Chris Whitaker is the award-winning author of Tall Oaks, All The Wicked Girls and We Begin at the End. All three books were published to widespread critical acclaim, with Tall Oaks going on to win the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award, and We Begin at the End being picked as a Waterstones Thriller of the Month.
When not writing, Chris works at his local library, where he gets to surround himself with books. A huge fan of teen fiction, his debut Young Adult novel The Forevers will be published summer 2021.
Chris lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and young family.
Follow him on Twitter @WhittyAuthor
chriswhitaker.com
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You see something and you raise your hand.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a cigarette paper or a soda can. You see something and you raise your hand.
Don’t touch it, neither.
Just raise your hand.
The townspeople readied, their feet in the ford. Movement in line, twenty paces between, a hundred eyes down, but still, they held together, the choreography of the damned.
Behind, the town emptied, the echo of a long, pristine summer had been smothered by the news.
She was Sissy Radley. Seven years old. Blond hair. Known to most, Chief Dubois did not need to hand out photographs.
Walk held the furthest side. Fifteen and fearless, his knees shook with each step.
They marched the woodland like an army, cops led, flashlights swept, through the trees was the ocean, a long way down but the girl could not swim.
Beside Walk was Martha May. They had dated three months, confined to first base, her father was minister at Little Brook Episcopal.
She glanced over. “Still want to be a cop?”
Walk stared at Dubois, head down, last hope on his shoulders.
“I saw Star,” Martha said. “At the front with her father. She was crying.”
Star Radley, the missing girl’s sister. Martha’s best friend. They were a tight group. Only one was absent.
“Where’s Vincent?” she asked.
“I was with him before. He might be on the other side.”
Walk and Vincent were close like brothers. At nine they’d cut palms, pressed them together and sworn oaths of classless loyalty.
They said nothing more, just watched the ground, past Sunset Road, past the wishing tree, Chuck Taylors parting leaves. Walk focused so hard but still, he almost missed it.
Ten steps from Cabrillo, State Route One, six hundred miles of California coast. He stopped dead, then looked up and saw the line move on without him.
He crouched.
The shoe was small. Red and white leather. Gold-tone buckle.
A car on the highway slowed as it came, headlights traced the curve till they found him.
And then he saw her.
He took a breath and raised his hand.
Part One
The Outlaw
1
Walk stood at the edge of a feverish crowd, some he’d known since his birth, some since theirs. Vacationers with cameras, sunburn and easy smiles, not knowing the water was stripping more than timber.
Local news set up, a reporter from KCNR. “Can we get a word, Chief Walker?”
He smiled, shoved his hands deep in his pockets and looked to thread his way through when the people gasped.
Fragmented noise as the roof caved and crashed to the water below. Piece by piece, the foundation lay crude and skeletal, like the home was no more than a house. It had been the Fairlawn place since Walk could remember, a half-acre from the ocean when he was a kid. Taped off a year back, the cliff was eroding, now and then the people from California Wild came and measured and estimated.
The stir of cameras and indecent excitement as slates rained and the front porch clung. Milton, the butcher, dropped to one knee and fired off a money shot as the flag pole leaned and the banner hung in the breeze.
The younger Tallow boy got too close. His mother pulled his collar so hard he tumbled back onto his ass.
Behind, the sun fell with the building, dissecting the water with cuts of orange and purple and shades without name. The reporter got her piece, seeing off a patch of history so slight it barely counted.
Walk glanced around and saw Dickie Darke, who looked on, impassive. He stood like a giant, close to seven feet tall. A man into real estate, he owned several houses in Cape Haven and a club on Cabrillo, the kind of den where iniquity cost ten bucks and a small chunk of virtue.
They stood another hour, Walk’s legs tired as the porch finally gave up. Onlookers resisted the urge to applaud, then turned and made their way back, to barbeque and beer and firepits that waved flamelight on Walk’s evening patrol. They drifted across flagstone, a line of gray wall, dry laid but holding strong. Behind was the wishing tree, a major oak so wide splints held its limbs. The old Cape Haven did all it could to remain.
Walk had once climbed that tree with Vincent King, in a time so far from now it too would barely count. He rested a shaking hand on his gun, the other on his belt. He wore a tie, his collar stiff, his shoes shined. His acceptance of place was admired by some, pitied by others. Walker, captain of a ship that did not ever leave port.
He caught sight of the girl, moving against the crowd, her brother’s hand in hers as he struggled to match her pace.
Duchess and Robin, the Radley children.
He met them at half run because he knew all there was to know about them.
The boy was five and cried silent tears, the girl had just turned thirteen and did not ever cry.
“Your mother,” he said, not a question but a statement of such tragic fact the girl did not even nod, just turned and led.
They moved through dusk streets, the lull of picket fences and fairy lights. Above the moon rose, guided and mocked, as it had for thirty years. Past grand houses, glass and steel that fought the nature, a vista of such terrible beauty.
Down Genesee, where Walk still lived in his parents’ old house. Onto Ivy Ranch Road, where the Radley home came to view. Peeling shutters, an upturned bike, the wheel lying beside. In Cape Haven a shade beneath perfect might as well have been black.
Walk broke from the children and ran up the path, no lights from inside but the flutter of television. Behind, he saw Robin still crying and Duchess still looking on, hard and unforgiving.
He found Star on the couch, a bottle beside, no pills this time, one shoe on and the other foot bare, small toes, painted nails.
“Star.” He knelt and patted her cheek. “Star, wake up now.” He spoke calmly because the children were at the door; Duchess, an arm on her brother as he leaned so heavy into her, like he no longer held bones in his small body.
He told the girl to dial 911.
“I already have.”
He thumbed open Star’s eyes and saw nothing but white.
“Will she be alright?” The boy’s voice.
Walk glanced over, hoping for sirens, squinting at fired sky.
“Could you go look out for them?”
Duchess read him and took Robin outside.
Star shook then, puked a little and shook, like God or Death had hold of her soul and was wrenching it free. Walk had given it time, three decades had passed since Sissy Radley and Vincent King but still Star slurred about eternalism, the past and the present colliding, the force spinning the future off, never to be righted.
Duchess rode with her mother. Walk would bring Robin.
She looked on as the medic worked. He did not try a smile and for that she was grateful. He was balding and sweating and maybe tiring of saving those so determined to die.
For a while they stayed in front of the house, the door falling open to Walk, there like always, his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin needed that, the comfort of an adult, the perception of safety.
Across the street drapes moved as shadows passed silent judgment. And then, at the end of the road, she saw kids from her school, pedaling hard, faces red. News moved so fast in a town where zoning often made front pages.
The two boys stopped near the cruiser and let their bikes fall. The taller, breathless, a sweep of hair plastered down as he walked slow toward the ambulance.
“Is she dead?”
Duchess lifted her chin, met his eye and held it. “Fuck off.”
The engine rumbled as the door swung closed. Smoked glass made matte of the world.
Cars snaked the turns till they tipped from the hill, the Pacific behind, rocks broke the surface like heads of the drowning.
She watched her street till the end, till trees reached over and met on Pensacola, branches like hands, linked in prayer for the girl and her brother, and the unfurling tragedy that began long before either was born.
Night met others just like it, each swallowing Duchess so totally she knew she would not see day again, not the way other kids saw it. The hospital was Vancour Hill and Duchess knew it too well. When they took her mother she stood on the polished floor, light mirrored up, her eye on the door as Walk brought Robin inside. She walked over and took her brother’s hand, then led him toward the elevator where she rode to the second floor. The family room, lights dimmed, she pushed two chairs together. Across was a supply room and Duchess helped herself to soft blankets and then made the chairs into a cot. Robin stood awkward, the tired dragging him, haunting dark circled his eyes.
“You need to pee?”
A nod.
She led him into the bathroom, waited a few minutes then saw he washed his hands well. She found toothpaste, squeezed a little onto her finger and ran it around his teeth and gums. He spit, she dabbed his mouth.
She helped him out of his shoes and over the arms of the chairs, where he settled like a kind of small animal as she covered him over.
His eyes peered out. “Don’t leave me.”
“Never.”
“Will Mom be okay?”
“Yes.”
She cut the television, the room dark, emergency lighting left them in red, soft enough that he slept by the time she reached the door.
She stood in clinical light, her back to the door; she would not let anyone inside, there was another family room on three.
An hour and Walk appeared again and yawned like there was cause. Duchess knew of his days, he drove Cabrillo Highway, those perfect miles from Cape Haven to beyond, each blink a still of such paradise people crossed the country to find them, buy their homes and leave them empty ten months of the year.
“Is he asleep?”
She nodded once.
“I went to check on your mother, she’ll be alright.”
She nodded again.
“You can go and grab something, a soda, there’s a machine next to—”
“I know.”
A look back into the room saw her brother sleeping soundly, he would not move until she stirred him.
Walk held out a dollar bill, she took it reluctantly.
She walked the corridors, bought the soda and didn’t drink it, she would keep it for Robin when he woke. She saw into cubicles, sounds of birth and tears and life. She saw shells of people, so empty she knew they would not recover. Cops led bad men with tattooed arms and bloodied faces. She smelled the drunks, the bleach, the vomit and shit.
She passed a nurse, a smile because most of them had seen her before, just one of those kids, dealt a losing hand.
When she returned she found Walk had set two chairs by the door. She checked on her brother then sat.
Walk offered her gum and she shook her head.
She could tell that he wanted to talk, to bullshit about change, a slick on the long road, how it would all be different.
“You didn’t call.”
He watched her.
“Social. You didn’t call.”
“I should.” He said it sad, like he was letting down her or the badge, she did not know which.
“But you won’t.”
“I won’t.”
He had a stomach that strained his tan shirt. The chubby, reddened cheeks of a boy whose indulgent parents never told him “no.” And a face so open she could not imagine he carried a single secret. Star said he was all good, like that was a thing.
“You should get some sleep.”
They sat like that till stars leaned to first light, the moon forgot its place and held like a smear on new day, a reminder of what had gone. Opposite was a window. Duchess stood at the glass and pressed her head to the trees and the falling wild. Birdsong. A long way and she saw water, specks that were trawlers crawling the waves.
Walk cleared his throat. “Your mother . . . was there a man—”
“There’s always a man. Whenever anything fucked up happens in the world, there’s always a man.”
“Darke?”
She held straight.
“You can’t tell me?” he asked.
“I’m an outlaw.”
“Right.”
She wore a bow in her hair and fussed with it often. She was too thin, too pale, too beautiful like her mother.
“There’s a baby just been born down there.” Walk changed it up.
“What did they call it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fifty bucks says it’s not Duchess.”
He laughed gently. “Exotic by rarity. You know you were going to be Emily.”
“Sore must be the storm.”
“Right.”
“She still reads that one to Robin.” Duchess sat, crossed her leg, rubbed the muscle, her sneaker loose and worn. “Is this my storm, Walk?”
He sipped coffee, like he was searching for an answer to an impossible question. “I like Duchess.”
“You try it a while. If I was a boy I might’ve been Sue.” She lay her head back and watched the strips blink. “She wants to die.”
“She doesn’t. You mustn’t think that.”
“I can’t decide if suicide is the most selfish or selfless act.”
At six a nurse led her.
Star lay, a shadow of a person, even less of a mother.
“The Duchess of Cape Haven.” Star, her smile there but weak. “It’s alright.”
Duchess watched her, then Star cried and Duchess crossed the room, pressed her cheek to her mother’s chest and wondered how her heart still beat.
Together they lay in amid the dawn, a fresh day but no light of promise because Duchess knew promise was a falsity.
“I love you. I’m sorry.”
There was much Duchess could say, but for the moment she could find nothing more than, “I love you. I know.”
You can buy We Begin at the End here.
(C) Chris Whitaker 2020