Ledger took the money and folded it again before sticking it into his back pocket.
“What I said before,” he said. “About how nobody was really surprised when it turned out Bell killed people? Like they always knew it was going to be something?”
Wren crossed his arms and nodded. “People call me Bird, not Fish,” he said.
“It wasn’t true.”
“Weird thing to lie about.”
Ledger ignored that. “Syder was surprised. So surprised that he didn’t believe me when I told him about it.”
The vending machine was broken. So the deputy had given Ledger a can she’d had in her drawer. The sugary, lukewarm pop made Ledger feel queasy—queasier—but every time the deputy looked his way, he tried to take a sip.
Syder finally came back. His face tired and grim—not that different from how he looked today—and he dismissed the deputy with a jerk of his head. He took the sweaty can out of Ledger’s hands and set it on the edge of his desk.
“Here,” he said as he pulled a flask out of his jacket. “This will help.”
It was whiskey. It didn’t. Ledger choked it down anyhow while Syder sat on the desk in front of him and watched.
“Did you… Did you find him?” Ledger asked. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and offered Syder the flask back. “Is it still there?”
Syder tucked the metal into his jacket, out of sight. “I talked to your dad,” he said, absently tapping his knee. Three fingers. Three times. He did that when he played poker too. “You’ve been struggling, he said, since you came out.”
“No.”
“Bullying at school? Acting out. Drinking.”
“No. I mean, maybe,” Ledger admitted. He rubbed his head. “But he has a guy chained up in ourbasement.That’s what… there’s a guy being tortured at our house. That’s what’s important.”
Syder leaned over and put his hand on Ledger’s shoulder.
“Come on, son,” he said as he squeezed. Behind them, Ledger heard the deputy say, ‘they’re in there.’ He tried to look around, but Syder pulled him back. “Does that sound like your dad? Does it sound like a real thing?”
This time he let Ledger look around when the doctor and the orderlies walked into the room.
“This is him,” Syder said. “I want you to take care of him. He’s my friend’s son.”
Ledger bolted out of the chair and toward the door. He’d not gotten far.
The memory was so vivid that Ledger could taste the sour, cheap mash of the rotgut on the back of his tongue. Wren’s voice pulled him back to the here and now: a narrow cut-out off the side of the road back from the monster’s house.
It was still better.
“He seemed like an asshole,” Wren said. “But that’s not a crime. It’s definitely not a sin.”
Ledger scrubbed both hands roughly through his hair to try and shed the static of his brain trying to filter his whole childhood through the lens of this new information. Every quiet conversation Bell and Syder had over beers and BBQ. The way Syder always stayed back to help clean up after poker because “they couldn’t leave the mess for the girls.” The…
Fuck. It wasn’t even just his childhood. Syder had known about the cabin. He’d asked about somewhereotherthan the cabin and the basement. Fuck.
There was too much of it to reassess right now.
Ledger took a deep breath and let it out. He gave Wren a grim look.
“The cancer would have made sense if Bell’s timer had run out, right?” he said. “If it was fifty years on? There’s always a sting in the tail on these deals.”
“Sure,” Wren said with a shrug. “It’s like the warranty on an appliance. The minute it runs out, it breaks down. It encourages repeat trade.”
“Syder is dying,” Ledger said.
