The Bone House - Brian Freeman [139]
'Come on,' Reich said. He dug in his pocket for the keys to his squad car and threw them on the ground. He held out the keys to the cuffs and shackles to Pete, who stood by the driver's door with his hands in his pockets. 'You having second thoughts?' he asked.
'You know me better than that, Felix.' He took the keys.
Reich stared into his friend's face for a long time in the shadows. 'OK then.'
Pete drove. They headed north on the deserted roads, back toward Door County. Ten miles from the farmhouse, they passed a bar with a handful of pickups parked outside the door. Pete continued past the bar for a quarter-mile until no one who ventured into the winter air would see them, and then he pulled on to the shoulder. Both men got out.
The wind poured over their bodies with an unforgiving fury. Pete dug his chin into his neck and pulled down his wool hat. Reich simply walked down the gully from the road into the dirt of the field. He wasn't even wearing a hat to cover the steel wool of his hair. His skin was already numb and white, but he didn't care.
Pete followed. 'You sure about this, Felix?'
'Just do it.' Reich squatted and found a fist-sized clump of earth that had frozen into jagged edges. 'Here.'
'I wish there was some other way,' Pete said.
'Hit me. Hard. You only get one try.'
Pete reared back with the rock and swung his gloved hand into his friend's forehead. The frozen spikes cut through Reich's skin, erupting in blood. Reich stumbled back at the force of the blow and nearly fell. He staggered. Pete dropped the rock and reached for his friend, but Reich shrugged him away.
'Get the hell out of here.'
'Can you make it to the bar?'
Reich touched his hand to his cheek, where the warm blood was already freezing. He felt his words slurring as he tried to talk. He tasted copper on his lips. 'Just go. I'll join you as soon as I can, and we'll finish this. It's for Nettie and the boys, remember?'
Reich stayed where he was, bleeding in the field, until Pete climbed the shoulder and drove away. The car disappeared, its tail lights winking out, leaving Reich alone. He was losing blood fast. He took two clumsy steps toward the bar, which looked impossibly far. Briefly, he wondered if it would be better to lie down among the broken cornstalks and give himself up to the winter. He had a vision of his future, and it wasn't pretty. He had been the one to cross the line tonight, and there was no going back.
Even so, he quashed his doubts and marched for rescue like a wounded soldier.
'I saw what was left of him, Sheriff,' Cab said. 'The two of you didn't just kill him. You tortured him.'
'Torture is burning to death,' Reich replied. 'I've seen it happen to people I considered my enemies, and I didn't even wish it on them.'
'I saw the broken bones. The bullet holes.'
Reich shrugged. 'I don't regret what I did. Sometimes you have to take justice into your own hands.'
'Peter Hoffman regretted it, though, didn't he?'
'Pete got soft,' Reich said. 'He got old. The booze took over.'
'Or maybe he finally realized the two of you had become the monsters you were trying to destroy.'
'We did what we had to do,' Reich said.
'If you're so sure about that, why kill Hoffman to cover it up? Why not tell the world?'
'People like you don't understand,' he snapped. 'They don't appreciate the tough decisions that others make for them.'
Tresa pulled away from Cab and marched toward Reich through the wet ground. She swept the red hair from her face. 'You son of a bitch,' she hissed.
'Tresa, stay out of this,' Reich told her.
'All this time I thought Harris was alive. That made it OK. And now I find out you killed him. You bastard!'
'This doesn't concern you.'
'Who else knew?' she demanded. 'Did my mother know?'
'No one knew. Look, Tresa, you were a kid. Your father was dead, and Harris was there for you. That doesn't change what he did.'
Tresa pushed in close enough to spit in Reich's face. 'You're always right, aren't you? You're right about everything. You didn't believe me about Mark either. You wouldn't listen when