We Begin at the End
Chris Whitaker
For my readers, who have come with me to Tall Oaks, Grace and now Cape Haven. When I’m struggling, you keep me striving.
YOU SEE SOMETHING AND YOU raise your hand.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a cigarette paper or a soda can. You see something and you raise your hand.
Don’t touch it, neither.
Just raise your hand.
The townspeople readied, their feet in the ford. Movement in line, twenty paces between, a hundred eyes down, but still, they held together, the choreography of the damned.
Behind, the town emptied, the echo of a long, pristine summer had been smothered by the news.
She was Sissy Radley. Seven years old. Blond hair. Known to most, Chief Dubois did not need to hand out photographs.
Walk held the furthest side. Fifteen and fearless, his knees shook with each step.
They marched the woodland like an army, cops led, flashlights swept, through the trees was the ocean, a long way down but the girl could not swim.
Beside Walk was Martha May. They had dated three months, confined to first base, her father was minister at Little Brook Episcopal.
She glanced over. “Still want to be a cop?”
Walk stared at Dubois, head down, last hope on his shoulders.
“I saw Star,” Martha said. “At the front with her father. She was crying.”
Star Radley, the missing girl’s sister. Martha’s best friend. They were a tight group. Only one was absent.
“Where’s Vincent?” she asked.
“I was with him before. He might be on the other side.”
Walk and Vincent were close like brothers. At nine they’d cut palms, pressed them together and sworn oaths of classless loyalty.
They said nothing more, just watched the ground, past Sunset Road, past the wishing tree, Chuck Taylors parting leaves. Walk focused so hard but still, he almost missed it.
Ten steps from Cabrillo, State Route One, six hundred miles of California coast. He stopped dead, then looked up and saw the line move on without him.
He crouched.
The shoe was small. Red and white leather. Gold-tone buckle.
A car on the highway slowed as it came, headlights traced the curve till they found him.
And then he saw her.
He took a breath and raised his hand.
Part One
The Outlaw
1
WALK STOOD AT THE EDGE of a feverish crowd, some he’d known since his birth, some since theirs. Vacationers with cameras, sunburn and easy smiles, not knowing the water was stripping more than timber.
Local news set up, a reporter from KCNR. “Can we get a word, Chief Walker?”
He smiled, shoved his hands deep in his pockets and looked to thread his way through when the people gasped.
Fragmented noise as the roof caved and crashed to the water below. Piece by piece, the foundation lay crude and skeletal, like the home was no more than a house. It had been the Fairlawn place since Walk could remember, a half-acre from the ocean when he was a kid. Taped off a year back, the cliff was eroding, now and then the people from California Wild came and measured and estimated.
The stir of cameras and indecent excitement as slates rained and the front porch clung. Milton, the butcher, dropped to one knee and fired off a money shot as the flag pole leaned and the banner hung in the breeze.
The younger Tallow boy got too close. His mother pulled his collar so hard he tumbled back onto his ass.
Behind, the sun fell with the building, dissecting the water with cuts of orange and purple and shades without name. The reporter got her piece, seeing off a patch of history so slight it barely counted.
Walk glanced around and saw Dickie Darke, who looked on, impassive. He stood like a giant, close to seven feet tall. A man into real estate, he owned several houses in Cape Haven and a club on Cabrillo, the kind of den where iniquity cost ten bucks and a small chunk of virtue.
They stood another hour, Walk’s legs tired as the porch finally gave up. Onlookers resisted the urge to applaud, then turned and made their way back, to barbeque and beer and firepits that waved flamelight on Walk’s evening patrol. They drifted across flagstone, a line of gray wall, dry laid but holding strong. Behind was the wishing tree, a major oak so wide splints held its limbs. The old Cape Haven did all it could to remain.
Walk had once climbed that tree with Vincent King, in a time so far from now it too would barely count. He rested a shaking hand on his gun, the other on his belt. He wore a tie, his collar stiff, his shoes shined. His acceptance of place was admired by some, pitied by others. Walker, captain of a ship that did not ever leave port.
He caught sight of the girl, moving against the crowd, her brother’s hand in hers as he struggled to match her pace.
Duchess and Robin, the Radley children.
He met them at half run because he knew all there was to know about them.
The boy was five and cried silent tears, the girl had just turned thirteen and did not ever cry.
“Your mother,” he said, not a question but a statement of such tragic fact the girl did not even nod, just turned and led.
They moved through dusk streets, the lull of picket fences and fairy lights. Above the moon rose, guided and mocked, as it had for thirty years. Past grand houses, glass and steel that fought the nature, a vista of such terrible beauty.