“Rode ’er to Sheriff McKindrey’s, but he weren’t there. The lady at his office said he was down at The Red Man Tavern, so I went there. The Sheriff was pretty drunk, but when I mentioned the fire, whole buncha folks ran out and got in their cars and went out to the farm. They got the fire out pretty quick and found my Pa in there, all burned up.”
“How do you know it wasn’t just an accident?”
“Heard a few of the men talkin’ to the Sheriff. They said they found some canisters of kerosene that we always kept in the barn. They were inside the house. Said they thought someone set the fire.”
Wayne scratched his chin. “Maybe… and I know this ain’t gonna be easy to hear, but…”
Louise shot him a glare. “Don’t.”
Wayne shrugged, but said no more.
“S’all right,” Pete said softly. “I know what you was gonna say, but Pa didn’t burn himself up. Not unless him and the doc had the same idea at the same time, cuz the doc’s place was all burnt up too.”
“Yeah,” Wayne chimed in. “That’s what I saw on the news. They found all those pieces of bodies there. Doctor went mad or somethin’, didn’t he?”
Louise spoke before Pete could answer. “Who do you think hurt all those people, Pete? Who do you think did this to your Pa?”
“It weren’t the doc,” he said. “It weren’t him, no matter what they’re sayin’. He wanted to help that girl real bad and when he sent us away, I could see he was afraid of somethin’, just like my daddy was. They were waitin’ for bad folk to come.”
Louise kissed his head, suddenly reminded of the nights she’d spent in this same pose with the boy while they looked at the stars, and that one night in particular as they watched one fall from the sky when he asked her, “Are you gonna leave us too?” She’d been unable to reply, unable to lie to him, and so had distracted him with talk of the Heavens. Then she had left him, and now his world had been obliterated, leaving him in the company, however temporary, of a woman he had to believe didn’t care.
“How did you find me?” she asked in a whisper, unsure whether the question was a rhetorical one.
“They had your address at Jo’s Diner. Said you called them with it so they could send you a paycheck they owed you or somethin’. After the funeral, the Sheriff organized a collection and they gave me some money. I used some of it to take the bus here.”
“So you’ve still got some left?” Wayne asked.
Louise stared at him. It wasn’t clear whether he was asking because he didn’t think they could afford to keep the boy for long, or because he planned to relieve the child of his money. Again she was struck by the unpleasant feeling that he was hiding something from her, that his paranoia might have its roots in something very real, and very troubling.
“Some,” Pete said. “Not much.”
“Well,” Louise said with a sigh, “We need to get you cleaned up, fed and bedded down if you’re going to be stayin’ with us for a while.”
She stood.
Pete frowned up at her. “I don’t want to stay with you,” he said, and Wayne couldn’t restrain a small sigh of relief.
Louise raised her eyebrows. “I don’t understand. I thought that’s why you were here.”
“No,” said the boy. “I came here to tell you what happened to daddy, because I know he loved you and would want you to know.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. I’m glad—”
Pete set his hot chocolate down and rose. Wayne was right. The boy had grown. He was now as tall as Louise. When she’d left him, he’d barely been up to her shoulders.
“And I came to tell you,” he said, his face impassive, a queer light in his eyes. His hands had begun to tremble and she reached out to hold them in her own. His skin was cold. “That I aim to find those folks and make ’em sorry for what they done.”
-17-
It was a Tuesday night, and McClellan’s Bar was mercifully free of the rowdy crowds it entertained on the weekends. There were no businessmen with their ties slung back over their shoulders, shirts unbuttoned as they spoke to each other in roars; no manicured women in short dresses trying not to look desperate as they eyed the men who appeared drunkest, and wealthiest; no underage teens balancing false courage with crippling nerves as they waited to be asked for their fake I.D’s; no couples canoodling in the red leather booths beneath veils of smoke, their hands touching as they preserved a blissful moment sure to be destroyed out there in the world where uncontaminated love was a thing of fairytale and film; no loud music as young men and women fed the jukebox in the corner by the restrooms; no girls dancing on tables, cheered on by their equally inebriated girlfriends; no aggravated men looking to start a fight with the first guy unfortunate enough to nudge against them while pushing through the crowd.
Tonight there was only the tired-looking barman polishing glasses that were already clean, a lone woman with long, tousled yellow-gray hair smoking a cigarette and staring at her own unhappy reflection in the mirror behind the bar, and Finch, who sat at the far end of the long narrow counter, away from the door but facing it, so he could see whoever entered. Kara had thought this habit—his refusal to sit with his back to any door in any establishment—a dangerously paranoid one, the behavior of a criminal, or a mafia soldier. He had never disagreed, or tried to explain it, but was glad that they had already broken up by the time he returned from Iraq, because it was much worse now. He had never admitted to her that his caution had been an affected thing, taken from some gangster movie he’d seen once in which one of the characters had professed an unwillingness to sit with his back to the door because one of his friends had been ‘clipped’ that way. Finch had liked that movie, though he couldn’t remember much about it now, and so had secretly justified his wariness as good sense in a world full of unseen danger. Nowadays, the paranoia he’d feigned had mutated, become real. Nowadays he sat facing the door because he was afraid something dangerous might at any moment explode through it.
A woman in an abaya perhaps, a scared smile on her face as her hands moved to her waist, to the wires…
Elbows on the bar, he brought his hands to his face and scrubbed away the memory of blood and smoke. He could still smell it on his skin, all of it mingled with the scent of fear that forever clung to him. And when finally he lowered them, he sensed the woman at the other end of the bar watching him, and there was a presence to his right, standing unsteadily between Finch and the door.
“Whassup?” said the man, and smiled. He had short blonde hair, a tanned youthful face, and was obviously drunk, his eyes bloodshot, Abercrombie & Fitch clothes slightly wrinkled, his shirt untucked. Finch figured him for a sole survivor of a bachelor party, or an escapee from a frat house where the celebrations had been defused, leaving this guy to seek out any excuse to perpetuate his immaturity. An oddly feminine hand with delicate fingers was braced on the bar, and seemed to be the only thing delaying his inevitable appointment with the floor.
Finch nodded, and went back to his drink. There was only the woman in the bar with them, and given the lack of aesthetic appeal she would have in Frat Boy’s eyes, he expected more shallow conversation to come. He was not disappointed.
“You look pissed off,” the guy said. “Lighten up, man!” He brushed a hand against Finch’s elbow. “S’early!”
Finch ignored him.
The barman materialized. “What can I get ya?” he asked the wobbling man.
“You got Sambuca?”
“No.”
Finch noticed with amusement the bottle of Sambuca on the shelf behind the barman.