He yawned, stretched, put a teaspoon of instant coffee in a cup, filled it with water and stuck it in the microwave, got a box of Honey Nut Cheerios from the cupboard and a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, carried it to the breakfast nook and went back to get the coffee when the microwave beeped.
As he took it out, Letty appeared, clutching her bathrobe, her hair a blond tangle, her eyes still sleepy; she was wearing bunny-rabbit slippers.
"Got more coffee?"
"This is instant."
"Okay…" She shuffled over to the counter and got down a cup, and repeated Lucas's ritual with the Folgers, complete with the yawn and stretch.
"Finish that Mockingbird essay?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah."
She carried the coffee over to the table. "Is it any good?" he asked.
"I don't want to talk about that," she said. "I need to talk to you about something when Mom isn't here."
Lucas looked at her for a second, then said, "I don't keep much from your mom."
"You might keep this," she said. "It's for her own good."
"So ' what?"
She took a sip of coffee and then said, "I didn't tell you the truth about the other night, with Juliet."
Lucas looked at her over his cup. "So what's the truth?"
"I was there-I just got there-when they came out of the house. Randy was yelling at Juliet and Ranch to "get me." Juliet didn't push him, and he slashed her with that stick, and then she took him over the edge. I heard the cop car coming, freaked out, and took off on my bike. I didn't want Mom to know, because it might scare her."
Lucas sighed. "Ah, jeez ' But Briar said she hadn't seen you."
"I taught her how to lie," Letty said. "So she could deal with Randy."
"Letty'"
"That's not all'"
She told him about setting up Briar to get beaten. "I knew it'd happen sooner or later-probably lots of times. I thought if I could get it to happen while I was there, I could call the cops, and they could get there, and Randy'd go back to prison. I didn't know they'd rape her."
Lucas looked at her for a bit, shook his head, poured some Cheerios.
Letty said, "I thought I better say something before, you know, tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" He was confused.
"You know-the court thing."
"What does that have to do with this?"
She took another sip, then said, "You know-in case you wanted to change your mind."
"Aw, for Christ's sake, Letty. We're not going to change our minds. What're you thinking about?"
He actually saw her come unknotted: "I was a little worried," she said.
"I'm a little worried, too," he said. "If you called nine-one-one, that means your voice is on tape and there's no way to get it off. If Briar talks to somebody…"
"Why would anybody care?" she asked. "They know what happened. She got raped and beaten up, and she pushed Randy over the edge. You said they're not going to prosecute her, and besides, she's a juvenile."
"Ranch isn't," Lucas said. "If he brings you up…"
"You told me Ranch doesn't remember anything," Letty said.
"He doesn't-or says he doesn't. And he was so iced up, I believe him. But' there could be fallout. They could put him on trial, they could put Briar on the stand…" He shook his head. "There could be trouble."
"Nothing I can't handle," she said. "I'm a kid. I got scared and ran away after calling the cops, and never told you. What could they do to me?"
He looked at her for a moment, calculating, smiled, one of his smiles that tended to scare people-but not Letty-and said, "Nothing."
"And that's what we tell Mom, right?"
He thought for another moment and then said, "That would be best. We ' let it go."
She stood up and said, "I've got to get dressed. I look like the witch in The Wizard of Oz."
As she was on her way out, carrying the cup of coffee, he said, "Hey."
She stopped.
Lucas said, "I'm not sure I'd have been smart enough to pull it off, when I was your age, but I would have tried. I would have tried the same goddamn thing. You take care of your family and you take care of your friends."
"Goddamn right," she said.
Jesse Lane was standing in the barn watching Max Gomez weld a broken tongue on the hay wagon, the place redolent with the burning metal, when his cell phone burped. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the face of it: "Caller Unknown."
He said, "Yeah?", half-expecting one of those robotic campaign recordings. Instead, he got Lindy.
"Jesse, you know who this is?"
"Where're you at?" he asked, stepping outside into the sunshine.
"That's for me to know and you to figure out' if you want to go to the trouble," she said. "I wanted to call and find out if you're going to hunt me down and kill me."
"I thought about it. Brute would have. He said so," Lane said.
"Yeah, well, if you're gonna try to get me, I'll have to try to get you first. I got the money to do it," Lindy said.
Lane laughed and said, "Hey, Lindy. Don't do that."
"We gonna let it go?" she asked.
"Fine with me," he agreed.
"You heard about what the cops say-that Brute shot Tate and Rosie."
"Don't surprise me none," Lane said. "He'd think that was the efficient thing to do."
"Efficiency isn't everything," she said.
"Nope, it ain't. It ain't even most things."
"I was right about the hotel. If I'd gone in there, I'd be dead, too."
"Yes, you were. Right," he said. A butterfly flittered by, and in the barn, Gomez killed his torch.
In the silence, she said, "I owe you some money."
"I got some money."
"I guess," she said. "I've been reading about it. Should be enough to prop up that fuckin farm, and any other farms you know about."
"I did all right," he agreed.
"But I still owe you," Lindy said. "You know that little bridge over Cross Creek?"
"Yeah." The bridge was three miles down the gravel road. Kids would park there, walk a half mile upstream to a broken-down dam, and swim in the summer.
"If you park, and then go under the bridge, and walk down, away from the dam, to that big oak tree where they used to have that tire swing?"
"Yeah?"
"If you look behind the tree, you'll see a rock, right on the top. There's six hundred thousand dollars under the rock," she said. "Your share. I'm keeping the other shares."
Lane laughed with the joy of life and said, "You're a nice girl, Lindy."
"Brute used to say, "You're not very nice, but you are pretty good."
Lane said, "Yeah. He did say that."
"So we're okay?"
"We're okay-and listen. You take care of yourself, hear?"
Justice Shafer was released by the Secret Service, without the.50-cal, and took off for Oklahoma. He thought about Juliet Briar occasionally, on the way back, but by the time he got home, she'd pretty much slipped his mind.
Juliet Briar was arrested for assault, but nobody much intended to prosecute, not after the rape charges were substantiated, and the beating wounds were photographed by the public defender's office. She was released to her mother, and when school started, went back. She thought about Justice Shafer, off and on for the first week or so, but then he slipped away.
The second week of school, she walked over to a McDonald's on University Avenue and was there, sipping on a strawberry shake, when Dubuque and Moline came in the door, and she took in the low-slung pants and the brass billfold chains, and felt a little thrum in her heart. The two men ordered and Dubuque was looking around when their eyes touched, and Dubuque's face lit up and he said to his brother, "Look what we got here."
Briar smiled at him, and Dubuque came over and said, "How you doin', Mama?"
"I'm doing okay," she said.
They chatted for a minute, then Moline came over, and they sat across from her in the booth, and talked about Randy. Randy had broken his neck and was paralyzed from head to foot.