The Detective's Garden (5 page)

Clarke and King looked at one another. Clarke shivered
and the tremor brought the far-back memory of his father shak
ing him gently awake in the dark. Clarke had sat up in his bed
and the quilt pooled around his waist and the air was night
cold. His father, rucksack over his shoulder and fishing pole
curved in his hand, told him to get up, to put some pants on.
Clarke trusted his father. He reached over the side of the bed
toward the pile of clothes on the floor. Like always, he did as
he was told. Where had they gone? A pool deep in the woods
where trout seemed to jump onto their lines.

In the cab of the truck, Clarke swept the goose bumps on his
forearm with a hand. He looked at King again. The decision he
had to make felt bigger than he, out of his control. There was
no way he was going to do as his father asked. Not this time.
Not with the lights of the sheriff’s car flashing behind.

His sister nodded and put her hands over her eyes. When his
father opened the door, Clarke refused to close his eyes but he
looked straight at the road in front of them and didn’t glance
toward the wing mirror. Wouldn’t it be okay, this one last time,
to choose to be a child?

With their eyes turned away, their ears opened to receding
bootsteps. A muffled voice. The honeybee that circled the truck
round and round. A low voice followed by a period of quiet.
The knocking of a woodpecker against a hollow tree. A whis
per and a thud and a metallic scrape. A lull. A grating sound.
Heavy thumps as things were tossed into the truck bed. The
bounce of the shocks. The crinkle and pop of unfolding plastic.
The whisper of their father’s hand on the handle of the door.
The concussive closure. The engine choking into a semblance
of life. Wheels spinning against earth.

They drove for less than ten minutes before Clarke broke. He
felt split wide open with the twinned impulses to question and
to obey. He couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. He looked over
at his father. He said, “What happened?”

“What happened where?” asked Dominick.

“Give me a break, Dad.”

“We worked it out,” Dominick said. “He let me go.”

“That’s it?” Clarke said.

“Uh-huh.”

“What did Sheriff Pope say? Why did he pull us over? Is he
on your side? Is he helping you get away from here?”

“I said that’s it,” Dominick said. “That’s it.”

They drove for half an hour, then encamped in a roadside
hotel outside Lewisburg. A Days Inn. Their father parked to
the rear of the hotel, the only other car in the back lot a battered
red coupe. The man behind the desk had no hair and gray skin
and deep uneven lines on his face. His eyes looked as near death
as the orbs of a strung fish. Their father wrote Jon Howland’s
name in a broad flourish and the hairless man handed them a
key while he looked at the clock fixed above their heads. They
gathered ice and Styrofoam cups and packaged food from vend
ing machines and ate around a small round table in a plain
clean room. Fake roses stood in a vase at the center of the table.
The children were quiet. They avoided looking directly at one
another. Finally, Clarke spoke. “Dad, what’re we doing here?”

“We can’t just drive,” his father said. “We’ve got to know
where we’re going.”

“Aunt Annie’s?” King suggested.

“Too predictable,” their father said. “I’ve got to think.” He sat
at the table in his peacoat and watch cap. The kids were tired.

“I have a question,” Clarke said. He sat on the floor. King sat
down and leaned against him.

“Go ahead, Clarke,” Dominick said.

“Why should we go with you?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Maybe we should stay here. King and me.”

“You’re children,” Dominick said. “We’ve got to stick to
gether. I need to keep you safe.”

King slumped against Clarke. He had gotten so big already,
but not as big as her father. Her eyes were closed. Clarke could
hear a slight hitch in her breathing. Her head rocked against
Clarke’s shoulder and he felt her weight, light in pounds yet
heavy with responsibility. When she spoke, her eyes stayed
closed. “I want to be with Dad,” she said.

Clarke lifted King quietly into the bed. He picked her up,
set her in the bed, and then got in beside her. Their father
pulled the bedcovers over them. The children’s eyes closed.
They slept like the dead.

When they woke the room stood empty. A Styrofoam cup
of coffee steamed on the table. Father-sized scuff marks in the
carpet. The kids lay in bed looking at one another. Clarke said,
“Let’s go look in the back of the pickup.”

“What for?” King asked.

“You know what for.”

“I don’t want to,” King said. The bedcovers slid off them like
shed skins and they cracked the door to the room and looked
out. The front parking lot was empty.

“I’m going,” Clarke said. He slipped out the door and around
to the rear lot. The Ford sat near a line of trees and a sycamore
limb curled over it like a finger. The sky had grayed into a vortex
of clouds. There was no one around. At the front of the truck bed
lay their father’s green duffels. Behind the bags, a blue grommet
ed tarpaulin folded over a lumpen mass. Clarke froze. He went
pale. King walked across the lot and stood beside him. Clark
held up his hand and moved it, glacially, toward the tarpaulin.

King called, “Don’t!” and the word hung as Clarke’s hand
pinched onto a grommet and pulled slowly back. They found
a green sleeping bag. Inside the sleeping bag were a police-is
sue shotgun, a bulletproof vest, speed cuffs and keys, a bivouac
sack, a side-handle baton, a stun gun, a tactical flashlight, and
three canisters of tear gas.

Relief shivered down Clarke’s legs, and he touched King’s
shoulder where her hair tickled his hand, and they were joined
together by a conflicted architecture of fear and love. They
heard the scuff of rubber against cement and a cold shadow
fell across them. They looked up and up until they could see
their father upside down against the gray sky. He was breathing
hard. “What’re you doing?” he said.

“Where is he?” asked Clarke.

“Who?”

“Dallas Pope.”

The breath left their father with a puncturing grunt and
hiss. King turned her back on both of them. “What?” Domi
nick said. “You thought I put him in here?”

“How’d you get all this police stuff?” Clarke asked.

“He gave it to me,” Dominick said. “How else?”

“I bet you stole it,” Clarke said. He reached down to pick up
the flashlight. “This is cool.”

“You can have it,” said Dominick.

On the way back to the room, their father stopped off at the
hotel office to settle the bill. The kids went ahead.

In their room, a chair had been knocked to the ground. A
wet, flowery smell hung in the air. King edged behind Clarke.
The blankets had been stripped from the bed. Ragged slits in the
pillows exposed stained foam. A ceramic lamp cracked open on a
small square table. A head-sized hole in the plaster beside the bed.

Behind them sunlight broke through the clouds. As though
they were in a museum, Clarke and King moved slowly
through the room without touching. The white shower curtain
spread across the floor. Bits of broken mirror caught the light
and burned. Furrows the width of fingers marked the drywall.
King touched one with her hand. “The ghost?” she whispered.

“No such thing,” Clarke whispered back. The compli
mentary glasses had shattered into thousands of pieces atop the
bureau. Artificial rose petals scattered across the carpet as wind
rushed in the open door.

They stopped by the round table. Salt blew over the edge and
onto the carpet. Still they could read what remained in thin scrolls.

Daughter, they read, River, Ring.

Behind them, their father cleared his throat. He stood by the
window. Half his thick frame awash with light. He looked to
them as he always looked, as oversized and solid as a landmass.
He pointed a finger between the window’s flower-print cur
tains. “Oh, crap,” he whispered. “We’ll go north.”

“North?” King said. “What for?”

Clarke said, “I don’t want to go.”

“We’ve never been to Maine,” Dominick whispered.

The kids’ feet whisked across the carpet. They stood beside
their father. In the lot, a dark boxy four-door spilled two men
dressed in navy suits. Even from the window they could see
the slick-bottomed city shoes. One of them younger and chest-
heavy, accustomed to the punching bag. The other thin and
dark-haired and kind-looking, the sort of man who might play
a father on television.

“Howland’s right,” Dominick whispered. “Must be feds.”

Clarke said, “I don’t want to go.”

Dominick had to keep Clarke with him, keep him safe,
clear the path ahead of them. If his kids left, he’d have nothing
worth protecting. He pulled a pistol from a green duffel bag
and tucked it into the holster underneath his belt. His voice
was low and quiet. “I don’t want us to split up.”

Clarke cursed. What if he walked away? Would King come
with him? Where would they go? What would they be then?

“You want to go to Maine, don’t you, King?” Dominick said.

“Okay,” she said.

“She needs you, Clarke,” Dominick said. “And she needs me.”

“Fine,” Clarke said, “I’ll come.”

Dominick tossed his beaten leather satchel over his shoulder.
He sniffed. The air smelled of diesel fumes. His chest beat hard.
He began to sweat. He knelt down. The navy-suited men walked
close to one another, talking casually, gesturing with their hands.
They walked across the lot and into the squat bakery next door.
Dominick’s eyes blurred. He smelled tire fires and raw sewage.
He blinked and blinked again and in the moments his eyes were
closed, he was kneeling on top of a hot flat roof with his rifle, an
M24. He forced himself to take a deep breath.

“Time to go,” Dominick said. He gathered the bags. His
movements were crafted and efficient. “Outside now. Walk
quick. To the back of the hotel.”

As they walked out onto the balcony and down the stairs
and through the tunnel filled with vending machines, the chil
dren felt as if they were followed by hundreds of eyes. No one
stopped them. No one put up a cry. No one pointed. The F-150
truck sputtered and the wheels turned against the cement lot
and the neon bakery sign blinked at them in red and yellow.

Then they were on the road. Route 17. The feds had been left
behind. The ghost, too. Driving as the darkness settled down
from the north, the pickup’s headlights battered the road. The
countryside passed by in glimpses dimly lit by billboard lights.
“We’ll drive the night through,” Dominick said. They were si
lent. Clarke and King sank into the old seat. King played with
her fingers for a long time.

IN HIS ROOM
at the Days Inn, Charlie Basin listened to
the tinned voice coming from his phone. The local police had
called. The air smelled of stale smoke. The ceiling was cracked.

With one hand, Charlie Basin closed his black suitcase. He
returned his phone to his jacket pocket. Why had Dominick
Clarke Sawyer gone on the run with his children when, in so
many ways, it was easier to leave them behind? Why put him
self so close to his kids that he’d have to talk to them? To ex
plain himself? To have them there beside him to watch what
he would have to do? To be asked what it was that he had done
with his life? Charlie Basin turned to face the second FBI man.
His eyes were small searchlights. He said, “Somebody found
Dallas Pope’s car.”