couldn't stop, her screams then, screaming at me to stop crying, until Linda and Hoyt stepped in and shushed her and someone gave her a sedative, not for the first or last time. It all came back to me in an awful gush. And then I read the article and felt the impact jar me in a whole new direction:
CAR DRIVES OVER RAVINE
One Dead, Cause Unknown
Last night at approximately 3:00 AM, a Ford Taurus driven by Stephen Beck of Green River, New Jersey, ran off a bridge in Mahwah, not far from the New York state border. Road conditions were slick due to the snowstorm, but officials have not yet made a ruling on what caused the accident. The sole witness to the accident, Melvin Bartola, a truck driver from Cheyenne, Wyoming-
I stopped reading. Suicide or accident. People had wondered which. Now I knew it was neither.
Brutus said, "What's wrong?"
"I don't know, man." Then, thinking about it, Tyrese added, "I don't want to go back."
Brutus didn't reply. Tyrese sneaked a glance at his old friend. They had started hanging out together in third grade. Brutus hadn't been much of a talker back then either. Probably too busy getting his ass whipped twice a day - home and school - until Brutus figured out the only way he was going to survive was to become the meanest son of a bitch on the block. He started taking a gun to school when he was eleven. He killed for the first time when he was fourteen.
"Ain't you tired of it, Brutus?"
Brutus shrugged. "All we know."
The truth sat there, heavy, unmoving, unblinking.
Tyrese's cell phone trilled. He picked it up and said, "Yo."
"Hello, Tyrese."
Tyrese didn't recognize the strange voice. "Who is this?"
"We met yesterday. In a white van."
His blood turned to ice. Bruce Lee, Tyrese thought. Oh, damn... "What do you want?"
"I have somebody here who wants to say hi."
There was a brief silence and then TJ said, "Daddy?"
Tyrese whipped off his sunglasses. His body went rigid. "TJ? You okay?"
But Eric Wu was back on the line. "I'm looking for Dr. Beck, Tyrese. TJ and I were hoping you could help me find him."
"I don't know where he is."
"Oh, that's a shame."
"Swear to God, I don't know."
"I see," Wu said. Then: "Hold on a moment, Tyrese, would you? I'd like you to hear something."
Chapter 43
The wind blew, the trees danced, the purple-orange if sunset was starting to give way to a polished pewter. It frightened me how much the night air felt exactly the same as it had eight years ago, the last time I'd ventured near these hallowed grounds.
I wondered if Griffin Scope's people would think to keep an eye on Lake Charmaine. It didn't matter really. Elizabeth was too clever for that. I mentioned earlier that there used to be a summer camp here before Grandpa purchased the property. Elizabeth's clue - Dolphin - was the name of a cabin, the one where the oldest kids had slept, the one deepest in the woods, the one we rarely dared to visit.
The rental car climbed what had once been the camp's service entrance, though it barely existed anymore. From the main road you couldn't make it out, the high grass hiding it like the entrance to the Batcave. We still kept a chain across it, just in case, with a sign that read No Trespassing. The chain and sign were both still there, but the years of neglect showed. I stopped the car, unhooked the chain, wrapped it around the tree.
I slid back into the driver's seat and headed up to the old camp mess hall. Little of it remained. You could still see the rusted, overturned remnants of what had once been ovens and stoves. Some pots and pans littered the ground, but most had been buried over the years. I got out and smelled the sweet of the green. I tried not to think about my father, but in the clearing, when I was able to look down at the lake, at the way the moon's silver sparkled on the crisp surface, I heard the old ghost again and wondered, this time, if it wasn't crying out for revenge.
I hiked up the path, though that, too, was pretty much nonexistent. Odd that Elizabeth would pick here to meet. I mentioned before that she never liked to play in the ruins of the old summer camp. Linda and I, on the other hand, would