The Border: The Complete Series (50 page)

Today

“Ben? Did you hear what I just said?”

Blinking a couple of times, Ben realized he'd been staring idly at his own hands for a few seconds. His mind had been empty, or as empty as he could manage. Even when his thoughts were silent, however, there were always plenty of shadows at the edges. Looking across the room, he saw Jane standing in the doorway holding two shotguns.

“These are for us,” she continued. “You know how to shoot, don't you?”

He paused, with his mouth hanging open, before slowly nodding.

“Good,” she muttered, stepping over to the kitchen table and setting the guns down. “I've got some other weapons in the car and more than enough ammunition. Hopefully we won't need this stuff, but I've got a feeling the people at the Border are going to fight back, so the last thing we can do is go in there unprepared. We need to be ready.”

She took a moment to check one of the guns, before glancing over at Ben again. “You're not having second thoughts, are you?”

“Me?” His voice was dry and croaked and more than a little tired. Deep down, he felt that he was getting to the end of it all. “No,” he continued, shaking his head. “No, this has to happen. I'd rather it was a bunch of other people doing it, I'd rather the decent men of Bowley had stepped up, but if we're the only ones...”

“The Border should have been shut down a long time ago,” she replied, grabbing a glass of water. “You're not the only one who knew about it. I should have -”

“I killed Garland Packer,” he said suddenly.

She paused, before slowly turning to him.

He frowned. Until the moment the words left his lips, he'd had no idea he was going to confess, but now it felt good. He'd told his father and mother, of course, but they hadn't helped at all. Jane was a cop, and she didn't seem to be a complete psychopath, so this was the first confession that really counted.

“I killed Garland Packer,” he said again. “It was self-defense, but I did it.” He looked down at his hands, and for a moment he thought back to all the blood that had dried on his skin that day nine years ago. “We were arguing, I told him I'd let the whole world know about the Border, and he threatened to...” He paused. “Well, he threatened my family. I got scared, and I hit him on the back of the head with a brick. Then when I realized he wasn't quite dead yet, I hit him again and a few more times, just to be sure.” He sniffed. “That did it.”

“But...” Pausing, Jane seemed genuinely shocked.

“You didn't suspect me?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Well, damn it,” he continued, leaning back in the chair and letting out a sigh, “I thought at least... I guess Alex really thought it was just another vagrant or...”

His voice trailed off.

“How did you manage to avoid leaving any evidence behind?” she asked. “Forensics went over the place, there was nothing.”

He shrugged.

“What's that supposed to mean?” she continued.

“It means I don't know,” he replied. “Just got lucky, I guess. Maybe they were sloppy, maybe someone from the Border didn't want to attract attention, or maybe I just have a knack for these things.” He paused. “So I guess Jack was right about me.”

“Hardly.”

“He knew I was a killer, he was just wrong about who I'd killed.” Getting to his feet, he made his way over to look at the guns. “My brother knew me better than he realized. He picked up on something I didn't even want to admit myself. No matter how hard I protested, he could tell something wasn't right with me.” He paused again. “Even my insane, pig-headed father wasn't far off the mark. I guess I owe the old man an apology. If I get out of this in one piece, I'll try to find the money to buy him a new computer.”

“But it was self-defense,” she pointed out. “If you really killed Garland Packer, surely -”

“Not in that split second,” he replied, interrupting her. “In that blink of an eye between raising the brick and smashing it into his head, I meant it. I experienced total clarity and I thought I could end the misery of the Border. I thought I could save the whole of Bowley. Look how that turned out, huh?”

“You don't have to come tonight,” she told him. “I can do this alone.”

He shook his head.

“I mean it,” she continued. “Ben, maybe this is too much for you. I can see it in your eyes, you're struggling with the weight of the whole thing.”

“Struggling with the weight?” he replied, as a faint smile flashed across his face. “No, I'm not struggling with any weight. You're bringing far too much poetry to the situation, Jane.
You're
the one who should back out. You've got two children to look after, children who just lost their father.”

“Your mother's with them,” she replied. “Beth too. Right now, I think it's more important to fix this town so all the kids grow up without the Border's influence.”

“And what if we fail?” he asked, heading to the door.

“How could we fail?”

“The possibility didn't occur to you?”

“Well, I mean...” She paused, genuinely shocked by the idea. “How
can
we fail? It's not like the Border is somehow impervious to the law. The place has only survived because no-one
tried
to shut it down.”

“Maybe you don't know what you're getting yourself into.” Stopping in the hallway, he turned to her. “We really
might
fail. We might fail big time, in a way that even strengthens the Border. It's never been forced to stand up for itself before, but if we go in there and start making a fuss... Well, these things have a way of defending themselves, that's all I'm saying.” He checked his watch. “Meet out front in five minutes? I need to make a phone call before we do this.”

She nodded, before looking back down at the guns.

“Oh,” he added, “and you know the abandoned Bodega Mills factory just outside town?”

“What about it?”

“There's a dead hit-man there. I buried him deep, but in case the body ever gets found... I killed
him
too.”

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he was already gone, leaving her standing alone in the kitchen.

***

“Why would you leave?” Beth asked, following Bob through to the bedroom and watching as he stuffed more shirts into his suitcase. “Don't you think we should talk about this first?”

“What's there to talk about?” he replied, close to panic as he crouched in front of the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. “Things have been a little tough between us lately, one thing led to another, and you ended up hiring a hit-man to kill me. I mean, in terms of signals, that's a pretty huge one, don't you think? It's hard to really misinterpret the part where you paid a random guy to execute me.”

“You're taking this the wrong way.”

He pulled out some ties. “How am I
supposed
to take it?”

“I've been very stressed lately,” she continued. “My brother just died, I've had a lot on my mind, I've been trying to get some more shifts at the hospital and I truly, honestly forgot about the hit-man. I was going to cancel him but then after everything happened with Jack, I accidentally let the deadline roll past.”

“Huh,” he replied, heading back to the bed and dropping ties and socks into his suitcase. “Well, that sounds very reasonable, Beth. I can see how the whole thing was an honest goddamn mistake.” With that, he closed the top of the suitcase and zipped the sides, before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment. “You hired,” he continued slowly, “a hit-man. An actual hit-man with actual guns who was actually going to
kill
me!”

He waited for a reply, before turning to her.

“Am I
that
bad?” he asked. “I mean sure, I'm not perfect, but don't you think hiring a hit-man is something of an overreaction?”

“It's not like I woke up one morning and decided to do it,” she replied, “it's more like... Each day, I took one more little step in that direction. Each decision was so small, it just felt like a slight transgression, and it wasn't until the end that I looked back and realized how far I'd come.” She paused. “Don't you think that maybe, for Lucy's sake, we should sit down and talk about all of this properly, before anyone goes making any rash decisions?”

He stared at her for a moment, before grabbing his suitcase and heading to the door. “I'm going to a motel.”

“Will
she
be there?”

He glared back at his wife as he headed out of the room. “
She
, assuming you're talking about Candy, isn't answering my calls. I wonder why.”

“Maybe she realized she made a mistake sleeping with a married man.”

“Maybe
you
should be grateful that she didn't tell the police what really happened!” he snapped. Stopping at the top of the stairs, he turned back to her. “Do you realize how things would have gone if the cops had gotten involved? You'd be staring at life in jail, Beth. Life behind bars and a reputation as someone who tried to hire a goddamn hit-man! How would we have explained that to Lucy?”

“I know,” she replied, with tears in her eyes, “but -”

“So you should be extremely grateful that you're still a free woman,” he said firmly, “and the fact that I'm willing to walk out the front door and
not
go to the authorities... Well, you should get down on your knees and thank God that you're not rotting in a cell somewhere.” He paused. “Oh, and you should really think about your relationship with Ben, because in case you didn't realize it yet, he quite obviously killed that hit-man. I guess everyone was right about him after all, huh? Maybe it's your whole family that's messed-up.”

Standing in the doorway, Beth watched as Bob made his way down the stairs, and then she listened to the sound of the front door being opened and, a moment later, slammed shut again. Heading over to the door to Lucy's room, she peered through and saw, to her dismay, that the little girl staring back at her, wide-eyed in the darkness having apparently heard every word.

***

“No,” Ben replied with a sigh, “I'm not coming back, that's the whole reason I'm calling, to say...”

He paused. Sitting on the steps outside the house a little before midnight, he waited for a reply. A car drove past just as a woman pushed a buggy in the opposite direction, and for a moment he felt overwhelmed by the way the world kept turning even though terrible things were happening close by. Then again, as he watched the woman pushing her buggy around the corner, he realized that she seemed completely oblivious. Like almost everyone else in Bowley, she'd learned to either ignore the Border or to not even notice it in the first place.

“Paula?” he said finally. “Are you still there?”

He heard her clearing her throat. “I'm here.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm just waiting for you to say what you called to say,” she replied, sounding as if she was on the verge of tears. “I should get to the store after.”

“Are you...” He could tell she was struggling, so he figured there was no need to ask about
that
. “Well, the thing is, I have to stay here and deal with some family things, and I don't think I'm going to be done any time soon, so -”

“I get it,” she told him. “I got it last time. I didn't think I'd hear from you again.”

He sighed.

“So say it,” she continued.

“Say what?”

“What you
called
to say, you goddamn -” She muttered something under her breath. “Just be a man and say it.”

“Yeah, Ben,” Caitlin said suddenly, sitting next to him. “Say it.”

He turned and stared at her. Bloodied and wounded, with a hole in her chest, she was nevertheless smiling as she watched him.

“I called to say goodbye,” he continued, immediately tensing as he heard Paula starting to sob on the other end of the line. “I called to say I love you but that I have to -”

Suddenly the line went dead. When he looked at his phone, he saw that Paula had cut the call.

“If it's any consolation,” Caitlin continued, “I'm sure she knew a day like this would come, even when she first starting dating you, or living with you, or whatever the hell you guys were doing. Banging you on a mattress in some cheap basement apartment somewhere?” She paused. “You never told your family about your girlfriend, did you?”

He stared at the phone for a moment longer. “No,” he whispered. “It never came up in conversation.”

“You're weird,” she added.

He turned to her.

“It's in your eyes. It's in everything about you. You're a weird man, Ben Freeman, and you unsettle people. They can tell you're never really paying attention to them. You're always thinking about something else, something bigger, something off in the cosmos, and that makes people not like you very much.”

“You're a ghost,” he pointed out. “You don't think
you
give people the chills sometimes?”

“Stop changing the subject. I heard what you were going to do tonight. We all heard.”