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Cautiously, I climbed onto the wall. We sat four feet apart, and I let my legs hang out over the water, too. I eyed my brother, warily, for he had yet to acknowledge my presence. He wore dark jeans, a white fleece pullover, and worn hiking boots. His brown hair had grown out and was messy from the wind. I glanced down at the swift, silent current as it glided beneath the bridge, then spit and counted how long it took to reach the water.

"Where's your car?" I asked.

"Hitched a ride with a transfer truck this morning."

"You were pretty confident I was coming. You been out here all day?"

"Since noon."

We were quiet for some time. There was a somberness about him I'd rarely seen. He seemed deflated, like after a kill, when his victim could no longer suffer and the reality of his useless existence came crashing down on him.

"How are things back at the homestead?" he asked, smirking through his words.

"They think I murdered Mom," I said. "Beth Lancing wants to know where her husband is. That's the guy you killed in Vermont."

"Well, I'm glad you came, Andy. It was the right thing to do. There's been a bunch of shit between us."

"That surprises you after Mom?"

"It surprises me after last summer. I thought you knew me better. I tried to make you understand." He turned, and we locked eyes. "Did you come after me because of Mom?"

I gritted my teeth and nodded. The stinging of wind on my cheeks had vanished.

"Would you like to know about Vermont?" he asked. "Like who you murdered? Why you were so blindly convinced he was me?" He smiled, but I said nothing. I was used to his baiting. "You like it out here?" he asked.

"It's all right."

He laughed. "It's fucking better than all right. You ever seen a sky this big? I come out here all the time," he said. "You can lose yourself in that sky. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? You like hiding in the trees where no one can see you. You like the claustrophobic forests in the East. These wide open spaces scare the shit out…"

"Fuck off," I said. "You gonna mentally abuse me? Was that your plan? Guess what? I don't give a fuck anymore. I'm looking at prison, Orson. It's a lot scarier than you."

"You aren't going to prison," he said.

"Well unless you're planning on turning yourself in, I don't see any other…"

"I am."

I looked up from the dark river into his blue eyes. "Why? I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I just don't understand. It doesn't seem like something you'd ever do."

He sighed. "I don't know how to explain it without you hating me more. I'm proud of what I've done, Andy. It's on the news everyday, in the papers. I'm out there. The world just doesn't know me yet. I'm a nightmare, and I want the fear I bring to last. I don't wanna be caught, but because of the national attention that's inevitable. So I'm gonna act. I want people to wonder, 'What if he'd never turned himself in? How many more would he have taken?'"

"So kill yourself."

"I won't do that," he said, a flash of anger surfacing in his eyes before descending again, back to its infinite source. "That's what those cowards who shoot up fast-food restaurants and schools do after they've killed thirty people, because they weren't happy. Besides, you can't do interviews when you're dead. You can't have criminologists lining up to meet you. You can't watch movies about yourself, or read your own biography written by your famous brother."

"No," I said.

"Well, that's the price of your freedom, Andy. And I won't fucking argue with you about it. You'll spend the rest of your long life in prison or your short one on death row if I do anything but turn myself in. You see, killing me won't save you now. They already think you killed your own mother, and eventually Walter's blood'll find its way onto your hands, too."

I turned from my brother and looked across the plain. It grew darker each second. Moments ago, the river glittered. Now it moved, a stream of liquid black, as if flowing from a cold