The Never Game

Shaw thought back to the letter Eugene Young had written to his father. He asked Rodent, “So where’s Braxton now?”

Touché. A wrinkle in the pasty flesh between Rodent’s eyes. “What do you know about her?”

Well, one thing more than he’d known a few seconds ago.

Her...

The man’s mouth tightened slightly. He’d been gamed. He said nothing else about Ms. Braxton, whoever she might be.

“Lockbox. Let’s look inside.”

“Just a trap. Empty.” Being cuffed defeated Shaw’s tactic of disarming the intruder when he reached in and broke a finger. He thought of the irony, given his nickname for the intruder. The trap was a big one, meant for rats.

“I guessed. Could be a reverse trap. Not sure that makes sense but you get the idea.”

Shaw opened it.

Rodent’d already pulled out a small halogen flashlight, which he now used to peer into the safe. He seemed impressed with the booby trap.

Back into the kitchenette. “Where’s the envelope? Or we start with the pain. This is entirely up to you.”

“My wallet.”

“Wallet?... On the floor. Facedown.”

Shaw did as told and felt the man lay something soft against the back of his knee, then apply pressure.

“It’s the weapon.”

Shaw had guessed. It must be some kind of truly magic cloth if it could dull the sound of a .40 caliber pistol.

The man extracted the wallet and rolled Shaw over and upright.

“Behind the driver’s license.”

Rodent fished. “A claim check for a FedEx store on Alameda?”

“That’s it. They have the original of my father’s documents and two copies.”

It was in the strip mall that also contained the Salvadoran restaurant of the other day, with the coffee from Potrero Grande. After he’d left, on his way to Frank Mulliner’s, he’d taken the manuscript in to have the copies made. He’d decided to leave the job there for a few days just in case the police, at the behest of the Sociology Department, came a’calling. Plausible deniability.

“Any other copies?”

“None that I made.”

Eyes leaving Shaw for only a second at a time, Rodent extracted his phone and placed a call, explaining to whoever was on the other end about the FedEx store. He recited the claim number. He disconnected.

“It’s closed now,” Shaw said.

Rodent smiled. Silence, as he sent a text, presumably to someone else. His eyes scanned Shaw as if, were he to look away for a whole second, his captive would strike like a snake.

Finally, Shaw could wait no longer. He said, “October fifth. Fifteen years ago.”

Rodent paused, looking up from his phone, not a twitch of surprise in his eyes. His voice was no longer high as a taut violin string as he said, “We didn’t kill your father, Shaw.”

Shaw’s heart was thudding for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that he was looking down the barrel of a large pistol.

“This is all a big soup of a mystery to you, that’s pretty clear. And it should stay that way. I’ll tell you this: Ashton’s death was a... problem... for us. Pissed us off as much as you... Well, okay. That’s not fair... But you get my drift.”

Rodent texted some more.

Shaw was dismayed. His heart sank. Because this meant his nightmare had come true: his brother, Russell, was their father’s killer. He closed his eyes briefly. He could hear his brother’s voice as if the lanky man were in the room with them.

He’s taught us how to survive. Now we have to survive him...

Russell had committed the murder to save his siblings — and his mother too. She and Ashton had been virtually inseparable ever since they met forty years ago in the Ansel Adams Wilderness on the Pacific Crest, a National Scenic Trail extending from the Mexican border to Canada. Yet as his mind dissolved, the year or so before his death, Ashton grew suspicious of his wife too, occasionally thinking she was part of the conspiracy, whatever that was.

And what if saving his siblings and mother wasn’t the only motive? Shaw had long wondered too if there was a darker one. Had Russell’s resentment finally boiled over? Dorie and Colter were very young when the family moved. Neither remembered much, if anything, about life in civilization. Russell was ten; he’d had time to experience the frenetic, marvelous San Francisco Bay Area. He’d made friends. Then, suddenly, he was banished to the wilderness.

Angry all those years, never saying anything, the resentment building.

Russell was the reclusive one...

Rodent lowered his phone. “For what it’s worth, it was an accident.”

Shaw focused.

“Your father. We wanted him alive, Braxton wanted him dead — but not yet, not till she had what she wanted. She sent somebody to, well, talk to him about the documents.”

Talk. Meaning: torture.

“Near as we can piece it together, your father knew Braxton’s man was on his way to your Compound. Ashton tipped to him and led him off, was going to kill him somewhere in the woods. The ambush didn’t work. They fought. Your father fell.