He didn’t answer. He slowed for a speed trap, easing through Evansville right on the nose at thirty miles per hour.
Soon the Kia was back up to sixty-five.
Picturing the brunette, her reaction. And the others’ glazed, sheeplike gazes as they looked at the corpse far below. Shaw asked, “The people Adam called to get you? Did he mention who they were?”
“I don’t remember if he did. I didn’t pay much attention when he was on the phone.” Erick’s lips tightened. “I’m going to go to jail, aren’t I?” He wiped his eyes again.
Colter Shaw had once thought of practicing law. When the family, for their own safety, abandoned the San Francisco Bay Area for eastern California, his father had carted along hundreds of books, many of them legal volumes. As a boy, Colter devoured them. He liked casebooks in particular, the compilations of trial decisions, many of which read like short stories.
From his knowledge of criminal law, Shaw knew Erick was in trouble, certainly, even if his story was true. At a minimum: flight, obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting, but he’d have a good chance of acquittal or a suspended sentence. His prints would not be on the Smith & Wesson. The police might find the janitor’s gun and could locate the bullets in the ground near where Adam and Erick had been. Under interrogation, the janitor—if he lived—or the lay preacher might recant their account and tell the truth. There might be witnesses supporting Erick’s story.
Shaw said, “You’ll have your day in court.”
“Lawyers’re expensive, aren’t they?”
“Good ones are.”
This discouraged him. He asked, “How far to home?”
“An hour, little under.”
“I’m going to sleep, I think.”
“Are the restraints too tight?”
“No.”
“I have to leave them on.”
“Sure.” The young man closed his eyes.
Shaw pulled his phone out of his pocket and, hesitating only a moment, placed a call.
“Hello.”
“Is this Stan Harper?”
“Yeah. Help you?”
“It’s Colter Shaw. I talked to you earlier about your son.”
“I remember.”
Shaw had had these conversations several times in his career. There was no way to buffer them. “Mr. Harper … I’m sorry to have to tell you that Adam died an hour ago.”
No response.
“He took his own life.”
“What?” A gasp.
“I was going to bring him and Erick in to surrender to the police.”
“But you said …” The voice faded.
“I know I did. I’m sorry.”
I want to get Adam back safe …
“Did he shoot himself?” Perhaps the thought of a son using his father’s own weapon to end his life was unbearable.
“No, he jumped off a cliff.”
“Jumped?” The voice said he didn’t understand.
“The police will be in touch so you can make arrangements.” When the man said nothing more, Shaw continued, “Mr. Harper, I’ve been speaking to Erick Young. It’s possible they were both innocent.”
“They didn’t burn the cross, didn’t shoot anybody?”
“Adam fired, yes, but it might have been self-defense.”
“So he would have gotten off?”
“Seems likely, or been convicted on minor charges.”
“Then why did my son kill himself?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
Silence rolled up. Through the phone Shaw could hear a ship’s horn, the caw of an angry seagull.
“Mr. Harper?”
Five more seconds of silence, then the man disconnected.
Y ou ever feel that way, Mr. Shaw …
As he drove, Shaw silently responded to Erick Young: More often than that, actually.
Colter Shaw and Erick Young shared this in common: mourning for their brothers. Dead, in Erick’s case. As for Shaw’s, Russell was long gone, though dead or alive, Shaw had no clue.
Ashton and Mary Dove’s three children assumed very different personalities. Their daughter, Dorion, the youngest, was the clever one. Colter was the restless one. Russell, the oldest, was the reclusive one.
Ashton Shaw died years ago—ironically, just like Adam Harper, tumbling from a cliff in a foreboding place known as Echo Ridge. That death, however, had decidedly not been a suicide. Not long after their father’s funeral, Russell had disappeared. Colter Shaw made a living by finding people, and he was good at this profession. Yet Russell had managed to elude him since that day. Neither Mary Dove nor Dorion had had any contact with son or brother in all those years either.
A father’s loss is tragic, especially under suspicious circumstances. At the end of his life, though, Ashton was growing increasingly demented and paranoid. Shaw—a teenager during those times—recalled moments when the man grew dark and dangerous. His death may have been premature but it seemed a natural conclusion to the complicated life he’d embraced in his later years.
Russell’s disappearance had been much harder on Shaw. The absence was bad enough but aggravating that sorrow were certain questions. First, was he alive or dead? Mourning is a different process in each instance.
And then there was the so-very-difficult question of what drove Russell away from the family.
Shaw had resigned himself to the fact that his brother was gone forever and did what he could to cope with that pain. He’d noted how hopeful Erick had sounded when he talked about this group, the Foundation, and how their brand of therapy might dull the loss. Treatment like that, however, was not a remedy that had any appeal whatsoever to Colter Shaw.
Odd how a rewards job in the wilderness of Washington State triggered memories and emotions with roots from a very different life, in a very different era.
Ah, Russell … Where are you? What are you doing at this moment?
If you’re doing anything at all.
Now, as Erick dozed beside him in the sedan, Shaw piloted the smooth-driving vehicle west.
Forty-five minutes to Tacoma.
His brother and father occupied his thoughts for a good portion of the drive.
Other images intruded occasionally. The group of curious men and women in their blue and black garb.
The brunette in particular, her run-in with the thickset bully.
And, of course, Adam Harper.
Whose death rested squarely at Colter Shaw’s feet.
He thought it best to take Erick Young directly to the Pierce