Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

  Driscoll waited. He watched Patrick mull that over, he watched the muscles beneath the man’s cheeks tighten. When Patrick turned back he said, “You come all the way up here on your own, Driscoll? No one to watch your back? No one to say this ever really happened?”

  “I came because you said you wanted to turn yourself in.”

  “Where are the marshals?” Patrick asked. “You trying to keep me for yourself?”

  “I’m trying to save your son and your daughter-in-law,” Driscoll said.

  Patrick looked up at the mirror. “I know you,” he said. “I know why you came out to see me every year—deep down somewhere you think we’re the same in some way.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your marriage,” Patrick went on. “Your daughter. You think I didn’t hear about your family?”

  “That has nothing to do with you.” But he knew it did. He knew in some way he needed something to show for all the time he’d taken away from his family—all the work he’d put in on this one solitary goal.

  “I think you should ask yourself who deserted who,” Patrick said. “I think you should ask yourself if you’re trying to save Bobby or if you’re trying to save yourself.”

  DRAKE LOOKED DOWN the long hallway, light fading away into the darkness beyond. He sat in a solitary dining room chair with his wrists still taped behind him and John Wesley’s hand resting like ten pounds of meat over one of Drake’s shoulders. Three minutes had passed since Bean took Sheri away down that hall. A door far down opening and only a sliver of light visible now as Drake strained to hear what he could from the darkness.

  “What is this place?” Drake asked.

  “Just the first place we found,” John Wesley said.

  For a long time they’d driven east into the fading light. The night moving up through the sky and the sun disappearing behind. When it was over Drake hadn’t been able to tell where they were, or even how far they’d come, and he looked around the house now searching for some beacon of information to help him get a bearing.

  Two silver candleholders sat on the table, their wicks burned almost to the metal and the wax pooled at their bases. Everything in the house seemed like something from a forgotten time. The hutch sitting there across from them with the old china plates displayed along its surface. A pile of mail by the door, built up and then toppled across the floor in a collection that seemed to take in weeks. The night out there beyond the windows like a fine silk cocooning them all within the house.

  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.”

  Chapter 19

  HE’S GONE,” PATRICK SAID. He’d come forward in the backseat with his hands cuffed behind him and his ear to the phone. Now he fell away, leaning his weight to the rear seat and watching the road ahead.

  Driscoll brought the phone back and stared at the screen. The whole call had taken less than a minute. “The man who called from Bobby’s phone?” Driscoll asked.

  “He’s one of them, the more dangerous of the two. He’s one of the men who came into Bobby’s house a few nights ago.”

  Driscoll couldn’t decide how to go on. He had Patrick now. It didn’t seem like any of this should be happening. “They didn’t want you?” Driscoll asked.

  He saw Patrick thinking it over. “They don’t need me anymore,” he said.

  Driscoll looked up at the rearview. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I thought if I called you it would all go away,” Patrick said. “I thought they’d give up on me, or they’d come for me. I didn’t think they’d have Bobby or Sheri. I never thought it would happen like this. I mean I knew it was a possibility but I just didn’t—I couldn’t . . .”

  “As a former lawman, you of all people have to understand why I’m taking you in.”

  Patrick shook his head. He was looking out the window. He wouldn’t look at Driscoll. “You’ve waited a long time for this,” Patrick said. “And you’re going to take me in for a stolen car?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “That drug money,” Patrick said. “I stole it. I’m telling you right now. I’m confessing it to you. You want that, don’t you? You want to be right after all these years.”

  Driscoll had him in the rearview. “Don’t bullshit me.”

  “I’m not. I’ll show you where it is. Everyone will know it was you who figured it out. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Driscoll looked up at the mirror again. Patrick was waiting on him. Driscoll thought about the years he’d wanted only this, about the years he’d spent avoiding his family, sacrificing relationships with his wife and daughter so that he could put himself in this moment. And then he thought about what it would mean when there were no more excuses—when one day he might finally go home and sit at the table with his family and have a dinner. And he wondered if he was too late or if maybe there was still time.

  “What’s it going to be?” Patrick said.

  THE DOOR TO the woodstove was open partially and Morgan sat with his back to it, his legs up on another chair and an old blanket stretched from his lap to his feet. He was faced toward the door, and out the window, he’d watched the sun descend and then thirty minutes later the light completely go out of the sky. Now only the reflection of the kerosene lamp on the table could be seen in the glass, suspended there in the darkness of the window, and his own shadowed ghost on the periphery.

  The books he’d received in the mail were stacked close at hand on the table and he looked at them from time to time but didn’t move from his seat. Again, he thought of the woman and then just as quickly pushed the thought away.

  On the floor lay a tin plate with what remained of his meal—taken early in the day, almost as soon as he’d come through the door. Just a bit of fry bread with some cooked meat and some tomatoes he’d grown and then dried over the past summer. He was looking at this, thinking how he needed to get up and wash the plate, when he saw the small pink nose pop from beneath the counter on which he cooked.

  He’d seen the mouse before. The sound of it there behind the counter, trying for whatever crumb he’d dropped. And now he sat as still and quiet as he could, watching first the nose appear and then the head. The mouse as big as his thumb and colored brown as the winter fields.

  It came out from under the counter and then stood, sniffing the air. The small whiskers twitching and the little claws clutched in front of its chest like a dog watching a ball raised high overhead.

  For a time the two of them sat there, the mouse on its haunches and Morgan in his chair. Then as if Morgan was not there at all the mouse moved in a straight line for the plate. The miniature body low as it came across the floor and the black eyes focused solely on the leftover crumbs of Morgan’s meal.

  Morgan didn’t stir and he watched the mouse come up short, testing the air again, and then, satisfied, move the remaining foot toward the plate. It sat there on the tin for a minute, holding one of the larger crumbs between its paws, working the bread down like a man eating corn off the cob.

  It finished the crumb and moved on to the next. The mouse close enough that Morgan could hear its claws skittering across the tin. He watched and waited. There was no rush and he didn’t want to scare the mouse away.

  The animal ate a third crumb and then went sniffing around the edges of the plate. Finding one it came up on its back legs again and stood gnawing at it. Morgan didn’t move, but he saw the ears of the animal turn up. The mouse gone rigid for a moment, standing there, nose poised in the air and ears flaring one way and then another. The tin was the only thing to sound as the mouse flitted back across the floor and disappeared behind the counter. Crumbs left uneaten on the plate and Morgan looking now toward his own reflection in the window glass.

  Chapter 20

  THE KILLERS HAD PARKED the patrol car just beyond the ridge and they went on foot to the summit, looking down on the small cabin. Bean carried the Walther in one hand and Drake’s service weapon in the other. John Wesley carried the shotgun they’d taken from Drake’s cruiser a couple days before. They stood watching the smoke feed up into the air in a blue moonlit plume. Nothing else to see at the base of the slope except the shift of the cottonwoods in the wind.

  They stood without speaking and studied the terrain. When they were done they went together down the slope and separated as they came upon the light spilling from with
in the cabin onto the grasslands.

  Chapter 21

  THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN on its hinges with such force that it bounced back almost completely, leaving a sliver of the night visible beyond and the bulk of John Wesley standing there. Without moving from his seat, Morgan raised the shotgun from beneath the blanket and emptied one barrel into the wood frame of the door, catching John Wesley in the left arm. Splinters of wood all across the floor and the big man taking a step back with the deer shot in his flesh. A look on his face that Morgan could only guess was complete surprise.

  John Wesley faltered a bit and then came forward. With his good arm he pushed the door open and stood looking in on Morgan. Morgan’s feet now planted on the floor, the woodstove behind him, and the old bird gun still in his hands. The bore smoking slightly and the blanket fallen to the floor.

  John Wesley looked to the window over Morgan’s shoulder and in the same moment Morgan saw a piece of his firewood come through the window. Glass all over the floor and the stove wood rolling to a stop, Bean just beyond clearing the remaining glass from the frame with his pistol.

  When Morgan turned back to the door John Wesley was raising his shotgun. Morgan pulled the trigger and the second shell of deer shot went full into the big man’s body, laying him out on the floor.

  Morgan was running before he knew it.

  Chapter 22

  BEAN WAS HALFWAY THROUGH the window when Morgan took off. All he’d wanted was a chance to talk with Morgan. He didn’t want to kill the man, at least not until he’d gotten the money.

  He had one hand on the sill and a leg through the opening and he was trying to keep his cool. But the only friend he had in the world, John Wesley, was laid out there on the floor and he wasn’t moving. Bean got the other leg over and he went through into the room just as Morgan came off the porch. Off balance and running, Bean raised the Walther and took aim.