“Well?” Harry said.

  “The boy’s name is Luther Wilkins. He’s still in surgery. We’ll know more later. The ER doctor says his signs were good, brain activity strong.”

  “And Errol?”

  “Minor bruising to his chest. Nothing much, but he’ll get a story to tell out of it. Never been shot at before.”

  “He did good in there. Moved fast. The kid panicked. There was nothing he could have done about that.”

  “He wouldn’t be moving very fast now if he hadn’t been wearing that vest. You should have had one too.”

  “Next time, I will.”

  Ray drank coffee.

  “I don’t think there’ll be a next time,” he said. He set the cup down. “At least not there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t imagine that old man is going to invite us back. I don’t think he was one hundred percent in favor of us to start with.”

  “So why were we there?”

  “A dozen robberies at black businesses in Neptune and Asbury since August, no arrests in any of them. The Citizens Crime Watch Committee decided to pool their money, hire private security. I quoted them a good rate. It was important to them, I think, to go to a black firm.”

  “And then the white guy shows up and all hell breaks loose.”

  “There’s some will look at it that way, sure. Doesn’t make them right.” He gestured to the waitress, who returned with the coffeepot, poured for both of them. “I’ve been rotating three two-man teams out of seven different businesses for a month, and that’s the first time anything’s happened.”

  “So you’re going to retire me?”

  “Hell, it’s not like you did anything wrong. You probably saved a couple lives in there. But the neighborhood people … they can get unduly sensitive about white police in their midst. Even ex-police.”

  “I understand.”

  “After tonight, what actually happened in there won’t matter. There’ll be at least two other stories about it floating around on the street.”

  “In both of which, I’m at fault.”

  “This is a rumor community,” Ray said. “Word-of-mouth. People don’t always read the papers. And when they do, they don’t necessarily believe what they read anyway. Black folks have a long history of mistrusting authority. Can you blame them?”

  “So this isn’t exactly a public relations coup for you. That what you’re telling me?”

  “Not what I said. I’m happy—grateful even—you took me up on the offer to come work with me. But maybe we should rethink this particular situation.”

  Harry sat back.

  “Don’t sweat it, Ray. I’m fine. You don’t need to go out of your way for me.”

  “Did I say I was? We’ll find something else for you to do. It isn’t a problem.”

  “But is it worth it?”

  Ray didn’t answer, put his cup down.

  Harry looked out at the rain.

  “This weather’s getting to me.”

  “Heard from Cristina?”

  Harry shook his head.

  “A letter about three weeks ago, that was it. Nothing since.”

  “You try to call her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “When she’s ready, she’ll call me.”

  “With all that happened between you two, I can understand her wanting to get away, get some things clear in her head. But you act like she’s never coming back. Like it’s already a lost cause.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “You should listen to yourself. You think you were going to come back here, do the happily-ever-after thing just like that? You got the crap beat out of you, got your arm broken, her husband got murdered. Not exactly your normal courtship.”

  “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “You were doing well for a while, partner, and now you’re sliding again. I can see it, hear it in your voice.”

  Harry shrugged.

  “You ever consider seeing someone?” Ray said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To talk with. You know.”

  “A therapist? I did for a while, a few years back. After Melissa died.”

  “And?”

  “It was good for me at the time, I guess. But after a few weeks I felt like we were just going in circles. The pills didn’t help either.”

  “What they give you?”

  “Something called Paxil. I took it three times, flushed the rest down the toilet.”

  “Maybe you should go back. Find a different doctor.”

  Harry shook his head.

  “Where did you say she was?” Ray said.

  “Seattle. She has a cousin there.”

  “And how long’s she been gone?”

  “Two months this week.”

  Ray looked down at his cup.

  “If I were you …”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d go out there. Show up on her doorstep. Sometimes that’s what women need, a gesture.”

  “Maybe I’m all gestured out.”

  Ray took out his wallet.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive you back to the store, let you get your car. Then I’ll call the hospital again. I have the feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

  There were still a handful of patrolmen at the liquor store, but Odell and the other detectives had gone. One cop had a roll of yellow crime scene tape, was waiting for the others to finish up before sealing the place off.

  The Mustang was intact. Standing in the rain, Harry got his keys out, unlocked the driver’s-side door.

  Ray slid the Camry’s window halfway down.

  “Give me a call tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  Harry nodded, got behind the wheel. As he started the engine, he looked up, saw the uniforms watching him from inside the store. The cop with the crime scene tape gave him the finger.

  The rain had slackened by the time he reached Colts Neck. He pulled up the long slope of driveway, left the Mustang in the side yard, not having the energy to push open the barn door, park inside. He was shivering now, with cold and post-adrenaline hangover.

  In the kitchen, the answering machine was dark. He played the tape back anyway, listened to it beep, hiss, click, shut off again.

  He hung the wet windbreaker on a peg by the back door. He’d left the .38 with Ray. He wouldn’t need it anytime soon. And he didn’t want it in the house.

  There was half a bottle of red wine left on the counter. He filled a glass, took it with him upstairs. In the bathroom, he stripped off his clothes, tossed them into the corner, the hamper already full. He turned the shower on hot, set the glass on the sink and climbed into the needling spray, felt it loosen the muscles in his back and neck.

  After a few minutes, he grew sleepy, twisted off the faucets. He got out, toweled off, took his first sip of wine. Almost instantly he felt his stomach clench, the nausea rise.

  He barely made it to the sink. His vomit was thin and watery, dark from the coffee. He gagged as it came up, gripped the edges of the sink. When it was over, he ran water, drank from the faucet, spit and drank some more. He wiped at his face with a towel, then poured the rest of the wine into the sink. It splashed like blood on the porcelain. He left the glass there, walked naked and cold down the hall to his unmade bed.

  There were traces of her everywhere: her jewelry box and makeup case on the dresser, a Chinese-print robe hanging from the back of the bedroom door. She had worn it the morning she’d left, hung it on the door before getting dressed. He’d left it there ever since, untouched. When he’d gotten back from taking her to the airport, the sight of it had made him cry.

  He dressed for bed, sweatpants and T-shirt, listening to the wind. The farmhouse was more than a hundred years old, had belonged to his grandparents and their parents before them. No matter how much insulating or weather-stripping he did, the cold found a thousand places to enter. The hardwood floor was like ice beneath his bare feet.

  In the hallway, he turned the thermostat up, heard the furnace thump and rumble in the basement. He got into bed, switched the nightstand lamp off, lay back on the sheets. When he closed his eyes he saw the muzzle flash of the .22, the kid’s legs giving way, the blood on the floor.

  After a while, he looked at the nightstand clock, saw it was almost three. He got out of bed, went down the hall to the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet was the Percocet bottle, two months past its expiration date. There were about a dozen left. He shook one out, snapped it in half, swallowed it with a palmful of water.

  He’d needed her tonight, more than ever. Needed her to be here, needed her to care about what had happened. To tell him that everything would be all right, whether either of them believed it or not.

  When he went back to bed, the sheets had already given up their warmth. He pulled the comforter across him, trembling with cold and more, closed his eyes and let the night take him.

  4

  It was in Jamesburg that he first saw the valley. He was fourteen and it was his second jolt there, nine months for aggravated assault.

  How it had happened, why the vision had come to him, Johnny didn’t know. He’d been in isolation, a one-bed cell, after his second fight in as many weeks. Lying on the thin mattress, coils pushing through it, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the noises that filtered in from the hallway: yelling, the blare of a TV from the common room and, from the cell next door, the steady crying of a young boy.

  The vision came suddenly. A mountain green with trees, so green nothing could be seen through them. He saw it as a bird might, swooping easily, silently. And there, at the base of the mountain, was the Valley, white with mist.

  It had calmed him, settled him. And after a while he had tuned out the noise, tuned out that world. His cell had vanished. He was borne on the wind, dropping slowly into the comfort of the Valley.

  Where the vision came from, he never knew. But it had come to stay. There in Jamesburg and later on, in other cells. In Glades, there had been times when the idea of spending a single night more behind those walls made him want to open his own throat with the homemade knife he’d kept beneath his mattress. It was those nights he would close his eyes, listen to his own breathing, find himself floating above the mist, the trees.

  Later he found he could do it almost anywhere, in seconds, even with his eyes open. In the cafeteria, the weight room, the showers. The vision steadied him, soothed him, told him he would survive. That, no matter what, the Valley and its peace always waited for him.

  When the train pulled into Newark, he opened his eyes, felt the Valley fade. The doors had slid open, people were moving down the aisle. A chill breeze blew through the car. He got up, stretched his legs, took the duffel down from the overhead rack.

  Home again, he thought. The longest he’d ever been away. But everything was different now. He was different. And nothing would ever be the same.

  He knocked twice on the trailer door with his fist, loud enough to wake anyone inside. He listened, did it again.

  On the street behind him, the cab driver was watching, restless. He knocked a third time, waited, heard a muffled, “Who the fuck is that?” from inside.

  It was ten-thirty in the morning. He knew Mitch would be asleep, unless he was still partying from the night before. Johnny knocked again, louder.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Open the door.”

  Movement inside, then locks being undone. He stepped back, waited. The door opened out a few inches, the length of the chain. His brother looked out at him, unshaven and bleary-eyed, most of him still hidden behind the door.

  “Hey,” Johnny said.

  “Son of a bitch. Hang on.”

  The door closed and the chain slid off. Johnny turned and waved at the driver. He pulled away, happy to be out of there.

  Mitch opened the door wide.

  “Come in, man, come in.”

  Johnny slung his duffel over his shoulder. Mitch wore jeans, a white T-shirt, was barefoot. He stepped aside as Johnny came in.

  The front room was a mess. Clothes on the floor and furniture. An ashtray full of cigarette butts and burned-out roaches. The smell of stale incense and last night’s pot hung in the air.

  “You should’ve called me, man,” Mitch said as he closed and locked the door behind him. “I could have picked you up. How’d you get here?”

  “Train,” Johnny said, looking around. There was a widescreen TV in one corner, a stack of unopened stereo component boxes beside it. A tumble of videotapes and DVDs on the floor, kids’ movies, a handful of titles he recognized—Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid. Seven years inside had given him a sense of order and space, of organization. He had lived like this himself once, but now what he saw offended him.

  “Let me take your bag, man.”

  Johnny let him take the duffel, unzipped his black field jacket. Somewhere in Delaware, he’d stolen it from the train’s overhead rack, bundled it beneath his arm and carried it back to his own car. Three people had watched him, but no one said anything. It was a size too big, but he was grateful for its warmth.

  “You got my letter, right?” Johnny said.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d be here so soon, bro. I mean, if I knew …”

  “It’s okay.”

  Mitch, still slow with sleep, set the duffel in a corner, began to gather discs and tapes off the floor, stuff them into an open compartment in the TV console.

  Johnny heard movement behind him, turned to see a black woman standing in the doorway that led to the back of the trailer. She was in her early twenties, thin, her once-dreadlocked hair now matted and lank. She held a blue terry-cloth robe closed around her, but a small rip on one side showed a patch of mocha thigh. From a room beyond came the sound of another TV, cartoons.

  She looked at him, said nothing.

  “Sharonda,” Mitch said. “Go get dressed.”

  She looked at him, then back at Johnny. She slowly pushed off from the door frame, turned and went back down the hall.

  “Go on, man. Have a seat.”

  Johnny slipped the jacket off, dropped it on the arm of the sofa. He moved a stuffed dog aside, sat down.

  “I was expecting you to call, man,” Mitch said. He sat on a recliner opposite the couch. “I would have made you something to eat or …”

  Johnny shook his head. He’d slept little on the train and the fatigue was on him now. He rubbed the stubble on his chin, took off the Marlins cap, set it beside him.

  “Oh, man,” Mitch said. “What happened to you?”

  “Shaved it all off.” He ran a hand through his thin hair. “In Glades.”

  “What for?”

  Before he could answer, there was a noise in the hall. Johnny turned to see a black girl of about six standing there, wearing pink zip-up pajamas, bows tied in the rattails of her hair. She looked at him, rubbed sleep from an eye.

  “Hi, there,” he said to her. “How you doing?”

  She looked back at him without expression. Sharonda appeared in the hallway behind her, dressed now in jeans and a knee-length blue and gold basketball jersey. She took the girl by the hand, gave Johnny a look he couldn’t read, then wheeled them both back down the hall and into a bedroom. He watched her go, heard a door close.

  “Yours?” Johnny said.

  “What? Treya? Oh, no, man. Sharonda had to leave her place. I’m just letting her stay here a few days. It’s not what it looks like.”

  “I couldn’t care less, Mitchy.”

  “I know, I’m just saying—”

  “You should crack a window, let some air in.”

  Mitch got up quickly, went to the window beside the front door, undid the latch and fought with the pane until it opened. Cold air wafted in.

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, bro,” Mitch said. “Let me get you a beer.” He started toward the kitchen.

  “Little early for that. Maybe later.”

  Mitch sank back down in the chair. He leaned forward, forearms on his knees, scratched the wiry red hairs on one arm. Johnny looked at him, sensing his discomfort. Seven years since they’d seen each other, and Mitch not knowing how to feel, how to react.

  “How you been getting along?” Johnny said.

  Mitch shrugged.

  “You know. Same old, same old. Couple bucks here, couple bucks there. Enough not to have to go to bed sober at night if I don’t want to.”

  “That thing work out for you? What I told you about?”

  “With Joey? No, man, he just … I don’t know. I guess I just wasn’t cut out for it. He said the words but he acted like he didn’t want anything to do with me. Had me selling phone cards on the street, believe that? Bogus phone cards like I was some sort of punk-ass scammer. I hung with him a couple months and then I said adiós. He wasn’t sorry to see me go.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “No, man, don’t bother. It just wasn’t working out.”

  “I wrote him from Glades when I went in, asked him to look after you, throw you something now and then.”

  “And he did, man, and now it’s over. I already forgot about it. Ain’t no thing.”

  “You should have told me about it. Wrote me.”

  “Like I said, it didn’t matter much. All that matters now, man, is having you in the flesh right here. And you look good.”

  “I was in the same place a long time, Mitchy. You could have come to see me.”

  Mitch shook his head, looked at the floor.

  “I thought about it. A lot. But it’s just …”

  “What?”

  “The idea of seeing you like that. In that place …”

  “In a cage.”

  “I just couldn’t handle it. I don’t know if that makes any sense. But it’s true.”

  Johnny got Camels from his jacket pocket, lit one with the Zippo, sat back.

  “You look like you could use that beer yourself,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  Mitch got up, went into the small kitchen, got a can of Budweiser from the refrigerator. Johnny could see a sink full of dishes. Mitch popped the can, came back into the living room, sipping foam.