Two sheriff’s deputies in wide-brimmed Smokey Bear hats walked them out through the tunnel at dawn. The adrenaline had given way to exhaustion and Matthew had trouble putting his feet where he wanted them. His head felt full of water. He stumbled twice before Georgie slipped in close and put his arm over her shoulder. A team of crime-scene techs worked along the tracks, their white Tyvek jumpsuits glowing under a series of halogen safety lamps. There was no sign of Dorne. His body had been removed during the night. Tacky dark smears marked the stone walls and wooden railroad ties, but they might have been blood or oil or diesel soot.
Official vehicles clogged the road at the other end of the tunnel. Fish, Wildlife and Parks had opened the Forest Service gate to let in the swarm of city cops, county sheriffs, fire and rescue, and highway patrol. The ambulance workers kept saying “Merry Christmas” to each other as they loaded Matthew onto a gurney. He told them “Merry Christmas” back a couple times and then realized they were being sarcastic. They were supposed to be home with their families instead of spending the holiday out here. He might have felt guilty about that if he weren’t so tired. Georgie climbed into the back of the ambulance with him and nobody stopped her. The EMTs put an IV in the back of his hand and he passed out before they even made it to the main road.
He dreamed of the fall day five years earlier when he saw his father for the last time. Matthew had driven his old Subaru up to the rental house near Flathead Lake so they could finally have it out. The drive was beautiful, with the trees decked out in reds and golds. The chilly tang in the air was the only warning sign that winter was almost on them. When he pulled up the long drive to the lake house he saw his dad out giving the yard a final trim. Driving a John Deere mower in circles getting smaller and smaller. From the look on his dad’s face as he bounded off the mower and wrapped him up in a bear hug, it was clear he’d forgotten Matthew was coming. The scent of him was grass and sweat, with the underbite of some sweet liquor. Under his pearl-snapped cowboy shirt his skin was brown and tough as leather and he wore a straw gardening hat that looked like his huge melon head might split it in half.
They sat on the rear porch swing side by side like lovers and drank their way into the twelve-pack of Rainier Matthew had bought in Polson, along with two big T-bone steaks and some fresh garden vegetables. The beer tasted good after two hours in the car. He waited until they’d both had a couple before he said: “Goran Turzic has been calling me. I went to see him a few times.”
The swing groaned as his dad shifted away from him. “That old son of a bitch,” he said. “What’s he want?”
“He’s only coherent about half the time, but he still remembers what you did,” Matthew said. “He just can’t prove any of it.”
“For fuck’s sake,” his dad said. “Who’s going to believe the word of a crazy old man?”
“His word,” Matthew said, “and mine.”
His dad cut him a long look out the corners of his eyes and stood up. The screen door banged shut behind him. A minute later, Matthew heard the snap, snap of his dad chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter. He finished his beer, watching a red-tailed hawk track wide, flat circles over the lake, then went and leaned in the doorway to the kitchen to watch his dad work. Love handles stretched his T-shirt around the middle. His shoulders were rounded but still thick. He looked squat and shrunken, like something left out in the rain.
“The thing I’ve never understood,” Matthew said, “is how you could kill a little kid and just go on with your lives. You care to explain that to me?”
His dad turned and leaned back against the counter. His body sagged but his eyes held a mean crackle. “Does that look like what I’m doing here?” he said. “Going on with my life?”
“I came here because I wanted to give you a chance to tell me how it happened,” Matthew said. “If you can stand there now and make me see how you and Chris Dorne killed that boy and thought you could get away with it, then maybe you and I can have a future. Otherwise, I’m going to go to the cops.”
The eyes narrowed. “You’re bluffing. I could always tell when you were bluffing, Matt.”
“Fuck you,” Matthew said. “I let you scare me into keeping my mouth shut back then, but I’m not a kid anymore.”
“Tell me how you think this is going to go,” his dad said. “You think they’re going to believe you after all this time? Your word against the superstar college professor and city councilman? Good luck with that. How will you explain that you knew about it for a decade and didn’t say shit? You’ll be lucky if you don’t wind up an accessory after the fact.”
“One chance,” Matthew said. “Right now, or I’m leaving, and I don’t think you and I will talk again.”
“Is that so?” his dad said. “You’ll give up on me just like your mother? Like everybody else?”
He let the silence float up between them. Finally, he said: “Really? Nothing?”
“Matt,” his dad started, but grimaced like he didn’t know how to go on.
“Please,” Matthew said, feeling his throat start to clot. “Just talk. Just start somewhere and talk.”
“I can’t,” his dad said. “It’s not—”
He shook his head again, gray curls trembling like he wasn’t going to stand there and listen to any more of this. Moving like a wounded bear slinking off to its den, he crossed the kitchen and squeezed past him out the sliding door into the backyard. Matthew watched him walk to the edge of the river embankment and dig a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. His lighter flicked, glowed in the dusk, and snapped out.
Matthew had a copy of his army enlistment papers folded in his pocket. He stepped out the door and spread them on the picnic table, weighing them down with a citronella candle. He waited another minute for his dad to turn around, but the old man just lifted one hand over his head to wave. It was a dismissive flick of the wrist that said: Go on. Get out of here.
He left him like that, staring out across the water at the trees. He backed out of the driveway too fast, leaving tracks on the grass as he spun a U-turn and headed for the highway. Once he was past the old blue grain silo he pinned the accelerator, feeling the car shudder on its worn tires. A song he knew came on the radio and he cranked it up. He’d brought the open twelve-pack with him—one final “fuck you”—and he held a can between his thighs as he drummed his hands on the steering wheel and screamed out every word.
He woke up in the hospital in the middle of the night. It was dark and the only sound was the occasional beep and sigh of machines doing work. He sat up a few inches and saw Georgie watching him from a green banana-shaped chair in the corner.
“Hi,” he said, his voice a hoarse croak.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a hundred pounds of shit stuffed inside a fifty-pound bag,” he said.
“Funny,” she said. “The way you look, I wouldn’t have guessed an ounce over seventy-five.”
The night-shift doctor was a loopy guy with a blond mustache and the bedside manner of a preschool teacher. He shined a light in Matthew’s eyes and said: “Watch the birdie. Watch the birdie.” The next morning they took him down for a CT scan and another MRI and determined that despite the blow to the head from the golf club he probably wasn’t much worse off than he’d been before. Multiple concussions certainly weren’t ideal, a doctor said, but enough time had passed between the IED explosion and this incident that Matthew probably didn’t have to worry about compounding the damage. His chances of recovery were unchanged, though the hospital’s official position was that he should do his best to limit further head trauma.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said.
When they got him back to his room, Voelker was waiting. The cop looked like he hadn’t slept in days and had a laptop balanced on his knees. He said he’d located surveillance footage from the ranch supply store and Great Northern train yard. He set the laptop on Matthew’s bed and hit a button on the keyboard. The whole thing took less than thirty seconds. Matthew watched a grainy black-and-white shot of the park-and-ride lot. He saw Dorne get out of his SUV in his wig and trench coat and haul a duffel bag out from the back of the truck. The footage jump-cut to the railroad yard. This part was in color but still low quality. No sound. It showed Dorne shambling along under the lights along the tracks. Matthew leaned close to the screen until Dorne moved out of sight. When the footage ended, he asked Voelker to play it again from the beginning. There was a rhythm to it when you watched it more than once. The third time, he grinned, feeling like he’d just finished a long, difficult race. Maybe even won.
“I knew it,” he said. “I fucking told you he was using the trains.”
“You did,” Voelker said, smiling back. “I don’t know how you knew, but you did.”