Дэвид Балдаччи - The Guilty

And, inexplicably, cold zero had never materialized for him. He stared down at his hands. They were trembling. He touched his forehead where the sweat bead had meandered before hitting him in the eye. Unless he figured this out, he was done. He couldn’t do his job. Which meant he was nothing.

Officially, he had been placed on leave. Until he got things straightened out in his head, if he ever did, Robie would not be going back into the field.

He stared down at the waters, and in their murky depths he once more saw the face. Only now he realized he had taken Sasha and, in his mind, changed her gender, moved her a thousand miles away, and given her another father, and along with it a reason for him not to take the shot.

He should have known something was wrong. How could he have seen a little boy in his father’s arms if his scope was aimed at a spot above the man’s head?

His mouth dried up and his hands shook with the thought of it. He couldn’t imagine his mind playing a trick like that on him. Never. But now that it had, Robie could never be sure that it wouldn’t do so again. And because of that, he could never again completely rely on the one person he always thought he could:

Me.

“Have you reached any conclusions?”

Robie turned to see Blue Man standing on the other side of the bridge.

He had stepped out from the shadow of the pedestal upon which sat a large sculpture of a horse and rider. There were actually two of these Arts of War sculptures, one on each side of the bridge entrance on the DC side, called Valor and Sacrifice . These were fitting subjects for a bridge that led directly to the nation’s most hallowed military burial grounds at Arlington National Cemetery. There was a lot of valor and ultimate sacrifice in that place.

“I didn’t hear you walk up,” said a clearly annoyed Robie.

“I didn’t. I was here waiting for you.”

“How did you know I’d come here?”

“You’ve come here before, after particularly difficult assignments.”

“Which means you had me followed.”

“Which means I like to keep on top of my charges at all times.” Blue Man crossed the street and stood next to him.

Robie said, “So are you here to tell me I’m officially finished?”

“No. I’m here to see how you’re doing.”

“You read the briefing. I froze. I put a kid in the picture who wasn’t actually there.”

“I know that.”

“And you must have realized that was a possibility, which is why you had a backup team in place.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t get that little girl out of my head.”

Blue Man looked at him appraisingly. “But it wasn’t a little girl .”

“What do you mean?”

“You told Gathers it was a little boy reaching for his father. Not a little girl.”

Blue Man drew closer and looked over the side of the bridge and down at the water.

“The mind can play awful tricks on you. Particularly when you have unresolved business.”

“What unresolved business?” said Robie sharply.

Blue Man turned to him. “I don’t think you need me to answer that. What I would say is that you have time off. And you should use that time off to best advantage. If you can resolve your issues, Robie, you will be welcomed back. If you can’t, you won’t. The choice is simple and the decision is largely up to you.”

“Look, this has nothing to do with my father, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“It may not. But if it does, it needs to be addressed.” He handed Robie a file. “Here are the particulars.”

With that Blue Man walked away. A few minutes later Robie heard a door open and close, an engine start up, and then a vehicle drive off.

He looked back down at the water. Then he opened the file, and by the light of his smartphone he started to read.

His father arrested for murder.

The facts of the case were sketchy.

A man named Sherman Clancy was dead. He knew Robie’s father. There was evidence that pointed to his father killing the man. Because of that the elder Robie had been arrested.

Cantrell, Mississippi, was an undistinguished dot on the map on the southern border with Louisiana barely five miles from the Gulf Coast.

His father, Daniel Robie, a former jarhead disguised as a rabid pit bull from the Vietnam era, was sitting in a jail cell for murder. Part of Robie could believe it; another, perhaps deeper component, could not. There was no doubt that his father was tough and could be violent. He could kill. He had killed in that war. But “to kill” was different than “to murder.” Then again, every mission Robie had ever successfully completed had technically been a murder, yet he did not consider himself a murderer. And why was that?

Because I was ordered by others to do it? Well, so were Mafia hit men.

Cantrell, Mississippi. It was a world and a place that Robie once knew well. For eighteen years of his life it was all that he knew. And then there came a time when he had wanted no more of it. It was certainly never a place he had wanted to return to.

He had neither kith nor kin left there, except for his father. He had no brothers and no sisters. And his mother? No, no mother either.

He had known the Clancy family when he had lived there. They were farmers, well known, if not overly liked, in the small town. They mostly kept to themselves. They had their land and they worked it. They sold what they grew and they got by. They had neither money nor grand ambitions. At least back then. But it had been over twenty years now. Things might’ve changed.

He knew of no bad blood between his father and the Clancys. But that might no longer be the case, since his father had been arrested for murdering the man.

Dan Robie was someone who could change his opinion of you. Robie well knew that. And when the opinion was altered, the man was unlikely ever to revisit it.

His thoughts still rambling and confused, he returned to his apartment, a sparsely decorated place that contained not one personal photograph or other memento. Robie had none of those to put out. He sat in a chair and stared out the window.

He had killed a father and his daughter. Technically, the killing of the little girl wasn’t his fault. In every other respect it was his sole responsibility. He could do nothing to alter that. The dead were dead.

And then he had seen a little boy raising his arms up to his father. Not a little girl, a little boy.

He rubbed his thighs with palms that had turned sweaty. He had killed so many times with hands as dry as hands could be. And now his palms were moist. He could smell his own stink. He could smell fear in every pore. For a man who made his living by being, in many ways, fearless, it was a rude comeuppance.

Family. Everyone had one. The difference was in degrees. But those degrees could be as vast as the size of the universe. And even more complicated.

Robie had never envisioned himself making the decision he just had. It seemed that the only way he could move forward was to at least make a modest dent in cleaning up the decades-long mess that was his past. He had never had the desire to do this before. Now, it seemed like the only thing he could possibly do.

It was not easy traveling to Cantrell, Mississippi. But he would get there nonetheless.

He certainly knew the way.

And God help me when I get there.

Robie ended up taking a flight to Atlanta and then made a connection to Jackson, Mississippi.

From there Robie could have taken a puddle jumper to Biloxi, but decided to rent a car at the Jackson airport and drive the nearly three hours due south to Cantrell. It was a journey that would stop only a few miles before he would plunge into the Gulf of Mexico. He figured he could use the drive to get acclimated to where he was now. And it wasn’t like his father was going anywhere.