and with a couple good swings broke his hip. Then for some reason, the beating took a break.”
Jaeger pauses.
Almost too soft to hear, Sarah says, “What are you telling us?”
“I’m explaining why you’re idiots.” Jaeger looks at her and back at Lucas. “Fifteen, twenty minutes passed. The killer stood over Wade. Talking to him, I guess. Probably telling him just how much he was hated. Because that’s what this murder was. That was the point of it all. Somebody wanted to milk the fun out hurting him. He wanted Wade helpless, wanted him to understand that he was crippled and ruined.”
Sarah makes a soft, awful sound.
Jaeger shakes his head. “Twenty minutes of talk, and then three or four minutes of good solid hammering. Wade died within sixty seconds, they figured. But he was a tough bastard and maybe not. Maybe he felt the one side of the face getting caved in and the ribs and arms busted and the neck shattered.”
Lucas leans against the barricade.
Jaeger pushes into the cable, long arms stretched wide and holding tight. The steady drumming of his strongest muscle causes the steel to shudder. Anyone touching the bridge can feel his heart beating hard and quick.
“I didn’t hate the man,” says Jaeger. “You know me, Audrey. You too, Lucas. I’m wrapped up in myself, sure. But this feud ran in just one direction.” He laughs and grabs both cables again. “Yeah, we ran together that Monday. And we were talking. But after a mile or so, I turned and he went on. For me, Wade was nothing. He was just another body in the pack. I didn’t hate him. Not till I spent two months in jail, thinking about him and his good sweet friends. And you know what? I’ve got this feeling. This instinct. I didn’t have any reason for killing, particularly like that. But I’m thinking that killing Wade Tanner is something one of you bastards would do. Easy.”
The building began as a factory and became a filthy ware house. Then the property sold cheap, and the investor put loft apartments into the upper stories and The Coffee Corner took over the loading dock and west end, while the backside was reborn as a fashionable courtyard complete with flower pots and a broken fountain. Lucas was walking past the courtyard’s black-iron gate. Saturday’s run was finished and coffee was finished and he was thinking about the rest of his day, and from behind, Sarah said, “I need new shoes.”
She was talking to him, Lucas thought, turning around.
To her phone, she said, “What kind should I try?”
The odd funny weird thing about the moment was her face. Sarah looked happy, which was different. The smile lit her face and made her eyes dance. She was listening to a voice, and he realized whose voice. Then she noticed Lucas and turned away, suddenly embarrassed, muttering soft little words nobody else needed to hear.
Sarah went through the gate. Lucas followed. The original pavers made the courtyard, dark red and worn smooth by horses pulling wagons. Maybe the horses were coming back someday. It was something to think about as he followed the little woman. A glass door led into The Runner’s Closet, and the owner had just opened up. A few minutes after ten, in October, and his day was starting off fine. He had two customers at once, and the guy had to grin.
Lucas stumbled over names. Tom? Tom Hubble, right.
“He wants me to try the Endorphins,” Sarah said. “The ones with the twin computers and the smart-gel actuators.”
“Good choice,” Tom said. “What size?”
She told him and he vanished into the back room, and then she turned, watching Lucas. She didn’t talk. She was listening and smiling. Then she said, “Lucas is here too,” and nodded as Wade talked. Then she told the living man, “He says you need new shoes too.”
“Yeah, but how does he know?”
“Wade still helps here. Keeps track of who buys what, and you haven’t bought for a long time.”
What was strangest was how much all of that made sense.
Lucas sat on the padded bench, Sarah settling beside him, still talking to Wade. An oval track had been painted on the floor, wrapping around the bench. She listened to the voice, and Tom brought out a box of shoes and put them on her and laced her up and watched her jogging a few strides at a time, smart eyes trying to see what was right and wrong in her step.
Sarah giggled. Not laughed, but giggled.
“I need new shoes too,” Lucas said.
“What kind do you like?” Tom said.
“What I have,” Lucas said.
“What’s the model?”
“I don’t remember,” Lucas said. “Ask Wade.”
Tom nodded, watching Sarah finishing her lap. She said, “Bye,” and touched her phone. “I’ll take them. And he said pass his commission back to me, please.”
“Sure,” Tom said, rising slowly.
Sarah started following him toward the counter but then stopped and looked at Lucas. “You know, I talk to him more than ever,” she said, smiling but not smiling. Happy in her core but knowing there was something wrong, something sick about feeling this way.
Jaeger grabs the cables and drives with his legs, climbing the far side of the swaying bridge. Pete holds his ground, waiting. The four people wait, shoulders squared but the feet nervous. Everything will be finished in another minute. A fight is coming, and the four people on the north bank can only watch, each of them feeling lucky because of it.
Pete’s face tightens.
Jaeger says, “Move.”
Nobody reacts. Pride holds them in place, right up until Pete dips his head, throwing a few words at the others as he backs away.
Masters retreats, relieved.
Not Crouse. He replants his feet. Unimpressed, Jaeger grabs the barricade and jumps, one f
oot landing where the planks cross. Then he yanks the foot free and drops beside Crouse, saying nothing while staring down at him, and Crouse nearly trips backing off the wooden ramp.
Only Sarah remains. She makes fists inside her mittens and steps forward, waving the fists while sobbing, fighting for breath.
Jaeger pushes past her and runs, vanishing in a few strides.
Pete waves. “One at a time.”
Gatlin goes first. The little body slips under the barricade and runs to the bottom and runs up to the far side. Varner chases, every step ridiculously long, the bridge bucking and creaking. Audrey is next, but she won’t let go of the cables and she won’t run. Halfway down, she looks back at Lucas, and he says, “Let’s just leave. We can head back.”
She shakes her head and says, “But what if they catch him?” Just the possibility makes her tremble, and she hurries, finishing her trip down and then up again.
Cupping a hand against his mouth, Pete says, “Are you coming?”
Lucas says, “No.” Maybe he means it. Anywhere else in the world would be better than being here. But he watches himself bend and climb through the barricade, and he lets his legs run. Planks rattle as he stretches out, and then without a false step or stumble, he charges up the far side.
Only Pete waits. He looks in Lucas’ direction. He talks to Lucas, unless he’s talking to himself. “I don’t know,” he says to one of them. “I just don’t know.”
The trail follows the slough to its mouth and then follows Ash Creek again. Cottonwoods stand among the scrub elms and mulberries, and the woods give way to dead grass and a parking lot of rutted gravel. Past the lot is West Spencer Road and another mile-deep slice of parkland. The rest of the group stand beside the lone picnic table, bunched together and silent. A rhythmic shriek begins, cutting at the cold air. Jaeger has claimed the old-style pump, lifting the handle and shoving it down again. A rusty box fills with water and brown water spouts from the bottom into a rusted bowl, spouting even when he stops pumping, bending over to drink.
Once he has his fill, Jaeger straightens, wiping his chin and his mouth. Then he trots to the next trail and stops again, looking back at them.
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