For the past nineteen years—for me—that’s all he’s been. Dead.
And now he’s crumpled at the base of a palm tree as a slow, leaky rain drips from above.
“Cal! Med kit!” Roosevelt shouts.
I cut past the white gazebo at the front of the park, and my foot slips in the grass, sending me flat on my ass, where the damp ground seeps through my pants.
“Cal, where are you?” Roosevelt calls without turning around.
It’s a fair question. I close my eyes and tell myself I’m still in the poorly lit park, but all I see is the tarnished doorknob in that spearmint-gum-and-hairspray room where my dad and I said good-bye. I blink once and the doorknob twists, revealing the child psychologist assigned by the state. It’s like that Moby song. When you have a damaged kid, you don’t ask, “How you feeling?” You give him a crayon and say, “Draw something nice.”
I drew lots of nice.
“Med kit!” Roosevelt snaps again.
I scramble to my feet. Years of training rush back. So do decade-old escape plans. I should turn around now. Let Roosevelt handle it. But if I do— No. Not until—
I need to know if it’s him.
Ten feet in front of me, Roosevelt still has the flashlight tucked under his armpit. It shines like a spotlight, showcasing the bloody inkblot stained into the man’s silk shirt. As I barrel toward them, Roosevelt turns my way and the armpit flashlight follows. There’s no missing the terror on my face. “Cal, what’re you—?”
Like a baseball player rounding third, I drop to one knee and slide through the wet grass, slamming the med kit into Roosevelt’s chest and almost knocking him over.
“Cal, what’s wrong? Do you know this guy?” Roosevelt asks.
Grabbing the flashlight, I don’t answer. I’m hunched over the man, shining the light and studying his face. He’s got a beard now, tightly trimmed and speckled with gray.
“Shut it off,” the man moans, jerking his head back and forth. His eyes are clenched from the light and the pain, but his face—the double chin, the extra weight, even the big Adam’s apple—it can’t be.
“You’re blinding him, Cal!” Roosevelt says, snatching the flashlight from my grip and shining it in my face. “What the hell is wrong with—”
“C-Cal?” the man mumbles, looking at Roosevelt. He heard him say my name. But as the man turns to me, the light hits us both from the side. Our eyes connect. “N-No. You’re not— You’re—” He swallows hard. “Cal?”
It’s an established scientific fact that the sense of smell is the most powerful for triggering memories. But it’s wrong. Because the moment I hear that scratchy, stumbly baritone—everyone knows their father’s voice.
Our eyes stay locked, and I swear, I see the old him under the new him, like he’s wearing a Halloween mask of his future self. But as I study this middle-aged man with the leathery, sun-beaten skin—God, he looks so old—his terrified pale green eyes, his twisted Irish nose . . . it’s more crooked than I remember. Like it’s been broken again.
His hand shakes like a Parkinson’s patient as he tries to wipe flecks of blood from his mouth. He has to tuck the hand underneath him to stop it from trembling. He spent eight years in prison. It can’t be just his nose that’s been broken.
“You okay?” Roosevelt asks. I’m not sure who he’s talking to, though it’s pretty clear it doesn’t matter. Down on my knees, I’m once again nine years old, pulling crayons from an old Tupperware bin. To this day, I don’t know if it was my greatest fear or deepest desire, but the one thing I drew over and over was my father coming home.
5
Cal, you need to hurry,” the man with the ponytail called out across the park. “He’s starting t—”
“Ready!” shouted the one called Cal.
From the front seat of his sedan, Ellis stared through his windshield, watching the scene and knowing that coincidences this perfect were never just coincidences. Next to him, in the passenger seat, his dog rumbled and growled—first at the rain, then at the flashlight, the bobbing and glowing light-stick in the distance.
“Easy, girl. . . . Good girl,” Ellis whispered, patting his dog’s neck as they spied the two homeless volunteers shouting at the far end of the little park. Cal. One of them was named Cal. From this side of the park, it was hard to hear much. But Ellis heard enough.
“Zero seven eight, zero five, one one two zero,” yelled the ponytailed man.
Ellis pulled out the file folder the Judge’s office had put together and checked the Social Security number against the one on the pink sheet from Hong Kong. The driver picking up the Book of Lies: Harper, Lloyd.
Ellis’s amber eyes narrowed as his thick eyebrows drew together. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He’d been following Lloyd for barely ten minutes—following the simpleminded courier just to make sure the shipment got through. But what Ellis had seen . . . when the flash of the gun erupted and Lloyd stumbled in the park . . . No, Lloyd wasn’t simpleminded at all. Lloyd Harper might not’ve known exactly what was inside, but he knew the value of what he was carrying. Ellis shouldn’t’ve been so surprised. His own father was a liar, too. And a far worse trickster.
The dog raised her head, always reading Ellis perfectly.
“I’m okay, girl,” he promised.
Across the dark park, there was a burst of light as the door of the van flew open. Ellis saw an older man with white hair— No. He had an open, boyish face and loose-jointed movements. Like a giant marionette out of sync. He was young. Young with white hair.
Ellis flipped through the pages, still rubbing his thumbnail across the corner of the file folder. White hair, twenty-eight years old. There it was. Known relatives. Calvin. Cal.
One of them was named Cal. And the way he was running—the shock and fear on his face as he came bursting out into the rainy night—Cal knew exactly whom he’d found.
For a moment, Ellis laughed to himself. Of course. It had to come back to father and son. Just as it began with Adam and Cain. Just as it was with Mitchell and Jerry Siegel.
It was the same when he’d first heard the truth about his own family—the lifelong lie his father had told him. In that instant, Ellis realized how much of his life was a construct. But Ellis wasn’t sad. He was thrilled. He knew he was meant for something bigger. No question, that’s why his mother left him the diary, the softbound journal with the water-stained leather cover.
For over a year he’d been studying the diary’s pages, absorbing the theories that his grandfather and great-grandfather—both Leadership officers—spent so many years working on. Throughout the books, his name was spelled differently—Cayin, Kayin, Kenite—depending on the translation and where the story originated. But there was no mistaking the world’s first murderer. Or the first man God forgave—and empowered. The man who held the secret of God’s true power.