Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

“You get something?”

“Maybe. Go bring me some snacks. I need some thinking peppers. You got any Habanero?”

He shook his head.

“Malagueta?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Shit, Walk. Some fucking poblano. I need heat. Jesus. Prepare for me next time.”

Suitably chastised he made his way into the small kitchen, brewed coffee and watched the street. They’d been at it four hours, from dinner to late, both yawning and red-eyed but both knowing they would sooner work than lie restless in their beds. The case was getting to her now, more because of the way Walk looked, like he was being ravaged by the detail.

He handed her the coffee, and a pepper mill.

She fought a smile, then flipped him off.

He watched her pace, in her hand was a corporation tax filing, a statement of registration. The trail was the kind of complex that had already seen her call in favors from a taxation lawyer she knew.

“Fortuna Avenue,” she said.

“The second line homes.”

“All but a couple are owned by the same holding company. When did the report come in, the first one? The eroding cliffs. California Wild.” Martha chewed the cap of her pen.

Walk fished through a heavy stack of papers. “May, 1995.”

Martha smiled, then held up her paper. “This company bought the first house in September 1995. And then they bought another almost every year since. Eight homes, rolling finance, each mortgaged to pay for the next. That worked for the first six, till the rate hikes.”

“And then?”

Martha paced again, walked over to the cabinet, topped off her coffee with whisky and did the same to Walk’s. “So this company bought every house on the second line. California Wild gauged it at ten years, right?”

“Give or take. Then they built the breakwater. The King house is safe.”

“The second line, they’re not worth all that much. Small, family homes. Got them cheap, doesn’t look like they increased much over the years.”

“Until?”

“Until the front line started to fall, and the vacationers started to come. One by one they went down. So all that stood between the company and what …”

“Five million dollars. At least.”

“And all that blocked it was Vincent King and his family home. The land around. It can’t be built on. No one would get a permit while the King house stands.”

“This company, what’s it called.”

“The MAD Trust.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“The name, it doesn’t matter. But guess who the sole director is.”

She handed Walk the paper and he held it tight, trying to steady it.

And there it was, at the top, bold print.

Richard Darke.

25

THAT NIGHT DUCHESS WOKE TO a cold sweat.

She saw shapes, the closet taking Darke’s soulless form.

When she calmed she checked Robin, then slipped from the room and down the stairs. She wore a soft robe. Hal had left it out for her. It was something they had fallen in to. She would still take nothing from him directly. No food or drink, no help with the horses even when she had homework due and the day was draining fast. Instead he left things for her and she took them when he was not around. She marveled at his patience.

She drank water straight from the faucet.

As she turned to head back up she heard it.

Movement on the porch. Maybe the swing of the seat, the chains loud no matter how much Hal oiled them. She ducked low, her heart again, racing away from her.

She fumbled for the drawer, found a decent-length knife and gripped it tight. She crept to the door, saw it open a little as moonlight fell onto her bare feet.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Shit. I was about ready to kill you.”

“That’s a bread knife,” Hal said.

He sat on the swing, reduced to the glow of his cigar, though as she neared she saw the shotgun by his feet.

“You believed me then,” she said.

“Maybe I’m just waiting on a bear.”

“I should’ve got the plates. I picked up the gun and forgot everything else. Fucking rookie.” She spit the words, mouth tight.

“You were protecting your family, not many people brave enough to do that.”

She shook her head. “Does Dolly know?”

After Hal had gently taken the gun from her Dolly had appeared and led her into the safety of the diner beside.

“She’s tough. Thought it’d do good to have another set of eyes out there. She asks after you, every time I see her. I think maybe you remind her a little of her younger self.”

“Why?”

“Dolly’s about the toughest lady you’ll ever meet. She had it rough, she doesn’t tell any of it. Her Bill, though, I was drinking with him one time. Dolly’s father, he was mean. He caught her smoking once.”

“And gave her a hiding.”

“No. He burned her with it. She’s still got the scars on her arms. He told her she’d never have the guts to light one up again.”

Duchess swallowed. “What happened to him?”

“She got older and he put his hands … He went to prison.”

“Oh.”

Hal coughed. “She dressed different back then, I saw photos. She wore boys’ clothes, shapeless, baggy, but he still came.”

“Some people are all dark.”

“They are.”

“James Miller, paid assassin and gunslinger. He went to church regular, didn’t drink or smoke. But rumor was he killed fifty. A mob lynched him. You know what his last words were?”

“Tell me.”

“Let ’er rip.”

“The mob got it right then. If the good stand by idle, are they still good?”

It was starry enough for snow. Hal said winter had not touched them yet, that when it did they’d know it so well they’d forget the colors of fall.

He scooted over.

She did not sit.

They stayed in silence for a long time. When he finished his cigar he lit another.

“The cancer will get you.”

“It might.”

“Not that I care.”

“Of course not.”

Darkness hid his eyes. He watched out, trees and water and the nothing that was slowly becoming something to her.

He stood and walked into the kitchen and she heard the whistle of the kettle.

She took a seat at the far end of the bench and eyed the shotgun.

He returned with cocoa and set her cup down on the porch beside her. Soft light from the kitchen showed marshmallow in hers.

He sipped whisky, a small measure. “There was a storm once. Bad one. I sat right here and watched lightning cross our land. I thought about the devil, I saw his face in the sky, serpent tongue lashing out like that. The barn burned.”

She had seen an acre out where nothing grew, just the soot shape of what had once stood.

“The gray. Her mother was in there.”

Duchess looked over at him, grateful for the dark so that he could not see the panic in her eyes.

“I couldn’t get her out.”

She breathed in that moment, knew well about the haunt of memory.

“We had storms sometimes,” she said. “Back home.”

“I think of Cape Haven often. I prayed for your mother, for you and Robin.”

“You don’t believe in God.”

“Neither do you, but I know you go to the clearing and you kneel.”

“Just a place to think.”

“Everyone needs one. The storeroom, the guns, that’s where I go to mull things. I sit down there and I shut out the world and I focus on what matters.” He glanced over. “I wrote to him.”

“Who?”

“Vincent King. Over the years I wrote him letter after letter. And I’m not a writer.”

“Why?”

He blew smoke toward the moon. “That’s a big question.”

She rubbed her eyes.

“You should go to bed.”

“My sleep patterns are none of your concern.”