Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

He set his glass down. “At first I wasn’t going to send them. Just, after Sissy, and then all that happened with your mother and your grandmother. I wanted an outlet, maybe. But then I thought why shouldn’t he know. Maybe he thought he’d ruined his life. I wanted him to know about ours. Maybe he had a vision of me, retired here, sitting on beautiful acres. I told him about the work, about the debt, the bills and living under that kind of weight.”

“Did he write back?”

“He did. At first it was all sorrow. I know it was an accident … I do know that. But that doesn’t really mean anything.”

She picked up her cocoa and spooned the marshmallow into her mouth. It was too sweet then, catching her out, like she’d forgotten the good things.

“I went there, to his parole hearings. I went to each one. He could’ve served less. He would have got out with his best years still ahead.”

“So how come he didn’t? Walk never told me. I just figured he got in shit, in that place, he did bad things.”

“He didn’t. Cuddy, the warden, he spoke up each time. But Vincent declined a lawyer. Walk was there too, same every time. And we both saw each other but I never said anything to him. Because that was Walk’s friend up there, close like brothers. I remember that back then. Thick as thieves, of course Vincent did the thieving but Walk always backed him.”

Duchess tried to see Walk as a boy, as Vincent King’s best friend. Instead she saw Walk in his uniform, never out of it, not since she remembered. He was all cop, and Vincent was all bad.

“Toward the end of the hearing they’d always ask that same question. If you get out, are you likely to break the law again?”

“What did Vincent say?”

“He’d meet my eye, and he’d say yes, he would. He was a danger to the people.”

Maybe he thought it was something noble, to serve the whole term, penance like that, small recompense but intent was everything. But now, knowing what she did, he was telling it straight. Vincent was a danger.

“That pain. Losing your mother, losing my daughter, my wife, all that was ever good for me. I know it all. I didn’t think I’d get through it.”

“So how did you?”

“I came here. I took it back to breathing. Montana is good for that. You might see that one day.”

“Star said there’s correlation between suffering and sin.”

He smiled, like he could hear the words direct from his daughter’s mouth.

“What was Sissy like?”

He stubbed his cigar. “Death has a way of making saints out of mortals. But with children … there is no bad. She was small and beautiful and perfect. Like your mother was. Like Robin is.”

He knew better than to mention her.

“She liked to paint. She cried during fourth of July fireworks. She ate carrots but nothing green. She doted on your mother.”

“I look like her. I saw the photo. Me and Star and Sissy.”

“You do. Beautiful like that.”

She swallowed. “Star said you were hard. She said there was nothing soft about you, not after. She said you were a drunk. She said you didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral.”

“We begin at the end, Duchess.”

“If you thought that you’d be alright. You’re full of shit.” She spoke quietly and without malice. “Are all the things she told me true?”

“I am a constant disappointment to myself.”

“I know there’s more. Why you didn’t come back, why she wouldn’t let you see us. What did you do?”

He swallowed. “A few years after. I mean … I heard talk of parole after five. For what he did. My Sissy.”

She heard the hurt there, a lifetime later and it was still so present.

“Maybe I did drink too much. Someone came. He had a brother in there, Fairmont County, with Vincent. He made an offer. He could make it go away, right the wrong. It wasn’t even a lot of money. I … if I could have my time over, would I have been stronger and told him no?”

“The man Vincent killed in Fairmont. It was self-defense.”

“It was.”

She took a long breath, his words so weighted she could not form a response.

“Your mother found out. And that was it. All and everything. A single act on a distant night and here we are because of it.”

She drank her cocoa and thought of her mother. She searched for a memory that might warm the night but found nothing but the white of Star’s eyes.

“Is that why you go to church?”

“Understanding for what we have done and might do.”

When she was done she stood. She felt tired, thought of Darke coming and looked at the old man and the shotgun.

At the door she turned. “Vincent. At the parole hearings. Why do you think he did that?”

Hal looked up at her and she saw Robin in his eyes.

“They’d lead him off, and Walk would look at Cuddy like they couldn’t make sense of it. But he wrote me. He tried to tell me.”

She stared at him.

“After that night, after what he did, he knew none of us would find freedom again.”

* * *

They stood outside the old Radley house. From the moonlight that fell Walk could just about make out Martha, the shape of her face, small nose, hair just past her shoulders. He smelled her perfume, something light. They held flashlights and both flicked them on.

Walk had the record, the time Vincent made the call and the coroner’s estimate of time of death. They could be accurate, Duchess had ridden her bicycle to the gas station on Pensacola, Walk knew she stuck to the main roads, despite the risk, so it took her forty-five minutes. That gave Vincent around fifteen minutes to lose the gun. They had to work the assumption he was the killer, and that assumption had kept Walk awake the night before.

“We’ll head every direction he could have gone.”

Martha had a stopwatch. They’d allow for the fact he could’ve run, sprinted there and back, though Walk didn’t recall if the man appeared out of breath, or sweating, but then Walk couldn’t recall much of the detail of that night, aside from Star’s face, which he knew he’d carry for the rest of his life. The memory loss, it was creeping on him. He’d taken to making notes, pretending he was writing up when really he was just keeping check. The order of his day, the time he took pills, he noted it all now.

They started out into Star’s backyard, stepped over the broken fence, which had been there as long as Walk could remember. Into light woodland, just a copse that separated Ivy Ranch from Newton Avenue. They were methodical, every walkway, every tree and bush and cluster of flowers. They checked drains; knew Boyd and his men and dogs had already run the same routes but Walk was hoping for something more, something only a local would notice. He closed his eyes and put himself into Vincent’s shoes.

They walked seven routes, some slight deviations from the last. They got nowhere at all.

“He didn’t have it. If he had we would’ve found it, or more likely Boyd would have.”

“It’s a hole in their case. A big one,” Martha said. “The D.A. will be pissed.”

They found their way back to the Radley house and stood on the sidewalk.

She reached out and grasped his hand. He was close to breaking. Every way he turned, he couldn’t figure it. He’d lost Darke, tried his cell over and over and left so many messages he filled up the mailbox.

He felt it. Darke killed Star and pinned the blame on Vincent King in order to get his hands on the house that would save his empire and make his fortune. It was flawed, but that’s all he had to work on. As for the girl, he took comfort in the fact that Hal was a ghost, Radley land was buried, the kids were safe up there.

At the end of Newton she led him down the neighbor’s driveway and then hopped a low fence, hidden by thick barberry.