38

It was the last week before Chris went back to school. They’d twice delayed Chris’s planned visit to his maternal grandparents’ farm because neither of them was ready to be separated.

Now, after Nettie’s nighttime visit, Mars, Chris, and Gunner were all doing better. So Mars arranged to drive Chris and Gunner down to the farm. Denise’s sister Gwen would bring Chris back a couple days before school started.

*   *   *

For Mars, the trip meant he could no longer avoid going back to Redstone Township. He should have gone down immediately after Nettie had been killed and the media started carrying stories about the Green Man’s involvement in Andrea Bergstad’s and Erin Moser’s deaths. He hadn’t wanted Sig Sampson to find out about Erin Moser’s death by reading a newspaper, but that’s what had happened.

Mars didn’t completely understand why it was so hard for him to go back to Redstone until after he’d dropped Chris and Gunner at the farm. As soon as he was on the route he’d taken on his first drive to Redstone, the agonizing sense of opportunities missed, of mistakes made, engulfed him.

*   *   *

“I should have come right away,” Mars said as he climbed the front steps to Sig’s house, Sig holding the screen door open for him. “I didn’t want you to find out about Erin Moser in the newspaper. But after what happened—I was crazy…”

He looked at Sig. “I’m still crazy.”

They went back to Sig’s den. It was, as ever, dim, and the air conditioner was still dripping into the coffee can. More than anything, Mars wanted this to be the day he’d first sat in this room, hearing the soft plinks of the dripping air conditioner. He wanted to be able to start the case over, avoiding all the mistakes he’d made.

Or, at least, avoid one of the mistakes he had made. Was that asking so much? To be able to go back over a case where hundreds of decisions had been made and undo one?

Sig said, “I told you the first time you came. I wasn’t up to this case. It was me being incompetent that caused all this trouble in the first place.”

Mars said, “Believe me, Sig, any mistake you made, it pales next to the mistakes I made on this case. Starting with my holy crusade to prove there was a sexual predator out there taking advantage of lax security at convenience stores.”

Sig shook his head. “You’ve got to remember, Mars. DeeDee Kipp is alive because of what you did. Everyone else—hard-hearted as it is to say it—everyone else who died made a choice that took them where they went. Andrea got involved with Campbell. Erin chose not to tell us what she knew. Nettie was doing a job—from what you’ve said, a job she loved doing.

“DeeDee was the innocent one. And she’s still alive.”

Mars looked over at Sig. “You’re a lot tougher character than I’ve given you credit for. But you’re wrong about DeeDee.”

“Wrong how?” Sig said.

“What I did put DeeDee at risk. If we’d never started this investigation, Nettie would still be alive and DeeDee wouldn’t have been at risk.”

Sig shook his head again. “From everything you’ve told me about that young lady, as soon as she was able, she would have set off on her own to find out about her family. And she would have walked right into the Green Man’s maw. Without ever knowing what had hit her or why.”

Mars knew Sig was right, but he wasn’t ready to let go of his guilt on that point. He changed the subject.

“There’s something else I want you to know. Something that hasn’t been in the media since we got the Green Man. There were things I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you needed to know them. Things that may never be known. About what he did when he wasn’t working for Alan Campbell. Things I thought might put you at risk to know…”

Sig said, looking at Mars straight on, “Like what?”

Mars told Sig the story Boyle Keegan had told him. The story of the three hunts.

When he stopped talking, Sig stared.

Then he said, “Have you ever heard that business about a butterfly’s wings that move in one place setting off a hurricane someplace a thousand miles away?”

Mars nodded, understanding Sig’s point before he made it.

“Chaos theory,” he said softly, more to himself than to Sig.

Then, turning toward Sig, he said, “Funny you should say that. When my friend first told me the story of the three hunts, he said chaos—chaos in the intelligence community—was what gave rise to this whole thing.”

“That’s what this feels like to me,” Sig said. “The smallest thing having connections no one in their right mind could anticipate.”

He shook his head slowly. “So how do we know what happens?”

“What happens?” Mars said.

“Say next month, the administration announces it’s captured Osama. That means your friend was wrong? There was only the one hunt? The official hunt?”

Mars said, “I can tell you what my friend told me. If the capture is announced anytime before the summer of 2004, the hunt to prevent using the capture for political purposes succeeded. And that they traded their capture prize for something big. Something more important to them than embarrassing the administration.”

“And if Osama’s capture is announced right before the election, say, next summer, into the fall, the Green Man got his job done before he died in that cornfield?”

“That would be my friend’s best guess.”

“And if the election comes and goes, with no capture…”

“As much as it would pain you and me to hear it, my friend would say the Green Man died too soon.”

“You don’t feel that way, do you?” Sig said.

Mars shook his head. “That’s an impossible question for me to answer. I can’t separate the Green Man’s death from Nettie’s death.”

They were quiet for a while, both of them thinking about those possibilities.

“So you’re saying people like the Green Man should be left to do whatever? That finding justice for the dead isn’t important?”

Mars didn’t answer for a long time.

“Let’s just say justice is less clear to me now than it was when I started on this case. Ask me if finding Andrea Bergstad’s killer was more important than Nettie’s life. The answer is no. I don’t even have to think about it. The answer is no.”

“You’re saying you want to be God, Mars. You’re saying you want to be in charge of the questions and answers. We don’t get that. Not in this life.”

“That’s the same thing you want, Sig.”

Sig rocked a little on his recliner. His lower lip protruding slightly as he thought about what Mars had said.

“Well, maybe that’s something we both need to work on. It’s not going to happen right off, but maybe sometime.”

Then he said, “But you were right, you know. About what happened to Andrea in the first place. She might still be alive—they might all still be alive—Andrea, Erin, your partner Nettie—if Andrea hadn’t been working alone at the One-Stop in 1984.

“You weren’t wrong about that.”

*   *   *

It was just before midnight when Mars drove into the condominium’s parking garage. His slamming car door boomed in the deserted, high-ceilinged space, his footsteps echoed as he walked across the concrete floor. Then, sound and space closed in around him as he entered the hallway off the garage and took the elevator up to the apartment.

It was the first time since Nettie had died that he’d been alone in the apartment.

“I should have left a light on,” he said into the dark emptiness. In the next moment, he was just as glad he hadn’t. Seeing the walls around him would have brought on a fresh wave of the claustrophobia that had plagued him since Nettie died.

Instead, he felt his way through the shapeless dark, found the latch on the sliding door to the terrace.

He stood on the terrace for more than an hour, comforted by the muffled sounds of the city at night, the occasional car passing on the street below.

To the north, he saw a light on in the window of a condominium near the river. Light surrounded by a darkness that reminds you of how isolated you are.

Probably like the One-Stop had looked that night nineteen years ago.