Last shot

Chapter 80

The alarm chimed at 2:00 A.M. Dray's complaint was unintelligible. Tim got dressed quietly. She made a more forgiving moan when he kissed her on her sleep-soft cheek on his way out. The Typhoon had managed to flip upside down so his head was pressed to the footboard. Tim rearranged him, gripping his sweaty torso tightly so he wouldn't slip free.

Tyler flopped back onto his pillow, chuckled to himself, remarked, "Elmo wearing diapers," and resumed sleeping.

Tim enjoyed his first traffic-free drive to Pasadena. When his headlights swept the house, he was oddly relieved to see that the lawn had been cropped, the bushes fastidiously tended. Cleanly shaven and smelling of aftershave, his father opened the door before Tim could ring. He wore a double-breasted charcoal pinstripe that looked new. Tim wondered if he'd bought it for the occasion. They nodded at each other like competing salesmen. Tim's father stepped out and locked the door, then regarded the keys in his palm for a moment before sliding them under the mat. He followed Tim down the path to the Explorer.

Tim said, "What are you doing with the house?"

"I know a guy."

Tim nodded and pulled out. Corcoran State Prison was up the 5, between Bakersfield and Fresno. The trip would take the better part of three hours. They coasted wordlessly along the freeway, his father sitting still as a mannequin, watching the scenery roll by. As they headed over the Grapevine Pass, Tim realized he hadn't had time to check to make sure his father's prison sentence was real, that Tim wasn't being deployed on leg one of a scam. All through the flat wasteland of Kern County, Tim kept alert, waiting for his father to redirect him, for a car-jacking, some new twist, but they just drove straight and silent. A glow came over the big squares of farmland flying past on either side, the first half hour looking more dusk than dawn. It wasn't until the sally-port gate came into view that Tim fully believed it was going to happen.

Corcoran caged six thousand inmates, Ginny's murderer among them.

And soon Tim's father.

Navigating through the two perimeter fences, in the shadow of the gray modules, Tim flashed his creds. Eyes lingered each time, the second correctional officer offering him a respectful nod. Tim's identity, duly noted, would be whispered into the right ears. Tim parked by the pedestrian entrance that led back to Inmate Processing. A prison bus dropping off cargo from Men's Central rattled in, and he and his father sat and watched the inmates unload. Many had to stoop to pass through the door.

Tim glanced at the man in his passenger seat. Fifteen years inside, even cut down by various sentence reductions, was too long for someone his age to be among men like this. It seemed improbable that he'd pass back out through these gates under his own power.

Tim checked the clock: 6:52. His father was due to report by 7:00.

"Well," Tim said.

"Well." His father did not move.

Though the sun was barely free of the horizon, heat was already radiating off the black dash. A road-worn Oldsmobile eased up beside them, forcing them to be privy to a weepy parting scene between a young couple. The tattooed kid ambled inside, wiping his face. Tim's father watched, lip curled with disapproval.

"Why would you do this?" Tim asked. "Submit to this indignity? You despise me. Why have me take you in?"

The clock changed, another precious minute gone. Tim's father's skin was dry, white dust by the mouth. His Adam's apple jerked with a swallow. "Mugsy's doing a dime. Frank got waxed last year. Mickey and Goose were rolled up. There's no one else."

6:57.

6:58.

Tim's father climbed out. He'd sweated through his dress shirt, something Tim had never seen him do. He pulled on his jacket, fastening the inner button with an expert tweak of his fingers. Erect and dignified, his father took a few steps. He paused, turned his face to the sun, closed his eyes.

He cleared his throat. "Maybe sometime I could meet my grandson."

"We'll see."

"Maybe he should see the world's ugly parts. Give him a shot to turn out better than me or you."

"I'd say that's a statistical inevitability, wouldn't you?"

With perfect posture his father started for the door. A correctional officer emerged.

"Move it along, pal. Door locks on the hour." The CO's face shifted with recognition when he looked at Tim, and he lessened the aggressiveness of his stance.

Tim stayed by his father's side. They reached the CO, the door.

Tim's father turned to face him. "I could count on you, Timmy. Despite everything, I could always count on you."

He offered his hand, and Tim shook it, and then the CO took him into custody with a respectful nod at Tim and led him away. He did not look back.

Dazed, Tim walked back and sat in his Explorer. He stared at the barbed wire, the chain link, the sally-port gate. Ten minutes passed. Then another ten.

He turned over the engine, but rather than heading for the gates, he drove around to the other side of the facility to the visiting area. He got out of the Explorer and started toward the building. The inmates were in the yard, pumping iron, bullshitting, gathering in protective clusters. In the wedge of shadow against the wall, there he was. Tim wasn't certain at first, but then Kindell stepped out to pick a rock from the dirt, and in the sunlight there was no question.

A pedophile and a child murderer-he wasn't supposed to last a month in there, let alone four years. For those four years, Tim had wanted him dead. He wanted him dead as much as ever. But even if Kindell were dead, he wouldn't be gone. He'd still be there. Always there.

His skin looked gray and hung on loose flesh. He'd put on weight-a lot of weight-his face blown wide around the familiar inexpressive eyes.

Whatever Tim had hoped to feel, he did not. Standing in the beating sun of the parking lot, he sensed a hollowness, not inside him but all around, as if he lay on the brink of a void too vast to comprehend. He grasped his own unimportance and, by extension, the insignificance of the man opposite the fence. It left him feeling dwarfed, though by what, precisely, he was not certain. There was a great horror in it, to be sure, but also a faint ray of a greater freedom he'd yet to encounter.

Kindell claimed his rock in a fist and withdrew back into shadow.

Tim looked at the visitor entrance, but, suddenly and clearly, he knew that he wouldn't go in, wouldn't confront Kindell through a mesh screen.

Tim thought of the vulnerability of his living child. He pictured the familiar scenarios-the kidnapping, the act of God, the proverbial bus. In every moment a hundred things can go wrong. But moment after moment they don't.

Right now Dray would be packing a picnic for the park. Tyler on the kitchen floor, wearing Evel Knievel and applying a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid to a knee scrape that had healed three days ago. Bear and Michelle Westin, D.D.S., on their morning walk, Boston running laps around them, an endless loop of Rhodesian Ridgeback.

Tim turned and headed back to the Explorer.

Ninety Days After Walker's Death

Kaiyer walk hisself."

"Okay, bub." Tim still guided Tyler through the penitentiary's outermost door. On its backswing the glass caught a reflection of the stern razor wire capping the double chain links. Tim paused, taking in the grounds. The place was removed from time, somehow. It seemed not a speck of dirt had shifted in the months since Tim had delivered the boy's grandfather.

Ahead the sally-port gate, the guard tower, COs with rifles.

And Dray leaning against the grille of her Blazer, arms crossed, face tilted to the sun. She took note of their accelerating progress back across the empty visitor lot. Tyler's steps grew shorter and choppier.

Halfway there he said, "Daddy up."

Tim held out his thumbs until the tiny hands grasped them, then lifted his son, seating him against his side.

They reached the Blazer and stopped. Tim took a breath and exhaled hard.

Dray said, "I bet."

Tyler squirmed a bit, so Tim set him down. Ty picked at the Scooby-Doo Band-Aid across the toe of his sneaker. Dray studied them, her face proud and tender, the sun shining straight through her ice green eyes.

"C'mon," she said. "Let's get you boys home."