The Truth of the Matter (17 page)

“Go ahead, Detective,” said the trooper.

“Have you got him?” said Rose. I recognized his voice now, even through the static of the radio. “Have you got West?”

“We’re on the chase. He went over the side of a mountain. It’s pretty steep. We may need some grappling equipment.”

There was a pause. Then Rose said, “You have your orders. Do what you have to do. Get him.”

“Ten-four,” said the Trooper. Then, muttering to his companion, he said, “What’s he giving me orders for? Guy’s not even in his own jurisdiction.”

“I know. He’s obsessed with this kid, though. It’s something personal.”

“Yeah, well, not falling off mountains is something personal with me.”

There was a bitter laugh in answer.

The idea that Rose was guiding the hunt for me gave me a weak, sour feeling. I knew the trooper was right: he
was
obsessed with me. He had believed me when I told him I was innocent. He felt betrayed—humiliated and fooled—when I turned out to be guilty. Now I understood more fully: Rose had been
right
to think I was innocent. It wasn’t I who had tricked him. It was Waterman and his people, Waterman and his people framing me for murder. No wonder Rose felt like a fool. And then my escape . . . He didn’t know it was all arranged by Waterman. He was furious about it all, and he would never rest until he had me back in custody.

Fighting down the growing pain inside me, I began climbing again. I looked down and saw that a new slope rolled out under my feet not too many yards below. I was almost there. Even if I fell now, I’d probably only get banged up a little. And at this point, I was so banged, scratched, sore, and aching, that I didn’t think a few more bruises would bother me much.

“This isn’t working,” I heard one of the troopers say above me. He sounded completely out of breath now. “There’s no way I’m going over the side carrying all this equipment. Not without a rope at least.”

“Yeah, me either,” said the other one.

Then, all at once, the first trooper shouted out to me, “Hey, kid! Hey, West! Can you hear me?”

I didn’t answer. I kept climbing down toward the slope below.

“Hey, kid!” the trooper shouted. “Why don’t you do yourself a favor and give yourself up? We’re in the middle of nowhere here. These woods go on for miles. It’s cold. Eventually the sun’ll go down. It’ll be dark. There’ll be bears. Snakes and whatnot. Come on! Starving and freezing to death—it’s no fun. Hey, West! Can you hear me?”

I heard him. And I knew he was right too. I couldn’t see anything beneath me but more forest, more trees. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was going. I had no plan.

But I did have a sort of vague idea of a way forward.

I reached the bottom. I looked up. I could see one of the troopers. He was peeking carefully over the edge of the drop. I could just see his head where it stuck out over the precipice.

He spotted me and shouted: “West! West!”

I began to scramble down the slope away from him.

“This is crazy, West,” he shouted. “We’re gonna get you sooner or later!”

I knew he was right . . . but I kept going.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Next Attack

The slope eased as I reached the bottom of the mountain. Soon I was making my way through the woods again, pushing through brush and tangled branches, moving slowly under towering pine trees and past the gnarled, eerie shapes of leafless oaks. The sun was shining in between the large clouds that sailed majestically through the blue sky, but the air was dry and crisp and cold. I welcomed the feel of the cold air on my skin. I was hot with effort and covered in sweat and the chill was refreshing on my bloody face.

As I moved, I could feel the pain building inside me again. I knew it was only a matter of time before another memory attack came on. Before it happened, before it left me helpless and unconscious on the forest floor, I had to put as much distance between me and the police as I could.

My idea was this: if it was true, as Waylon had said, that there was someone else who knew me, who knew about Waterman and his plan to frame me for murder and work me inside the Homelanders organization, then maybe I already knew who it was. Maybe, I mean, the information was already deep down there in my brain somewhere and I just hadn’t remembered it yet. And with my memory slowly coming back to me one painful attack after another, maybe if I could just survive until the next attack, I’d remember who my ally was and figure out how to find my way to him.

The problem was, the memory attacks left me helpless. While I was busy lying unconscious writhing in agony and going back into the past and so on, the police—and Rose—would be spreading out through the forest looking for me. I needed to find a safe place where I could go through the whole rotten process in relative peace.

So I kept pushing my way through the tangled branches and underbrush, kept heading downhill, hoping to find a road or a house or even just a cave or something, hoping I could hold the attack at bay until I was someplace where I could hide and collapse and let myself go.

But with every step, I could feel myself growing weaker. I was thirsty, hungry. Every part of my body seemed to ache or sting or burn. Luckily, the forest floor was growing more and more level as I descended. I thought I must be getting near the bottom of the hill.

I paused. I leaned against the trunk of a tall pine, breathless. I looked into what seemed an endless tangle of forest. The sun was pouring down through the branches in yellow columns. As I scanned the scene, I saw, some yards ahead, a beam of sun fall through a stand of hemlocks to land glittering on the ground.

I saw that glitter and I thought:
Water!

I moved toward the light. Sure enough, a stream was there, bubbling quickly over a bed of rocks. I knelt on the stream’s banks and drew the water out in my cupped hands and drank and drank until my head cleared. I bathed my sores, washed the blood off my face . . .

And as I did, I heard something.

I wasn’t sure of it at first. The trickling sound of the water obscured the other noise. But I held very still and listened very hard and after another moment, yes, I did hear it: an engine. The sound of a car or a truck on a road nearby!

I leapt to my feet. I crossed over the stream. I moved through the trees as quickly as I could. The engine sound grew louder. I was pretty sure it was a truck now. It was getting nearer and nearer to where I was.

Was it the police coming after me? The Homelanders? Or someone else, just an ordinary citizen passing through? In any case, it meant I was close to a road, close to finding a way out of the woods.

The sound of the truck grew louder. Then I saw it. Off in the distance, through the trees. A red pickup zipping along a road just beyond the edge of the forest. Not the police anyway. I didn’t think it was the Homelanders either.

The truck moved along the road, getting closer and closer to me.

Despite all my aches and pains, despite my exhaustion, I broke out in a smile. I moved faster and faster toward the truck. Maybe I could stop it. Maybe I could hitch a ride. But even if I couldn’t, the fact was: I had made it. I had found my way. I was almost out of the woods . . .

I took another step—and that’s when the dragon of pain burst to life inside me.

The next memory attack struck me to the ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Last Day of My Life

I looked around, startled. Where was I?

Dumb question. It was obvious, wasn’t it? I was sitting at the dining room table in my house in Spring Hill. Where else would I be? I mean, for a moment, I guess my mind had drifted and I had had this strange sense that I was somewhere else, in some forest wilderness somewhere where something unpleasant was going on . . .

But no, everything was all right now. Here I was at home, having dinner with my mom and dad and my sister, Amy, like pretty much always.

And I was struck by how . . . well, just how
pleasant
it was here. The smell of food filled the house. So did the sound of our voices and occasional laughter. Looking down at my plate, I saw we were having pork chops and applesauce and mashed potatoes. Sweet! One of my favorite meals.

But something was wrong. What was it?

I lifted a forkful of meat to my mouth, started chewing slowly, trying to figure it out. My heart was heavy. Why? What was the matter?

Then, as if I were waking from a dream, everything snapped into place and I remembered. This was my last night here, my last night at home. My last night with my parents for a long time, maybe forever.

Tomorrow, I was going to be arrested for the murder of Alex Hauser.

I had agreed to Waterman’s plan. I had told Waterman
Okay, I’ll do it
. And now the machinery of my frame-up and arrest had gone into operation and there was no stopping it.

Everything is already in place
.

That’s what Waterman had told me as we’d driven around the hills in his limousine.

It’s all arranged. We’ll use what pull we have to expedite the trial. We’ll get rid of a lot of the usual preliminaries
and get you convicted as soon as possible. It’s all going to
happen very quickly, Charlie .
. .

The meat became tasteless in my mouth. My throat felt so thick, I didn’t think I’d be able to swallow. Why had I agreed to this? What had I done?

No one will know any more than they have to
, Waterman had told me.
Only a very small group of individuals
will be in possession of all the facts. We’ll get you
arrested and convicted as quickly as we can and arrange
the breakout from prison as soon as possible. But we
have to be careful not to let it look too easy, or the
Homelanders will get suspicious. Also, we need to give
Sherman enough time to feel he’s converted you to his
point of view. So in the meantime, you’ll have to be
patient and look after yourself. Basically, from now on,
you’ll be on your own
.

As I chewed the meat that now tasted like cardboard, Waterman’s voice replayed in my head. But at the same time, there was another voice nattering away almost without a break. It was my sister, Amy. She was sitting across the table from me, talking full speed.

Coming out of my own thoughts, I lifted my eyes to her. Amy was a year older than me. For as long as I could remember, she had been—not the worst person in the world or anything like that—just what you might call a source of unrelenting annoyance. Having Amy for a sister was like having this irritating high-pitched noise sounding constantly in your ear . . . while someone hit you over the head with a hammer at the same time. It wasn’t the constant talking that bothered me, it was the constant
emotion
. She was always really, really something-or-other—really, really happy; really, really sad; really, really nervous or frightened or excited. Whatever emotion it was, it was always as if she were experiencing it for the first time ever on planet Earth and experiencing it more powerfully than anyone on the planet would ever experience it again.

“So Mandy is all, like, I
have
to go to college in California, I just
have
to, and her mom is all, like,
absolutely
not
, I am not sending my
baby
so far away, and Mandy is, like, I’ll
die
because she and Sam are, like, Lovers Till Death and she’s, like, ‘Mom, you don’t understand, Sam is, like, going CRA,’ and she’s like all, ‘CRA? What’s CRA?’ because Mandy’s mom is so basically clueless and Mandy is like screaming at this point, ‘It’s College Rules Apply! College Rules Apply!’ because basically Sam figures he can be with anyone he wants now as long as Mandy’s not in the same state and Mandy is so I’m-going-to-throw-myself-out-the-window . . .”

With her being my sister and all, it was hard for me to judge, but I think Amy must have been pretty. She had long, straight brown hair and a sort of round face with blue eyes, all of which looked okay enough to me. But I think she must’ve been more attractive to the rest of the general male population than I could see, because guys seemed to fall all over themselves to get close to her. Her conversation was always so full of Johns and Judds and Joes and Daves and so on, I couldn’t keep up with which one of them she was ready to die over at any given moment. It must have been because of her looks. It’s the only explanation I can think of. I mean, it wasn’t her personality, I feel sure about that.

Anyway, this was her last year in high school, and right now she was involved in what to her was the unbearable drama and suspense of applying to colleges, and I guess that’s what she was rattling on about. She herself had to get in to some art school in Virginia or she was going to die, just die, and I guess her friend Mandy had to go to California or she would likely die as well. Teenage girls die a lot, if my sister is any indication. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to hurt them much.

Chewing that piece of cardboard meat, I looked at her from across the table. Her voice seemed to fade away and become muffled and distant. The remembered voice of Waterman returned, much louder, clearer, more real to me than Amy’s.

You’re going to be on your own a lot from now on,
Charlie. On your own, in danger, afraid. I’d tell you to
brace yourself, to get used to it, but I know from personal
experience that you never get used to it
.

“The suspense is
killing
me,” Amy said. “I swear if I get wait-listed, I’m just going to keel over on the spot . . .”

I chewed the tasteless meat, unable to swallow, knowing it wouldn’t go down past the lump in my throat. I looked across the table at Amy. More than anything, I wanted to get up, go over to her and put my arms around her. Strange as it was, annoying as she was, I suddenly realized I was going to miss her.

I will tell you this
, Waterman had gone on as the limousine traveled through the hills
. We chose you for a
reason. Partly, sure, it’s just because you’re in the right
place at the right time. But it was more than that. We chose
you because we know you’re a warrior. We know when the
going gets tough—and it’s going to get very tough, Charlie—we know you won’t surrender. In the end, that
may be all we have going for us
.