Beach Road

Chapter 108. Tom

“MAYBE WE CAN still figure a way out,” I say, starting up Kate’s Jetta and carefully backing out of the muddy driveway. With every neighbor within miles celebrating at Marie’s, the street is deserted, and in the heavy rain, it looks more desolate than usual. “What makes you so sure it’s over, Nephew? What happened?”

“Raiborne happened,” says Sean. “Soon as the verdict came down, I bolted out of there, but when I get to my car, Raiborne is standing right next to it. The son of a bitch is waiting for me. He must have sprinted to get there first, but if he was breathing hard, he didn’t let me see it. He introduced himself. Said that as of three minutes ago the murder cases of Eric Feifer, Patrick Roche, Robert Walco, and Michael Walker were wide open again, along with the never-solved murder of Señor Ma

“When I ask him why he’s telling me, Raiborne looks at me cute and says, ‘Because I’m pretty sure you’re him, Sean. You’re Loco!’”

I’m on Route 41 now, but it’s raining so hard, I’m doing less than thirty. I slow down even more when I see the boarded-up Citgo, and just past it, I turn off onto another depressed little street.

I look over at Sean-and I smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about Detective Raiborne anymore.”

“Really?”

“Really. He came to see me too. This afternoon at my place, just after Clarence picked up Kate and took her to Marie’s. He said he couldn’t figure out how I knew so much about the murders-that the gun was a plant, the prints and the call from Feifer staged, that Lindgren was dirty. Then he realized I must have been involved too.”

“So what’d you do?”

“I was going to ask if he’d ever been to Antigua, any of the islands. Had he ever thought of taking early retirement? But I knew it would be a waste of my time.”

“So what’d you do?” asks Sean, looking away because he already knows the answer.

“What I had to. And I’ll tell you, the guy’s an easy two hundred thirty pounds. I barely got him in the trunk.”

“Now you’re killing cops, Tom?”

“Didn’t have much choice,” I say as we hear the siren of an East Hampton cruiser racing north on Route 41 toward Marie’s place.

“How about letting Dante find his own lawyer? Or if you had to be the big star again, be in the spotlight with your girlfriend, how about letting him lose?”

The road, barely visible through the pounding rain, climbs past an abandoned trailer home.

“I guess you never heard of something called redemption, Nephew.”

“Guess not.”

“A chance to undo mistakes like mine comes once in a lifetime, Sean.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that, Uncle?”

“What do you mean?”

“To undo the past? Start over?”

“Oh, it’s never too late for redemption, Sean.”

Chapter 109. Tom

NOW IT’S RAINING so hard that even with the wipers flapping on the highest setting, I can hardly see the road. If I thought I could risk it, I’d pull over and wait for the rain to let up.

“So what are we doing with Raiborne?” asks Sean, trying not to look at me, the way I’ve seen people look away from born-agains.

“Bury him,” I say. “At that old nigger cemetery up on the hill. Only seems right.”

The paved road becomes a dirt one. I know it well. Somehow I make out the half-grown-over opening in the bushes and beside it what’s left of a sign for the Heavenly Baptist Burial Grounds.

I push through the opening, the bushes flailing against the car windows, and up a dirt driveway. It’s rutted and soft, but going real slow and avoiding the worst parts, I get the car to the top of the rise, where it opens on a clearing lined with dozens of modest limestone headstones and markers.

I park beside a rotting bench, nod to Sean, and we step reluctantly into the downpour. With the soggy mud sucking at our shoes, we walk to the rear of the car. Heavy drops ping off the roof and trunk as Sean pushes the chrome lock and then steps out of the way as the chipped blue lid slowly lifts open, but of course, the only thing inside is Kate’s bald old spare and some gardening tools she uses around Macklin’s place.

“What the fuck?” says Sean, turning toward me and quickly pi

But by then my gun is tight against his side, and as he stares at me with the same shocked expression the mortician had to wipe off Feif, Walco, and Rochie, I shoot him.

I’ll say one thing. Sean doesn’t cry for his mother like those other boys did. He must think I’m his mom the way he reaches for me and says, “Tom? What are you doing, Tom?”

I fire three more times, the barrel of the gun so tight against Sean’s big chest it works like a flesh-and-blood silencer, and the sound of the muffled shots barely reaches the soggy woods. That shuts him up, but his eyes are still wide open and it feels as if they’re staring at me. I feel Sean’s eyes on me until I get a small shovel from the trunk and dig a shallow grave. Then I start throwing dirt over his face. I find another spot to bury the gun; then I get back into the car.

I love being in a parked car when the rain is tap-dancing on the roof, and for a while I just sit there and watch it wash the grime off the windshield, just like I washed Sean off of me. And you know what? I still feel redeemed.

Chapter 110. Kate

MARIE’S TINY LIVING room is so crowded it’s kind of like swimming in the ocean. You go where the waves take you. One minute I’m listening to the very good-looking George Clooney rant about the American criminal justice system, the next I’m having an emotional heart-to-heart with Tom’s brother, Jeff, who tells me he’s been worried about Sean.

“He’s not been himself since the trial started,” says Jeff. “Anxious, depressed or something. And he never said a thing to me about a girl.”

“It’s a tough age,” I say, and try to reassure him, but before I have much of a chance, I’m pulled away as if by an undertow to a spot in a corner beside Lucinda Walker, Michael Walker’s mom. It’s awful standing in such a jubilant crowd with the mother of a murdered child, but Lucinda takes my hand.

“God bless you, Miss Costello,” she says. “You kept another i

As Lucinda talks about Dante and Marie, the front door opens and Tom wedges himself back into the packed party, and when he smiles at me across the room, my heart flies out to him. It scares me to think how close I came to not giving him a second chance. If not for this case, I might have never talked to him again.

“I feel like a salmon fighting his way upriver to spawn,” says Tom, sweat dripping off his nose.

“Hold that thought. How’s Sean?”

“More down than I’ve ever seen him. It’s sad, but I gave him my spiel and your hug. How about you, Kate? How’s my girl?”

“I had no idea being happy could be this exhausting.”

“What do you say the two of us get lost for a little while?”

“You got a place in mind?”

“Actually, I do. But that’s the surprise I told you about before.”

He leads me across the room toward Mack and Marie, and Marie hugs me so tight I laugh.

“Look at you two,” she says, her eyes dancing with joy. “You showed everyone. E-ver-y-one! The whole world!”

“Us? How about you two?” says Tom, and clinks his beer bottle against Mack’s glass.

“To twos,” says Macklin, putting his arm around Marie.

“Well, this couple’s heading home,” says Tom. “It’s been a great day but a really long one. We can barely stand up.”

The guest of honor is in the kitchen surrounded by high school buddies who beam at him in awe. Although around the same age as Dante, they seem five years younger. Dante won’t let us leave the house until he’s introduced them all.