Chris Whitaker - We Begin at the End

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A thousand miles from that courthouse, Robin found the yellow flower from a rabbitbrush and brought it back. Duchess helped him flatten it, then pin it to their board, beside Jet. She placed an arm around him, her mind elsewhere. Rick Tide had begun again, trying for a rise, a kid that did not know when to quit. He’d spit on her back, told her that was from Mary Lou. She’d gone to the bathroom and washed her shirt, thought of Walk and how he’d told her to be good.

That evening after they ate Duchess took Robin out to the swing set in the big garden and pushed him before a sun that sat blazing beyond the trees. He squinted and smiled and she told him he was a prince.

Then she helped him ready for bed, brushed his teeth and read him a chapter from a story about a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte.

“He’s an emotional pig,” Robin said.

“He is.”

That night they said a prayer. Robin looked over to his sister and she made him close his eyes and steeple his fingers.

“Why did we pray tonight?” he asked.

“Just checking in.”

After he fell asleep she crept from the room. She passed the beds, the forgotten children slept, dead to the world for those precious hours when they could forget their place and occupy another.

The room in darkness, just the television glow. She flipped channels till she found the right news station, and watched as reporters gathered outside the courthouse.

She’d called Walk, collect, he sounded beat as he told her the jury would think on it, that they could come back anytime at all. She guessed it was soon.

Her mind ran to her mother, to the past year and all that came with it.

She turned and saw her brother standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on her.

“You’re not in the bed.”

“Sorry.”

He walked over and sat beside her, and they watched scenes so distant it was hard to believe their connection.

They saw reporters fill, cut to commercials. In silence she sat and wondered what was on her brother’s mind. When they retuned they ran through the trial and detailed things they did and did not know about their mother and about Vincent King.

When the verdict flashed red she sat up, heart beating fast.

“What does it say?”

“They said he didn’t kill Mom.”

She watched, mouth slightly open, as the reporter found a juror. The man looked tired, but still managed a smile. He detailed the testimony of the Cape Haven Chief of Police. How the cop had found a break-in report that showed the suspected murder weapon, a gun once owned by the suspect’s father, could not have been in the possession of Vincent King. The jury had been on the fence, it gave them the out they needed.

She got a pain in her stomach then, so bad she pressed a fist to it. “Walk. What the fuck did you do, Walk?”

Robin nestled close and she kissed his head and questioned everything she thought she knew about the world. It had tilted on her again, the concept of truth, the implausibility of fair.

And then they saw him.

And Robin stood.

On the screen, accompanied by a small woman in a smart suit and Chuck Taylors, was Vincent King.

The room lit with the flash of the city’s camera. An innocent man being led to a waiting car.

“What is it?” she asked her brother.

He shook, his whole body trembled as he struggled for breath.

He began to cry as dark pooled and spread from his pants.

She dropped to her knees. “Robin. Talk to me.”

He shook his head, clenched his eyes closed tight.

“It’s alright. I’m here.”

“It’s him.” Breathless. Crying. “I remember.”

She cupped his face gently. “What do you remember?”

He stared past her, at the screen. “Vincent was in my bedroom. I remember what he said.”

She wiped his tears as he finally met her eye. “He told me he was sorry for what he’d done to Mom. He told me to say nothing or I’d regret it.” He closed his eyes and sobbed. She held him tight.

She led him back to the room, put him in the tub and showered him off, then dressed him in fresh pajamas and tucked him into the bed.

He slept.

And then she packed.

In her bag she found a photo of Star with them, one of so few, in their yard barefoot and laughing. She tacked it to the corkboard, along with a photo of Hal.

She cracked the blind to stars, and then took her seat at the foot of his bed, where she sat for night hours so long and quick as she recounted their time. She thought of his birth, first steps and words. All the ways he made her laugh. His first day of school, how she taught him to toss a football in their small yard.

She stayed till first light, he would not wake alone in the dark.

She pulled her bag to the door and propped it gently open.

Then she returned once more, and she held back her tears till she could no longer breathe, cursed herself and pulled at her hair like the mad girl she was. Had she a knife she would have cut herself deep. She deserved it to hurt. She deserved all the pain.

She leaned, kissed her brother’s head, told him to be good as she slipped from his life, like so many before.

39

WALK SAT AT HIS DESK, found the bottle of Kentucky in the drawer, unscrewed the cap and took a long drink.

He closed his eyes to the burn, didn’t feel all that much like celebrating. Vincent had gone right home. He did not speak on the ride, he did not smile, just shook hands with Martha May. Walk told her she did good, met her eye and knew that Martha knew. Victory was hollow. The district attorney had stormed from the courtroom.

He drank a little more, till the night softened, his shoulders dropped, his body stopped exhausting him.

He looked over at the stack of papers piled high on his tray, going back a year, mostly routine, he had ignored all but Vincent King and Darke. The one thing they hadn’t lied about at trial was the state of Walk’s office.

He pulled the stack and began to thumb pages, Louanne’s scrawl, traffic violations, vandalism, possible trespass. He found it hard to focus, hard to recognize what used to be routine. He caught a couple of memos from state, and then, amongst it all, he saw a message from a Doctor David Yuto, returning his call.

Walk scanned his mind, the frustration growing before he settled on the autopsy of Baxter Logan, the man Vincent had killed in Fairmont.

He checked his watch, saw it was late but dialed the number.

The man answered on the first ring, turned out Yuto was working his last week, preparing things for his successor, two decades younger, more than a lifetime less experienced. They made a little small talk. Walk ran over the Logan case, it took Yuto a minute to locate the file, a man who knew the order.

“What more do you need to know?” Yuto said.

“I don’t … I guess the detail. I just wondered—”

“We weren’t as stringent back then. No DNA to look for. I noted cause of death. Head trauma.”

Walk sipped his whisky, his feet on the old desk. “So that was it. One punch and—”

“Not one punch. Not the way Logan looked.”

Walk stared into the glass.

“I remember Cuddy called. Of course he was young then, he hadn’t yet taken over from his father. But he told me not to waste that much time on Logan. Sex offenders aren’t all that popular at Fairmont. I noted cause of death and moved on to the next.”

“The beating … was it bad?”

Yuto sighed. “It’s been a long time but some of them, you just don’t forget some of them. Teeth gone, both eye sockets shattered. His nose was broken so badly it pressed flat to his face.”

“But it was a fight. Vincent King was fighting for his life.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to say here, Chief Walker. It was a fight, but Logan was beaten long after it was over.”