Whom Dog Hath Joined (31 page)

I shook my head. “Everybody has secrets,
whether they live in a big city or a small town. And bad things happen wherever
you go.”

Gail’s phone buzzed, and she said, “I realized
while I was watching Eben that if anything happened to me, I didn’t want to die
feeling like I’d missed any chances.  So I called Declan and left him a
message.” She picked the phone up and stood, then walked a few feet away to
talk in private.

“Listen, I’m sorry I put you in danger,” I
said to Mark. “Once he pulled out that shotgun I should have just sat down and
shut up and waited for Rick. That was a stupid move on my part. I get caught up
in my own head, and I forget about the effects what I’m doing will have on
other people.”

“I’ll survive,” he said. “You had no way of
knowing he had that shotgun with him. And you did a good job of talking him
down.” He sighed. “And I agree with Gail. You know, life is short, don’t let
opportunities pass you by, all that crap.”

“Thomas Hobbes said life is nasty, brutish and
short,” I said.

“Yeah, well, old Tom got it right,” Mark said.
“I suppose I could look for some new carpet for Friar Lake. Maybe even get Joey
to help me with the samples.” He smiled.

Gail came back to tell us she had plans to see
Declan on Saturday night, and Mark said he’d call Joey and see if things could
still be salvaged. He left, and Gail went back inside, but I stayed at the café,
finishing my coffee and petting my dog. I drove Rochester back to River Bend,
and we took a long walk around the community.

A little girl with training wheels on her pink
bike rode past, wearing a matching pink helmet with a silver tiara glued to the
top. I remembered riding my bike into Stewart’s Crossing, baseball cards
flapping on the spokes, blue plastic tassels hanging from the handlebars. The
sense of freedom I felt, able to go wherever I wanted. I might have only had
change in my pocket, but the world was mine.

Our parents had never thought of bicycle
helmets then, car seats or not smoking or drinking during pregnancy. And we’d
survived. I knew a lot of kids who died, but it was the kind of thing you
couldn’t prevent – leukemia, head-on collisions, house fires and plane crashes.

Did I still think I was bullet-proof, the way
my Eastern students did? That because I’d survived childhood, I could make it
through anything? But mine had been a simple, protected life back then. My
parents loved me, gave me shelter and food and books and the sense that I could
do anything I wanted if I only tried hard enough.

I had fulfilled those dreams they had for me –
a very good small college (Eastern); an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia);
a decent career and marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then, like a house of cards
I was tired of playing with, I had knocked it all over. Goodbye career, wife,
freedom.

I thought I’d learned a few lessons in prison,
but here I was, forty-plus years old and still doing dumb stuff. Would Lili
break up with me over my actions? My head said that I’d acted rashly and put myself
and others in danger. But my heart said I’d do it all again. Would I ever be
able to marry those two so that I’d act like a real grown-up all the time?

I pulled my cell out of my messenger bag,
eager to speak to Lili and tell her everything that had happened. I’d missed
having someone in my life like that for too long, and I knew I was lucky to
have found her. But then I put the phone away. This had to be handled face to
face, as I’d done when I told her about hacking into the reunion database.

Rochester hopped into the front seat of the
Beemer and we headed upriver. It was going to be sweet when Lili and I lived
together, I thought. No more long phone calls, no more drives between our
homes. As long as she would still have me when she knew what I’d done.

38 – Barbecue

There was no answer at Lili’s apartment, and
her phone went right to voice mail. Could she still be at work? I dialed her
office, but it was after five and neither she nor Matilda answered.

That’s when I noticed the text message icon on
my phone.
Developing more pix @Adam’s. TTY 2morrow
.

Crap. I didn’t want to have to wait that long
to tell Lili what had happened, and I didn’t want to leave her a voice mail, or
a note on her door, or send her an email. I wanted to see her, talk to her, hold
onto her and make sure she was all right with what I’d done.

But I couldn’t. So instead, I drove Rochester
back to River Bend, poured some chow for him and boiled some pasta for myself. After
we ate, I
turned on one of the dog shows on TV, and I pointed out things
to Rochester that I thought he could do. On screen, a German shepherd posed, an
Afghan hound walked with her tail erect, Yorkies and Maltese obeyed commands,
Shih-tzus flowed across the stage as if their coats were watery. The trainers
had an almost mystical rapport with their dogs, an unspoken connection that led
to seamless movement.

I had that with Rochester, I thought. Sure, he pulled on his
leash, hid sometimes when I called him, wouldn’t take pills easily. But give us
a case to work together, and we were a machine.

At eleven, I took Rochester out for a solitary
walk. It was chilly, and an angry wind swept the dead leaves past the darkened
houses of my neighbors. A straw couple in patchwork clothes swayed together, an
owl hooted, and Rochester chased after something that scurried beneath Bob
Freehl’s hedge. I looked up at the sky, hoping for a star to wish on, but all I
saw were clouds scudding past.

I drove to work Friday morning in a dark mood.
I needed to talk to Lili  and make sure she was okay with the way I’d put my
life, Rochester’s, Mark’s and even Gail’s in danger the day before. She could
see that as indicative of the fact that I was too much of a loose cannon to
commit to.

On one hand, I had found some measure of justice
for Don Lamprey – but had I ruined my own future in doing so? Even Rochester
seemed aloof, as if he was mad at me, too.

It was hard to concentrate at work, and I
often found myself staring into space, wondering about Lili and our future
together. At lunch, Rochester and I walked down the hill to the lakefront, and
the old ranch house where the mendicant friars had lived. It was chilly, with
the bite of winter in the air, and I was glad I’d brought a jacket with me.

While he nosed around the corner of the house,
I thought about the way those mendicants had lived, forsaking worldly
attachments for a life of service. I had no interest in that—I wanted to have
people around me, to go out to dinner, luxuriate in possessions, enjoy the
company of my dog.

But everything I did seemed to contradict
those goals. I didn’t kid myself; my marriage to Mary had been on the rocks
long before I hacked into the credit bureaus. But it was that act that drove
the knife into our marriage. By the time I returned to Stewart’s Crossing I had
no money and only the few things my father had left me in his will.

Rochester had started me on the road back to
life. I knew I had to get a job to provide for him. Instead of wallowing in
self-pity I had to walk him, feed him, play with him. I thought that must be
how Tamsen had felt after her husband died in Iraq – that she couldn’t go on,
but that she had to, for the sake of her son.

Rochester had gotten over his pique, and he romped
over to me, a stick in his mouth. I tugged on it. “You’ve got to release it if
you want me to throw it for you,” I said. He did, and I sent it sailing across
the overgrown lawn between the house and the lake.

This was my life, I thought. If I had nothing
else, if Lili broke up with me, if I lost my job and the friendships I’d
cultivated with Rick, Mark, Gail and others – I’d still have my dog. He rushed
back to me with the stick in his mouth and an expression of doggie devotion on
his glowing, golden face.

Around three o’clock, Rick showed up at Friar
Lake. “What brings you all the way up here?” I asked.

“I took a full statement from Eben last night,
but I need to get one from you, too. Since I appreciate the help you gave me
yesterday in talking him down, I thought I’d save you the trip to my station
and come up here. Thought I’d see what the place you’re always talking about
looks like, too.”

 “I’ve been thinking about yesterday,” I said,
as Rick sat down across from me. “I should have been mature enough to realize
that Eben was dangerous, and that it was up to you to resolve the situation. I have
been so focused on not hacking , that I lost sight of the fact that hacking is just
a symptom of my not thinking through the consequences of my actions.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much. I guess the
saying isn’t true after all,” he said, smiling. “If you’re actually learning
from your mistakes, that means you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Hey, you’re older than I am,” I said.

When he smiled and said, “By three months,” I
knew we friends again.

“I spoke to the DA this morning,” he continued.
“He agrees that the statute of limitations for the theft of the money and the
drugs has passed. But Eben doesn’t have a sportsman’s permit or a license for
the Mossberg. That’s either a third-degree felony, or a first-degree
misdemeanor. Basically a slap on the wrist.”

“That’s all?”

“There’s one other option.” He paused. “The
crime scene guys retrieved a couple of shell casings from the entrance to River
Bend, where you were shot, and they match Eben’s Mossberg.”

“So he’s the one who shot at me?” My heart
zinged for a moment.
Got you, creep
, I thought. “Why would he?”

“He’s not admitting to shooting you, but my
guess is that he must have been paying attention to you. He might have seen you
help me out at the Harvest Festival when we found the bones, maybe he saw the
two of us around town somewhere. Then you went walking past his house. That
must have spooked him.”

“So you can prosecute him, right? Attempted
murder?”

“That’s a different story,” Rick said. “His
gun was used, and his fingerprints are on it. But to eliminate reasonable
doubt, we’d have to prove that he’s the only one who had access to the weapon,
and that he had a motive to shoot at you. A good attorney could tear you apart
on the witness stand. Were you interfering in the investigation? Had you made
any efforts to contact Eben? That kind of thing.”

There was another pause. “His attorney could
call me to the stand, too, and make it seem like I violated procedures by using
your help.”

“Which would get you in trouble,” I said.

“Yeah. But I’m a big boy. If I have to take my
medicine I will.”

I remembered my prison conversations with
Balbino. And suddenly, what happened to me didn’t seem to matter so much. “You
know what?” I said. “Eben’s paid enough, holding his secrets for forty years. I
don’t see any point in dragging this out, do you?”

“He broke down yesterday,” Rick said. “Sobbing.
How bad he felt.”

“Where is he now?”

“Had to arrest him for waving that gun around.
He spent the night in the county jail, and then he appeared before a judge, who
granted him bail.”

“So he’s out?”

“On his way out of the system as we speak.
You’ll never guess who’s posting the bond for him.”

“Edith Passis?”

“Close, but no cigar. Hannah Palmer.”

“The clerk of the Meeting?”

“Yup. She says that the Friends look after
their own. But if you’re not going to press charges, the judge will probably
let him off with a warning and a fine.”

I thought about it for a moment. I could
obsess about Hosford, carrying anger inside me the way I’d blamed Mary at first
for motivating me to hack into those credit card databases, and all the other
things that had sent me to prison. It had taken me a long time to let go of
that, to accept my own responsibility and move on. It was time to do that here,
too. “I’m okay with letting him go.”

He pulled out a tape recorder, and we went
through everything that had happened. “When I get this transcribed, I’ll email
it to you for review, and then ask you to print and sign it.” He hesitated,
then said, “On another subject. I invited Tamsen and her son over for a
barbecue tomorrow evening. I was hoping you and Lili would join us with
Rochester. You could bring the signed transcript with you then, and it would really
help me out. It’s going to be the first time Justin sees me with his mom as
more than just his coach, and...”

“I’m not sure I’m still seeing Lili.” I told
him about my failed trip upriver, that I was waiting to talk to her in person. “But
I can come with Rochester.”

I remembered that Gail and Declan had a date
on Saturday night and suggested that Rick invite them. “And Mark Figueroa is
supposed to be getting together with Joey Capodilupo. Why don’t you call Mark
and invite them, too?” I asked. “Edith, and Hannah and her family? Make it a
big party and nobody will feel that awkward.”

“Sounds like a plan.” He paused again. “Thanks
for all your help on this, Steve. We can both feel good about giving some
closure to the Lampreys, and seeing that Don’s bones get buried out by his
family.”