The gate crashed to the earth in a cloud of splinters and dust, and the cops needed no more invitation.
Shots fired.
A blank check.
Tactical teams led the assault, but French cared for nothing but Gibby. He wanted to search the house at a dead run, but it was enormous, and Burklow was a very steady friend. “Just be still. Wait here. We have a lot of boots on the ground, and suspended or not, you’re still the ranking detective. Information will come to you first.”
Fear was the only reason he’d agreed: fear that he would find the remains of his son. He’d never felt anything like it. Nakedness. Raw terror. Those fears were only compounded when officers discovered a girl locked in the north wing. Burklow broke the news. “Tyra’s friend Sara.”
“Still no sign?”
“No sign is a good thing. Keep the faith.”
Easier said than done. The girl was distraught, but dry-eyed. She continued to repeat the same thing: “He was in the walls, I heard him in the walls.” They watched as she was led to a police car, and then to an ambulance.
“Something good,” French said. But he was more concerned about the body parts in the basement freezer. Eighteen-year-old parts or something else? No one could tell him. He stood at the front door. Twenty minutes since the gate came down. “Any word from the medical examiner?”
“Five minutes out. Can I get you a coffee?”
French didn’t want coffee. He wanted to know who fired the shots, who they were fired at and why. Dispatch had delivered three different messages from his wife. She wanted news. Where was her son?
“He has to be here.” French tried to scrape the sleeplessness from his eyes. “And where the hell is Jason?”
“Oh, man.”
“What? Ken? What?”
“Something Jason said. Bill, I’m sorry. With all that’s happened, I forgot. It made so little sense when he said it. I had no context. Had no idea we’d find this.”
He dipped his chin toward the house, and French squared up on his best friend of thirty years. Anger. Need. He could hide none of it. “Said what, exactly?”
Burklow lowered his voice. “He asked me to tell you that if things went sideways, he’d be at the quarry. You can see why I’d blank on that. It was four in the morning. I had no idea any of this was coming. The quarry? Seriously.”
French raised a finger, too tired to conjure any real force. “You deal with this.” He meant the house, all of it. “And please don’t talk to my wife.”
At the quarry, French parked beside the only car there. Jason stood alone at the water’s edge, the morning light thin on his face. In spite of all that had transpired, the sun was still low, not a hand’s breadth above the trees. French wasted no time; couldn’t hide the distress. “Is he okay?”
“Gibby is fine. He was in shock for a while, but he’s better. No physical harm.” Jason kept his eyes on the water, but lifted his chin toward the cliff. “He’s up there with Chance. Processing, I think. I told him I’d stay down here and wait for you. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
French let his eyes move up the cliff’s face. He saw them there, and almost broke. Now that he knew. Now that he could breathe. “He was at the house?”
“He was.”
“Son, I don’t understand any of this. Why was he there? How did you know he was there? How did you get him out?”
“Me? I was never there.”
“Son, please.”
Jason sighed, and it came from a deep place. “It’s a long story, and I’m tired. As far as the cops are concerned, Gibby can tell you everything you need to know.”
“The cops, yeah.” French said it reluctantly. “Why did you call us? Burklow said you needed help.”
“All I needed was the distraction.”
French felt that one in his chest. “You knew I’d call it in.”
“I believed you when you told me that Gibby was young and needed protection. I don’t take it personally.”
“What if you’d gotten him killed?”
“What if you had?” That bought a moment between them. Father. Son. Nothing quiet between them. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it. He’s alive. You’re here.”
“Just like that?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you really hate me so much?”
“Hate?” Jason looked his way for the first time. “Dad, I’ll never hate you.”
“But the rest of it?”
He meant family, the future. Jason raised his shoulders, and let them settle. “Too much water, I guess. Besides, it looks like I’m rocking this outlaw thing now. And, well…” He made a motion with his hand, like he was shaving down a piece of wood. “The open road is calling.”
French wanted to say something to get his son back, to make up for the mistakes he’d made. “Would an apology help?”
“Not now, no.” Jason’s head moved. “In time, maybe.”
French lifted his eyes to the cliff’s edge. They were so small, the boys. “I know what you did at Bến Hải. How you saved that village. And I know what General Laughtner did to you, afterward, the way he tried to cover it up, the drugs and the dishonorable discharge. I wish I’d known sooner. I wish I could go back.”
Jason raised an eyebrow, but showed no emotion at all.
French took that one in the chest, too. “Will you say goodbye to your mother?”
“She doesn’t want to see me. You know that.”
“Where will you go?”
“Are you asking as an officer of the law or as my father?”
“Enough, Jason. Please. As your father. Always, your father.”
Jason took a deep breath, as if to fill himself up, then stooped for a rock, and skimmed it. “You feel like a walk?”
The trail was a quarter mile long, but felt longer. French still had things to say; and still had no idea how to say them. Each step was a moment lost, a steady dwindle. As they neared the top, Jason broke the silence. “He was only trying to help me, you know. Whatever he did to make you angry or make Mom worry … He’s a good kid, and a lot like Robert.”
French shook his head. “Once upon a time, maybe. The older he gets, the more I see of you.”
Jason stopped for a moment. Birds were calling. Light slanted through the trees. “Do you really believe that?”
“Like you could be twins.”
“Is that right?”
There was a note of surprise in Jason’s voice. A smile came, too, and the sight of it broke French in half.
At the cliff’s edge, he gave Gibby a hug, but not the fierce one he felt in his heart. It might have crushed the boy to death. He held him at arm’s length, and studied his face. “Jason tells me you’re okay.”
“I am, yeah.”
He kept his hands on Gibby’s shoulders, but looked left. “Chance?”
Chance nodded, but kept his eyes down.
“I’m just glad you’re okay, the both of you.” French squeezed his son’s shoulders, a final touch, an assurance. “We can talk about it later, okay? There are things I need to understand, but those things can wait, so long as you’re okay. Tell me one more time. Not hurt? Not traumatized?”
“I’m good. We’re good.”
The worst of French’s tension subsided. He looked across the quarry, thinking of his sons, of all his sons. A quiet moment passed. “This is where Robert dove, isn’t it?”
“Right there. Jason did it, too.”
French leaned out, looking down in disbelief. “Is that right?”
“It was just a thing.” Jason shrugged as if the vacuum of that fall wasn’t trying to suck them all down. “Do you guys mind if I have a moment alone with Gibby?”
My father led Chance to the trailhead, and they sat at the forest’s edge, a hundred yards of stone between us. Jason looked from them to me, and when he smiled, I was surprised. It was not the normal smile; nor did it last. It was an eye blink of a smile, and it said a million things. “Let’s talk about the dive,” he said.
“What about it?”
He pointed. “That’s your spot, right?”
“More or less.”
He stepped to that spot. The stone was smooth, the cliff’s edge sharp. Jason leaned out and looked down. “How long have you been working up the nerve?”
“Two years, I guess.”
He dropped a rock, and watched it fall. “The world record is only fifteen feet higher. Did you know that?”
“You care about stuff like that?”
“I heard about it after I made the dive, but yeah. It’s pretty cool.” Jason stepped from the edge, his eyes very bright. “You know that cool is not enough reason to make this dive. You know that, right?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Really? It’s four seconds, top to bottom. Hit wrong, and it may as well be concrete.” He was quiet, but intent. “You need a reason to make a dive like this. Robert, for instance. Robert was going to Vietnam, and wanted to believe he couldn’t die. He needed that. It’s why he dove, and for him, that reason was good enough.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but come on, Jason. You did it on a wager. You did it for a day out drinking beer.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“It’s what you said.”
“What I said.” He scoffed at the words, then looked away for long seconds. “Maybe I did it for a day out with my brother, for a chance to know the only one I have left. Did you ever consider that?”
I shook my head, wordless.
“Or maybe I’m the opposite of Robert,” he continued. “He needed to believe he couldn’t die. Maybe I needed to believe I was still alive, that my heart had room for something more than war and prison and regret. Maybe I had to make that dive.” He made a fist, and tapped me on the chest. “You feel me, little brother? You feel what I’m saying?”
I offered up a solemn nod.
“It’s the same with Vietnam,” he said. “Don’t go because I went, or Robert went. There’s no glory, no honor. You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself. That mirror can get cloudy at times—you’re eighteen, I get it—but trust me when I tell you that war is no place to prove anything. Be a friend. Love the girl.”
I looked at Chance. I thought of Becky.
He tapped my chest again, and said, “Trust me on this.”
I told him I did trust him, and that I’d think about everything he’d said. When he turned to look across the quarry, I stood beside him, and we could see the forest and the water and the far, pale sun.
“I have to leave, you know.”
“Cops. I get it.”
“The Tyra thing—that’ll go away now. The guns, though?” He shrugged. “There’s only one thing here I’m sad to leave.”
The emotion was real.
I could feel it between us.
“Take this, all right?” He handed me a piece of paper. There was an address there. “Nova Scotia,” he said. “A little house on a black-pebble beach. I won’t be there for a while—a year, at least—but when I get there, I plan to stay. Maybe you’ll come see me sometime. It’s a good place, I think. It belongs to a guy I ran rivers with in the DMZ. His grandparents left it to him, but he has no interest. Stone walls, though. A fireplace. He tells me the ocean is black at sunrise and hazel at lunch, that the surf is loud and the wind is like a woman’s breath.”
“Sounds … poetic.”
“Yeah, well. My friend is a bit of a drinker.” Jason smiled, and it was a good one. “Will you come see me sometime?”
“I will.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It is.”