Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (14 page)

Several feet away, he stopped and tossed a manila envelope onto the sun-bleached wood. Walter looked down at me, and I could see myself in his sunglasses. He sat down beside me on the edge of the pier, and our legs dangled out over the water.

"Your novel’s selling well," he said. "I’m happy for you."

"It’s a relief."

As I fumbled with the envelope, Walter said, "I never opened it."

"You don’t have to tell me that."

"Something’s on your line." I grabbed my rod and yanked it back, but the bobber resurfaced without tension in the line. When I reeled it back in, the bobber didn’t move.

"Shit, he was big. That was a large-mouth." I tossed the rod onto the pier and picked up my drink. "Come on," I said, standing up. Though the air was mild, the long day of direct sunlight had turned the surface of the pier as hot as summer concrete. It toasted the soles of my feet. "Let’s go inside. I’ll get you a beer."

In swimming trunks, I ran up the pier toward the shore, leapt into the grass, and waited. Walter came along sluggishly, his usual pace. We walked together up through the yard, a narrow green slope rising from the shore to the house. I hadn’t mown the grass in two weeks, so it rose several inches above my ankles, a soft, dense carpet.

As we climbed the steps to the deck, I glanced into the woods on my right. I thought of the corpse buried out there, the one that had flung my life into this disarray. For a moment, I relived finding her — the smell, the fear, the rush of discovery.

Inside, I got Walter a bottle of beer out of the fridge and led him into the living room. Not quite as soused as I wanted to be, I mixed another Jack and Sun-Drop as he lay down on the sofa.

"I’m sorry I haven’t been over," I said from the wet bar.

"Book tour wore you out, huh?"

"Just wasn’t in the mood to be in front of people constantly. To be on all the time." After dropping several shards of ice into the glass and filling it half with citrus soda, half with bourbon, I stirred my drink, walked into the living room, and sat down in the tan leather chair across from Walter.

His eyes caught on Brown No. 2, looking down on us from above the fireplace in all its pretentious glory. He smirked, but the tension between us made him withhold comment.

"I know," I said, "A real piece of shit.
Loman
. I’d like to kick that fucker’s ass. Don’t know why I leave it up there. It’s not like it’s growing on me. Fact, I hate it more every day."

"Deep down, he must’ve known he was a hack. Had to. Should’ve listened to me, man."

"I know, I know." I yawned. I’d be passing out when Walter left. "How’s the
fam
?"

"Ah. The obligatory inquiry. They’re fine. I’ve been trying to spend more time with them lately. Less at the magazine. I’ve actually gotta be at a school play in two hours. Thirty six-year-olds on a stage. Can you imagine?"

"What are they doing?"

"Mamet." We laughed. We always laughed when we were together. "Poor thing — Jenna’s so nervous about it. She got into bed with Beth and me last night, crying. We fell asleep comforting her. Woke up in a puddle."

"Ooh," I shuddered. "The thrill of parenthood. I’d miss it for the world."

"You serious?" Walter asked, kicking off his wing tips and balancing the bottle on his chest.

"Hell yeah. Everybody feels sorry for me when I tell them I don’t wanna get married or have kids. But it’s not like pathetic resignation. I just happen to know for a fact that there isn’t a single person out there I’d wanna wake up beside day in and day out. Except you, of course. I’d marry you, Walter. Seriously."

He laughed kindly. "Karen did a number on you, but you won’t always feel bitter."

"How the hell do you know how I’m always gonna feel?"

" ’Cause it’s impossible for someone to go through life without repeatedly falling in love."

How sad. He really thinks I want his life. He thinks I’m Gatsby to his Daisy. Maybe I am.

"I was in love with Karen," I said, and a lump swelled in my throat, but I stifled it. "Where did that get me? So I loved her and thought I wanted to spend my life with her. For two years, I felt this way, and suddenly, she didn’t, and wanted nothing to do with me. Not even friendship. Said I was a phase. A fucking phase. That’s two years of my life wasted. I think about what I could’ve written during that time — fucking irks me." I shook my head and sipped the soured citrus soda. "I’ll tell you — it’ll be a genuine miracle if I ever do get married, ’cause I’m not looking for it. I just don’t think it’ll happen, and after two years of Karen — hell, I’m fine with that. I make a great mate."

"You bit into a bad apple, and now you think all apples taste that way, but they don’t," he said with the swagger of someone who knows they’re right.

"Maybe some people just like the taste of rotten apples." His face dropped. "I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m being an asshole. I’m just a little shit-faced right now."

"Hey, people go through phases. Be glad you aren’t a full-time asshole like Bill York."

"That prick’s still your copyeditor?"

"Yep. He’s such a dick. He was giving me shit today for leaving early."

"You run the magazine. Fire him."

"If he wasn’t such a good editor, I’d have canned his ass a long time ago. But I don’t pay him to be a decent human being. Long as he keeps the text grammatically perfect, he can be the Prince of Darkness."

"God, I admire your principle." We laughed again. There was a brief period of silence, but because it followed laughter, it elapsed unstrained. Walter looked up at me from his beer.

"Andy," he said, "wanna tell me what’s going on?"

I looked into Walter’s eyes, and I wanted to spill everything. The urge to tell another human being where I’d been and what I’d done was overwhelming.

"I just don’t know."

"It has to do with that trip you took last May?"

I held my breath, thinking. "I guess you could say that."

"Is it taxes?" he asked. "You in trouble with the IRS? That’s no shit."

"Of course not." I laughed.

"What can’t you trust me with?" His eyes narrowed, and I shrugged. "So talk to me."

"You willing to chance prison, or your personal safety, to know what happened to me?"

He sat up and set his half-empty bottle on the floor. "I know you’d do it for me."

My stomach contracted at the thought of the desert. I finished my drink and looked into his hazel eyes. His gray hair had grown out considerably since May. "You know I have a twin?"

"You’ve mentioned it. He disappeared, right?"

"We were twenty. Just walked out of our dorm room one night. Said, ‘You won’t see me for a while.’ "

"Bet that was hard."

"Yeah, it was hard. He contacted me last May. Walter, you can’t tell anyone. Not Beth, not —"

"Who am I going to tell?"

"You remember that black teacher who went missing last spring?"

"Rita Jones?"

I swallowed. You say it now, he’s involved. Think about it. You’re too hammered to make this decision.

"She’s buried in my woods." Walter’s face blanched. "My brother, Orson, put her there. He blackmailed me. Told me my blood was all over her and that the knife he killed her with was hidden in my house. Swore he’d call the police if I didn’t come see him. Threatened my mother."

"You’re drunk."

"Wanna see the body?"

Walter stared at me, eyes laced with doubt. "He killed her?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He’s a psychopath," I said, steadying my hands.

"What’d he want with you?" Tears welled up in my eyes, and I couldn’t stop them. They spilled down my cheeks, and as I wiped them away and looked up at Walter, my eyes filled again.

"Horrible," I said, my lips quivering as tears ran over them and down my chin.

"Where’d you go?"

"The Wyoming desert."

"Why?" I didn’t answer him, and Walter allowed me a moment to regain my composure. He didn’t ask why again. "Where is he now?"

"I don’t know. Could be anywhere in the country."

"You never went to the police?"

"He threatened my mother!" My voice rose into the second floor. "Besides, what would I say? ‘My twin brother killed Rita Jones and buried her in my backyard. Oh, by the way, my blood’s all over her, she was murdered with my paring knife, and my brother’s disappeared, but I swear I didn’t do it!’ "

"What other choice do you have?" he asked. I shrugged. "Well, if what you’re saying is true, people will continue to die until he’s caught. It could be Beth or John David next. That doesn’t concern you?"

"What concerns me," I said, "is that even if I could find Orson, haul him into a precinct, and tell the detectives what he’d done, Orson would walk out the free man. I have no proof, Walter. It means shit in a court of law that I know Orson is a psychopath, that I’ve seen him torture and murder. What matters is that Rita Jones is covered in my blood."

"You’ve seen him murder?" Walter asked. "Actually watched him kill?" Tears came to my eyes again. "Who did he —"

"I don’t wanna talk about it anymore."

"But you’re telling me you —"

"I won’t talk about it!" Leaving the chair, I walked to the window, which looked across the lawn and, farther down, the lake. On the forest’s edge, yellow poplars had begun to turn gold, and scarlet oaks and red maples would soon set the woods ablaze with their dying leaves. My forehead against the window, my tears streaked down the glass, leaving blurry trails in their wake.

"What can I do?" Walter asked, his voice gentle again.

I shook my head. I murdered, too. Cut out a woman’s heart and shot a man in the head, because Orson told me to. The words ricocheted inside my head, but I couldn’t tell Walter what I’d done. Somehow, I thought it’d be enough that he knew about Orson and where I’d been.

"I have nightmares every night. I can’t write. The things I saw…"

"You have to talk to someone. Something like this could fuck you over for —"

"I’m talking to you," I said, watching a boat drag an inner tube across the lake and wondering what really was coursing through Walter’s mind.

He came to the window, and we both leaned against the glass.

"She’s right out there," I said, pointing toward the woods. "In a shallow grave."

We stood for ages by the window. I thought he might push for more details, but he kept the silence, and I was grateful.

It was soon time for him to leave. He had his daughter’s play to attend. I pictured Jenna onstage, Walter and Beth in the audience, beaming. I swear it only lasted a second, but I was gorged with envy.

16

JEANETTE Thomas lived alone in a dying neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in the same ranch-style house where her sons had grown up and her husband had died. It had been a thriving middle-class neighborhood when I was a child, but now as I drove my red CJ-7 slowly along Race Street, I marveled at how the area had changed. Rusted chain-link fences enclosed the yards, and some of the homes were derelict. It seemed as if an elderly person sat in a rocking chair on every front porch, waving at the infrequent cars that passed through. This neighborhood served as the final zone of independence for many of its residents, most only several years from a nursing home existence.

Approaching my mother’s house, I couldn’t help but ruminate on what this place had once been. In my childhood, kids had filled the streets, and I saw them now, riding bicycles and scrap-wood contraptions, laughing, fighting, chasing the ice-cream truck as it made the rounds on a sweltering summer afternoon. A wonderland, shrouded in shady green trees and electric with youthful energy, it had been mine and Orson’s world. We’d climbed its trees, navigated the cool darkness of the drainage ditches, and explored the forbidden woods that bordered the north side of the neighborhood. We’d formed secret clubs, constructed rickety tree houses, and smoked our first cigarette here on a deserted baseball diamond one winter night. Because it was the only home of my childhood, the memories were thick and staggering. They overcame me every time I returned, and now that this neighborhood had become a ghost town, my childhood felt far more spectacular. The present listless decay made my memories rich and resplendent.