The record keeper a murp.., p.28
The Record Keeper (A Murphy Shepherd Novel), page 28
The percussion surprised me and set me on my heels. It was that surprise that cost me the time I needed to catch Bones’s leg. Frank’s head rocked backward, launching his body over the edge and into the blackness of the well, dragging Bones with him. One brother intertwined with the other, so that discerning who was holding who was impossible.
Then, as the echo faded off the stone walls, the two disappeared.
I lunged, reached for Bones’s leg, but he was too heavy. Given the bullet that had passed through my shoulder, I couldn’t hold him. I stared in shock as the indomitable man I knew as Bones disappeared into the darkness.
Seconds later, I heard the splash.
Chapter 32
Coastal Georgia, 24 hours later
Clay drove as I stared at Frank’s photo. The one he’d left for me on the edge of the well. I didn’t know it at the time, but by laying it down, Frank had left me a message. Eddie, Camp, Jess, and BP sat in the back of the van and said little. Words did not and could not console me.
After Bones and Frank disappeared, I buckled Gunner to my vest, rappelled the well, and spent eight hours searching. Until our batteries died. We walked the last hundred steps in total darkness following Gunner’s nose.
Having emerged from a world of darkness, Gunner and I swam back under the stone shelf, and I hauled him with one arm into the Zodiac, where we were met by the first rays of light. The sun was rising in the east, and yet I couldn’t wrap my head around my loss. I’d lost him. I’d lost Bones. I’d never lost anyone, and yet here I’d lost the one who mattered most. The pain was more than I could bear. I lay in the bottom of the boat and heard the echo of his voice. “When light walks into a room, the darkness rolls back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light. And while we live it in real time, it happens too fast, so we watch it in memory. To know the joy, we shut our eyes and remember having seen it.”
I closed my eyes, felt the warmth of the sun on my skin, and cried like a baby.
We’d coordinated our arrival here on the coast with my new boss in Washington. A voice on the other end of the line. Given the nature of Frank’s work, our timeline was short. Once news of his death circulated through the dark world he commanded, the sharks would circle and a feeding frenzy would ensue as his generals fought for control. When that started, whatever information we had gleaned from opening Frank’s third vault would be useless. I’d flown directly from Majorca to Florida and, as much as it pained me, returned to the world where Bones had grown up.
The photo showed the two of them. Suntans. Cutoff jeans. Bare feet. Not more than five or six. Healthy. Smiling. Standing knee deep in the water. Each boy held a fishing pole in one hand, his other arm wrapped around the other’s shoulders. Just two boys being boys, because being a boy is what they knew. What they needed. Before their world was turned upside down, they had each other.
I flipped the photo over and read the inscription. “Brothers.” Below that Frank had written GPS coordinates, which had led us here. I retraced my and Bones’s footsteps beneath the oaks to the overgrown dilapidated chapel he and Frank had known as boys. Why did Frank choose this place? I really can’t say, but if I had to, I’d suggest it had something to do with a peace he hadn’t known since he was taken from here. I walked around back, pulled away the vines, found the keypad, and punched in the twenty-one-digit code, and the rotten, cat-infested porch slid out of the way to reveal a stone staircase leading down to a vault door. I entered the second twenty-one-digit code, and the pressurized door clicked open, accompanied by the sound of exiting and equalizing air. Then the door swung open and our team disappeared inside.
Memories of Bones flooded my heart. A tidal wave.
With the team inside, I followed the trail to the water’s edge and sat with Gunner, trying to remember the name of the Spanish doctor who’d sewed up my shoulder. The weight on my chest threatened to suffocate me as I struggled to just inhale and exhale. One breath. Two. Then another. Maybe the tough part wasn’t the breathing so much as the wanting to.
An hour later, my phone rang. I recognized the caller ID and answered. “Yes, sir.”
The vice president’s voice sounded pained. “Murph, I just heard. I can’t tell you how—” He broke off. “I can’t believe it. It doesn’t feel real. He . . . he was the best of us. Always was.”
“Yes, sir.”
A pause. “I know you don’t need me to tell you, but . . . anything you need. Anything at all. Don’t hesitate.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead, and I realized I wasn’t the only one hurting. The aftershocks of Bones’s death were traveling through the ranks in DC and the hundreds of friends he’d made around the world.
Summer and the girls were en route. I told Summer I didn’t want to return to Freetown right away, and she said they all thought a week or three at the beach would do us good. I didn’t disagree. An hour later, Eddie found me lying on the bank with Gunner in my lap. He, too, was grieving, and he didn’t know how to show it other than by placing his paw on my chest. I wiped my eyes and Eddie spoke softly. “It’s all there. Names. Numbers. Addresses. Accounts. Videos.” He nodded. “You’re not going to believe this, but Frank gave you the truth.”
The thought of this stopped me. Something else I could not process. Another breath. In. Out.
He continued, “We’re going to bring in some folks from DC and coordinate with teams and agencies around the world. You can’t set that many people free without some forethought and some help. The next few days will . . .”
I turned and headed for the water. Bones had done that. He’d done it all. I had not. Under the guise of capture, he’d gone back. For his brother. Something I’d never considered. Never contemplated. And I’m rather certain Frank hadn’t either. Why hadn’t I seen that before? My response to Frank was to crush his windpipe. Shoot him in the face. Let him burn in hell. Given the amount of evil he’d inflicted on planet Earth, why not?
But Bones?
Bones suffered beating after beating, and for what purpose? Simple really. To reveal to his brother the singular fact that while he’d known a way out of that hell on earth, he’d come back. Day after day. Why? One reason. He would not leave his brother to suffer alone. No matter how guilty. This act of selflessness was mind-blowing to Frank. A paradigm shift beyond comprehension. In the end Frank gave up the location of and codes to the closet that held his secrets. His power. The keys to his kingdom. We knew about the vault beneath the prison and the one in the New York City high-rise, but they meant nothing without the last piece of the puzzle. Now we had it. And thanks to the help of Guido and Bernie, who were now singing like canaries, we were able to unlock all of it. To make sense of it. To find the people. And the money.
In the process what we’d seen play out on the world’s stage was a conflict of kingdoms.
In Frank’s kingdom one man enslaved the innocent and bled profit from their flesh. A world of darkness. Without feeling. Without empathy. Where the one dominated the many. Concealed in shadow and pungent with the smell of death.
A slave market.
In Bones’s kingdom one man walked into the slave market and said, “What’s the price? For all of them.” And when the slave master quoted the price, Bones never flinched. He paid it. With his life.
The magnitude of his sacrifice was inconceivable to me. Bones had known the cost going in. I’d never contemplated it.
I could understand running through hell to rescue the innocent. I’d done that and kept the record on my back. A record of the undeserving. Of the betrayed, rejected, and abandoned. But Bones not only emptied the market, he ran back into that same hell—hell squared—a second time, to rescue the one who’d enslaved them. Why?
This was my problem.
As the days passed and the answer built, it weighed me down. Pressing on my soul. Then, when I was unable to keep it at bay any longer, it hit me all at once. A freight train. Because Frank, too, was enslaved. Unlike the masses, Bones found mercy for his executioner. Whereas I’d simply written him off.
Wanting justice, I’d kept a record of wrongs. Payment to be exacted from the guilty. On my terms. It fueled and justified my need for revenge. Bones? Bones kept a record of hope imprinted on his heart.
In my time at the Academy, Bones and I grocery shopped on Sunday evenings. He’d park in the alley out back with a good view of a soiled sleeping bag spread beneath a cardboard shack. The woman who lived there was sun-weathered. Angry. Talked to herself. She’d stand on street corners. Eyes glazed. Palm out. Spending the proceeds on brown water and more glaze. About once a week, often on Sundays, she’d stumble into the store, fill a cart, and then argue with the manager.
One day we stood behind her in line. She was spilling stuff across the conveyor belt. The cashier spoke over the intercom. “Manager needed on four.” When the manager appeared, he wasn’t having any of it. He had tired of her and her constant circus. She was scaring the other shoppers. Polite society. He began ushering her out the front door.
Bones spoke up. “Excuse me, sir, what does she owe?” I can’t remember what he said, but it was a couple hundred dollars. Bones handed the man cash, and then he turned to the lady. “Can I help you with that?” She was about to shout something when Bones put a hand on her shoulder. “Let me help you.” The language of touch spoke something she could hear, and when she did, she nodded—and that’s when I saw it. Something in her expression changed. Something replaced the anger. Something good. I witnessed one curtain lift and another fall.
For weeks we continued seeing her on the street corner, and we continued shopping on Sundays. Then one Sunday she was gone. Along with her cardboard home. Bones seemed unfazed.
I pointed in surprise. “Probably dead or in jail.” As if dying was all she had left.
Bones shook his head and idled out of the parking lot. “Sisters of Mercy.”
Sisters of Mercy was a private and expensive rehab facility. “What?”
He said nothing more.
Two months later, curiosity got the better of me and I rang the bell at the counter. Not sure how to phrase it, I tried the honest approach. “Excuse me, ma’am, do you have a woman here who used to live behind the Piggly Wiggly?”
She turned the clipboard around, said, “Sign here,” and handed me a guest badge. “Room 119. If she’s not there, try the garden.”
Room 119 was empty, so I wound through the Ritz-Carlton–like facility and found the rose garden, where a woman wearing a straw hat and wielding pruning shears was tending the roses. My shadow crossed her, she stood, and I almost didn’t recognize her. She pushed the hair out of her eyes, slid off a glove, and extended her hand. “Murph. Bones has told me a lot about you.”
Her name was Rose, which I found fitting given the garden in which she was working. Rose was a wife. Mother. Sister. Friend. A PhD and tenured professor of romantic languages. After twenty years her high school sweetheart had an affair. That same year, her son died in a war, and disease robbed her of much that was feminine. She said she didn’t remember the last straw, but when she broke, anger took over. Rage set in. Sometime later she woke up behind the grocery store having named the rats.
Rose shook her head, her eyes found mine, and she whispered two words. “Then Bones.”
Once an angry woman draped in soiled clothing who created distance through the smell of urine and spit-filled obscenities, now something completely new stood before me. Smelling of roses. A reflection of the face of God. To my shame I’d written her off. Sometimes, given their depth, we become little more than the sum of our wounds, and it takes someone else to see what we can be instead of what we are.
No one was better at that than Bones.
What had found me as a boy on a river troller had gone on to carry me through the Academy. Through Roger’s betrayal. Through Marie. Through Key West, tending bar, and Karen. Through more than a hundred countries and three times as many rescues. Through gunshots, knives, hospitals, and infections. Through Angel and Casey and Clay and Ellie and Summer and Shep. Through Freetown and Frank.
Then Bones. The two words that defined my life.
I walked down the bank and waded into the warm water of the Intracoastal, where I stood letting the gentle current press against me. Wash over me. Carry my tears south. In a couple weeks they’d be mixing with the waters around Key West. In a year or two, or maybe a decade or a hundred years, they’d mix with the waters of the Balearic Sea, and maybe there I’d find my friend.
When I did, I’d hug his neck. My friend Bones.
Had Bones’s last selfless act had any effect on Frank? Did it change anything in him? If so, was the gain worth the purchase price, or was his sacrifice in vain? I couldn’t say. In my hand I held the picture. Frank had set it down as I watched. A purposeful act, and unlike the rest of his life, it was not done in secret. Standing in the water, Gunner swimming around me, I had more questions than answers and more pain than joy.
Over the next few days and weeks, thousands of prison doors would be flung wide. Ripped off the hinges. Shackles loosed. Bones was right. We needed a bigger town. Those who had been slaves would walk out of the market. Sun on their faces. Life before them. And none save me would know the price paid for their freedom.
One life for the many—starting with the one I’d written off. Who wasn’t worth the cost.
I did not understand that kind of love.
But . . . then Bones.
Epilogue
It was dark when I woke. I tried not to stir as Summer was wrapped around me like a vine. Since my return, she hadn’t let me out of her sight. Neither had Shep, who’d taken the news of Bones’s death badly. In the days since, Summer had wanted to process, to talk about it. I could not. My anger raged at my own inadequacy. My own failure. I had thrown my phone in the ocean and silently vowed never to return to Freetown.
Her hand moved across my chest and laid flat across my heart. “Talk with me?”
I couldn’t. I shook my head.
“Why?”
I said the only thing I could. “I’m in pain.”
Daylight found me sitting in a chair at the water’s edge. Gunner lay quietly at my side as gentle waves rolled in, bathed my toes, and then receded. With funds from one of Frank’s many accounts, Eddie and the girls had made the decision to buy five thousand acres along the coast of Spellman Bluff. A purchase that included Bones’s childhood playground as well as a retreat center built by the same people who owned the Cloister. Currently the center would sleep four hundred, and given the events of the last few days and the reports from around the world, those beds would fill quickly. Summer, Eddie, and the team were already dreaming and drawing up expansion plans.
The girls voted, and the working name became Hopetown. I was silently voting for City of Bones, but after listening to myself say it a few times, I admitted it sounded a bit morbid and I was pretty sure no one would want to live there.
I flipped open the lid of Bones’s million-mile orange Pelican case and stared at the dusty bottle. I lifted the wine and found a yellow sticky note written in Bones’s own hand. It read “For memory.”
I was working on my second glass when Casey’s shadow appeared over my shoulder. Arms crossed, she studied me. “Little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
I nodded and poured a few more sips into Gunner’s bowl.
She took my glass, sipped, then handed it back. “That won’t numb your pain. I know. I’m a bit of an expert.”
Another nod.
She leaned over, kissed my cheek, and laid a pad and pen on my lap. Then she waited until I looked at her. When I finally did, she said, “Write it out.”
Casey was going to be okay. She’d made it. The rescued now caring for the rescuer.
Eddie was the next to find me. In the time since we’d returned, I hadn’t looked at a screen. Hadn’t listened to the radio. Had no idea what kind of conversations were swirling about me. About David Bishop. Because I didn’t care and didn’t want to hear them. I just knew that life, as I had known it, was over.
Eddie knelt alongside my chair, rubbing Gunner’s head. His tone was soft. Gunner sighed and rolled onto his back. “Since we’ve been back, things have been crazy and I’ve wanted to tell you but never seemed to find the right moment.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure this is it, but I figured you need to know. When . . . when Frank dumped your identity onto the world . . . and you watched as the hits counted into the millions, well . . . he didn’t. I mean, they didn’t. Not really. I mean, he thought he did, but—”
I lifted my Costas off my face and squinted at him. Only then did I notice Jess, Camp, and BP standing behind him. Angel too.
Eddie fumbled with his hands while Camp continued. “I had his machine. When he thought he was posting to the Internet, revealing the truth of you, he was really just posting into our mirror.”
Evidently my eyes asked the question on my mind.
Jess held up her phone. “The world doesn’t know.”
Slowly, the pieces were shifting into place.
BP shrugged. “About you.”
Eddie added, “Unless you want them to.”
I sat up straighter and turned toward them. “What exactly are you saying?”
Jess spoke first. “Murphy Shepherd is still protecting David Bishop.”
Angel knelt alongside me. “Your secret is still safe with us, Padre.”
While they were speaking, I heard someone walking toward me, dragging a beach chair through the sand. When I turned, Clay stood wearing a straw hat, board shorts, and flip-flops. He held a fishing pole baited with shrimp and a lead weight that looked like Sputnik. He nodded, walked to the water’s edge, cast the bait, and then hung the rod and reel in a silver stake driven into the sand. Reeling the line taut, he poured himself a glass of wine, toasted me and someone out across the ocean, who I imagined must have been Bones, and then sat alongside me, propping his feet on the orange case like a footstool.
