Archer Mayor - The Dark Root

Perhaps responding at last to his own sense of fatalism, Diep committed. Turning his back on the reality around him, he began climbing the staircase.

I ran to the south side of the dome, where the platform jutted out without seeming function or purpose. Stepping through the veil of interlocking steel triangles, craning my neck to look up, I could see only the lip of the concrete slab and, in the distance, to its rear, the small figure of Diep, climbing.

Like a spectator at a movie in which I could not affect the outcome, I watched and waited for the inevitable.

There was a movement above me, at the railing on the platform’s edge, as far from the stairs as possible. A hand gripped one of the tubular cross pieces, and I saw Truong pull himself with grim deliberation to a sitting position and wedge himself against one of the uprights. Instinctively, I knew he must be mortally hurt. Let Diep come on , his long crawl along the platform’s length said.

But I was wrong, yet again. From high on his perch, with Diep cautiously advancing, Truong turned away and looked down at me, his gun in his hand.

Curiously, I felt no danger. I looked up at him, as if responding to some incomprehensible communication, and I spread my empty hands wide, indicating I had no weapon.

I thought I saw him smile then; he gestured with the gun, as if offering it. Although I made no response, he dropped it to me anyway. It landed in the gravel near my feet with a crunch. Reacting by reflex, I walked over and picked it up, popped out the clip, and saw it still had several rounds.

I looked back up at him, noticing that Diep was no longer visible on the staircase. He had obviously made it to the platform. Only now did I understand. Take out this man in my name, Truong had implied, in my brother’s name, perhaps in your fellow slain officer’s name. Kill the man who would kill me, for I no longer have the strength.

I stared up at him in wonder. He was right, of course. With his gun, now I had the advantage over Diep, who was cornered. But he was also wrong. While our roles might have appeared similar, our motivations couldn’t be. I didn’t share the passion, the beliefs, the cultural obligations that had brought him to this place. I wasn’t even sure I understood them-not as he did.

Looking up at him, our eyes locked, the air around us now vibrating with sirens coming from all angles, I shook my head, and dropped the gun.

There was a moment’s pause, before he turned away resignedly. Seconds later, several shots rang out, Truong’s body spasmed briefly, and one arm slipped out between the railing, dangling lifelessly in the air, its hand open.

I turned at the sound of cars squealing to a stop behind me, and saw both uniformed and plainclothes officers spreading out in tactical positions, making me doubly glad I’d dropped Truong’s weapon. I recognized Lacoste among them and then saw Frazier, Spinney, and Lucas all stepping out of their van.

Following their gaze, I looked back to the edge of the huge, floating platform. Standing next to Truong’s dead body, Lo placed both his hands on the railing’s top rung, still holding his gun. He looked down at the impressive display of vehicles and police officers fanned out below him.

I heard Lacoste’s distinctive voice, slightly blurred by a loudspeaker, demanding Lo’s surrender. But predictably, almost anticlimactically, Lo exploited his other option, bringing this cataclysm to an end. He raised his gun, took aim at the crowd beneath him, and died in a last angry outburst of bullets.

Gail pulled over to the curb and cut the engine. “He wanted to meet you here?”

I looked past her at the gentle curve of Morningside Cemetery, the ragged rows of individual and sometimes idiosyncratic monuments, the hulking, dormant mass of Mount Wantastiquet beyond. The air was tinted with the perfume of spring in full flower. “I called Megan Goss about him yesterday, after he asked me here. I wanted to run his symptoms by her to see what she thought. She said it sounded like he was in mourning-for a loss of innocence, maybe, compounded by what had happened to Dennis, and exacerbated by having a new baby on the way. Her guess was he wants to tell me he’s quitting the department. I guess a cemetery’s as good a place as any to do that.”

Gail studied my face for a moment and then reached across and squeezed my hand. “He’s not the only one in mourning, is he?”

I smiled slightly. “I suppose not. I hadn’t allowed any time for it till now.” I paused and then added, “I’d hate to lose Ron as well.”

Gail released my hand. “You better find out what he wants.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

I found Ron Klesczewski crouching at the foot of Dennis’s grave, staring distractedly at the broad river far below. I sat down next to him, using a neighboring stone as a backrest. “Hey, there.”

He didn’t turn his head. “Hi, Joe.”

"Guess you heard we closed the case, shut down the task force. We found Amy Lee, too-scared, but all in one piece.”

“I saw it in the paper,” he answered tonelessly.

I didn’t know what else to say, and despite my gloomy prognostication to Gail, I had no idea how this was going to end. The last thing I wanted was to precipitate a gesture he hadn’t been intending.

Groping for something benign in the silence, I finally said, “Willy put a donut in the coffin.”

Ron slowly turned away from the view and stared at me. “What did you say?”

“Willy said he put a donut into the casket when no one was looking at the funeral home, tucked just out of sight under the bottom lid panel. He thought Dennis would appreciate it.”

Ron shook his head, puzzled. “I thought Kunkle hated Dennis.”

“Dennis was a cop. Willy never dumped on him about that.”

Ron’s anguished face cracked a smile. “A donut? Jesus Christ.”

“Honey glazed-right on his chest, where he could reach it. And a napkin.”

Laughing now, Ron sat down against the stone next to me and stretched his legs out before him.

Seizing the moment, or maybe just wanting to get it over, I asked him, “You gonna’ quit the department?”

The laughter stopped, but the smile lingered encouragingly. He shook his head, his eyes fixed before him. “I was going to this morning. Even told Wendy.”

“What did she say?” I asked in the silence that followed.

He looked up at me. “Not to do it. She said she’d never seen me happier than the day I made detective. That it wasn’t something to give up just because I was in the dumps.” He rubbed his forehead. “That surprised me. She was one of the reasons I was thinking of quitting-Wendy and the baby.”

“Not bad reasons,” I murmured, thinking of Gail.

He sighed. There was still something unaddressed-some issue we’d stepped over that I hadn’t noticed.

“What is it?”

“I feel guilty.” His words were barely audible above the soft breeze from the river.

“Because you lived to worry that you almost got killed? You gotta see the irony in that.”

He smiled again, but I knew I hadn’t quite hit it. I had picked Ron as my Number Two a few years ago, over Brandt’s reservations, and I’d worked hard to make him feel comfortable in the role-perhaps too hard. I thought back to Truong Van Loc, and his relationship to his brother, on whom he’d pegged so much. I realized I too had been selfish, albeit a little less dramatically. Ron’s anxiety was as much my fault as a result of his own insecurities. I hadn’t paid attention to the price he’d been paying for a decision all my own.

“I’d be happy to switch things around a little, if you’d like-take you off as my second,” I told him.