The Truth of the Matter

by Andrew Klavan

  “I’m sorry I brought this on you,” I said to Margaret over my shoulder.

  “No, it’s on all of us,” she answered back. “It always has been.”

  Waylon laughed, his white teeth flashing. “Very touching. Very heroic. Very moving.” He shook his head, still grinning. “All right, West,” he said to me. “You win. You win at last. I had orders to question you, but you’ve made it impossible. Congratulations, tough guy.” Turning to the fat gunman, he said, “I’ve had enough of this. Kill them both.”

  “Drop it!”

  Everyone in the room froze. The command had come from the open door of the house. I turned and saw nothing there—nothing but the night and darkness.

  Then out of the darkness stepped Detective Rose, a pistol in his hand. He held the gun high in both hands and kept it trained on the fat gunman.

  “Put the gun down right now,” he said.

  The fat gunman hesitated and Rose fired off a round. He lifted the barrel of his pistol so that the bullet flew over the fat gunman’s head. It crashed into the wall, opening a small black hole and sending a puff of plaster into the room.

  That was all the fat gunman needed to see. Terrified, he immediately stripped his machine-gun strap over his head and dropped the weapon to the floor. He put his hands up.

  But not Waylon.

  While Rose’s attention was on the fat gunman, Waylon turned and leveled his 9mm at the detective. I saw it— but I was too far away to do anything about it.

  My arms flew out helplessly. I shouted, “Rose, watch out!”

  Rose turned and Waylon fired at him and Rose fired back all in the same instant.

  The room seemed to quake with the deafening explosions. My eyes wide, I saw the frame of the door go jagged as splinters flew out of it. Waylon had missed.

  For what seemed like a long, long second, the two men just stood there with their guns trained on each other. It was weirdly quiet. It came to me that Sport had stopped barking upstairs, as if he were listening too, waiting to find out what had happened.

  Then Waylon looked down in surprise to see the black hole that had appeared in his chest.

  The next moment, the terrorist collapsed to the floor, dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Don’t Ever Be Afraid

  Detective Rose stepped into the house—and now law enforcement officers came pouring in behind him. It seemed there was a whole army of them: state troopers in khaki, local cops in blue, detectives in jackets and ties. They filled the living room. Some of them grabbed hold of the fat guard. They threw his large body against the wall roughly. They wrestled his hands behind his back and snapped handcuffs on him. Others grabbed hold of the guard lying on the floor. He was starting to moan and shift around there. His eyes fluttered open and he let out a groan. By then a pair of troopers had him under the arms and were hauling him to his feet. They put his hands behind his back and handcuffed him too.

  “This one’s dead,” said another trooper, kneeling over Waylon.

  Rose nodded, holstering his gun. “We’re all gonna miss him,” he said drily. “He brought the world so much joy.”

  “Detective,” said Margaret. The words seemed to break out of her: “My son. I sent him out to hide in the woods. He must be out there somewhere. He must be so afraid. Please find my son.”

  “We’ve already got him,” said Rose.

  “I’m here! I’m here, Mommy!”

  A patrolman in a blue uniform came to the door holding Larry by the hand. The child broke away from him and ran into the room. He ran to Margaret and threw his arms around her.

  Margaret hugged him, closing her eyes, tears pouring down her cheeks. It was a long hug, but finally, Margaret kneeled down so that she was at eye level with her son. She held him by the shoulders.

  “Are you all right?” she said, crying. “Are you hurt? Where were you?”

  “I didn’t go into the woods, Mommy,” Larry said in his piping voice. “I know you said to, but I didn’t want to leave you alone. I ran down the street to Mrs. Carter’s house. I used her phone and called the number.”

  Margaret shook her head, confused. “What number?”

  “The number you kept saying. The one on the card. You and Charlie were trying to call it, but the phone was broken. You kept saying the number, so I remembered it and I called it and told Detective Rose we were in trouble and he came.”

  “We had a search headquarters set up just down the road,” said Rose. “We were less than two minutes away.”

  Margaret wrapped her arms around Larry and started to sob helplessly.

  “Second floor’s clear,” said a cop on the stairs—and as he spoke, Sport, released from wherever he’d been locked up, came bounding down to us. He joined Larry and Margaret and danced around them, panting happily.

  “What about this one?” said a trooper. He was standing next to me. He put his hand on my arm.

  Rose looked at me. His flat face was expressionless. His sharp eyes were distant and cold.

  “Cuff him,” he said. “He’s a fugitive wanted for murder. I’m here to take him back to prison.”

  The trooper grabbed me by the arm and the shoulder. “Hands behind your back,” he ordered.

  I put my hands behind my back. I kept looking at Rose. Rose kept looking at me, his eyes cold. But still, somehow, I thought I saw something in them. Some recognition. Some message of encouragement. I hoped I saw that anyway. I hoped I was right about him and that he really was my ally.

  The trooper put handcuffs on my wrists.

  Sport barked a protest at them.

  “Why are they arresting Charlie?” Larry cried out in distress.

  I smiled down at him. “It’s all right, Larry,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “But they’re arresting him, Mommy! Why are they arresting him?”

  “Ssh,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, Larry,” I told him, trying to smile. “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be all right, you hear me? Don’t ever be afraid.”

  The trooper grabbed me by the shoulder again. He started pressing me toward the door.

  I held back. I turned to Margaret. “Thank you,” I said. “God bless you.”

  She shook her head. “God bless you,” she said. “Don’t you be afraid either.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I told her. “I’m not afraid.”

  The trooper turned to Rose. Rose kept looking at me.

  “Charlie West,” Rose said, “you’re under arrest for murder and escape.” Then he added to the trooper, “Take him in.”

  The trooper marched me out the door and into the darkness.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. As the title of this part of Charlie’s story indicates, the answers about the past year are slowly starting to come. What part of the truth was most surprising to you?

  2. Charlie says “I knew it wasn’t about things being fair. It wasn’t about them being easy or safe. It was about who I was, who I wanted to be, what I wanted my life to be about, what I wanted to stand for, live for, even die for it I had to. It was about what I wanted to make out of this soul God gave me.” Have you given much thought to what you want to make out of the soul God gave you? What are you willing to stand for? Are there any things you wish you were willing to stand for?

  3. When Charlie eats the food from Margaret’s refrigerator he leaves money in the lunch meat container to pay for it. Would you think to do that if you were in Charlie’s situation and running for your life? What do you think this action says about Charlie’s character? Does it enforce character traits you’ve already seen in him or is does it show a new side?

  4. Charlie ends up being protected by Margaret and Larry. If you came home and found a strange person there, what would you do? Why do you think that Margaret didn’t immediately call the police?

  5. Charlie describes Margaret as a woman who “looked and sounded like a woman who was on a long, hard journey but knew she was headed for a
good place.” Do you know anyone you would describe that way? What good place do you think Margaret is headed for?

  6.W ere you surprised by Charlie’s dream about roses? What do you think is going to happen now that Rose has arrested him?

  An Interview with

  Andrew Klavan

  Q: There’s one book left in Charlie’s story—The Final Hour, available August 2011. Any hint as to what’s going to happen to him?

  ANDREW KLAVAN: Well, if you’ve come to the end of The Truth of the Matter, you should have a pretty good sense of, you know, the truth of the matter: who Charlie is and how he got into this situation. But there are still some pieces of the puzzle missing. And, as so often happens in life, the final pieces can change the whole picture. I will say this: The Final Hour is also Charlie’s darkest hour—a real nightmare of a situation where he and some of the people he loves are put in positions where they have to risk the ultimate sacrifice. So the story is close to ending—but it’s far from over!

  Q: Why did you choose to make karate such a big part of Charlie’s life?

  AK: Partly it was personal: my own enjoyment of the sport, my own feeling that it’s cool to do and my own pride in having earned a black belt. Partly, I thought it was good storytelling: if I was going to throw Charlie into a desperate situation, I wanted him to have some resources of physical and mental skill—I didn’t want him simply to be running away and hiding all the time. But also, and maybe this is the most important reason, there are certain values inherent in martial arts training that I think we talk about way too little and that I think are central to living at a high level. Paying attention, joyful self-discipline, focus. I wanted Charlie at his best to be able to exemplify that way of life.

  Q: What aspect of Charlie’s character do you most hope readers will remember?

  AK: His fortitude . . . Ha, there’s an old-fashioned word for you. It means: “mental and emotional strength in facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation courageously.” See, a person can have courage in battle but fold his cards the minute things get tough emotionally. Or he can speak his beliefs boldly, but then turn into a mouse the minute he faces a physical threat. But someone with fortitude never gives in. Charlie has moments of real terror and even one or two moments of actual despair. But he always finds a way to fight out of it. He never gives in. Most of us aren’t going to be wanted for murder and chased by terrorists, but we are going to face grief and sickness, loss and the failure of hope, times when the best we can do is bear down and keep on, keep heading toward the light. I want people to remember how Charlie keeps on.

  Q: What’s the most interesting question you’ve been asked by a fan of this series? How did you respond?

  AK: Well, I get asked a lot of questions about Charlie’s patriotism and I always find that interesting—even peculiar in a way. There’s a school of thought today that rejects patriotism. People are made nervous by that intense allegiance to country. They think it can only lead to war and bloodshed and that fights can be avoided if we all just compromise and get along. And, of course, compromise and getting along are great things as long as you’re not sacrificing essential values. But I believe there’s a line in the sand, some things that you have to be willing to stand up for, even if it means trouble. Charlie’s patriotism is not blind, flag-waving jingoism: it’s an intense allegiance to the American concept of liberty. He’s thought it through. He can talk about it and explain it. And he’s shown he’s willing to give everything for it. I admire him for that.

  Q: The Homelanders Series has been optioned for film. Who optioned it? Any idea when we might see Charlie on the big screen?

  AK: Yeah, I’m excited about that. The series was optioned by Summit Entertainment. They’re the people who make the Twilight movies. The last news I got, they were looking for someone to write the script and they believed they were close to hiring someone. I’ve had a few books made into movies and my experience is that things move very slowly—and then very fast. They go along trying to put things together, working on the script, going down dead ends and you think, “Well, this’ll never happen”— and then suddenly they start filming and the picture is done. So you basically just have to stay both hopeful and patient.

  Q: Do you have plans to write any more young adult novels once the Homelanders Series is complete?

  AK: Absolutely. I’ve loved writing Charlie, and I’ll be sorry when the Homelanders saga is complete and I have to say goodbye to him, but at the same time, I really enjoy doing new things and starting on something original. Plus I’ve got lots of other great stories I’m dying to tell. My plan now is to write some singleton novels—non-series stories that begin and end in a single book. I’ve already got the first one all worked out in my head— my publisher, Thomas Nelson, and I have made all the arrangements—so yeah, I’m ready to go!

  THE FINAL

  HOUR

  THE

  HOMELANDERS

  ________

  BOOK FOUR

  AVAILABLE

  AUGUST 2011

  About the Author

  Andrew Klavan was hailed by Stephen King as “the most original novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich.” He is the recipient of two Edgar Awards and the author of such bestsellers as True Crime and Don’t Say a Word.