Sometimes the Wolf (21 page)

Drake walked the twenty or so steps from the fence to where Morgan stood.

“You were five or six when your mother got sick and by the time you were seven she was dead,” Morgan said. “You probably remember that pretty well, don’t you? You think of her as a woman lying in a hospital bed with a bunch of wires connected to her. All you probably remember of her is the way the hospital smelled or what the waiting room looked like. If your father hadn’t kept a framed picture of the three of you, you’d probably have to guess what color her hair was or what her face looked like when she smiled.” Morgan stopped to gather his breath. He was looking toward the county road a mile away. Not a single car passing in the whole time they’d stood there.

“What you don’t think about when you think of your mother,” Morgan went on, “is how lovely she was—what a great person she was before she got sick.” With one leg he swept his foot over the grass, parting it and sweeping the dirt. The grainy sound of bits of rock and dirt rolling across a hard flat surface. “Everyone loved her and when she got sick it didn’t seem like it was really happening—it seemed like it couldn’t happen to her. Because things like that don’t happen to people like her. People with good hearts, with an easy laugh like hers or a face like hers, or any number of other things I still remember.” He knelt and Drake heard the old knee crack, his grandfather now bent to the prairie floor, his fingertips lifting a weathered board, one and a half feet long and eight inches in width. The hole below big and square as the grave Drake had dug in the apple orchard behind his house.

Morgan bent forward and brought up what looked to be a small tackle box. Green, with the metal clasps and pins all rusted and stained with time. “Patrick missed your mom more than anything. Having her there meant one thing in his life, and having her gone meant something altogether different. He loved her and when she passed it scared him. She really could have done anything—been whatever she wanted, had any life she chose—and for her to go like that, at her age, it didn’t make sense and it scared him more than anything he’d ever come up against,” Morgan said, still talking as he brought the box up and placed it on the ground next to Drake’s feet.

Drake knelt next to his grandfather and placed the shotgun away from him in the grass. He put his hands on the tackle box. “What’s in here?” he asked.

“You know what’s in there.”

“I don’t want to open it,” Drake said.

“He loved you,” Morgan said. “That’s all it proves.”

Drake undid one clasp, then the other. He bent back the lid and raised the small shelf beneath. A folded piece of paper with his name on it sat there in a plastic sheath. Underneath the letter, four stacks of bills. “How much is it?” Drake asked.

“Two hundred thousand, minus a bit Patrick asked me to bring him while he was in Monroe.”

“This is for me?”

“When Patrick put it here he told me to give it to you on his death.”

Drake brought up the piece of paper and slid it from the plastic. Drake’s name written there on the outside of the paper in his father’s hand. The first line written inside simply an apology. The next: “For the house and for whatever else you need it for.” Then a final signature from his father.

The message was short and to the point, like anything else his father had done. Still, Drake flipped the paper over looking for more. When nothing else could be found he slipped the paper back within its plastic envelope.

“You probably won’t believe me but Patrick was getting out when he was arrested. He was building up the money to pay off the house. He wanted to keep it in the family. He wanted to keep it for you.”

“But he didn’t get out,” Drake said. “He went to prison for twelve years.” His voice broke a little and he recovered himself. “He killed two men for this.”

“I don’t know what to say about that,” Morgan said. “You asked me last night whether it’s possible to still love a son who is a killer. I think it is.”

“That’s all you know about it?”

“I know what happened to those two men was an accident. It was a misunderstanding. Patrick was worried about it before he went and he asked Gary to come along and watch his back. Gary was too jumpy. He watched one of the men go for a cigarette and before the man could pull his pack from inside his jacket, Gary caught him at a hundred yards. The second man was a witness at that point.”

“That doesn’t make this okay,” Drake said.

“I don’t blame either of them,” Morgan said. “Gary was watching out for your father and your father was watching out for you.”

“Jesus,” Drake said. “I don’t want this. I never asked for this.” His voice held low and the words only a whisper. Drake looked down at the money. “You’ve had this ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Just waiting to give it to me?”

“Yes.”

“So he’s dead?” Drake asked. His eyes still on the open lid of the tackle box, the wind rustling the small folded piece of paper that sat on top; he didn’t want to raise his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Morgan said. He looked away to the road, where a pickup was cresting the far hill and then descending once again, out of sight, beyond the grass. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t know if we’ll ever see him again, but if those men get ahold of him before you do I know it will mean trouble for both me and you.”

Morgan told Drake all there was to know. He told him Maurice’s full name, how long they’d shared a cell for, where he lived now, how Patrick had asked Maurice for help, and how Maurice had been the one to make the connections with Bean and John Wesley. Patrick doing the rest, trying for protection and making promises he could back up with only the money as a reward.

Drake listened and when Morgan finished, Drake said, “So those men don’t know you have the money?”

“Besides Patrick and myself you’re the only other person who knows.”

“You think my father would bring them here?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“I can’t believe this,” Drake said. “All this time—” The anger in his voice cut into his words. “Do you know what it could mean for Sheri if my father isn’t with Maurice?”

“Outside Silver Lake it’s about the only place I could see him going.”

Drake didn’t have anything more to say. His grandfather didn’t have the answers. But the anger was there still. He couldn’t help it and he knew it wasn’t his grandfather’s fault.

“I had to show you this,” Morgan said. “You had to know. It’s your money.”

Drake bent his hand to the small piece of paper and brought it up. He tucked it within a pocket of his coat. When he was finished he dropped the tackle box back into its hole.

“Telling the truth can be a horrible thing,” Morgan said.

Drake thought that over. He thought about all the things he’d hidden away in his life—all the failings he’d had. “I lied to you last night,” Drake said. “We had a child. A miscarriage. I buried it in a hole behind our house. I never told Sheri it was a little boy. I think about him all the time.”

“Sometimes what you hope is at the end of the rainbow isn’t what you thought it was going to be at all,” Morgan said.

THE ASIAN MAN
who came into the room to meet him was about thirty years old and had tattoos running up out of his shirt collar on both sides of his neck. Driscoll waited for him to sit before opening the file the warden had given him. The guard who’d escorted the inmate into the room now stood by the doorway about twenty feet behind.

“John Se,” Driscoll said. He had the file open and he was looking down at the man’s mug shot. The statement was not a question, but merely a fact. “You’re in here for second-degree murder. Correct?”

He leaned back from the table and grinned at Driscoll. “Is it going to surprise you if I say I didn’t do it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

“Well that is the fact,” John said. “They have me in here because they picked me up for being an Asian male.”

“Case closed,” Driscoll said. “You Asians all look the same.”

“Now you’re getting it. I’ve been saying that for years.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Too long.”

“How long do you have to go?”

“Too long.”

Driscoll flipped through the paperwork a few times and then looked up at John. “You know it says here that several witnesses saw a man of your height and build cave in another man’s head with the heel of his shoe. Says here that the tattoos on this perp’s neck matched yours exactly.”

“I don’t know what to say to that. Neck tattoos are pretty popular these days.”

“Not that popular,” Driscoll said. “Not the best choice either, especially if you want to go around smashing people’s heads in.”

“How does self-defense sound?”

“I’m not your lawyer,” Driscoll said. “I don’t really care. All I care about is how much time you’re doing in here and if you’re willing to reduce that time by helping me out.”

“Who are you?”

“DEA.”

“They didn’t tell me that.” John looked behind him at the guard. “DEA?”

Driscoll snapped his fingers. “You have trouble keeping your eyes on the chalkboard when you went to school, John?”

John turned around and looked Driscoll over. “This is when you make the joke about Asians being good at math.”

Driscoll didn’t say anything. He had the two mug shots of the escaped killers facedown on the table in front of him. Their combined crimes included seven counts of murder, one count of arson, two counts of armed robbery, and one count of kidnapping. One of the men was guilty of killing his parents, his uncle, and his grandmother in their sleep, then burning the house to the ground to cover up the murders. “Until a week ago you were Patrick Drake’s cell mate, weren’t you?” Driscoll asked.

John looked back over at the DEA agent. “Pat? What does this have to do with him?”

“Two people were found murdered a quarter mile from where he was staying in Silver Lake.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“No one is saying you do.”

“Well, you can never be too careful, you know. I’ve been mistaken for things before.”

Driscoll looked past the inmate to the guard who had brought him in. Perhaps just looking for some sign that John could give a real answer from time to time. The guard just shrugged, a smile beginning to show on his face before he dropped his eyes to his shoes.

Driscoll brought his attention back to the man before him. “You know these men?” Driscoll asked. He turned each mug shot over one at a time.

“I know them,” John said. His voice diminished, pulled back somewhere into the shadows.

“These guys scare you?” Driscoll asked.

“What are you offering me here? I’m not too crazy about how this is starting to look if someone finds out I’m talking to you.”

“The warden is the only one who knows what we’re doing here. The guards all think I’m a lawyer here for a meeting with you. Well, they did until you yelled out to that guard back there.”

“Sometimes my mouth gets me into trouble.”

“I can imagine,” Driscoll said. “What I can do is send that guard an early Christmas present this year. You know, the kind that makes sure he keeps his mouth shut.”

“You’re kind of dirty for a DEA agent.”

“I can’t protect you from any others you want to tell about this, but I can help you out if you’re willing.”

“Okay,” John said. “What are you looking for?”

“What’s Patrick’s relationship to these two men?”

“That’s a big question with a lot of zeros behind it.”

“I know about the money,” Driscoll said.

“Well then it makes sense that a lot of us in here knew about it, too,” John said. “It wasn’t common knowledge, but when you sleep in the bunk above Pat for as many years as I have, it gets out. Pat would have never said anything, but something like that gets out. He wasn’t exactly running the show in here, but he wasn’t wanting for anything, either. Pat wants something done, it gets done. Respect will do that, but mostly it’s power, and in Pat’s case that power came from the money he was supposed to have on the outside.”

“He kept himself safe.”

“That’s all he did. Counting the days till he could get out.”

“He never told you anything about the money?”

“I saw a bit of it from time to time. Someone was bringing it in for him. Just enough to keep people satisfied.”

“So, you don’t know where it is?”

“Would you tell someone where you’d hidden that kind of money?”

“Two hundred thousand isn’t as much as you think it is these days.”

“Who said anything about two hundred thousand?” John said. He leaned back in his chair and grinned at the DEA agent.

“How much?”

“I’ve got another nine years on my sentence,” John said.

“You’ll be out in four,” Driscoll said. He was leaning into the table now, waiting on John. Behind him, the door opened and the warden appeared. He whispered something to the guard and then asked to see Driscoll in the hall for a moment.

“We’re in the middle of something,” Driscoll said.

The warden shot him a sharp look. “There are people waiting to talk with you, Driscoll.”

John said something under his breath.

“What did you say?” Driscoll asked.

“Marshals,” John said.

The warden was still waiting on him but he couldn’t move. “How do you know about them?”

“They were here yesterday,” John said. “I thought with how close you always seemed to Patrick, visiting him once a year, you’d have shown before them.” John was smiling now, looking across the table at Driscoll, a wild look in his eyes.

The warden tried to get Driscoll’s attention again but Driscoll waved him off. “Just give me a few more seconds.” Driscoll waited for the warden to leave before turning to John. “You knew I’d come?”

“Patrick was like family to you.”

Driscoll didn’t look away. “He was something to me but it wasn’t that.”

“What happens when you catch up to him?”

“I don’t know, but I can tell you it will be a lot better than what will happen if the marshals or those two killers get him first.”

“Patrick is a good guy,” John said. “He helped me when I first got here. Everyone needs someone like that, you know?”