The Guilty hp-2 Read online

  You never know how much damage is done until you pull back. Survey the scene from a distance. And even then it needs a few days to metastasize.

  What Largo Vance had started, Costas Paradis was about to finish. The man had donated nearly half a million dollars to perform an exhumation of Brushy Bill Roberts and compare his DNA to William Henry, his alleged grandson, and the sole surviving heir to Billy the Kid. And this time they were going to do it right. Costas would make sure of that. Or at least his money would.

  In the meantime, as expected, residents of New Mexico and Texas were apoplectic over the Dispatch' s revelations.

  They were planning to fight the exhumation tooth and nail.

  My old friend Justice Waverly was quoted in the Dallas

  Morning News as saying, "They can come with shovels and backhoes, but if they try to destroy the legacy of the Old West we'll meet them with rifles and cannons."

  In New York that kind of talk could get a politician impeached. In Texas it guaranteed Justice Waverly would be reelected every term until he finally keeled over in his morning pastry.

  I spoke to Curt Sheffield the day after Roberts died. The cops had found a receipt in his bag for several nights at a seedy forty-dollar-a-night hotel room. I didn't even know they ran that cheap in New York. The manager didn't remember seeing Roberts, mainly because the man was half blind.

  The cops found bloodstains on the floor that they were running against Mya's type, to confirm Roberts had stayed there. They also found a note on the nightstand next to the bed where Roberts slept. It gave no further explanation for the murders. It contained two brief sentences.

  Up in heaven I'll see my friends.

  Bury me next to my blood.

  If the DNA tests confirmed what I assumed they would, there was a question of whether William Henry Roberts would be buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, next to the alleged grave site of Billy the Kid. Even though it wasn't where the true

  Kid was buried, it was where his legacy lived. And that legacy, that myth, I'd learned, was far more important than the truth.

  Most argued a murderer didn't deserve such a burial. Those in power argued what was good enough for one killer was good enough for another, that evil should be contained.

  After running the hostage crisis on page one the next day, the next day Dispatch relegated the Roberts story to page seven, where it was given quarter-page treatment in deference to a color picture of a senator's wife who had an allergic reaction to her Botox injection. After that, William Henry

  Roberts wasn't mentioned again.

  Paulina Cole was suspended for three weeks. But I knew that her suspension was merely window dressing. Ted Allen was forcing her to fly under the radar until everything quieted down. Besides, with Costas Paradis looking to dig up Brushy

  Bill Roberts, the Kid's defenders had bigger fish to fry than a newspaper reporter.

  On page three of the Dispatch was a small item about the custody fight for the Winchester rifle Roberts had used on his rampage. Rex Sheehan claimed it was still the legal property of the museum in Fort Sumner. Costas Paradis wanted to buy the gun to smelt the metal and burn the wood. Despite my desire for Costas to get some sort of closure and to see the rifle destroyed, part of me felt the gun was a relic of American history and should be treated as such. Provided, this time, Rex got a security system worth a damn.

  When I finished reading the day's papers, I put them in a neat pile underneath the chair. It was only then when I noticed the steady beeping, the humming. It came from Mya's bedside.

  Staring at her small, frail body, a far cry from the strong, vibrant girl I once knew, something inside me had burst. I couldn't leave. Didn't want to. I told Wallace and Jack I needed a few days off, that the trauma from the week's events combined with the new sutures in my hand made it difficult to write, difficult to work. This was all bullshit, but it sounded better than the truth. A lot of things were sounding better than the truth.

  Mya came and went. Her eyes fluttering open and shut.

  The doctors said she would make it. She would recover.

  Physically. Mentally, it would take time. It would be hard.

  And I would be there for her. Like I hadn't been before.

  I called you, Henry.

  And I wasn't there.

  No more.

  Cindy Loverne entered, holding a cup of coffee. She sat down, blew some steam off the top and crossed her legs.

  "How are you, Henry?"

  I felt guilty even answering such a question.

  "Feeling a bit better," I said.

  "That's good. Listen, I want to thank you for being so Jason Pinter good to Mya. I don't know what she's done to deserve such a good friend, but-"

  "Please," I said. "Don't finish that sentence. She deserves much better than anything I've given her. And I want you to know, I know she can't hear me right now, but I'll be there for her and your family. It's the least I can do after everything."

  Cindy smiled warmly. Then her eyes moved to the bed. She looked back at me.

  "I think somebody can hear you."

  I looked over. Mya's eyes were open. They were filmy, groggy, squinting to regain focus.

  I nearly leapt off the chair, went over and knelt down by her bedside.

  "Hey you," I said.

  "Henry," Mya said, her voice still weak.

  "I'm here," I said. I took her hand in mine, gently stroked her dry skin. "I'm here."

  I waited outside the hospital. The sun had dipped below the buildings, the sky turning a harsh gray. The air felt cold and I cinched up my jacket. I'd asked Amanda to meet me here, unsure why I chose this particular location, but in the back of my mind I knew the reason full well.

  I watched her as she walked toward me. Her eyes were streaked with red, and I didn't have to ask why. She came up to me. Her hands were in her pockets. She moved her toe back and forth across the pavement, afraid or unwilling to make eye contact.

  "Hey, Amanda," I said.

  "Hey" came the flat reply.

  "Were you able to find-"

  "Yes," she said, cutting me off. "A friend said I could sublet her studio for a few months. Rent's not too bad. Commute is kind of a killer. Guess you take what you can get."

  "Yeah," I said. "Guess so."

  She looked at me, the pain and hurt and confusion in her eyes nearly tearing me apart, letting loose everything I wanted to say but knew I couldn't.

  "So what happens now?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I replied. "I do want to see you again."

  Amanda shook her head, and it was just then that I saw she'd begun to cry.

  "Nope," she said. "If we end this…I want to end it. I don't want to have to think about this every time I see you. I just want to pull it off. Like you said."

  "Amanda." I never wondered, in all my life, what it would feel like to tell the girl I loved, who loved me back, that I couldn't be with her. Part of being in love, part of being a man was putting your loved ones above yourself.

  I didn't love Mya anymore. Not like that. But she'd paid a price for my failures. I had a debt to pay her back.

  To keep Amanda safe, to keep her alive, I had to leave. I knew pulling away from her would tear open a wound that would probably never heal. But at least at some point the bleeding would stop; it would scar over.

  I noticed her hand had left its pocket and was fidding with her jeans absently.

  "What's that?" I asked. She seemed surprised.

  "Nothing," she said. "Just, you know…guess old habits die hard."

  "Show me," I said, but had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew what it was. She stared at me as she brought it out. A small spiral notebook. Just like the kind she wrote in back when we met. Back when she had nobody, and every person she met was cataloged in one of those note-368

  Jason Pinter books. For a girl who'd grown up with no real family, no real identity, those notebooks helped her hold on.

  I hadn't seen her
write in them in the year we'd been a couple. And now that we were coming apart, she needed them again.

  It's for the best, I told myself. She's smart. She's beautiful. She has the world waiting to open itself for her. If you stay with her, you selfish bastard, you could steal it all from her.

  And so I knew I had to end it.

  "If you ever need anything," I said. "Someone to talk to…"

  "I won't," she said. "But I appreciate the gesture."

  "Right," I repeated blindly. "Gesture."

  She wiped her nose, sniffed once.

  "Well then, goodbye, Henry." She turned to leave.

  "Amanda," I said. She turned back. The tears were flowing from her eyes, and all I wanted to do was gather her in my arms, kiss her and tell her everything would be all right. But to do that would allow events like the other day to happen.

  Jack was right. He'd been right all along. And Amanda nearly paid for my ignorance with her life.

  "If you want to say something, Henry, say it." My mouth opened but nothing came out. So she said, "Goodbye, Henry."

  Amanda walked away without saying another word. I watched as her hand went to her pocket again, then wiped at her eyes, and before I knew it she'd turned the corner and disappeared.

  I stared at the empty street for several minutes, half hoping something would happen, the rest of me praying it wouldn't.

  And when I was sure it wouldn't, I turned around and went back inside.

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