The Best of Evil

  “Let’s do my next scene,” I said.

  Carla studied my face. “I like it. You hold that intensity, Aramis. We’ll be ready to roll in a few minutes, soon as the lighting crew’s set.”

  The slow pace of the filming process tested my patience through the remainder of the day. I was relieved when lengthening shadows and dropping temperatures ended Saturday’s session in the woods above Big Bear Lake. I had pizza alone in the cabin, watched the end of an NBA game, and lamented the inability of seven-foot basketball players to make free throws.

  Anything to take my mind off stirred recollections. Covered by a thick eiderdown comforter, I drifted into dreamless sleep and woke up needing to remind myself where I was.

  Carla Fleischmann knocked once before using her own key to enter.

  “Hey.” I turned from flames crackling in the huge stone fireplace. “How about a little privacy here?”

  “No such thing in show biz.”

  “It’s only six. I thought the schedule said—”

  “Change of plans.” She zipped her white ski coat. “Storm’s moving in by midafternoon, so we need to wrap things quickly.”

  I adjusted my boxers. “Lemme get dressed.”

  “Today’s the day, Aramis. Are you ready to face Wyatt Tremaine?”

  On the monitor, Wyatt looked harmless in peglegged jeans and a button-down shirt. This was my uncle. And yet a stranger to me. Where had he been all these years? Why had he moved to Hohenwald? Had he known all along about Mom’s secrets? About Meriwether Lewis?

  As the camera tagged along beside him, it revealed deep lines in his middle-aged face. The segment showed him walking through a small town, his boots clicking on the sidewalk. He looked back over his shoulder—a man running from unseen ghosts.

  Narrator: “Meet mild-mannered Wyatt Tremaine. For years he’s carried the shame of what happened that day at the riverbank. Could he have saved his sister’s life? Did his actions goad the killer into pulling the trigger?”

  The camera pulled back to reveal the narrator strolling alongside my uncle.

  “Your nephew holds you responsible, Mr. Tremaine. Fair? Not fair?”

  “The boy’s entitled to his opinion, I s’pose. Don’t take no joy in what happened. That’s a fact.”

  “How did that day start? Did you suspect the trouble to come?”

  Wyatt gazed far off. Natural light revealed shadows beneath his eyes.

  “I was out workin’ with my tractor,” he said at last. “Saw someone wavin’ me in from the porch, had a call from my sister. She tells me a man’s just pulled up in her driveway, yellin’ at her, plannin’ to kill her.”

  “And what did you do at that point?”

  “I went to her straight off, hopin’ to get there in time.”

  The shot switched to an old Chevy kicking up dust. Wyatt’s face was visible through the driver’s side window as the car slid to a stop before a humble farm dwelling that represented my childhood home. Wyatt, viewed in slow motion, ran to the door and through the house. Empty. He vaulted back down the front steps and raced through the reeds toward the river that glistened in the background.

  There. A little boy. Crouched in fear on the ground.

  The child actor.

  But it was me. I could taste the mud in my mouth all over again.

  Wyatt shoved the child down, gagged him with a cloth, and said, “Don’t you make a noise, you hear? Not one peep.”

  Shadowy and muffled, seen through the curtain of reeds, the attacker yelled threats and brandished a gun. Standing, my uncle entered the fray.

  The narrator appeared on-screen again, standing on the deck of a lodge, with the sound of the wind playing softly through the Jeffrey pines. I was at his side.

  Narrator: “Why did he restrain you the way he did, Aramis? You blame him for your mother’s death, but was he simply trying to protect you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what he was trying to do.”

  “Why then do you hold him responsible?”

  “I got loose. My mom had already been shot in the leg …”

  The camera went back to the river as a thundering gunshot brought a woman to her knees in obvious pain. The narrator and I continued the voice-over while the scene played out with the child actor stumbling through the reeds.

  “I ran forward,” I explained, “yelling at the man to stop. And he did.”

  “He stopped?”

  “Yes. When he realized I was her child, his entire attitude changed. He turned toward me and told me he could see I was a good kid. He was gonna let her live. Except my uncle didn’t get it. Didn’t pay any attention and tried to jump the man.”

  “Was he wrong, Aramis, to try to protect your mother?”

  “The gunman warned him. Said if Wyatt moved another step he would kill my mom. But that didn’t stop my uncle from trying to be a hero.”

  “And what was the result?”

  Even softened by the voice-over, my bitterness was thick.

  “My mother was murdered.”

  The music came back in with a teaser for the next segment. Then the show’s logo swiveled into view. I kept my eyes on the monitor. Fixated.

  The following scene opened with a recap as the camera swept past a sign that read Welcome to Hohenwald. Zooming in toward a green John Deere tractor, the lens found my uncle at the wheel. He was plowing a field, jostled by the ruts, talking in his easy manner.

  “Aramis never knew, and it weren’t my place to tell him the truth. I know the kid blames me, and I figure that’s the price a man pays sometimes. There were things in our family, things people wanted to get hold of, and I was just tryin’ to protect my own, that’s all.”

  “But,” the narrator interjected, “the protection came too late.”

  Back to the riverside, through the reeds, with white water in the background …

  Gunman: “Dianne, you didn’t tell me you had a son.”

  Wyatt: “He’s lying. I don’t know that kid.”

  The gunman turned to the child again, and my uncle launched forward.

  The sound of a shot shook the monitor’s speakers, then the camera spiraled down, jolted, turned up into the merciless sky—mirroring my mother’s journey. A montage of her body followed: dropping into the white water, plunging under the surface, bobbing up, then disappearing for good until all that filled the screen were the rapids, depleting their energy into darker, deeper pools below.

  The narrator, back at the lodge: “Did you ever learn the gunman’s identity?”

  I pushed my fingers into my thick hair. Shook my head. “Never.”

  “Would it ease your mind if we were to tell you that your mother’s killer was brought to justice for this ruthless act?”

  A barely perceptible shiver. My eyes dark green, uncertain.

  The narrator sat me down at a table on the lodge’s deck and spread open a file of paperwork and photographs. One photo in particular grabbed my attention. I took hold of it. On the screen, the face of a murderer became clear. Not an actor. The actual man. Darkly tanned with bleached blond hair. I could still see that malevolence roiling through emerald eyes before he fired the fatal shot.

  Narrator: “This man was arrested by the Tennessee Highway Patrol fifteen months after the murder. He was pulled over for a traffic violation outside Nashville. There were warrants for his arrest in four states. Eventually he was convicted of murder and armed robbery and spent nearly two decades in the state penitentiary near Salem, Oregon.”

  “The Oregon State Pen?” That got my attention.

  Back in the field at Hohenwald, on his tractor …

  Uncle Wyatt: “I saved Aramis’s life. That’s the thing he ain’t never understood. He wanted nothin’ to do with me, so I just up and left. By then, the truth was all topsy-turvy anyhow. Didn’t lay eyes on my nephew again until just this year. Hoped to talk to the boy, make some sense of it all. One look at me, though, and he popped me hard across the face.” Wyatt wiped a
hand over his chin. “Funny thing how he got that anger inside him. Just like his daddy.”

  Seated across from me at the lodge, the narrator gave me a woeful look.

  “What do you want?” I demanded.

  “Your uncle claims he saved your life. Why do you think he’d say that?”

  As my hands wandered through the stuff on the table, the narrator’s voice-over joined the music: “Aramis Black came here blaming his uncle for his mother’s death but instead caught a glimpse of the killer and the justice rendered. Wyatt Tremaine came to face his nephew’s pain and to reveal, finally, his reasons behind his attempt to save the life of Dianne Lewis Black. When we return, one last surprise. And an opportunity for two long-estranged men to get the best of evil by doing good.”

  I turned from the screen. “One last surprise? What’re you hiding from me?”

  “Time for action,” said Carla Fleischmann. “The crew’s ready to go.”

  “But I—”

  “This is what you came for, isn’t it? The chance to confront your uncle, to know the facts, to put all this to rest. I came to produce a show that’ll resonate with viewers. Genuine emotion is what I want. Your real-time response. This way, you don’t need to act. All you need to do is be yourself.”

  Be myself? The sound of that worried me.

  The narrator and I took our seats at the deck table, circled by cameras and lights and microphones and cords. Greg Simone floated in the background. The photos from the file were spread out before me in a casual pattern.

  I was frozen. A still-life painting.

  After all that had happened to bring me to this point, I decided it must be for a reason. I was meant to be here. Now. The moment of truth.

  God, please don’t leave me hangin’. I need you.

  Carla and Greg called out commands. The woman who had played my mother looked on.

  She was smiling at me. Our eyes locked.

  And then the cameras were rolling. Take one, two, three …

  After a few miscues, we worked out the issue of nerves. On the fourth take, the narrator said to me, “Aramis, I’m sure you’d like to know what happened to your mother’s killer. He served more than nineteen years for his part in her death. It was lung cancer that ended his life. Nature took its course. Prison officials tell us he had found some measure of peace, though he insisted on mailing something out in the days before he passed. Something that belonged to his son.”

  I felt disconnected from my own body. My head was nodding.

  Something mailed? From the penitentiary in Oregon?

  “Apparently,” the narrator continued, “he thought you should have it.”

  “Have what?” I heard myself ask.

  “A gift from your mother. That’s what he told the authorities. If it’s any sort of justice, you and your uncle outlived the violence of Mr. Richard Lewis.”

  “Lewis?” My head snapped up.

  “Your biological father.” From my left, Uncle Wyatt approached the lodge and joined us at the table. “Your mother’s first husband. She left Richard after he got to beatin’ her. Then she married your brother’s father, Kenny Black.”

  I glared at him, felt my fists clench.

  “My sister was young and foolish, and for a short time she went back to Richard. I knew it was trouble, tried talkin’ her out of it. She wouldn’t pay no mind, and she got pregnant with you. Didn’t never tell no one who the father was, but I knew. You’re a Lewis. She wanted to pass on the family secrets.”

  “Family secrets?” the narrator said, nudging him on.

  Wyatt looked at me. “I figure you know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  I met his glance.

  He turned his attention to the file on the table. “At the river that day, Aramis, I knew the man’d kill you once you told him who you were. Your mother, she’d taken an heirloom. Didn’t trust Richard with it, didn’t trust his intentions. Richard knew she’d try and hide it.”

  My mind was reeling. I cast the idea aside, then edged up to it. Prodding. Piecing it together.

  My darker skin. The handkerchief in the mail—from the state pen.

  Kenny Black. I’d never felt close to the man. Could it be true? Had he known all along I wasn’t his son? Had he raised me, provided for me, while bearing that burden in secret?

  “Richard woulda killed the both of you,” Uncle Wyatt was saying. “He knew Dianne woulda passed on the heirloom to you somehow. I could see the realization in his eyes, the way he was talkin’ to ya, butterin’ ya up for information. It was the thing I feared most. The reason I tied ya down in the first place.”

  Ready to explode, I kept my voice low. “What’re you saying? If I’d stayed down, none of it would’ve happened? Mom would’ve survived?”

  “Not my place to say.”

  “You have the gall to come here and point the finger at me?”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “You scum!” I hissed across the table.

  “Just tryin’ to tell ya why I done it. With every ounce of my being, Aramis, I threw myself out there to save her. I did. And for what? I lost my sister in the act.”

  “My mother.”

  “Lost you too.”

  “If this is all true, why didn’t he kill me also?”

  Tears glistened in Uncle Wyatt’s eyes. He was shaking his head. “Richard knocked you ’round so hard I thought sure you were dead. I wrastled with him, kicked the gun into the river. I had him, but he somehow managed to get up and get away. I knew your mom had thrown the whip in the river—to spite him, to keep him from gettin’ something he didn’t deserve. But I was sure she’d left a clue somewhere, somehow. Well, when the police continued with their investigation, and you told them how her handkerchief got stolen that same day, then I knew. Richard musta gone back to your place and searched the house before spotting your tree fort. Musta made sense to him that she would give the handkerchief to you. ’Course we both know now that they caught him on down the road.”

  “In Tennessee.”

  “It’s in the blood, boy. In the family. I moved out to see what I could see.”

  With a bitter grin, I said, “Is that why you stole Mom’s handkerchief?”

  Wyatt opened his hand to reveal the thin silk. “This whatchu want? I took it, and that weren’t right of me. I admit that. Your brother gave me a key to get in, figured you’d never allow it. I found it with a note, somethin’ or other ’bout calling the cops before someone got hurt. That worried me. All I was wantin’ was to track down what your mother died to protect. You gotta believe me on that.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’m your family, Aramis. Your uncle.”

  I huffed.

  “Hear me out. Johnny Ray figured it was time you let go of the past. Well, I needed to do the same. So I got this fool idea how I could win you back.”

  “How?”

  “By findin’ the family treasure, to prove what kinda man I was.”

  “And what’d you find?”

  “Found I’m still missin’ some part of the clue. Here, take it.” He slid the material into my hand. “I’m leavin’ it to you. Now that you got your mother’s silk handkerchief, now that you know what you’re lookin’ for, you just might have a fightin’ chance. It’s the best an ol’ man can hope for.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Looking back, I can see it all so clearly.

  My trip to Big Bear Lake had opened the door and let in some light.

  It wasn’t until I was shown government records from the Oregon penal system that I fully embraced the identity of my biological father. When the ICV thug told me he had talked to my father, he’d been referring to Richard Lewis. I’d funneled my anger toward the wrong man.

  I also now understood the years of discord between me and Kenny Black.

  No wonder he’d turned against me. A child not even his own. The show wasn’t scheduled to air until February. Of course, I’d signed confidentiality agreeme
nts with nondisclosure clauses, never realizing how hard it would be to keep my mouth zipped around my brother and Brianne.

  A long time to keep quiet. And just long enough to process everything for myself.

  It was in this interim period, between the show’s production and airing, that I was handed the last piece of the puzzle.

  Johnny Ray pestered me with questions for the full fourteen weeks leading up to the broadcast. Can you imagine the tools of torture at his disposal? Think country twang and cryin’-in-your-whiskey songs.

  That first week back in Music City, I tried to put my foot down.

  “Johnny, I’m moving outta here if you don’t quit.”

  “You’d never leave your big brother.”

  I thought of the secrets he’d kept from me. I wanted to say hurtful words but restrained myself.

  “Come on, Aramis. Spill it.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  Brianne’s methods were more subtle.

  That first week back, tired from my travels and still filtering all that’d occurred, I reached 2216 Elliston Place and stared at the door to Black’s. The routine was wooing me, but some things would never be the same. Not in this lifetime.

  The door opened. “Are you coming inside, Mr. TV Star?”

  Brianne stood before me, keys in hand. She recognized my pleasure in seeing her again and rewarded it with a long embrace. We closed the door behind us, and she locked it while giving me a kiss.

  “Can’t say a word,” I responded to her questions. “Gotta wait a few weeks.”

  “Fourteen. Oh, how will I survive till then?”

  “One day at a time. As a wise detective once told me.”

  “Detective Meade?”

  “The only detective I know.”

  “He’s been waiting to see you. Are you going to tell him what happened?”

  “Maybe,” I kidded.

  She leaned into me and purred against my chest. “Not fair in the slightest. If you can tell him, then maybe you could just whisper it to me.”

  “Sorry. If I violate the nondisclosure clause, it’ll cost me big bucks.”