The first thing he did after he got off the phone with Rob was walk the three blocks into town for a big twenty-ounce caffe latte with a double shot of espresso, the air dense, the sea swallowed up in fog. There were tourists everywhere, though the season was petering out. Or should have been. But then the Boomers were enjoying their retirement and didn’t have a season anymore — they just kept coming. He would have gone to the bakery or the breakfast place to put something on his stomach, if only for ballast, but he didn’t really want to see anybody or have to make explanations or pretend to be grateful for the expressions of sympathy people kept laying on him, whether false or sincere or somewhere in between. Instead he went to the deli and had them fix him a couple of sandwiches, one for now, one for the train, then he went home to make his hundred daily phone calls in the frustrated hope of gleaning some bit of information that would provide the key here, the key he could turn in a lock that would open the door and make all this go away.
Just yesterday he’d heard from a source at the Fort Bragg police station (Freddy Aulin, who’d graduated from the high school in 1982) that a witness had positively identified Adam the night before. The witness — a man in his twenties, one of those free spirits who didn’t worry much about grooming and slept rough and had a drug and/or drinking problem — was making his own camp off the railroad tracks up near the South Fork milepost, and while he wasn’t oblivious to the sheriff’s order he just didn’t think it applied to him. It was unclear whether he knew Adam or not, but he was heading back from town along the tracks with a bottle of fortified wine and saw a figure coming toward him, moving fast, and recognized Adam. The thing was, Adam didn’t seem jumpy or paranoid at all. In fact, he’d stopped and chatted with the man awhile, even going so far as to share a joint with him in a thicket not fifty feet off the tracks where transients were known to gather. Was the man afraid for his life? Well, no, he wasn’t. For one thing, he was drunk, and for another he expressed nothing but admiration for what Adam was doing, sticking it to them, and they were brothers, that was how he saw it. Adam must have seen it that way too.
“You know,” the man told him, “they’re out here looking for you. Like a million cops.”
Adam just shrugged. “Let them look,” he said.
And how had this man come to let the police in on the encounter? Had he strolled in voluntarily to offer up information, maybe in the hope of scoring some reward money? No. He was arrested for urinating in public when he went back into town later that night for a second bottle, and as the arresting officer was handcuffing him, he happened to let it drop, whether out of civic duty or by way of extenuation wasn’t clear. “I don’t know if it means anything to you,” he said, the words thick in his mouth, “but I just saw that dude you’re after, Adam? Like two hours ago?”
So yes, Sten was making phone calls, and whether they led to anything other than frustration, more frustration, at least he was doing something. He spent the next two hours on the phone, learning nothing, then thought to call Carolee before he left for the train, just to let her know what was going on. She picked up on the first ring and right away he could tell something was wrong, just from the way she murmured hello as if it had to be pried from her lips.
“What is it?” he said. “You hear anything?”
It took her a minute. She was gathering herself, her breathing harsh and sodden, as if she were holding a washcloth over the receiver. “They shot the antelope.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Two of the sable. Corinna and Lulu. They’re saying Adam did it.”
“Adam? That’s ridiculous. It’s forty miles to get down there.”
She didn’t say anything to this, just breathed through the line.
“It’s probably nothing. Some kid with a gun.”
A pause. Her voice so reduced it was barely there. “Adam’s a kid with a gun.”
“Some other kid. Some apprentice yahoo. It’s nothing, I’m sure of it.”
“Uh-huh. Tell that to Cindy. And Gentian. They’ve got two dead animals on their hands, animals that might as well have been over in Africa, taking their chances there.”
He didn’t know what to say to this. Adam could easily have humped those forty miles in the last two days, but Sten was sure he hadn’t. And even if he had, why would he shoot antelope? But then — and Sten’s thoughts were racing ahead of him — why would he shoot Carey or Art or open fire on a SWAT team? The answer came rising to the surface like something buoyed on its own gases: because he was suicidal, that was why. Because he wanted to die. He wasn’t going to come to the train, to the sound of his own name, to his father. That was fantasy. That was futility. That was the way to pain and more pain.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am. Really. That’s a terrible thing. But I’m sure it’s not Adam, I’m sure there’s some other explanation. . but look, the reason I called is I heard from Rob and he wants me to go up the train line.”
“When?”
“Today. This afternoon.”
“I’m coming.”
“You heard Rob, didn’t you? Bullets are flying out there. And whether these cops are highly trained or not, you never can tell what’s going to happen, so that’s just not an option.”
“And you really think he’s going to listen to you, he’s going to come to you? Because I’m the one. I’m the one he’ll come to.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I know that,” and here was the accusation again, the old thrust, why can’t you be a better father, why can’t you be home nights, why can’t you get strict with him, lay down the law, make him stop this nonsense, why didn’t you show up for the T-ball game, the sing-along, the cake sale, because what meeting is more important than your own son? “And if I didn’t know it I’m sure you’d be there to tell me the next ten thousand times.”
The train moved along at a walking pace, easing across the intersection on Main with its whistle blowing for everybody to hear and take note of, whether they were stalled at the crossing in their cars and campers or hunkered in some ravine halfway up the mountainside ready to take on the world. Sten was dressed like a tourist, in shorts, running shoes and a woolen shirt that concealed the soft body armor Rob had insisted on, though it wasn’t quite clear why since it wouldn’t stop a round from an assault rifle. Slow it down, maybe, depending on how far it had to travel. Or a ricochet, it might stop a ricochet, which, of course, might not necessarily cooperate and strike you where you were protected. It could go anywhere, through your skull, the roof of your mouth, your groin. But he didn’t want to think about that — or the last time he’d laid eyes on Adam, the fight they’d had, how Adam had shoved back with all the sick fury uncoiling inside him, and what had the Norse called their fiercest warriors? Berserkers. They didn’t know fear. They were unhinged. And on the battlefield they went berserk. Adam Stensen. Sten’s son. Son of Sten who was the son of Sten.
There was no one on the deck of the observation car — that would have been suicidal in Rob’s estimation, Rob who’d declined to go on this little expedition because he had a command to oversee — and Sten wondered about that, about the imposture they were trying to pull off here. Various deputies were scattered throughout the two enclosed cars, men and women both, dressed casually, the men in loud shirts and reversed baseball caps, the women in big straw hats and pastels, but if they were really tourists, actual tourists, half of them would have been lounging around the open car, beer bottles pressed to their lips and cameras flashing. Would Adam notice? Would he care? Would he even be anywhere near the rail line in broad daylight? And here, despite himself, he felt a flush of pride: Adam was smart. He was elusive. And he knew his terrain. He would have made a LURP in Vietnam, the ghost in the night who materialized amongst the enemy to cut the throats of the unwary and scare the shit out of the rest.