Linwood Barclay - Lone Wolf

Timmy glanced at Orville, just for a moment, long enough to see that Orville was scared. Maybe not as scared as I was. But scared.

“Orville,” Timmy said. “Take. A. Walk.”

I stared down the barrel of the shotgun. Timmy smiled, shook his head at Orville’s foolishness, and squeezed his finger around the trigger.

Orville Thorne shot Timmy Wickens in the neck.

Timmy said, “Ack.”

The shotgun fell away from me.

His mouth stayed open, but all that could be heard was a faint gurgling sound. He clamped one hand to the wound, blood spilling out between his fingers. He held on to the shotgun with the other hand, turned it toward Orville. Before he could fire, Orville shot him again, this time in the chest, and Timmy dropped to the floor.

Orville took a step forward and in the moment before Timmy Wickens closed his eyes, Orville said, “He’s my brother.”

By the time the sun came up, Hank Wrigley was in Braynor District Hospital getting patched up, Betty at his side. What was once a farmhouse was nothing but a pile of smoldering embers. A pumper from the Braynor Fire Department was still pouring water onto the site. They’d run a hose down to the lake and were pumping from there.

After Orville shot Timmy Wickens, I flicked the lights at Dad’s cabin on and off until he came back in the boat with May and Jeffrey. Lawrence showed up not long after that, once the ambulance attendants had arrived and left with Betty and Hank. We both made a point of keeping May and her son away from cabin 3, where Timmy lay in a pool of his own blood.

Dr. Heath was roused from his slumber so that he could pronounce Timmy Wickens and Wendell dead. Nobody was able to find enough of Dougie or Charlene to make a similar assessment.

The coroner was good enough to retrieve our car keys from what was left of Wendell’s jacket and pants. The dogs had chewed through them, and him, pretty thoroughly.

The phone company even sent someone out to get the line to Dad’s cabin reconnected. The cops-and they were from every level imaginable-were turning Dad’s place into a temporary command center, and wanted the phone operating pronto.

Once the phone was working, I called Sarah and gave her the short version. I told her I’d be home sometime in the late afternoon, and would write something for the next day’s edition of The Metropolitan . About a family of homicidal psychos who’d planned to blow up a parade.

“You still want this other information you were asking me about the other day?” she said. About a shelter, where a woman with a child on the run could go.

“She’s not exactly on the run now,” I said. “But she’s going to need some help. Everything she had is gone. No clothes, nothing.”

“I’ll start making some calls,” Sarah said.

“See if we have some old stuff of Paul’s that would fit a ten-year-old.”

Lawrence, who’d walked into Dad’s study in the middle of my conversation, said, “They can stay with me till we get them set up someplace.”

“That’d be great,” I said to Lawrence. I told Sarah of Lawrence’s offer and added, “She’s a nice woman. She’s been through a lot. And she and Jeffrey are on their own now. That’s actually going to be a plus, given who she was with, but she’s still going to be traumatized for a while.”

“Sure,” said Sarah. “And you? Are you okay?”

I smiled. “I’m a complete disaster.”

“Get home safely.”

I hung up and found Dad in the kitchen, sitting at the table, looking dazed and tired. I asked him about the ankle, and he said it was a bit swollen again.

“But I don’t need you here anymore,” he said. “I’m closing the place for the rest of the season. Soon as Hank’s released, he and Betty are going. Bob’s taking off end of the day. Leonard Colebert’s family is due here today to pick up his things. And there’s a lot of stuff to deal with, of course. Insurance, for one thing.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry anymore about finding a way to get the Wickenses out of your house.”

Dad gave me a tired smile. “No Wickenses. No house. No problem.”

I found Bob Spooner down by the water, sitting in his boat, just looking out over the lake.

“How was the tractor?” I asked.

“Fast,” he said.

“I was serious, what I said last night,” I said.

“About what?”

“About going fishing. Are you packing up yet?”

“Not till the end of the day. I might even hang in until tomorrow. Are you serious? After all that’s happened? You want to go out one last time?”

“Yeah,” I said. “If you don’t mind. Something a bit restful, for a change.”

“Sure.”

“In an hour?”

Bob said sure, again.

The parade, we heard later, went off without a hitch. Stuart Lethbridge and the rest of the Fifty Lakes Gay and Lesbian Coalition failed to show. Turns out Stuart couldn’t get anyone to run the comics shop, and Saturday being his busiest day, he couldn’t afford to close.

May and Jeffrey were going back to the city in Lawrence’s Jag. They’d given statements to the police, and Lawrence had let them know that they’d be staying at his place, at least for a while.

Lawrence had finished packing all his stuff and tossed it into the trunk. Jeffrey, still holding on to what was now his entire Star Wars collection, Mace Windu and Lando Calrissian, was getting into the backseat.

“You take care,” I said. “Lawrence will look after you.”

Jeffrey was dazed and tired. “I know,” he said. “I like him.”

“I like him, too,” I said. I shook Jeffrey’s hand, then went over to say goodbye to May.

She gave me a hug. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry about your father,” I said. For any pain she felt, I really was.

“I had no idea,” she said. “Not that he’d killed two men in my life. Sabotaged my jobs. And then he allowed us to be locked up. Would he have killed us? My own father? Would he have killed me and his grandson?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if he couldn’t have brought himself to do it, I think Charlene would have.”

She looked like she was going to cry. She gave me a kiss, thanked me again, and got into the Jag.

“Thanks,” I said to Lawrence as he opened his door.

He put his arms around me, patted my back, and whispered into my ear, “The shit you get into. I do declare.”

As they drove up the hill and disappeared around the bend, I noticed Orville Thorne standing not far away.

“I owe you,” I said.

He gave me a half smile. “I may not be cut out for this,” he said. “Maybe I should think about doing something else.”

“Well,” I said, “you were there for me when I needed it most, and I thank you. When you’re in the city, I want you to come by. My wife Sarah, my kids Paul and Angie, they’d be honored to meet you.”

“I’d like that,” he said.

“How are you and Lana?” I asked.

Orville sighed tiredly. “We talked a lot last night. She’s not my aunt, she’s not my mother, but she loves me as much as either.”

“Hold on to that.”

“I wish,” he said, working to get the words out, “that I had had a chance to meet your mother.”

“Our mother,” I said.

He nodded. His eyes were wet.

“I’ll do what I can to tell you everything about her that I can.”

He smiled sadly. “I’d appreciate that. And, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“About what I said before, when I found out, about you being my half brother, what I called you.”

“Oh, the asshole thing?” I said. “Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be the first one in the family to make that assessment.”