The Duration (34 page)

We separated into pairs, Grevantz and me, Crevis and a junior officer, Tudd and another. A few of the valets joined us. Unsie strapped on a pair of cross-country skis and set off down a virgin trail on his own, his strokes as smooth and precise as a metronome. Tudd watched him go like I'd watched Ava, lust in his eyes, and broke out some compensatory snowshoes. We headed out into the woods.

The sun was up and starting to cut through the gloom, but it was still cold enough to freeze the hairs in my nose. Grevantz and I followed the trail that led out the back of Fleur-de-Lys and through the Magic Meadow to the top of Scrimshaw. The wind had blown hard in the meadow, and along its edges the drifts cut like half-pipes. In six weeks these fields would be covered with bluebells or bluebonnets or whatever the hell those flowers are called, but right now it was still rows of winter grass and cattail, the cold corduroy of March.

We hiked for thirty minutes. I buried my hands in my pockets and wondered whether Chick was up at the Horse Head, sleeping in, maybe hitching down to breakfast at Gina's. I thought about calling LaBeau, figured I'd try Chick one last time first. I borrowed my phone back and pressed the numbers, wrapping the sleeves of my sweatshirt around my exposed hands. The phone went straight to voicemail, then slipped from my swaddled fingers and fell into a pile of snow, and as I bent down to get it I heard Grevantz's walkie-talkie crackle, the sound like when you get soap in your ears, and the junior officer walking with Crevis say to come to the near side of the meadow, the side just over the rise and close to Bramble, 300 yards away. I heard Grevantz ask if they needed an ambulance.

But I was already running.

Pick 'em up, put 'em down. The goldenrods and ice sheets cracked under my feet. My legs felt strong. My chest was a bellows. I crested the rise and could see down a straight, slight slope to the edge of the meadow, still two football fields distant. One, two, three people. Maybe more coming through the woods. Unsie was there, leaning on his skis. I let my legs go and my momentum carry me down the slope.

When I got closer, I could see that they were gathered around a spot just off the trail. A creek bed. A pair of sneakers attached to a pair of legs attached to a big white sweatshirt half in a stream. Someone tried to grab my arm but I gave them a little stutter-step and a swim move and then I was past and in the icy water, the cold dip, pulling him up, his face up, the icicles in his beard, and he was long gone. I could see it in his eyes.

My Chickie, my best bud.

I held him in my arms, the overcoat open and spreading around us like shade, and I ran through my options.

Slip a hot wire up his bent spine.

Whale on him like Rocky in the meat locker, hit him until his heart was so purple it beat again out of umbrage.

Press my warm forehead to his cold one, my pink lips to his blue ones. Lift his chin, as we once had, and just will it to be otherwise, will him back into this world.

As if, at that point, either of us had a choice.

Later, when they tested, they found all sorts of things in Chick's system. Oxycodone. Heroin, surprisingly. Other stuff I don't even know. They figured he must have had something on him, or already in him, when he ran, and that the drugs kicked in at about the same time as the cold, and that he just fell unconscious into the thin creek. I guess that made sense, but it didn't explain how he wound up where he did. This was the third time in a week he'd traveled these trails. He must have known where he was going. But this time he'd had the horn. Because I'd let him take it. I spent a while thinking about the things I should have done, whether I'd killed him, whether after all of it I'd wound up being an accessory not just to his crime but also to his death.

But that was later, and there on the edge of the Magic Meadow, as the sun finally started to break through and Chick dripped and stiffened in my arms, I just cried. I cried my fucking balls off. There's probably a prettier way to say it.

Don Huey was good enough to call me himself on Wednesday night. I didn't take the call. Finally got a hold of him on Thursday, when he told me I didn't need to come back. I told him not to worry about it. I had bigger fish to fry.

Friday I had a quick introductory meeting with a criminal defense attorney Unsie knew and Jimmer had offered to bankroll. Both of them felt responsible, I guess. But they shouldn't. The lawyer and I talked charges, plea options, the somewhat pressing issue of the location of the horn. Chick had not had it on him.

The weather cleared and Friday afternoon was soft and wet, a solid 40°F warmer than Tuesday night. Unsie and I went back out to the Magic Meadow with Chief Grevantz, tried to trace Chick's steps from the door of the spa to the side of the creek, the creek newish, a product of beaver dams and the disgorgements of the Head-Connect septic system. Somehow Chick had wound up on that weird edge of the meadow, far from the trailheads. If he could have just made it to Bramble, the sidewalk would have taken him into town, to the crowded Heirloom, to Asgard. To a pay phone, if he needed one. But he veered away from it and wound up in a no man's land of roots and bogs. We found a little cleared-out area, not too far from the meadow, that looked like a campsite. Little stones in a circle as if for a fire. Maybe he was planning on putting that tent up out here? Maybe he'd been staying out here for longer than I knew.

As for the horn, I like to tell myself that he finally figured out where the rhino lay buried, and had at long last made it whole. Head-Connect had sent several helpers into the woods, under the pretense of trail maintenance, to look for it. Squads of hooded trainers in duck boots and fleece. They were coming up empty-handed as well.

“Maybe they'll find it in the spring,” Grevantz said as he called off our little expedition, but we all knew how that would work out.

They held the wake on Saturday at the Ripton Funeral Home next to St. Barney's. The line was around the block. Chick's mother came up from Florida and I couldn't look at her. She wanted a Mass at St. Barney's, and I was like fuck that, but nobody asked me, so my own mom drove down from Vermont to whisper in her ear and hold her up. She squeezed my arm but I was okay. I was done crying by the time everyone else started. Jimmer came back from Halifax, of course, with Vishy Shetty and her new assistant. His clothes were better than anyone else's, his girlfriend's tears were more glittery. I could feel him scanning the room in his grief, trying to understand it in a way that would become useful. Ginny Archey was there, her belly ripe and pendulous, tears streaming down her cheeks. It was a little alarming. In a month, her water would break while she was drawing a pint of Lost Sailor at the Heirloom and Tim-Rick would rush her up to Knotsford Medical Center, where she'd give birth to a healthy little guy they would name John, but whom Ginny would call Clubber because he was born with a Mohawk and thick gold chains around his neck. Kidding about the chains. But anyway her water hadn't broken yet, and from the way she was crying it looked like she had plenty to spare.

Tim-Rick was there, at her side, his own eyes red and wet maybe for the first time? Probably not, but still. People—Jimmer, Billy Glib, others—seemed to make it a point to embrace him, put the past down, move on united. Like it fucking mattered. I was so angry. The whole time. The church did what it does best in small towns, which is to collect and hold the grief of the community, and I just could not abide it. A young priest from St. Barney's moved through the crowd, offering comfort. He hadn't done anything, was probably a good guy, but I thought if this dude touches me I'll break his arm.

Ava stood off to the side of the room, holding hands with her dad. He was pretty openly teary, in a dignified way, and I couldn't see her eyes because she was wearing these huge glasses, but she had something shiny and bee-stung going on around her mouth. She wouldn't speak to me. Through the attorney, I'd heard that Head-Connect was considering keeping the whole thing quiet for PR purposes. Spas where they find a dead body in the woods tend to lose business. Apparently you can do that with money, make things disappear.

I'd heard Ava was transferring to the Nevada facility.

I looked around the room. There was Ms. J., our former vice principal, still terrifying in her seventies. On her arm was Ms. F. from middle school phys ed. They nodded to me, but I ducked them. The waitress from the breakfast place was there. Mooselike Judge Ralph, chagrinned and semi-anonymous out of his robes, hanging his head like he'd dropped the ball. And that couldn't be Coach Harvey, stooped and small, in a wrinkled suit and a crewcut. A hundred others I knew but felt compelled in my shame to try and unremember. Unsie stood by the casket, upright and forlorn. Soon he too would become a father, the springtime full of baby boys, and he and Sara would name their son Philip and call him that. People put their hands on his arm and he nodded to them solemnly. From where I stood, I could see Chick's face in profile, they'd shaved the stupid beard and he looked ten years younger. Which was just great. I couldn't bear to get closer than that.

I stuck it out for as long as I could, then shunted toward the door in a way that I hoped would get Ava to notice me. If she did she didn't let it register. The priest from St. Barney's passed by and his robes brushed my arm. He was clasped up with an octogenarian from our old paper routes, but gave me a sympathetic look over his shoulder.

Not having it, padre. Not. Having it. Take that kumbaya bullshit somewhere else.

I went out to the parking lot and sat in the Escalade. Maybe this was all meant to be. Maybe we never had a chance from the minute Bill Trivette sunk his teeth into Chick's soft shoulder up in the bell tower all those years ago. You know that serenity prayer, about having the serenity to accept the things one cannot change, the strength to change the things one can, and the wisdom to know the difference? What a stupid prayer. Here's something I believed. I believed that if I put my back into something, I could change it, whatever it was, and therefore I did not have to accept shit. Which is why, maybe, I rarely put my back into much. But I'd put my back into this, and here's what it got me.

An irreconcilable. A lightning-struck tree. A big hole in the space-time continuum.

Fuck it. Want to hear something that's not a prayer? In the law, there is no duty to rescue. If you see some random dude drowning in a lake, you don't have to jump in and try to save him. You can just stand there and watch him sink and the law won't judge you for it. But if you do jump in, then you have to perform your rescue well, or at least adequately. You can't swim out, pull the guy up from the depths, and drag him into the middle of a busy roadway where a car will hit him. It's not enough to try. If you try, you have to be competent. You can't make it worse.

I had to get out of there.

Alone in the parking lot, I started the Escalade, my remnant, my wild machine, and found I was nearly penned in by a police cruiser, a Datsun, and a hearse. There was some space between the Datsun and the hearse, and I eased into it, trying to get out, get anywhere else. I saw the Datsun roll a bit as my bumper pushed it. I backed up and cut the wheel, but this time, the hearse shuddered.

I pressed on the horn. Nobody came.

Cut the wheel the other way, backed up again. Heard a little crunch as I hit the cruiser. Honked the horn again. People began looking at me from the sidewalk. A few heads bent out of the funeral home doors.

And you know what? I stopped giving a shit. I moved forward again, pushing on the hearse. I cut the wheel
into
the hearse. I honked again, an extended blast, a one-fingered salute to all that piety and remorse and whatever else they were feeling in that fucking morgue. These fucking penitents. These ass-licking mules.

Only my grief is real.

Only I am entitled.

The engine growled. A fever set in. Those slumbering departed in the cemetery next door coughed in their sleep. But enough was enough. I wasn't about a resurrection anymore. I was about a takedown. And I hoped the people in the ground would understand.