Jan Burke - Nine

“My grandmother,” Kit said, “doesn’t come up here. She lets me use this place because she knows that sometimes I need…privacy.” In a wry voice he had added, “I’m so used to being in a fine and private place.”

Gabe hadn’t caught the allusion at the time.

The second condition for receiving the key was that whenever he made use of the cabin, he must not bring anyone with him.

“If I can’t tell anyone about it, I’m not likely to bring anyone,” Gabe had said impatiently.

“What I’m saying is, that’s why you should come here. You need to get away from other people. You need to learn how to be alone. One of the reasons you get in trouble is because you don’t know where others end and you begin.”

Gabe hadn’t liked hearing that, but he took the key, telling himself that Kit could go fuck himself, and that he’d plan a big fucking party up here, and tell everyone about the place, and to hell with all of that privacy shit.

But he never did any of those things, and he never took the key from around his neck. He had called Kit from time to time, usually to ask for money. They would catch up on each other’s news but didn’t speak of Kit’s offer to use the cabin or the key. In times of trouble, Gabe found himself fingering the chain.

Later, he added Meghan’s key to it. When women asked him to take the chain off, he’d smile and say he was a latchkey child and needed to be able to get back home again.

So on that January night in the bar, he had paid his tab and hitched rides until he reached Lake Arrowhead, and then, with nothing more than a light coat to protect him from the evening’s bitter cold, made his way to Blue Jay and then on to the cabin, a walk of several miles. He struggled through the snow on the front walk and fumbled with numb hands to use the key for the first time, smiling to himself at the thought that he hoped Kit had tested the damned thing before giving it to him.

The door opened easily. He flipped a switch. Lights came on. The place was dusty, but there was wood for a fire and dry clothing in the closet that fit him a little snugly but would do.

That was five months ago.

He thought Kit had probably forgotten by now that he had ever offered the use of the place. Gabe decided that he’d take advantage of this refuge until he figured out what to do next, or until Kit showed up and demanded that he leave.

The water had been turned off and drained from the pipes to keep them from breaking, but he found-to his surprise-a note addressed to him on yellowing paper, telling him how to turn the water supply on and off again, along with other information that would be helpful to him.

Gabe smiled to himself-he should have realized that Kit, always a move ahead of anyone else on the board, would have been prepared for any possibility, even that Gabe might return here one day.

Reading down the list, he discovered there were cupboards full of canned goods and other staples, including coffee. The second to the last line of the note was, “Try this sober, if you can. But if you can’t, you’re still welcome to stay as long as you need to.” The last one was, “So glad you made it here.”

He had looked outside just then and saw a deer standing in the moonlight. It stayed still for a long time, then moved off. He heard a soft creaking sound that unnerved him, until he remembered his earlier visit here, when Kit had taught him to listen to the snow.

“You wouldn’t think it makes noise,” he had said, “but it only looks quiet and still. It’s changing all the time.”

Aloud, to the empty cabin, Gabe had asked, “Is it too late for me, Kit?”

The snow made a sighing sound. Or maybe he did. He wasn’t sure.

For five months, he had been sober. It had been hell at first, and most days, only by occupying himself with shoveling snow and other exhausting activities did he wear himself down enough to cope with it.

He had grown thinner. The clothes Kit had left here fit Gabe loosely now.

He shaved his hair off and grew a beard. He hiked to the store if he needed anything perishable.

He hadn’t turned the television on much, but he started watching the news, in part to see if Kevin Delacourt had been caught.

Kevin had been the leader. There had been four of them involved in the crime that November day. It was supposed to have been a burglary, no violence. It wouldn’t have been Gabe’s first burglary, and not his first one with Kevin. Kevin, as always, had come up with the idea. It seemed so easy. An isolated home in the wine country, an estate owned by a retired movie mogul who fancied himself a vintner. An old man in his fifties who had married some hottie starlet who was thirty years his junior and had three kids with her. They lived away from Los Angeles because the old man didn’t want to keep meeting friends who would ask him what he was working on these days.

Kevin said the owners of the home were away on vacation.

He had been wrong.

All of Gabe’s nightmares were about just how wrong Kevin had been. Most of what he thought about during any given day was the same.

None of the family had survived. Of the four robbers, one had been killed by the old man, one had been captured by police, and Gabe and Kevin had escaped. Farrell, the man who was caught, had apparently named Gabe as both the planner and the shooter, although Gabe hadn’t even carried a gun that day. Farrell never mentioned Kevin. Gabe ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Farrell was undoubtedly too afraid of what Kevin might do to him if he ratted him out. That night, Kevin had surprised them all with what he might do.

Until he had seen the press conference, Gabe had remained somewhat philosophic about the possibility of his own capture. He had decided that he wouldn’t offer resistance, but he probably wouldn’t surrender. He’d let fate decide the issue and hope that Kevin was caught and linked to the killings. If Farrell knew that Kevin was locked up, maybe he’d tell the truth about what happened.

But Kevin wasn’t on the FBI’s list. His face wasn’t on the newscast that followed the L.A. County Sheriff’s press conference, like Gabe’s was. The three victims of the vigilantes were shown with big X’s across their faces. Like they were items on a “to do” list, rather than human beings. How long before someone put an X over his face?

He listened to the newscaster, a woman named Diana Ontora, talk about the other criminals. He cringed to see himself ranked as one of them, to hear himself described in terms of what happened on one awful night.

He wondered if these vigilantes, who seemed to know more than the best law enforcement agencies, had some way of finding him.

He tried to turn his thoughts away from his fear.

He thought a lot about Meghan, as he often did, and-as always-with a deep sense of shame over what this must all be doing to her.

He also thought about Kit. Among the many books in the cabin, he had found a volume of English poetry. He picked it up again now, and opened it to a page that Kit apparently bookmarked long ago. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” Two lines especially caught his attention, because he remembered what Kit had said, so long ago-

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

“I’m so used to being in a fine and private place,” Kit had said. But what could he have meant?

No matter how hard he thought about it, Gabe couldn’t understand the reference. It occurred to him that he knew little or nothing at all about Kit Logan’s past, other than the fact that Kit had killed his stepfather, that Kit’s stepfather had killed some women, and one of those women had been Kit’s mom. Over all the years, it had been Gabe coming to Kit with his problems, never the other way around. Kit had protected him. Kit was protecting him now, though he doubted Kit knew that.