The Midnight Road (25 page)

TWENTY-ONE

The snow kept falling. Flynn worked his cases. The winter got worse. Sierra watched him and made sure he was doing his job, that he wasn’t coasting too lost in his own troubles. She didn’t fully trust him anymore. The wedge was there and might always be there now, and the idea of it saddened him.

He knocked back the files and folders. He worked in a frenzy. He chased down bad dads and mean mommies. He kept his eyes open, wondering when the folks in the snow were going to make their charge. Every time someone passed him in a hallway he looked for a note in their hands. Every time he stepped into a men’s room, he wondered if he’d find a body zapped in the stall. He hounded abusive fathers and stupid mothers and he called in the Suffolk cops more than he ever had before. Maybe he was worried his judgment was off. He was worried about being worried.

Sierra triple-checked his paperwork to make sure he wasn’t fudging details. She held semiclandestine meetings with Mooney and other coworkers. If he’d taken better care of the damn cactus, things might be altogether different.

He read through files at home and spent his off-hours checking on kids. A greater number of bad tips and false leads came in. The rotten weather shook people up. They saw bundled children running into each other with sleds and figured something awful was about to happen. The more ice that layered across their lives, the more bored they got and the more they needed to serve their drama and pained intuition.

Flynn worked through the cases at redline speed. He cleared his stacks and went looking for more. He caught a couple of religious loons who belonged to the same cultish church, a converted two-room schoolhouse that had been around for nearly a century. The whack jobs picked it up for loose change and hammered up a crucifix that showed Jesus even more skeletal and hairier than usual. They were big believers in not sparing the rod. One Sunday Flynn slipped inside to check out the services. He wasn’t there forty minutes when he saw the preacher pick up an eleven-or twelve-year-old boy, shake him violently in front of the congregation for no reason Flynn could see, and toss him hard to the wooden floor. The whole antique structure shook with the force of it. The preacher went into a bout of tongues. So did the boy. It was all very weird.

Flynn was careful about his hands. He waited until services ended and everybody was milling around, waiting for Armageddon. He approached the leader and wrote him up and had everybody in the place screaming except for the boy, who stared at him in mute shock and wonder. More of them started in with the tongues. It almost made him laugh. Somebody got pushy in the name of God and Flynn knocked him down. That really got them tonguing. Somebody tongued 911.

Two cops showed up ready to throw Flynn in the slam until they checked the logs and found a lot of complaints about the place. The creepy congregation slinked off and Flynn made an on-site inspection of the boy’s home the next day. He called two Suffolk cruisers in to park out front for a little extra leverage. He waited for the preacher or somebody to press charges but nobody did.

Sierra triple-checked his report two days later and gave him the stink eye, but didn’t say anything.

The next afternoon he had to haul all the way out to the Hamptons, and every inch of the way he thought of Danny. He refused to go over fifty the whole ride, forcing himself to make it feel leisurely while he waited for his brother to appear in the rearview. He waited for the dog to snap off a caustic comment. He waited for Patricia to make a move and give him the clues to saving Emma. But the whole drive he was alone and couldn’t figure out why.

Once out there, in a beach house built on an eroding coast, with the shoreline moving in on the foundation and probably costing the family everything they owned, he found the father edging into oblivion.

Drunk with his insurance papers and bank statements and two calculators laid out on the living room table, the man refused to take Flynn’s hand. A fireplace designed to perfection for roasting marshmallows burned and crackled.

Inside, the place vibed millionaire, comfort, class, style, home on the heath, beautiful people united against the peasants of industry. Outside, the house was maybe a year from tilting into the ocean.

It would tear anybody up, investing in a castle that wouldn’t last until next Christmas. All your poor cousins laughing at you. Having to crash on your sister’s couch because you blew a few mill buying a disaster area. Flynn could see the guy about to fall into the sea himself.

His name was Kenton. Flynn had done a quick background check and liked that the mook had worked his way up from the bottom of the construction crew world. He’d spent years at a cement mixer and breaking rock with a jackhammer. Kenton’s powerful, muscular body tightened under Flynn’s questioning.

The wife and daughter seeped from the living room corners. Flynn saw plenty of shadowed bruises and black fingerprints on them as they cowered beneath prints of Dutch masters’ paintings. The girl’s left arm had been wrapped in a sling. Flynn stood there wondering why the wealthy had it so bad.

Kenton’s angry talk eventually shifted into threats and devolved into worse. Flynn waited for him to jump. It would happen soon. He didn’t even have to meet another man’s rage head-on, all he had to do was stand there and the poison would pool on the floor.

Flynn just kept listening to him while the snow piled against the windows and the thermostat maintained a perfect seventy degrees and you could feel the place sinking by atoms. The smoky smell of the burning logs filled his mind with childhood memories that weren’t his own. He thought of his parents feeding each other pumpkin pie, laughing as they held each other and swung beneath mistletoe, and he and Danny sat opening presents in front of the fire. The whole family going outside to build an igloo and make snow angels. It was never too late to dream about a happy childhood.

Finally the little girl started to cry and the shushing sounds of her mother filled the room and Kenton started blaming Flynn for making his daughter cry.

“See that!” the man shouted. “See what you’ve done now!”

It was so ludicrous that Flynn couldn’t help letting out a little disgusted laugh. It got Kenton’s eyes bugging, the thick veins in his temples slithering. Flynn shot the mother a sympathetic glance, went to the table, grabbed up a couple of the financial forms and threw them into the fire.

A tidal roar fluttered Kenton’s lips as his face went purple. You’d think he’d have been happy. Flynn had just done what Kenton had wanted to do for months, maybe years. For a large, furious man he moved slowly, warily, knowing he was about to cross a whole new line now.

He stomped forward, waiting for Flynn to throw a punch or dance away, totally confused when Flynn didn’t move at all. Kenton drew back his fist.

The wife let loose a plaintive cry and the girl mimicked her, then they turned toward each other and held on, resigned to death.

Seeing his mother and father on their backs in the snow, waving their arms making wings, Danny going by on a sleigh, it was enough to make Flynn shake his head and realize how carried away you could get no matter the circumstances. The shadow in the blizzard must’ve had plenty of happy fictitious memories veering around his skull while he electrocuted Florence. Maybe seeing him self with Angela Soto, loving her and ringed with happy fat children, even while he shot her face off.

Kenton’s swing still not even fully drawn back to the shoulder. Flynn’s mind and muscles were light-years ahead, warping around the sun. He could go home, take a nap, drive back here, get back in place and Kenton’s massive fist still wouldn’t have reached him.

Flynn wanted a wild drag-out. He wanted to take off his clothes and dive into the ocean. He wanted somebody to tell him if his life was making any difference to any body at all except the shadow in the snow, who was the only one who seemed to give a shit.

The girl hiding her face behind the sling, the mother trying to do the same thing. Both of them terrified of Kenton’s raised arm.

Flynn wanted to match wrath and righteous pain.

He wanted to behold the cosmic scales of outrage and misfortune and see how he and Kenton stacked up against each other. Who hurt more. How many dead brothers did Kenton have in his backseat? How many talking ghost dogs knocked out quips and urged him to let go with his worst potential?

Flynn still had plenty of time. He wanted to drag the lug by the ear and dump him in front of his kid. He thought about handing Louisville sluggers to the wife and daughter and letting them pound the crap out of the thug. It would take some creative manipulation of the paperwork, but Flynn figured it would be worth it.

Here came the fist.

But before it reached Flynn it veered and fell and Kenton sank to his knees.

This huge man just hunched there, his eyes wide and seeing some of his mistakes and the extent of his actions, turning to look at his wife and kid. He probably hadn’t cried in more than thirty years either.

Kenton seemed to be meeting himself inside himself. His shoulders sagged and began to shake. The sobbing began down in his throat with a childish wail seeking escape. It rose and he looked puzzled, as if wondering where it was coming from. His rheumy eyes closed as if against a great wind, and when they opened again they were full of tears. Flynn felt a strange and sudden rush of jealousy.

The mother and daughter took a step forward as Kenton held his hands up in front of himself, waving them like a baby in a crib. His mouth opened wide and his tongue flopped loose as his cheeks reddened and glittered wetly.

The family piled together in the center of the room, crying and hugging and begging forgiveness. Their murmurs at once heartened and sickened Flynn. He wanted to steal the girl. He didn’t want to offer second chances. He wished the fist had continued on its trajectory so he could have been within his rights to have shattered the bruiser’s collarbone.

Sometimes you allow yourself to feel remorse and mercy. Sometimes you don’t.

He went to the fire, threw another log on, and left them there.

The cool air hit him like the force of his own twisted, backward envy.

He was starting to think that maybe he wasn’t going to outlast the figure in the blizzard after all.

Flynn was afflicted too. Whatever happened next had to happen fast.

TWENTY-TWO

The next morning Patricia Waltz, thirty years dead, pregnant with Danny’s baby, stood at the door with snow in her hair.

No blood on her mouth now, just a plum-colored bruise at the corner of her lips. A shadow high on her cheek under her eye was carefully concealed with makeup. It had been a bad shiner a few days ago but was healing up nicely. She held a folded piece of paper in her hand. She said something quietly under her breath. Flynn thought it might’ve been his name, but he couldn’t be sure.

He reached out and wrapped his arms around her, wishing he had the time to truly feel and hold her but already knowing the moment was up as he yanked her sideways, turning so he could block her with his body even as they fell.

A gout of wood and metal exploded from the jamb.

Two more shots tore minor scuffs out of the floor. He purposefully left the door open instead of kicking it closed just so he might see muzzle flash or the gleam off a rifle barrel. He wasn’t smart enough to figure this out without putting his life on the line for it, but that didn’t matter now. The snow helped him. He saw the black figure in the distance at the end of the parking lot.

Finally.

Time had been on hold ever since Kenton had lifted his fist. Now it began to whip-snap along again. Flynn lay on top of Emma Waltz for a moment, enjoying the human contact. She looked so much like her dead sister that she’d spooked him for a second. Her hair had fallen back across her face. He brushed it aside. Her mouth twitched but her eyes were dead. She was in shock and probably had been since the day Danny had thrown them both out of the Dodge.

He only had another half second to waste. He had to get moving, his chance was here.

She said nothing. He wanted to tell her that everything would be all right soon, that he would figure out a way to get them both back into the world. The moderate irritation he had felt knowing she’d folded for Chad and lied about Flynn to the cops now disappeared. He leaned down and gently kissed her bruised lips. She didn’t respond and he didn’t need her to. She’d brought the killer out of hiding. She’d delivered the bad boy to Flynn’s door. It was an offering of love and redemption. She’d saved him.

The note fell out of her hand. It read:

I AM YOUR BROTHER

Flynn was on his feet then and out in the storm. He watched the black shape trickling away at the corner of his view, fading like everyone who’d ever meant anything to him. It could be his father. It could be Marianne. Maybe the kid he and his wife never had. Any or all of the medical students watching over Shepard, Mooney’s patients, Sierra’s foster kids, the other bodies floating around the Long Island Sound. It could be anyone alive or dead except maybe his brother.

He couldn’t see much because of the snow. Another blizzard. It would keep coming down killing the homeless and causing wipeouts on the LIE until Flynn finished this. He would get the bad boy or the bad boy would get him, and as soon as one of them finally breathed his last the clouds would part and the sun would break through and the fucking flowers would bloom.