Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

“How old were you?” he asks.

“Five. Bren said I could name him. I said Patch, ’cause he had like a black eye patch. Now I’d think of something better, but I was only little.”

“You ever find out where he came from?”

“Nah. Not from round here, or we’da known about him. Someone dumped him out of a car on the main road, probably, and he crawled from there. He wasn’t one of them fancy dogs. Just an aul’ black-and-white mutt.”

“Best kind,” Cal says. “Your brother did good.” He tests out his knee, which is working OK, now that the initial shock has worn off it. “Tell you something, I’m feeling better’n I expected to right now.”

This is pretty much true. He’s throbbing in various places and feels mildly nauseated from swallowing blood, but overall, he could have ended up a lot worse off. He would have done, if Trey and the Henry hadn’t interrupted.

“Thanks, kid,” he says. “For saving my ass.”

Trey nods. She reaches for Cal’s bread and sticks a couple of slices in the toaster. “You figure they woulda kilt you?”

“Who knows,” Cal says. “I’m fine with not finding out.” He doesn’t want to take anything away from the kid, but he doubts he would have wound up dead, unless someone screwed up. He knows the difference; this beating wasn’t intended to kill. Just like he said to Donie, the Dublin boys don’t want the attention that a dead Yank would draw. What they wanted was to get their message across.

Now that Trey’s gone and shot one of them, that might change. It depends on how level-headed this Austin guy is, how persuasive Cal can be, and how strong a hold Austin has on his crew. Cal is in no frame of mind to make that phone call tonight, but it needs to happen tomorrow morning, as soon as Austin can reasonably be expected to be awake.

Trey is alternating between watching the window, watching her toast and watching Cal. “You got that gun loaded up pretty quick,” Cal says.

“I had it ready. Ever since you left.”

“How’d you get it out of the safe?”

“Saw the combination when you opened it that time.”

Cal feels he ought to lecture her about not touching guns unless she has both permission and a license, but in the circumstances that would seem unappreciative. “Right,” he says. “How’d you know you wouldn’t hit me?”

The kid looks like the question is so dumb it barely deserves an answer. “You were on the ground. I aimed higher up.”

“Right,” Cal says again. The thought of her getting one of those men in the head gives him an extra fillip of nausea. “Well then.”

Trey’s toast pops. She leans over to get the cheddar out of the fridge and a knife from its drawer. “You want some?”

“Not right now. Thanks.”

Trey packs slices of cheese between the toast, not bothering with a plate, and pulls off a chunk so she can bypass her split lip. She says, “How come you didn’t let me make them talk?”

Cal takes the ice pack off his nose. “Kid. You had a gun on them. You’d already shot one of them. What did you think they’d say? ‘Uh, yeah, it’s our doing that your brother’s gone, sorry ’bout that’? Nah. They woulda sworn blind they had no idea what happened to him, whether they did or not. And then you woulda had to pick between shooting them all dead and letting them go home. No matter what, you wouldn’t have got your answer. I figured it was a lot smarter to skip straight to sending them home.”

The kid thinks that over, eating hunks of sandwich carefully and swinging one foot. The taut focus has faded out of her. Her eye is blooming in lurid new shades, but she seems revived and energized, back in her body and her mind. Tonight did her good.

She says, “I wanted to shoot them.”

“I know. But you didn’t. That’s a good thing.”

Trey looks about half convinced. “I got the one fella, anyway.”

“Yeah. I think you got him in the arm. He was moving fine, when they left. He’ll be OK.”

“He won’t go to the cops.”

“Nah,” Cal says. “The hospital might call them, if he has to go there. But he’ll say he had an accident cleaning his gun, something like that. They won’t believe him, but there won’t be a lot they can do about it.”

Trey nods. She says, “They sound like Dubs to you?”

“Dunno. I wasn’t paying much attention to that.”

“Sounded local to me.”

“Probably,” Cal says. Austin wouldn’t have had the time, or likely the inclination, to send guys down from Dublin. This would have been a job for a few local foot soldiers. “You recognize any of ’em?”

Trey shakes her head.

“You see what they hit me with?”

“Looked like hurls. Couldn’t see for sure, but.” She glances up from her sandwich. “We haveta be getting close, right? Or they wouldn’t bother coming after us.”

“Maybe,” Cal says. “Maybe not. Could be they’re just fed up of the hassle. Or pissed off with me for beating up Donie.”

“But maybe.”

“Yeah,” Cal says, only partly because she needs that, to make all this worth it. “We could be.”

After a moment Trey says, “Are you raging?”

“I don’t have time for that right now. I need to get things straightened out.”

Trey thinks that over and rips off another piece of her sandwich. Cal can feel her wanting to say something, but he can’t help her with that. He rummages through the first-aid kit till he finds his ibuprofen, and swallows a hefty dose dry.

Trey says, “It’s my fault they done that to you.”

“Kid,” Cal says. “I’m not blaming you.”

“I know. It is, but.”

“You didn’t beat me up.”

“It was me that got you into this.”

Cal looks at her and finds himself floored by both the vast importance and the vast impossibility of saying the right thing, at a moment when he can barely piece together a thought. He wishes Lena were there, until he realizes that she would be no help at all. He wishes Donna were there.

“All’s you can do is your best,” he says. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you intend it to. You just gotta keep doing it anyway.”

Trey starts to ask something, but then her head snaps around. “Hey,” she says sharply, in the same instant that headlights sweep across the kitchen window.

Cal pulls himself to standing, bracing himself on the table. His knee still hurts, but he’s steadier on his feet. “Go in the bedroom,” he says. “Anything happens, get out the window and run like hell.”

“I’m not going to—”

“Yeah you are. Go.”

After a moment she goes, slamming her feet down hard to make her views clear. Cal picks up the Henry and goes to the door. When the car’s lights go off and he hears the engine cut out, he throws the door wide and stands in the doorway, leaving himself clear in the light. He wants whoever it is to see the rifle. He couldn’t aim it even if he wanted to, but he’s hoping the sight of it will be enough.

It’s Lena, getting out of her car with Nellie bounding ahead of her, and lifting a hand to Cal in the door-beam of light down the grass. What with one thing and another, their plans slipped Cal’s mind. He recognizes her just in time to avoid making a fool of himself by shouting the Lord only knows what. Instead he remembers, after a moment, to raise a hand in return.

As she gets close, Lena’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the holy Jaysus,” she says.

Cal had forgotten what he looks like. “I got beat up,” he says. It occurs to him that he’s holding a rifle. He steps back inside and lays it down on the counter.

“I got that part, yeah,” Lena says, following him. “Didja shoot anyone with that yoke?”