Once Barry was done with interviewing Drew, he spent some time with Ellen in the living room. That left me and Drew alone in the kitchen.
“So,” I said, smiling, standing by the counter, “a bank robber.”
“I wasn’t very good at it,” Drew said. “My first holdup, I blew it.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“I needed money,” he said, looking at me like I was some kind of an idiot. “I had a child to support.”
I recalled his comment, that he didn’t have kids anymore. Rather than pursue this, I asked, “How’d it go with Detective Duckworth?”
He shrugged, happened to glance up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly midnight. “We still workin’ tomorrow?” he asked.
I smiled tiredly. “How about I pick you up at nine instead of eight?”
“That’s okay,” he said. “If they don’t take me in.”
I wanted to say something encouraging, but I had no idea how his talk with Barry had gone.
He said to me, “You could have just said you killed him. The cops would’ve believed you without even thinking. But not me. Not with a record.” He frowned. “I was starting to think maybe you’re actually an okay person.”
If I’d made a bad impression when I’d first met Drew, I wasn’t sure how I’d done it. And besides, was that what you had to do to qualify as an okay guy in Drew’s book? Claim to kill someone when you hadn’t?
Wasn’t that a lot for Drew to ask of me, even if he had saved my life? And Ellen’s? Maybe it wasn’t. The thing was, I might have done it if I’d thought the police would buy the story. But there was still Mortie’s accomplice out there somewhere, and no matter how disreputable he might be, his version of events could end up undercutting mine.
It seemed better to stick with the truth. I just hoped it didn’t end up getting Drew screwed.
Finally, Barry and I had some one-on-one time, but we ended up covering the same ground again, and if Barry had found any inconsistencies in our stories, he wasn’t letting on.
The last thing I said to him was, “They won’t charge him, will they? Ellen and I’d probably be dead now if Drew hadn’t shown up.”
Barry shook his head slowly, as if to say no. But all he said was, “How’s your hand?”
There were marks where my fingers had been jammed into the teeth of the hedge trimmer, but the skin hadn’t been broken. “Okay,” I said.
“You were damn lucky.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got horseshoes up my ass.”
We walked back into the kitchen together. Ellen and Drew were outside on the deck, talking. A different uniformed officer, who was holding something down at his side, out of view, sidled past them and came into the kitchen.
“Detective,” he said, and presented Barry with a plastic evidence bag. There was a gun inside it.
“A Glock 19,” Barry said. “Nine mill. The Langleys were killed with a nine-millimeter weapon.”
I felt my own eyebrows go up.
“Where’d you find it?” Barry asked the cop.
“Alongside the lane, just by the grass. We’ve marked the spot.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “You saying this is the gun that killed the Langleys?”
Barry shook his head. “Nobody’s saying that. Not yet. If it’s the same gun, it’s made an amazing reappearance. Every square inch around here was searched after the Langleys were killed.” He told the cop to keep the recovered gun out of sight, and called Drew in.
“Yeah?” he said.
“You said you followed the second guy?”
“Yeah, but he had a head start, I couldn’t catch him. I’m strong, but I’m not a good runner.”
“You notice anything funny when he got to the car, whether he dropped anything?”
Drew thought. “He was just getting in and the door was closing, then he went to open it again, but I was getting close, and he closed it and backed up like crazy, kicking up gravel and everything.”
“Come show me exactly where the car was,” Barry said.
We all walked up the lane together, Barry and Drew and the cop who’d brought in the gun in the lead, me and Ellen following.
“Okay,” Drew said. “It was dark, like now, but the car was parked just up here, about three car lengths in from the road, you know?”
Barry was nodding. The cop had a big flashlight and was shining it ahead. Drew pointed out to the highway. “I had to leave my car up there because I couldn’t get past it.”
I squinted into the darkness where Drew was pointing, saw a car up there, looked like an older Ford Taurus, maybe a Mercury Sable.
Drew stopped walking. “I think it was right about here.”
“And the car,” Barry said. “It was nose in?”
“That’s right.”
“So when our dead guy’s buddy got in, it would have been over here, on the right side of the lane.” The cop shone his light in that area.
“Yup,” said Drew. The cop’s light had picked up a small flag that I was guessing had been used to mark where the gun was found. “What’s that?” Drew asked.
Barry said, “That’s where our friend dropped his gun. Son of a bitch.”
TWENTY-NINE
The police weren’t done with us until nearly one in the morning, and ordinarily I might consider that a bit late to call someone, but when Ellen suggested getting in touch with Natalie Bondurant to tell her about what had happened, and how these recent events might help Derek, I said, “Do it.”
If Natalie was upset at our having disturbed her, she gave no indication. “I want to know what evidence they get out of that gun,” she said. “Pronto.”
Despite what we’d been through, we slept better that night than we might have expected. I think we were able to sleep because we felt, for the first time since Derek’s arrest, that there was hope.
“I’m all over this today,” Ellen said at breakfast. “I’m going down to see Natalie, I’m going to see if I can get in to talk to Derek.”
I felt comforted, seeing Drew standing at the curb outside his mother’s house when I turned down his street. Clearly, Barry had not changed his mind through the night, and Drew had not been taken into custody.
“Hey,” I said as he climbed into the truck.
“Morning,” he said.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Tired,” he said. “Later, that detective? I was getting in my car to go and he asked all his questions all over again. A couple of times.”
“Things okay?”
“I think he was finally satisfied that we were all telling the truth.”
“You okay otherwise?” It seemed a somewhat foolish question. He’d killed someone the night before. Even though his actions had been justified, taking the life of another person, it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing I’d be able to shake off.
“I wondered if you’d actually come this morning,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because of my record,” Drew said. “Because you found out I’d been in prison.”
“I’d be a real asshole, after what you did for me and Ellen last night, to bail on you.”
He nodded, stared straight ahead beyond the windshield. “How about you?” he asked. “You okay?”
