She leaned, kissed her brother’s head, told him to be good as she slipped from his life, like so many before.
39
WALK SAT AT HIS DESK, found the bottle of Kentucky in the drawer, unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.
He closed his eyes to the burn, didn’t feel all that much like celebrating. Vincent had gone right home. He did not speak on the ride, he did not smile, just shook hands with Martha May. Walk told her she did good, met her eye and knew that Martha knew. Victory was hollow. The district attorney had stormed from the courtroom.
He drank a little more, till the night softened, his shoulders dropped, his body stopped exhausting him.
He looked over at the stack of papers piled high on his tray, going back a year, mostly routine, he had ignored all but Vincent King and Darke. The one thing they hadn’t lied about at trial was the state of Walk’s office.
He pulled the stack and began to thumb pages, Louanne’s scrawl, traffic violations, vandalism, possible trespass. He found it hard to focus, hard to recognize what used to be routine. He caught a couple of memos from state, and then, amongst it all, he saw a message from a Doctor David Yuto, returning his call.
Walk scanned his mind, the frustration growing before he settled on the autopsy of Baxter Logan, the man Vincent had killed in Fairmont.
He checked his watch, saw it was late but dialed the number.
The man answered on the first ring, turned out Yuto was working his last week, preparing things for his successor, two decades younger, more than a lifetime less experienced. They made a little small talk. Walk ran over the Logan case, it took Yuto a minute to locate the file, a man who knew the order.
“What more do you need to know?” Yuto said.
“I don’t … I guess the detail. I just wondered—”
“We weren’t as stringent back then. No DNA to look for. I noted cause of death. Head trauma.”
Walk sipped his whisky, his feet on the old desk. “So that was it. One punch and—”
“Not one punch. Not the way Logan looked.”
Walk stared into the glass.
“I remember Cuddy called. Of course he was young then, he hadn’t yet taken over from his father. But he told me not to waste that much time on Logan. Sex offenders aren’t all that popular at Fairmont. I noted cause of death and moved on to the next.”
“The beating … was it bad?”
Yuto sighed. “It’s been a long time but some of them, you just don’t forget some of them. Teeth gone, both eye sockets shattered. His nose was broken so badly it pressed flat to his face.”
“But it was a fight. Vincent King was fighting for his life.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say here, Chief Walker. It was a fight, but Logan was beaten long after it was over.”
Walk’s mind ran to Star, three ribs snapped like that. He thanked Yuto and hung up.
He swallowed, tasted the whisky still, his throat drying up, heart beginning to race away. He stood, left the station and made the walk, night now, nothing to see but distant light riding the waves, the steady pull of boats crossing the bay.
He breathed salt wind, moved slow enough, tried collecting his thoughts but they ran and formed pictures he did not want to see. Along Brycewood Avenue, neighbors he knew from the summers before, when the town was his.
He stopped at the end of Sunset when he saw Vincent across the street, back to him, moving fast, dark jeans and shirt. He thought of calling out, instead followed, far enough back. He wondered how the man felt, death to life.
Along the street and up, two minutes and Vincent climbed over the gray wall, dry-laid stone, jagged against soft streetlight. He walked up to the wishing tree, not breaking stride, just bent quick, and then he was up, glancing back and around.
A car at the top of the street, falling headlights up and over the hill. Walk moved into the shadow, Vincent, spooked, moved on, at pace, away from the beams, into the night.
Walk watched the car pass, and then he climbed the wall and dropped to long grass. At the tree he felt around blind, then took out his cell and lit the base.
The hole, close to the dirt, small enough to miss.
He knelt, reached a hand in, and pulled out a gun.
40
“THOSE FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON,” Thomas Noble said. “The Apollo astronauts made them and they’ll stay there for at least ten million years.”
She saw sky no longer endless. She knew about souls and the prophetic, about divine reunion and a world to come. She tried not to think of Robin, if he woke that morning frightened, she swallowed a lump of such bitter shame she almost cried out.
“Where will you go?”
“I have business to attend to.”
“You could stay here.”
“No.”
“I could come with you.”
“No.”
“I’m brave. I took a blue eye for you.”
“For that I will always be grateful.”
They lay at the end of his yard, the woodland behind made shadows of them.
“What you’ve been through,” he said. “It isn’t fair.”
“You sound like a child. The notion of fair.” She closed her eyes.
“You know nothing good will come of any of this.”
A star bled from the sky. She did not make a wish. Wishing on stars was for children, and Duchess knew she was no longer one of those. She wondered if she ever had been.
“All these people,” Duchess said. “They spend a lifetime looking to the sky and asking questions. Does God intervene, if he doesn’t, why do they still pray?”
“Faith. The hope that he will.”
“Because otherwise life is too small.”
He spoke again quietly. “I worry you won’t find a way back.”
Duchess watched the moon.
“I used to ask God about my hand. Why? That kind of thing. I used to pray I’d wake up normal. You know
