Unquiet Ghosts Page 35

  He slipped the tobacco into his mouth, his right cheek filling like a squirrel’s as he chewed. “Jack needed some blood. We’re not the same type, but I’m O-neg and keep a few pints of mine stored in a cooler for emergencies. I gave him two.”

  “Don’t you need to get him to a hospital?”

  “Gunshot wounds attract the cops. He’s doing OK for now, resting in the bedroom next door. That may change, but until it does, it wouldn’t be good to get the law involved. Unless you’ve got other plans?”

  I didn’t answer the question, and I had a feeling that unsettled him. “What about Sean?”

  “I looked in a little while ago, and he’d fallen asleep next to his dad. That boy lives for his father.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “It must be weird seeing them both again after all these years.”

  “Weird doesn’t come close.”

  Kevin sat back, rubbing his jaw between thumb and forefinger. “How did Sean react when he first saw you?”

  “He didn’t. I don’t think he gets me or our relationship.”

  “He will. He’ll get it.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Yes, I do. Give time time, as my old grandmother used to say.”

  “How long have you and Jack known each other?”

  “Since Iraq. We’ve still kept in touch now after our duty ended. For a short while before he left the Army, I actually counseled Jack.”

  “He never mentioned your name.”

  “No surprise there. A lot of my Army buddies never want to talk much about the war, never mind meet for a beer. Want to hear my theory?”

  I nodded.

  He splashed bourbon into his glass, dropped in a handful of ice. “War’s like a dirty little secret they shared. It can bring out the best in men—bravery, heroism, self-sacrifice. But mostly you wind up doing things you never thought you’d do—killing, maiming, destroying, you name it. The old story. You realize how paper-thin the veneer is between man and the primal beast within. That’s probably why some guys don’t talk much about war once they get done with it. Or hang out a lot with service buddies. They don’t want to remember all the nasty crap they did.”

  “You knew Jack, so I’m guessing you knew my father and my brother?”

  “Sure did. Your dad’s Old Ironsides, tough as a jockey’s hide. I was the medic on duty the night he got hit. I did his amputation. I don’t recall him whining, but I do remember him screaming a bucket of swear words.”

  “What about Red Rock?”

  “I dealt with the dead and wounded afterward at our field hospital.”

  “Did Jack ever talk to you much about it?”

  “He didn’t speak much about a lot of things, but we’re veering into the tricky realm of doctor-patient confidentiality.” Kevin’s eyes betrayed nothing, but he had an uncomfortable look, one that implied he knew more than he was saying.

  “You knew about Kyle?”

  “Yes, I did, and I’m truly sorry. But at least you still have him. Twenty vet suicides a week, that’s the accepted figure. It’s probably a lot more.”

  Kevin took a swig, the ice clinking, and held up his glass. “The law says you can’t walk into a bar and buy a drink until you’re twenty-one. Yet you can enlist at eighteen and die for your country. How crazy is that? We romanticize war. But so many lives are ruined by its horror. We can’t expect someone who lives with death and fear and horror every day, who sees it all around him on the battlefield, to return home and just pick up his life where he left off. If we send them, we must try to mend them, but we don’t. Guys overdose or put guns to their heads or deliberately crash their cars, or their ill health takes care of the dirty deed.”

  Kevin looked right at me. “You probably heard it before—this country knows how to start a war. But it never gives much thought to repairing the cost of human suffering afterward. I saw it with my own father.”

  He took a long swallow this time, knocked it right back. “My old man suffered from PTSD after Vietnam. Had his skull peppered with grenade fragments. It’s maybe why I became a doctor in the first place. I was always looking for the father I once had, the parent I lost. I wanted to help heal him. But it didn’t work out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He crashed his car one night. Drove at high speed along I-75 and smacked into a wall. Probably did it deliberately, too. Like a lot of vets with PTSD who wind up in auto wrecks. They can’t live with their mental-health issues or their ghosts or both.”

  “How did Jack end up here?”

  “Are you up to walking?”

  “Why?”

  Kevin grabbed the storm lamp, moved toward the patio door, and opened it on creaking hinges.

  “I’ll explain. There’s something important you need to be aware of.”

  87

  * * *

  I followed Kevin outside into the darkness and toward the barn. “How did Jack end up here?” I asked again.

  “You mean in the middle of nowhere? I was the first person he called the night his aircraft crashed.”

  We stopped. I met Kevin’s stare.

  “You’re wondering why me? I directed a private clinic near Sevierville. All the latest equipment and privacy. It wasn’t far from the crash site, which suited Jack because he didn’t want the cops involved.”

  “Why?”

  “I think Jack’s the guy to answer that one. I just did what he needed me to do that night.”

  “Which was?”

  “Provide medical assistance, get him and the kids to safety, check them out physically, and tell nobody.”

  “Why help him?”

  “Because he was a buddy I cared about who needed help. There were times in Iraq when I could have died if not for Jack. He laid it on the line for me and for others.”

  “The investigators say there were no calls from Jack’s cell that night.”

  “So? People use throwaway cells all the time. Jack told me he always carried an untraceable cell. And nobody knew he crashed in the Smokies.”

  “Tell me about Jack’s phone call.”

  “He was distressed. He explained that his aircraft had crashed in the storm, but he didn’t want the emergency services involved, no 911 calls. The pilot was dead, and he and the kids were injured. He didn’t think the kids experienced any serious injuries other than being violently thrown around in the crash and suffering concussions, but he didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “Didn’t you question why Jack didn’t want to call 911?”

  “Sure I did. But he said I had to trust him, and he’d explain why, so I did as he asked. From his route maps, he had a pretty good idea that he was probably on the southern side of Thunder Mountain. I headed for the crash site in my four-wheel-drive Jeep. It took me a while to get the Jeep up some of the muddy mountain tracks, but Jack and I kept in touch by phone so I could locate him.”

  Kevin started walking again, and when we reached the barn doors, he halted and fiddled with the storm lamp. “I found him and the kids sheltering in an abandoned shack near the crash. The pilot was definitely dead from a broken neck. Jack had done some basic first aid on himself and the kids. He’d suffered several broken ribs and a leg fracture. Sean had a broken foot, and Amy’s shoulder was dislocated, and all of them were concussed.”

  “Amy—Amy was alive?”

  “Yes. She was in shock, as was Sean. I could determine no obvious or serious neck or head injuries and no serious cuts or pulverized bones, but they needed to be checked out.”

  I listened, mesmerized.

  “We left the pilot’s body, and I drove them to my clinic. After I completed some scans, it was obvious that the children’s injuries were somewhat worse than I first thought. Sean sustained a serious head injury in the frontal lobe, no bleeding but internal
bruising and some cranial swelling. Kind of like the blunt-force internal trauma you can experience if you’re beaten senseless in a bare-knuckle fight.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  Kevin looked at me, knowing the question I was desperate to ask. “You’re wondering will Sean ever recover, right?” He shrugged, displaying both his hands, palms up. “The mind and the body can be incredibly resilient and regenerative, but I figure Sean’s injuries are irreversible.”

  I felt as if I were in an elevator and the steel hawsers had been cut. It took me a little while before I could speak. “What . . . what about Amy?”

  “Jack was probably drunk when he saw you for the first time after the crash, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Know why? Because he knew he would have to explain about Amy. It would be painful for him and for you. He felt responsible for her death. Maybe that’s partly why he could not face you. I think he had his own breakdown, too, after the crash, which didn’t help matters. For a time, I know he stayed with an old Army buddy at a farm down in Florida.”

  The Florida connection hit me. “Who was the buddy? A guy named Quentin Lusk?”

  “You’ll have to ask Jack that.” Kevin seemed to be avoiding saying anything he wasn’t sure Jack would want me to know.

  Anger braided my tone. “He’s not the Jack I knew.”

  “He’s not the Jack anyone knew. War does that to people. Changes them—and always for the worse.”

  The burning question kept coming back. “Who killed DJ and Vera Spears? Jack said whoever did it wants to kill us, too. Or is he being delusional? He held a gun on me. Struggled with me to wrench it back when I managed to get it from him. Doesn’t that tell you something about his mental state?”

  “You want my opinion? He didn’t want you to have a firearm in your hands when you saw Amy’s grave. He was afraid you might harm yourself once you knew the truth.”

  “What were Jack and Sean doing at DJ and Vera’s place?”

  “DJ and I kept in touch. He and Jack were once buddies. DJ visited Kyle now and then, to keep an eye on him, at my request . . .” Kevin’s voice trailed off.

  “That tells me nothing much.”

  Kevin looked away, then back again. “Look, all I know is I got a call from DJ telling me you visited him and were asking questions. Within a couple of hours, he said he noticed a couple of different vehicles drive by his house. One of them was a van with a bunch of antennas and a satellite dish on top. He said it did a couple of passes by his home. He sent Vera out at one point, and she thought she noticed another vehicle parked up the street, an SUV with dark-tinted windows. When she approached it, the SUV drove off.”

  Kevin paused and looked at me. “DJ was a wily redneck. He knew someone was watching him. That you had led them to him, knowingly or otherwise.”

  “Me?”

  “He reckoned. And he was getting worried. It sounded that way when he called me. I told Jack. When we called DJ back a few hours later, there was no reply. DJ always called back. But not this time, and Jack was getting worried, too. I was going to drive over to DJ’s later that day and check on him. But without me knowing, Jack decided to do a drive-by himself, see what he could find out. When he saw no activity around the trailer, he decided to head inside. That’s when he and Sean found DJ and Vera dead, and your paths crossed.”

  “What did DJ have that these people wanted?”

  “Nothing, except that whoever killed him probably figured he might know where Jack was.”

  “Did he? Did DJ know that Jack was alive?”

  “I never told him. But like I said, DJ was a wily redneck. And once the aircraft was found and there was no mention of bodies on the news, DJ called me and started asking a lot of hypothetical questions.”

  I put my hand to my mouth. I felt a surge of guilt, that I had somehow contributed to the deaths of DJ and Vera.

  “I reckon whoever killed DJ wanted to find Jack. My guess is you’re being tailed and watched by the same people.”

  I followed Kevin into the barn.

  There was a Polaris Ranger inside, an old one, the red paintwork muddied and dented.

  I was overcome by a powerful sense of desperation. “You need to answer my questions. Who? And why did Jack vanish? Why flee with our children? And what happened to Amy?”

  Kevin played statue. His eyes gave nothing away.

  He moved to the end of the barn. Old farm implements and rusted chains adorned the walls. A few dozen bales of straw were piled in a corner, the floor covered in it. Kevin kicked away the straw. I saw a trapdoor. He reached down and grabbed a frayed piece of rope attached to it.

  “I’ve waited eight years to know the truth, darn you.” I felt my face go livid. “Why won’t you tell me? Why? I’m begging you!”

  He pulled on the trapdoor rope. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

  88

  * * *

  “Open sesame.”

  The trapdoor yawned open to reveal blackness below, a wooden stepladder leading down. Kevin flicked a light switch that was screwed onto an upright wood joist near the trapdoor, and a light sprang on in a cavern underneath.

  Kevin turned around and got ready to descend. “Jack’s living on his nerves. He’s felt safe here, but he’s still often on edge. Afraid he might be found. Now that you’ve shown up, he thinks you may have been tailed, so there’s a risk. That means you need to know about our backup plan.”

  “Where are we going?’

  “There’s an old coal tunnel that runs out beyond the farm. It exits a few hundred yards away in some woods nearby.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Better safe than sorry, in case we have need of it.”

  He reached the bottom and beckoned for me to join him. “There’s electric lighting all the way, but I always take a flashlight and a storm lamp with me just in case. Follow me down; it’s safe if you stick close.”

  I climbed down after him.

  At the bottom, I saw that we were in a cavern, the black walls obviously a coal vein. The air was chilled, almost icy, the damp black walls glistening, cobwebs everywhere. I shivered.

  Kevin moved along the lit passageway, and I followed. Naked electric bulbs stretched for as far as I could see, and the ceiling was high enough to stand up under.

  “This way, and mind your head, the ceiling dips a little.”

  I ducked my head as I stayed behind him, the chilled air prickling my skin.

  I couldn’t shake off the despondency of Amy’s loss. It hung over me like the darkest cloud imaginable.

  “Jack was prone to bouts of paranoia since Iraq. Some PTSD sufferers are totally blighted by it. No amount of reasoning or treatment can cure them.”

  “Don’t you think I knew that?”

  “Sure, but did you know that for that diagnosis to be truly valid, you have to be in fear for your life?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Jack felt in fear for his life. And in his own mind, he created valid reasons to disappear.”

  “What reasons?”

  Kevin kept moving forward, into the blackness of the damp coal walls. “Ones that a fragile mind like Jack’s would find compelling, especially since the crash made his paranoia worse.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He believed the plane crash was sabotage. That someone set out deliberately to kill him.”

  I stared back at Kevin in astonishment. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I thought of the warning words from the man on the bridge. Know what you’re dealing with here? Powerful, desperate people.

  Our shadows flickered on the glistening black walls as Kevin said, “In the mind of a man suffering from paranoia, it seemed totally logical, and he therefore needed to disappear. The mind can twist anything to survive. Anything can become normal.�
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  “But why take the children?”

  “He believed that if any of you got in the way of the people trying to kill him, you’d be targets, too. In Jack’s tormented mind, he decided to vanish to protect all of your family, you included. He figured that with him and the kids apparently deceased, those who sought to harm him would at least leave his widow in peace. That may not make sense to you, but again, we are not dealing with a rational mind.”

  Kevin looked at me as we kept moving. “And as unreal as it sounds, Jack meant to protect you all.”

  I felt a ripple of shock.

  Kevin took a deep breath and let it out. “To Jack, vanishing was a better option than if he and the kids showed up alive. Or if you vanished, too, soon after the crash, to join him. That might have seemed as if the family had conspired to go on the run. So he didn’t contact you. When the aircraft was never found in the months afterward and the authorities had no leads, why, that was just perfect. Jack was more convinced than ever that he had done the right thing. It also gave him time to try to figure things out.”

  We came to a part of the tunnel that was different from the rest. It split in two, one side leading a short way to a massive oak door set into a solid framework of rough-hewn timber that looked as if it might take dynamite to shift. The door was locked, several solid wood beams barring the way, chained and padlocked.

  “What’s in there, behind the door?”

  “Old tools and tunneling equipment.”

  Kevin gave me a shifty look and for some reason didn’t sound all that convincing. He moved on, a rush of fresh air wafted in, and we stepped out of the cavern past some bushes onto a small plateau. I could barely see, with the moonlight dimmed by clouds.

  Kevin tilted his head toward a carpet of dark, wooded hills that seemed to go on forever. “It’s why Jack ended up here. You can walk some of these trails for thirty miles without meeting a soul. Jack felt safe, until the wreckage was found.”

  I looked at Kevin, open-mouthed, understanding none of it. “At first I thought you were saying his fear was all in his mind. That it was paranoia. But . . . but now I get the feeling you’re suggesting he vanished for a good reason.”