Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

  Already Patrick could see the men standing around the base of the tree. Their own flashlights illuminating the scene with a strange glow, the tall thin shadows of tree trunks shifting across the landscape as one deputy or another moved his light to take in the cottonwoods behind.

  The incline was difficult with his hands cuffed behind him and Patrick slipped, falling to his side so that the meat of his shoulder would take the fall. He lay there with one of his legs beneath him for only a second before Gary had him up, asking if he was okay. Patrick didn’t spare the time to answer. He’d seen the legs there on the other side of the tree trunk now. The tips of the boots he knew were his father’s and the old bird gun there on the man’s lap.

  Patrick came down and stood looking at his father. There was one fresh shell loaded into the shotgun and the other was still in his palm. He seemed to be staring at something just past them all, and for a long while Patrick looked out on the darkness beyond the cottonwood stand and tried to make out what it was.

  DRISCOLL WALKED OUT onto the porch and then came back inside again. The paramedics had come and taken John Wesley and Morgan away. The blood was still on the floor where the big man had lain for the last couple hours. Drake brought his eyes up and took in Driscoll where he stood in the doorway of the cabin looking them all over. “You ready, Patrick?”

  Patrick didn’t show any notice of Driscoll. He was watching the far hill where the ambulance had gone.

  “You taking him in?” Gary asked. “I’d like to come along if that’s what this is.”

  “That’s not what this is,” Driscoll said. “Patrick owes me something.”

  Patrick came out of whatever trance he was in. He looked to Drake and Sheri first and then he looked at Driscoll. “I said what I did to get us here.”

  “I don’t think so, Patrick.”

  “Think whatever you want,” Patrick said. “Bobby is alive because I did what I did. All the rest, it’s all the same as it’s always been. There’s no money. There never was.”

  Driscoll reached inside his coat and brought out the note written in Patrick’s hand. It was still in the plastic envelope. He walked it over to the table and set it before Patrick. “This was in the front of Bobby’s cruiser. Are you going to tell me you don’t know anything now?”

  Patrick was studying the note on the table, his hands cuffed behind him and his back at a slight arch as he bent to take in the old note. He started to laugh, softly at first and then louder, and when he looked up at Driscoll he said, “You really don’t have anything, do you?”

  “Where’s the money?” The words were fast and spit came up out of Driscoll’s mouth as he spoke. He was leaning into Patrick now, staring him down.

  “We can take him in together,” Gary said again, his voice weaker now, but still trying. He was sitting opposite Drake, and Drake could see the sheriff’s eyes dart from one man to the other.

  Driscoll straightened and returned to the open door, looking on the land out there that was now probably Patrick’s. The remaining deputies and lawmen were still searching the area for Bean. Driscoll’s back was to them and Drake couldn’t tell what was going through Driscoll’s head. Patrick was going back in regardless. There was no getting around that.

  Drake was alive. He knew what his father had done for him. Sitting here with his wife and his father when he might not have been. But still, the note was on the table. The money didn’t belong to any of them. And maybe that was the problem.

  “I can show you,” Drake said.

  THEY CROSSED THE prairie with the moon full above them. Drake in the lead, followed by Sheri and then Driscoll, Patrick lagging behind with his hands cuffed and Gary bringing up the rear. The two men far enough back that their voices could not be heard over the sound of the grass swishing at their feet.

  “How much is it?” Gary asked.

  Patrick looked over his shoulder and then went on walking. He was having trouble seeing where to put his feet. Drake carried a flashlight and so did Gary. But the light would probably be better if both turned their flashlights off and they just used the moon. “You know how much,” Patrick said.

  “All of it?”

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  Gary quickened his step. He was just behind Patrick now and every few steps he felt Gary’s shoe catch the back of Patrick’s heel. “It can look like an accident,” Gary said.

  “I don’t want that,” Patrick said.

  “It’s been twelve fucking years,” Gary said. His voice elevated.

  Driscoll turned and looked back at Patrick but there didn’t seem to be any recognition in the man’s face.

  They were still walking when they came up over a small rise and Patrick saw where the fence sat in a line along the hill. “It’s going to be okay,” Patrick said, speaking over his shoulder to Gary. The thought that they’d soon stop and then there wouldn’t be another chance to talk for a very long while. “No accidents,” Patrick said again. “I didn’t do all this to watch it all fall apart in front of me. You’re going to have to take care of Sheri and Bobby now. They’re going to need you.”

  SHERI RODE SHOTGUN and Gary drove. It was past midnight and they’d left Morgan’s cabin an hour before. Neither of them had said much to the other since they’d left, Sheri only telling Gary what roads to take and where to turn. She was reading the directions off an app on Gary’s phone and the display gave the front seat of Drake’s cruiser an intimate closed-off feeling that Sheri could only avoid by opening her window. The night air blew by at sixty miles per hour. The far lights of farms the only thing to be picked off the Eastern Washington prairie.

  The turn for Silver Lake was a few miles ahead and she put the window up. The heaters had been turned on full and she switched them down and then flicked on the phone. The small blue icon that was them and nothing else around for thirty miles.

  “How far?” Gary asked.

  “Two miles.” She put a hand to the dash and messed with the heater for a while, trying the various settings. Though she knew them almost as well as her own car. Just doing what she could to pass the time, all the while studying Gary from the corner of her eye.

  Gary wet his lips and then glanced her way. “I’m proud of Bobby.”

  “I’m proud of him, too,” Sheri said. She didn’t know where this was going but she’d been the one to suggest it. She’d been the one to tell Drake she didn’t mind going back to Silver Lake with Gary.

  “Not a lot of people would have given up the money like that.”

  They rode in silence for a long time after that. Gary took the turn and the road began to wind into the mountains. Silver Lake another hour away. The smell of the evergreens growing as they went and the air turned crisp and cold. High up on the peaks she saw the snow in the mountains. This place was her home, though it had not always been. And she tried to imagine where she would go or what she would do if she ever left.

  After a time, she said, “Patrick wasn’t alone when he took the money, was he, Gary?”

  “No,” Gary said. He glanced her way and then returned his eyes to the road.

  “All this time,” she said.

  “I know.”

  She waited, listening to the wind pass by outside the window. “You’ve been the sheriff as long as I’ve lived in Silver Lake.”

  “I know that, too,” he said.

  She watched the high, blue mountains and when she turned back she asked, “Should I be scared of you?” She was watching him but he wouldn’t turn to look at her.

  “No,” he said. And then after a while he asked, “Should I be scared of you?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that. All the years they’d known each other, all the help Gary had given them over the years. None of it fit.

  She looked his way. “Tonight could have gone a lot different,” she said. “I don’t know if this is the right way to say it but I guess I think you did the right thing back there.”

  “How’s that?”

 
“Bobby gave up the money but I think in some way you did, too.”

  THE FIRST LIGHT chased them up the mountains and they drove now in the western shadows just beyond. Drake sat with the green tackle box between his feet on the floor. Patrick, with his hands cuffed, was asleep in the back and Driscoll drove. For a long time Drake sat and watched the undergrowth pass by his window and then when he tired of it he turned and looked to the back, where Patrick slumped against one of the doors, his head bent to the window and his eyes closed.

  “You know what they say about a guilty man,” Driscoll said.

  Drake nodded. “I know.”

  Driscoll raised his eyes on the rearview mirror and then brought them back to the road ahead. “When we come into Bellingham I’ll drop you at the hotel and then take Patrick in for holding.”

  “I’ll go in with you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to,” Drake said. He didn’t know how to feel about it. He never thought he’d be the one to take his own father in, but he was.

  “I’m going to take the money in as well. I’ll be handing it over in Bellingham. It’s their case still.”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go by the hotel first? The guys in Bellingham are going to want to talk with Patrick. It might be a while.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Drake said. “They’ll want to talk with me as well.”

  “We don’t have to rush anything.”

  Drake thought that over. He didn’t say anything more and Driscoll didn’t try to talk him out of it.

  They drove in silence and by the time they came out of the mountains Drake was asleep, only waking when Driscoll pulled the Impala to the front of the Bellingham Police Department and turned the engine off.

  Patrick was up, and Drake wondered how long his father had been sitting there, his eyes on both of them while Driscoll drove and Drake slept.

  Driscoll asked for the money, and then, when Drake handed it over, he ran his eyes between father and son and then went on inside the department.

  “He’s wondering if I’m going to let you loose,” Drake said, speaking over his shoulder to Patrick.

  Patrick didn’t respond. Out on the street a school bus had stopped and the doors slid open. A group of elementary students waiting with their parents and then when the doors slid closed again Drake and Patrick watched the parents walk away, some talking to each other for a time before splitting and going on again toward their individual houses.

  Patrick cleared his throat. “We’d both be in Monroe if you let me loose.”

  “I’m sorry about the way this turned out,” Drake said.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I just wish I could have seen your grandfather, you know?”

  “I feel responsible.” Drake had his head down, his eyes on the place the money used to be. Morgan was dead and in some way Drake was a part of that.

  Patrick shook his head. “You know you’re not responsible for any of this. Drug smuggling, the money, the deaths of those two men, or your grandfather. I know you want to believe you are. I know that’s why you became a deputy but it’s just not your fault. I’ve wanted you to know that for a long time and I’ve wanted to say that to you for just as long and I guess now I have. You understand? You’re not responsible for my mistakes.”

  Drake sat looking out on the front of the department. Driscoll would be back soon and Drake didn’t know when he’d see his father again.

  Patrick leaned forward and Drake could feel him close behind. “Say something.”

  There wasn’t anything Drake could say. The emotions were spinning around inside of him like a tornado. Nothing ever settling. He knew his father wanted him to let it go but he just couldn’t.

  SHERI GOT THE PHONE on the second ring and listened to what Drake had to say. By then it was afternoon and Drake had already given his statement to the Bellingham police. He’d slept a few hours at the hotel and one of the detectives had told him he’d give Drake a ride home in an hour or so.

  Sheri hung up without saying more than ten words and when she walked to the front window she saw Luke out there in his cruiser, watching over her. It was Gary who’d insisted on it. With Drake not home yet it was just a precaution, Gary had said. Bean out there somewhere still.

  She turned and walked away from the window. Everything was the same as it had been when Bean and John Wesley had taken her from the house. Even the cereal bowl was still there in the kitchen sink. She looked this over and then after a minute she cleaned the bowl and spoon and set them on the rack to dry.

  She straightened the kitchen first and then the living room. Ten minutes later she walked down the hall and stopped in front of Patrick’s room. The door was open and she stood there for a long time looking over the crib and changing table, the walls painted to look like a sunset.

  Drake’s voice on the phone had sounded tired. It was how she felt, worn out, scrubbed down. For forty-eight hours she hadn’t known if she would live or die.

  She had not known how it would turn out for so long, and now she did. Her life with Drake. Her life here in Silver Lake.

  She stood in the doorway for a long time before she turned and went back to the kitchen. When she came to the second bedroom again she carried an empty cardboard box with a wrench and a screwdriver inside. She removed the tools and set the box on the bed next to Patrick’s things.

  The first thing she packed was Patrick’s clothes, taking them from the changing table drawers and folding them before putting them in the cardboard box. When she was done, she set the box in the hallway and came back into the room. It took her thirty minutes to break down the crib, loosening the bolts and then removing the sides so that each lay flat against the wall.

  Sheri did it all with a quiet determination. There was no pausing or break in her labor. It was just her and the room. Two separate bodies that had once been and now were not.

  THE DETECTIVE WHO’D agreed to take Drake back to Silver Lake was waiting for him in the front drive of the hotel. A plastic container of 7-Eleven nachos in his lap that he ate chips from one at a time. He nodded to Drake and when Drake was seated in the car he wiped one hand clean with a napkin and drove out of the lot still eating chips with the other hand.

  The man was twenty years older than Drake and from talking to him earlier, Drake knew the detective had been one of the first to respond to the two bodies found at the gravel lot outside town. The case Driscoll said Patrick was involved with.

  The detective had been a young guy then, the incident one of his first investigations. Now he was aged past his middle and moving into the last years of his service. He talked and drove at the same time. Pointing out various places he’d made busts and pulled drivers over to find sandwich bags of meth in their glove compartments.

  Halfway to the highway Drake stopped the man and asked him to turn the car back.

  They made it to the gravel lot just as the sun began to set. The detective sitting in the car and telling Drake what had changed and what hadn’t. He gestured to an open spot just twenty feet away. “That’s where they were shot,” he said. The detective made a gun out of his fist. Bucking it with each shot. “Pop. One goes down. A clean shot to the temple, cracked his skull right down the middle. The second man turns to run. Pop, pop, pop. He gets cut up as he moves. Makes it maybe four steps and then falls right there.” The detective was still holding his trigger finger out on the scene, letting it quiver there in the air before him. A spot of nacho cheese on his fingernail. He brought the finger back and put it to his mouth and just sat there looking the lot over. “We found the bodies behind one of the big rock piles over there.”

  “Where was the shooter?” Drake asked.

  The detective pointed out the spot. It was about a hundred yards off. “Twelve years ago there was one of those big yellow excavators right there. The shooter was probably back behind it in the shadows.”

  “Were they shot at night?�
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  “That’s what we figured.”

  Drake opened the car door and got out. The evening cold around him and the lot out a ways from the city, built up against a few acres of wetland. Farther out, the white trunks of a stand of birch trees, the leaves just starting to sprout. He walked over and stood in the spot where the men had been shot.

  He turned and looked to where the shooter would have been. Nothing there now but an empty space between two piles of gravel. He knelt and looked at the ground, running his hand over it and feeling the grit against his skin, expecting somehow that his fingertips would come back stained with blood. Still kneeling, he put a hand to his bad knee and pushed into the muscle, feeling the dull, familiar ache of his old injury. He imagined the shot. He felt the force of the bullet and the tear it made through human skin.

  By the time he stood, the detective had come out of the car and was waiting a little ways off watching Drake. “The thinking on this has always been that there were two men. One waiting where you are now to distract the two victims, then the other back there in the shadows covering them all.”

  “What did my father say when you interviewed him today?”

  “Denies it ever happened. Says he’s not the one. Says we had it wrong all those years before and we still have it wrong.”

  “Even with all that money?”

  “Funny thing about it is I always thought it was going to be more. Two hundred thousand is a lot of money but it doesn’t seem like enough to kill for.”

  “What happens now?” Drake asked. He was trying to put it all back together in his head. He was trying to picture his father here twelve years before.

  “We’ve got statements from you and your father but it’s really not enough without the gun, or any direct proof your father was here. We can’t hold him. Driscoll will move him to the federal building in Seattle tonight and I’d guess it will be the last we see of your father. He’ll be back in Monroe in a week.”

  “Even the money isn’t enough?”

  “It’s drug money. It’s not like the bills were marked.”

  Drake looked to the spot where the shooter had been. He paced it out, walking over and then looking back at the detective.