The Simple Truth (30 page)

As the plane passed by and the silence returned, he stepped onto the bow of the sailboat. The craft gently swayed under him; the sunlight stroked his face. He sat down and put his head against the mast, sniffed the canvas of the unfurled sail and closed his eyes. He was so damn tired.

“You look awfully comfortable.”

Startled awake, Fiske looked around before turning and seeing Sara standing there. She wore a black two-piece business suit; a white silk blouse peeked out at the neckline. Her neck was encircled with a small strand of pearls, her hair tied in a simple bun, a touch of makeup and pale red lipstick tinting her face.

She smiled.
“I’m sorry I had to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully.”

“Have you been watching me long?”
Fiske asked, and then wondered why he had.

“Long enough. You can take your shower now.”

He stood up and stepped back on the dock.
“Nice boat.”

“I’m lucky, the riverbank drops off steeply here. I don’t have to keep it at one of the marinas. I’ll take you out if you want. We have time left before it has to be winterized.”

“Maybe.”

He walked past her toward the cottage.

“John?”
He turned back. She put one hand on the stair rail and looked over at her sailboat, as though hoping to carve a wedge of calm from its tranquil frame.

“If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will make it right with your father,”
she said.

“It’s my problem. You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, John, I do,”
she said firmly.

*    *    *

Thirty minutes later, Fiske drove the car out onto the private road leading to the parkway. The two black sedans flashing in front of their car made Fiske slam on the brakes. Sara screamed. Fiske jumped out of the car. He stopped as soon as he saw the guns pointed at him.

“Hands in the air,”
one of the men barked.

Fiske immediately put his hands up.

Sara climbed out of the car in time to see Perkins emerge from one vehicle and Agent McKenna from the other.

Perkins spotted Sara.
“Holster your weapons,”
he said to the two men in suits.

McKenna’s voice boomed out.
“Those men are under my command, not yours. They will holster their weapons upon my order only.”
McKenna stopped directly in front of Fiske.

“Are you all right, Sara?”
Perkins asked.

“Of course I’m all right. What the hell is going on?”

“I left an urgent message with you.”

“I didn’t check my messages. What’s wrong?”

McKenna’s eye caught the shotgun lying in the back seat. Now he pulled his own weapon and pointed it directly at Fiske. He studied Fiske’s injured face.
“Is this man holding you against your will?”
McKenna asked Sara.

“Will you stop with the dramatic crap?”
said Fiske. He lowered his hands and caught a sucker punch in the gut from McKenna. Fiske dropped to his knees, gasping. Sara raced to him, helping him lean back against the car tire.

“Keep your hands up until the lady answers the question.”
McKenna reached down and jerked Fiske’s hands up in the air.
“Keep your damn hands up.”

Sara screamed,
“No, for God’s sake, he’s not holding me. Stop it. Leave him alone!”
She pushed McKenna’s hand away.

Perkins stepped forward.
“Agent McKenna — ”
he began, but McKenna cut him off with a cold stare.

“He’s got a shotgun in the car,”
McKenna said.
“You want to take a chance with your men, fine. I don’t operate that way.”

Another sedan pulled up and Chandler and two uniformed Virginia police officers climbed out, guns drawn.

“Everybody freeze!”
Chandler boomed out.

McKenna looked around.
“Tell your men to put away their weapons, Chandler. I’ve got the situation under control.”

Chandler walked right up to McKenna.
“Tell your men to holster their weapons right now, McKenna. Right now or I’ll have these officers arrest you on the spot for assault and battery.”
McKenna didn’t move. Chandler leaned directly in his face.
“Right now, Special Agent Warren McKenna, or you’ll be calling the Bureau’s legal counsel from a Virginia lockup. You really want that in your record?”

Finally, the man flinched.
“Holster your weapons,”
McKenna ordered his men.

“Now move the hell away from him,”
Chandler ordered.

McKenna very slowly edged away from the fallen Fiske, his eyes burning into Chandler’s with every backward step.

Chandler knelt down and gripped Fiske’s shoulder.
“John, you okay?”

Fiske nodded painfully, his eyes on McKenna.

“Will someone please tell us what is going on?”
Sara cried out.

“Steven Wright was found murdered,”
Chandler said.

The shack rested in the center of a heavy forest in a remote part of southwestern Pennsylvania, where it notched into West Virginia. A muddy, tire-gouged strip of dirt was the only way in or out. Josh came in the front door, his 9mm poking out of his waistband, red clay and pine needles sticking to his boots. The truck was parked under a leafy shield of a soaring walnut tree, but Josh had taken the added precaution of covering the vehicle with camouflage netting. His biggest worry was being spotted from overhead. Luckily, the nights were still warm. He couldn’t risk building a fire; you couldn’t control where smoke went.

Rufus sat on the floor, his broad back resting against the wall, his Bible in his lap. He was drinking a soda, the remains of his lunch beside him. He had changed into some clothes that his brother had brought him.

“Everything okay?”

“Just us and the squirrels. How you feeling?”

“Happy as hell and scared as the devil.”
Rufus shook his head and smiled.
“Feels good to be free, sitting here drinking a Coke, not having to worry about somebody trying to get the jump on me every second of my life.”

“The guards or the other cons?”

“What do you think?”

“I think both. I was on the inside for a while too, you know. We could probably write us a book.”

“How long we gonna stay here?”

“A couple of days. Let things die down a little. Then we’ll head on, make our way down to Mexico. Live good on a tenth of what it takes up here. Went a few times after the war. Got some old Army buddies who live there. They’ll help us get in and then set us up. Find us a boat, do some fishing, live on the beach. That sound good to you?”

“Living in the sewer would sound good to me.”
Rufus stood up.
“Got a question for you.”

His brother leaned against the wall and started carving up an apple with his pocketknife.
“I’m listening.”

“Your truck was full of groceries, two rifles and that pistol you’re carrying. And the clothes I’m wearing.”

“So?”

“So you just happen to be carrying all that stuff when you come visit me?”

Josh swallowed a slice of apple.
“I got to eat. That means I got to go to the store, now, don’t it?”

“Yeah, but you didn’t buy nothing that’d go bad, no milk or eggs, stuff like that. All cans and boxes.”

“I ate out of a can in the Army. I guess I just fell in love with meals ready to eat.”

“And you always carry all them guns with you?”

“Maybe I’m still screwed up from Nam, got some syndrome or other.”

Rufus tugged at his shirt, which was the size of a blanket.
“My size don’t exactly come off the rack. You came ready to bust me out, didn’t you, Josh?”

Josh finished working on his apple and then threw the core out the open window. He wiped the apple juice from his hands onto his jeans before facing his brother.

“Look, Rufus, I never knew why you killed that little girl. But I knew you weren’t right in the head when you done it. When I got that letter from the Army it crossed my mind there was something there. Now, I didn’t know it was some cover for what they done to you. But the fact is, nowadays, people go crazy and do bad shit, they stick ’em in the nut-house, and when they’re better, they just let ’em go. You been in prison for twenty-five years for something I know for a fact you didn’t even mean to do. Let’s just say I took it on myself to say that was long enough. You served your time, you know,’paid your debt to society’crap. It was time for you to get out, and I was gonna bring the key. If you hadn’t wanted to come, I was going to make you change your way of thinking. Call me right or wrong, I don’t give a damn. It’s what I made up my mind to do.”

The two brothers looked at each other for at least a minute without speaking.

“You a good brother, Josh.”

“You damn right I am.”

Rufus sat on the floor again and picked up the Bible, his hands gently turning the pages until he found the part he wanted. Josh eyed him.

“You still reading that stuff after all this time?”

Rufus looked up at him.
“Gonna read it all my life.”

Josh snorted.
“You do what you want with your time, but wasting it ain’t such a good idea if you ask me.”

Rufus eyed him stonily.
“The word of the Lord kept me alive all these years. That ain’t no waste of time.”

Josh shook his head, looked out the window and then back at Rufus. He touched the grip of his pistol.
“This is God. Or a knife, or a stick of dynamite, or a don’t-piss-on-me attitude. Not some holy book full of people killing each other, men taking other men’s women, just about every sin you can think of — ”

“Sins of man, not God.”

“God ain’t the one busted you out. I did.”

“God sent you to me, Josh. His will is everywhere.”

“So you’re saying God made me come get you?”

“Why did you come?”

“I told you. Get you out.”

“’cause you love me?”

Josh appeared a little startled.
“Yes,”
he said.

“That’s the will of God, Josh. You love me, you help me. That’s God’s way of working.”

Josh shook his head and looked away. Rufus went back to his reading.

A squawking sound came from Josh’s portable police scanner, which he had set on the floor along with his radio. Josh had managed to tune in a radio station from southwest Virginia for any local news on Rufus’s escape.

“Heard your name on the police band anymore?”
Josh asked.

Rufus Harms had been mentioned in the news the day before. All the military authorities would say was that Harms was a convicted murderer who had a history of violence inside prison. He had escaped with the help of his brother, a dangerous man in his own right. The standard lingo was used, namely that both men were believed to be armed and dangerous. Translation: No one should be surprised or ask any questions when the authorities dragged their corpses in.

“A little,”
Rufus replied.
“They’re looking south, like you thought.”

Just then the afternoon news came on the radio. The first two news stories meant nothing to either brother. The third news story was a late-breaking one and it made both brothers stare at the radio. Josh hustled over and turned up the sound. The story only lasted about a minute and when it was over Josh turned the radio off.
“Rider and his wife,”
he said.

“Made it look like he killed her and then turned the gun on himself,”
Rufus added, his head shaking slowly in disbelief.
“Two men come to see me and now they’re both dead.”

Josh stared over at his brother. He knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Rufus, you can’t bring him back, you can’t bring none of them back.”

“It’s my fault they’re dead. For trying to help me. And Rider’s wife, she didn’t know nothing about any of this.”

“You didn’t ask that Fiske boy to come down to the prison.”

“But I asked Samuel. He’d be alive except for me.”

“He owed you, Rufus. Why you think he came on down in the first place? He felt guilty. He knew he didn’t fight hard for you back then. He was trying to make up for that.”

“He’s still dead, ain’t he? Because of me.”

“Supposing that’s true, you can’t do nothing about it.”

Rufus looked over at him.
“I can make sure they didn’t die for nothing. Them folks took most of my life away. And now they took these other peoples’lives. You say we’ll be okay in Mexico, but they ain’t never gonna stop looking for us. Vic Tremaine is crazy as hell. Just have to look in the man’s eyes to see that. Old Vic been trying to get me all these years. Probably think he’s got his chance now. Fill us both up with lead.”

“The Army catches up with us before the police do, they’ll damn sure keep firing till their mags are empty,”
Josh agreed. He pulled out his Pall Malls and lit up, blowing smoke across the room.
“Well, I can shoot straight too. They’ll know they been in a damn fight if they don’t know nothing else.”

Rufus shook his head stubbornly.
“Nobody should be able to get away with what they done.”

Josh flicked cigarette ash to the floor and stared at him.
“Well, exactly what are you gonna do? March in to the police and say, ‘Listen up, boys, I got some story to tell. Now y’all come on help a brother put these big-important white folk away’?”
Josh took the cigarette out of his mouth and spit on the dirt floor.
“Shit, Rufus.”

“I need to get me that letter from the Army.”

“Where’d you leave it?”

“I hid it back in my cell.”

“Well, we ain’t going back to the prison. You try to do that, I’ll shoot you myself.”

“I ain’t going back to Fort Jackson.”

“What, then?”

“Samuel was a lawyer. Lawyers make copies of things.”

Josh arched his eyebrows.
“You wanta go to Rider’s office?”