by Jen Blood
“It wouldn’t take long,” Diggs said.
The kid’s frown deepened. Diggs had been trying to get on his good side, but something had clearly gone wrong. He glared at my man for a second, silent, before he shifted focus back to me. “You can tell him, I don’t talk to reporters. Got my name and my picture in there that one time, and I caught deep shit for it. I don’t talk to reporters since then.”
He said it like he was a veteran at navigating press conferences and paparazzi. Diggs glanced at me, then back at the kid.
“I got a release from your folks about that, Aidan. You shouldn’t have gotten in trouble.”
“I didn’t then,” Aidan said impatiently. He crossed his arms over his thin chest and glared. “But a couple months ago, Mike found the clipping. Just about had an attack—I got the shit kicked out of me. He almost went after my brother, too. The government’s always trying to track you, you know that? And you get your picture in the paper, and they got you there forever. They know where you are—they got a record of you from then on out, Mike says. So I don’t talk to reporters no more.”
“Okay,” Diggs said. He looked at Aidan seriously, his regret obvious. “I’m really sorry about that.”
Aidan considered the apology for a few seconds before he shrugged. “It’s all right. You probably didn’t know—not everybody does.”
The trailer door opened behind him, and Aidan flinched. I watched as Mike Reynolds took the front steps, his jaw set, and made straight for the kid. I felt Diggs tense beside me.
“Your mother told you to get inside,” Mike said. He didn’t even acknowledge Diggs and me—the world was a pinpoint at the moment, and Aidan was seated at the tip. Mike got lower, until he was face to face with the kid, grabbed hold of his thin arm and pointed back to the trailer. “What’d we tell you about not listening to what she says? You don’t get two warnings, you don’t get five seconds. You do it now.”
“I’m going,” Aidan said. Mike didn’t let him go. Diggs stepped up.
“He was talking to us,” he said.
Mike dropped Aidan’s arm and twisted his head to look up at Diggs, hovering above him. If it weren’t for the look on Diggs’ face, the moment might have been comical. I knew Diggs well enough to know he didn’t see the humor. Mike straightened.
“Go on inside,” he said to Aidan.
The kid didn’t argue, but ran for the door at top speed. That left Mike with Diggs and me. Now that the kids were safely out of sight, the dog slunk off to a dilapidated doghouse in the yard. Even he seemed afraid to look Mike in the eye.
Personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was. The guy was a head shorter than Diggs, with a patch of red hair, a goatee, and a bunch of tattoos that twined up his scrawny arms. He wore jeans that hung too low, and a dirty Gap t-shirt a size too small.
“I don’t remember you saying you was coming back here today,” he said to Diggs. He eyed him warily, his gaze shifting to me and then back again. “And you never said you’d bring somebody else out here. You pull something like that, and it doesn’t feel like you’re respecting me. Doesn’t feel like you’re respecting our friendship.”
“I wanted to talk to you,” Diggs said. He didn’t bother trying to infuse an ounce of friendliness into his tone this time. “Did you hear anything about what happened last night? With my father?”
“The reverend?” Mike said. He blinked slowly. I watched as he ground to a halt and tried to switch gears. “He got hit, right? I heard he got hit.”
Inside the trailer, Mike’s wife was screaming at the kids. I saw the blue light of a TV come on. Magically, everyone went quiet. Mike scratched his neck nervously, digging in hard enough to draw blood. “I don’t know anything but that, though,” he continued when Diggs didn’t say anything. “I don’t know anything else about it.”
“So you don’t have any idea who might have wanted my father dead?”
Mike glanced back toward the trailer. He shifted from his left foot to his right, still digging into his neck. “I’m supposed to get in there for dinner,” he said. “Eddie hates it when I miss dinner. I’m sorry about your dad, man, but I didn’t have anything to do with that. If they went after him, it didn’t have nothing to do with me.”
Diggs followed up without giving him time to backtrack, his voice sharp. “What do you mean by that? If who went after him?”
Mike took a step back, his hands up. This time when he glanced backward, his focus went to the tree line. I followed his gaze. It was too dark to see much of anything, but I could have sworn I saw movement over there. Mike shook his head.
“I don’t know anything. Now get off my property. You don’t respect my bounds, we can’t be friends no more. It’s not like you got some magic ticket that’ll make me talk. Nobody’s got that magic ticket but me.”
Eddie appeared in the door again, just about ripping the flimsy metal screen off its hinges. This time, she had the shotgun with her.
“Supper’s getting cold. Get in here,” she said to Mike. I wasn’t sure whether the shotgun was for us or him, but I had no intention of sticking around to find out. I touched Diggs’ arm.
“We should go,” I said.
He nodded, but he didn’t move. He glanced at Eddie and her shotgun fleetingly before he closed the distance between him and Mike. He wrapped his hand around Mike’s throat. I thought of the thin stream of blood there a second ago, and cringed. If we survived this at all, Hep-C could be a very real concern.
“When did you start beating on your kids, Mike?” he asked. His voice was low—very Eastwood. Diggs can be tough, but he’s never been the Eastwood type. It wasn’t even kind of a turn-on, right now. “I thought you were better than that. You remember how much you hated getting the shit kicked out of you? I thought we got this straight.”
“I don’t beat on my kids,” he said.
Diggs tightened his grip. Mike started to turn an unhealthy shade of puce. I grabbed Diggs’ arm, while Eddie strode toward us with her shotgun raised.
“You want to try again?” Diggs said.
“Aidan? That little asshole ain’t even mine. I’m teaching him the way the world works,” Mike gasped the words through his rapidly shrinking vocal chords.
“Let him go,” Eddie said. She leveled the gun at Diggs. I pulled on his arm, preparing to kick him somewhere that might jolt him out of the sudden testosterone surge.
“If you touch him again,” Diggs said, “I’ll have someone come for you. I don’t know what kind of shit you’re into right now, what kind of plans you have, but you lay a hand on the kids again and I’ve got twenty guys I can call who’ll end you.”
He finally let Mike go seconds before he turned purple. He turned his back on Eddie without acknowledging her, and strode away. I had to run to catch up. Once we were presumably out of shotgun range, I grabbed his arm.
“You’ve got twenty guys you can call who’ll end him?” I said. “Since when? What the hell was that? We were going in soft—asking questions. That was not going in soft.”
He didn’t answer. Fury rolled from his shoulders, his hands clenched tight. I held onto his arm until he wheeled, and took a step back. “Give me a minute,” he said.
The violence still lingered in his voice. I’ve known Diggs a long time—he’d be more likely to show up in a mankini at the next Republican convention than he would hurt me. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him in that moment; it was more like he was suddenly afraid of himself, this unexpected fury he’d tapped into. I gave him his space while he pulled himself back. The two of us walked back to Monty’s van in silence.
We got back in the van a minute later, and I gave Monty and Carl an abbreviated version of what we’d learned. Diggs remained locked in silence, a million miles away beside me.
“So you think this guy had something to do with what happened last night?” Monty asked when we were on the road again.
“He knew something,” I said. “Unfortunately, Diggs tried a new interview tactic
that wasn’t that effective. I’m not sure how well we’ll do with him from here on out.”
“It’s too late anyway,” Diggs said. I looked at him in surprise. His voice was cooler, more measured now that he’d gotten the beginnings of a grip. “Whatever’s going on, they’ve got Mike now—J., or whoever it is. Everything Aidan said: Mike losing it, worrying about the government tracking him… Short of getting him checked in somewhere, there’s no reasoning with him now. I don’t see that happening.”
Personally, I hadn’t considered that a possibility from the start. Knowing that Diggs had been holding out hope up till now was sobering. “Okay. So, we know that much now,” I said. “What’s next?”
“We stick to the plan,” he said.
I grimaced. At the moment, I wasn’t a big fan of the plan.
Ten minutes later, we pulled up in front of the old Victorian that had been Diggs’ childhood home. The expansive front lawn was dead, and two rock gardens were overgrown with wilted flowers and dried leaves. A huge oak tree in the front yard stood sentinel over the scene. The white picket fence needed painting.
“Park down the street,” Diggs said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” I corrected him. He glanced at me. I couldn’t make out his expression in the darkness, but I could feel the tension radiating from him.
“It won’t take long,” he said.
“Then it’ll take even less time with two of us,” I returned. Before he could argue any further, I opened the door and hopped out. Monty and Carl remained in the van as Diggs and I walked down the silent side street. It was barely seven o’clock and the neighborhood was already quiet, Christmas lights lit and windows shuttered.
When I was a teenager, I climbed Diggs’ trellis and snuck in his window the night of his mother’s funeral. It was the first night we slept together, the two of us curled up together in the twin bed he’d had since he was a little boy. Emphasis on “slept”—there was no hanky panky between us in those days. Back then, I was still the student, he the reluctant mentor, our relationship on the cusp of something it would take us both years to admit.
Now, Diggs strode ahead of me, the tension still thick between us after whatever the hell had just happened with Mike Reynolds. We both carried flashlights, though at the moment only mine was lit. It was dark, the old granite stones leading to the back door slick and cracked. Directly in front of the rear entrance was a hulking old birdbath that Diggs had to bodily heft to the side. Dead climbing vines clung to the side of the house, tangled and brown. I pulled a notification from UPS from the door and shined my light on it. According to the paper, delivery had been attempted five of the past seven days unsuccessfully; the package was being returned. Meanwhile, Diggs reached onto the sill above the door and retrieved a key.
“Some things never change,” he muttered.
Diggs turned on his light, opened the door, and went in without another word. I followed.
As soon as we were through the door, I paused. Something was very, very wrong. Like, flashing-neon-sign wrong. The back door opened onto a small mudroom that I remembered as immaculate, just like the rest of the reverend’s life. Now, it smelled like rotten garbage and looked like a hurricane had hit it. Diggs walked ahead of me, his own light bouncing along the walls and over the floor. The house was freezing.
“What was that you were saying about things never changing?” I said.
The mudroom led to a cramped living room—more cramped now, as it appeared the reverend had raided the local antique shop and added every piece of broken furniture they’d had in stock. My flashlight beam bounced from corner to corner, taking everything in. Half the furniture was stacked directly in front of the door. If the mudroom smelled like rotten garbage, it was nothing compared with the rest of the house.
“What happened here?” I asked.
Diggs shook his head, silent. He went to a corner lamp and tried to turn it on; nothing happened. “I think the electricity’s been shut off.”
“I feel like that’s a really good cue for us to leave.”
“Go ahead. I just want to look around.”
He continued moving through the house, past the living room and into the dining room and kitchen. Of course, I followed.
The dining room table was piled high with newspapers, most of them torn apart. I moved closer and trained my light on the pages. Whole articles had been highlighted, stories circled in red. Several yellowed articles had been taped to the wall in the dining room, which was apparently where the reverend had done the bulk of his “work.” Half a dozen half-empty plates of food were stacked off to one side beside several candles burned down to their wicks.
“What the hell is going on?” I said, staring at the mess.
Reverend Diggins was the most meticulous man I’d ever met—OCD was his middle name. Diggs paused at sight of a picture on the corner of the table. It showed him and his brother as boys, his brother pudgy, dark-haired, while Diggs had been blond and lean. They both wore swim trunks, their chests bare, hair wet. There was another picture of the whole family, Diggs’ little brother barely more than a baby, Diggs only three or four.
Even in that shot, Diggs’ mother held Josh while his father looked on, Diggs standing apart from them both. His hand clutched the corner of his mother’s skirt; it was the only connection he had to the rest of the family unit.
Diggs lingered at the picture for a second before he pushed it away and moved on. The kitchen smelled like more rotten food. It appeared the electricity had been out for at least a few days, most of the scant contents in the refrigerator spoiled now. Diggs gave it only a cursory look before he made for the stairs to the second floor. I debated playing the voice of reason and insisting we leave, but Diggs wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what the hell was going on here.
When we were upstairs, Diggs passed the door I knew led to his own old bedroom, and went straight for his father’s room instead. I decided maybe it was best to give him some space, and went to his room instead. I had to put my full weight against it before the door finally gave. My heart jackhammered in my ears. I stood in the doorway, paralyzed as I ran my light through the room.
“Sol!” Diggs called. I shut the door quickly and whirled around.
“Jesus,” I said. “Take it easy, huh? No yelling in this place.”
“You should see this.”
I followed him to his father’s room and stopped cold. “Shit,” I heard myself say.
“I think we just found J.’s contingency plan,” Diggs said.
Chapter Six
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Both flashlights trained on his father’s bed now, I took inventory. It was covered with weapons: three rifles, an oversized spool of copper wire, a bag of fertilizer… I started to go in, but Diggs grabbed my arm before I could.
“Stay out. He could have wired the place—we should get out of here.”
“How would your father have known how to wire…anything?”
“I don’t know, but I’d rather not find out the hard way if he did. I just want to check one more thing.”
He started toward his old room. I stepped in front of the door before he could open it. “I already checked. There’s nothing there.”
“I want to grab a couple of things,” he said. He looked at me curiously, shining the light over my face. He set his jaw at my expression. “Step aside.”
I didn’t move. “There’s nothing you need to see in there.”
“Damn it, Solomon.” He took me by the shoulders and bodily moved me. I didn’t bother fighting him any further, but I wished like hell I could stop him. He opened the door. And stood there, much as I had.
Unlike the rest of the house, the room was immaculate. The bed made neatly, the curtains pulled. This was no longer Diggs’ room, though. He stepped inside, running his flashlight from corner to corner. The high school trophies, music posters, everything that had littered the place the last time I
was here, were gone. Instead, the room was designed for a much younger boy: Star Wars bedspread and curtains, a framed photo of Diggs’ mother with a dark-haired baby I knew was Josh. Other photos of Josh plastered the walls. Children’s books lined the bookshelves. A Crayola lamp was on the nightstand, a case of Matchbox cars on the floor.
Diggs just stood there for a few seconds, staring. I ran my flashlight over the photos, searching for any sign of Diggs. There was none. The same photo I’d seen downstairs—Josh in Mrs. Diggins’ arms, the reverend beside her—was framed here. Diggs had been cut out.
I took his hand. To my surprise, he let me. “I think your family might be gaining on mine for the title of Most Dysfunction in a Single Household,” I said.
He laughed. It sounded faintly hysterical. “Yeah. Lucky me.”
We left the room, and closed the door.
We were back downstairs in the dining room, still in a daze, when headlights lit the house as someone’s car swung into the driveway. Diggs froze. As did I.
“Who do you think it is?” I whispered.
“No idea,” he said, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. If J. had killed Diggs’ father, or used him, or…whatever, maybe they were back for something they’d left behind.
Whoever was driving the car out front killed the engine. The headlights went out. A car door slammed. Diggs and I ducked back against the wall with a perfect view of the driveway. A man in full winter gear got out of a king-cab pickup.
“What do you want to do?” I asked. “Can you tell who it is?”
“Not a clue. You have your gun?”
The Ruger was in my purse—which was in the van. “I didn’t think I’d need it here.”
He drew his Glock. When Jack Juarez did that, it was damned sexy; when Diggs did it, it scared the hell out of me. Not that he wasn’t a good shot, but it still looked wrong somehow. “Stay here,” he said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I said. “At least wait until we know who it is.”
“And how are we supposed to figure that out?”
