of the attempted robbery, how Arthur dropped Traynor’s name and how the attempted robbery ended in the gunman’s supposed suicide. By the time I finish, Corwin is shaking his head, his jaw set. “Jesus,” he says. “I mean it, Benji. You need to keep your fucking distance. These people are animals. You need to keep yourself safe. If anything comes from this, we have bias intimidation of a witness and assault and battery against Traynor. Don’t suppose you called the cops after he left.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m sure Griggs would have loved to take that report.”
Cal growls at him again. “You don’t need to worry about him. It is not your job. It is my job. And I am more than ready to do what is asked of me.”
Corwin stares at him. “You’re an odd duck, you know that?”
“I am not a duck at all,” Cal snarls. “You just do your job and let me do mine. Benji belongs to me and no one will take him from me.”
“Hush,” I tell him lightly. “Nothing is going to happen to me. And besides, I can take care of myself. I have for a long time.” Cal looks at me like that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever said.
“You guys been together a long time?” Corwin asks bluntly.
“Yes,” Cal says at the same time I say, “A few days.”
Corwin stares.
“Long story,” I say as I flush.
He nods. “I’ll be in touch, Benji. Just keep doing what you are doing, and don’t let anyone know yet that you spoke to me. If you see me around Roseland, act like you don’t know me. If the shit starts to hit the fan, you call me. That number I gave you is a separate private number. Most people don’t know I have it, not even my wife.” I arch my eyebrow at him, and he rolls his eyes. “Not like that. I deal with some shady people sometimes with what I do, and I don’t want to bring my work home with me. And sometimes, like now, I don’t want to bring things into my work. Not yet. We clear?”
I nod. He stands up from the booth, dropping a twenty on the table. He starts to walk away but pauses at the edge of the booth. He doesn’t look down at us. “I’m sorry about your dad,” he finally says. “I… I always wanted to say that. You know, how sorry I am. What he tried to do was a very brave thing. You have every right to hate me, but the only thing I’ve ever wanted was to help people and to put the bad guys away. I like to think that maybe your… Big Eddie was like that too.”
I nod again, blinded by tears.
He leaves. That is the last time I see him alive.
I’m not the one who physically killed Agent Joshua Corwin, though it might as
well have been me. It is my fault just the same. Had I not called him, he might not have found a reason to come back to Roseland. He might have escaped the pattern, even if it seems to have been calling to him. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have been freed from it? Had I not involved him, he might be with his family instead of lying in a morgue a hundred miles away in the coastal town of Bandon, his bloated body having washed up on a rocky beach four days after we met in the grimy diner.
The what ifs haunt me almost as much as my own memories do. I lost my father to something I still don’t quite understand. He was taken from me, yes, and even if I believe more and more that his death was not an accident, a small part of me still questions whether it could be true. What I can’t question is the fact that I helped to take Corwin away from his family. His daughters will not have their father because of me. His wife will not have a husband because of me.
I don’t know much about Corwin’s last hours. I didn’t see him around Roseland in the days that followed our meeting. All I know is that Abe came in, his hands shaking slightly as he grabbed a newspaper off the stack near the front door. He flipped the paper over and showed me the story in the bottom right-hand corner with the headline: Body in Bandon Identified as FBI Agent. Even as those words