The Goodbye Man
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #2
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53597-3
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Goodbye Man». Краткое содержание книги:
“I don’t know, about four hundred.”
“Not bad.”
A moment of debate apparently. “Okay, actually, it was yards.”
A quarter mile straight down.
Shaw said, “You get the trophy.”
They sat in silence for a moment, until Victoria stretched and winced, as the shoulder took some unexpected stress.
“Think I’m feeling tired,” she said.
He was too.
Shaw walked her to the bedroom that had been Dorie’s. The decorations were mostly prints of Native Americans, wild animals, dogs and, for some reason, old-time locomotives, which his sister had been obsessed with as a girl.
When they stopped, Victoria turned to face Shaw. Her maneuver was of a certain caliber, sure and unmistakable. She lifted her hair away from her face. Colter Shaw put his hand on her good shoulder, leaned slightly down, and kissed her firmly. She pressed fully into him. Chase was gazing at them with that look of blended understanding and confusion that only dogs can muster. After a too-brief quarter minute, Victoria eased away.
“’Night,” she whispered and walked into her room.
83
June 22
The weather in Gig Harbor had changed considerably from the last time he’d been here.
The sun was brilliant, not a wisp of fog or cloud to be seen. The green swath of pine was radiant, the water blue as sapphire.
Shaw steered the Winnebago through the entrance gate. The two pillars holding the cast-iron panels were crowned with angels made of concrete. The poor creatures were grimy and their wings weather-smoothed.
He braked to a stop and scanned the grounds. The battered, green pickup truck he sought was not far away. He steered toward it and parked behind. Taking an 8-by-10 envelope from the seat beside him, he climbed out of the camper and walked up to the man who stood over a new grave.
“Mr. Harper.”
The broad-shouldered man appeared startled, apparently not having heard the camper arrive and park. He frowned, thought a moment. “Shaw.”
Adam’s was a simple tombstone. Name and the dates of birth and death. No angels, no bas-reliefs like in the Study Room in the Foundation’s camp.
The name on the neighboring tombstone was Kelly Mae Harper.
Shaw said, “There’s something I want to tell you.”
A shrug of the man’s big shoulders.
“When Adam was away for those three weeks, after your wife died?”
Stan Harper’s response was a tip of his head.
“You said when he came back his moods were better.”
“Was like when he was a kid, when he was happy. His troubles didn’t hit until he was a teenager. What’s any of this matter, Shaw?” A glance toward the grave at his feet. A ragged: “He’s gone.”
“Those three weeks he was away? He was in a cult.”
“Cult?”
“It’s been in the news. Osiris Foundation.”
Looking blankly at the ground, Stan muttered, “And?”
“What the cult taught was that after we die we come back.”
“Like... reincarnation?”
Shaw said, “Something like that.”
“And Adam believed it?”
“Yes, he did. It gave him comfort. Before he died he was convinced he’d be with his family again. In another life. His mother, you.”
Harper grunted a laugh. Shaw couldn’t tell what his reaction to this odd news might really be.
“That’s all bullshit. All of it. The church too. Heaven, hell. Way I feel anyway. After Kelly.”
“It meant something to Adam.”
Stan was silent.
“Here.” Shaw handed him the envelope. Harper looked inside and extracted Adam’s Osiris Foundation notebook, the one Frederick had given him.
Harper glanced at the cover. The Process.
“It was Adam’s. Like a diary. He wrote down his thoughts and memories. What he liked about his life, what he didn’t.”
The bad feelings — anger, fear, sorrow — and the good ones — joy, love, comfort. We call them — how clever is this? The Minuses and the Pluses...
Shaw had skimmed it. The passages weren’t very grammatical, they rambled and ranted. There were irrelevant doodles. But some of the Pluses included memories of times spent with his father.
“I don’t want it. Why would I want it?” He stuffed the notebook in the envelope and handed it back, then glanced down to the grave. “Don’t know why I came. Thought I’d feel something. Thought I’d think something.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Harper.”
The man didn’t reply.
Shaw started back to the Winnebago. He was halfway there when he heard. “Hold on.”
Harper was walking up to him. “Maybe I’ll hold on to that. Just... Well, maybe I will.”
Shaw handed the envelope to him.
Harper took it and returned to his pickup, fishing keys from his pocket.
84
The Winnebago was parked in a Walmart lot near Tacoma.
Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, Shaw was at the dinette, on which sat a thick file folder he’d labeled Ashton Shaw Material. The map of the San Francisco Bay Area that sat on the top was wrinkled and stained. Shaw was looking over the eighteen X’s, most of them in the north — Marin County and on up into wine country. Napa, Sonoma.
The map included here indicates the locations in the city that might contain — or lead to — the evidence Gahl hid.
He was sipping a fine Honduran coffee, which was laced with just the right amount of milk. That was always a question: too little was fixable, too much not.
There was a rapping on the door.
“Mr. Shaw? It’s Sue Bascomb.”
Shaw slipped the map into the file and opened the door. The camper sagged slightly as she climbed in. The stocky woman was wearing a dark green, long-sleeved dress and black cardigan sweater.
He offered her coffee, which she declined, and they sat at the small table. She asked questions she’d prepared. He answered into a recording app on her phone, and she took notes as well. Shaw declined to give any personal information and, of course, said nothing about Victoria.
He did report in detail on the beating of the reporter Klein and the horrific murder of John. He said nothing specific about Abby, though he described sexual assaults in general. These details seemed to interest her the most.
After a half hour, she said, “That’s very good, Mr. Shaw.”
“‘Colter’ is fine.”
“Helpful. Quite helpful.” She then flipped through her notes and seemed about to ask another question, a follow-up perhaps, when they heard a shout from the parking lot.
They both rose to their feet quickly. “There’s a fire, a car,” she said, peering through the shade. Shaw grabbed one of the extinguishers he kept near the driver’s seat and pushed outside.
An SUV nearby was engulfed in flames, smoke spiraling skyward like a black tornado. It took him back immediately to John’s horrific death, which he’d just been recounting.
People were running from the store and their own cars to see what was happening.
“There’s somebody inside! Look!”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“Stand back! It could blow up!”
Shaw hurried to the vehicle and let fly a stream of extinguisher foam. It didn’t do much, though it did suppress a portion of the flames long enough to make it clear that the SUV was unoccupied. What someone had taken for a human was just a stack of packages.
There were several loud pops.
“Those’re bullets!” a man cried, and people fled.
Shaw didn’t bother to tell them that, no, that’s not what burning bullets sound like. What they’d heard was probably food jars exploding.