Wild Justice

CHAPTER 19

A minute later, I heard Jack behind me. He didn’t catch up, even when I slowed. Finally, I glanced over my shoulder. He was maybe twenty feet away. He picked up his pace and was beside me in a few seconds.

“I’ll clean it up,” he said.

“I’ll help—”

“Don’t need to. My mess.”

“I’m going to help you, Jack.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. Seeing if I was okay with what just happened. I could say I was, but then it would seem as if his actions were indeed in question. They weren’t. When you kill people for a living, you accept the risk that this is how it will turn out.

“I’ll load tools into the truck while you go in for breakfast,” I said. “We should join the guests, too. It’ll look strange if we take off again too soon.”

“Yeah.”

More quiet walking. I glanced over. Jack was facing forward, muscles tight, gaze distant.

“Hey,” I said.

I brushed my hand against his. When he didn’t tense or pull away, I hooked my index finger around his and gave a gentle squeeze. I started to let go, but he held my hand there, fingers locked. We walked like that for another minute before he said, “I fucked up.”

“I hope you don’t mean about shooting that asshole. There’s no way we could take the chance he’d come back—after both of us this time.”

“Mean him coming after you. My mess.”

As his anger surged, his hand clenched mine, reflexively. When he realized, he loosened his hold, but didn’t let go.

He looked over at me. “You don’t care, do you?”

“About what?”

“That I almost got you killed. Biggest fucking error in judgment since—” He inhaled and shook his head. “I took you to that bar. My idea. We thought he made you. You were worried. I said it didn’t matter. I fucked up.”

“There was no way to expect Aldrich would recognize me—in disguise—after twenty years. No reason to panic when it seemed as if he did. Neither of us could have foreseen that he’d deal with it by hiring someone to kill me. We know, better than anyone, that it’s entirely possible to hire someone to fix problems that way. Yet we never saw it coming because it makes absolutely no sense.”

“Could have killed you.”

“And that’s never been a risk before?”

He made a noise in his throat.

“It’s a chance I take every time I accept a job. I didn’t get killed today, Jack. I didn’t come close. That wasn’t dumb luck. I’m careful. Damned careful.”

“I know.”

“Then you know that however bad you feel about this, I was never in any real danger.”

He had nothing to say to that.

Jack still had my hand when we got to the lodge. I don’t think either of us realized, until Emma came off the porch to greet us and stopped in her tracks.

We broke contact fast.

“Did we miss breakfast?” I called.

She shook her head and looked from me to Jack. He murmured, “Fuck,” under his breath.

“You’ve got time to wash up before you eat,” she said. “Not much, though, so you’d better step to it.”

She stayed at the bottom of the steps, drying her hands on a dish towel. As we reached her, she said, “John?”

“Hmmm?” Jack said.

“Can I have a word?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Emma said. She glanced at me, too quickly for me to read her expression, and then she headed up and inside.

“Fuck,” Jack muttered as the door closed behind her. “Feel like I’m sixteen. Got caught sneaking you out for the night.”

“Which isn’t like Emma at all. Hell, she practically shoves me at every guy who looks my way.”

He shrugged. “Different.”

“I’m sure she’s long past believing we’re actually related.”

“Not that. Age difference.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But I’ll talk to her.”

“Nah. I will.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Got it,” he said and went into the house before I could argue.

Jack came out as I finished loading body-dump supplies into my old pickup. He was carrying a picnic basket and a thermos.

“Either you totally charmed her,” I said, “or we aren’t allowed to dine with civilized folks.”

“Wasn’t about that.”

“No?”

He waited for me to accompany him down to the dock. I turned on the heater in the gazebo as he set up breakfast inside.

“Emma heard the news about Aldrich.”

“His suicide?”

“Yeah. Said she was going to tell you and I offered to do it.”

“That saves me from finding the right look of shock. Thank you.” I poured coffee as he put out the plates.

“Emma said the papers are reporting that the suicide note was a confession. About Amy.”

“Which is good on all counts. He’s dead and she gets justice.”

“And you? Your justice? How’re you doing with that?”

“I think it still hasn’t entirely sunk in. It feels like it happened to someone else.” I lifted my hands. “Not that I’m claiming it did. I know what happened to me. It’s just not . . . sinking in.”

“You gonna talk to someone?”

“A therapist, you mean?” I shrugged. “Probably not. I had that after Amy died and after I shot Wayne Franco. I know it works for people, but I can’t talk to strangers. Which sounds utterly ridiculous to anyone who knows me.”

“It’s different. Personal.” He snagged my gaze. “You don’t do personal.”

I’m sure that if I did talk to a shrink, she’d tell me that my hyper-friendliness was a defense mechanism. If I’m open and extroverted, no one will notice that I don’t really say anything about myself. In my own way, I carry a Do Not Trespass sign as big as Jack’s. I’m just better at disguising it.

“Speaking of dealing with it, I still want to read that journal and see if I can give other families closure. But the first order of business is to track down this Roland guy before he realizes his pro is dead and sends a backup.” I paused. “I believe we’ve been in this situation before. Pretty soon middlemen are going to stop sending their guys here. Eastern Ontario: the Bermuda Triangle for professional killers.”

Jack snorted.

“So we need to find Roland and get a lead on the client, preferably without telling Roland he’s lost a hitman. As much as I hate to cut out on the Waldens again, I think we’re off to Pennsylvania.”

Jack asked if he could talk to Evelyn. I had photos of Aldrich’s killer’s license plate and that might help her find who’d hired that hitman. Normally, I’d hand the plate number over to Quinn, but that wasn’t happening.

While I did have other resources—and so did Jack—Evelyn was a convenient choice. There’s always the worry that she’s a little too convenient, kind of like a little store in the middle of nowhere, where you can get what you need easily, but you know you’re going to pay through the nose for it. I knew the cost for this—she’d insist on talking to me about the Contrapasso Fellowship again. She wouldn’t do it overtly, but she’d ask if I’d heard about some case or other of delayed justice, a victim finally vindicated, and then say, “I heard the Contrapasso did that,” and the minute she saw my resolve wavering, as I thought “Maybe I was too hasty,” she’d pounce. I didn’t need that. I already saw such cases in the paper and wondered if it was them, and sometimes felt the pangs of regret, of thinking maybe they were what I needed . . . No, I didn’t need that.

But Jack knew it and he wouldn’t put me in a position where I’d need to hear it. He’d talk to her. He’d say he wanted her help, and he was the one person she couldn’t refuse, even if she’d be gnashing her dentures, knowing he was asking on my behalf.

I told Emma I was taking off again. Then we dealt with the body and went back to the lodge to pack. By the time I came down the stairs, half an hour later, Jack was waiting in the car. I flew out the lodge door, flung my bag into the trunk, and settled into the passenger seat with a sigh.

Jack said, “Look like you ran a marathon.”

“I got a call just as I went to pack.”

“Wasn’t reporters, was it?” he asked as he pulled from the lodge lane.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have held you up for that. It was one of my cousins.”

“You guys keep in touch?”

I fastened my seat belt. “We do. I’m still in contact with most of my extended family. It’s the immediate family that doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Jack made a noise in his throat. I’d barely spoken to my mother since she remarried and moved to the States. Same with my brother. There was no precipitating fight, no ongoing feud. We just drifted apart, and the greater the physical distance, the less need for contact. I think we all embraced that excuse. My mother had never made any effort to know me, even as a child. Nor had Brad. Dad had been my real family, and he’d died before the Wayne Franco incident.

I continued, “I still see Neil a few times a year for dinner, and since his divorce, he’s been coming up to the lodge with friends. He lives in Burlington, so it isn’t too far.”

“Between Toronto and Buffalo. Right?”

I nodded. “Which is a segue to a question. Would you mind if we stopped in? He was at the station when I escaped from Aldrich, and he stayed with me while my dad and uncle went back for Amy. He was young, but he was family, which means he’d know . . . whatever there is to know.”

“About you. The rape.”

I flinched at the word. I tried to avoid it myself. I talked about “what happened” or “what Aldrich did.” I didn’t say the word. That was, I think, part of the problem. Use euphemisms and not only did it avoid the ugly reality of what happened, but it diminished Aldrich’s culpability. He hadn’t raped me. He’d just . . . done something.

“I want to understand what happened,” I said. “Did Neil know? Did I tell anyone? Why wasn’t Aldrich charged? How did I get raped and spend twenty years not knowing? Maybe he can fill in some of the blanks, because there are a whole lot of blanks.”

“Just tell me where to go.”