Fathers

by Matt Rogers

  ‘You askin’ that like I know anythin’ else,’ Tyrell said. ‘Maybe I don’t know what okay feels like. My life sure ain’t been okay. I think I feel okay now, but maybe I don’t and I’m just used to feelin’ this way.’

  Slater looked out over the marsh, riddled with bodies. The mud had absorbed all the blood already. It felt like the swamp would swallow the corpses, too, make it seem like nothing had ever happened. But it wasn’t about the physical evidence, he realised. It was about the memories burned into their minds, imprinted on their subconscious. He didn’t want to think about what Tyrell’s subconscious might look like.

  What the boy had already done, what circumstances had forced him to do.

  Slater said, ‘I want you to have the chance to feel okay.’

  Tyrell stared into the swamp. ‘What you mean?’

  ‘You can stay with me for more than a few days,’ he said. ‘If you want. The offer’s there.’

  ‘Won’t those government people come looking for me? “Foster care” or whatever it’s called?’

  That pulled Slater out of the emotional hole he was in, allowed him a wry smile. ‘Kid, we have worse government people looking for us. Trust me. You stay with me, they’ll never find you.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘You go to school. You make new friends. You have a normal life. If you want that.’

  ‘And you’ll do … what?’

  Slater didn’t answer.

  Tyrell stared out at the bodies. ‘I didn’t really ask … what exactly do you do, man?’

  Slater said, ‘This, mostly.’

  ‘People pay you to do this?’

  ‘No,’ Slater said. ‘I’ve got all the money I need.’

  ‘But this is dangerous. You could get killed.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Slater could see Tyrell was startled by the honesty.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Slater said. ‘That’s the choice you’ll have to make. I’m not going to stop doing what I do. Nothing will stop me from that. I have a partner, a soon-to-be wife if I’m lucky. She’s had to accept that. I go off on some crusade to help someone, I might not come home. She has to live with that every day. It’s a huge sacrifice. But I guess in the end I’m the one making the ultimate sacrifice, because I’m the one who’ll be dead. I’ll die in the line of fire, though. There’s nothing more peaceful than that. I don’t expect you to understand any of this, but you need to make a choice. If you come to live with me, and you start getting attached to me … maybe I become something like a dad to you …’ Slater had to screech the speech to a clunky halt as a wave of emotion ripped through him. He let the waver in his throat die away, squeezed back the tears so they didn’t show. ‘If that happens, Tyrell, you have to know that I’ll keep doing my work either way. I’ll keep killing people who don’t deserve to live. And one of these days that might get me killed. If you can manage that, there’s a place in our home for you…’

  He raised a closed fist to his mouth, exhaled sharply into it. It took everything he had left to hold it together. There was no use allowing his own emotions to cloud the boy’s decision.

  When he felt composed enough to look at Tyrell, he turned to see the kid mid-shrug.

  Tyrell said, ‘That’s the way it’s always been. That’s normal to me.’

  Slater didn’t answer.

  Tyrell said, ‘My dad and uncles, they weren’t shit, man. It was worse with them. Every night I know they out there doin’ bad shit, puttin’ themselves in danger over those dumb rocks and bricks. Every night I ain’t expect them to come home. And if they got shot, it woulda been over money or turf or something. Stuff that doesn’t matter. But what you doin’, it matters. So I ain’t got no problem with that, man. You do you. I’ll do me. I can take care of myself.’

  Slater didn’t know what to say.

  All he knew was Tyrell might be the smartest twelve-year-old he’d ever met.

  ‘Nah, man,’ Tyrell finally said, more to himself than to Slater. ‘I expect everyone I love to die. At least you gon’ do it doing something important. Not like them.’

  Slater couldn’t really blink back the tears anymore.

  Tyrell asked, ‘Can I stay with you, man? Maybe not forever. Just for a while.’

  ‘Sure you can, kid.’

  His voice wavered now, but he let it.

  Tyrell stepped into a hug, and Slater pulled him tight, close to his chest.

  The late morning was sticky and the grey sky bore down on them. Blood was all around them, and bodies, and the stink of death.

  Didn’t matter.

  Slater had all that mattered in his arms.

  81

  At no point had a gun been fired, so there was no threat of the authorities bearing down on the Templeton residence.

  King ushered the elderly couple into the kitchen, away from the grisly scene. Before he went after them he snatched Myles’ phone off the table and fired a message to the unknown number that Rebecca had called from twice.

  THIS IS KING. ALL CLEAR.

  He dropped the phone back on the tabletop and ignored the corpse as he went through to the kitchen.

  He sat the Templetons down and started making tea so they had a chance to digest everything. Hopefully they’d start to understand that they were safe, their daughter was safe, that the only victim in all of this had been the psycho who deserved death anyway.

  They wouldn’t realise that yet.

  They’d just seen a man beaten to death.

  Roy placed his palms on the kitchen table, grizzled knuckles facing up, coated with white hair. ‘I never trusted that fucker.’

  ‘Roy,’ Margaret hissed under her breath.

  Roy met her scornful gaze. ‘You did?’

  Her head shook slightly, her lips pursed. King got it. She didn’t want them talking about anything personal in front of the murderer in the kitchen with them.

  King placed steaming mugs of tea in front of them and sat down across the table. When his weight hit the seat, Margaret flinched. King watched her until she finally, reluctantly, met his gaze. He could see how frightened she was.

  ‘Your daughter asked me to do that,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel good about it.’

  Margaret’s hands shook as she tried to grip the mug. ‘Rebecca … asked …?’

  ‘There’s a lot you didn’t know about Myles.’

  Roy had been watching King like a hawk. Now the old man said, ‘He wasn’t a cop, was he?’

  That jolted King. He hadn’t expected the old man to be so prescient. ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  Mrs. Templeton gasped, ‘What?’

  ‘Knew it,’ Roy growled. ‘Lying little shit. He never seemed like one. He was always a coward masquerading as a tough guy.’

  ‘He used to be,’ King said. ‘They took his badge two years ago. He kept up the illusion, I think to convince Rebecca everything was fine.’

  ‘So what was he doing?’

  ‘He got involved with the wrong crowd.’

  Roy’s grey eyes gleamed as he connected dots. ‘That Dwayne guy? He a criminal?’

  King nodded, then thought about what Slater would have already done. ‘Not anymore. He got the same treatment as Myles.’

  Margaret spilled a few drops of milky tea on her blouse, trying to get the trembling mug to her lips. When she put it down she asked, ‘How can you … do something like that? You seem so normal. But you just … killed … oh my God.’ She trailed off, touching a hand to her mouth, closing her eyes. She looked like she might be sick.

  King said, ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’

  Roy said, ‘I understand.’

  King couldn’t bear it any longer. He came right out and asked it. ‘Vietnam?’

  Roy gave a brief, single tilt of the head. Barely a nod. Acknowledging it, but not wanting to dwell on it. King understood. He’d fought his share of battles for superiors with the wrong intentions. You don’t want to get bogged down in the meaninglessness of it all o
r you’ll end up blaming yourself.

  You compartmentalise it, you move on, and you learn to keep an eye out for corrupt leaders with self-serving interests.

  Roy asked, ‘What happens now?’

  King said, ‘That’s why I sat you both down.’

  Margaret kept her eyes shut. She couldn’t handle this.

  Roy, on the other hand, kept King in his line of sight. His stare didn’t so much as waver.

  King said, ‘You can call the cops. Hell, it’s what I’d do if I were you. They know what Myles was like. His track record will tell all. But you’ll have a hard time explaining how he came to have his head caved in. I won’t be here, obviously, because I’d like to spend the rest of my life outside a prison cell. They might find it hard to believe that a big guy came through the window and beat him to death. I doubt they’ll suspect you two, given your … advanced age. But you’ll be subject to scrutiny for a long while. It’ll seem like you’re hiding something, even if you claim you didn’t see anything.’

  Roy could tell where this was going. ‘Or?’

  ‘Or I take the body away and we pretend this never happened. Boston PD aren’t looking for him. I called his station house. They’d prefer he never existed. They’re sick of suppressing journalists wanting to write stories. They’re not going to put much effort into investigating his disappearance. Rebecca will say he walked out one day and never came back and that’s all she knows. There’ll be far less scrutiny than if there was a body.’

  Roy asked, ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  Margaret whispered, ‘This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.’

  ‘I’m going to need you to agree before I walk out of here,’ King told her.

  She opened her eyes. Her lips stayed pursed, and her throat and hands still trembled. But she pulled it together. Maybe some of Roy Templeton had rubbed off on her over the years. She said, ‘I don’t know anything about a body,’ before she squeezed her eyes shut again.

  King turned to Roy and raised an eyebrow.

  Roy scoffed. ‘I don’t want any more cops in this damn house. Do whatever it is you do.’ That made him pause, think about what he’d seen. ‘What do you do?’

  King got to his feet. ‘Used to do a lot of things. Now I just lend a helping hand.’

  Roy said, ‘If I’m trusting you, I need a concrete answer.’

  King nearly smirked. It’s exactly what Rebecca had demanded. Like father, like daughter. ‘Did you ever see any covert action in Vietnam? Soldiers that didn’t seem to report to anyone, moved through the country like ghosts. Come across any of those types?’

  He could see Roy thinking about what he wanted to say in front of his wife.

  Finally the old man said, ‘I had a couple of buddies who did that sort of thing.’

  ‘They ever talk about what they did?’

  Roy shook his head.

  ‘But you know what they did. Some of it.’

  Roy nodded.

  King said, ‘I used to do that. Just not in ’Nam.’

  Roy absorbed that.

  He said, ‘Thank you. For what you did here. And for what you’ve done before.’

  King bowed his head to accept the words. ‘I need to go get my car. Stay here in the kitchen. Don’t move a muscle. Have more tea. Pretend there’s nothing in your living room.’

  He left them in the kitchen and walked out.

  He knew, for their own good, he’d never see them again. In another life, he’d probably get along well with Roy Templeton. He had no doubt they could have traded war stories for the rest of their days. But the Templetons deserved a quiet life. They’d earned it.

  Not a life like King’s.

  And King didn’t need more friends. He had a kid now. That was enough responsibility for a lifetime.

  He slipped out the front door and scanned the quiet street for signs of concerned neighbours. There was nothing. Not a peep of the violence had floated to strangers’ ears, disturbed the peace of the neighbourhood.

  He set off to get his car as if he was going on a casual stroll.

  Not like he’d smashed a man’s head in with his bare hands a few minutes earlier.

  82

  King knew Roy would understand what was required, and sure enough when he came back with the car the garage door was up.

  He reversed in and went from the garage to the living room and back with not so much as a peep from the kitchen. It was better this way. There was no point making idle chit chat after bashing in the skull of the man who was supposed to be their son-in-law. Even if Roy never trusted him, it didn’t make it any less traumatic for either of them. King was sure, beneath the stoic exterior, Roy was rattled.

  King left the old couple alone, let them process the fact they’d been hostages, very nearly killed. With a gun to her head for nigh on four hours, Margaret would need serious time to recover emotionally.

  Anyone would.

  He dumped Myles in the big trunk of the SUV and got back behind the wheel. He was out of The Point in minutes. He headed north first, to the top of Quincy, the neighbourhood of Squantum. There he found the Squantum Marshes, which weren’t exactly wetlands anymore, dried out to dead yellow fields that undulated softly between rivulets of swampy mud. There were still plenty of hiding places, though, and after a couple of loops to scope out the terrain he pulled up next to a deep fissure of mud and dead grass. He checked the coast was clear before dragging Myles out of the back, hefting him over one shoulder, and leaping down into the miniaturised canyon.

  He used a shovel he’d been smart enough to throw in the trunk that morning to bury the body. He buried it deep, letting the marsh enclose it, swallow it whole. Then he spent twenty minutes using his considerable strength to haul every natural deadweight in sight over the unmarked grave. By the time he was done it was covered in huge rocks, entire bushels of nutgrass, and giant clumps of moss.

  By the time anyone found him, Myles Vaughan would have decomposed to bones.

  King wiped his hands on a cloth in the trunk, tossed it back on the muddy shovel, got behind the wheel, and drove away.

  It was nearly midday by the time he reached the hotel he’d dropped Rebecca at.

  Sitting out front, composing himself, he felt the weight of the past thirty-six hours. Just yesterday morning he’d become a father. It felt like a year ago. It was ironic that he thought fatherhood would slow him down, mellow him out, when really all that talk of becoming a different person was just that: talk.

  It would never change who he was.

  Thirty-six tense, mind-numbingly stressful hours, and he felt he was only getting warmed up. He could do it all over again tomorrow, if he had to. Only he didn’t. All that was left was this.

  Rebecca’s stooped silhouette appeared through the glass of the hotel lobby, a speck against the backdrop of the enormous atrium. She shuffled out through the revolving door and got into the passenger seat. King peeled away before she’d taken in a breath to speak.

  She said, ‘I fucked up.’

  King nodded.

  She stared straight ahead. ‘I assume you heard the calls.’

  ‘Sounded like you were trying to stall him,’ King said. ‘It wasn’t needed. That’s why I didn’t tell you to buy a new phone like you did. He would have stalled anyway, because he didn’t want to die. It was just empty words. But if you slipped up, said the wrong thing…’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘I know. And you didn’t fuck up as bad as you think.’

  ‘You don’t blame me?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Her thin lips were pursed tight. ‘When he called, that last time … I thought it was over. I came outside and had a panic attack. The bellhops crowded me ’cause I collapsed out there on the sidewalk, but then I got your text. It took all my willpower to pull myself together. I apologised to them, a million times over. Went back inside and sat down and kept to myself. I think one of them was more wo
rried than the others, but they talked him out of calling an ambulance. Wasn’t worth the hassle, I don’t think.’

  ‘You did good.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  He took a deep breath and went through it. Who Dwayne was, what Slater had done, how the gangster had been used to distract Myles. When he was done Rebecca’s lower lip was quivering. Tears in her eyes. She asked, ‘So they’re okay? Really?’

  ‘Your dad’s tough,’ King said, ‘but he’ll still take it hard, I think. Later on. Your mother’s just as strong. I could sense that. She played it smart and got her emotions out early. She was a wreck while I was there, but that’s understandable. She’ll be okay quicker than you think. And so will you.’

  Rebecca stared at him. ‘You sure about that? I feel dead inside.’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  ‘You felt like this? Once upon a time?’

  ‘Not just once upon a time,’ King said. ‘This life will toughen your emotions by beating them down. I go through it more than you’d think.’

  ‘Surely you’re calloused by now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ King said. ‘But not when my kid’s in the mix.’

  ‘You’ve got a newborn. You should be spending time with him.’

  ‘I will. But it’ll never change who I am.’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘If no one intervened, I don’t know what would have happened…’

  He grimaced. He didn’t want to say it, but she needed to know. ‘You would have gone back to him.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  But it was half-hearted, like she knew the truth.

  ‘You were defending him,’ he said. ‘In the café. Driving to the safe house. Even after he shot at you.’

  She stayed silent for a long time, trying to work through her emotions, no doubt finding it impossible. She asked, ‘Conditioning?’

  King nodded. ’But not anymore.’

  ‘Where is he?’ She twisted in her seat, found nothing. ‘There’s a stink in here.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’