Tunnel Vision (25 page)

FIFTY-SEVEN

It was three days later before the police finally caught up with Jack Derricks. He was holed up in a friend’s hunting cabin, and he surrendered like a meek kitten when the Department of Natural Resources and State Police finally came knocking.

All Jack wanted to do was talk about the teenagers who had screwed him over, but he could never find a cop that cared all that much. Betty and June learned about everything through the slow filters of the television and the Internet, and the slower filter of what Andrea was willing to share with them after work.

In the days after the arrest Betty and June worked nonstop to bind together all of the loose ends in their project, telling the truth not only about what had really happened to Mandy, but also—mostly—about their own investigation. The cops knew there had been a boy in Jack’s house with them, or at least they suspected it after hearing Jack’s description of what had gone down there and interviewing the neighbors. That was unavoidable, but Betty and June remained mute on the subject. Both girls were insistent to the police that despite what Jack and the neighbors may have had to say, they had been there alone. Eventually, the questions stopped, even the ones about the small burn on Jack’s back.

Duke would have been released from Jackson with the new revelations of the true nature of Mandy’s death, but he died before the case against Jack Derricks could be finalized and the process to release him could be completed. A combination of liver damage from substance abuse, hepatitis C, and AIDS saw to his end in prison.

With his impending release the concert was delayed, and then canceled altogether after his passing. The girls couldn’t have cared less. A concert seemed boring by comparison, a useless endeavor, especially to June. Instead, they enjoyed their time at school, heroes in a way that none of them had ever imagined, but with a sheen of guilt for the lie at the center of it all that was Nickel.

Betty checked her e-mail obsessively in the hopes that he might get hold of her, but for two weeks, no message came. She also found herself regularly accompanying Andrea to Rhino’s to work out, at first just thinking she might see Nickel again, and then just because it felt good to train. She felt her body transforming swiftly. She’d already been fit, but as she pounded mitts and rolled with her mother and other students, she felt like she was coming into her own, and she liked the feeling.

The question of whether or not Nickel would ever contact her was answered finally by a typically terse request to meet at his bench in Riverside Park: “I have a job if you want to help. N.”

Betty nearly screamed with excitement when she read the message, but managed to keep her joy inside. Nickel was her secret, the only part of her that wasn’t in the public eye, and she wanted it to stay that way. And she wanted to know what other mysteries he might be hiding. Betty deleted the mail, closed the browser, and then headed downstairs.

FIFTY-EIGHT

I know honesty is the only policy in this case, so I tell Betty everything. Dad. Arrow. Sam. Ben. Paul. When I’m done, she does the last thing I ever would have expected: she throws her arms around me.

“How can I help?” Betty asks, and I just shake my head. I’m about to ask her to assist me in the commission of multiple felonies, and just sharing this stuff could be the end of both us, but she’s acting like I asked her to dance. This shouldn’t matter, but it does. I can’t do this alone, and I do need her help, but I never could have predicted her enthusiasm.

It’s Duke and Jack and June all over again, a problem begging to be solved, but this time I’m the one who needs help, not Betty. That’s OK, I’ve told myself over and over again, but now that I’m really asking it’s just as scary as launching myself after Jack Derricks and pushing a lightning storm into his back.

“If we do it right, it’s going to be simple,” I tell her.

“And what happens if we don’t do it right?”

“We could end up in a lot of trouble, or maybe even worse.”

“I don’t care,” says Betty, and I believe her. There’s beauty in her eyes, but there’s a coldness there as well, and it’s been growing since we talked about Ben and his dead mother.

“I’m serious,” I say, but she just shakes her head.

“What do I need to do?”

I explain, but she doesn’t like what I have to say.

I wasn’t expecting opposition, but Betty hates the plan. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am anyway, and we’re right back to not having a plan at all.

We’re already crumbling and the job hasn’t even begun.

It’s a good and just plan, I’m sure of it. I’ll be planting a bomb in Paul’s car, an IED that will blow him to hell where he belongs, and I need Betty’s help to make the job safe.

By the time we’re through, the ice in her eyes is back. She knows about Ben, she knows about his dead mother, and she knows I need her help to get to Paul. We work it together, and finally everything clicks.

I’m breaking into Paul’s van to place a small package in the trunk under the spare tire. There’s no question that if this thing doesn’t work I’m going to be a mess, but I can be confident at least that if Paul comes out to the van while I’m still working, I can handle myself. Betty has the burner with one number on autodial, and she knows if he comes out to check his ride, she needs to hit “Send” immediately. That way, no matter what else might happen, he’ll still get taken care of.

It’s hard to work with a cool head when you’re fired by angry, urgent retribution, but I do OK, and by the time the trunk is closed the butterflies in my stomach seem to have found a place to roost. I walk from the van, beelining for Betty and the safety of the trees and forcing myself not to look back. This plan only really works if Paul doesn’t see me and just gets in his van and leaves. I part the thick curtain of tree boughs and disappear behind it, grinning as I see Betty.

“Did you do it?” she asks, and I nod. “Will it work?” she asks, and I nod again. It will, there’s no doubt about that. When I put something together to hurt someone, I make sure to be very thorough, and that is most definitely the case with the package in Paul’s van.

I sit next to her, and Betty settles down as well. We’re ready for the fireworks.

It’s two more hours before Paul leaves the house, climbs into the van alone, and takes off. Betty doesn’t ask me if she should still make the call. She punches “Send,” and I watch Paul’s van roll off down the street.

“I need to report a drunk driver,” says Betty into the burner, before rattling off the van’s plate number.

Paul might not be drunk, but he does have a couple ounces of blow in his trunk, along with a flash drive with a couple gigs of some really sad child pornography. I hated compiling it, but at least it’s being used to pound the final nail in a coffin that sorely needs closing.

“They’re dispatching a car right now,” says Betty as she stands, and I nod before following her lead.

As it turned out, Betty thought killing this particular roach with a sledgehammer might have been a little too much, and too dangerous for the attention it might bring my way, especially in light of the recent fire and mess left at Gary’s. I didn’t want to agree with her, but I know she was right, and that just gives me one more reason to be glad I called her.

Still, it’s a strain acclimating to this less direct, less violent course of action. “Think they’ll check the trunk?” I ask.

Betty smiles and shakes her head. “Yes, dummy. You heard me tell them he was drinking when he left the party and how he kept bragging about all the coke he was holding.” She pats my hand and smiles. Everything about this moment, about these last few hours, is so beautiful and surreal it feels fake. “He’s going to go down hard, and you have nothing to worry about.”

“I still kind of feel like we should have blown up the van.”

“You can think whatever you want, but if you want me to keep helping you, you need to think around both sides of a problem.” Betty leans over and kisses my cheek as we walk out of the woods, and I can feel my face catch fire as her lips brush against it. I never want to get used to that feeling, to take it for granted and act like it isn’t a miracle.

I can’t say anything like this, of course. Instead, I stammer, “I do think around problems,” and Betty laughs.

“No, you decide whether you should blow a guy up or just beat him into a coma,” says Betty, and I shake my head.

“I’m just used to nuking my problems.”

“‘Don’t get caught,’ remember? That’s rule number one.”

I nod. She’s right, that was always the number one rule, but I never had a reason other than fear to want to avoid capture before now. If being with Betty means taking my work down a slightly safer path, then that’s fine with me, just as long as I still get to crack some heads once in a while.

“You want to go to Rhino’s?”

“Sure thing,” says Betty as we approach her car and she walks to the driver’s side, and for the first time I realize I might not need Lou anymore. “You think Ben will still be there?”

“No, Rhino will have moved him, either somewhere else, or with extended family if he could. Ben and his mom have been on the news way too much lately,” I say as I get in the car. There was some hubbub about the missing boy after his slain mother was found, but it didn’t last long. Without crying family members around to keep the fires hot, the press had moved on to the next tragedy. I know from experience that without some serious media heat, lost kids are far too common to keep on generating PR on their own. That’s why I’m in the business I’m in.

Everything feels like it’s changing, and I usually hate change, but this is different. I’m scarred for life, I know that, but right now I’m happier than I can remember being since Dad was alive. I can’t bring Dad back, or Sam, or Ben’s mother, but I can be happy, at least once in a while.

Betty starts the car and I lean back in the seat. I’m still adjusting to being in the front of a car, but that’s OK. The view’s actually better up here.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It’s so easy as an author to wax poetic about the trials and tribulations of one project or another, always forgetting as we do so that we are the blessed ones, sharing our dreams—and, all too often, our nightmares—with our friends. I felt like I was in that situation with this very book, in fact, and I could tell you in vast expanses of text how hard this one was for me, how the edits stretched on and on, and about how the words struggled from my fingertips. But I won’t. Instead, I want to tell you about Anne.

When I first began dating my wife, I realized I was going to be in for a bit of culture shock if our relationship had legs. I was raised in a very small family, while she grew up with an army of aunts, uncles, cousins, and the occasional hangers-on, all of whom were very friendly, if a little scary for me at first. It’s hard to blame them in retrospect. After all, I was dating one of the young women from their so-called tribe, and having a daughter of my own now, I consider myself lucky that I wasn’t clubbed, tarred and feathered, and then sent packing. However, as polite as they were—and they all were, despite my nervousness and difficulty with names—Anne stood out.

Just a few months before my wife and I began dating, her aunt, Anne, had lost her husband, Carl, far too early in life. Despite the obvious pain she was suffering, not to mention the fear any parent would have upon losing their life partner, Anne was immediately welcoming. I think she saw me as the same sort of outsider she had once been before receiving full tribal status. It was a kindness that wouldn’t have been a shock to anyone who knew her. Anne was that outgoing woman who always had a smile on her face. Despite the loss of her husband, and despite the loss of her father when she was just a girl, she always wore a grin.

On December 3, 2013, we received the news that Anne had died in her sleep; it didn’t—and still doesn’t—seem possible. She was young still at forty-seven, had recently remarried, and was very happy. It seemed a cruel twist that nearly fifteen years after Carl had passed Anne would find love again, only to die, and it sure did suck the wind out of any complaints I might have had about entering another round of edits. Anne was one of those irreplaceable people, the kind of woman who lights up a room, and I know everyone who knew her will miss her like I do.

First and foremost, I need to thank my wife and daughter for sticking by this writer as he occupies the kitchen table and battles enemies of his own design, all the while swinging from mood to mood like some yet-to-be-housebroken chimp. I love you both so much, and I can never thank you enough for the constant anchor you both provide for my well-being and my occasionally fragile mental health. I could never do this without you both and desperately hope I never have to try.

A wild round of applause for my parents, who continue to offer rock-solid support for my literary career, but especially to my mother, who has been asking for another Nickel novel since before the first one went to print. If you have been clamoring for more Nickel, trust me, my mom is the person you want to thank.

A massive thank you goes to my new editor, Anh, who found herself in the unenviable position of dealing with neurotic little me shortly after I decided to do this writing thing full-time. Anh, thank you so much for your support of this book, and for the tons of help you gave me as we built this thing up from the skeleton I passed along to you last year, help that got us where we sit today. This book is better because of you, and I can’t wait to work on another one with you.

The other person who made sure this book was as good as it could be is my long-suffering creative editor, David, who, upon reading one particular passage—I believe I described a room as smelling like “ass and bad breath”—wondered whether Max Perkins ever had to wrangle phrases like that while editing Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Probably not, David. Probably not.

Thanks to my good buddy Greg, who always offers a sunny disposition to all things literary, and who got married to Maggie this past year. Much love to you both.

Thank you to Sarah Burningham of Little Bird Publicity, who always manages to get a hold of me when I most need a shoulder to complain on, or to field questions about this wild world of writing.

Thank you to Jacque, for your help in the early edits of this novel. As it turned out, just about everything you suggested last fall wound its way into the final copy. As usual, I could save myself a lot of trouble if I always just listened to the people I work with, instead of waiting four edits down the road to make things right.

Big-time thanks to Laurel and Pete, who met my wife and me at Founders Brewing Co., shared a sandwich and a beer, and then got to work. By the end of our lunch my wife and Pete were discussing Michigan beer, and Laurel and I were discussing the film rights of my work. I can’t wait to see what the future brings, Laurel. Thanks again for working with me.

Of course, I need to thank everyone else from Amazon Publishing, and though you are far too many to name, I need to be sure to thank Jeff, Terry, Jon, Sarah, Gracie, Tiffany, Andrew, Alex, Caroline, Jodi, Alan, Justin, David, Jessica, Ashley, Luke, and every other gosh-darn person there who is making this work for us lucky authors. You guys are the backbone that allows all of this to happen, and I appreciate you all so much.

One last thing: thanks to every single one of my readers. I think I’d write this stuff either way, but it sure is fun sharing it with all of you. You guys are the best, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I hope to see you again soon.