Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

And then-

Caroline shines her flashlight above the fireplace where a bullet hole – round and jagged, unmistakable in the plaster – is framed by the square dust outline of a picture frame.

She finds the picture itself on the floor in front of the fireplace, blown off the wall by the gunshot. The glass is shattered but the frame is intact. Caroline picks it up and turns it over in her hand, expecting to find the nickel-size bullet hole through Clark's young face. But his face is still there, smiling, his arm thrown around the eighteen-year-old version of Eli Boyle, whose head is now gone, a small, ragged hole in the crisp paper of a faded photograph.

Jesus, even at the end, after all he'd done, Eli didn't have it in him to hate Clark as much as he hated himself. She can imagine him staring at the photograph on the floor, then walking back outside, his arm limp at his side, going upstairs to the carriage house, sitting at the computer and reading Clark's message over and over: I lied about everything. Is it spur of the moment, a shudder, a frenzy, a delirium, a dream? She tries to imagine it; maybe it's because she hasn't slept all weekend, but Caroline can only see it as a kind of fatigue, of giving up, the gun falling against his cheek, eyes pressed shut. Enough.

Rest now.

She is close, too close to stop now. And only one more thing to do. Caroline slides the prom photo into her bag next to the legal pads and walks toward the door. And she thinks maybe it's all we can do sometimes to save ourselves.

She finds him at dawn, sitting on a ledge atop the Davenport Hotel, staring out at the city. She sees him from the car as she drives up, sees his feet first, dangling from the terra-cotta molding that rests like a crown on the twelfth floor of the old brick hotel. Apparently he doesn't see her, and in Spokane on a Sunday morning there is no one else on the street to see him; no movie crowd has gathered to crane their necks to see if the loon really jumps, no firefighters stand below with nets, no priests or uniformed cops lean out the window to console, cajole, and capture. She sees only a single man, hair licked by the wind, 130 feet off the ground, staring out from the top of a building.

She parks and steps out of her car. The Davenport Hotel rises dark and empty before her, burning at its base from the glow of construction lights. On these lower floors, behind braces of scaffolding, the restored terracotta gleams like new teeth.

She could climb the scaffolding to an open window. That's probably what Clark did. Instead, she peers through the automatic double doors. A janitor is working inside, wearing headphones and running an electric mop across the marble floor, no doubt cleaning up from one of the parties or wedding receptions they have here on the weekends in the restored ballroom. The hotel is four or five months from reopening and already people are straining to get in, to glimpse the history and the promise, to see for themselves if it's really coming back.

Caroline pounds on the glass, but the janitor can't hear her. She waits until he swings the sweeper her way and then she waves her arm. The janitor looks up, then shakes his head: No.

Caroline presses her badge against the glass and finally the janitor comes over. He reads her badge through the glass, then searches the ring on his belt for the proper key. He opens the door without saying a word. She explains that they picked someone up at the hotel two days earlier, and she just needs to have a look around.

The janitor shrugs and goes back to his mop. Caroline walks past the elevators and peeks into the lobby – she is not above longing, herself. She looks up at the paneled skylights, at the ornate railing on the second-floor walkway overlooking the marble-floored square, a fountain at its center. She closes her eyes and tries to hear the water trickling, the crowds, bellhops and porters, tropical birds, the cars motoring up to the door, Lindbergh and Earhart and Fairbanks sitting in chairs in the lobby. And Thomas Wolfe, downing his Scotch, grabbing his hat, preparing to leave Spokane "through land more barren all the time."

She opens her eyes on the dark, empty lobby – maybe a person can only spend so much time in empty buildings composing elegies. Caroline walks back and presses the button for the elevator. She is relieved when she hears the car coming down. The stairs might've killed her. Forty-eight hours without sleep.

The elevator is framed in gold-leaf pillars, oak leaves and clusters, but inside it is pure freight, the walls and railings papered and taped, a carpenter's sawhorse left in the center of the car. She rides up leaning on the saw-horse, the elevator motor and cables mumbling about morning and sleep, until the doors open onto the top floor of old rooms and Caroline emerges into a dusty hallway where the remodeling is still mostly theoretical. The first sunlight streams in from the east bank of windows onto a floor in which the lath-and-plaster walls have been removed and what remains is the bones of these rooms, framed in new honey-colored two-by-fours and a few old, gray beams and headers. She feels the breeze from the open window and walks toward it.

He is sitting on the ledge, his back to her, sky beginning to turn in front of him. She sticks her head out and feels the cool air, gasps a little. Spring comes with a hangover in Spokane – late, regretful, sometimes staggering back to bed. She slides her bag out onto the ledge and then begins to climb out the window, bracing herself on the window frame. She feels his ice-cold hand on her arm, helping her out on the wide guttered ledge. She sits next to him, shivers against the cold.

"You found me," he says.

"I found you."

They are facing north. Before them is downtown Spokane and the river channel, beyond that the gently sloping hills blanketed with homes and a simple, honest grid of streets. The whole thing is flatter than she would think. When you're on those streets the hills seem imposing, but from here it is a graceful and good incline, like a man propped on a pillow in bed, reading a book.

She looks past Clark, to the east, where the sky is clear and the sun streaks down the long river valley all the way from Idaho, framed by long straight rail lines and a bolt of freeway. Then she looks west, to where the dark sky is trying to hold on to threats.

"It's beautiful," she says. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"I was just trying to get up the nerve," he says.

"What were you waiting for?"

"Sunrise," he says.

They both turn and look at the sun, still cradled in the foothills to the east.

"You wait long enough you might freeze to death instead."

"I probably don't have the nerve for that, either."

Caroline reaches in her bag, takes out the legal pads, and sets them down in front of Clark. Then she gives him the prom photo.

"Did you tell Dana?" he asks.

"No," she says. "I didn't tell her about Eli and I didn't tell her about you."

Clark stares out to the north again, leans back against the brick, and closes his eyes. "Do you know the worst part? Eli never told her it was my fault, that it was all my idea. He let me off the hook."

A jet tears across the clean sky above them, east to west, high and noiseless, its stream carving the blue until it hits dark clouds and disappears. Caroline picks up the yellow legal pads. "So is that it?"

"Hmm?" He turns to face her.

"The confession. Is that all of it?"

"Yeah. I guess it is."

"What now?"

"I don't know," he says. "What do you normally do?"

"What do we do?" She shrugs. "If someone turns himself in to the police and admits that he intended to commit murder? Committed acts furthering that crime? Entered into a conspiracy? We usually say you have the right to remain silent. That anything you say can be used against you. That you have the right to an attorney, but if you can't afford one we'll give you an overworked one who just got out of law school and will go into private practice the week your case goes to trial."