The Variables

“She’s never coming back.”

“I can still want justice,” Huck said. He bent down and picked up his youngest child and held her in his arms. Blair rested her head on her father’s shoulder. She brought a hand up and ran it through his dark hair greying at the temples. His body had aged a decade in the past four years. From the moment Kymberlin’s body was discovered, naked in the woods, covered loosely with dried leaves, her skin and fingernails scrubbed clean, her eyes left open, Huck watched his own eyes set deeper in his sockets and deep lines etch in broad strokes across his forehead.

From behind them, someone stirred. Their driver took a tentative step forward and cleared his throat and motioned to the town car, which was idling on the gravel drive. “On the radio...I just heard...it’s time.”

Huck and Josephine turned to him, their faces ashen. Josephine looked like she was going to be sick.

“Gordon!” Josephine called without looking. “Gordon! Get back here!” Her voice rose. Here here here echoed through the trees. “Oh, Huck,” she whispered, and she sucked in the air through her teeth. “I’m scared.”

He trudged forward through the grass and reached for the handle of the car. “I’m not,” he nodded with a tense smile. “Short deliberation is in our favor.” Huck looked back at his daughter’s final resting place. He blew a kiss in the direction of the headstone and ducked into the waiting car.

No one bothered to turn on the overhead lights. A single desk lamp illuminated Huck’s desk, his sprawling blueprints and stacks of paper. He tapped a pen against his temple and mumbled to himself while Bobby Darin crooned “Beyond the Sea” in the background. Blair, still dressed in her polka dots, had fallen asleep across the cushions of the front den’s leather couch, one foot dangling off the side. Her brother sat with his back against the front of the same couch, his head resting in his hands. Maybe he had drifted off to sleep, too, with an empty whisky tumbler turned over by his side, a melting ice cube creeping toward the edge.

Someone knocked on the door.

Gordon’s head shot up. He looked to his dad and then to his sleeping sister. “Are we answering it?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Huck didn’t reply.

“Dad?” Gordon called, a little louder. “Dad?” But Huck hunched over his paperwork, picking up one piece and then another, oblivious to his son’s voice or the knocking. “Dad!”

He turned, his red-rimmed eyes catching in the light.

“If you care about who is at the door...then answer the damn door,” Huck replied. Then he stared, unmoving, as Gordon hesitated and finally rose, wiping his hands on his pants as he walked.

Keeping the chain lock in place, Gordon unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door just a few inches. He looked out into the hallway at a tall man with sunken shoulders, his tie unknotted around his neck, hair disheveled.

“You’ve been drinking, too?” Gordon asked, still peering, his voice raspy from sleep.

The man gave a non-committal shrug. Gordon sighed and shut the door, slid the chain free, and then opened the door wide. The visitor squeezed Gordon’s shoulder as he walked past, making a beeline to Huck.

“You don’t have any lights for this place?” the man asked.

No one answered him.

“Maybe,” Huck said after a long moment, “you should have called before coming here.”

“We didn’t get to talk at the courthouse, about options, and for me to say how sorry...”

Huck put up a hand. He turned to the man, his face flat, expressionless. “Save your sorry. You’ll need them in bulk when the other teenagers turn up dead. Their fathers are going to want to know how a man who kidnapped a college student in broad daylight and strangled her in his apartment, and then transported her to a well-traveled park...was able to walk out and see the sun today. Smell the rain coming in. Feel freedom. He felt it, on his skin, seeping into his pores. Freedom that he doesn’t deserve, that’s for sure. So, no, no—no sorry for me.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Save the sorry. Save them all.” Then Huck turned back to his desk. “Do you know what next week is?”

The man swallowed loudly. Gordon resumed his place on the ground; he didn’t take his eyes off his father, even as the man looked to Gordon for reassurance.

“Huck—”

Huck drummed his fingers against the wood. “My question. Answer my question. In all those copious amounts of notes you needed...you have it written down?” He then wielded his pen in the direction of the man. “You must have it written down.”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. God. Seriously, can we turn some lights on in here?” The man reached for the wall light, but Gordon coughed and Huck spun, lifting his pen as a weapon.

“Tsk, tsk,” Huck said. He waved the pen like a metronome keeping the beat. “I saw the date...bright and clear today on my daughter’s headstone. Her birthday, Harris. Next week would have been Kymberlin’s twenty-third birthday.”

Harris didn’t reply. Then he opened his mouth into a long drawn out oh and closed his eyes.

On the stereo, Darin’s voice repeated sailin’, sailin’, sailin’ as the song hummed its ending. Then after three long seconds of silence, the track picked back up at the begi

“I should have remembered, Huck. Really, I should have.”

“You failed us.” Huck took a step forward and then leaned in, poking the tip of his pen into Harris’s tie. “The jury failed us. Failure, failure everywhere.” He looked wildly between his visitor and his son and then his sleeping daughter. He paused and examined his pen against the green and white fabric of the tie, an inkblot spreading, and withdrew it with a swift motion. “Not again.”

Harris put his hands up. “Huck, listen, friend. I mean this without offense, because I know what you’ve been through today...but if you’re pla

Retreating to his work, Huck didn’t answer. Then he slipped a piece of paper out from a single stack and held it to the light. “A-ha,” he said, pleased with himself. “Found it.” He flicked his finger against the middle and the paper wobbled in his hands. “Goodbye, Harris,” he said, and he walked to the door and opened it wide.

“Huck,” the man pleaded. He remained rooted to the floor. Then he looked around the room, and his eyes settled on the fully dressed Blair and the disheveled Gordon as if for the first time. He lowered his voice to a whisper and took three large strides over to his friend. “Okay, okay. I can call in some favors. Some people...from back in the day, they can help with these kinds of things.”

“Please,” Huck interrupted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave before you embarrass yourself.”

“You always knew that was on the table—”

“Stop.”

“Where’s Josephine, Huck?” Harris asked, and Huck narrowed his eyes, his hands remaining fixed on the open door. When no one answered, Harris took a step back toward the middle of the condo. “Let me just talk to Josephine before I go, okay?”

Gordy stretched his legs out in front of himself and yawned with an exaggerated flair.

“She’s on the roof. With a bottle of wine. And that’s where she wants to be right now...so leave her be,” Huck replied.

“Oh, now.” Harris ran his fingers through his hair, his arm made a shadow on the wall. “Huck, now...”

“Have a good night, dear old friend.”

“Come on. Don’t kick me out. Today’s been dreadful, for all of us.”

“No,” Huck said with an eerie calm. “Not for all of us. But really, what could be worse than the day I found out she was gone? There’s no pain that measures up to that moment...so, this? Today? Your epic botching of a case giftwrapped for you?” Huck brought his free hand to his mouth and mimed blowing dust off of his palm. Then he wiped his hands together, tucking the single piece of paper under his arm. “That’s all you are to me...and I’d appreciate it if you got out of my house.”