Compared to the man, though, Caitlin is a mess, her hair a clawed and uneven tangle, her left cheek bleeding from scratch marks. Despite these injuries, she seems radiant with feral energy, while the man at her feet is pale and wheezing from extreme blood loss.
It doesn’t matter that Blake doesn’t recognize the man at first, because there is enough recognition and guilt in the man’s pain-widened eyes for both of them. Just the sight of his expression alone is enough to collapse Blake’s self-assurances that Caitlin’s slipped into a world of utter lunacy.
Which means that this man is somehow connected to John’s murder… and Blake’s life for the last ten years has been nurtured by a lie.
Nova’s hand comes to rest on his elbow. He’s not sure if she’s frightened or trying to comfort him, and it doesn’t matter. He is grateful just for her touch.
“You don’t remember him, do you?” Caitlin asks. And it takes Blake a second to realize the question is directed at him. Before he can manage a response, Caitlin says, “Of course you don’t. The last time you saw him he was wearing a mask.”
“Listen,” the man wheezes. “Please… listen…”
“His name is Mike Simmons,” Caitlin says. “We went to high school with him, Blake. And, boy, did he fuck up. He assumed I was in on it, you see. So after I caught him in the yard, he started making me offers. And he said too much. Way too much.”
“In on it? What’s happening?” Blake whispers. “Just… tell me what’s happening.”
“There’s a tape, you see. A tape of this bastard and his friends leaving the scene of John’s murder. Troy had it. He stole it from a security system in one of the homes along the levee that night and kept it from the homicide detectives while he framed the wrong men for the murder. Troy Mangier, our hero, he had it for years. And he used it to blackmail this… piece of shit and his pals. When they heard he’d gone missing, he”—and she emphasizes who she’s talking about by kicking the wounded man in the stomach—“put my house under surveillance and started following me.”
Blake feels as if his gaze is shrinking to a pinpoint somewhere above the man’s body and just below Caitlin’s chest. He is breathing through a straw and there is a tingling weightlessness throughout his shoulders and upper back that makes him feel as if the top half of his spine has gone molten.
“This is him, Blake,” Caitlin says, her voice just above a whisper. “This is the man who killed John Fuller.”
“No!” The man’s scream is fluid-filled and lashes his gaping mouth with spittle. “No. No. We didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t know about the pumping station. We didn’t know… the water. We didn’t know the water would…”
Nova lets out a stunted groan. She tightens her grip on Blake’s elbow just as he begins to sink to the floor. When he lands in the chair she’s steered him into at the last moment, he finds his casual, seated pose to be almost sacrilegious, and so he bends forward and places his face in his hands because it feels like it’s going to fall off him, along with the rest of his skin and anything else designed to armor his soft, interior parts.
He sees Troy, the handsome uniformed officer, giving interview after interview on TV, describing the arrest of Xander Higgins and Delray Morrison in precise, professional detail. He sees the man grilling steaks on the pool deck at that condo high-rise in Pensacola where they all spent a weekend together after Troy and Caitlin first started dating, when the man’s installation in their everyday lives, their lives beyond tragedy, seemed like an inevitable comfort for them all, a selfless hero assuming his rightful place. Frank Sinatra croons from the nearby stereo, and the sugar-white beach looks even more fierce and brilliant than usual beneath a sky piled high with gray storm clouds that drench the watery horizon but not the shore. And Blake sits on a lounge chair, knowing it will make for a perfect memory someday, the kind you take off the shelf and write poems about when your life has stalled out, when you’re lonely and older and working too hard—the music and the barbecue smoke and Troy’s hair and powder-blue polo shirt dancing in the hot wind off the Gulf, the great towering clouds that from this distance are all visual drama and no real rain, and Blake feeling confident that if Caitlin could land someone so handsome and brave, then surely someday he’d find someone who’d make him feel the way John could have if he’d been allowed to live.
And the whole time, there was a tape. A tape of John’s real killers that Troy had hidden somewhere. There was a tape when Troy had turned from the grill that afternoon and sung along with Old Blue Eyes as if Blake were his only audience member in the theater in his mind. There was a tape as the clouds sailed from east to west and the music soared and Caitlin called down from the balcony overhead to ask them how much longer until the steaks were done. The whole time, there had been a tape. A tape that condemned two innocent men to early deaths.
And now Blake can see how Troy could gamble for hours every weekend and never lose his apartment or his shirt. But a tape like that, how long can you use it before one of your victims cracks? So he’d gone after Caitlin years later, the wealthiest young woman he’d ever come across in his years as a lying, duplicitous bastard. Even better, she was always tethered to a best friend who was sure to see Troy as a hero, sure to help Caitlin overlook any missteps Troy might take in the first days of their courtship.
And suddenly no one seems knowable, every promise the seed of a betrayal, and Blake is making sounds into his palms that don’t sound quite human as Nova grips his shoulders from behind. Because never before has the full weight of something come crashing down on him quite like this, with the force and precision of the lead pipe they struck John across the head with that night.
Blake feels a feathery sensation against his fingers and opens his eyes through tears to see Caitlin crouched on her knees before him. She’s taken both of his hands in one of hers, but in the other she still holds the gun. And behind him, Nova has stiffened. She’s watching their captive now that Caitlin has turned her back on the man.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did it this way, but I wasn’t expecting you, and I was planning to… Never mind that. I’m not sorry. I’m glad you’re feeling it all at once. I’m glad that you’re not shutting it out, denying it. Sometimes you can be too smart for your own good, Blake. Sometimes it’s important just to feel things, even when it’s rage. Especially when it’s rage.
“You can’t… explain to someone that the world is not what they think it is. They have to see it for themselves. They have to learn it for themselves. I mean, look at me. You came to me with all those people who said they’d seen Troy in the casinos, and I refused to believe you. And what was my reward? I walk in on him fucking some whore at my own birthday party. And what do I do? I run out to the gazebo and I grab a champagne glass and I slash my wrists and I get ready to die. But instead, something else happens. Something comes up from the earth, and it drinks from me, Blake.
“Whatever this thing is, that’s what it does—it drinks from you and then it heals you. In every way. I’m just beginning to understand it, but I know one thing. Whatever it is, it’s been waiting for the blood of the betrayed. I gave it mine and it brought me justice. It saved my life and took away my grief. And now… now, Blake, it’s time for you to give it yours.”