The Silent Places (11 page)

He no longer was. Now they knew each other pretty well, and it was a problem. She still hadn’t returned the call he’d made to her at the beginning of his shift.

Klosterman said, “What’s up?”

Hastings said, “It looks like they’ve gone to bed.”

Reese took a seat at the bar.

The bartender, a cute woman in her thirties, said, “We’re closed.”

Reese held up a twenty-dollar bill, putting it under the small bar lamp so the barmaid could see it.

“Whiskey,” Reese said.

“We’re closed.”

Reese lowered his hand. Raised it again. This time, there were two twenties.

“Whiskey,” he said again.

The bartender sighed and said, “All right. Just one. Then I want to get home.”

Reese nodded and told her Johnnie Walker Black doubled would be fine.

She brought it to him and Reese noticed that she was very pretty in an earthy way. She took one of the twenty-dollar bills and went to make change.

“No,” Reese said. “We made a deal.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“No, take it.”

The bartender gave him a look and said, “I’m not like that. I don’t feel comfortable—”

“I don’t expect anything,” Reese said. “Just a drink.”

He was at the bar in his hotel. Earlier, he had fallen asleep in his room with the television on, then awoke from a nightmare.

It had started out nice. In the dream, Sara was not well. But they were together. She was pale and weak, but she was in the passenger seat next to him in his car. They were driving to the top of a mountain in Colorado. The day was cool and sunny but not cold. Reese had opened the sunroof and the wind was blowing across her face. She was so beautiful. Even with her head scarf on and her eyebrows fading. The cancer was spreading and now they knew it would take her life, but they would have this day together. She looked over at him and smiled, and he smiled back. He was happy, so happy, that she had come into his life and given it meaning and purpose. He had grown empty and soulless, a shell, and then he’d met Sara and was reborn. She took his hand and said, “I’m getting better, you know.” And John said that, yes, she was.

The road twisted and curved and banked and then they were at the top. Reese intended to open her door for her, but when he got out of the car, she was already out, too, walking over to him, extending her hand. He took her hand and together they walked to the parapet, which would give them a glorious view of the valley below.

He got to the edge and looked over and saw … nothing. No yellow and brown and green. Just cold mist and emptiness. He turned to his wife. She was gone.

“Sara,” he said.

Nowhere to be seen.

“Sara!”

He turned and looked at empty faces. Other tourists or demons. He asked them, “Where is she? Where’s Sara?”

No one answered him.

He cried and screamed.
No! This was supposed to be their day. Just one day to have together. She deserved this day. How, how could they take this away from her?

Reese woke up, shouting. Soon he realized he was in a hotel room and not in a prison cell. Then he remembered he was in a no-name place outside of a no-name town in West Virginia. He made it to the bathroom before he began crying.

He feared returning to bed. He considered the hotel room and thought he had never felt more alone in his life. He had escaped prison for this. A room alone. He left the room and went to the bar.

Reese had known a man in the army who had been captured by the Vietcong and imprisoned in Hanoi. He was freed in 1973 with most of the other soldiers and allowed to return home. The man told Reese that every day he could get out of bed and walk out a door that was not locked was a good day.

But Reese knew another soldier who spent four years imprisoned and got out, only to learn that his wife had left him for another man. A soldier whose children considered him a stranger. That man never recovered.

Reese could leave his hotel room and walk to a bar. But he could not escape his loneliness and grief. He had not imagined that he would miss his Sara more once he was out of prison. But he did. He knew it was not logical.

His reticence intrigued the bartender. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was an attractive, approachable one and she was used to being hit on by customers.

She said to him, “In town for the night?”

He looked straight ahead, not at her. “Yes,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Paul.”

“What do you do?”

“Business.”

“What sort of business?”

He turned and regarded her. His expression was neither rude nor warm.

“Hardware,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m not much of a conversationalist.”

“You look tired.”

“I’ll be finished soon.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” the girl said. “I mean, stay as long as you like. I’m not going anywhere.”

The girl placed her fingertips near his hand. “Maybe you’d like to talk,” she said.

“No, not really.”

“Maybe something else.”

He looked at her again. “No, not really.”

“You don’t fancy me?”

It did not occur to Reese that he had not been with a woman in over thirteen years. Arrest and then trial about a year later and then a lifetime sentence. Most men, upon getting out, would have gone straight to the nearest brothel. Or their wives.

Reese said, “I’m sorry. I’m married.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. I mean, you’re not wearing a ring.”

They had taken the ring away from him. It was still at the federal penitentiary.

Reese’s words had the effect of making her more determined. She said, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Thank you.”

The bartender walked off and Reese glanced at her backside. She was young and she reminded him of someone he knew. Sharon? Or was it Rita? It was Rita, the preacher’s daughter. Rita never said no to anyone.

God, what? Over thirty years ago …

Rita Fay Cutler. Not beautiful, but hot and dirty and willing, with a blouse full of promise …

Berry, Texas. A small oil town about a hundred miles from Dallas. Moderately affluent before the oil bust of 1984. John Reese was one of three hundred or so students at the town’s only high school. He had been working construction after school then. Making four dollars an hour, which was good money for a teenager in the seventies. At the age of eighteen, he had saved enough money to buy a Li’l Hustler Datsun pickup, one of the best vehicles he would ever own. He would take Rita Fay out to the lake in it, get it up to about ninety on the back roads as she screamed in delight, “Faster,
faster
. ” They would park the truck in a secluded area and make love under blankets nearby. There had been girls before Rita Fay, but they had been quick, uncomfortable affairs. Rita Fay was like a woman, demanding and experienced, giving him explicit direction. John Reese was soon mad for her.

Rita Fay had to hide him from her parents, particularly her father. John Reese was a bastard and, worse, a Catholic. Born out of wedlock, he never knew his father. His mother was a cashier at Otasco. She made extra money cleaning the church on Saturdays. She also made a point of taking her only son to Mass every Sunday. When John Reese was a child, most churches did not extend warm welcomes to unwed mothers. But his mother made sure that John received First Communion, in spite of the pointed fingers and hushed gossip. When he reached adolescence, his mother was no longer in a position to force him to go to church.

Reese’s mother told him that Rita Fay Cutler was no good. She would lie to him and twist him around and then get rid of him when he no longer amused her. John said he loved her and that they had talked about getting married.

John Reese thought it would work. After high school, he would work full-time for the construction company. He would be able to afford his own place. Rita Fay would attend the local junior college. They would see what their futures would be.

About a month before graduation, he and Rita Fay were at a party. Rita Fay told John that another boy was bothering her. The other boy’s name was Carl Sommersby. He was bigger than Reese and was on the football team. He also had friends, three or four of them.

John Reese was a loner. He was not a social outcast and he had never been picked on. But he was not a popular kid, either. If he was considered at all, he was thought to be a no-account, nameless figure who had never distinguished himself. Generally, he was left alone.

But Rita Fay, the preacher’s daughter, was the sort of girl who liked boys to compete for her. It made her feel valuable. It gave her a kick, too. She liked kicks. Had John Reese not been a hormonal teenager, had he been older and wiser, he would have told the girl to handle it on her own, smiled, and said good-bye. But eighteen-year-old boys generally don’t have that sort of insight.

Still, John Reese was more mature than most kids his age. When Carl Sommersby taunted him and tried to get him to fight, Reese said to Rita Fay, “Let’s go.”

He would remember later that Rita Fay did not answer, just smiled. So Reese turned his back and started to walk away. That was when the Sommersby kid shoved him in the back.

Things happened quickly then. Reese stumbled but did not lose his footing. He turned around and, with no warning, hit the Sommersby boy in the nose, using the heel of his hand, not his fist. Somehow, Reese knew the heel of his hand would be more effective and that noses break easily and that most men are unnerved by the sight of their own blood. Sommersby bellowed and then made a mad rush for him. That was when Reese kicked him in the knee, using the bigger boy’s weight against him. Sommersby screamed and went down.

Bystanders later said they heard two cracks: one for the nose, another for the knee.

What struck the other boys was how efficient and businesslike it had been. Reese did not fight the way a kid did. It was as if something quiet and deadly was just
in
him. A violent warrior in the body of a kid. A sleeping dragon.

The police arrested Reese the next day. He was charged with aggravated assault and battery. In the next few days, John Reese would learn that he no longer had a job at the construction company, that his mother could not afford to hire an attorney, that the Sommersby boy’s knee was shattered and he was therefore no longer eligible to receive his college football scholarship. He would also learn that not only were Sommersby and his friends ready to testify against him but Rita Fay Cutler was, too. The district attorney informed Reese and his mother that John would be tried as an adult. He was, after all, eighteen now.

Carl Sommersby’s father was a man of some influence in the community. Previously, he had prevented a charity foundation from building a home for mentally disabled adults in his neighborhood. He had a seat on the town commission and he owned the most profitable farm machinery dealership in the county. He was not wealthy by worldwide standards, but he was small-town rich, and that can mean a great deal in local affairs. Mr. Sommersby wanted John Reese to go to prison.

The local judge, an elected official, saw where this was going. He intervened and, with considerable effort, brokered a proposition: John Reese could join the army or he could go to prison for two years.

John Reese chose the army. He returned to Berry, Texas, only once. And that was for his mother’s funeral.

Hastings met Carol at the Starbucks in Clayton, at the intersection of Hadley and Wydown.

They exchanged uncomfortable pleasantries. Soon Carol said, “You look tired.”

He told her about his latest assignment.

She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t return your call last night.”

Were you out with another man? Hastings thought. But he knew that would be a cop’s question. Paranoid, suspicious. You had to shut it off sometimes.

“It’s okay,” Hastings said.

“And I’m sorry about the other night, too. I think maybe I overreacted.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I’ve never left a man alone at a restaurant before.” She raised her eyebrows. “Such drama.”

“I sort of sprung something on you.”

“You did. But I could have handled it better.”

They both avoided talking about children.

Carol said, “So what’s Senator Preston like?”

“I’m supposed to keep the assignment confidential.”

“Even from me? I’m not the gossipy type.”

“No, you’re not,” Hastings said. “He’s an asshole. His wife seems okay, though.”

“Sylvia Preston? I saw her once downtown having lunch. She is very pretty. She has that sort of conventional, plastic blond look that would look good in front of a camera.”

Hastings frowned. “I don’t think she’s actually like that.”

“Oh? You like her?”

“No, I just talked with her for a second.”

“So you don’t think she’s just a showpiece.”

“I don’t know her well enough to say that she is or that she isn’t. I’m just saying that there might be more to her than looking good in front of a camera.”

Carol shook her head, smiling. It was a small thing, and usually Hastings would take it good-naturedly. But for some reason, he didn’t like it now.

Hastings said, “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you meant something.”

“I guess I meant that I’m just not surprised.”

“About what?”

“That you would defend her. Another pretty blonde.”

“Another? … Are you referring to Eileen?”

Carol shrugged.

“Christ, Carol. That’s a hell of thing to say.”

“Oh, George, don’t be so sensitive. It’s just a comment.”

“You just said I was superficial. A woman’s a pretty blonde, so I defend her.”

“Look, all men are superficial. So don’t get uptight about it.”

“Well, shit.”

“You defended a woman when I suggested that she may be … less than substantial.”

“So what?”

“Would you have done that if Mrs. Preston had been dumpy and plain?”

“Maybe. Would you have insulted her if she was dumpy and plain?”

“I didn’t insult her.”

“You did, actually. You said she would look good in front of a camera. Like that’s pretty much all there is to her.”