All I could do, as she vanished, was retreat into her bedroom and hobble about, trying to get a last trace of her scent. I kept at it even after Kevin had come and gone again, until I’d heard them collect the three children outside—Ambyr in full mother mode and herding them into the rear seat of Kevin’s extended cab—and until, finally, the truck started up and pulled away. Then, at last, I allowed myself to collapse onto the edge of the bed, put my face into one of her pillows, and weep…
{vi.}
I cannot say how long I stayed in that room and that house, any more than I can say how long I cruised around Burgoyne County after leaving the place. Certain that I couldn’t yet return to Surrender, to tell not only Lucas but Clarissa and Mike about the hard truths I’d learned (and perhaps to be informed of Ambyr’s arrest), I retraced many of the roads we’d taken during the case; and at length I found myself back up at the Capamagios’ old trailer in Daybreak Lane, which still had fading crime scene tape hanging loosely from its door. I don’t know why that was the place that brought icy clarity to my thoughts: perhaps because it had all started there, or perhaps because I now had to imagine Ambyr’s cohorts, maybe even Ambyr herself, carrying Shelby’s body into the forlorn trailer, there to arrange it so grotesquely and then abandon it. Whatever the case, I finally did understand one thing, about the relationship that had inspired more hope than any other in my life, then crashed and burned so badly:
I had confused the similarity of the traumas that Ambyr and I had endured when we were younger with a close, even a precise, similarity of experience; and I’d therefore confused extreme compassion with genuine understanding. But where we had both known savage pain, before we met, for her the experience had been recent; there had been no time, first to make the mistakes and create the kind of havoc that emotional suffering inevitably drives humans toward, in the initial effort to relieve it, and then to finally grow tired of such behavior, and seek the kind of counseling that no relationship, not even a marriage, can replace. I’d had that time: time to do all the things that Mike had said I’d done, pick the wrong women, over and over, hurt them, let them hurt me, until I’d finally entered a program of psychotherapy myself. I wondered, as I walked about the overgrown grounds outside the trailer, if Ambyr would ever seek out such help. Plenty of traumatized people don’t; and they play hell with themselves and others for years, often for lifetimes, whatever their other accomplishments. Certainly, I could imagine Ambyr spending years doing just what she was doing now, pursuing a noble cause, on the one hand, and using it to rationalize lying to and using those close to her, on the other: only later would she learn that methods are as crucial as goals…
I could take none of these thoughts home with me, of course, if only for Lucas’ sake. There was, after all, a difference between being frank with the kid years down the road, and being so brutally honest at that moment that I would catapult him into disruptive, self-destructive behavior—or even cause him to slip back into his dissociative state, from which he would likely emerge only to embody just the sort of clinical compartmentalization that had come to afflict his sister. He didn’t deserve any of that. The only things that would keep him on a road toward the kind of recovery that might allow him to take care of himself and others were time, the help of a therapist of his own (which I would make sure he got), and the belief that Ambyr had not meant to betray him by behaving as she had. And that was the message I would bring to the kid. Confident that this was the correct course, I got back into the Empress and headed for Surrender and Shiloh, driving like Mike: with a lead foot and an utter disregard for speed limits. I lit a cigarette, rolled down my window, and punched the stereo on. Lucas’ CD was still there, ready to accompany my drive away from the late afternoon sun with a fully appropriate song: Led Zeppelin’s “Fool In the Rain.” All that was missing, I realized with a small laugh at the triteness of the thought, was the rain…
When I arrived at Death’s Head Hollow, I saw no signs of any reporters: all their vans had vanished, which might have seemed strange, had I not been certain that someone from the state—likely Donovan herself—had told the press that the real story was no longer there. The assistant district attorney’s ambition to rise quickly, which had been another engine of so much tragedy, required a shift of media attention to whichever of her superiors stood in her path to promotion, whom she would now, I was sure, try to implicate in the throwaways plot. It was another brilliant example of misdirection, and for now, it was fine with me: I needed time to adjust to my new reality, and to encourage Lucas to do the same. And so I headed on home—or rather, I tried to:
At one shielded bend in the road, just within sight of the hangar, the barns, and the roof of Shiloh’s farmhouse—the very spot where I knew that BCI cars had parked the evening that Gracie Chang had first come to visit us—were two vehicles. The first was an unmarked cruiser with a BCI card banded to its downturned visor. It was ominous, but the second was the one that struck terror into me: it was a beat-up Dodge truck from the late Nineties, with a white cap and all-terrain tires.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “A fucking coincidence, after all. Or is it…?”
I pulled the Crown Vic over and, with my Colt drawn, got out to examine the truck’s interior. On the front seat was the thing I most feared, an open and nearly empty Pelican tactical rifle case. Only the suppressor had been left behind: a deathly sign that secrecy had been abandoned altogether. Dashing forward, I tried the driver’s door of the cruiser, and found it open. Searching the papers scattered about the passenger seat, I discovered an official departmental note that was meaningless, save for its addressee: Frank Mangold.
“Jesus…” My mind was slipping into panic. “So Mitch was right about you, after all, Frank…”
I got out to look in all directions. They were here. At precisely the moment when I’d believed that I’d reached some kind of resolution about how to handle my homecoming, and been thankful, as always, that there was such a home to return to, everything had been thrown under renewed threat. Frank Mangold, lacking Cathy Donovan’s cleverness, needed someone to blame for his own shortcomings in the case. In addition, as he’d said to me at the Kurtz house that day, someone wasn’t playing straight with him, and he’d evidently decided that the culprits were Mike and me. So, to tie these ends together, he’d decided to charge us with something, anything, bringing their assassin along for backup. Not that I believed for a minute that the shooter usually drove that old Dodge: they’d bought it to try to confuse us, on the chance that we might see Kevin Meisner’s truck, and pursue a red herring. Which I almost had, the night we’d met Kevin. That part of the scheme was likely more of Donovan’s work, I didn’t know for sure; but before long, it seemed, I would find out. That is, if Mike and I were given that long to live: for we knew Mangold’s methods all too well…
My mind set to work, trying to figure out a plan; but I was prevented by the sudden sound of a gun going off up near the house. Not the short clap of a pistol report, but the long, echoing boom of a large-caliber rifle. Terrified, I quickly got back behind the wheel of the Empress, then heard its rear wheels growl as I slammed down the accelerator and spun them against the dusty dirt of the road. I didn’t even dare think about what, specifically, the gunshot had meant: every option was too horrifying. Instead, I steered, a bit perilously, with my left hand, keeping my Colt tight in my right.
“All right, you fuckers,” I said, rage cutting into my nauseating worry. “You shot first. Just remember that. Because I have had it…”
I reached the driveway in seconds, took the left-hand turn, and then raced on up to the house, not even bothering to continue on to the usual parking spot by the barn. Instead, I pulled onto the house’s lovely, sloping lawn, got out, and looked around, listening carefully—
But there was nothing; no sight, no sound. I waited for a few seconds, thinking that there might be more shots to indicate who was firing at whom from where; but again, nothing. The entire situation was
the apotheosis of eerie; but, my first thought being for Clarissa—who had been, after all, drafted into the case, and was the least deserving of harm—I set my cane to working hard, got up the slope of the lawn and onto the porch, then hobbled quickly through the screen door in front of me and into the living room, expecting to at least find somebody. But the house, like the rest of the farm, was deathly silent. I called all of their names in turn—“Clarissa! Annabel! Lucas? It’s okay, it’s me, Trajan!”—but still, nothing. Ignoring the rising pain in my hip, I made for the stairs and climbed them, using, by that point, almost every ounce of my strength to reach the second floor and get to the master bedroom. But the chamber was empty; even Marcianna was gone. And then a terrible thought occurred to me: hunting rifle—Marcianna—had they dared…?
Going back toward the stairs and still crying out to the others—“Will one of you answer me, damn it?”—I still got no response. But I also found no trace of blood, not even when I checked Clarissa’s bedroom and then went downstairs, stumbling once or twice as I did, to the kitchen. That comfort faded in speedy fashion, however, as I realized that the shot must have been fired outside, based on how loud its report had been, and how it had echoed up and down the hollow. Outside, I remember thinking clearly; it must have come from outside, and likely higher up than the house…
“No…” I whispered, the worst dread that I’d felt all day consuming me. “No, no, no!”
Bursting back out the screen door, I went to the northwest corner of the porch, from which I could just see the fence of Marcianna’s enclosure. With a shock that caused a lone, wretched, tearless sob, I saw that the gate was open: open, with my beloved other self nowhere to be seen. “Marcianna!” I called from my vantage point. “Marcianna, you come here—now!” But she did not appear, as she had every other time I’d called her, during the years since she’d learned her name and truly acclimated to life at Shiloh. Even the few times that, for whatever reason, she’d gotten loose, she’d always come at the insistent sound of my call. But now…nothing.
Getting back to the ground, I left the Empress where it sat and started toward the barn, still calling her name, along with Clarissa’s, Annabel’s, and Lucas’, as I went. But I continued to be answered by that maddening silence, which was universal: even the birds had stopped making any sound, with the boom of the rifle shot, as had the cows. It was literally, or so I thought, a deathly silence; and by the time I reached the barn I was becoming frantic. Finding no more sign of life here than I had anywhere else, I made for the hill to the hangar, and began to call Mike’s name.
Finally, a response, from high up in Marcianna’s enclosure: Mike’s voice. “L.T.?” he called. “L.T., watch the fuck out! That fucker’s on the loose!”
Breathing a heavy sigh of relief but keeping my head on a swivel, I started up the hill. “But where the hell is everybody, Mike?” I shouted.
“We’re all up here,” he said. “In Marcianna’s cave, den, whatever the fuck you call it!”
“Are you all okay?” I responded. “What the hell was that shot?”
“Yeah,” he said; and suddenly, there was a note of real trepidation in his voice: “We’re all fine, but—Marcianna…”
“Marcianna what?” I cried, my voice warbling badly.
Mike paused before answering: “She got hit—trying to protect us.”
“No…” Tears had already come to my eyes. Then I asked the terrible question: “Is she okay?”
“She’s hurt, L.T.,” Mike answered slowly. “I think it might be bad. I already called her vet—but he says he isn’t coming until the shooting’s stopped. The problem being, we don’t know where the fuck the shooter is, or who the fuck he is!”
“Have you seen Mangold?” I asked, a lethal desire for revenge now in my words.
“Christ, is he here, too?” Mike answered. “No, not him—I never saw this fucker before.”
“Where did he go?”
And finally, a new voice: from behind the parked Prowlers in the lean-to shed adjoining the barn, it was the sound of a human who’d descended to the level of an injured, angry animal:
“I’m right the fuck over here, Jones…”
He slithered out from behind the ATVs, using one of them for support. In his left hand, and pointed at me, was the rifle that, I had no doubt, had done the damage to the roof of the machine he was leaning on, to Marcianna, and to Curtis Kolmback: a Savage 10FP. He was thin but wiry, with bright blue eyes, while his face, which I suddenly realized I’d seen before, was pale from loss of blood; and the cause of the loss was easy to locate. The de rigueur black sniper’s costume that he was wearing had been torn away from his right arm, as had much of the flesh near the shoulder and all through the hand. He was bleeding badly, but he didn’t seem to know just how badly: I was relatively certain that Marcianna had shredded his brachial artery, and that, without fairly speedy medical assistance, he would bleed out in moments.
“Rare kind of hunting dog, hunh?” he said, his voice hoarse with weakness and pain. “That fucking thing just about tore my arm off. But I worked a bullet into her—don’t you think I didn’t…”
“Sergeant Dennis Shea,” I said, immediately recalling the scene in North Fraser that night, when it had been this excuse for a man who had put a bullet through Latrell’s brain.
He nodded with a pathetically evil grin. “Didn’t know if you’d remember me.” He kept the gun leveled at my chest, but unsteadily. “Glad you did. Your friend Dr. Li, he didn’t; just carried your animal up into that cave with the others. I didn’t stop ’em, they don’t matter. You’re the only one who does. I nail you, my bosses’ll be happy. Now toss that Colt over here…”
I did as instructed, having absolutely no fear, now. If Marcianna was indeed dying, I had no more interest in living, myself. Not after that day, not in a world that could have caused all this to happen. But I was, as always, curious about a few details:
“So,” I said, raising my right hand while I switched my cane over to my left: for more reasons than mere submission. “You’re Frank Mangold’s golden boy, and he’s probably let you in on everything that’s gone on with this case. Then you’ve fed that information to the people who’ve been placing these kids down south, the people that Frank didn’t even know he should’ve been looking for. Got paid a nice fat fee for all you did, knowing that, when the time came, you could break the case open, and make yourself look good. But only after the Kurtz girl and her friends had gotten away, so that they’d never suspect you of playing both sides against each other.”
He nodded, his wretched, pained grin spreading. “Something like that. You think you know so much, but you never figured all that out till now.”
“No,” I answered. “I didn’t.” I began to move toward him by slow increments. “So it was you, then—the Gunderson boy, in the Patricks’ house. You put him there?”
“Right” came the answer. “On orders, of course. We almost tied the whole thing up with the Patricks. Even had Frank believing it. But you…” Shea began to gasp, wincing in pain, and the muzzle of his Savage drooped. “You had to do it, didn’t you? Wasn’t enough that you went and fell in love with Ambyr”—and from the way he said her name, I could tell that he harbored his own feelings about my departed paramour—“you had to fuck everything else up. Now you take it all with you.”
“I’m not quite that stupid, Shea,” I said, still advancing slowly. “Even if you kill us all, others know, and will take over. But tell me: is it just my imagination, or is everybody in this damned county in love with Ambyr Kurtz?”
“Don’t you talk like that! She ain’t that way, she was only with you to protect the operation.”
“You sap,” I answered, trying to keep his blood flowing hard with anger. “Whatever she was really doing, you don’t know, and you’ll certainly never find out.”
“Think so?” he answered. Then he caught my movements: late, and a sign of his diminishing strength. “Stay right the fuck there, Doc!
” he warned; but the rifle in his left hand drooped even more. “So fucking smart,” he said; and there was a terrible similarity in the way he said it that almost made me believe he had had some intimate moments with Ambyr. “I’ll find out—once I get to Mexico and meet up with her, and we ditch that Meisner kid.”
“Mexico?” I let out a short laugh, despite the fact that my left hip was giving me hell again. “You chump—did she really tell you they were headed for Mexico?” The added weight that came from having my cane on the wrong side made me wince, I hoped not perceptibly: for the longer I remained in that configuration, I determined, the more he’d believe that it was my right and not my left leg that had been amputated. “And when you get there,” I went on, “are you going to tell her that you killed Derek Franco? On Cathy Donovan’s orders?”
“She don’t need to know that,” he answered, still trying but failing to level the rifle.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be very happy, then. Two liars, off into the sunset. Except that she won’t be in Mexico, Shea—that’s just some story she told you.”
“You shut up about her, I said! She told me she’d be there because that’s the truth, and don’t you try to tell me anything else.”
I could only smile mournfully. “Shea—if you know anything about her, you know that that girl has a different version of the truth for every person she talks to.”
“Shut up!” he cried, with a renewed lethality. “Just shut the fuck up and stand there, while I figure out—” He tried to drag his rifle up onto the fender of the Prowler and point it at my head, but could only get it as far as the shaky perch of the top of the front tire. “Goddamn it,” he said, his frustration revealing how far his thinking had been clouded. “They never—I never learned how to shoot with my left, damn it…”
“Of course not.” I studied his bearing and general demeanor more closely, along with his ignorance of the fact that the main wound to his shoulder was slowly draining the life out of him. “You weren’t military, Shea. They teach their snipers to at least defend themselves with either arm. You’re just some dumb cop playing soldier, who doesn’t even know basic wound awareness.”