The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  “Maybe it’s in the garage.”

  “There’s no room. He was a mechanic for forty years, and accumulated a lot of junk. He parks in the driveway.” He looked at his watch. “Where the hell is he?” He got out of the car. Sara did as well.

  He looked at her over the roof of the car. “You can stay here if you want.”

  “I’ll come in with you,” she said quickly.

  Fiske unlocked the front door and they went in. He turned on a light, and they moved through the small living room and into the adjacent dining room, where Sara stared at a collection of photos on the dining room table. There was one of Fiske in his football uniform; a little blood on the face, grass stains on the knees, sweaty. Very sexy. She caught herself and looked away, suddenly feeling guilty.

  She looked at some of the other pictures. “You two played a lot of sports.”

  “Mike was the natural athlete of the family. Every record I set, he broke. Easily.”

  “Quite the jock family.”

  “He was also valedictorian of his class, a GPA on the north side of four-point-oh, and a near-perfect score on the SATs and LSATs.”

  “You sound like the proud big brother.”

  “A lot of people were proud of him,” Fiske said.

  “And you?”

  He looked at her steadily. “I was proud of him for some things, and not proud of him for others. Okay?”

  Sara picked up a photo. “Your parents?”

  Fiske stood beside her. “Their thirtieth anniversary. Before Mom got sick.”

  “They look happy.”

  “They were happy,” he said quickly. He was growing very uncomfortable with her seeing these items from his past. “Wait here.” Fiske went to the back room, which had once been the brothers’shared bedroom and now had been turned into a small den. He checked the answering machine. His father had not listened to his messages. He was about to leave the room when he saw the baseball glove on the shelf. He picked it up. It was his brother’s, the pocket ribbing torn, but the leather well oiled — by his father, obviously. Mike was a lefty, but the family had no money to buy a special glove for him, so Mike had learned to field the ball, pull off his glove and throw. He had gotten so good that he could do it all faster than a righty could. Fiske recalled that blur of efficiency, no obstacle his brother couldn’t overcome. He put the glove down and rejoined Sara.

  “He hasn’t listened to my phone messages.”

  “Any idea where he could’ve gone?”

  Fiske thought a moment and then snapped his fingers. “Pop usually tells Ms. German.”

  While he was gone, Sara looked around the room some more. She eyed a small framed letter, set on a wooden pedestal. Wrapped around it was a medal. She picked up the frame and read the letter. The medal was for valor, awarded to Patrolman John Fiske, and the letter commemorated the event. She looked at the date it had been given. Quickly calculating, she concluded that the award would have been given at about the time Fiske had left the force. She still didn’t know why he had, and Michael never would say. When she heard the back door open, she quickly put the letter and medal down.

  Fiske entered the room. “He’s at the trailer.”

  “What trailer?”

  “Down by the river. He goes there to fish. Go boating.”

  “Can you call the trailer?”

  Fiske shook his head. “No phone.”

  “Okay, so we drive. Where is it?”

  “You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty already.”

  “I don’t mind, John.”

  “It’s about another hour and a half from here.”

  “The night’s sort of shot anyway.”

  “You mind if I drive? It’s off the beaten path.”

  She tossed him the keys. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Let me get this right: On top of everything else that’s happened, you let him escape.”

  “First of all, I didn’t let him do anything. I thought the guy had just had a friggin’heart attack. He was chained to the damn bed. He had an armed guard outside his door, and nobody was supposed to know he was even there,” Rayfield snapped back into the telephone. “I still don’t know how his brother found out.”

  “And his brother’s some kind of war hero, I understand. Superbly trained in all forms of eluding capture. That’s just great.”

  “It is for our purposes.”

  “Why don’t you explain that one to me, Frank?”

  “I’ve ordered my men to shoot to kill. They’ll put a bullet into both of them as soon as they get a chance.”

  “What if he tells somebody first?”

  “Tells them what? That he got a letter from the Army that says something he has no way to prove? Now we’ve got a dead Supreme Court clerk on our hands. That just makes our job a lot tougher.”

  “Well, we were supposed to have a dead country lawyer too, but, funny, I haven’t read his obituary anywhere.”

  “Rider went out of town.”

  “Oh, good, we’ll just wait until he gets back from vacation and hope he’s not in discussions with the FBI.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Rayfield said angrily.

  “The Army has an intelligence component, Frank. What do you say you try to use some of it? Take care of Rider and then concentrate on finding Harms and his brother. And when you do, you put them six feet under. I hope that’s clear enough for you.” The phone went dead.

  Rayfield slammed the receiver down and stared up at Vic Tremaine.

  “This is going to hell in a handbasket.”

  Tremaine shrugged his shoulders. “We take Rider out and then those two black SOBs, we’re home free,” he said in a gravelly voice that seemed perfectly calibrated to command men to fight.

  “I don’t like it. We’re not in a war here.”

  “We are at war, Frank.”

  “The killing never did bother you, did it, Vic?”

  “All I care about is the success of my mission.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that right before you pulled the trigger on Fiske you didn’t feel anything?”

  “Mission accomplished.” Tremaine put his palms down on Rayfield’s desk and leaned forward. “Frank, we’ve been through a lot together, combat and otherwise. But let me tell you something. I’ve spent thirty years in the Army, the last twenty-five in various military prisons just like this one when I could’ve gotten a civilian job that paid a lot more. We all made a pact that was supposed to protect us from a stupid thing we did a long time ago. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I’ve baby-sat Rufus Harms while the others went on with their lives.

  “Now, in addition to my military pension, I’ve got over one million bucks sitting in an offshore account. In case you’ve forgotten, you’ve got the same little nest egg. That’s our comp for all these years of doing this crap. And after all the shit I’ve been through, no one and nothing is going to keep me from enjoying that money. The best thing Rufus Harms ever did for me is escape. Because now I’ve got a bulletproof reason to blow his sorry ass away and nobody’ll ask any questions. And as soon as that sonofabitch has breathed his last, this uniform I’m wearing goes into mothballs. For good.”

  Tremaine straightened up. “And, Frank, I will destroy anyone who even remotely tries to mess that up.” His eyes became black dots as he said the next word. “Anyone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  On the drive to the trailer, Fiske stopped at an all-night convenience store. Sara waited in the car. A rusty Esso sign clanked back and forth from the force of a semi sailing past and made her jump. When Fiske got back in the car, Sara stared at the two six-packs of Budweiser. “You intend to drink your sorrows away?”

  He ignored the question. “Once we get down there, there’s really no way for you to get back by yourself. It’s really in the middle of nowhere; sometimes I get lost.”

  “I’m prepared to sleep in the car.”

  About thirty minutes late
r, Fiske slowed the car, turned into a narrow gravel drive and drove up to a small, darkened cottage. “You’re supposed to check in here and pay the guest fee before going into the grounds,” he explained. “I’ll do it before we leave tomorrow.”

  He pulled the car past the cottage and into the middle of the campground. Sara looked at the trailers, which were laid out in a street grid style. Most of them were brilliantly outlined with Christmas lights and had flagpoles either attached to the trailer or porch, or sunk into concrete. With the strings of lights and the moonlight, the area was surprisingly well illuminated. They passed late-blooming flower beds of impatiens, and red and pink mums. Clumpy vines of clematis gripped the sides of some homes. Everywhere Sara looked were outdoor sculptures of metal, marble and resin. There were a number of cinder-block grills and a large smoke pit; the commingled smells of cooked meat and charcoal lingered tantalizingly in the hot, humid air.

  “This place is like a little gingerbread town built by gnomes,” Sara said. She eyed the numerous flagpoles and added, “Patriotic gnomes.”

  “A lot of the people are from the American Legion and VFW crowd. My dad has one of the tallest flagpoles. He was in the Navy in World War II. The all-year Christmas lights became sort of a tradition a long while back.”

  “Did you and Michael spend much time here?”

  “My dad only got a week’s vacation, but Mom would bring us down for a couple weeks at a time during the summer. Some of the old guys taught us to sail, swim and fish. Things Pop never had time to do. He’s made up for it since he retired.”

  He stopped the car in front of one trailer. It had bright Christmas lights and was painted a soothing, muted blue. His father’s Buick, with a SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE bumper sticker, was parked next to the trailer. Fronting the trailer was a bed of bulky plantation hostas. Next to the Buick was a golf cart. The flagpole in front of the trailer went a good thirty feet into the air.

  Fiske eyed the Buick. “At least he’s here.” Well, this is it, John, no more reprieves, he thought.

  “Is there a golf course nearby?”

  Fiske glanced at her. “No, why?”

  “So what’s with the golf cart?”

  “The owners of the trailer park buy them secondhand from golf courses. The roads are pretty narrow here and, while you can drive your car to your trailer, you can’t drive it around the grounds. And the people down here are elderly, for the most part. They use the golf carts to get around.”

  Fiske got out of the car with the two six-packs. Sara didn’t move to join him. He looked at her questioningly.

  “I thought you might want to talk to your dad alone.”

  “After everything we’ve been through tonight, I think you’ve earned the right to see it through. I’ll understand if you don’t want to.” He looked over at the trailer and felt his nerves slowly disintegrate. He turned back to her. “I could sort of use the company.”

  She nodded. “Okay, give me a minute.”

  She flipped down the visor mirror and checked her face and hair. She grimaced and reached for her purse, doing the best she could with lipstick and a small hairbrush. She was sweaty and sticky too, her dress clingy, her hair beyond salvation thanks to the rain and humidity. As trivial as worrying about her appearance seemed under the circumstances, she felt like such a fifth wheel that it was the only thing she could think to address.

  With a sigh, she flipped the visor back up, opened the door and got out. As they headed up the wooden porch, she smoothed down her dress and fiddled some more with her hair.

  Fiske noted this and said, “He’s not going to care how you look. Not after I tell him.”

  She sighed. “I know. I guess I just didn’t want to look like too much of a disaster.”

  Fiske took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He waited and knocked again. “Pop.” He waited a moment and knocked again, louder this time. “Pop,” he called out, and kept knocking.

  They finally heard movement in the trailer and then a light came on. The door opened and Fiske’s father, Ed, peered out. Sara looked at him closely. He was as tall as his son, and very lean, although he had vestiges of the powerful musculature shared by both his boys. His forearms were enormous, like thick pieces of sun-baked wood. Sara was able to observe this because he had on a tank-top shirt. He was deeply tanned, his face lined and starting to sag, but she could see he had been handsome as a younger man. His hair was thinning and curly and almost totally gray except for small flecks of black at the temples. She fixed for a moment on his long sideburns, a holdover from the seventies, she guessed. He had on a pair of pants halfway zipped up, the clasp unbuttoned so that his striped boxers were clearly in sight. He was barefoot.

  “Johnny? What the hell you doing here?” A broad smile cracked his face. When he registered Sara, he looked startled and quickly turned so his back was to them. They watched him fumble with his pants until they were right. Then he turned back to face them.

  “Pop, I need to talk to you.”

  Ed Fiske glanced over at Sara again.

  “I’m sorry — Sara Evans, Ed Fiske,” John said.

  “Hello, Mr. Fiske,” she said, trying to sound both pleasant and neutral at the same time. She awkwardly held out her hand.

  He shook it. “Call me Ed, Sara, pleased to meet you.” He looked back at his son curiously. “So what’s up? You two getting married or something?”

  Fiske glanced at Sara. “No! She worked with Mike at the Supreme Court.”

  “Oh, well, hell, where are my manners, come on in. I got the air going, sticky as the damn devil out there.”

  They went inside. Ed pointed to a worn sofa and Fiske and Sara sat down there. Ed pulled a metal chair from the small dinette and sat down opposite them.

  “Sorry I took so long. Just nodded off to sleep.”

  Sara looked around the small space. It was paneled with thin plywood stained dark. Several stuffed fish were mounted on plaques and hung on the wall. Slung across a rack on another wall was a shotgun. In the corner she saw a long, round container with one end of a rod and reel poking out. A folded newspaper was lying on the dinette table. Next to that was a small kitchen area with a sink and a little refrigerator. There was a worn-out recliner in one corner, a small TV across from it. There was one window. Mounted on the ceiling was an air conditioner that was making the room deliciously cool. She actually shivered as she adjusted to the temperature. The floor was cheap, uneven linoleum with a thin rug covering a portion of it.

  Sara sniffed and then coughed. She could almost see the cigarette smoke lingering in the air. As if in response to her thoughts, Ed pulled a pack of Marlboros from a knicked-up side table and deftly popped a cigarette in his mouth, taking a moment to light up, then blew the smoke to the nicotine-coated ceiling. He grabbed a small ashtray off the same table and tapped his cigarette in it. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. She noted that his fingers were abnormally thick, the nails cracked, and blackened in spots from what looked like grease. He had been a mechanic, she recalled.

  “So what brings you two down here so late?”

  Fiske handed his father a six-pack. “Not good news.”

  The elder Fiske tensed, and he squinted at them through the smoke. “It’s not your mom. I just saw her, she’s okay.” As soon as he said this, he shot a glance at Sara. The look on his face was clear: She “worked” with Mike.

  He looked back at John. “Why don’t you tell me whatever the hell it is you need to tell me, son.”

  “Mike’s dead, Pop.” As he finished saying it, it was as though he were hearing the news for the first time. He could feel his face grow hot as though he had leaned too close to a fire. Perhaps he had waited to see his father, to join his grief with his. He could believe that, couldn’t he?

  Fiske could sense Sara looking at him, but he kept his gaze on his father. As he watched the devastation wash over the man, Fiske suddenly found he could barely breathe.

  Ed took the cigarette out
of his mouth and dropped the ashtray, his fingers shaking. “How?”

  “Robbery. At least they think so.” Fiske paused and then added the obvious, since he knew his father was going to ask anyway. “Somebody shot him.”

  Ed tore off one of the Buds from the plastic holder and popped the tab. He drank it down almost in one swallow, his Adam’s apple moving up and down.