Last Light (16 page)

Michael had been a model prisoner for so long they removed his restraints once he was inside the room, although David was certain he’d undergo a strip search before and after the visit, just as for any visit that allowed contact.

Michael sat, his face a stone wall, devoid of emotion, until the guards left and the door closed behind them with a click. With the sound, his facade broke. His face twisted and a tear spilled from one eye as he gasped, “David. My God. Why—how—is she, is your mother—”

“Still alive. Barely. She asked me to come.”

Michael recoiled at the sound of his son’s voice. It hurt more than David cared to admit. “She told me about what happened to you over in Afghanistan. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

He ignored the question. As far as he was concerned, his father had no right to know anything about David’s life. “You know she went to the Justice Project, got the appeal started for you before she got sick?”

Michael nodded. “After Dicky died. I told her it was a lost cause, that I’d made my peace with staying here, but she insisted—”

“Look. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you rot in here, but she does. She’s spent her life, wasted every chance she had, defending you, waiting for some miracle to bring you back to her. It’s the only thing she ever wanted in this life and by God, I’m going to give it to her.”

“Don’t waste your time on me. You should be with her. Comfort her before it’s too late.”

“Don’t you think that’s exactly where I want to be? Instead of sitting in this room that stinks of piss and vomit?”

“David, you and your mother, you are everything. All that I have left in the world. I did what I did to protect you.”

“Growing up alone, that wasn’t protection. Leaving Mom to fend for herself, drive herself crazy with worry, all the stress of following you from one prison to another, all those hours spent waiting and waiting for a chance to see you and have it never happen. Are you trying to tell me it was somehow worth it because you thought you were protecting her?”

David’s voice failed to convey the depth of his feeling—a failure so extreme and feelings so tangled up with every lost moment of his life that he slammed the table with his fist. “From what? Answer me that. What was so awful that you thought abandoning your family was some twisted form of protection?”

Michael closed his eyes as if he were trying to imagine David vanished from his world. So goddamned typical. Ignore what you cannot control. Wish away anything you don’t want to deal with. Paint over the scabs with a brush labeled denial.

David’s breath burned through his chest as if preparing for battle. He waited, the walls closing in. Whatever came next might bury them both. Finally, Michael opened his eyes, his expression turned to anguish. “I was trying to save you from the truth.”

“What truth? Stop talking in riddles.”

“The truth of what happened that night. Of how I ended up here.”

David leaned forward, realizing for the first time that he was taller than his father. “Truth is why I came. Only reason I came. I want it, all of it. And I’ll know if you’re lying—if you do, I’m out of here.”

Michael’s face shuttered but his body revealed his agitation as the muscles at his neck corded tight. He nodded slowly. “All right then. The truth. Not that it will do any of us any good.”

“Stop stalling. What really happened that night.” It wasn’t a question; rather a demand.

Michael stood, began pacing, his gaze focused on the cracked gray concrete floor. “I relived that night a hundred million times, trying to figure out how it all went wrong. It was the best night of my life. And the worst. Everything started out so great: Dicky lending me his truck, winning the game, Maria waiting for me after, going to the river...”

Finally his gaze sought out David, his smile gentle. “Everything I ever dreamed. We fell asleep, though, and when we woke, it was late—”

“How late?”

“Clock in the truck said three-oh-two by the time I got Maria back home. She snuck into the house without waking her folks and I thought we’d dodged a bullet. I was so jazzed I almost didn’t go home, almost kept on driving just for the sheer joy of being out there under the stars, alone with what I’d just done, with those feelings...everything was possible that night. I was invincible.”

“But you didn’t?”

Michael’s shoulders slumped and he returned to drop into his chair, angling it so he didn’t face David. “No. I didn’t. I went home first—not even sure why. Had this vague idea that I wanted to talk to Dicky, that I could somehow get him to rehab for good this time. I mean, that night I was a goddamn Superman, so why not? But I was too late. The place was trashed, all the money I’d been saving gone, and so was Dicky.”

“You went after him?”

“I wasn’t going to let him steal my future, flush it down the toilet like he had his own. I ran back to the truck but—” He stuttered to a stop, his face vacant.

David tapped the tabletop, trying to draw his attention back. “But what?”

“That’s when I saw the gun. Well, not the gun. The towel it was wrapped in. In the back of the truck. At first I thought it was something Maria had forgotten, so I grabbed it. The gun fell out, rattling against the truck bed, so loud it could’ve woken the dead. But there was no one to hear it except me. The moonlight made it look larger than life, a revolver, biggest one I’d ever seen outside the movies, all shiny steel, lethal, powerful.”

Silence fell over them. David waited, watching for any signs of deception in the older man. So far he told the truth—would that continue?

“And then,” Michael continued, his voice so low David had to strain to hear it. “Then I picked it up. It felt sticky, but the grip was dark wood so I didn’t realize there was blood on it, not then. It felt so good in my hand, so right. I knew exactly where Dicky would be—with that no good so-called friend of his, his dealer, Ronnie Powell. I was going to get back my money, save Dicky from himself, save the day. All because of that gun.”

Finally, he turned to face David. “Didn’t exactly happen that way.”

SAYLOR FINALLY TURNED
back to Lucy and slowly, as if it took great effort, eased into his chair. Lucy resumed her seat as well, giving him time to gather his thoughts.

“When we first got Alan, we kept him in a special school near Beth’s work. Last thing we wanted was him being traumatized by seeing someone from his past. It’s hard to know what will set him off—a song on the radio, cartoons, hell, a box of cookies. It’s been a long time since he had an episode, but the boy’s been through so much—”

The boy was now a thirty-five-year-old man, but Lucy understood what he meant. “Has he ever spoken about what happened that night?”

A look of anguish crossed Saylor’s face. “You don’t understand. He’s never spoken at all. Not a single word—only sound he’s made since that night is when he has nightmares and screams like a wild animal caught in a trap. Doctors said while he does have cognitive dysfunction from blood loss and lack of oxygen, that’s all in his higher brain centers—like math and reading and the like. They’ve never found any damage to his speech areas of the brain. Said his lack of speech is from psychological trauma.”

“Elective mutism.” She’d once worked a sexual assault case involving a young child who’d also stopped speaking. “Therapy didn’t help?”

He shook his head. “Made things worse. It’s like his silence somehow protects him from the memory of what happened. So we just accept him for who he is: our loving, gentle, special boy.”

“If you truly believe the Mannings are responsible, then why are you so protective of Alan now? What’s he have to fear?”

“Nothing with them safely behind bars. But I never want to risk them getting out and thinking they need to take care of the only surviving eyewitness.”

“Them? With Richard Manning dead, don’t you mean
him?
Michael?”

An uncertain look crossed Saylor’s face as his gaze slid past Lucy to the window beside them.

“You think they’re innocent?” she guessed.

“No,” he said, returning his focus to her. “No. Dicky Manning was guilty. No two ways about it.”

“Then...you’re not sure Michael was involved? You think someone else was in that house with Dicky Manning?”

His lips tightened as if preventing any words from escaping, but his head bobbed in a reflexive nod.

“If Dicky wasn’t alone,” she continued, “then why hasn’t his unknown accomplice come after Alan?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t care. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family until I’m absolutely certain there’s no threat.”

Twenty-nine years of living with that kind of bunker mentality? She glanced around the well-fortified property. But Saylor had been sheriff for much of those twenty-nine years, would have used whatever means necessary to find any accomplices—

“Ronald Powell, Richard’s drug dealer friend. He vanished the day the murders were discovered. Was that your doing?”

“No.” Another glance through the window into the house. “Wish it had been, then maybe...”

“Why are you so certain Powell was involved?”

Pure anguish creased his face. He was silent a long moment. “Because I saw him earlier in the night. With a knife. If I’d arrested him then, none of this would have happened.”

Lucy said nothing, knowing that once started, he’d want to keep talking. Usually, it was a technique she used when interrogating subjects; this time she felt as if her role was more one of hearing a confession.

“It was at the stadium parking lot before the game. I’d heard rumors that Powell was selling pot, but by the time I spotted him in the crowd, there was no evidence of any drugs. He was sitting on the trunk of his car—he drove a beat-up old Impala—innocent as could be, whittling these little bear figures he used to sell.”

“Bears?” Lucy asked, not sure what they had to do with drugs.

“That’s our high school team, the Blackwell Bears. Powell would carve and sell all sorts of unofficial school mascot figures. Kids loved them—adults, too. He might even have made some money at it, if he’d ever tried to sell them for real. I always figured it was a way to cover the cash from his drug deals—not to mention an easy way to hide drugs during an exchange.”

“Hollow out a space inside the carving?”

“Right. Guy pays cash for a special bear, Powell delivers, all looks legit to anyone watching. Anyway, that night I saw him, rousted him, even got him to let me search his vehicle, but I found nothing except a few carving knives, wood, and those stupid bears; he must have already sold all his product before I found him.”

“Were you ever able to compare his knives to the wounds on the Martin family?”

He nodded, his face shadowed. “State lab did after we got a warrant for Powell’s stuff. Said two of the knives were possible matches. He was long gone by then. Never seen again.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the door, one hand sliding close to the shotgun leaning against his chair. “But I’m ready if he ever comes back. No one’s going to hurt my boy, not again.”

Lucy was silent, giving the emotions pouring off him time to dissipate. Finally, she asked the real question that might help her do her job. “Why did you take the tape and transcript? What happened during that hour you were with Michael Manning?”

He looked past her, eyes squinted tight against the morning sun streaming in below the porch roof. Without saying a word, he stood and disappeared inside the house. Since he left the shotgun behind, she assumed he’d be returning—and in a few minutes, he did, bearing a thin stack of papers and an old cassette tape. “See for yourself.”

She glanced at the transcript. He didn’t wait for her response to the terse words on the page. “I’m not proud of what I did. Broke every rule in the book. But I’d do it again. My job was to protect this community and I couldn’t do that without getting Michael Manning to talk.”

“You understand by giving this to me, it might get him set free?”

His sigh heaved through his body as if it had been waiting twenty-nine years to be released. “It’s not enough, not by itself. But if you find other evidence, if I made a mistake, well, then—” He swallowed, then finally met her eyes. “If I did wrong by that boy, then maybe it’s about time someone set things right.”

SHERIFF ANDREW SAYLOR
: This is Blackwell County Sheriff Andrew Saylor interviewing Michael Manning. The date is November 14, 1987, and the time is 8:43 p.m. Mike, did the deputies inform you of your Miranda rights?

MICHAEL MANNING:
Yeah, but I don’t understand—

SAYLOR:
You don’t understand your rights?

MANNING:
No, those I understand just fine—

SAYLOR:
Good. Saw you play on Friday night, Mike. You were amazing.

MANNING:
Thanks. When can we leave?

Saylor: We?

MANNING:
Me and my brother.

SAYLOR:
Your brother isn’t going anywhere.

MANNING:
He needs a doctor. Rehab. Locking him up isn’t going to do him any good.

SAYLOR:
You think this is about your brother’s drug habit?

MANNING
: Isn’t it?

SAYLOR
: No. It’s not even about Dicky sending two of my guys to the ER.

MANNING
: They rushed him—and I saw Howard hit him with his shotgun, knock him out. Dicky needs the ER or at least a doctor. They dragged him in here unconscious, probably has a concussion.