Pariah

‘NO!’ Doyle cries. He starts forward, but is stopped in his tracks by the sight of two gun barrels aimed straight at him. It’s the second time his own gun has been trained on him, and the second time he believes it to be his last.

‘Fuck!’ Doyle says. ‘She was your wife, for Chrissake! You didn’t have to do that.’

‘You’re wrong. I should have done it in the beginning. Instead of all that complicated shit, I should have just killed Nadine. I thought I could fix things, but I couldn’t. I should have kept it simple. I think she knew the truth anyhow. The way she acted after Joe and Tony died, I could tell she knew it was me. Of course, she couldn’t say anything without giving up what she’d done. When I started making it look like it was about you, she latched onto that. She really wanted to believe it had nothing to do with her own infidelity. We were both living a lie, Cal. It couldn’t have lasted.’

Doyle glances again at Nadine’s body. It’s motionless now. Blood trickles down from the hole in her head and into her part-open mouth. Her eyes are wide; they stare at Doyle as if to say, Look at what you’ve done. Doyle breathes like he’s just run a marathon; his heart seems to pound the blood through at the rate of a machine gun. He wants to move, to take some kind of action.

‘How the fuck are you going to explain this, Mo?’

Another shrug. ‘She was killed by your gun, Cal, not mine. There’ll be forensic traces that you were here — I’ll make sure of that. You came here, you killed her, you disappeared. Weird, I know, but then your behavior has been pretty erratic lately. I mean, the way you just happened to turn up at Spinner’s place and find the body. That was pretty coincidental, don’t you think? Then there was the meeting you had with known criminals — again, I’ll make sure we find confirmation of that. Maybe the hotel staff saw you leave with one of ’em? I don’t know — I’m sure we’ll find something. Oh, yeah, and then you go and check out of your hotel without even informing anyone. You just up sticks and leave. Pretty strange, all right. Why kill Nadine? Who knows. Maybe you were having a little thing with her. Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been suspected of cheating like that. Or maybe she found something out about you, along the lines of you engineering this whole anti-Doyle scheme yourself. We’ll see what the NYPD manages to come up with.’

‘With you directing the investigation, naturally.’

‘Naturally.’

‘For a last-minute change of plan, that’s pretty good.’

‘Thank you. I think better under pressure.’

‘Only, I didn’t like the bit about me disappearing after I’ve been here. Can we change that?’

‘Sorry, Cal. That stays.’

Doyle nods. ‘I thought it might.’

Franklin nods too, then stands there for a while. He tucks Doyle’s Glock back into his waistband, then gestures with the other gun.

‘Let’s get this over with.’

THIRTY-ONE

Franklin leads Doyle through a large kitchen to the rear door of the house. He unlocks it and motions Doyle out into the backyard. He picks up a spade resting against the wall of the house and tosses it to Doyle. Then he grabs a flashlight resting on the windowsill and aims it away from the house without turning it on.

‘Walk,’ he says. ‘That way.’

Doyle looks down to the bottom of the yard. The moon overhead is almost full; it bathes the scene in an eerie gray light. He begins to walk, his feet crunching on the coarse white gravel path. Halfway down, he hefts the spade in his hands, debating whether he can swing around fast enough to smash it into the face of the man behind him.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Franklin says, and Doyle stops doing so.

They reach a fence separating the yard from the woods beyond. Franklin tells him to unlatch the gate, then switches on the flashlight and shines it into the trees.

‘Through there.’

The way he’s indicating is straight into the thick of the woods, away from any well-defined path.

Doyle pushes on. Without a flashlight of his own it’s slow going. He frequently trips on gnarled roots or gets poked in the eye by a branch. At every step, small forest-dwellers in the blackness ahead of him scurry for cover.

After ten minutes of fighting nature, he halts and turns toward Franklin, who responds by shining blinding white light into his eyes.

‘You don’t think we should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs or something?’

‘Not much farther, Cal. Straight ahead.’

Doyle continues his struggle for another few minutes as the ground begins to slope downward toward the banks of the reservoir. Then, after unsnagging his pants from a particularly stubborn tree, he stumbles into a small clearing. Following behind, Franklin switches off the flashlight and allows the moonlight to take over the illumination of this stage upon which Doyle figures he is to play out his final moments.

Franklin circles the arena, then hops onto a large rock and sits himself down. It’s clear from his sure- footedness that he’s been here before.

‘I come here alone sometimes,’ Franklin says. ‘Just to think, to get away from the world. I’m sure there’s hardly another soul even knows it’s here.’

Doyle sniffs against the cold. His nose feels like it’s on fire. ‘I’m honored you feel you can let me in on it. Why don’t you do some more of that being-alone business while I head back to somewhere a little warmer?’

‘A little exercise will soon warm you up. Start digging, Cal.’

Doyle looks down at the ground. With the tip of the spade he scrapes a hole in the carpet of dead leaves, then taps the hard soil beneath.

‘This ground’s frozen, Mo, and I’m not in the best of shape right now.’

‘I’ll do it myself if I have to, Cal. But only after I’ve put a bullet in you.’

‘Never mind. I’ve just remembered how much I like digging.’

He puts his foot on the edge of the spade’s head and transfers his weight onto it. He’s surprised at how easily the blade sinks into the soil once it breaks through the top crust.

Which means that this isn’t going to drag on as long as I hoped, he thinks. Great.

He throws out a few mounds of earth, wincing against the pain in his side with each swing.

Franklin says, ‘Hurry it up, Cal. I’ll be arriving home soon, crying out at the sight of my poor murdered wife.’ He pauses for a second. ‘Or maybe I had too much work to do and decided to stay in my Manhattan apartment. Hmm, I’ll have to think that one over.’

Doyle continues to dig. Sweat trickles from his brow, and now his whole ribcage seems to be throbbing with the pain.

He pauses for breath, one hand resting on the end of the spade, the other pressed to his side.

‘What’s the matter, Cal? Young guy like you shouldn’t have any trouble doing this.’

Doyle doesn’t answer. He sniffs again, smells the resin from the trees surrounding him. He looks hard at those trees. Looks for a way out of this. Looks for some hope. Finally, he puts his hands down and faces Franklin. The upright spade topples and falls to the ground.

‘What are you doing, Cal? That’s not nearly deep enough.’

‘It’s over, Mo.’

Franklin raises his gun and points it at Doyle. ‘It’s over when I say it is. Now keep digging or I’ll shoot you. Makes no difference to me whether I kill you now or when you’re done. Just thought you’d appreciate a few more minutes to make your peace with the Lord. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’

‘Lapsed. I got the feeling He wasn’t listening to me. Somebody else has been, though.’

Franklin says nothing for a few seconds. Doyle senses the alarm creeping into the man’s bony frame.

‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Back at the house. I wasn’t the only one listening in to that microphone strapped to Nadine. You may have