Kin

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  “I did ask.” Finch tapped a forefinger on the stack of paper.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, man. This ain’t the first time I been sittin’ across from a guy who looked ready to jump headfirst into Hell without an asbestos swimsuit. I knew when I was puttin’ that file together what you were gonna use it for. Think I’m dumb? And I also knew what would happen if I gave it to you.”

  “But you gave it to me anyway.”

  “Wouldn’t have if I didn’t think you’d just find some other guy to dig it up for you, or go and dig it up yourself. Might have taken a while longer, but the end result would’ve been the same. Besides, like I always said, we look out for each other, and I guess I should be grateful you trusted me with this.” He sighed. “Though somethin’ tells me you callin’ me up has less to do with trust and more to do with convenience.”

  Finch shrugged. “Told you in the desert if you went through with the crazy idea of trying to become a P.I. I’d drum up some work for you.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think it’d be this kinda work. Work that could get your ass killed. Shit, if I’d known you had a death wish, I’d have let you die over there and saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  It was a joke, and both men knew it, but nevertheless Finch had to suppress the memory it evoked.

  “You get your license yet?” he asked.

  “Workin’ on it.”

  “Should be a cinch. You were always nosy.”

  “I prefer to call it curiosity. You know what though? I thought it’d be just a case of applyin’ like you do for a fishin’ license or some shit. Turns out I gotta take classes man. Get myself a diploma. Can you see me tied to a desk listening to some uptight sonofabitch tellin’ me what I already know?”

  Finch couldn’t. Beau had a real problem with authority, as evidenced by the amount of sergeants whose blood pressure had suffered an astronomical rise while he’d served under them. “Well, I’ll wait to read these files before I give you my professional opinion on whether or not it’s wise to pursue it.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll try to contain myself until then. ’Course, chances are you’ll be in itty bitty pieces and not worth the price of the bag they stuff you in and all my anxiety will be for nothin’.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Beau laced his fingers together, all trace of humor gone from his voice now. “You gettin’ a clear enough picture here? This ain’t your fight, man.”

  Finch appraised him. “They killed my little brother.”

  Beau unclasped his large hands and joined them again around the glass of OJ, then brought it to his lips. After a small sip, he lowered it and studied Finch.

  “I know they did, and I’m sorry as hell, but—”

  “Save it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I know it’s true, but I don’t want to hear it. Not from you.” Finch sighed heavily, his fingers caressing the flap of the now empty envelope. “It’s not about bringing him back.”

  “Then what is it about? You even know? This here’s a little more than punchin’ out the bullies who been pickin’ on your brother, man. You go down there with your head all muddied up, you ain’t comin’ back in one piece. Or if you do come back alive, you got blood on your hands and you’re lookin’ at hard time. Life, man.”

  “If I get caught.”

  Beau shook his head. “Prison ain’t the only kinda life sentence. You know that well as I do.”

  At the bar, Frat Boy began to argue with himself. The barman told him to keep it down. The gray-haired woman chuckled. Finch decided to use to distraction. “You want a drink?”

  Beau nodded at his OJ. “Got one.”

  “I meant a real drink.”

  “Naw. I ain’t touched it since I got back. Don’t need any help gettin’ fucked up these days. Nice way to change the subject though.”

  “There isn’t a whole lot to talk about.”

  “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

  Finch met his stare. “You know how it goes, Beau. If by some miracle someone decides to look into this, to entertain the possibility that they were wrong about the doctor, and they find out they pinned it on the wrong guy, what happens next?”

  “They go after the right guys, and if they catch ’em, they go to jail for a very long time.”

  “Exactly: if they catch them. And say they do, say they go to jail, those bastards will probably end up with better lives than they have now. Three square meals a day, rest and exercise, TV—”

  “Man, you ain’t never been in one of those shitholes, have you?”

  “That’s not the point—”

  Again Beau cut him off. “Sure it is. Some of the joints we got over here make Abu Ghraib look like the Waldorf Astoria. A bunch of murderin’ rednecks ain’t gonna have any kind of peace in no jail, man, not after what they did.”

  “It’s not enough,” Finch said.

  “So what if you kill these motherfuckers and it still ain’t enough. What then?”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  Beau sat back and sighed. “Whole lotta folks said that same thing before they went to the desert, Finch. All of us said it, and if we weren’t sayin’ it we were thinkin’ it. ‘Not gonna happen to me, man.’ Remember?”

  Finch glanced at the bar to avoid the weight of the other man’s gaze. When at last he looked back, Beau had drained his drink and was rising.

  “Danny was a good kid,” Beau told him. “A real good kid. Had his head screwed on right.”

  Finch nodded his agreement.

  Beau stepped out, and took one last look around the bar. “Do yourself a favor though, and don’t use him as an excuse to let loose some of that hate the desert put into you. We saw some real cruel shit over there, and what’s happened here ain’t a whole lot better, but you in danger of dyin’ or spendin’ the rest of your life behind bars or lookin’ for targets if you go through with it.”

  Finch started to protest, but Beau raised a hand to silence him.

  “I put some other stuff in that file you might want to take a look out before you go headin’ off playin’ Rambo. Read it. See what you think. It ain’t subtle, but hey…you know me. I’ll be down at Rita’s on Third this Sunday after eight. It’s my cousin Kevin’s 21st birthday. We’re throwin’ a little shindig. You ain’t invited because if I see you there I’ll know you’re gonna see this thing through to the end.”

  “And if I can’t resist the urge to gatecrash?”

  “Then I guess because it’s you and I don’t want to be lookin’ at your ass cut up on the main evenin’ news, I’ll help you, whatever you need. But just so you know: I’ll be hopin’ for a night of family and friends, not vigilantes. Catch you later.”

  He walked away, and all faces present turned to watch him go. The gray-haired woman offered him a smile and he returned it, then eased himself out into the street. The door swung shut behind him.

  On some level, Finch knew Beau was right, about everything. There were risks here he hadn’t considered, repercussions he couldn’t yet see. But none of it mattered. Reason had no hand in what was going to happen. Rage dictated it all, and no amount of good sense or logical argument was going to change his plans.

  “See you Sunday,” he said quietly and turned his attention back to the file.

  -18-

  “Claire, there’s someone here to see you.”

  Sitting with her back against the headboard, legs folded beneath her, Claire looked up from the photo album. Her face was damp from tears and now she rubbed at it as her mother watched from the doorway.

  “I can tell him to go away if you’re not up to it.”

  Claire shook her head. It had been almost two weeks since she’d seen anyone outside of Kara and her mother, and as much as she loved them for what they were trying to do, she was beginning to feel suffocated by their constant worry. They were treating her as if she’d turned to fragile glass, as if the slightest touch might shatter her. She knew it
was silly and selfish to expect anything different from them, or anyone else after what she’d gone through, and yet she yearned for normality, no matter how forced, longed to come downstairs and not have them look at her like a wounded dog that had just limped into the house. In their faces she saw empathy and a reflection of her own pain. In their eyes, she saw a victim, and nothing more.

  “Who is it?”

  “Ted Craddick.”

  Claire’s breathing slowed. Her yearning to see a face outside of her family’s own faded a little upon hearing the name of her dead friend’s father. She had spent the past hour or so torturing herself by looking through her photo albums at countless pictures not marred by awareness of death, nothing but sunshine and smiles, eyes bright with the promise of the future. There had even been a few of Ted, his bald head catching the summer sun as he stood on the porch of the house he’d shared with his son and Stu’s younger sister Sally, arms around them both, all of them grinning, Sally somewhat self-consciously as she tried to draw her lips down enough to conceal her new braces. In another, Daniel and Stu mugged for the camera, Claire and Katy looking on in faux disapproval. In the background, Ted had his forefingers in his mouth, stretching his lips wide in a comical grimace, his tongue lolling. There were others, but already Claire couldn’t recall which of them she’d seen him in. Ted Craddick had always been a peripheral figure in her life. She had spoken to him occasionally, but it had never graduated beyond idle conversation and pleasantries.

  Hi Mr. Craddick.

  Hi Claire. Stu’s upstairs with Katy. And please, call me Ted.

  Okay… Ted. Thanks.

  Of course she had never called him “Ted” outside of those few occasions when he requested she do so, and even then it had felt awkward.

  “Tell him come up,” she told her mother, who lingered, uncertain.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “He’ll have questions.”

  “I know,” Claire replied. “Tell him come up.”

  With a final dubious glance, her mother disappeared from the doorway. Claire listened to her heels clacking on the stairsteps, heard the reverent mutter of voices, then the front door closing. While she waited, Claire shut the photo album and slid it beneath her pillow. Her joints still ached in protest with every move, but it was not enough to bother her. It was what they represented that bothered her. Every twinge, every dull throb of discomfort jerked loose another unpleasant memory, and made her skin crawl at the thought of what she had endured.

  Stop it, she told herself. You can’t think like that. You can’t. Not if you ever want to get better.

  Better. She almost laughed at the thought, but was interrupted by movement in the doorway. It was her mother again, moving as if sound itself might harm her daughter.

  “Claire?”

  Her mother stepped aside, and Ted Craddick entered the room. Claire felt a jolt. She had expected a lesser version of the man in the pictures, but nothing like this. It was as if she was seeing his reflection, leached of color in a dark window. His clothes looked two sizes too large for his sagging frame, the gut that had always forced his shirts to stretch to accommodate it now gone, his jeans hanging loose on his hips. The smiling face from the photographs was drawn down like a theater mask of sadness, his green eyes lost in puffy sockets. The man carried about him an air of desperation, as if he had come here not for consolation, or empathy, but to be told that there had been a terrible mistake, and that only Claire could confirm it. He looked like he wanted to be told Stu was alive and well and due home at any second, that it had all been a misunderstanding.

  “Hi Mr. Craddick,” Claire said, sliding from the bed and coming to him. They hugged awkwardly, death and mutual suffering not enough to force a connection where there had never been one. His body felt like a live wire, humming beneath the skin. She released him and stepped back, then gestured for him to join her on the bed, where she sat, hands folded in her lap. He eased himself down with some effort and tried to smile. It was a wretched thing to behold.

  “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Claire told him. “I’m sorry about Stu. He was one of my best friends, and I miss him.”

  Ted nodded slowly, and looked up. Claire’s mother offered him a weak smile and then moved away from the door, leaving them alone. Claire didn’t hear her descending the stairs, and knew she was still out there on the landing, listening.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” Ted said, staring down at his hands. “When the news first broke, we thought all of you…” He frowned. “Why did they do this?”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said truthfully. She had asked herself that same question many times over the past few weeks, and no answers had presented themselves.

  “I mean… you were just kids. Why would anyone want to hurt you like that?”

  “We were in the wrong place,” Claire said softly. “We crossed the wrong people.” ‘Crossed’ wasn’t exactly the right word though and it felt wrong to say it. They hadn’t crossed anyone. They’d been minding their own business when Stu and Daniel had stopped walking, their eyes on the woods that ran along the road on both sides. Someone had been moving in there, a ragged looking shape, moving closer as they watched. If this guy’s got no teeth and a banjo, I’m running. Try to keep up, Stu had joked.

  Stu, shut up, Katy had told him, with just the slightest quaver in her voice, and then all of them had frozen as the sound of laughter cut through the trees, not from the shape before them, but from somewhere in the woods behind them.

  Stu, a man’s voice had said mockingly.

  They turned as one, and there were children there, grubby, mean-looking kids standing in the road behind them.

  Hey there, Katy had said, trying to be her usual pleasant self.

  One of the children, the closest one to her, answered by carving an arc through the air with a wickedly sharp looking blade they hadn’t realized up until that moment he’d been holding. Katy had said, “Oh,” and looked down at herself. A wide slit had opened in her right leg just above the knee, dark blood already pooling in the wound. Before the attack had fully registered, a spike was driven through her skull.

  Claire shook off the memory, aware that Ted was looking at her.

  “My sister,” Ted said, pausing a moment to swallow. “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Is she okay?”

  He shook his head. “She and Stu were real close. Up until a few years ago, y’know, until Stu got too cool for it, they used to go horse riding together. She has a little ranch up in Delaware. When she heard what had happened, she shut herself up in her house. I dropped by yesterday and found the back door open. She was upstairs, out cold, an empty bottle of Scotch and a pill bottle beside her. She’d tried to kill herself.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” A stone dropped in a pond, Claire thought, forever making ripples. And it would never stop. There was no bank for it to break against. Instead, like a shockwave, it would continue on until there was no one left to feel it.

  “She’s a good girl, Yvonne,” Ted told her, picking at a patch of raw sore-looking skin under his thumbnail. “She loved Stu.”

  “Is she going to be all right?”

  “Doctors say she’ll be fine. I’m thinking maybe I should get her and Sally away for a while. Maybe take them on a cruise.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Claire smiled, but wondered if Ted knew the distraction didn’t exist that was powerful enough to stop them from feeling what they’d lost. She guessed he did, that he was grasping at straws in an effort not to cave in on himself, and lose all he had left in the process. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

  “How is Sally?”

  He shrugged. “Holding up, best as she can I suppose. Worst thing is, she keeps coming to me to tell her everything’s going to be all right, or to make sense for her of what happened, and I can’t seem to find
the words. Everything sounds…forced, as if I’m lying to her. But I’m not, you know? I just don’t know what to say.”

  Claire did know. It was exactly what she was doing now with the father of her dead friend.

  “There isn’t much you can say,” she said. “I still, even with everything that’s happened, have trouble believing it.”

  Ted looked at her for so long she had to resist the urge to stand and busy herself with anything that would get her out from under his gaze. At length, he sighed. “I’m sorry for what they did to you.”

  In that moment Claire knew how Sally Craddick had felt, seeking comfort from her father only to suspect his words were empty. There was no emotion in his voice, and she wondered just how much this man hated her for coming back alive when his son had died a horrible death.

  His hand found hers and his skin was cold. “Tell me,” he said.

  She looked at him, trying to read his will in the lines on his sallow face.

  “Tell me how he died. Tell me what they did to my boy.”

  Images passed through Claire’s mind, some of them taken from the photographs, others from the equally vivid vault of memory. She saw Stu standing on a jetty with Katy, him in black swim trunks, her in a cute peach-colored bikini, both of them wearing sunglasses as they posed, their skin beaded with water, hair wet from swimming. Then Stu drunk at the bar at the hotel in Sandestin, chatting up the barmaid, who looked completely uninterested, Katy sitting at a table with Claire and Daniel, all of them watching. Think I should tell her he has a tiny dick? Katy had said, and they’d laughed, but after several shots of tequila, she hadn’t been able to disguise the hurt in her voice. Thank Christ for college next year, she’d added, raising her glass. No more men with the maturity of a dragonfly. Daniel had frowned at her, puzzled by the analogy, then laughed so hard he’d almost choked on his beer. They all had, the sound of it enough to draw Stu back from the bar. What’s the joke? he’d asked, prepared to join in if he deemed it worthy. But then Katy’s smile had vanished as she’d looked away and told him, You are.

  “He tried to protect us,” Claire told Stu’s father. “He tried to fight them off.”