Gun Lake (14 page)

He had just dipped his foot into the pool of that life and come back refreshed. Even to this day, he could find a certain amount of optimism whenever he thought of Grace and the time they had together. It didn’t necessarily make him feel good or even hopeful. But it helped him keep moving forward.

“Looking back is like looking over your shoulder,” Grace had told him. “If you do it too much, you might run headfirst into something.”

“You never look back?” he’d asked her.

“I do. But I just take fleeting glances. Any more can be disruptive. Or even dangerous.”

He tried to follow her advice, but it was a little like taking advice from a pastor or a priest. They say what they do because that’s who they are.
Do not sin, my child
, the preacher says. Because that’s what the preacher’s all about—telling you not to sin. And even if he was right, that didn’t mean you could actually do it.

She only told me not to look back
, he thought.

So he tried not to. As much as possible.

These days, though, not looking back was harder and harder to do. Especially now that things were happening and the past seemed about to close in on him.

So what he did was take those fleeting glances. And remember Grace. And wonder what she would do.

Why was it that some people crossed your path in life but only stayed for a fraction of the time, leaving such an emptiness in their wake?

He thought of such people and felt both exhilaration and trepidation.

Paul passed a row of river birch trees and knew it would be the last time he would ever visit this place.

NEWSWEEK
HAD GOT IT WRONG. Sean Norton was not “malevolent.”

Sean pictured some asinine, four-eyed writer typing that word on his laptop, dreaming up yet another way to describe the Stagworth Five and their leader. Just the very fact that they were calling them the Stagworth Five seemed too much, too hilarious. It sounded like a movie—could be a great one, in fact.

But malevolent? That was just wrong. Sean knew he didn’t wish harm or evil on innocent people; he was by no means malicious. Lonnie, yeah, sure, but not Sean. He wasn’t trying to figure out ways to hurt people. And this article was making him look like a loser, someone as deceived and loony as the Son of Sam.

Maybe he should write them a letter. He’d need to think that through for a few days—how he’d get it to them without it being tracked and how he could make sure they knew it was from him and not from some crazy Sean Norton wannabe.

Newsweek
showed the same picture the other newspapers and magazines kept showing—his prison shot, taken the day they cut his hair and gave him a fresh shave. He looked eighteen in the picture, very different from what he looked like now with all his hair. At first he had wondered whether his hair would grow back, but it had. He wanted it as long as possible. He’d also grown a goatee for now. Why didn’t the authorities show photos of all of them with longer hair and beards? That’s what he would do if he were them.

Sean sat in the front passenger seat of the deathtrap of a Ford they’d bought yesterday for cash. Seven hundred bucks, no questions asked. Just cash for a hunk of metal that might have another hundred miles in it before it gave up the ghost. It didn’t matter. They only needed it to get around the city, get to places the trains wouldn’t go. They had money for cabs too, but this errand was something that required waiting. Hopefully the address was right. He couldn’t go back to Texas to try to get a new one.

Wes sat behind the wheel smoking, oblivious to the article Sean was reading. Sean wondered, with a bit of amusement, if Wes even knew how to read. The photo of Wes in the magazine was
actually the easiest to recognize. He wore his hair slicked back, and his face was as square now as it was then. He didn’t smile, not like Sean’s mug. And the tattoos on his neck showed plainly.

Everything leading up to the robbery in Louisiana ended up being covered in the weekly magazines. Sean had bought the last few days’ worth of
USA Today
and found them mentioned in every one. The stuff back in Texas—the mess they’d left behind—had hit the papers almost immediately. The authorities didn’t know if the Steerhouse deaths were directly related to the Stag-worth Five—cue the movie music now, Sean thought—but they suspected. No prints had been found, though the forensics people were trying to match the bullets with the one found in the Louisiana store manager.

They won’t be able to do it
, Sean thought.
Different guns
.

The
Newsweek
article profiled each of the men with a blurb. Nothing that Sean didn’t know, although they were wrong about a few things. Didn’t reporters interview people for these articles? The blow-by-blow account of how they’d escaped was incorrect in at least three different ways. But they got it right that Sean Norton was probably the mastermind behind the breakout.
Mastermind
—that was a lot better than
malevolent
. A ton better.

Sean thought of one of his favorite movies growing up:
Cool Hand Luke
, starring the one-and-only Paul Newman. What a stud. What a guy who did whatever he wanted and who went against the rules. Well, not Paul, but Luke in the movie. He’d been a convict too. Sean loved the bet involving how many eggs Luke could eat. Sean had always wanted to try that at Stagworth, but couldn’t find eggs to consume. So he had consumed pickles—wonderful pickle slivers. All the other guys had donated them from their trays. He had around four hundred of them and had the runs for almost four days. He could still taste the awful vinegary flavor on his tongue. Yeah, Cool Hand Luke, that’s what it was all about.

He closed
Newsweek
and stared at the apartment building across the street. The sound of a can opening brought his attention to Wes.

“What? Want one?” the big guy asked.

Sean shook his head and then was forced to listen to Wes gurgle down the can of Coors Light. He sounded like a walrus, the way he slurped the beer.

“Keep the noise down, all right?”

“Yeah.”

“No sign?”

“No sign of nothing,” Wes said. “You sure he’s here?”

“No.”

“And who is this again?”

“An acquaintance.”

“Someone we can trust?”

“Someone I can trust,” Sean said.

“How do you know him?”

“Finish your beer,” Sean said.

Wes decided that Sean must have meant to literally finish the beer, so he drained it in three chugs and pounded the can flat. Sean looked at the big guy in amazement that somebody so blessed with muscles could be so devoid of brains.

“That was nice to watch.”

“I can do it again.”

“Later,” Sean said, a sly smile on his face.

The pain in his shoulder still throbbed. All he had to do was think about it or just not think about something else and the throbbing would get his attention. He’d cleaned it up and bandaged it as well as he could, but he might need to get it looked at by a professional if it started feeling worse. He’d make a decision in another day or so. That’s why he needed help now.

And then, walking across the street as if divinely sent, a guardian angel carrying a paper grocery bag, there was Ossie.

He looked the same as he had years ago. Sean couldn’t help smiling when he saw the unhurried pace of the black guy who crossed the street several cars in front of them.

Instead of telling Wes that was who they were waiting for, he just told him he would be back in a few minutes.

When he laid the bag of groceries on the table, the door buzzer went off. Ossie crossed over to the switch on the wall. He
pressed the button automatically, thinking it might be Marissa from down the street coming to bring her dog for him to babysit for the afternoon. It was a little cairn terrier Ossie didn’t mind watching while Marissa did errands. Ossie thought that eventually it would be good for Marissa to trust her dog on its own for a few hours, but for now it was fine.

He took out some items he had purchased at the local grocery down the road. He got a discount at the Jewel store where he worked, and yet he hated shopping there. Something about shopping for groceries at the place he worked felt strange. He didn’t want to shop before work, and he didn’t want to shop after he got off work, mostly because by then he was ready to get home and sleep. And that meant he’d have to go
back
to work to shop for groceries, which he wasn’t about to do. The Jewel was ten minutes away. The other grocery was a five-minute walk.

The knock on the door sounded off, and for a moment Ossie simply stared at the door. Then he walked over and opened it to find someone very different from Marissa.

“The Wizard of Oz. Life treating you well?”

Ossie held one hand on the door and didn’t know what to say as he stared at Sean Norton.

“Going to let me in, Oz?”

Ossie nodded and let Sean come in, closing the door behind him.

“I wondered if you might knock on this door someday,” he told his visitor.

“Did you really? I take that as a compliment.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, yeah, sure, I know that,” he said, glancing around the apartment. Sean spotted a photo on the small entertainment center in the combination living/dining room, went over, and picked it up.

“Your mom?”

“What are you doing here?” Ossie asked.

“Oh, come on, Oz. Why the hostility?”

“There’s no hostility here.”

“Good.”

“You guys killed three people in Texas, one in Louisiana.”

“Says who?” Sean placed the frame back on the shelf. “Just because we happened to be in Texas, we get blamed for that.”

“They think you guys headed west.”

“Yeah, I know. Didn’t think we’d show up in Chicago, huh?”

Ossie shook his head, then went back to his bag to continue unpacking.

“Got anything good in there?”

“No,” Ossie said. “Lettuce. Eggs. Bread—”

“You know why I’m here,” Sean interrupted.

“Why is that?”

Sean walked over and sat on one of the four chairs around the round table. He crossed one leg and winced for a second, then grinned at Ossie.

“How long has it been?”

“Long enough,” Ossie said, putting a can of soup in a cabinet.

“I was thinking about it. It’s been almost five years.”

“That so?”

“Your memory failing in your old age?” “No one around here suffering from old age,” Ossie said.

Sean laughed. “Good for you. Still feisty, huh?”

“Only to guys with a four-hundred-thousand-dollar reward on their head.”

“That’s for all of us.”

“Figure you get the ringleader, you’d get them all.”

Sean grinned. “How would you spend that money? Huh? Find yourself a nice little woman—maybe a couple of—”

“What do you want?” Ossie asked, not hiding his irritation. Not caring that Sean was probably carrying and might be desperate.

“I need a favor,” Sean said.

“A favor?” Ossie’s voice was calm again.

“Yeah.”

“What sort of favor?”

“It’s complex.”

“Why don’t you try me?” Ossie asked.

“You’re supposed to be a reformed man, aren’t you, Oz? Why the hostility?”

“Think about it.”

“I’m thinking, but I don’t see why.”

“I’m not being dragged into the mire of your making,” Ossie said.

“Fancy poetic words. Wow. The mire of my making.”

“I’m not a part of whatever you guys are doing.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s fine. Nobody wants you to be a part of anything.”

“Then why are you here?’

“Like I said—for a favor.”

Sean stressed the word
favor
, and Ossie understood what he was getting at. He breathed in and took a chair across from Sean.

“What do you want?”

Sean grinned. “See? You can still be hospitable to an old friend.”

SHE THOUGHT OF HER MOTHER brushing her long hair before church. Stroke after gentle stroke, in front of the grown-ups’ mirror, the dark locks falling over one of her dresses, innocent in its bright colors. The way Norah remembered it, this was the most important part of the morning—getting ready. Selecting which outfit to wear, brushing and pinning your hair, and carefully applying the makeup. Mom always spent a good two hours getting ready, and when they showed up at the Baptist church you would have thought she was arriving at a beauty contest. Solana Britt had always overshadowed Norah and her blue-collar father, a lighter-skinned man who always looked like he’d gotten on the wrong bus when walking with the two ladies of his life. Norah had always wondered how Jerry Britt, with all his shortcomings, had ended up with the beautiful Lana.

Appearances. That was what had counted the most in the
Britt house, at least to her mother. And even though Norah had vowed to be different, she had ended up turning into a version of her mom—only weaker and more attentive to surface matters. Like applying makeup carefully over bruises and repairing torn nails and smiling brightly when life was really falling apart.

But the makeup and the smiles and the whole facade of the last few years had been left behind. And as Norah gazed into the motel mirror she saw more than the drab beige room with an unmade king-sized bed and the flimsy double-locked door. She recognized a new person. Someone who was starting over again. Starting new. On the first day of her new life, she found herself both thrilled and terrified.

What waited behind that door?

In jeans she’d worn the day before and the same top, slightly wrinkled from hours in the car, Norah finished brushing her teeth. A knock on the door startled her.

It’s him
.

She froze and felt the breath inside of her release like a freshly opened can of tennis balls. She just stood in the motel room and waited, holding still and thinking that the knock might simply have been part of her active imagination. But it tapped again, this time causing her to jump.

Harlan had managed to follow her and had come to take her back home. Back to the prison she’d escaped. Back to that hellhole she would never be taken back to.