I looked at her and she looked at me. Her eyes were dark brown, like mine. No amount of time or makeup or the natural beauty of her face could take away the coldness in them.
"What did you do?"
"I split. I didn't want the next dose on my face."
I looked at her, but she wouldn't look back. Her eyes were turned downward and she was focusing in, not out. Something thick rose in her throat.
I could see the basic shape of my head in hers, the same fundamental structure of my face, the same angle and set of the ears and nose. And something of me in her posture too, the way she held herself.
"I called one of my cop friends from a pay phone down in Elsinore. I found out later he went to the house, but Thor had already taken you to the fire station. He rode you on his hog, tucked in his arm like a football. That's because I'd taken the car. I never could figure how he shifted gears. Maybe he just used first or second. It wasn't that far a drive. Anyway. That's what happened. There's worse things, worse stories. When I look back I think it was bad, but then I read the papers and realize it wasn't such a big deal, compared to what happens today. I look around me and I realize you can change and improve yourself and get rid of the past. That's what I did. I don't think about it anymore."
In her profile I saw again what I'd recognized but couldn't define. Even in the photograph, a little of it had shown. I still couldn't put a finger on it. But it was there and I knew it and I knew what it was. The Unknown Thing. Julie Falbo had it. Charlotte Wample had had it, too.
We walked through the fallen jacaranda blossoms. Through the trees the sky was blue and streaked with clouds. I looked at her and a purple blossom fell and stuck in her red-black hair. She carefully rolled it out then flicked it to the driveway like you would a cigarette butt. I realized she wasbeautiful. She'd become that way since her picture was taken twenty-three years ago. She had looked sharp and hungry back then. Now, she looked filled and strong. It was like some gentle carpenter had taken a sharp young stick and shaped a smooth, beautiful thing from it.
And I understood. Fastball had seen The Unknown Thing in her. Thor had seen it. Even the cop who'd answered Charlotte Wample's 911 seen it in her, too. He'd seen it very clearly and it had cost everyone.
"The cop who rolled on the 911," I said. "He wasn't a cop. He was sheriff's deputy."
"He was ten years older than me, married, two kids. He was fabulous to look at. He could talk. Man, could he talk. Energy you wouldn't believe. He made my speed jags look like naps. He loved me. Deputy-Two Will Trona, Orange County Sheriff's, at your service, little missy."
She stopped walking and turned to me. The hard eyes peered at from the soft face and it was like two women were there.
"I thought it was good when he adopted you. I know he and his wife couldn't conceive. I knew him well enough to know he could give you the love I couldn't. He kept paying Thor, to protect the rest of his family from his little indiscretion. I'm glad you had a decent place to grow up. And got to go to college and get on with the sheriff's department. I'm sorry you didn't get to know you were his until now."
"Thank you for telling me the truth."
"Is that your car?"
"It was Will's."
"I drive the big Lexus. It's the fastest production sedan in its class."
"They say that on the commercials."
"Please go."
"Wait. If Thor's payments stop, he'll want to talk about what happened and why. It's bothering his tiny soul. And he'll realize it will make him famous all over again."
"I'm taking over those payments. Good-bye."
"I want to know one more thing. You said you couldn't love me. Why?"
Her face was soft but her eyes were hard. "God didn't put my heart in right. It only beats for my own benefit. Everything I do is to get something else."
"Then why not abort me?"
"I thought you'd be worth some money from Will. After Thor did what he did, I didn't think you were worth the trouble."
I thought for a moment. She looked back toward the pool. I could see the boy arching through the air, arms out, legs pumping, a whirl of brown against the blue sky.
"I understand the emptiness in your heart," I said. "I have some, too."
"Not as much as I do, I hope."
"No."
"Will had a full heart. Maybe in you there's the right amount of both."
"I met someone and it feels full now."
Her face went red and tears came to her pale eyes, but they didn't melt the hardness. Her eyes looked cold and wet as quartz at nine thousand feet.
"Good-bye, son. Go."
"Good-bye, Mother. I'm pleased to have met you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I still dream poppies. Fields of poppies stretching up into the hills. Sometimes they turn to flames on a man's face, and I realize that face is mine. But sometimes they're just flowers and those are mine too, bright and fragile and brave.
I dream beautiful faces. One face comes back again and again, slender and straight and the eyes are a deep brown that sometimes holds laughter and sometimes shatters into lightning. The skin is moist copper and the mouth is small. My heart beats hard. Sometimes the face wakes; me up and I reach out and find it beside me, really there, lost in the pillow, locked in sleep. I'll brush the outline of it with my palm and feel the tickle of hair and ear and cheek.
And there's another face, too, not too unlike the first. But it's a man's face and I can see the strength of the jaw and the whiskers on his skin the hunger in his eyes. Sometimes the hunger is regret and he tries to tell me something but can't get all the words out. He makes the same beginning over and over: I think you should know ... I think you should know . think you should know. . . . And when I dream that face I always tell it the same thing: I know, I know, I know. And he leans back and his eyelids droop but his eyes are sharp and he looks at me with pride of ownership, and with a critical coolness that says I can be improved.
And I dream a woman who is full of The Unknown Thing. Her face is lovely but her eyes are hard, and she is always turning away so I have to circle her to see her and even then she turns a little faster and I can never quite catch up, never quite get the view of her that I want. Finally, she's nothing but a whirling blur that slowly vanishes. Good-bye. I'm pleased to have met you.
Baptism won't work anymore. The desire is gone. Instead, I feel a powerful craving to stand in moving water. I tried the beach, but it was too crowded, and the water I need has to flow only one direction. I stood in the gutter on my street one day when one of the neighbors was over watering her lawn, and let the dark trickle move past my feet. I could feel the beginning of true cleansing but I needed more volume. It was like a song on a distant radio I couldn't quite hear.
So I found a river to stand in. Actually, it's just a creek. There are crawdads and frogs and turtles and small gray fish, and all sorts of shore birds, both exotic and common. It's not far from my house and it runs even in the summer. If I stand there in the middle, with the shore just yards away on either side, I can feel the gentle movement of the water against my ankles.
A rush of water would be better—a massive, mile-wide surge filled with riffles and rapids and pools and history. My creek is only a few inches deep. But if I close my eyes and let the sin and the scar and the ugliness run out of my heart, the water of the creek takes it away.
I've made a list of the great rivers of the nation, and want to stand in each one before I die. In a blue notebook I've written out a loose schedule that spans five decades and thirty-one rivers. I'm going to start with the Colorado, which is a nice drive from Orange County if you pick up the southern end of it, along the California-Arizona border. After that, the Russian, the Eel, the Sacramento, the Columbia, and so on. By the time I hit the Hudson I'll be an old man. I wonder if sitting in a rocking chair in a river would work. Maybe you could lie on the bank and dangle a foot or a finger.
A week later, they released Savannah to her mother. I ta
lked to her a couple of times each day, usually by phone, and Savannah seemed stronger as the week went by. She told me that she and her mother were going to stay in the Aspen house for the rest of the summer. I visited them once at Pelican Point. Lorna looked alert and sober. Savannah had gained weight. I surprised when Lorna handed me a check for $100,000 and told me knew about her husband's offer to me for Savannah's safe return. I took it.
We released Alex in exchange for testimony against his father, because Phil Dent didn't think the kidnapping charges would hold up if Alex's lawyer put Savannah on the stand and she explained that she gone to Alex, not the other way around, and had always been free to leave. Alex vanished, as he's so good at doing.
Jack Blazak stayed in jail, of course, in protective custody in Mod J, facing charges of manslaughter for beating Luria Bias and of murder WITH special circumstances in the death of Will Trona. Melissa in the crime lab has typed his blood against the flesh sample found beneath Luria B fingernail, and established that that flesh once belonged to Mr. Blazak fingernail—that little scratch—will sink him, even if Savannah's tape is eventually ruled inadmissible as evidence.
When we searched Gaylen's car after his death, Rick Birch came up with $35,000 cash, hidden where the spare tire should have been. I think that money was Jack Blazak's way of upgrading a beating to an execution. Even a murderer like Gaylen has his pay scale. I think Bo Warren passed it along to Gaylen before the hit, maybe that night in the parking lot of Bamboo 33. I'm hoping Warren sheds some light on this, when Dent starts to tighten the knot around his neck.
Old Carl Rupaski was also in Mod J, charged with conspiracy in the death of Will, and with forcible kidnapping and attempted murder of Bridget Andersen and me.
.Bo Warren got ad-segged—administrative segregation—in Module F because we didn't think he had a high enough public profile to be housed in Mod J. He's facing the same charges as Rupaski. They put him in cell twenty-four, between a white supremacist killer who likes to sing to himself and a talkative armed robber. My friends tell me that Warren feels snubbed in Mod F, which we were hoping he would. Pride might loosen his tongue. The guards tell me that he hates the jail more than any man they've ever seen.
We're using Millbrae to make our case against the three other conspirators. Of course, they're all pointing their fingers at our frightened little rat and at the now defenseless John Gaylen. Their lawyers are leaking stuff to the press every hour, it seems. Millie is this close to being arrested. That will be Dent's call. I don't care one way or another whether Millbrae does time. He's a coward and he's ruined and that's enough. He was one of the gophers, anyway, not the Brutus. He was our slippery, reluctant little key.
Bernadette Lee and Pearlita Escobar and Del Pritchard are cooperating with us too, for self-serving reasons of their own.
No one has mentioned the close proximity of the Reverend Daniel Alter to all of what happened. Just wait, if the media gets wind of that. His sermons have been impassioned lately, filled with humility and prayers for redemption and forgiveness. In an act of atonement that few understood, Daniel established a fund for the family of Luria Bias and Miguel Domingo. I thought of donating Lorna's $100,000 but June said this was foolishness. Together, we looked up Enrique Domingo, Luria's little brother. We took him to lunch and when we said good-bye we gave him a new backpack with the hundred large. I put one of my cards and one of Mary Ann's lawyer's cards in one compartment of the bag, in case he was stopped and questioned. So far, no call from Enrique.
I was surprised to get a call from Jennifer Avila. She told me that she'd been used by Pearlita. Pearlita, she said, had been furious at Will for refusing to help her accused brother. This, after Pearlita had led Will to the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, which was where he'd found Alex and Savannah. I'll do what I can do, but I still can't turn coal into a diamond. Jennifer had called Pearlita from the HACF that night to confirm that Will was there, believing that the shot-caller wanted one more chance to plead Felix's case to Will. Then Pearlita had called Will later that night—with the number that Jennifer had given her—in order to confirm for Gaylen that Will was on his way to the pickup. Jennifer speculated that Pearlita! had inspired her to hit Ike Cao on Gaylen's behalf, though certainty money was involved—the cash in the trunk of Gaylen's car took on possibility. Jennifer said she hadn't understood all of this until later, never heard of John Gaylen until after it was over. I believe her. She proud a woman to apologize to me for such a huge foolishness, the crack in her voice apologized for her.
Then she answered a question that I thought would never be answered. I'd wondered about it, but hadn't known who to ask until then. Of people on Earth, Jennifer would have been the one that Will would tell.
"Why did he leave me out?" I asked.
"Because he was ashamed," she said. "He was using a girl to her father. He argued with himself about whether he should go through with it or not. He kept changing his mind. He kept wondering what you would think if you knew the whole story. I told him from the start turn Savannah over to Child Protective Services. But Will couldn't let go of his opportunity to ruin Blazak. He hated himself for it, but went with it, just the same. It killed him. He told me he wanted to take you up in the world, not down in it. So he didn't include you until the very end. When it was supposed to end happily. He took you along that night so you could see him be a hero."
I had to think about that for a long moment. "In twenty years, he once asked me for an opinion about himself."
"He adored you. I think he loved you more than his own sons, even though you were adopted."
With a mental health clearance from Dr. Zussman, Sergeant Delano reassigned me out of Men's Central and Module J. Too much potential conflict, since so many inmates are tied to Will. I'm over at the Musik Honor Farm now, which is out in the country, kind of, and more relaxed. I miss the regimentation, the order, the strictness of Men's Central and Module J.
Last week they did a surprise shake of Sammy's cell, and they turned up a clean little zip gun made from a Cross ballpoint pen, some aluminum from a soft drink can and the spring from a rat trap. He'd used the steel temple rod from his glasses as a firing pin, and had put the thing together using some tiny screws from his eyeglass repair kit. They never found the rest of the trap. Likely, he broke it down and flushed it. No one has any idea where Sammy finally got it. Maybe the same way he got his dog nail clippers, which I now understand he wanted for the powerful spring. The zip gun was outfitted with a .22 rimfire cartridge and would have been fully lethal. Sergeant Delano has launched an intense investigation as to how Sammy got his hands on live ammunition inside Module J. The gun was small enough to conceal and carry in a body cavity or slipped in between the layers of a tennis shoe sole.
A day later, they intercepted a kite from Sammy—intended for Bernadette—specifying an escape plan. It was to begin with Sammy faking convulsions in order to be sent to the Western Medical Center. Once there, Sammy planned to shoot his keeper with the zip gun, disguise himself as a doctor and meet Bernadette in the parking lot. It said right in Sammy's kite that he hoped that the keeper wouldn't be me. Sammy stands to do more time for this felony, though he's likely to draw death for shooting Patrolman Dennis Franklin.
Still, I miss him. And Chapin Fortnell and Frankie Dilsey and Giant Mike Staich and the other murderers, rapists and sociopath of Mod J. I miss the quiet tension of the mess hall, the wood car and the black car, the Mexican car and the Asian car, this highway of criminals waiting in line to be fed. Hands in your pockets. No talking. Seat left-to-right. Somehow, it all reminds me of me.
I miss my mechanics' sled and the long hours hidden in the plumbing tunnel, listening to the plans and dreams and desires of men in cages. June told me that the fresh air of the Honor Farm would do me good. It should, and I believe almost everything she says, but I'm waiting to see. I've got another year of jail—whatever branch they put me in—but then I'll be eligible for reassignment to patrol.
Patrol
I'll be a real cop.
I thought long and hard about whether or not to tell my mother about Will and Charlotte Wample. Should I add to the miseries of her grieving heart? Should I let the lie stand and work its slow poison, as lies always do? Was it possible that she would be strengthened in someway, knowing Will's blood flowed in me—regardless of the way it had gotten there?
One Sunday evening, sitting under the umbrella beside the pool of our home in the Tustin hills, I told her the story.
When I was finished she sat there and sipped her drink and looked at the green, smog-softened hills.
"Well. Well, Joe. I'm not sure what to say to that."
"You don't need to say anything."
"Will, Will, Will. His lies go on and on."
"This one just stopped. I love you. And I always will. You're my mother."
We stood and she hugged me long and hard, and I hugged back. We said a lot with that hug. A lot about loyalty and betrayal, silence and secrets, pain and strength, forgiveness and love. Mostly about love.
June and I took our first trip together at the end of July. It was just for a weekend—two nights in a place called Bullhead City. Bullhead City is right on the Colorado River and the hotel I booked promised a riverside room with a patio overlooking the majestic Colorado.
We started our drive from her house at nine on a Saturday morning. I drove my Mustang because the county took back Will's car. I was sorry to give it up because it was a good car and it was his. The Mustang is and fast and punishing, and after an hour of it you feel like you've been on a carnival ride that won't let you off. We stopped to make love in Riverside, Barstow and Needles, which that day was the hottest city in the nation at 122 degrees. In Riverside we had a large, late breakfast. In Barstow we got hamburgers and root beer floats. In Needles we bought a foam cooler and a six-pack of beer, which we drank on the road. The four-hour trip took nine.
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