Gun Lake (42 page)

It was over in just a matter of seconds. Ossie ran over to Lonnie and took the gun from his hand. Just one gun—Lonnie had dropped the other when he fell. Kurt came up and took the same pistol from Ossie’s hands and looked down at Lonnie. For a moment, Ossie thought Kurt might put another six shots into Lonnie’s head. But it was obvious from the awful wound that Lonnie would never harm another soul.

Kurt ran to Norah, dropped to his knees beside her, and examined the wound in her side. He held her head.

“Ossie, you gotta call someone. Nine-one-one, the cops—somebody.”

And the man who had been a cop—who was some deputy or something like that—was gone. He had sprinted out and away just like Sean had.

“Ossie, come here!” Kurt shouted.

Ossie knew he was in a sort of dumb stupor. But he had just shot and killed a man. Something he swore he would never do again. And this woman might be dead as well—

“Ossie!”

Ossie moved over to where the woman lay crumpled on the ground, Kurt beside her. Kurt’s eyes were teary, and he sounded desperate.

“Look—here—just stay with her.”

“Kurt—”

“I’m going to get some help.” “I’m sorry, man,” Ossie said.

“No. No.”

Kurt looked at the woman and whispered in her ear and stroked her forehead and then felt her neck.

“I’m getting help,” Kurt said as he propped up Norah’s body and gently passed her into Ossie’s arms.

Ossie knew she must be dead.

“She took a shot from—”

Kurt cursed and shook his head violently. “No, no, don’t—no.”

“Kurt—”

“Just stay here with her. Please, Ossie, stay here and I’m going to call and they’ll come.”

“Kurt—”

But Kurt was already running toward the cars, holding the gun in his hand, leaving Ossie with the bodies.

Ossie tried to find a pulse on the woman but couldn’t feel anything. She had to be dead. He looked at her face and suddenly thought she was a beautiful woman. Shiny black hair spilled down over his shoulder and chest.

Father be with her be with her now please rest her soul

Down the road a car peeled out, and Ossie stayed there with the dead woman and kept praying.

ONE DECISION HAD CHANGED everything. Everything.

He should have never—never—picked Lonnie Jones to join them.

Everything would have been okay if he hadn’t. Who knew—maybe Craig might have still been with them. The entire mess that just happened would never have occurred had it not been for his mistake of bringing Lonnie.

But that’s life. You make mistakes and you pay for them. And you keep on going—until the end
.

Sean drove on toward his father’s place.

I’m comingforyou, Pop. It’s time
.

He slipped in the cassette that he had bought. Another Elton John. They didn’t have any Doors, so this would have to do.
Greatest Hits
. “Yellow Brick Road” began to play, and all of the sudden, he was hearing Kurt’s voice.

“You’re not some rock star who’s going to change the culture.”

Maybe not, sure. That was fine. He didn’t need to change culture. He didn’t need to be a rock star.

But he was going to right some wrongs. And make up for all those lost years and lost times.

For everything he could have had and never had.

On the tape deck, Elton made it clear that he was too old to be singing the blues.

Amen to that.

Got that, Dad?

Got it?

You made me this way, and I’m exactly the son you never wanted.

I’m coming for you, Pop.

Daddy-o.

Father dearest
.

Sean listened to the song and felt the rage fill him, surround him, carry him forward. This was all he could really remember about his father. Sitting there next to him listening to music in a truck. No memories except for sitting there listening, waiting and listening, waiting for a word, for a single word that never came. Instead, the backdrop of music filled the cabin of the truck. Filled his head. Filled all the spaces where love was supposed to live.

Beyond the rage, or under it, Sean realized he felt something else. He felt fear. A sad, insecure, sniffling, junior-high sort of fear.

How can that be?

But the fear didn’t stifle the rage. It made it stronger.

I’m coming
, he thought.

I’m here
.

It’s last call, Father. Gotta take care of business and get past the yellow brick road. My future lies beyond this place. Beyond this lake. Beyond my father. Beyond Father Paul
.

Beyond.

“COME ON MAN, let us go,” Jared said.

The hulking, tattooed stranger named Wes stood near the front door, looking out the window.

“Can’t do that.”

They still sat on the couches, hands tied, just as they had sat for the past twelve hours. This morning Michelle had woken up with half her body asleep, almost unable to move for a few moments. She had gotten up and walked around. Wes, dozing at the kitchen table, had jerked up and grabbed his gun. Noticing her pain, he had offered to make coffee. She had found it quite good.

The sun had risen and life as usual proceeded out on Gun Lake. Outside they could hear shouts and splashes and conversation. Inside, as the morning wore on, Wes had grown more nervous, pacing and looking out the windows, smoking more.

Jared kept pleading his case.

“What’s the big deal if you let us go?”

Wes ignored him.

“What if you just let
her
go?” Jared asked.

“No,” Michelle said.

“Mom, be quiet.”

“Jared—”

“I’m not letting either of you go. All right?”

“Wes,” Jared said.

“Yeah?”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

Wes jerked his head and gave Jared a suspicious look.

“You told us yesterday about them,” Jared reminded him.

“Oh, yeah. Her name is Charlotte.”

“What if someone had Charlotte and your wife held up? Captives. Like us.”

Michelle couldn’t believe Jared was talking this much, this casually. Wes walked back toward them and stood by the television. The gun was shoved into the waistband of his pants.

“That’s different.”

“What’s different about it?” Jared asked.

“I gotta—I have to stay here. Y’all won’t get hurt. I promise.”

“Let my mom go,” Jared said, looking at Wes with an expression that reminded Michelle of Ted.

“I can’t.”

“Please. She’s not going to say anything, not with me here.”

“Jared, I’m not leaving.”

“Be quiet, Mom.”

“Both of you be quiet.” Wes rubbed his temple. He looked like he was trying to think and having a hard time of it.

Michelle looked at her son. The sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t take any orders from her and barely listened. The kid who had defied her, had done his own thing for so long. The little boy who now seemed undaunted by a massive man with a gun.

My son, trying to protect his nagging mother
.

“Wes, come on, man,” Jared said. “Just let her go. Then you can keep me here until you leave.”

“No, I can’t.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Michelle repeated.

“Look—”

“I’m not leaving. End of discussion.”

Wes looked at them and shook his head. “Look, I don’t know where they are. Somebody should’ve been here by now. Something’s wrong. I just—I don’t know.”

Jared looked at his mother as Wes went back to the kitchen window to look outside. Then something happened that really surprised Michelle.

Jared smiled at her.

THERE WAS NOTHING MORE to think about. Only one thing. Something he had tried to escape from, something he had almost managed to move past.

almost

Kurt had just called nine-one-one from the closest stop to their cabin—a mini-mart on the edge of the road. He told them a woman had been shot and they should hurry, and he gave directions and then hung up.

He thought of going back, but he knew it was too late. It was too late for any of them now. People had died today, and more would probably die, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. As far as Kurt was concerned, there was only one who
should
die, and he would take care of that.

Kurt drove the vehicle down the now-familiar road, his eyes blurring over, pictures flashing through his mind. Memories. What Sean said had shaken them loose.

“A man who beats his own kid—”

He could still see those chubby cheeks—cheeks made for smiling. Eyes made to light up when his mother and father looked his way, grinned at him, made silly faces and animal noises to make him laugh. Benjamin Wilson. Little Ben. Bennie and the Jets, Ben. Ben who only and always loved his parents, who worshiped his father. To take that love, that smile, that undeserved admiration and trust and to strike it down the way he had struck it down one blurry long night so long ago—

“Gets drunk and ends up almost killing—”

Ben was older now and probably looked very different. But in Kurt’s mind, he would always be eighteen months old—eighteen months old, with a smile that lit the world.

That boy loved you. This child was yours. He loved you, and what did you do?

Another picture hung in his memory, dim and hazy, partially blocked out but unforgettable. A little body crumpled on the floor, chubby cheeks pale, not even crying. A trickle of blood
from the mouth. Erin frantic, on the phone, her face a twisted mask of fury and grief.

To say that picture haunted him still would underscore his whole life. As the months and years passed since, he had understood this more and more. Understood what it meant. To hit a helpless, trusting baby—what kind of a monster could do that? There were murderers who deserved more respect than Kurt did. People who had robbed and stolen and even killed and were still better off. He was low on the pathetic ladder, perhaps just a rung above the child molesters. Or maybe a rung below.

He felt tears, felt the shame, and knew that no matter how far away he ran, he could never escape the shadow of his ugly self—or what he did one late night when he didn’t know what he was doing.

Other pictures were flashing in his head. Erin as a teenager, blonde and beautiful, loving him. Kurt’s father with his familiar red face, drunk, yelling and pulling out his belt while Kurt ran for cover. Nights at the clubhouse down the road from where they lived, having fun, pouring down the booze when he should have been home. The baby crying, crying, not stopping, when Kurt’s head was about to explode—

No excuses
.

The thing was, blaming it on the liquor didn’t help. Blaming his folks didn’t help. He was still responsible. And guilty. He did what he did. Deep inside his heart and soul, something was fundamentally wrong, and Kurt was certain it couldn’t be fixed.

The only thing that could be done, the only right thing, was to continue down this journey and take it to the end. To find the right words to say he was sorry, truly sorry. And then to show how sorry he was. Make the final gesture and end it all.

He wasn’t being overdramatic. It was the only thing he could do. Only he could make that sacrifice and try to make things right. Ben might never understand, might never know, but it was still all he could offer. Nothing else seemed adequate. Nothing else would be enough.

He’d written the letter. The apology, if that’s what you could call it. Maybe it was more of a man-to-man talk, a letter that Ben
would understand when he was older, wiser, more hardened to life and the cold, hard world. Maybe Ben would never accept the apology of a long-lost father, but maybe he would understand.

Kurt was hungry for oblivion now, longing not to feel the weight on his soul anymore. What would become of that soul when he was through with it, he didn’t know. If there was a God, if by some fluke Ossie was right and God actually existed, then Kurt knew where he’d end up. It wouldn’t be a happy place. But he hadn’t been in a happy place in a long time. The hell that he would go to after he died could surely be no worse than this hell he lived in day in and day out. The hell of his own making.

“Somebody else made a sacrifice for those sins.”

He heard Ossie’s voice utter the words. It was a nice thought, letting someone else make the sacrifice. But Kurt knew for a fact that nobody could take the sins Kurt had committed in his life. Nobody could take them on himself. Nobody could make the sacrifice for him. They were his and his alone.

And there was only one thing he could do about them.

HE WATCHED HIM WALK toward the cottage and go in. He could see him from the truck, parked in the back of the lot behind a large dumpster. Then, coming back, getting in an old, beat-up Chevy, and driving off.

That was when Paul followed Sean.

He was careful not to drive too close behind him; he hung back almost a block, kept a car or two between them. Sean drove for about ten minutes and finally pulled off on a driveway that led down to the lake. Paul parked his car and took the forty-five and held it in his hand as he walked down the gentle slope toward a drive with several cottages.

He hid behind the parked Chevy and looked over the light-gray cottage that Sean had entered.

This must be where the boy and his mother were being held.

This would be where he would end it all.

What do you think you’re doing?

He walked across the small driveway. He knew where he was going and knew exactly what he was doing. And as he walked, he made sure the safety was off on the forty-five. If he was going to use it, he wanted to make sure it could be used.

Thoughts walked with him. Impressions. Memories.

—meeting a young, feisty woman named Lori he proposed to in the front of a car—

He opened the side door.

—thinking they’d made a baby and then, a month later, finding out they had—

He walked inside and saw three people and Sean standing near the fireplace, a look of surprise and amusement on his face.