“They just blubbered. They just sat there and they blubbered. And they apologized. And they blamed it on sin and the devil. And my father just nodded sympathetically like he understood. You know, like we can all get so caught up in our sin, we end up raping thirteen-year-olds in the woods. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’d been in a fog for days, but I could feel rage coming up in me. Pure rage. Was my dad really going to allow these bastards to explain it all away?
“Then he made all three of them get down on their knees, one after the other, and apologize. And I thought, well, that’s something. I liked seeing them on their knees. Then, we all sat down at the table again and they’re still crying, but now they’re doing it like they’re relieved, you know? Like it’s wrapping up and now that they’ve made it through, they’ll never make the mistake of raping a child for fun again. Promise. And that’s when my dad starts passing around this bottle of Dr Pepper and he says, Let’s share a drink together to show all is forgiven.
“And he drinks out of it, and then I drink out of it, and then they drink out of it, one after the other. And then, about thirty seconds later, all three of them are dead. The pill he gave me, you see, it protected me from the poison. He took one, too. It was quick, the poison. Real quick. Painless. At least it looked that way to me. I mean, those boys went down like a bag of rocks, each one. No thrashing. No seizures. No foaming at the mouth.”
Cole reaches out and takes a sip from the beer bottle. Donald’s eyes follow its journey from his mouth and back to the table again.
“You see, he was trying to teach me two things that day. One, that I would always be his son, no matter what. That he would always protect me no matter who I was on the inside or no matter how long I looked at a pretty boy in a pickup truck. But the second part, that was harder. He wanted me to sit at the table with him and see those boys, hear those boys, remember them as something more than my rapists, so that I could see the weight that would pull on his soul from that day forward. The vengeance that day was his, not mine. He was getting back at them for hurting his only son. But he was showing me what he’d have to remember for the rest of his life after he took theirs. Their sobs, their lies, their pathetic, desperate talk of sin and the devil. Vengeance is always possible, he said, but only if your memory can endure it. My father taught me a lot of valuable things in my life, but that was one of the best.”
He’s told this story as much for the father of Jordy Clements as he has for Charlotte Rowe. No doubt, she’s watched all of this through the TruGlass lenses sitting in his eyes, hopefully from someplace quiet and private in the closest thing she’s ever had to a hometown.
He lets the story settle, then he reaches out and pushes the bottle a little closer to the man sitting across from him.
“Drink your beer, Donald.”
IV
The less I know, the better, Cole said.
Fine.
But here’s what everyone thinks they know about the men who came to build a tunnel on the edge of our town.
A black Econoline van registered to their company and carrying Jordy Clements, Milo Simms, Bradley Kyle, Greg Burton, Peter Henricks, and Bertrand Davis was discovered crashed at the base of some cliffs halfway between here and Cambria. Evidence of a wild party, complete with drug paraphernalia, was discovered at a work site just off State Mountain Road 293. The assumption is they got good and wasted and then decided to go for an ill-advised joy ride, maybe to do a little barhopping down in Morro Bay or San Luis Obispo. On the way, they veered off the cliff and plunged hundreds of feet to their deaths.
According to the descriptions in the Tribune, the nearest local paper, the van was all but destroyed by the fall, and most of the bodies were blown out of it on impact. So it’s assumed that Mike Frasier, Ralph Peters, Manuel Lloya, and Tommy Grover, who are also still missing, were inside the van when it crashed, but it’s possible they were swept out to sea. The Tribune’s coverage has made no secret of the fact that Peter Henricks had recently quit the Altamira Sheriff’s Department and had been seen regularly in the company of Jordy and his crew. The implication is that he fell in with a bad crowd and ended up plunging to his death with them.
Here’s what I know that the papers don’t.
Mike Frasier, Ralph Peters, and Manuel Lloya were probably never placed inside the van because it would have been too hard to explain away their injuries by car wreck. Mike was speared by a tree branch, and Ralph Peters and Manuel Lloya were mutilated by technology that most people don’t even know exists.
And then there’s Lacey. I know they found her body in the same place they found Peter Henricks’s, but for some reason Cole’s men thought it was too big a risk to place her in the van as well. Which probably means she was shot, just like Tommy Grover said. No one seems to be looking for her. Not her family. Not old friends. Not old friends of Jordy’s. The ones that didn’t die with him in that van, that is. On balance, it sounds like she didn’t live what anyone would call a good life. But when she discovered a horror show in her backyard, she tried to stop it, and so she deserves some credit, goddammit. She deserves to have her memory honored even if it’s just by me.
In a few days, Marty and I are going to go up the mountain and say a few words for her near the shed. Maybe Luke will come, too, but we’re not going to pressure him. Not after what he went through up there.