“So you killed her. Damn Ray — it was Ann!”
Raymond shook his head slowly. He looked out the window, then toward Jim, but Weir could see that his gaze traveled far past himself, all the way to some destination that Jim could neither identify nor imagine.
“There are certain things a man can’t put up with in this life,” Ray said. “You can’t borrow his wife, use her, then hand her back with your kid inside. I tried to take it, but I couldn’t. The more it ate at me, the more I needed to see some justice done. You won’t understand this, but to me, Ann was proof that I was good. When I had her, I believed that. She was my badge, my... validation. When she betrayed me, I fell apart.”
Jim could hardly keep a rein on his charging thoughts. “You were always good enough, Ray. You were the only one who didn’t think so.”
“I don’t know. It’s something you either have inside or you don’t.”
“I stood up for you when you married my only sister. I stuck up for you anytime you needed it. You never had to prove anything to me. You’re right — I don’t understand.”
Raymond looked again at Cantrell, then he worked himself up to his hands and knees. He stood slowly, eyes fastened on Jim. “You don’t understand because you’ve never let yourself go. You always wash around in the middle. Ask Becky. We’ve had enough talks about the way you drift. You’re a good, strong, decent guy — but you’re afraid to go all the way. I was never like that. One thing you can say about me, Jim, is I’ve always been willing to go all the way. Want to hear something strange? When I found out she was carrying this asshole’s child, was going to try to fool me, I felt like everything I’d believed in was a lie. I sat there with her journal in my hands, crying like a baby. And Hell, I was furious. I didn’t believe in Ann anymore; I didn’t believe in the God I’d been praying to for thirty years. I didn’t believe in me or my job, or the law, or anything at all. I realized I was still living my life according to all the things that had failed me. I felt like a fool. Then, after I killed her, they all came rushing back. That’s why I stabbed her so many times — I could feel the old beliefs coming back. So I just flailed away, trying to make them disappear again. But it didn’t do any good. After she was dead, everything was back in place. Just like before. I missed her and I hated myself. I believed in God again and knew he was going to waste me. It took killing Ann to get my faith back — not that I really care about my soul anymore. I came that close to telling you, Jim, that night we went down the wall. I’m sorry. But I’m not sentimental enough to think I can change anything by saying so. I’m prepared to carry this through. I always have been.”
Ray looked down at Cantrell once again. “Pull that trigger if you want, but I’m going out on deck so I can breathe.”
He walked past Jim and out to the bridge deck. Jim followed him three steps back, the gun still in his hand. They were five or six miles offshore, ten miles south of Newport, Jim guessed. The swell was still high. Sea Urchin bobbed a quarter mile out. He could see the speck of Becky on the bridge.
Raymond looked back toward shore, then turned to Jim. “Ann got knocked up by Cantrell when she was fifteen. I didn’t know that until I read her journal. That trip to France? She never went to France. She went to upstate New York and had a dead baby. Told me later the scar was an appendectomy, and I believed her. Here we are twenty-four years later and she gets pregnant by him again. You wouldn’t believe how bad we wanted that for ourselves. What am I supposed to think? I’ll tell you what I came up with. I think God is a sour old bastard who plays tricks on us for his own entertainment.”
“How did you get to Goins?”
“No. I think Cantrell set that all up. Don’t ask me how he found Goins when a whole police department couldn’t. Don’t ask me how he got him to write that note, then jump in a pool of boiling silver. Maybe someone convinced Goins he really did do it. Guy’s a nut.”
Raymond looked down for a long while, then back toward shore. Past his head, Jim could see the pale bluffs of Dana Point, the brooding spring sky. Two sea gulls hovered overhead, treading air without effort. To the north, Newport was nothing but an approximation, a gray idea somewhere at the edge of the land.
Ray dabbed at the drying blood on his head. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
Jim didn’t answer.
“I wish it could have ended better. What are you going to do?”
“What kind of choice do you leave me, Ray? I either use this gun in my hand to blow away my best friend, or I drag you back to rot in jail.”
Raymond ran his hand over the polished railing. “I got to thinking lately about Francisco. I think his wife had a thing for Joaquin. That’s why his men turned around at the last minute. They were on her side.”
“Maybe.”
Raymond ran his hand over his bare arms and shivered. “Cold out here with no shirt on. What do you guess for water temp?”
“Low sixties.”
“How long would I last?”
“Two hours maybe. Half the time it would take you to make shore.”
“No chance at all?”
“None at all.”
“Let me take it?”
Weir looked at him. There was an odd little smile on Ray’s face, the same expression he’d get when he brought a suspect out in handcuffs.
“We still friends, Jim?”
The idea hit Jim that the constants in life were the things you made for yourself. Everything else was just degrees of uncertainty. Faith bridges the gaps, but the gaps remain.
Raymond was smiling again now, a broader, less fettered smile.
A long minute passed as neither man spoke. Jim looked out at Sea Urchin, up to the gray moving clouds, back along the miniature coast to Newport. The big yacht swayed gently in the swell, and the minor sunlight brought warmth to her wood and decking. He was profoundly tired.
For a moment, he saw on Raymond’s face an expression of absolute, unalloyed grief. In some strange way, it was what Jim had been wanting to see. Ray took a deep breath, and swallowed hard. “Thanks.”
With that, he climbed onto the gunwale and jumped over.
Jim waited a moment, then went to the railing and looked down. Ray, true to Jim’s prediction, had set off west, away from shore. His strokes were fast and short and the chop slapped hard against him. It was hard to tell how rough the sea was until a man was in it, trying to survive. It was an awful sight.
Jim watched for a long while. The swell kept Raymond pretty much in place, pulling him north a little and east a little, in spite of his determination to go the other way. Weir went back in and checked Cantrell. Shock had slowed his bleeding and his breath. Jim tore some fresh strips from Ray’s shirt, did what he could with them, then wrapped two blankets around the man. He swung Lady of the Bay to starboard and brought her up along Raymond, then went back out on the bridge deck. Ray was on his back now, trying to conserve energy, his strokes already slowing. The sea was too rough to last in, too cold, too big. Becky had moved Sea Urchin on the other side of Raymond, and she looked to Jim with an uncomprehending expression. Jim signaled for her to stay in place.
Looking down at Raymond’s struggle, Jim saw him instead at the age of sixteen, waiting for Ann to come downstairs for the prom. Oh, what a light in that boy’s face.
Jim could see him standing beside Ann, facing the priest before them, saying “I do.” Such conviction there, such belief.
Jim could see his skinny brown body riding the waves at Fifteenth Street; scurrying around the Eight Peso looking for dropped change; climbing into a fighting chair on one of Poon’s charter boats, begging to go along for the day. What hunger, what life and promise.