The Exiled (21 page)

T
he warden owned twenty-five acres of forested mountain land just ten miles from where Grant torched the truck. They passed the remains of the scene—charred earth, a line of police tape strung between two blackened trees—and stopped to take a look. They found a singed mirror in the understory, a small scattering of cigarette butts left behind by an idle trooper or lab tech.

“Careless,” Raney said.

“Still, they kept the fire in check,” Bay said. “The woods around here could've burned for days.”

“Grant probably called them himself. Maybe before he tossed the match.”

“Guess he wouldn't risk his buddy's land.”

“Not if he's hiding on it.”

According to the county map, an access road ascended a half mile to a hunting cabin perched on the summit of a small mountain. The road was blocked now by a heavy log gate, the gate chained to a post with an industrial-looking padlock. There were a half dozen
NO TRESPASSING
signs nailed to the top rung. Bay rolled past the entrance, pulled over.

“You really think he's up there?”

“If he'd burned the truck two counties over, I'd have put the odds at fifty-fifty. But this close?”

“So let's call the marshals.”

“They're not going to set foot on the warden's property without an ironclad reason.”

“Then we'll give 'em one. Hell, I'll phone in an anonymous tip.”

“Just let me lay eyes on the man. You wait here. If I catch sight of him, we'll call every agency in the state.”

“Fuck you, Raney. You ain't doing this alone.”

“He'll spot two people quicker than one.”

“So your plan is to climb uphill toward a professional sniper? Where do you put those odds? What's this about, Raney? What'd that woman touch off in you?”

“Nothing. Just keep the motor running.”

Bay laid a hand on Raney's chest, held him back.

“You know,” he said, “on a good day I look at you and I don't see a shred of happiness. Not one shred. You can handle yourself, I'll give you that. But I'm thinking maybe Grant raises up and you hesitate just a second. I'm thinking maybe Clara was some kind of last straw.”

“Don't think so hard, Sheriff.”

Bay looked him over. Raney didn't look back.

“Sorry,” Bay said. “I can't let you do it.”

He palmed the clutch, shifted into gear, but Raney was already outside.

“Fuck you, then,” Bay called. “I won't stand in your goddamn way.”

The sky was clear, the sun sharp where it broke through the canopy. He skirted a meadow teeming with wild rose and yellow cinquefoil, walked swiftly, heel to toe, half crouching, one hand cradling his gun. He saw himself as if from someplace distant—a bowed figure cutting through a wilderness that had kept him sober and steady for eighteen years, on his way, he believed, to either kill a man or be killed. What was in him—the self-loathing, the desire to harm and be harmed—had finally spilled over: he was reverting back to himself, just as Jack and Mavis had done. Our minds have evolved in the wrong direction, he thought. Nature can only contain us for so long.

A quarter mile up he spotted a small red light buried in a cluster of needles. Then another, and another. Surveillance video, Grant watching him from a monitor somewhere nearby. Raney drew his gun, cut over to the access road, ran full speed. He reached the summit in time to catch a motorbike speeding down the opposite slope, a blur appearing and disappearing between stands of lodgepole pine, a large knapsack strapped to the driver's back. Raney continued running, fired a shot though Grant was well out of range. He fired again, stumbled over a granite outcropping, fell backwards, landed in the warden's fire pit, his spine striking black stone. He stood, braced his lower back with a flat palm, watched the bike turn west onto a paved road and vanish completely.

He dialed Bay's number, heard only static.

The cabin looked to be the last remaining structure of a long-dismantled mining camp, an adobe rehabbed with mud plaster and a recently installed red tile roof. A mesh cage with a tarp lying across the top housed a gasoline-powered generator. Grant had been kind enough to leave the front door open. Inside, more animals on the walls, a bear hide covering most of the exposed floor. A hot plate and a kiva fireplace for cooking, a dorm-size fridge for perishables. Minimal furnishing: a neatly made cot, a futon, a plywood table, and a few folding chairs. Whatever Grant had brought with him was gone. Any forensic evidence could be explained away: Grant had been coming here for eighteen years. The warden was free and clear.

Raney sat for a moment, recuperating, then took out his camera and photographed every inch of the cabin. He started downhill, cursing himself. Grant wouldn't surface again without a damn good reason. Bay had been right: Raney wasn't searching; he was hiding. As he approached the county road, he saw a chasm opening in front of him, an empty space he could think of only one way to fill.

W
hen he woke the next morning he found himself facing the Narrows, the Verrazano Bridge to his left, traffic speeding down the Belt Parkway behind him. He had no memory of arriving there, no memory of switching off the engine, shutting his eyes.

He drove the short distance to his apartment in Fort Hamilton. Then nothing. The nausea was gone, but his skull ached, and his skin was sore to the touch.

He shut the door behind him, started undressing, noticed a strong odor of cigar smoke. He reached for his revolver. It wasn't there. He couldn't think of where he'd left it. He heard metal slide against metal, a bolt click into place. Ferguson stepped from the bedroom with his shotgun raised.

“Put your weapon on the ground and kick it toward me,” he said.

“I'm not armed.”

“Bullshit.”

“I can strip if you want. Are you here to kill me?”

“You think I'm a killer?”

“I know you are.”

“Even if that were true, I'm not sure you're worth killing,” Ferguson said. “We're going to talk, and then I'll make up my mind what to do with you.”

They sat on opposite sides of a small Formica table, Ferguson holding the twin barrels of his gun inches from Raney's chest.

“You've forgotten, haven't you?”

“Forgotten what?”

“Beating my daughter,” Ferguson said. “Her right eye is swollen shut. I sat up with her for hours. She claims you were hallucinating. Ranting. I think she still wants to rescue you, but I won't let that happen. I won't let you anywhere near my grandchild.”

It came back now, not little by little, but all at once, as though he were living it again, or maybe for the first time: Sophia falling, her belly exposed.

“Did she say what I was ranting about?” Raney asked.

“That's the question you want to ask me?”

“She must have. That's why you're here—to find out if there's any way Meno's death can blow back on you.”

“You have some goddamned nerve pointing your finger at me. I'm here because of my daughter. Because of what you did to her. The woman who's pregnant with your child.”

“I'll answer for that, but not to you. Stone was careful down to the smallest detail. Meno didn't know there was a case until you told him.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because it was just a matter of time before Meno found himself in a room with Stone. A dirty police captain would have given him a card to play. It wouldn't have earned him much with Stone, but it would have been worth something.”

“My daughter was right. You're spouting drug-addled nonsense. You need help. A place to go and clear your mind.”

“Was Meno spouting nonsense?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The man had a lot to say before he died.”

“So you
were
there last night.”

“You know I was. You put me there.”

“What did he say?”

“It doesn't matter,” Raney said. “The fact that you're asking is all the proof I need.”

Ferguson leaned back in his chair, brought the shotgun level with Raney's skull.

“It's time for you to be careful now,” he said.

“Don't worry: any hope of prosecuting you died last night. That's what you wanted all along, isn't it? It was some stroke of luck, having your future son-in-law working the case that would have put you in jail. But then you made your own luck. Or had your lackey Kee make it for you.”

“This story gets more absurd by the minute. Soon you'll have monsters rising from the deep. And somehow that will be my fault, too.”

“It's just you and me in this room, Captain, and you know what I'm saying is real. You pushed me to kill Meno from the beginning, but I wouldn't listen. That's why Stone is dead, isn't it? It had to be one or the other, and I was too damn slow. Or maybe Stone turned out to be the better choice. He would have kept on you even after Meno died. Now they're both dead, and all you had to do was whisper in the right ears.”

“If this gun went off,” Ferguson said, “there would be a hundred ways to explain it.”

“The kickback would send you through the window. Besides, I just said I won't be coming after you. I have no proof. And now there's a child to think about.”

“Proof or not, I look at you and see a problem.”

“So you're going to kill me,” Raney said. “You sure you want to pull the trigger yourself? You might be able to get your daughter to do it.”

“I'm not as ugly as you think. And no, I'm not going to kill you. You're a manageable problem. Manageable because your problems are at least as big as mine, and I'm the only person you know who can make them go away.”

“I'll get by without your help.”

“Don't be stubborn just for the sake of it. Hear me out. Believe it or not, I came to make you an offer. A generous offer.”

“You're going to turn yourself in?”

“I had something else in mind. I own a cabin in New Mexico. It's small, but there isn't a more beautiful spot in this country. It's been in my family a long time. I love the idea of the place, but somehow I never get there. Sophia doesn't even know it exists. I'll sign over the deed. You go out there and get yourself clean, start fresh. I can help. I know people there, too.”

“You mean you're banishing me?”

“I'm giving you an opportunity.”

“I'll get clean here. I'll be here for my wife and child.”

“On the contrary, you'll never lay eyes on my daughter again. And you won't know your child.”

“It's your turn to be careful. Maybe last night whet my appetite.”

“I've outlived so many threats that I almost don't hear them anymore. Yours is particularly meaningless. You're the fool, not the hero. A righteous fool, which is the worst kind. You need to consider who has the upper hand. At the end of the day, you have nothing on me. You said so yourself. Only your word, and we both know you've done things to make that worthless. But how long do you think it will be before Homicide discovers you're connected to a quintuple murder? What do you think they'll say when my daughter tells them you showed up at her place in the middle of the night dressed in another man's clothes? And then there's the blood on your badge, which seems almost too pathetic, too contrived to be true. Do you understand what I'm saying? I can steer the investigation in a different direction. Because of your righteousness, your foolishness, you need my help. I can give it or withhold it. I can do anything to you I like.”

“Then why are you here, talking to me?”

“For Sophia. For my grandchild.”

“And if I'm willing to crash and burn as long as there's the smallest chance of bringing you with me?”

“Then consider this: What would you rather be to your child? A convict? Or a mystery?”

S
hit,” Bay said. “I hate for it to end this way.”

“It's up to the marshals now. You were right—I should have left it in their hands to begin with.”

“Still, your instincts were dead-on, Raney. I never seen anything like it.”

“Meanwhile, Grant's in the wind.”

“So what's next for you? Back to the cabin?”

“Until they send me out again.”

“And Clara?”

“Won't return my calls.”

“Wish I had some wisdom to offer there.”

“What about you?” Raney said. “On to Alaska?”

“I've got a month yet.”

“Hope it's a quiet month.”

“I figure the lightning struck all at once.”

“You're a good man, Bay,” Raney said. “I wouldn't want to be the one to fill your shoes.”

Bay raised his coffee cup.

“Here's to new adventures.”

“And old friends,” Raney said.

Bay smiled. “I have trouble seeing you as the sentimental type,” he said. “But it's damn nice of you to fake it.”

The cabin was a forest-green Cape Cod set back from a creek bed and sequestered in a stand of Douglas fir. The sky was bright, the moon nearly full when Raney pulled up at just past midnight. He fished around in the small metal cabinet under the barbecue until he came up with the house key. Inside, he switched on the lights, kicked off his shoes. The neighbors' daughter had kept the bird feeder full, taken in his mail, watered his only plant. Everything was as he'd left it: the living space tidy, the loft bed made up with the same linen, the air holding the same scent of pine.

When he first arrived, and after he was sober, he'd done everything he could to erase Ferguson's presence. He'd removed the deer head from above the small fireplace, replaced the bearskin with a burlap-colored area rug. He refurnished the place with a mismatched couch and love seat, a queen-size bed with no frame, a small glass table, and a pair of discarded chairs he'd found on someone's lawn. The books he'd acquired—most of them guides to the regional flora and fauna—sat in piles against the walls. He'd bought an antique radio and hooked it up to modern speakers, stuck a floor lamp next to the couch. Now it was only when he left and came back that he remembered the place had ever belonged to Sophia's father.

He was more hungry than tired. He switched on the deck light, took a salmon steak and a half dozen asparagus stalks from the freezer, and started the barbecue. While the food was grilling, he changed into jeans, sneakers, a sweater. He poured himself a glass of white wine, sat in a wooden armchair by the creek, eating and drinking, listening to the sound of the water, feeling his body ache as though he'd returned from a week of hiking through the back country. He drifted off, woke to a coyote howling somewhere on the opposite bank. He left his empty plate and glass balanced on the arms of the chair, walked along the creek, beyond the reach of the deck light.

The smell of piñon, the sound of the water, the sharp mountain air: he caught himself wishing Clara were there to share it. He didn't resent her so much as he resented the wish.

He started the next morning with a short hike, came across a fox hunting meadow-jumping mice, spotted a pair of sandhill cranes gliding overhead. Afterward, breakfast on the deck, coffee by the creek.

The supermarket carried papers from Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Raney resisted the temptation to pick one up. At this time of the morning, he had the store to himself. He set aside his list, walked every aisle, reading labels, trying, for reasons he couldn't name, to fill his cart with products he'd never thought to buy before: farina instead of oatmeal, flavored seltzer instead of bottled water, French roast instead of Colombian, soy instead of skim. He walked back down the produce aisle, topped his cart off with gingerroot, mangoes, pearl onions.

On the way out, he glanced down at the Albuquerque
Gazette
. The front-page headline read
MANHUNT CONTINUES
. The date was August 1, 2002. Raney hadn't realized that July was over.

It was the date that stayed with him as he drove home, then unpacked his groceries and folded the bags. He had a vague feeling that August meant something, that there was something he was supposed to do, an event he was supposed to celebrate or at least observe. Ella's birthday? Daniel's? Sophia's? The anniversary of his father's death? The feeling nagged at him while he pumped air into the tires of his bike, did a load of laundry, grilled his dinner. His mind cycled through snapshots of the people who'd once been central in his life and now were gone from it. He felt the old craving switch on—a sudden absence in his blood. It remained with him into the early evening, when he drove above the tree line to watch a herd of bighorn sheep graze. The marvel of standing alone with these creatures in a landscape resembling tundra was tainted by the fact that he had nowhere else to be.

It wasn't until he'd climbed into bed and turned off the lights that he remembered. He hurried down the loft steps, switched on his laptop, skimmed through the bookmarks labeled
GRANT
. He found it: an obituary giving Jonathan Grant's date of birth as August 3, 1983.