Дэвид Балдаччи - The Guilty

Robie looked at his father. “Recognize the guy?”

He shook his head and looked like he wanted to punch the screen. “I don’t know any pedophiles,” he snapped.

“We think Clancy was blackmailing this guy. That’s where his seed money came from. Not from selling his land to an energy company.”

Now Dan Robie looked interested. “How do you figure that?”

“Everybody told me that Clancy had hit a home run because his farmland had oil or gas under it. Only no one could tell me if it was oil or gas. Or who the energy company was, for that matter. Jessica and I walked the property today. There is no sign that anyone ever tried to get any oil or gas out of that land.”

Dan Robie sat back in his chair. “And the photos were used to blackmail the guy who’s abusin’ the kids. And that was Clancy’s jackpot?”

“Yes,” said Robie.

“Damn good incentive to kill him,” said Moses. “Aubrey Davis will shit a brick when I bring this up.”

Reel said, “But if Clancy had these photos all this time and the guy never tried to kill him, why would he kill Clancy now? What changed?”

Robie said, “Maybe Clancy kept squeezing the guy and he got tired of it. Maybe he was afraid that Clancy would screw up and inadvertently show someone. From what I’ve heard around town, he’d been going downhill for years now. Drunk most of the time.”

“Well, it seems that it has to be this guy, or at least his goons,” said Moses. “They were goin’ to kill Pete, because they assumed he knew about the pictures. They wanted them back. So maybe the guy was sick of payin’ off Sherm. And he sure as hell wasn’t goin’ to start payin’ off his son.”

“Which brings us back to the guy,” said Robie. “Who is he? He must be rich, because he could afford to pay Clancy a lot of bucks.”

“Maybe the FBI can help us there,” said Reel. “They could run it through their databases for facial recognition.”

“And then we go ask this person some questions,” said Moses. “Like did he kill or have Sherman Clancy killed.”

“It’s too bad we shot down all those guys,” said Reel. “I should’ve just wounded one of them so he could answer our questions.”

Moses looked at her wide-eyed. “Remind me not to get on your bad side, girl.”

“Do you think Sara Chisum might be able to tell us something about them?” asked Robie. “They took her. She thought they were going to do a deal with her. She might have seen or heard something.”

“Worth a shot,” said Reel. “How do you want to do it?”

“Delicately.” He looked at his father. “You want to answer my question now?”

“Which one?”

“ Were you driving your Range Rover the night Clancy was killed?”

“You do what you need to do,” said his father grimly. “And I’ll do what I need to do.”

“He’s not how I pictured him to be,” said Reel.

They were in Reel’s car outside the jail.

“How did you picture him to be?” asked Robie.

“I don’t know. Just not like that.”

“He doesn’t want me down here. He told me to go back to where I came from.”

“Well, what did you expect, Robie? For him to welcome you with open arms after twenty years? Hell, you never talked about your family. I didn’t even know your old man was still alive.”

“Well, I did come back. And I am trying to help him. That should be worth something in his eyes.”

“Do you really care about that?”

Robie shot her a glance. “What do you mean?”

“I mean is this about your dad or your inability to pull the trigger on a target because you inadvertently shot a little girl and then imagined you saw a little boy in the way of another shot?”

“I see that Blue Man did fill you in.”

“Would you expect him not to?”

“Why are you really here?”

“My mission, which I chose to accept, was to come down here and help you.”

“But you didn’t expect to drop into a firefight.”

“No, that was just gravy on top of the mashed potatoes.”

He smiled weakly at her comment and then leaned back against the car seat.

“I’m sort of screwed in the head right now, Jess.”

“I’ve been there. And there is a road back.”

“That’s why I kept asking Blue Man when you were getting back. I... thought we could talk about things. That you would understand.”

“Every situation is different. And I’m not a qualified shrink. But I can give you the benefit of my experience, Robie.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Of course it is. It’s in your head. How can it not be complicated?”

“You’re right. I came back here more for me than my dad.”

“Okay.”

“I felt like I had unfinished business.”

“I can relate to that. You helped me clean up my past.”

Robie rubbed at his temples. “And after seeing the little boy in the middle of my last shot, I began to think I had to go back to move forward, if that makes sense.”

“It does.”

“Right before I was to take the shot on my last mission... everything was off. I thought I, I don’t know, that I might be having a heart attack.”

“Or more likely a panic attack.”

“I couldn’t make the shot, Jess. Even if I had fired, I would have missed.”

“So to get back to where you can do your job, you need to work through Mississsippi?”

“Unfortunately, this isn’t a peaceful walk down memory lane while I get my head straight. My dad’s on trial for murder. And people are shooting at us.”

“You take life as it comes at you, and it’s rarely perfect.”

“But things aren’t going to get any better between my father and me.”

“You sure about that?”

“You saw him today.”

‘“I saw a man mightily confused and unsure what to do. And I’m not just talking about you.”

“You saw that?” Robie said skeptically. “In both of us?”

“Yes, I did. Now tell me what happened between you two to start this whole thing.”

Robie took a long breath. “It wasn’t one incident. It was years of incidents. He was a jarhead back from Vietnam. He was one of the toughest men you’ll ever meet. Never asked for any quarter and never gave any. He would beat the shit out of me for the slightest thing. But it wasn’t the fist or the belt that hurt the most.”

“It was the words,” said Reel.

“Yes. He made me feel worthless. Like I would never amount to anything. No matter what I did to please him, it was never good enough. Would never be good enough. I finally stopped caring. I didn’t feel anything toward him. He wasn’t my father. He was some guy I had to live with until I got old enough to where I didn’t. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Cantrell.”

“And your mother?”

Now Robie took a shallow breath. “That was the other thing. He drove her away. She loved me, but she hated him more. She was the only thing that made my life here tolerable. After she left...”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“No,” Robie said curtly.

“She never tried to contact you?”

“No.”

“So do you feel she abandoned you?”

“Of course not,” snapped Robie. “It was my father’s doing.”

“But she did leave you.”

“Because my father made her.”

“You know that for a fact?”

Robie sat up straight. “Look, we need to get going on other things. We need to talk to Sara Chisum. We have to find Pete. We have to ID the guy in the photo. So let’s hit Sara first.”

“If you say so,” replied Reel, looking troubled by his response.

Robie slid on his seat belt. “I do.”