Killing Down the Roman Line (35 page)

So, loser boy was lost in the flames. Time for something new. Travis felt a prickly giddiness at the idea of reinventing himself.

His hands were black with soot. He should have grabbed some gloves from the barn. No matter. Maybe dirty hands were part of his new identity. Dirty hands, dirty past. No past at all.

He pulled on a beam with the hoe and it crashed down, spewing soot into his face. Waving it clear, he clocked something in the charred wood. Filthy and damaged from the flames. Anticlimactic now. He pried it loose, disappointed that some part of his old loser self remained.

Holding it up to the light, he saw that the artefact didn’t belong to him after all. It didn’t even belong on their property. The wood stock and grip had been charred away but the double barrels remained unscathed.

“Travis!”

He looked up, saw his mom waving at him. “Can you come here,” she said.

“Coming.” He climbed out of the ruins, hiding the remains of Corrigan’s gun behind his back.

~

The trailer home came courtesy of Harvey’s RV’s, the boat and recreational vehicle lot over on Beech Avenue. Harvey and his wife felt terrible at what had happened to the Hawkshaws and insisted they use the double-wide for the time being. At least they could stay on their own land.

Emma was overwhelmed by everyone’s generosity. They all wanted to help, wanted to give, reach out somehow. These were good people. You saw it everyday in small ways but when something bad happened, you really saw it. It made her humble, embarrassed and proud all at the same time.

Travis hated the trailer. It was cramped and smelled of mothballs and menthols. There was no where to go, no privacy.

“You’ll adjust,” Emma told him. “It’ll be like we’re camping.”

“We’ve never gone camping,” he said.

“Would you prefer a homeless shelter?” she scolded. “We could bunk with the hoboes and the bedbugs. Because that’s what we are now, Travis. Homeless.”

Harsh but true. She regretted it now, a day later as she knelt under the hang of the trailer, fitting a hose to the water supply. Travis knew how to push her buttons but she had to remind herself that she was the adult in this situation. She screwed the hose to the coupling and opened the valve. The hose swelled as water pumped into it. “Okay!” she hollered. “Try it now!”

The sputter of water as air pockets gurgled out of the tap until the line ran clean. Travis came out of the trailer, rattling the aluminum door and gave her a thumbs up. “It works.”

Some part of her tantrum must have sunk in. Travis seemed a different person since her outburst. Gone were the smart-ass remarks and disgusted grunts when asked to help out. She brushed her hands down her jeans, stepped back and looked over the trailer. It was parked on the flat grass facing the ruins of their house. Close to the barn so she could hear the horse from inside. A small comfort.

“We’re trailer trash now,” he said.

“Wow, that joke gets old fast, doesn’t it?”

She bopped his shoulder to let him know she was kidding and then turned back to their new home. She regretted having parked the trailer so close to the ruins. The charred remains of their home was hard to look at. An open wound festering in the sun and the first thing she’d see every morning.

“I still can’t believe it’s gone.” She put a hand on his shoulder and Travis didn’t immediately shirk away. A good sign. The last three days he’d refused to be touched, backing away from a hug or even a pat on the arm.

“Do you think dad’s ever coming home?”

She looked at him. He hadn’t mentioned his father in the last three days, always changing the subject when she mentioned Jim. “Of course he is, honey.”

“But what if he isn’t?” He looked up at her, then quickly looked away. “You know what he did.”

How to navigate this? Emma gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Are you still thinking about it?”

“I can’t stop thinking about. I keep seeing it over and over.”

“It’s all a blur to me, that whole night. I hope it stays that way too.”

He knew it was a lie, and she read it in his face but they left it there. An untruth both agreed upon. And then her phone rang, letting both of them off the hook.

It was Constable Bauer, calling from the OPP office up in Exford. Asking if she could come and bring her husband home.

~

Jim stared at the floor of the holding cell. A narrow closet of a room with a bunk and a metal door. The smell of disinfectant hadn’t caused his headache but it didn’t help matters either. The headache came from the lack of sleep over the last three days. Going over his story again and again with Ray Bauer.

He had told Ray everything. It had felt good too, letting everything out, purging it all. At least that first time. Telling it the hundredth time, with Constable Bauer stopping to pick at the details, it felt like nothing at all. Numb to it, like he was repeating a story someone had told him once. Ray kept at him, pecking at the details to find a loose straw that would collapse the whole thing.

Images of Puddy kept flashing in Jim’s head, his leg clamped in the iron and screaming for help and Jim as useless as a stump. Puddy, whom he had abandoned, leaving for that psychopath to pick off.

That was why he had told his lawyer to go home. Perry Keller showed up the day after, telling Jim he had found a good criminal defence lawyer and to keep his mouth shut until he gets here. Jim remembered Puddy in the trap and told Keller to go home. He didn’t need a lawyer. He was simply going to confess everything and take his lumps. Keller protested, telling Jim he was still in shock and not thinking clearly. Jim banged on the door until Ray came and took the lawyer away.

Stupid?

Maybe.

He didn’t care anymore.

The lock clicked over and Jim looked up as the door opened. Ray Bauer waved at him to get up. “Time to go,” he said.

“Go where?”

“Home. You made bail.”

Jim blinked. What had Emma done? His bond had been set at twenty grand, a sum they simply didn’t have and could not borrow. Did she sell the farm? “Gotta be mistake, Ray. There’s no way Emma put up the bail money.”

“She didn’t.” Ray waved at him again. “Come on. Someone wants to talk to you.”

Ray led him down the hall to a small room not much bigger than the holding cell. Jim stepped inside, eager to put his arms around his wife but Emma was not in the room.

Patrick McGrath sat at the plastic table. “Hello Jim.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Came to talk. Sit down.”

That seasick feeling came back, see-sawing the ground under Jim’s feet. He eased down into the hard plastic chair. “Did you post my bail?”

“Yes sir.” McGrath looked over the tiny room. “You don’t belong in here. Ray tells me you didn’t want bail. Izzat true?”

“I need to talk to my wife.”

“It’s a terrible thing, what happened to you and those other men. And I understand, someone’s gotta pay. But that doesn’t mean it has to be you.” He drummed yellow fingers on the table top and Jim figured the hardware man was already itching for a cigarette. McGrath went on. “Constable Bauer told me about your confession. I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

“It’s what happened.”

“You’re not thinking it through, Jim. I can understand feeling guilty but what about the other men? What are their families gonna think? Puddy’s wife, Hitch’s kids? They’re already mourning and you wanna go and shit all over their grief with this story? And for what? To assuage your own guilt?”

Jim set his teeth so hard they squeaked. “It’s what happened,” he said again.

“Well I don’t buy it. Not a word.” He swept his hand across the table, as if clearing it of debris. “And there’s nothing to back it up with.”

Jim balled his hands into fists and bit back the urge to choke the smugness right off the fat man’s face. “Go away, Pat.”

“Where’s your proof, Jimmy? Where are these confessions you say you found? About the Corrigan murders?”

They burned up in the town hall fire, didn’t they? Along with Kate.

“Ask Gallagher. He’ll tell you. Hell, he’s the one who showed them to me.”

“Gallagher’s gone.”

Jim’s eyes snapped up. “Gone where?”

“He disappeared. No one’s seen him since that night.” McGrath shrugged, swaying the wattle under his chin. “More than likely he’s dead. My guess is he was drunk and slipped and fell into the river. Someone’ll snag him on a fishing line when he bobs up in Garrisontown.”

Another kick to the guts. Did Corrigan get to the old man too? It’s possible. So too was the likelihood that Gallagher passed out in a ditch somewhere and simply hasn’t been found yet.

“So who does that leave?” McGrath said. “Who else can back up your story? Brian Puddycombe is dead. As is Doug Hitchens and Bill Berryhill and that little punk Kyle what’s-his-name.” He leaned in again, whispering a little sidebar. “I don’t mean to speak poorly about someone who’s deceased but there was something seriously wrong with that kid.”

Jim felt his skin crawl. He desperately needed a shower.

McGrath wheezed on. “The point is, Jim, there’s more here than just you. Do you want to leave these men a legacy like this? Leave their families with this awful story about how they died? They deserve better than that.”

The floor was see-sawing again and Jim gripped the table for balance.

“And what about your family?” McGrath went on. “What’s Emma gonna do now? Your boy? They gonna run that farm by themselves? They need you, Jim. What they don’t need is a martyr.”

Jim tasted the sick in his throat, eyes darting around for a bucket to hurl into but there wasn’t one. He put his head between his knees.

McGrath stood and lumbered for the door. “Your family’s on their way to pick you up. Go home.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Looking out for my own. It’s what a mayor does.”

~

The reunion was awkward. Jim came out of the police station and bear-hugged his wife and son but they were stiff in his arms and no one quite knew what to say. Travis was aloof, Emma stilted and distracted. He quickly smeared his wet eyes, self-conscious and clumsy out here on the sidewalk. Emma fussed over his appearance but shied away when he tried to catch her eyes. They’d been through a lot, he told himself. Still in shock.

Emma smoothed his hair and asked if he had slept at all. Was he hungry?

He just wanted to go home.

“My God…”

Jim swung out of the cab but left his guts back in the truck. The last time he had seen the house it was still burning, still upright. He hadn’t thought about what it would look like now. It was all gone. His eyes stung and everything went liquid and soft.

Emma saw the tears in his eyes and told him it was okay. Speaking softly, the way she did to her horses. A dumb animal. He smeared away these new tears, quick and with shame. The way men do.

He squeezed her hand, a little pump to tell her he was okay but felt her bristle at his touch. Her eyes dropped to his hand, the one squeezing hers, and he saw something ripple across her face. The same revulsion he had seen that night when his hands were covered in blood. Is that what she was seeing now?

Watching her eyes dart around like a bird, he could read the thoughts behind them, the admonishments she was telling herself.

Don’t pull your hand away.

Get over it.

“It’s just a house,” she said. “Wood and bricks. That’s all.”

When she slid out from under his arm he felt lost. Unmoored like a rowboat slipped from the dock, left to bob away on the current.

“We can rebuild.” He looked over his shoulder to where Travis sat on the picnic table. Clutching what looked like a black stick in his hand. Jim beckoned for his son to join them. “Right Travis?”

Travis didn’t move, watching them from his perch with dark mouse eyes. Observing from a safe distance and no further.

“Travis.” Emma’s voice was sharp. “You’re dad asked you a question.”

“Sure,” Travis said in a timbre flat and bloodless. “I guess.”

“What do you got there, son?”

The boy watched his father with cold eyes, like the man was an acquaintance he couldn’t quite remember and then looked at the thing in his had. “Nothing.” Travis spun off the picnic table and ambled away towards the barn.

Jim took a step, about to call the boy back when Emma spoke. “Let him go.” Her arms folded tight like she was cold. “He’s had a rough time of it.”

“He’s scared of me.”

She looked at her feet. “He’s still in shock.”

“You are too.”

“No. God, no. It’s just—” Her hand swept over the ruins of their house. “It’s this. It’s like a death in the family.”

She’s scared shitless. Just like your son.

The wariness in her eyes, the tensed shoulders. Like someone waiting for a bomb to go off. I’ve lost them, he thought. They’re here but they’re long gone.

Emma chinned the trailer. “What do you think? Pretty sweet, huh? Harvey and Anna said it was ours for as long as we needed.”

“It’s nice.” He hated it but felt grateful. Anything will fit a naked man. His eyes drifted back to the ruins.

“What happened?” Emma blew the hair out of her eyes, deflating like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. “At the police station?”

“I told them what happened.”

“And that’s it? They just let you go?”

“They didn’t believe me.”

“The police think you’re lying?”

“No. They just have their own version of events and they’re sticking to it.” He kicked at the dirt. “Ray and McGrath and, I dunno, everyone else in town.”

Emma parted her mouth to say something but nothing came out. The crickets sounded louder than ever.

“I’m sorry, Emm,” he said, eyes still on the ground. “I couldn’t fight them anymore. So I told them what they wanted to hear.”

He watched his wife to see how she would react. She kept her gaze levelled on the ash pile and didn’t move. No reaction at all.

“You’re home now. That’s all that matters.”

Every muscle burned to touch her. To reach out, hold her. Anything. But he couldn’t. Spook her now and she’ll be gone for good.