At all costs Page 15

  He turned. “Next?”

  “Yeah, next. Let’s say we make it as far as the Den…”

  “Oh, we’ll make it, all right.”

  She waved off his defensiveness. “Yeah, okay. When we get all the way to the Den. What happens next?”

  “We sleep?”

  She rolled her eyes. She hated him when he was intentionally obtuse. “Come on, Jake! What do we do tomorrow? And the next day, and the one after that?”

  He shrugged. “We live.” He stated it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We live, we wait, we make a life for ourselves as best we can. You know that. Then, when the time is right, we try coming out again and making the best of it. That’s the plan; that’s always been the plan. You know this.”

  “And that’s what’s been gnawing at me,” she blurted. “You’re right. It’s always been the plan, but there’s no future in it. We might as well all go to jail together.”

  Instantly, she realized she’d pressed the wrong button. Jake twisted his neck the way he did when he was angry, and he opened and closed his fists around the steering wheel. “I guess there’s a reason why you’re bringing this up now, after it’s too late to do anything?”

  “I’m just stating my concerns…”

  He cut her off. “Then keep them to yourself. I’ve invested way too much time and effort into this to have you start tearing it apart now.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t say!” she declared. “If I have a concern, I’ll damn well let you know about it.”

  “Why?” His tone was combative, but the question was real. “What do we possibly have to gain by your second-guessing now? The situation is what it is, and we are where we are. It’s truly that simple. How many times did I ask you to come here with me?”

  “And do what with Travis?”

  “Bring him along! He’d have loved it.”

  She set her jaw angrily and turned to face out the window. “Well, Mr. Secrecy, you always were so paranoid about anybody finding out about this.”

  “Paranoid?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We’ve got warrants out for our arrest-for murder. We’re at the top of the Most Wanted list-at least, we were. And I’m paranoid for wanting to keep a few secrets?”

  She held up her hands, as if surrendering. “Look,” she pronounced. “I’m only saying that maybe we should have more of a plan than just heading out into the middle of nowhere to wait for God knows what.”

  He thumped the steering wheel with his palm. “And what would you have us do, Carolyn? Get on an airplane? A bus? A boat maybe? Perhaps we could go back to the Rebel Yell and check in for the year. Hell, with the cash we’ve got in the bag there, we could stay at the Plaza for a month! But you know what? There’s people there, Carolyn. There’s not a single plane, train, bus, or boat that we could get on without being spotted in a heartbeat.”

  She took a breath to argue, but he cut her off again. “No, wait. Listen to me. We’ve been planning this day for fourteen years, okay? You’ve got to believe that we’ve worked most of the bugs out. The place is ready for us, and we have to be ready for it. If you start losing confidence now, Travis is going to come unglued.”

  “What about Travis?” Carolyn shot. “We talked about schooling him ourselves, but I don’t know what eighth graders are supposed to learn. Suppose we screw it up?”

  Jake sighed. His planning had always centered around escape and a decent hiding place. The rest was just too unpredictable; and because it was so unpredictable, it was irrelevant. Now, in the heat of it all, she wanted a specific plan for every conceivable contingency. Why couldn’t she see that this was a time for flexibility? Ever since this whole thing started yesterday, she’d focused on nothing but the negatives, and he was sick of it.

  What difference did it make if something went wrong at this point? They’d either recover or they wouldn’t. It was that simple. Worrying about it only made everything seem more complicated.

  “Carolyn,” Jake said, making his voice suddenly much softer. “If we screw it up, we screw it up. Then we move on. Our hand is dealt, honey. It’s too late to worry about a stacked deck.”

  She bowed her head toward her chest, and her voice got very small. “This is just all so unfair to Travis,” she said.

  “Carolyn, look. Family first, remember? Everything else second. If we do our jobs right, Travis will grow up remembering this as one huge adventure.”

  She breathed through her mouth to rein in her emotions. It didn’t take long. “God help us,” she whispered.

  Travis awoke fifteen minutes later, as Jake slowed the van at the top of Falls Ridge to make the left-hand turn onto a dirt road that would ultimately take them to Donovan’s Den. “Where are we?” he asked groggily.

  “Almost there.”

  “Where’s ‘there’?”

  The answer became apparent soon enough. “There” was about two miles east of nowhere. The dirt road, such as it was, ended abruptly about a hundred feet in from the highway. From there it was grass and gravel; paradoxically smoother than most of the paved roads they’d traveled that morning. The aqua and white trailer-the Den-sat in the middle of an overgrown field, looking like a giant striped mushroom against the spatter-colored backdrop of the forest. Field grasses obscured the wheels entirely, reaching nearly all the way to the bottom of the high windows.

  It had been too long. Carolyn remembered the place as being primitive, but no way was she prepared for this. Travis spoke her thoughts for her: “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Be it ever so humble,” Jake announced, trying his best to conceal his own horror at the condition of the place, “there’s no place like home.”

  “No way,” Travis said emphatically. “No friggin’ way!”

  As the van came to a stop, the boy helped himself to the back doors and climbed out. His mouth agape, he led the family through the weeds toward the front door. If he used his imagination, he could swear that he saw a path leading right to it.

  “What is it?” Travis asked.

  “It’s our home,” Jake replied, his voice leaden with a threatening undertone. He’d already been through this discussion with Carolyn. He didn’t relish a second round with his son. “Here, let me get the key.”

  “No need,” Travis said, pushing the door open with a fingertip. “It’s already open.”

  Jake drew his Glock from under his jacket and took over the lead, entering the door carefully, with the pistol stretched out in front of him and Travis close behind. “Anybody in here?” he called. The only response was the taunting buzz of a cicada.

  Inside, the Den smelled like an old sponge, wet and dirty. Up front, in the kitchenette-which looked for all the world like a camp stove with a counter-the jalousie windows were opened just enough to let the rain enter and soak the Early American cannons-and-drums foam rubber seat cushions. The linoleum on the floor had peeled up around the base of the cabinets, exposing two parallel lines of yellow glue, which ran the length of the short hallway leading to the single bedroom at the other end from the kitchen. The total length of the place was maybe twenty-five feet.

  “Looks like we’ve had some visitors,” Jake said, holstering his weapon. A look from side to side constituted a complete search.

  Travis slipped past his father, wedging belly-to-belly in the narrow galley. He said nothing; but the look of disgust on his face spoke volumes.

  “I’d forgotten there’s no electricity,” Carolyn grumbled, eyeing the gas jets on the stove and the cotton mantles on the wall sconces.

  “Oh, gross!” Travis exclaimed, ducking back out of the bedroom. “There’s used rubbers all over the place!”

  Carolyn gasped, momentarily curious about how Travis would recognize such a thing, and walked with Jake the eight paces to take a look. Sure enough, used condoms littered the mattress and the floor-seven of them, at first glance-looking like so many miniature crashed zeppelins.

  “That’s disgusting!” Travis
declared again, making his way back toward the front.

  “That it is,” Jake mumbled. His words drew a look from his wife. “At least we know why our visitors were here.”

  Travis seemed headed for the door when he stopped short. “Wait!” he said, suddenly very agitated. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  His parents shared another glance. “Out back,” Jake said simply. “I dug it myself.”

  Travis glared, his face a mask of disbelief. “No way,” he said. “In the woods?”

  Jake shrugged, suddenly ill at ease. “More in the field than in the woods, actually. It’s got a shed around it.”

  “No way,” Travis said again. He looked close to tears. “No fucking way!”

  “Travis!” Carolyn gasped.

  “No fucking way am I gonna shit in the fucking woods like some fucking animal!” He threw the door out of his way, catching it with his elbow as it rebounded off the cabinets, and stormed out of the trailer toward the woods.

  “Oh, God-Jake, where’s he going?”

  Jake took a deep breath and let it out. “I’ll go get him,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you.” She hurried to get ahead.

  He grabbed her by the arm. “No,” he said gently. “This one’s for me, okay? He’ll be all right.”

  Travis recognized the sound of his father’s gait. He didn’t even look up.

  The reason he left the trailer in the first place was so no one would see him cry. Now they were coming to watch, anyway. As he swiped at his face, a stab of pain reminded him of Terry Lampier’s gift from just two days before. As much as he thought his life sucked then, nothing compared to this level of hell.

  When his dad sat down next to him on the deadfall that served as his bench, Travis ignored him. He hated this man-this liar. He hated them both. When his dad tried to touch his arm, Travis shook himself free and rose to his feet again.

  “You knew this was going to happen one day, didn’t you?” The boy made no attempt to disguise the accusation.

  When Jake answered, his voice was just a whisper. “I guess I did.”

  Travis turned and finally made eye contact. The anger and the hatred were right there, burning red streaks into the blue eyes. “All these years, everything you told me-a lie. Was that story about the massacre a lie, too? Did you kill those people?”

  “No.”

  Travis took a step closer, daring his father to fight. “I don’t believe you,” he spat. “You’re a liar and a murderer, and I hope you get killed and go to hell!” He saw his father recoil under the impact of his words. Good, Travis thought, I hope it hurts bad!

  Who was this man anyway? The father he’d known these thirteen years never would have tolerated this kind of verbal assault-he’d have smacked his kid into next month. That his dad tolerated it now pissed Travis off even more. He wanted a fight, dammit-a knock-down, drag-out brawl where he’d get to take his best shot.

  The enormity of it all was beyond his comprehension.

  “You know, they taught it to us in school,” Travis said at last, his voice becoming unsteady. “They call it the Newark Incident. The worst chemical disaster in history.” He winced suddenly as his voice cracked, and he pressed his hands against the sides of his head as if to keep it from exploding. “Jesus, Dad! I mean, this is like the Holocaust or the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre! I mean… God, it’s got a name!”

  Jake stood, too, and grasped his son’s shoulders. Travis shook himself free and backed further away. “I told you the story yesterday,” Jake said as reasonably as he knew how, “and every word I said was true. All your mom and I did was run.”

  “But you lied!”

  “Look at me, Trav,” Jake said softly.

  Travis didn’t want eye contact. That’s how his dad always won their fights. Still, the pull of his old man’s gaze drew Travis’s eyes right where Jake wanted them.

  “You’re right, son. I did lie. I lied to anyone and everyone I’ve met in the past fourteen years. Including you. There’s no excuse for doing what I’ve done, but even if I had it all to do over again, I still can’t think of how I would have done things differently. I’m sorry.” He cupped his son’s chin in the palm of his hand and smiled. No matter how hard an exterior the boy showed to his friends and his classmates, Jake had always been able to look straight through to his soul. “But you must believe that I’m not lying now.”

  Travis shook himself away. “Then why don’t you just go to the police? Right now. Just tell them what you told me, and we’ll get it all fixed.” He was crying openly now, and as soon as he realized it, he turned quickly away, to face the woods.

  Jake tried to hug him one more time but with no success. “It’s just not that simple, Trav. It’s been too long now. Whoever organized all of this had a plan. And it was a very good one. By surviving, your mother and I set ourselves up to take the fall. The person who did this, he wanted us to look guilty, and by running away, we ended up doing our very best to help him out.”

  “Why us? What did we do?”

  Jake sighed and stepped closer. God, it hurt him to say this. “It’s not about all of us. It’s about your mom and me. You’re part of it only because you’re a part of us.”

  Travis sat heavily at the base of a healthy oak, his back turned. He hugged his shins and buried his face against his knees as he fought to regain control. It was like someone had put a time bomb in the middle of his life, and now the alarm was ringing. Somehow he’d always believed that as he got older, he’d stop being just a trailer park kid; that life would somehow become fair. Now, as he fought back tears, he realized that fairness wasn’t part of life’s package.

  Jake’s heart withered under the strain of his son’s sadness. His feelings of utter helplessness. He’d visited that place in his own soul many, many times.

  Back in the early days, while they were learning to become invisible, Jake had dedicated hundreds of hours to mentally re-creating the events of that August afternoon in Newark. He knew, firsthand, that the “why me” puzzle could drive a person over the edge if dwelled on too long.

  Whoever the architect of the “Newark Incident” was, and whatever his reasons, he could have killed the Enviro-Kleen workers anywhere, just as he could have blown up the magazine and its contents anytime. For some reason, the killings and the explosion had to happen together, of that Jake was sure. And it had to happen in such a way that somebody would get punished.

  Inevitably, his thoughts always came around to the body that Adam Pomeroy had found just before the shooting started. That had to be it. The way Jake figured it, the asshole who put all of this together did it as part of an elaborate plan to hide a corpse. After all, what better place to put it than among a bunch of other corpses? Maybe the guy even knew that the fires and contamination would force the government to seal everything off and entomb the evidence forever.

  Fourteen years ago Jake had tormented himself trying to solve the riddle of why Mr. X didn’t just move the damn body and bury it elsewhere, but Carolyn eventually came up with a plausible theory: The EPA shutdown had caught Mr. X by surprise. Once the site was discovered and shut down, it was too late to go back in without being detected.

  Over time, Jake and Carolyn had spun countless twists on every possible detail, but they always came back to that body. They’d even fantasized once about sneaking back inside and collecting the evidence that would prove their innocence, but the risks of getting caught or being poisoned by residual chemicals always seemed to outweigh the slim chance of finding the exculpatory evidence they sought. At best, it would have been a shot in the dark. And a dangerous one at that.

  Now, as he watched his son fight off panic, the details of that long-forgotten pipe dream began to leak back into his consciousness.

  You’re crazy, he told himself. A thousand things have changed since then.

  But a million others hadn’t. If he’d read the newspaper articles correctly, and if the media reported the facts accurately, nothing in
that magazine had changed since the day they’d escaped with their lives. Everything should have remained untouched.

  It can work…

  He shook his head, trying to knock the craziness out of his brain, but the flame of hope burned brighter the more he thought about it. Sure, there were risks. And they’d have to step into the open for a while, but by God, it could work!

  And what did they have to lose? This was no life! What had he been thinking? The tragic flaw of their escape plan, he saw now, had always been that it stopped with the escape. The rest had been too unpredictable. What kind of future was there for them, huddled in some shithole of a trailer, living in fear of the moment when the lovebirds might return with more condoms? Once recognized, what would the Donovan family do then? How would they keep the lovebirds quiet? Kill them? Not hardly.

  At least this new plan offered a glimmer of salvation. And if he and Carolyn died in the process, then at least their son would grow old knowing his parents had done their best to redeem themselves.

  Sometimes honor lay more in the fight itself than in the outcome.

  Even as he recognized the absurdity of the notion, Jake felt strangely energized, as if, in the space of a few seconds, years had dropped from his age. This could work!

  “So is this it?” Travis asked, his back still turned. His voice sounded cloudy. “We just run forever?”

  Jake took a seat on the ground next to his son. “Funny you should ask…”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  For the first time in four decades, Clayton Albricht seriously considered just staying in bed. The press had been assembling on his front lawn all night, as he worked feverishly with his staff to figure out a way to control the damage.

  He cringed as he heard the clip on the morning news of his press secretary telling the assembled reporters, “The senator vehemently and categorically denies that he has ever engaged in homosexual or pedophilic activities…”

  Christ, even the denial was damning.

  No one could prove, of course, that Frankel had anything to do with this, so it was out of the question even to suggest such a thing. That left Albricht with lame, paranoic claims of unidentified conspiracies to defame him. Every excuse he offered sounded comically defensive.