Iron River

26

The next afternoon, Bradley steered his Cyclone GT up the dirt drive toward his mother’s ranch house. It was now two years since her death, and his heart turned heavy and full as his old muscle car rumbled slowly along.

The ranch was in Valley Center, northeast of San Diego. It was eight acres of sava

He looked into the rearview and saw Erin in the Caye

He parked in front of the house, and Erin pulled in beside him. Clayton and Stone wandered in behind them in their own vehicles, also loaded with personal possessions. Two of the casitas at the far end of the barnyard were theirs. Always attuned to appearances, Clayton the forger had already painted his to match the barn-red with white trim. The other three remained pink as Suza

Bradley climbed the stairs to the porch and unlocked the front door. This porch needs dogs, he thought. He swung open the door for Erin and he stepped in behind her. The new tiles were in and the house smelled of new paint. Sunlight barged through the windows, no drapes or blinds or curtains needed in this remote place. It had a rambling, open-floor plan thanks to his mother’s knocking out of walls. Her last live-in lover, Ernest, father of baby Ke

Bradley walked into this room and saw people in it, drinking and eating and carrying on until the early hours. Loud. He saw himself stealing beers and selling them to the other kids. He saw Ernest, on a bet, hurling one of the great spears through a beer can taped to the corkboard wall. Bradley had grown up enamored of the primitive weapons, and Ernest had left the tiki room intact as Bradley had asked him. Ernest was living in Oahu with Jordan and baby Ke

Erin turned and looked at him. “You okay, Brad?”

“Perfect.”

“She’s everywhere. This place has her crazy energy.”

Bradley found the spear slit in the corkboard, pushed a finger into it. “It came out the other side.”

“I know.”

“Mom was pissed. Not because of the hole but because she bet against him, that he’d miss the can from across the room. Lost five hundred bucks.”

“We’ll have good times here, too.”

“I wouldn’t mind if my brothers came back. Ernest, too, for that matter.”

“Just bet on him, not against him.”

They carried boxes into the big master bedroom in the back. They helped the movers get things into the right rooms, and for every box he carried and every possession the movers brought in, Bradley felt his old life in L.A. growing smaller and his new life in Valley Center growing larger. The only downside was Erin ’s long drive for gigs, but like Bradley, she enjoyed fast cars, and a performer’s hours would keep her out of workday traffic.

The movers were finished by evening. Bradley gave them beers and fifty bucks each for not busting anything. When Clayton and Stone headed out for di

Later they set up Erin ’s studio in one of the big rooms that Suza

“I’ve got some things to move into the barn,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

“Take your time.”

He unlocked and pushed open the sliding barn door. He turned on the lights. It was one big and mostly unbroken space, no stalls, his mother never having gotten the horses she wanted. She always used to say she was too busy for horses. She had been a hard worker, he thought with a wry smile. Two jobs: schoolteacher and armed robber.

Pigeons fluttered in the new light, and a handful of feathers sashayed down from the rafters. This would be his version of Erin ’s studio, a place for working on his cars and daydreaming and being alone. A place for hatching plans. Maybe a place for becoming a poet.

His phone buzzed on his belt. He took the call from Owens, listened to what she had to say, hung up. He pictured her face, the lunar eyes, the raised serpents of scars intertwined upon her wrists. She made him uneasy, but she had helped him before and now she was offering to help him again. Her father was an interesting little man, likely insane, but he raked Bradley’s nerves when he was around, and Bradley’s instincts told him the man could help him. He knew things Bradley couldn’t believe he knew. Bradley tried to trust people as little as he needed to, and Owens, with her vague history and uncertain circumstances, made this easy. He thanked her and rang off and holstered the phone.

Then Bradley looked at the floor where a double murder had taken place, and a sharp anger arose inside him. Bradley himself had discovered the bodies and in that moment had shed his boyhood. He was sixteen. His mother had been the target and the two men who had died, brothers, were men he had known and liked. I