“I understand that,” I said, but he may not have heard me. He continued as if he’d not.

“Marion wanted other children, of course, but I said no. I was still paying off med-school debt and barely had time enough for one child as it was. I was just too busy. That’s a hard thing for me to say, but there it is. She didn’t like it, mind you. But she accepted it.”

I watched shadows move on one side of the old man’s face as he looked back down, and the way he tilted the glass in his seamed and heavy fingers. How he watched light move through the shifting ice.

“Michael was three and a half years old when he died. It took the cancer seven months to kill him.” He looked up at me then, and I saw that his eyes were dry. That didn’t prevent the pain from showing through. “You don’t need the details of those months, Work. Suffice it to say, they were about as bad as a man could imagine. No one should live through times like that.” He shook his head and paused. When he spoke again his voice had waned. “But if Michael had not died, we never would have had William. That’s another hard thing to say, and most times I can’t look at it straight on, not like it was a trade. Michael is a memory now, an unfulfilled promise; but William is real and he’s been that way for almost fifty years. I can’t picture what my life would have been. Maybe it would have been better. I’ll never know. What I do know is the son I have, and I can’t separate that out.”

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this, Dr. Stokes.”

“Don’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not thinking very clearly right now.”

He leaned forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. I felt the heat of it, and the pull of his weathered, knowing eyes.

“Hell is not eternal, Work. Nor is it devoid of all hope. That’s what his death taught me, that you never know what’s waiting on the other side. For me, it was William. There’ll be something for you, too. All you need is faith.”

I considered his words. “I haven’t been to church in a long time,” I said, and felt the firm grip of his practiced hand as he climbed to his feet and leaned on my shoulder. The light was full on his face when he spoke.

“It doesn’t have to be that kind of faith, son.”

I walked behind him as we moved back through the house, and I stopped him at the door. “What kind of faith, then?” I asked.

He turned and patted me on the chest, above the heart. “Whatever gets you through,” he said.

CHAPTER 20

It was four in the morning, cold and damp. I stared at the hole, a rip in the earth, and a blacker black I’d never seen. Around it the world paled to gray, and I felt naked in that pallid light. I was squatting in weeds at the edge of the parking lot. A steep bracken-covered bank led down to the glint of water, and I heard it gurgle thickly around the storm-swept litter that had collected at the tunnel’s mouth. What remained of the mall was a hundred yards away. Like everything, it felt alien in the skeletal light, a crumbled fortress surrounded by dozers and trucks, hard-edged and immovable. I heard distant noise, but here it was hushed. Only the water spoke, and it did so in the tongue of twelve-year-old boys. It said, Come, enter, be afraid.

I’d parked behind the tire store that bordered the mall property. It was closed, of course, but other vehicles were parked there and the truck would arouse no suspicion. I’d dressed for the job, in dark clothes and rubber boots. I carried a bat, and if I’d owned a gun, I’d have been carrying that, too. I also had a heavy flashlight, but the batteries weren’t great. I hadn’t checked them until I’d gotten there, and I knew that if I left now for new ones, I might not return. Ever.

From my position, the creek ran diagonally under the parking lot. It passed within a hundred feet of the mall before angling away to Innes Street. The first storm drain was the one I wanted. It was opposite the entrance where Ezra had been found. It was where the gun had been tossed. I knew what was beneath that drain: a concrete shelf that rose like an altar, and a red-eyed memory waiting to unman me.

“Fuck it,” I said. “That was a long time ago.”

I blundered through the brush, my feet loose and dangerous beneath me. I fell once but was quickly back on my feet, and then I hit the water with a splash that sounded too loud. My face was scratched from the brambles, but I still had the flashlight, still had the bat.

I was committed. I had to move soon. Slim chance or not, a cop could come by at any second. If I was found there, it would be over. Too many questions and not enough answers. So this time the blackness and the tunnel were my friends, a sanctuary, but my breath was loud in the windless space between the high banks.

I’d sworn I’d never go back.

I turned on the light and stooped into the low entrance. It was smaller than I remembered, lower, more narrow. The water came to mid-shin, and the bottom felt the same, a mixture of rock and deep muck. I shone the light down the length of the tunnel; it stretched away, square and wet, then faded to gloom. There was a lot of old trash and dead branches, and in places I saw narrow tracks of mud that rose from the water like alligator backs. I ran my fingers along the wall. The concrete was slick and wet. I remembered it vividly, and thought of blood, tears, and screams. I tapped the bat against the wall and walked on.

After two dozen steps, the tunnel mouth was a dull metal square, like a quarter I’d put on the tracks as a kid and pulled from the gravel after the train had passed. Twenty more and even that was gone. I was deep in the throat, but my breathing sounded steady and my heart rate was normal. I felt strong, and realized that I should have done this years ago. It was free therapy, and part of me wanted to find the bastard that had damn near ruined me. But he was gone. He had to be.

I pushed on, and each step took me farther from those childhood terrors. But when I reached the shelf beneath the drain, it was bare. No gun. For a moment, I didn’t care. In the cone of weak yellow light, the shelf was stained, as if by blood, and I stared, seeing a past that rose like an apparition, sudden, vicious, and so real, I could touch it. And I lived it again-the fear, the pain, all of it. But this time it wasn’t about me. It was about her, and that’s what I saw-the sticky blood that had looked black on her thighs, her battered eyes, and the brief blue glimmer as she’d thanked me.

Dear God. Thanked me.

I grew dizzy, and then my hands were on the concrete, my fingers clawing as if to gouge out the past. But it was just concrete, and my fingers merely flesh. I thought of a child on a playground, yelling for a do-over. But this wasn’t childhood, and there were no do-overs. So I put it behind me, shoved it. Done is done.

I set the flashlight on the shelf and wiped at my mouth with the back of my sleeve. I plunged my hands into the water and felt along the bottom, my search becoming increasingly frantic. I found lots of mud and plenty of rocks, but no gun. The light flickered. I saw movement in the line where light met dark, a rat. Two of them, one crouched against the wall, one swimming against the current.

I dropped to my knees and widened the search. It had to be there! If it had entered the water, it shouldn’t have gone far. There wasn’t much current. But I thought about storms, and the heavy runoff that carried trash and dead branches so far into the tunnel. Could it carry a gun, too? Sweep it away?

I rocked back on my heels, shone the light down the tunnel; it ran for half a mile before exiting on the other side of the lot. A long way.

I looked for the rats. One was gone. The other seemed to watch me with something like contempt.

Maybe Max was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t the right storm drain. Maybe the gun wasn’t here at all. Someone might have found it. If I were looking for a place to smoke crack, this would be as good as any. People must find their way into this place from time to time.