Page 23 of Never Flinch

“Yes, but we can’t read them. They’re in the hands of the corpses, who were having a little hard seltzer party behind a laundromat in Breezy Point before this dirtbag showed up and shot them. We’ll know what they are after the forensics people get here and do their thing. What are you thinking about?”

“Have you located Letitia Overton yet?”

“No. Soon, I hope.”

“When you do, ask her if she was on the jury that convicted Alan Duffrey.”

Silence at the other end.

“Iz? Are you there?”

“Fuuuck,” Izzy whispers. “Twelve people on a felony-count jury. That’s what you’re thinking?”

“Yes,” Holly says, then hastens to add: “It’s only a guess, but if you add in the judge… plus the prosecutor… you get…”

“Fourteen,” Izzy says.

“Itcouldonly be thirteen—the letter isn’t clear, maybe on purpose—but I think it’s fourteen. Or the guilty one could be Cary Tolliver. That makes logical sense.” She thinks that over and then says, “Mr. Tolliver is dying, but it could still be him.”

“I’ll find out about Overton, also about the names these two dead men have in their hands. You can’t say anything about this, Holly. If Lieutenant Warwick finds out I put you in the loop…”

Holly runs a finger across her lips. Then, because Izzy can’t see that: “Mum’s the word. But if it should prove out, the fish tacos are on you the next time we’re in Dingley Park.”

7

Trig beavers away at work for the rest of the afternoon. He waits for the cops to come and arrest him for the double murder behind the Washee-Washee. He’s sure he wasn’t seen, yet the idea—the result of too manyCSIepisodes, maybe—lingers, but his only visitor is Jerry Allison, the elderly head janitor in his building. Jerry feels he can drop by for a chat—with Trig, or anyone else—any old time he likes, because he’s been pushing a broom and waxing floors here since Reagan was president, as he’s happy to tell anyone, and at length.

After work, Trig gets in his car and drives thirty miles to Upsala, where there’s a meeting called the Twilight Hour that he sometimes attends.

On the way, a marvelous thing happens: his free-floating anxiety lifts. His sense of doubt about his ability to complete his mission also lifts. Unless he makes a mistake, the police won’t be able to find a trail leading to him, even if (when) they realize what he’s doing, because his targets are completely random. Yes, he knew about the Buckeye Trail, but so do thousands of others. Yes, he knew that those winos sometimes drank behind the laundromat, because he saw them on one of his scouting expeditions after the death of Alan Duffrey and Cary Tolliver’s horrible confession on that Buckeye Brandon podcast. There are only eleven to go. It is important to carry through. When he’s finished, the world will know that when an innocent man dies, the innocent must also die. It’s the only atonement that is perfect.

“Because then the guilty suffer,” he says as he pulls into the parking lot of the Upsala Congregational Church. “Right, Daddy-O?” Not thatTrig’sDaddy-O suffered. No; that was the son’s job.

I’ll wait a bit before taking the next one. A week, maybe even two. Give myself a breather, and give them time to realize the why of it.

In a way that’s funny, because it’s what he always thought about the drinking:I’ll take a week off, stay sober, just to prove I can do it.But this is different, of course it is, and the idea of taking time off lifts a weight from him.

He goes downstairs to the church basement, where folding chairs have been set up and the ever-present urn of coffee is chuffing out its pleasant aroma. His upbeat mood holds through the reading of the AA “Preamble,” and “How It Works.” It holds through the reading of “The Promises,” and after the rhetorical question “Are these extravagant promises?” he chants,We think notalong with the rest. It holds through the chairman’s drunkalogue, which follows the usual pattern—rum followed by ruin, ruin followed by redemption. It holds until the chairman asks if anyone has a topic they’d like to discuss, and a burly man—someone Trig knows well, even though the burly man is in the front row and Trig himself is sitting in back—raises his hand and lumbers to his feet. “I’m Reverend Mike.”

“Hi, Reverend Mike,” the alkies and druggies respond.

Tell them you love God, but—

“I love God, but otherwise I’m just another fiend,” Reverend Mike says, and just like that, Trig’s upbeat mood collapses.Maybe it was just a freak rush of endorphins, after all, he thinks.

It’s true that the Rev is apt to show up at any meeting (although rarely this far out in the williwags), always standing so everyone can see him, running his mouth, going on at great length. For him to be at the Twilight Hour just after Trig has killed the two winos… that seems like a bad omen. Theworstomen.

“As Chapter Seven of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us…” The Rev then goes on to quote, verbatim, from said chapter. Trig disconnects from this declamation (and judging by the glazed eyeballs he sees around him, he’s not alone), but not from the Rev himself. He remembers Reverend Mike catching him after a Straight Circle meeting sometime in late winter or early spring. Saying Trig had sounded upset when he shared.

How had he replied to that?

It was hard to remember exactly, especially while Big Book Mike is still holding the floor and spreading the polysyllables. Hadn’t Trig said he’d lost someone very recently? Yes, and that part was all right, only then he’d told the Rev that the someone he’d lost died in lockup.

I didn’t say that!

Except Trig is pretty sure he did.

Even so, he’ll never remember, and what difference would it make even if he did?

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