Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

  When he was finished he came back to the car. “It seems like a pretty good shot.”

  The detective nodded. “It was.” He watched Drake where he stood. “They’re saying your father will be out again in a few years. That worry you?”

  “Honestly,” Drake said, “I really don’t know.”

  “And this other guy, your father’s buddy from Monroe. He’s still out there, too. He’s out there now.”

  “The money’s gone,” Drake said.

  The detective grinned and opened the driver’s-side door. “Like I said, it always seemed like too little.”

  Chapter 25

  BEAN SAT AT THE edge of the wood and surveyed the clearing before the small house. His face dirty and his hands crosshatched with slivers of dried blood from the rock and grasslands he’d traveled through much of the night. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost the jacket and his white shirt was stained gray with a mixture of dirt and sweat. The collar a jaundiced yellow where it rested against the exposed skin of his neck.

  Most of the night had been spent making his way through the fields, grasslands and prairie giving way to wheat fields and then back to prairie. When the day came he followed small creek beds that had gone dry or still trickled with water and worked his way across the country in a zigzagging fashion, using what tree cover he could find to hide him from view.

  Now, almost twenty hours later, he had come to the house at the base of the mountains. He sat watching it for a long time as he tried to make up his mind. The light fading and no sense that Drake or his wife had been able to lead the marshals back this way. Though Bean knew he and John Wesley had been careful enough coming here the night before.

  He waited, watching the light fade till it sat over the fields in a blue haze of floating pollen and spring seedpods. The light catching it all like the filament of weeds in a stream.

  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.

  They hadn’t talked yet about the crib or the way Sheri seemed to be packing the house away little by little. She had only asked him to clear the room, to put the things away in the garage. Drake thought about this as he set the table. He thought about Patrick’s bed in there and how he’d break it down after dinner and put it away with all the rest. Leaning it against the crib. And for a long time he looked away into the darkness out back of their house, trying to locate the small dirt patch where their child was buried, but he didn’t see it and Sheri called his name and told him to pour two glasses of water and grate a small block of cheese before she brought the pasta over.

  They sat in silence and ate the food. Neither had had much to say the entire day. Several times now Sheri tried to speak but the words failed her and she looked away again or twirled her fork through her pasta.

  “Is this the life we wanted?” she finally asked, the pasta gone from Drake’s plate and the red sauce all that remained against the white porcelain.

  He looked up at her and there was nothing to take away from her face. The eyes steady as they appraised him, her chin held tight and the lips solid and unmoving.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking around at the house they’d made their own.

  “Is this the life you wanted?” she asked.

  Drake didn’t know what to say, but he knew if he asked the same question of her she would have an answer for him. Somewhere along the way it had all gone crooked for them and he stared back at her and knew what his answer would be, and he hoped it wouldn’t take them long to find their way back to where it all went wrong.

  ANDY WAS AT the front door in the morning, and Drake rose from bed and pulled his boxers on and then some sweats. He got to the door just as Andy started down the steps to go around and try the back door.

  “Gary says he wants to see you,” Andy said after Drake had the door open.

  “What about?”

  “Don’t know, he just got me on the radio and told me to tell you to go into the department.”

  Drake looked behind him into his house, the living room still in shadow and the door to their bedroom left open slightly. “Sheri’s still sleeping.”

  Andy looked past Drake like he might see her back there but then when he didn’t he raised his eyes and told Drake not to worry, he’d be just outside.

  Drake wore his deputy browns and his star. He drove into town in his own patrol car and put on his belt just before coming into the department. He wore his hat and he didn’t even have time to take it off before Gary called to him from the back office.

  The first thing Drake noticed was Agent Driscoll sitting in one of the seats before Gary’s desk. Gary motioned to the other one and Drake sat, taking his hat from his head and placing it in his lap.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in Seattle?” Drake asked.

  Driscoll sat up a bit in the chair and put a hand to his side, wincing for a moment and then recovering. “That was before someone broke my rib with a rubber bullet. I was just telling Gary here all about it.”

  Gary looked over at Drake. “Someone jumped Driscoll and an officer just as they were taking your father out of holding.”

  Drake looked from Gary to Driscoll. “He’s gone?”

  Driscoll smiled. “Let me get down to it.” He was still holding his hand to the injured rib.

  “Please do,” Gary said.

  “One of the officers who brought Patrick back to holding after he made his statement let Patrick make a phone call.”

  Gary watched Drake’s face and said, “Driscoll says Patrick called over to the Buck Blind.”

  “Well, your father made a call into the bar specifically, not the restaurant,” Driscoll said. “You two know all the regulars down there, don’t you?”

  “You’re talking about half the town of Silver Lake,” Gary cut in.

  “Weird thing about it is the rubber bullet. They’re used by city police for riot control.”

  Gary shifted and fixed Driscoll with his eyes. “I don’t like what you’re saying. I don’t know why you’re talking to us about this. Just go by the bar and see who answered the phone.”

  “You’re right, Sheriff. After I got out of the hospital last night I called over there and got no answer.”

  “It can get busy down there,” Gary said.

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what I was wondering. I worked in a restaurant when I was a kid. Some little Italian place, and I remember how it was. You start juggling too many things at once and eventually you’re going to drop something. I guess the bartender just dropped that phone call.”

  “Do you even know if Patrick talked to anyone?”

  “The officer said he did but he wasn’t close enough to hear who he might be talking with.”

  “So you think it was some regular down there? One of Patrick’s old smuggling buddies?”

  “That’s the guess.”

  Gary laughed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his hands over his belly. “You just love this place, don’t you,” he said. “You’re almost a regular as it is. I expect you’ll be buying your lake cabin soon enough.”

  Driscoll smiled back at Gary. “We could have one of those old-time cabin-raising parties. Isn’t that how it’s done around here? We help each other. You’d help me, wouldn’t you, Bobby?”

  “Sure I would, Driscoll.”

  “Agent Driscoll living in Silver Lake,” Gary said. “Sounds like fun.”

  Driscoll tried to laugh, but just ended up wincing and putting a hand to his ribs again. “Feels like someone is kicking me every time I try and take a breath,” Driscoll said.

  “I bet,” Gary said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “Don’t I know it, at close range the bullet lifted me right off my feet.”

  Drake nodded. He was trying to catch a break between the two men but he hadn’t been able to find it yet.

  “I’d never been hit like that,” Driscoll was saying. “I imagine it looked like one of those big boxing swings we used to see on television when me and you were younger. You know, the big heavyweights going at it. One punch and the guy’s bottom jaw is up in his brain and his feet are sailing into the air. Lifting him right off into outer space. Man, I miss a good fight like that sometimes. Now we have all these featherweights dancing around the ring.”

  “It’s true,” Gary said. “Things used to be different. No one can take a hit like that anymore and any time I watch a fight these days they always end up hugging on each other.”

  “The young fi
ghters have some finesse. But they’ve got nothing behind their punches. No offense, Bobby.”

  “No offense taken,” Drake said. “I’d rather watch finesse any day than see two big guys slamming away at each other.”

  “Yeah, well, to each his own,” Driscoll said. “What I wanted to get down to here is who Patrick called and how they got their hands on rubber bullets made specifically for the police.”

  Drake could see Driscoll looking around at all the hunting pictures that lined the office. Gary holding up the head of a big buck. Gary kneeling next to a moose somewhere up in Canada.

  “You shoot, don’t you, Sheriff?” Driscoll asked. “You probably work in a variety of different situations. You might even know where someone would be able to buy that type of bullet.”

  “Agent Driscoll, you’re getting real serious all of a sudden.”

  “Try getting shot, it will switch your whole perspective around.”

  “I’d prefer not to,” Gary said. “I like my perspective just the way it is.”

  Driscoll didn’t say anything for a while. He was staring at the wood backing of Gary’s desk. “Where were you last night, Gary?”

  “I was actually at the Buck Blind for most of the night.”

  “One more thing for me to talk to the bartender about,” Driscoll said.

  “For fuck’s sake, Driscoll, just come out and say it.”

  “Last night you shot me with a rubber bullet and helped Patrick escape custody.”

  “Can you prove any of this?” Gary asked.

  “I hope you have some sort of alibi for last night,” Driscoll said.

  “You’re flying too close to the sun,” Gary said.

  Driscoll winced and stood, his hand to his side. He looked around at Drake. “You should know who you’re working for. He’s just as bad as your father only he hasn’t been caught.”

  Drake held Driscoll’s gaze for a long time before looking away. He heard Driscoll turn and go, the department door closing a few seconds later.