Vanished in the Night (28 page)
“But you still did nothing. You hid and watched while the one person who tried to help you bled to death in the dirt. Isn’t that right, Gary? Isn’t that what you did?”
Gary began to cry. “I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t brave like Max. Or strong. So I hid. He took my beating and I hid.”
Burton’s voice was smooth and silky, almost seductive in its calm. “So who really is to blame for Max’s death, Gary? The little girl who didn’t even know what she had found, or the coward who let Max die in his place?”
“Oh, no. No, don’t say that. Don’t,” Gary moaned.
“I’m just pointing out the facts. Whose blood do you really think Max would want to be shed here? The
blood of his baby sister? The little girl whose picture he kept by his bunk? Or the blood of the coward who let him die in his place?
“What would really bring everything full circle, Gary? Her blood or yours? What would the bones tell you about that, Gary?”
Gary began to back away from the grave, hands shaking, tears running down his face. “No. He wouldn’t ask that of me.”
“Are you sure about that, Gary?” Burton started walking toward Gary. “Are you absolutely positive? You watched him die. You watched him be buried right here, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. Maybe that’s why he led you here. So you could make amends to him on the spot where he died.”
“Do you think that’s what he wants?” Gary whispered.
“I don’t know, Gary. He doesn’t talk to me. His bones told me nothing I didn’t already know. What are they telling you?”
Gary went still and silent, as if he was really listening. As if a voice might actually be telling him what to do. “No,” he moaned. “Please, no.”
Burton’s voice was implacable. “And who was the last person I marked, Gary? Who was the last person I came to see? It was you, wasn’t it, Gary? What do the bones say about that?”
* * *
Zach crouched, ready to rush Gary. The gun went from Veronica to Lyle . . . then Havens leaped to the side and disappeared.
“What the hell?” Frank yelled. “Where did he go?”
Burton fell to his knees. “Steam tunnels!”
Zach remembered Stoffels telling them the whole place was connected by steam tunnels. He took off running, found the hole that Gary had disappeared into, and dove in after him.
It was pitch black and Zach felt around himself. Concrete walls. A pipe running overhead. Soft scurrying noises like rats, and louder, the sound of footsteps ahead.
Zach pulled the flashlight off his belt and shone it around. The tunnel bent just ahead and he shut off the light so he didn’t give away his position. He slowly made his way down the tunnel, trying to still his breathing enough to hear Gary moving ahead of him.
He was there. He was still moving. Zach reached the place where the tunnel bent, feeling the turn with his hands. He inched his way around the corner, not sure if he would be greeted with gunfire or silence.
Neither. He heard whimpering ahead. Havens was completely deteriorating.
“Gary, come back,” he called.
He was answered with the sound of Gary scurrying ahead. Damn. Zach took a deep breath and moved forward, wondering if he should leave a trail to find his way out again. He hit another junction and had to choose left or right.
Which way had Havens gone? He was coming apart at the seams and Zach could use that to his advantage. The guy was back at the scene of his past torture. He’d come face-to-face with one of his tormentors. What was he thinking? He had to get into this guy’s head.
“You okay, Gary?” he called into the darkness.
“What do you think, asshole?” Havens called back from the left.
Progress. Zach moved toward the sound of his voice. “I don’t know what to think, Gary. I’m still trying to figure it all out. You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”
“I thought I had. I really thought I had.”
“We all make mistakes, Gary.” Zach continued down the tunnel and hit another intersection. “I’ve made plenty.”
“I did not make a mistake. Max’s bones told me what to do. I was helping him. I was finally helping him,” Gary sobbed.
To the right this time. “And I’m sure he knows that, Gary.”
“Do you think so?” Havens’s voice was much closer now.
It was hard to tell in the echoing tunnel, but he sounded only a few yards ahead. “I do, Gary. I think he knows.”
“I really tried.”
Shit. Havens had stopped and Zach was almost on top of him. He flicked on his flashlight. Havens was crouched at a dead end. Part of the tunnel had collapsed. There was no way out, and Havens was pointing his gun directly at Zach’s chest. The light from the flashlight temporarily blinded him, and Gary threw up his other arm to protect his eyes.
“I know you really tried, Gary. Max knows, too. We all know.” Zach kept his voice low and calm. Every muscle was tensed, ready to spring. He just had to wait for the right moment.
“I felt like it was cleansing me. I spend all day cleaning, but I can never get myself clean from what they did to me. Their blood was finally making me clean.”
“What those men did up here was criminal, Gary. We’ll go after every single one of them. I swear that to you.” That was no lie.
Gary’s arm dropped a little. “You will?”
“Yes. They make me sick. No one should be allowed to prey on children like that.” Zach took a tentative step forward.
“So you’ll make them pay? All of them?”
Gary’s gun hand relaxed a little. If it wavered another couple of inches to the side, Zach could rush him.
“I will, Gary. I’ll make them pay.”
Gary smiled. “Good.” Then he shoved the gun into his mouth and blew the back of his head off.
20
Veronica had told the funeral director to set up only a dozen chairs. It would be too depressing to see row after row of empty folding chairs at the memorial service laying her brother and her father to rest.
She had spent the past week making the arrangements; she was too shaken to go back to work yet.
It had taken hours after Gary Havens had shot himself to finally get out of there. They’d found the Plumas County deputy who’d been waiting at the clearing handcuffed to a tree. He had a concussion, but was otherwise fine. Veronica had a dislocated shoulder and a lot of bruises, and loud noises still made her jump. If Zach wasn’t in her bed next to her, she needed a light on. Recognizing the signs of PTSD, she was talking to a shrink. She’d work through it.
Lyle Burton would never be the same again, either. He had already made one suicide attempt in jail. Veronica wondered whether he’d ever make it to trial. He was a broken man.
She watched now as the chairs had filled within five minutes of the funeral director opening the doors, and the room was soon packed with people trying to find a place to stand as the employees scrambled to set up more chairs.
Zach’s sisters were here with their husbands. His mother had come, too. There were friends from the hospital. Tina, of course, and Matt Cassel, her EMT boyfriend. Even some people she knew from Al-Anon were there.
“I can’t believe all these people came,” she whispered to Zach. “None of them knew Max, and if they’d met my father, they probably wouldn’t be here to pay their respects.”
“They know you, though.” He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. “They’re not here because of Max or your dad. They’re here because they love you. It’s why we’re all here.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
He was right, too. These things weren’t for the people who’d died. Nothing could change anything that had happened to her brother or her father, or anything they’d done in their lives. It could change
things for her, though. It could make a difference for her. Couldn’t it?
She sighed. “Max has been gone for so long. He’s been gone from my life longer than he was in it. And my dad wasn’t much of a dad in the first place.”
“So you can lay them to rest now. And you can say good-bye and go on with your life.”
“It’s never been completely mine before. I don’t have to nurse my mom, or bail out my dad, or wait for my brother. The only person I have to worry about is me. I can go wherever I want.”
“And where do you want to be, Veronica?” Zach asked softly.
She stepped into the circle of his arms. “Right here.”
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