Blood Runs Cold

they? But that didn’t cover Jason Wardwell. This paunchy, graying middle-aged man was trying to stay as close as he could to his target market.

‘This lady is right.’ Malcolm Wardwell was finally having his epiphany, a man too simple and hopeful to have ever pieced together the psychology of his son. ‘You are a nasty piece of shit!’ was the best he could do. He raised his hands. ‘And I love you.’

Broken-down emotions, the plain language of a small-town man who saw no nuances. He looked at ‘Jason’s problem’ and his thought process ran through truth/lie, reveal/hide, break/fix, sick/well. Malcolm Wardwell grew up in a time when parents warned their children in riddles: ‘Don’t cross the fields with whoever,’ ‘Don’t take a cookie from the man in the white house.’

Ren shook her head. You poor, sad, old man. Jason Wardwell’s face was almost unbearable to look at, yet drawing her like a magnet to understand what sickness lay behind it.

‘I thought you were better,’ said Malcolm. ‘Until you wanted that job right by the day-care center.’

Jason laughed. ‘You thought for twenty-six years I was dead from the waist down?’

You are a sick, sick man.

‘What have you done?’ said Malcolm to his son.

‘What have you done?’ said Jason.

Ren still marveled at the shifting of blame; it was the man at a table on the street corner, playing the shell game, moving the cups to hide the quarter. The quarter will always be there … just under whichever cup suits him. And the audience never wins.

‘I … I didn’t do anything …’ said Malcolm, answering the pathetic question. He turned to Ren. ‘Is he right? Is it my fault he did these things?’

‘I don’t know where to start,’ said Ren. ‘But it won’t be here.’

Fear could come with hope. Fear could be resigned. And fear could be dead if there was no worse consequence to face. Pull back from the screen where all the action is held and it is surrounded by black. Jason Wardwell had reached the edge of the game. Nowhere to go. His eyes were bright with a hopeless fear – a glassy shine that said anything could happen.

62

Jason Wardwell wiped his hand across his brow. He blew sweat from his top lip. Ren’s face was burning, her eyes dry. She could hear Malcolm Wardwell struggle for breath.

‘At least turn off the stove,’ said Ren. ‘Please.’

Jason glanced over at it. He looked at his father. ‘Go ahead,’ said Malcolm.

Jason walked over to the stove, his eyes on Ren. As soon as he turned his body away from her a fraction, she dropped down and pulled the Glock 27 from her ankle holster and aimed it at Jason.

‘Drop your weapon,’ said Ren.

She watched his gaze flick back toward his father.

‘Put your fucking gun down,’ she said.

His eyes flicked again to his father, but he put his gun down.

‘Kick it over to me,’ said Ren.

He did. She bent down and took it. When she stood up, Malcolm Wardwell stood to her left with a gun pointed at her.

‘That is my gun,’ said Ren. ‘And I’m afraid I wasn’t kind enough to load it for you before I got here.’

Malcolm pulled the trigger anyway.

‘Clllllick,’ said Ren. She jerked her head at Jason. ‘Get over there with your father.’

Jason did as she said. ‘You’re not going to kill both of us,’ he said.

‘Probably not,’ said Ren. ‘But I could get you both in the balls.’

Malcolm Wardwell stood, defeated; tired and old and mistaken. He had spent his life covering for a son who he didn’t even realize had been showing up at parks and playgrounds and swimming pools, driving around to scout for girls to make his fantasies real.

Malcolm Wardwell had stood, confronted, on Quandary Peak – Jean Transom telling him the last thing he wanted to hear – that his devotion to his son had not mattered. That he had released a disturbed and violent child abuser into society, that from the age of seventeen, Jason Wardwell had been acting out what he had previously only ever seen in magazines and on video.

‘You hated that Jean Transom had been so damaged by your son,’ said Ren. ‘But you hated her more for thinking that it was you. And you hated Jason for putting you in that position. And where was he that night? Where was the one person who could have bailed you out when you needed him?’

Malcolm muttered something.

‘What?’ said Ren.

‘He was there,’ said Malcolm. ‘Behind her. He just stood there, without saying a word. And she wouldn’t believe me. She wouldn’t believe it wasn’t me. He said nothing. He didn’t back me up.’

‘And there it was,’ said Ren. ‘You couldn’t take one more second of blame. You had lived to protect Jason. And he was happy to let you die to protect him. And it was just too much.’

‘It was,’ said Malcolm, his voice exhausted from years of lies. ‘It was. She wouldn’t listen when I told her. I was so terribly confused. On the darkest, coldest night of winter, when I had only gone up to help people: she was there. And I just wanted her to go away.’

The door to the cabin crashed open, shattering the timber frame. Paul Louderback had his gun drawn and moved in quickly opposite Ren. They formed a triangle with Jason Wardwell – both their guns trained on him.

‘Malcolm Wardwell killed Jean Transom,’ said Ren. ‘But it was Jason Wardwell who abducted the girls.’

Paul took two silent steps closer to Jason Wardwell, his face grim resolve.

Something is not right with Paul Louderback.

‘So this man in front of me is the man who abducted and raped two eleven-year-old girls,’ said Paul.

‘One,’ said Jason.

‘Two,’ said Ren. ‘Are you out of your mind? Jennifer Mayer and Ruth Sleight. Two.’

‘I only wanted the little blonde,’ said Jason, as if he was talking about a trip to a nightclub. ‘I didn’t lay a finger on the other girl, the Ruth girl. I locked her in the fitting room. The only reason she was there was that I saw her with the blonde too late. So I had to take her too. She was an ugly, scrawny thing, covered in freckles, ready for braces – not my type.’

The room was in total silence at the casual defense in his delivery. Paul Louderback lunged for him. He slammed his fist into Jason’s face before he had even knocked him to the floor. He gripped him by his neck and used his free hand to quickly impact Jason’s eye socket, break his jaw, his nose, loosen his teeth, tear one of his earlobes free.

What the fuck are you doing, Paul?

‘You motherfucker,’ shouted Paul. He was repeating it over and over, lost in something more than Ren could understand as she watched this handsome man in his fine suit in a shitty cabin, releasing a rage she didn’t know he was capable of.

Ren watched, stunned, as Paul Louderback put into practice everything he had taught her she would never need to do. He had been wrong before. And he was wrong now.

Paul fell on to his back, his breath heaving, his body drenched in sweat. He dragged himself on to his knees, pushing the muzzle of his gun up against Jason Wardwell’s temple. Ren knew Paul enough to feel his sense of failure and exposure. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

‘Nobody move,’ said Ren. ‘Nobody.’ She looked at Paul. ‘Give me your gun. Give it to me now.’

Paul reached for the cloth that hung from the back of a chair, wiped his face and threw it on top of Jason Wardwell, who lay curled on the floor, bleeding and moaning.

Ren lowered her voice. ‘Paul.’

He handed her the gun.