'Right.'
'You good at bedside manner?'
'I try to be.'
'I don't. Not even a little. You want coddling, go on a diet and hire Richard Simmons. So let's skip all the pardon-mes and excuse-mes and all that objectionable crap, okay? Just answer my questions. The car accident story you told them. Is it true?'
'Yes.'
'Because the feds will check all the facts. You know that, right?'
'I know.'
'Okay, fine, just so we're clear here.' Crimstein took a breath. 'So maybe your wife had a friend take these pictures,' she said, trying it on for size. 'For insurance reasons or something. In case she ever wanted to sue. That might make sense, if we need to peddle it.'
It didn't make sense to me, but I kept that to myself.
'So question uno: Where have these pictures been, Beck?'
'I don't know.'
'Dos and tres: How did the feds get them? Why are they surfacing now?'
I shook my head.
'And most important, what are they trying to nail you on? Your wife's been dead for eight years. It's a little late for a spousal battery charge.' She sat back and thought about it a minute or two. Then she looked up and shrugged. 'No matter. I'll make some calls, find out what's up. In the meantime, don't be a dimwit. Say nothing to anyone. You understand?'
'Yes.'
She sat back and thought about it some more. 'I don't like this,' she said. 'I don't like this even a little bit.'
Chapter 11
On May 12, 1970, Jeremiah Renway and three fellow radicals set off an explosion at Eastern State University's chemistry department. Rumor had it from the Weather Underground that military scientists were using the university labs to make a more powerful form of napalm. The four students, who in a fit of stark originality called themselves Freedom's Cry, decided to make a dramatic albeit showy stand.
At the time, Jeremiah Renway did not know if the rumor was true. Now, more than thirty years later, he doubted it. No matter. The explosion did not damage any of the labs. Two university security guards, however, stumbled across the suspicious package. When one picked it up, the package exploded, killing both men.
Both had children.
One of Jeremiah's fellow 'freedom fighters' was captured two days later. He was still in jail. The second died of colon cancer in 1989. The third, Evelyn Cosmeer, was captured in 1996. She was currently serving a seven-year prison sentence.
Jeremiah disappeared into the woods that night and never ventured out. He had rarely seen fellow human beings or listened to the radio or watched television. He had used a telephone only once – and that was in an emergency. His only real connection to the outside world came from newspapers, though they had what happened here eight years ago all wrong.
Born and raised in the foothills of northwest Georgia, Jeremiah's father taught his son all kinds of survival techniques, though his overriding lesson was simply this: You could trust nature but not man. Jeremiah had forgotten that for a little while. Now he lived it.
Fearing they would search near his hometown, Jeremiah took to the woods in Pennsylvania. He hiked around for a while, changing camp every night or two, until he happened upon the relative comfort and security of Lake Charmaine. The lake had old camp bunks that could house a man when the outdoors got a little too nasty. Visitors rarely came to the lake – mostly in the summer, and even then, only on weekends. He could hunt deer here and eat the meat in relative peace. During the few times of the year when the lake was being used, he simply hid or took off for points farther west.
Or he watched.
To the children who used to come here, Jeremiah Renway had been the Boogeyman.
Jeremiah stayed still now and watched the officers move about in their dark windbreakers FBI windbreakers. The sight of those three letters in big yellow caps still punctured his heart like an icicle.
No one had bothered to yellow-tape the area, probably because it was so remote. Renway had not been surprised when they found the bodies. Yes, the two men had been buried good and deep, but Renway knew better than most that secrets don't like to stay underground. His former partner in crime, Evelyn Cosmeer, who'd transformed herself into the perfect Ohio suburban mom before her capture, knew that. The irony did not escape Jeremiah.
He stayed hidden in the bush. He knew a lot about camouflage. They would not see him.
He remembered the night eight years ago when the two men had died – the sudden gun blasts, the sounds of the shovels ripping into the earth, the grunts from the deep dig. He'd even debated telling the authorities what happened – all of it.
Anonymously, of course.
But in the end he couldn't risk it. No man, Jeremiah knew, was meant for a cage, though some could live through it. Jeremiah could not. He'd had a cousin named Perry who'd been serving eight years in a federal penitentiary. Perry was locked in a tiny cell for twenty-three hours a day. One morning, Perry tried to kill himself by running headfirst into the cement wall.
That would be Jeremiah.
So he kept his mouth shut and did nothing. For eight years anyway.
But he thought about that night a lot. He thought about the young woman in the nude. He thought about the men in wait. He thought about the scuffle near the car. He thought about the sickening, wet sound of wood against exposed flesh. He thought about the man left to die.
And he thought about the lies. The lies, most of all, haunted him.
Chapter 12
By the time I returned to the clinic, the waiting room was packed with the sniffing and impatient. A television replayed a video of
'Yo, Doc.'
Tyrese Barton hopped up. He was wearing butt-plunge baggy pants and what looked like an oversized varsity jacket, all done by some designer I never heard of but soon would.
'Hi, Tyrese,' I said.
Tyrese gave me a complicated handshake, which was a bit like a dance routine where he leads and I follow. He and Latisha had a six-year-old son they called TJ. TJ was a hemophiliac. He was also blind. I met him after he was rushed in as an infant and Tyrese was seconds away from being arrested. Tyrese claimed I saved his son's life on that day. That was hyperbole.
But maybe I did save Tyrese.
He thought that made us friends – like he was this lion and I was some mouse who pulled a thorn from his paw. He was wrong.
Tyrese and Latisha were never married, but he was one of the few fathers I saw in here. He finished shaking my hands and slipped me two Ben Franklins as though I were a maitre d' at Le Cirque.
He gave me the eye. 'You take good care of my boy now.'
'Right.'
'You the best, Doc.' He handed me his business card, which had no name, no address, no job title. Just a cell phone number. 'You need anything, you call.'
'I'll keep that in mind,' I said.
Still with the eye. '
'Right.'
I pocketed the bills. We've been going through this same routine for six years now. I knew a lot of drug dealers from working here; I knew none who survived six years.
I didn't keep the money, of course. I gave it to Linda for her charity. Legally debatable, I knew, but the way I figured it, better the money went to charity than to a drug dealer. I had no idea how much money Tyrese had. He always had a new car, though – he favored BMWs with tinted windows – and his kid's wardrobe was worth more than anything that inhabited my closet. But, alas, the child's mother was on Medicaid, so the visits were free.
Maddening, I know.
Tyrese's cell phone sounded something hip-hop.
'Got to take this, Doc. Bidness.'
'Right,' I said again.
I do get angry sometimes. Who wouldn't? But through that haze, there are real children here. They hurt. I don't claim that all children are wonderful. They are not. I sometimes treat ones that I know – know – will amount to no good. But children are, if nothing else, helpless. They are weak and defenseless. Believe me, I've seen examples that would alter your definition of human beings. So I concentrate on the children.
