The man fobbed open the doors and lifted suitcases out of the back. He wrestled with them — big ones, not the little tote size, but monsters. He couldn’t make it with both. He put one down on the beaten dirt and entered with the other. East watched him disappear inside.
The other suitcase sat beside the car, unattended.
Uncalculating, straight and quick, East rushed behind the truck, around the light that spilled out the front door, to the suitcase. Was there a tag? A name card? He reached for it, the pine bough still in his hand. Looked for a name card, something on the handle, down the side. Nothing.
Then he found the golden stitching on the highest flap. Faint in the house’s glow: a monogram. CWT. For a moment his brain buzzed, pulling up the name of the man they were hunting. Then a shriek echoed inside the house: it all clicked in. Carver. Thompson. The right initials.
The right man.
The girl. “Daddy? Daddy? Someone—”
She came running. Not at him — not to shut the door. He saw her eyes. Never mind the initials — this suitcase was what she wanted.
He straightened, raised the pine mask idiotically to his face.
“Daddy!” She burst through the door, came outside.
East’s heart hammered. Discovered now.
The father’s first cry was faraway. Then he came barreling, yelling now: Melanie! Melanie! East spun away — where was his gun, even? He kept his face hidden, for being spotted by her was not like being spotted by him. She was a witness; he was the target. He was the one who knew too much. East cleared his throat, but as he did, she reached her suitcase, and he heard the other pair of feet sliding to a stop on the piney ground: his brother. Arrived.
Ty said, “Here we go, E. Is it him?”
East nodded. “It’s him.”
The judge stopped at the door. East watched him stare and then smile. Half laughing, a curious voice: “Do I know you boys?”
Ty’s arm came up and a growl rose from his throat, a reproach. Then he fired through the screen door. Two shots, three. East heard them punch the man, heard the long, failing gasp.
The girl tugged the suitcase and shut her eyes. Opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Her father hit the floor. Walter arrived.
“He finished?”
Ty leveled the gun at the girl, who hadn’t unsqueezed her eyes. She clutched the black handle.
“Not her,” East said.
Pock. Pock. Twice his brother shot. The noise ripped the black yard. “No,” East said, but already she was falling, the suitcase toppling over her.
Walter’s face was pale, stretched. “Is he finished, I said.”
“Three in the heart,” Ty said. “That’ll do. He’s the right dude?”
East dropped the pine bough. “He’s the one,” he murmured.
And the girl. The girl with her face going still in the lamplight. In the dark, she had the Jackson girl’s face. That same all-seeing look, into a world where nothing moves. East stood near her. “I told you not to,” he said.
“My call. I did it. That was what we said,” said Ty. “No time to talk about it.”
“You want to lose that gun, man,” Walter pointed out.
“No,” said Ty. “Ain’t the way it works. Right now I got to find my shoes.”
He sprinted, dirty socks, back to where he’d mounted the window. East staggered away. The gunshots still echoed around the spaces of his brain. Seconds were passing.
Lights in a house deeply set behind pines. But they might have been on before.
Ty’s feet scrambling in the needles behind the house. Every sound carrying sharply now, every breath leaving its shape like ghosts in the air.
“We got to go,” Walter urged. “East. We got to leave.”
“I know it.” East’s neck crawled. He did not look at the two dark piles, the man behind the door, and the other, under the black suitcase toppled over. He stared down the cleared channel beside the lit, empty house.
“Fuck!” Ty said in the useless dark.
Walter’s eyes swiveled. “East?”
“Did you do something with his shoes?”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Walter protested. “He kicked them off. Maybe we should get a head start? East?” Backpedaling already, finding the road with his feet.
Then mad, flying footsteps, and Ty was coming, the stripes of light painting him as he sped beneath the windows. In one hand the shoes, in the other the gun. “Go!” he panted. East turned: already Walter was pumping down the road. No other noise, no movement, no response. The quiet banks of mailboxes marked them passing by.
Quickly they made their way back around the stony road, thudding heavy of foot as it swept downhill, the pines less dense on their left between them and the lake. Their breath came and fled in quick mouthfuls. Around the lakeside curve, the parking lot came into view, the lone light on its pole stained yellow, a glimpse of their blue van shining beneath the trees. Numb, East hastened his steps. Get away, get away, his mind drummed. And also: What happened?
No talking, only the question the girl’s face made.
Then he saw the other car, an old boat of a Chevy jacked up on fat wheels, parked near the van, black like the pines in the yellow light. And two kids swarming around the van. Trouble.
“Look,” he said, pointing.
“Mother fuck,” said Ty, taking the lead. “All right. Guns up, and spread out. I’m a handle it. But be ready.”
“It’s just neighborhood kids,” said Walter.
Ty’s scowl locked down. “Do what I say, Walt.”
He fanned left, and East began a slow run across the lot, taking each yellow-lined parking space in two steps, Walter coming up behind. Ty’s gun made a heavy click, and East pawed at his pockets for the little gun. He found it clumsily, fumbling at it as he ran.
As yet the kids hadn’t spotted them. One might have been the ghetto-lake thug from yesterday. Meaty shoulders, moustache.
“That one got a gun,” East panted. Guessing. But just as much, telling Ty: Careful.
Ty raised his hand and squeezed a shot into the trees. Pock. The white boys saw them now. They clutched at each other, then broke for their car. The rattly engine roared. Ty followed them left, and East went for the van, slapping his pockets for the keys. “Hey!” Ty was yelling. “Hey!”
The dark car burned rubber. It leapt toward a gap in the trees. Instantly its lights were gone, just its whine climbing the road away from the lake. East reached the van, panting, key ready in his fingers.
But it wasn’t any use. The kids, they’d fucked it up. Walter came wheezing up behind, goggle-eyed. “Oh, shit,” he groaned. “Oh, shit!”
East breathed and circled. One side window had been popped off its buckle. It hung askew on its hinges like a flap. That had gotten them in. They’d pulled out everything — the clothes, the food, the first-aid kit and blanket. The case of water bottles, scattered on the ground.
“They took my game, man,” Ty swore from the back.
“We got the money, right?” said Walter. “Y’all still have the money?”
“They got my game.”
“We have to leave,” East said.
“Look, though,” Walter said. East stepped back. The problem wasn’t apparent. But down the hidden side of the van, the woods side, it said something in spray paint. It said, FUCK YOU NIGGERS.
“Bashed out the taillights too,” said Ty, shoes still dangling in his hand.
Walter chewed his lips. “We can’t drive like this,” he said. “Like, hello, help us out, every cop in the world. Right at the same time they’re finding bodies.”