steps and into the house.
Marla came to me long before Stan and Rosie had finished crossing the meadow and she and I stepped close to Gareth and looked down at him. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood and more of it welled steadily from a torn cavity in the center of his chest. His bladder had let go and the crotch of his jeans was dark.
Marla slid her hand into mine and I heard her breathe quietly to herself, “At last…”
But Gareth wasn’t dead yet. His eyes had been half closed but they opened fully now and he coughed a mouthful of blood over his chin and spoke in a wet choking voice that made me think of a room filling with water.
“Looks like Einstein’s fucked himself up again.”
“Not as much as he’s fucked you up.”
Gareth laughed and choked and spat out more blood. “He’s going to go to jail for killing me to protect you from something you did to stop him from going to jail in the first place. I think you call that irony.”
He stopped for a moment and fought for breath. I noticed there were small bubbles forming in the pool of blood that had collected on his chest.
“Aren’t you going to call 911?”
“No.”
“They might be able to save me.”
“Honestly? I don’t think so.”
“And that’s okay because I killed your father, right? Well, I’m going to leave you with a little present. You too, Marla-you most of all. And if you’re smart, Johnny, you’ll do the right thing with it.”
Marla squatted so that her face was only a foot from his and hissed, “Don’t!”
“It’ll always be there between you if I don’t.”
“You promised.”
“Dying’s kind of a free pass. Johnny, get down here too, it hurts to talk.”
I squatted next to Marla. For a moment Gareth closed his eyes and gathered his strength. On the other side of the meadow I heard an engine start and a car pull away. When Gareth opened his eyes again the light had gone out of them and they were starting to look fixed and dull.
“Okay… I did fix the brakes on Ray’s car, same as Tripp’s. But I didn’t kill him. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have tried again, I just didn’t have to-”
I glanced at Marla and saw that she was watching me and crying.
“-because Marla did it for me. But you have to know, Johnny, it was an accident. It wasn’t her fault…” He paused and blinked rapidly several times. “And that pipe, I got rid of it weeks ago. Kiss my dad for me.”
Gareth tried twice to take another breath but couldn’t do it. The wound in his chest fizzed nastily. And then he was dead.
I stood slowly and looked down at him, at the now-cooling body of a man I had known for more than ten years-a friend I had robbed of the woman he loved, a friend I had made my enemy. So many years ago…
How could I have foreseen that his desire for Marla would one day lead my poor damaged brother to commit murder? There was no way, of course. Even so… even so, it seemed to me that I should have known.
Marla had her head in her hands; she wasn’t crying for Gareth, though. There was now a fresh horror in our lives demanding to be dug from its grave and examined. But I was terribly conscious that I had to go to Stan. Killing Jeremy Tripp had been something I could only just support. For someone like Stan, the most innocent of people, the act of murder would tear his soul to shreds.
I lifted Marla to her feet and began to pull her across the meadow toward Millicent’s house but she hung back and took her hand away from me.
“Johnny… Johnny…”
Her face was blotchy from crying and she stood in front of me unable to speak, her mouth twisting.
“Marla, come on. I need you with me.”
For a moment she didn’t move, then the briefest flicker of hope crossed her face and she held my hand again and ran with me, up the meadow to Millicent’s house.
When we got there I saw that the Datsun was gone. Millicent came to the door when she heard us on her stoop and the sight of her chilled me. That she was there meant someone else had driven the car away.
“What happened? Why did Stanley shoot that man? Is he dead?”
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. They went into the bedroom for a minute, then Rosie got the keys and they took the car.”
“Didn’t they say anything?”
“Not a thing. Except Rosie stopped on her way out, just here by the door, and put her arms around me and told me, ‘Thank you.’ What for, I don’t know, but she hasn’t hugged me like that more than three or four times in her life.”
I called Stan’s cell phone from Millicent’s stoop but he didn’t answer. Marla and I ran back down the slope and got into the pickup and charged out of Empty Mile.
We went straight to Old Town first and then, when we didn’t find them there, doubled back to Back Town. With each street we checked I felt an increasing sense of foreboding. Marla tried Stan’s phone constantly but it went straight to voice mail.
Near the town hall a thought struck me and I accelerated past the remaining stores and headed out to the Oakridge commercial precinct. If Stan was being eaten alive with guilt he might go to the place he most closely associated with the beginning of that guilt.
But when we got to the Plantagion warehouse there was no sign of the orange Datsun. I got out of the pickup to look around just in case. The warehouse was locked up and deserted. Through the window I could see all the office furniture was gone. It seemed that whoever had inherited Jeremy Tripp’s estate had closed the business down. I made a circuit of the building but there was no sign Stan had broken in anywhere. When I got back to the pickup my cell phone was ringing. Stan-his voice dreamlike, as though while he was speaking to me he was looking at something of beauty.
“Hi, Johnny-”
“Where are you?”
“It’s okay.”
“What do you mean? Stan? I want you to go back to the cabin right now.”
“Rosie and me talked about it. And you mustn’t be sad, Johnny, okay? You mustn’t be sad.”
“Stan! Get back to the cabin now. Put Rosie on the phone.”
“I had to shoot Gareth.”
“I know you did, and it’s okay. I’m not angry with you.”
“I know that, Johnny. You’re never angry with me. You’re the best brother in the world.”
“Stan, please. Where are you? What are you going to do?”
I heard my voice break and though I knew I was crying I couldn’t feel the tears on my face or the tightness in my throat. My perception had narrowed to only the voice against my ear and the dreadful visions flying through my head.
“I love you, Johnny, and I know how you tried to make things good for me with Plantasaurus and the gold and you let me marry Rosie and you took care of me. And I remember all the times we had together, since you came back and before that when I was a kid. I remember them all and I’m going to take them with me. Just like when I drowned and came awake again. The first thing I saw was the sky and it was so deep and blue, and then I saw you looking down at me and you were so worried and I thought how much I loved you and even when you were gone I never stopped feeling that way. Don’t forget, Johnny. Don’t think anything else.”
“Stan, I’m not going to think anything. We’ll talk about it at home.”
“You should wear my costumes, Johnny. Sometimes when you put them on it feels like things can’t hurt you so much.”
“Stan, please… You’re not going to hurt yourself, are you? I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you. Promise me.”
“I’m going to take you with me in my heart. I love you, Johnny.”
The line went dead. I dialed him back immediately but there was no answer. Marla put her hand on my thigh.
