The last thing I remember

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Shelter There was a TV hanging on the cafeteria wall. A pretty blonde newswoman was on the screen, sitting at a desk, telling the news. She was talking about the arrival of Secretary Yarrow on Saturday. Yarrow had personal ties to the governor, she said, and was stopping off in Centerville to meet him. From there, it was easier for him to travel to the president’s vacation home along the highway rather than by helicopter. And because of that, the security precautions were going to tie up traffic in the area. There was a map behind her showing the secretary’s route from Centerville to the president’s vacation home.

Saturday. Tomorrow. And no one knew the secretary was going to be assassinated. No one but me.

I was in a homeless shelter. It was dark now. Night had fallen. I had been on the run all day-a long, long day…

I had ditched the stolen police cruiser as soon as I put some distance between me and the jail. The car was just too easy to spot. The police would have found me in minutes. Instead, after driving a few zigzagging blocks, I jumped out and made my way on foot. I crossed empty lots and ducked down dirty side streets, hoping to hide my trail before the police could get moving and come after me. Finally, I spotted an abandoned brownstone and went inside to hide. On the third floor, there was an open space where there had once been walls and rooms. All that was there now was broken glass and stone and dirt, cold air drifting through broken windows-oh yeah, and rats, big fat ones, nosing around the walls, looking for scraps of food.

I stayed there and listened. Soon the sirens started, one and then more and then more as the police turned out in force to search for me. After a while, there was a helicopter too. I heard its blades chopping the air as the pilot scanned the area below. I sat in the abandoned building and waited. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought they would turn out with dogs soon, and then they’d be sure to find me. But the hours went on and I heard more sirens but no dogs. And no one came to the building.

So there I stayed, hour after hour. Waiting, listening, afraid. I slept sometimes, but mostly I just sat-sat and thought about things, trying to figure out what I should do next.

It wasn’t an easy thing to figure. I mean, here I was, on the run again just like yesterday-only now it was much, much worse. Yesterday, I thought only the bad guys were after me. I thought all I had to do was find my way back to civilization and call my parents or the police and everything would be fine. Now I realized the police-the good guys-were after me too. My parents had moved away. I was suspected of killing my best friend. Everyone was against me.

Well, no, wait-not everyone. There was that guy- that guy who’d whispered to me as they lowered me into the police car, who had broken my handcuffs and said I was a better man than I knew. He was on my side, whoever he was. If I could find him, or find this Waterman he was talking about, maybe one of them would help me.

Meanwhile, though, I had another problem, a new problem, a big one. Richard Yarrow, the secretary of homeland security, the man in charge of protecting the country from terrorism. With me a fugitive and the police figuring me for a murderer and a liar, how was I ever going to convince anyone that his life was in danger?

So I sat in that empty room and thought about all this, hour after hour, hugging myself and shivering as the afternoon wore on and the autumn air got colder and blew harder from one broken window to another. After a while, the howls of the police sirens began to fade, first one, then the next, until they were all gone. The helicopter moved away, the chop of its propellers growing softer and softer until I couldn’t hear it anymore. By the time the sun went down and the light at the windows faded, it was quiet all around me.

Darkness came, and I edged over to a broken window. I poked my head around the frame and peeked out at the street three stories below. It seemed empty down there except for the occasional homeless guy shuffling along in the dark.

I was hungry now, wondering how I was going to find a meal. I had no money. I hated to think of stealing something, but I knew I had to eat if I was going to go on.

Finally, I left the brownstone. I went down into the street and stepped out into the chilly evening. It was a weird, kind of naked feeling being outside again. I knew my escape must be on the TV news. I knew they must be talking about me and showing my picture and all that. Maybe they were even offering a reward-you know, for information leading to my arrest. I felt as if my face were a neon wanted poster, a big lighted sign saying: If you see this man, call the police.

Stuffing my hands in my pockets and hunching my shoulders against the cold, I moved down the street. I kept looking around to see if anyone noticed me. Every time a car went by, I pulled up, worried it might be a cop. Once, a police cruiser actually crossed my path, heading down an intersecting street. I edged close to the wall of a building, where the darker shadows hid me until the cruiser had gone past.

I had an idea now. Back home-back in my real life when I was just a regular kid-my church had worked with a homeless shelter. Once a month, people from our congregation would go over there and bring food and cook dinner for anyone who wanted it. Sometimes I was one of the volunteers. The homeless shelter was connected to another church, and I knew that a lot of churches in bad neighborhoods like this one ran soup kitchens and shelters to help the poor.

So I looked for a church. Whenever I came to a corner, I lifted my eyes and scanned the area for a steeple or a cross lifted against the night sky. Each time I saw one, I went toward it to see if there might be a soup kitchen, somewhere for the homeless to get something to eat. Somewhere for me to get something to eat.

Sure enough, on the third try, I lowered my eyes from a steeple and saw a line of hunched men standing on the sidewalk. I moved toward them. They were waiting outside a small building next to the church. It was a homeless shelter with a cafeteria. There was a cardboard sign in the window, saying dinner was available at seven o’clock on a first-come-first-served basis. I got in line with the others. When the shelter doors opened, we began to shuffle inside.

I was glad to get in. I was weak with cold by that time. The building was warm, and the warmth slowly sank into me. I followed the others down a little hall that led into the cafeteria. It was a big room, clean and brightly lit, with long tables covered with paper tablecloths. I smiled kind of sadly to myself when I saw it. It reminded me of the cafeteria at school. I never thought I’d miss that place. But I missed it now.

I got a tray and stood in the food line at the long counter. I was younger than most of the others there, but we all looked pretty much the same: stooped and unshaven, with worn-out clothes and dark circles of exhaustion under our eyes. The people behind the counter scooped mashed potatoes and roast beef onto our plates- big heaps of them. They all smiled brightly and said hello to each of us as we went past. It was funny in a way. They acted just like the people from my church acted when they volunteered at the homeless shelter once a month. They acted just like I acted when I volunteered. I remembered all those tired, heavy, unshaven faces going past me as I put the food on their plates. I remembered their exhausted eyes looking at me as they nodded their thanks and shuffled by. It never in this world occurred to me that I would ever be one of them. I guess it never really occurs to anyone.

When my plate was full, I carried my tray to a table. I spotted the TV on the wall and sat where I could watch it while I ate. The news was on-I figured I’d find out if they were talking about me. And of course they were. First there was that story I mentioned about Richard Yarrow’s visit, about the security and the traffic and the map of his route and all that. Then, as I sat there watching, a great big picture of me-of my face-appeared behind the newswoman, right where the map had been.

“A fugitive killer arrested yesterday by police has broken free again. Jack Alexander has the latest.”

Instinctively, I slouched down in my chair and kind of hunched up my shoulders to keep from being noticed. I glanced around the room to see if anyone had recognized me. It didn’t seem that anyone had.

Then I looked at the TV again. There it was: the video of me being taken from the Centerville jail to the waiting cruiser. Detective Rose holding my elbow. The crowd of reporters shouting at me, jostling me. The crowd of onlookers, gawking and staring. The police surrounding me, hurrying me to the cruiser. It was weird to see it like that, from the outside, right there on television. It was weird to see my life transformed into a story on the evening news.

“After more than three months on the run, Charles West was brought to justice yesterday,” the reporter, Jack Alexander, said over the pictures. “But it didn’t last.”

Alexander went on to talk about how I’d somehow managed to break free of my handcuffs and run away. There was a picture of Detective Rose, scowling as he walked past reporters without making a comment. Alexander said the police were baffled about how I broke out of the cuffs. He said the police effort to track me down had been hampered by recent budget cuts that had left them short on manpower and had eliminated their K-9 Corps-their tracking dogs.

Then they want back to the video of me being led out to the cruiser in Centerville. I was wrapped up in the story now. I leaned forward in my chair, staring at the TV. I was trying to see if there was a picture of the man who’d broken my handcuffs. But no, there was just Detective Rose with his hand on my arm and then, just before I reached the car, the state troopers crowded around me, and the picture just became a blur of khaki.

I sat back. Keeping an eye on the television, I got myself a forkful of potatoes. I started to lift it to my mouth-but what I saw next made my hand freeze in midair.

There were my mom and dad. Right there on TV. They were standing outside a house in front of a lot of microphones. My dad had his arm around my mom’s shoulders. My mom was holding a tissue to her nose, crying. She was crying so hard that when she tried to speak, she couldn’t. It hurt to see her like that. I always hated it when she cried.

“I just want to say…” she began, but then the crying overcame her and my dad had to talk instead.

“We just want to ask the police-please, be careful. Don’t hurt our boy. He’s only eighteen. Please…”

And then, as I sat staring up at the TV, my dad had to stop talking, too, just like my mom. I’d never seen my dad cry before, not ever. I have to admit, it made tears come into my eyes as well.

I put my fork down on my plate with a shaking hand. I lowered my face until I could get myself under control.

But the shocks weren’t over.

Now the TV reporter said, “West’s girlfriend also had a message for the fugitive.”

I looked up quickly. My girlfriend? I had a girlfriend?

There on the TV screen-to my utter amazement- was Beth Summers. I couldn’t believe it. But it said so, right there in a caption under her face: “Beth Summers, killer’s girlfriend.”

My mouth fell open. I must’ve looked like an idiot, sitting there, staring at the screen with a big open mouth. But that was nothing compared to what I felt like inside. I mean, just to see her-Beth-just to see her face again, made me feel a strange ache inside me as if a hand had wrapped itself around my heart and made a fist. The curling honey brown hair framing her smooth face, her blue eyes, and just that sweetness in her expression that I could never describe… How long had it been since I’d seen her? A day? A year I couldn’t remember? Or what felt like a hundred years since I looked at the phone number she’d written on my hand and turned off the light in my bedroom and went to sleep?

Beth was sitting in a living room-hers, I guess, though I couldn’t remember ever having seen it. There was a reporter-maybe Alexander-sitting across from her. Now and then they would show his face and he would nod sympathetically as Beth spoke.

Beth’s eyes were filled with tears, but her voice was steady.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell Charlie right now?” Alexander said, in that syrupy voice reporters use when they want to sound like they care.

Beth nodded and took a deep breath. Then she looked straight at the camera-straight at me. “I’d like to tell him: Charlie, please, turn yourself in. I just don’t want you to get hurt or”-she had to swallow down her tears before she could go on-“or killed, you know? If you come back, we’ll keep fighting in the courts. I promise. We’ll make everyone see that you’re innocent, that you’d never murder anybody. And also, I just want you to know: I still believe in you. I still love you.”

The breath rushed out of me as if I’d been punched in the stomach. She loved me? Beth was my girlfriend and she loved me? How had that happened? When had it happened? How could I not remember? Had I held her hand? Had I kissed her? Had we taken walks together and told each other what we thought about and what we wanted to do with our lives? Was all that gone, gone out of my memory forever?

When they cut away from Beth to another picture, I wanted to reach out and grab the television and make it stop. I wanted to call to Beth’s image on the screen and beg it to stay there just a little longer so I could look at her. I wanted to say: “Don’t go. Don’t leave me here in this homeless shelter, hunted and alone. Say that you love me again.” But she was gone, and the story ended, and the newswoman behind the desk came back to talk about other things.

I felt so bad, so heartsick, I just rested my elbows on the table and put my hands over my face for a long time.

But after a while, I felt something. You ever do that trick, where you stare at the back of a guy’s head until he can feel it and it makes him turn around? Well, I felt that. I felt someone looking at me.

I lifted my eyes. I scanned the room. There he was: a man, watching me. He was one of the homeless guys, a white man in an old army jacket. He was bald and had a silver stubble of beard and a narrow face with sharp features. He was sitting at a table nearby, mopping up the last of his food with a piece of bread. But all the while he was swabbing the bread around on the plate, he wasn’t looking down at it. He was staring at me.

He recognized me. I could tell. He must’ve been watching the TV the same as me. He must’ve seen my picture. Then I guess he saw me and he knew who I was. At first, I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. I tried to tell myself that he wouldn’t go to the police, wouldn’t try to collect any reward that might be on offer. I was so tired, see. Tired of running, tired of being afraid. I didn’t want to leave the church shelter. I didn’t want to leave the warmth or the light or the kindness of the people behind the counter with their smiling faces. I didn’t want to leave the television set. I wanted to sit there and wait until another news program came on in case they showed Beth again and my parents. I didn’t want to go out into those cold streets where Detective Rose and the other police were searching for me. So I tried to tell myself that it was all right, that I could stay.

But it was no good. The old man kept watching me. I could almost hear his brain working behind his dull, grayish eyes. I knew that as soon as he could, he’d tell one of the shelter people about me or even find a phone and call the police.

You know who I thought about then? I thought about Alex. Alex Hauser. I thought back to that night we sat together in my mom’s car and talked, that night they say I followed him into the park and killed him. He was so sad that night, so sad and angry. He had lost his faith and he had lost his way. I remembered the things I had told him then. Things I had learned from my dad and from church and from Sensei Mike. I told him he had to keep on trying, to trust in the good things and never give in. I told him he had to keep on believing that God was there and that God knew where he was and would help him keep his spirit strong. Alex got angry at me because he said I didn’t understand how hard it was. And you know what? He was right. I didn’t understand. Not then.

But I understood now. It can be crazy hard. To keep your faith, to keep going. It can be harder than I ever would have imagined. Sometimes things happen to you, really bad things that aren’t fair, things that make you feel so terrible you’re not even sure who you are anymore or whether you’re right or wrong, good or bad. Sometimes you feel like there’s no one to turn to, and you’re all alone and so scared you can hardly move and so tired you just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep forever. I guess that’s kind of the way Alex felt that last night I saw him. And that’s the way I felt now.

But I guess I had one advantage over Alex. I guess in some way I’d been training for this time my whole life. I’d been training every day, even in simple things, little things. I trained to keep my mind sharp when I went to school. I trained in karate to keep my body and spirit strong. Even when I just went to church, or when I prayed by myself, it was a kind of training: I was training to remember that I was not alone. I was never alone.

Well, training was over now. This was the real deal. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of the shelter. I didn’t want to start running again in the night and in the cold.

But I had to. I had to.

I grabbed a roll off my plate and stuffed it in my pocket so I’d have something to eat later on. Then I got to my feet.

It was time to go.