Very Bad Men (50 page)

“Where did he come from?” I said in a quiet voice.

Elizabeth answered in kind. “The woods on the other side of the cabin.” We watched him creep toward the second car, the one covered with a tarp—the senator's Mercury. He circled it, reaching beneath the canvas to try each of the doors. They must have been locked. He straightened, peering toward the cabin, then glancing in our direction. He did a double take and in the next moment moved swiftly around the car and into the woods.

Elizabeth and I stood motionless, straining to catch sight of him again. Somewhere in the trees above us a bird sang out. Elizabeth took a step toward the cabin, as if she intended to go looking for Nick. As I made up my mind to join her I heard sounds behind me: the snap of a twig, the stirring of old leaves. I spun around to see Nick stepping out of the woods.

“What're you doing here, sport?”

Elizabeth answered before I could. “Let's go for a ride.”

 

 

“YOU'RE GONNA THINK this is crazy,” Nick said.

We were driving south through Brimley. His bike was in the trunk; we had stopped to pick it up from a hollow by the roadside. Nick sat in the backseat, leaning forward to talk to us.

“That guy with my mom, I think he's somebody.”

Elizabeth and I exchanged a look.

“Is that why you were sneaking around his car?” she asked.

Nick shrugged. “I thought there might be something in there with his name on it, but it was locked. You know who he is, don't you?”

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw his dark eyes staring back at me.

“Put your seat belt on,” I said.

“You're killing me, sport.”

Elizabeth gestured for him to sit back. After a moment I heard the click of the belt.

“How long has that man been involved with your mother?” she asked him.

“They been talking the last two weeks. Maybe longer. I answered the phone once or twice when he called.”

“What has your mother told you about him?”

“She says he's an old friend. His name is Johnny.”

“And she's been seeing him?”

“She doesn't admit it—she just tells me she's going out.” In the mirror I saw him sneer. “‘Going out' used to mean the Cozy Inn,” he said. “That's where she used to meet up with Kyle Scudder. But she broke it off with him.”

“When?” I asked.

“Two weeks ago, same time she started going out with Johnny. I been trying to figure out where she meets him. Not at the Cozy, I checked there. Today's the first time I thought of the cabin.” He looked from me to Elizabeth. “You didn't answer me. Do you know who he is?”

“He's exactly who you think he is,” I said. “John Casterbridge, the senator.”

Nick scrunched his face into a frown. “What's he doing in Brimley?”

An excellent question. I wasn't about to tell him the truth: that Casterbridge had come here to see the woman who had given him a son thirty-seven years ago. I tried to think of an answer that wouldn't be a lie, but Elizabeth saved me the trouble.

“It's like your mother said,” she told him. “They're old friends.”

WHEN WE REACHED the farmhouse, the sky was darkening into evening. I parked beside the rusted pickup and helped Nick haul his bike out of the trunk.

We went inside and Elizabeth asked him if he'd eaten dinner. He hadn't, so we retreated to the kitchen and fixed him a sandwich and a bowl of soup. I kept him company while he ate, and Elizabeth wandered into the living room. We found her there a short while later, standing by the fireplace. A collection of framed photographs lined the mantel—most of them of Nick, one of old Charlie Dawtrey, and one that looked like a high school portrait of Matthew Kenneally.

Kenneally's name had been in the news, and one or two stations had carried footage of him leaving City Hall on the night he was questioned about shooting Anthony Lark. I knew Nick had followed the news about Lark's death, so I wondered why he hadn't made a connection between Lark's doctor and the boy in the picture on his mother's mantel.

Elizabeth must have wondered too. She reached the picture down and showed it to Nick.

“Who's this?”

He frowned. “That's supposed to be my brother.”

“Supposed to be?”

“I've never met him. He's way older than me and lives down south.”

“In southern Michigan?”

“Farther south than that,” Nick said. “I think he moved to get away from my mom. They don't get along. He's got some big important job—he never has time to visit.”

“What's his name?” Elizabeth asked, returning the picture to the mantel.

Nick had to search his memory. “Chip,” he said at last.

“What's that short for?”

He shrugged impatiently. “Whatever it's usually short for. Are you gonna tell me what you're doing up here?”

The question was as much for me as for her, but I stood silently with my hands in my pockets, feeling the smooth metal of the bullet against the fingertips of my right hand. Elizabeth stared at the fieldstones of the fireplace. I knew she didn't want to answer him.

She couldn't tell him the truth: that his mother had married his father at least partly out of guilt, because her son had escaped punishment for the Great Lakes robbery and his son had gone to prison. That he, Nick, was an act of penance, a replacement for his lost brother, Terry. She couldn't tell him that his other brother, Matthew Kenneally, had manipulated Anthony Lark, sending him after Terry—an act that had led directly to Nick's father's death.

She settled on an answer that didn't really tell him anything.

“We came to talk to some people up here. To ask some questions.”

“What questions?” he said.

“Just police business. Nothing you should worry about.”

It was the wrong thing to say. The corners of Nick's mouth tightened with contempt. He turned his back on Elizabeth and said to me, “You lied about her, sport.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said she wanted to find out the truth about what happened to my father. And Terry.”

“She did. And she has.”

“She's just a cop,” he said, his voice rising. “Cops look out for other cops.”

I answered him calmly. “We've talked about this, Nick. Anthony Lark killed your father. The cops had nothing to do with it.”

“Paul Rhiner shot Terry. He was a cop.”

“He was doing his job. Terry tried to run.”

The words tore out of him, his voice nearly a scream. I could see the tension in his shoulders, in his clenched hands. I thought he was close to tears.

“Hey,” I said softly. “Take it easy.”

Elizabeth came around so she could see him face to face. “It's all right,” she said. “I know this is hard. You loved Terry. You shouldn't have to deal with this alone. Have you talked to your mother? Does she know about . . . everything that happened?”

Nick turned to me, bewildered. “What's she trying to say?”

I didn't answer him right away. I was fiddling with the bullet, turning it over with my fingers. I thought I knew exactly what Elizabeth was trying to say. I should have seen it much sooner. Nick acted like an adult, but he was fifteen years old. He'd had a brother in prison, and had loved him enough to help him try to escape. But the attempt had failed. His brother had died.

I watched the bullet turning between my fingers. Without realizing it, I had taken it out of my pocket. When I looked up I saw Nick staring at me. I slipped my hand back in my pocket and let the bullet drop.

“What she's saying,” I told him, “is that you shouldn't blame yourself for what happened to Terry. It's not your fault. And if you want to talk about it—”

I watched his lips tremble, his anger barely controlled. His dark eyes glared at me. “You a social worker now, sport? You want me to talk about my feelings? I'm not sorry about what I did for Terry. You don't know anything. You want to help me? Find out why they killed him.”

I shook my head sadly. “They killed him because he ran.”

“That's what you keep saying.” He whirled around toward Elizabeth. “You said you came up here to ask questions. You talk to Sam Tillman yet?”

I had almost forgotten about Tillman. He was the other deputy who'd been guarding Terry Dawtrey. Paul Rhiner's partner.

Elizabeth shook her head. “I haven't talked to him.”

“I've been watching his house,” Nick said. Pointing at me, he added, “Did he tell you?”

“I told her,” I said. “But I thought you stopped. I asked you to stop.”

Nick ignored me. “Sam Tillman spent the last two weeks sleeping on his couch. Then on Thursday his wife left him. She took the kids and the dog. Packed a lot of stuff in her car.”

Elizabeth was watching him intently. “Is that right?”

“Yesterday his priest came to see him,” Nick said. “They went inside and talked for an hour. I couldn't hear what they said.”

“If Tillman's marriage is in trouble,” she said, “they might have been talking about that.”

Nick closed his eyes in frustration. “They might have been praying for rain. But I figure if a priest comes to your house, maybe he's there to hear your confession.” His eyes came open again. “Paul Rhiner's the one who shot Terry. So what does Sam Tillman have to confess?”

Elizabeth said nothing at first. She lifted her necklace from her throat, touched the beads to her chin thoughtfully.

Then she said to Nick, “I need you to stay away from Sam Tillman's house.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I heard that line before.”

“You're right to be angry,” she told him. “I haven't looked closely enough at Terry's death. But I will now, I promise you. Starting with Tillman. I'll talk to him.”

“It's about time.”

“That's why I need you to stay away from him. And there's something else.”

“Yeah?”

“I need to know about the plan for Terry's escape,” she said. “Whose idea it was, how you worked it out, all the details.”

He looked at her warily. “I'll tell you, but I want to go with you to see Tillman.”

I expected her to say no, but she nodded. “You can go,” she said. “But you have to do as I say. We'll drive out there tomorrow. Until then, you stay away from him.”

“Why can't we go right now?”

“I need time to prepare. It has to be tomorrow.”

A skeptical silence. Then: “All right.”

E
lizabeth and I left the farmhouse around twenty after nine. By then Nick's mother had called to let him know she'd be home soon. I listened to the snap of gravel under the tires as we coasted down the driveway and onto the road. I had my window down.

“I was surprised when you told Nick he could come with us tomorrow,” I said.

Elizabeth steered through a slow curve. “Are you scandalized, David?”

“A little. It was such a brazen lie.”

She smiled, but the smile held no pleasure. “Do you think he believed it?”

“I think so.”

I knew she didn't like deceiving him, but she couldn't take him when she went to interview Tillman. And it made no sense to argue with him.

“So we're not waiting till tomorrow?” I said, reaching over to touch her hair.

She leaned her head back. “I thought we'd go now.”

She drove us north and east on two-lane county roads. When the speed limit went up to fifty-five I raised my window. A dark line of trees swept by us on either side.

“What do we think of Madelyn Turner?” I said.

Elizabeth answered without taking her eyes from the road. “She's a careful woman. She's been walking a tightrope for the last seventeen years.”

“She kept a lot of secrets,” I said. “She kept Nick from knowing much of anything at all about Matthew Kenneally.”

“She had to. Once she got involved with Charlie Dawtrey, she was on a dangerous path. The secrecy had to have started then, before Nick was born. She must have been afraid of Terry Dawtrey. She knew he had seen Kenneally on the day of the Great Lakes robbery, and probably before. She might have assumed he didn't know Kenneally's name—Floyd Lambeau had the robbers call each other by code names—but she couldn't be sure. Anything she revealed about her son to Charlie—and later to Nick—could get passed along to Terry.”

So Matthew Kenneally became “Chip,” the estranged son who lived down south and had a job that kept him from visiting. Not much more than a photograph on the mantel.