The Triggerman Dance (38 page)

Snakey had set the Mac beside him to slide back the cover.

He looked at John, then at the gun, then at John again.

John saw a look of determination cross Snakey's face, a look of pure arrogance.

"Don't do it," he said. But Snakey already was going for his gun.

The two shots from the Colt were through him before his hand touched the gun. John saw the little puffs of dirt kick up on the other side of the fence. Snakey hit the ground like a dropped bag of sand, like a bird shot from the sky, like Rebecca after the second shot, a once-living thing now wholly, immediately and forever emptied of life.

John was on his knees, too, his burning eyes still locked on Snakey, whose funny flat-top waved stiffly in the warm morning breeze.

When John reached him, Josh was on his way to the airport to catch a flight to Washington, so the reception was spotty. He and Dumars had been summoned by Evan, post haste. John imagined them in the Bureau Ford, Dumars driving and Joshua fretting, as usual. He longed to be with them. He told him what had happened, and for a long moment, Joshua was silent. Then:

"Talk to me, John. Please talk to me now."

"I've just murdered an innocent man. I got pictures and drawings and notes. I'm coming out, Josh. I've had enough."

"You did what you had to, John. It was not your decision to make. It was Snakey's. He made it."

"I want out. I'm done."

"John, listen to me. I told you this would happen. I told you there would come a time when you would want nothing but out. And I told you where you would be when you felt this way. Tell me now what I said. Tell me where I said you would be."

Dizziness.

Sickness.

Swirling images of blood and bones, teeth and hair. The death waltz. The killing ball.

He puked.

"John," Weinstein commanded, "respond to me now. Where did I say that you would be?"

"In the the darkest hour."

"Was I right?"

"You were right."

Joshua's voice faded, then came back strong.

"But what did I tell you next—when is the darkest hour?"

"Some shit about right before the dawn." He was blubbering now.

"Correct. It was not shit and that is why you are not coming out. You are staying in. If you come out now, you'll always be in that dark hour, John. It will follow you the rest of your life. Right now, you belong to it. But for it to ever go away, it must belong to you."

"I can't do any more."

"Quiet, John. Listen. I'll bring you out the second you're finished. But I can't do it before you're finished, can I? Reason with me now. I need time to analyze the documents you found in your cottage. I need time to get a search warrant, if we can get one at all. We will need more."

"I don't want more."

"Oh, yes you do. You want Holt. That's the agreement, John. Holt. Not Snakey.
Holt"

John tried to gather himself, choke back the ugly sobs that kept breaking into his throat. "That poor dumb Snakey. Jesus. Bring me out."

"I need you now, John."

"I don't know what to do."

"You will stay in, John. You will wait until I can vet the documents. If it's good stuff, we'll be close to Wayfarer. Remember, Wayfarer is the only one left on earth who can reassemble your soul. He is the missing part of you. You own him when we take him."

John heard himself breathing, then a blast of static.

Josh's voice again:

"Let me ask you something, John. When your parents were recovered from the airplane, you were asked to identify them, right? You told me so. I've thought about that since then. It's a very tragic thing for a nine-year old to be asked to do, and I am impressed that you could do it. But John, what if you hadn't entered that building? What if you had stayed out, never gone into that cool, disinfected room and had the courage to confront what life had so cruelly dealt to you? I can answer that. If you hadn't, John, you would still be there, still a boy, still terrified and confused and angry. If you had never opened that door, you could never have closed it. But you did, didn't you? And that's why you are the man you are."

John said nothing. His thoughts were underwater. Black, deep water. No up. No down.

"Listen to me, John. Months ago, when Rebecca was alive, I went to her house late one night, after work. She was in the pool. It was cold and there was steam coming off the water. She had been swimming for a long time because her breathing was fast and deep and her strokes were slow, and she wasn't staying in the lane. She was a strong swimmer. I sat down in the dark and watched. Back and forth. Back and forth. Ten more minutes. Twenty. Finally she stopped. She flipped up her goggles and stood in the shallow end a while. Then she climbed out and wrapped herself up in her towel—the red one, you remember, the one with the tropical fish on it. She still didn't know I was there. She hadn't looked my way. She sat on the deck and dangled her feet into the water. She was hunched inside that big towel, just the top of her head showing. And she said something to herself. She said,
You've got to do something. You've got to do something. You've got to do something, and you don't know what it is."

John waited through Joshua's silence.

Then:

"She couldn't see a way out, John. She was paralyzed by you. Paralyzed by me. It's the worst feeling on earth, needing to act but not understanding how to act. She never knew what to do, until she wrote those letters. But by then it was too late. She didn't live long enough to send them. You, John, have the path. You are halfway down it. You
know
what to do. Now, you must wait. Learn from what Rebecca didn't do. Let her teach you."

John looked again at Snakey's inert form, the two bloody holes in the back of his shirt.

"For Rebecca," said Joshua.

"For Rebecca," said John.

He could feel his heart begin to steady, and exhaustion settling over him. "Think Snakey left the computer message and the bag in my freezer?"

"No. I don't believe it was Snakey. I believe it was Holt, and that is why I had you bring me the photograph and the sketch, and the notes. We'll have them analyzed in twenty-four hours, God and the Crime Lab willing. They will prove to be a counterfeit of his handwriting and an altered photo. You will present them to him as a token of your trust and loyalty."

John said nothing. He felt like lying down in the dirt and sleeping for a week.

"Leave the bag in the box with your tools. Leave Snakey where he is, God rest him. Get a fresh camera and go back. Repair. Wayfarer is due back day after tomorrow. Let yourself come together again. You are scattered. You are losing focus. Show me that you're the man Rebecca thought you were. Show me she did the right thing by leaving me for you."

The risen sun was a disc of orange now, throwing heat and light into John's face. He imagined floating through the sky with the winds, like he'd tried to do at age ten from his uncle's roof.

"I can't bring her back to you, Joshua. I would if I could."

"I told you to never apologize for that. Never."

"It's not an apology. It's the truth."

A deep, icy chuckle issued from Joshua Weinstein. "I know you wouldn't bring her back to me even if you could, John. You would bring her back and keep her for yourself, now, wouldn't you?"

CHAPTER 25

The first time John Menden ran away from home he was eleven years old. It was not from his parents' home, of course, because they were elsewhere, out in the big wide open, out in the sky somewhere. It was Stan and Dorrie's.

He packed up the necessities for life on one's own: sleeping bag, a pillowcase full of food, pocketknife, all the cash he had— twenty-six dollars, a flashlight and a jacket. It was imperative that he bring his box with him. It was a cedar cigar box his father had given him, and it locked shut with a shiny brass hook. Inside it was the accumulated personal wealth of his eleven years: a silver ring with a big turquoise inlay that his parents brought him from Mexico and that was much too large even for his thumb; a piece of tree turned into a rock from the petrified forest of Arizona; pictures; a wristwatch that no longer worked; some sea shells he collected; two arrowheads he found himself; one shark's tooth he got up in the Mojave Desert and another, black and gigantic, that his mother bought for him; a collection of minerals in separate plastic bags that came with an Audubon Society book on rocks; Stebbins's
Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians;
and a loose rubble of acorns, tiny sand dollars, crab claws, pertinent stones and snake rattles. His latest addition to the box was the plastic bag the Sheriff had given him with the fossilized seashell and two gold rings. All of this luggage he strapped to his bicycle with Uncle Stan's duct tape, using the little book rack on his three-speed for the cigar box, sleeping bag and food. He slipped away late one summer morning.

First he went by his old house, which was only half a mile away. He stopped on the opposite sidewalk, leaned his weight onto one leg, and paused there to absorb the atmosphere of that place. The new owners had already painted the outside a dainty yellow with white trim, which John found too girlish. The woman had placed planter boxes under the bedroom windows and spiked them with marigolds and lobelia.

As he watched, two little boys about his age charged from the house and started up a game of stickball against the garage door. John looked on as they proceeded to use the very same strike zone that his father had painted there for him. The tennis ball thudded against the wood. One of the boys looked at him for a moment, then spit into the street. John leaned back onto the bicycle seat, strained his legs full-length to reach the pedals and headed off down the sidewalk.

Down Fourth all he way to the Marine Base, west along the chain link of the military property, past the guard house to the freeway, down the frontage road and old Coast Highway to a gravel path that led through a saltwater slough and into the gentle but wild foothills of the Rancho del Sol and a short three hours later John was on the place that would someday be known as Liberty Ridge.

He pushed his bike as far as he could into the brush, toward the lake. When he couldn't push it any farther he unstrapped his belongings and left it hidden under a lemonadeberry tree. It tool him almost an hour to cross the ridge of foothills and reach the lake. He could see the old mission house far on the other side, up on a rise where it commanded a view of the countryside around it. The roof tiles were orange in the summer light and the wall: were white. He found the old boat in its usual place, tucked up under a sandstone ledge not far from shore, with bunches of tumbleweeds to hide it. The oars were lying inside the hull.