about hell?’
The man shook his head slowly. He smiled but it wasn’t a happy smile or even a smile of amusement, like he thought what Reggie said was funny or stupid or both. It was a sad smile, like he missed something he’d once been fond of.
‘I’ve never seen anything that would make me believe in a heaven or a hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen cruelty, and greed, and men and women pushing and manoeuvring to make it to the top. Only to find that when they’re at the top there’s somewhere else they want to be. Somewhere higher.’
‘Will you kill me?’ Reggie asked.
The man stared at him long and hard.
‘I haven’t yet, have I?’ he said.
‘That’s because you still need me,’ Reggie said. ‘You’re not healthy enough yet to get along on your own.’
The man smiled again and nodded sagely.
‘That’s very perceptive,’ the man said. ‘Always mind the details.’
‘Will you kill me when you’re better?’ Reggie asked.
‘No,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we have a deal,’ the man said. ‘And in my line of work, a deal’s a deal. A man’s word means everything.’
‘What if I break it?’ Reggie asked. ‘What if I call the police?’
‘You won’t,’ the man said, looking at him intently, as if he were reading fine print on a contract.
Under such scrutiny, Reggie had to look away.
Not because he was scared, though. And not because of any suggestion of threat beneath the man’s words should the deal be broken. But because, Reggie realized, he knew he wouldn’t call the police.
He’d made that decision the moment he’d run up to help the man and hadn’t turned away even after seeing the gun beneath the jacket.
Reggie looked away because the killer, having known him only a few hours, already read Reggie like a book. This was the kind of insight that only a close family member had.
Someone like a mother … or a father.
They were quiet for a time, looking across the space at each other. The lantern was lit but carried hardly a few feet. Outside the open windows of the tree house the night was heavy and dark. As if the two of them were in the last habitable space in an abyss.
The man looked at his abdomen, then out the window nearest him, then at Reggie again. He looked tired, aware, and restless all at the same time, like how Reggie felt when he had a big test the next day at school. Something important that much else depended on.
‘You should probably go to bed,’ the man said.
Reggie nodded and moved to the ladder.
‘I think I’ll need something for infection,’ the man said.
Reggie looked back and nodded again.
The man gave him the names of some drugs. Some for pain, stronger than the aspirin, he told Reggie he could find in a store. Others, he’d have to look around at home, maybe search his parents’ medicine cabinet. The man told Reggie to be back as soon as possible in the morning with them.
Reggie nodded again and started down the ladder. Then he paused and poked his head back up.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Ivan,’ the killer said.
‘I’m Reggie,’ he said.
The man nodded in his direction.
‘Good to meet you, Reggie,’ he said.
‘Are we friends?’ he asked.
The man smiled that same sad smile for the third time.
‘I guess we are at that,’ he said. ‘Now get along to bed.’
Reggie gave a little wave and descended the ladder. He jumped down the last few steps and turned back towards home.
The distance and darkness from the woods to the house seemed immense; shadows everywhere where things could hide. Yet he wasn’t frightened at all. He felt as if there was something watching his back. Something protecting him. Something that killed and wasn’t afraid of hell and didn’t answer to anyone.
In fact, the walk back was quite peaceful.
2.
Reggie awoke rested and energetic. He ate his breakfast fast and enthusiastically and this seemed to please his mom. He told her the pancakes were great and swallowed them down with a large glass of orange juice. This made her smile.
Dropping his dishes into the sink, he told her he was thinking of riding into town. This seemed to make her even happier.
‘It’s good for you to get out and do things,’ she said. ‘You’ve been holed up in this place too long.’
No doubt she assumed a trip to the comic book or video game store was his destination. Reggie said nothing to make her think otherwise. He just smiled back and walked out of the kitchen.
Upstairs, he showered, dressed, then left the house, wheeling his bike out of the garage for the first time in months. He checked the tyres, hopped on, and was soon down the road and turning onto the highway. The desert road twisted downwards, a serpentine thing, and the town out there ahead of him, miniscule but growing. Like a toy model magically rising to human dimensions.
A mile down the road he saw the sirens, flashing red and blue.
To either side of the highway desert fields stretched to the horizon in great white expanses. Sparse cacti and trees and bushes dotted the bone-white stretches like stragglers of a great migration. Periodically, ditches and arroyos dipped the surface like moon craters. Men and women in police department blue and sheriff’s department tan spread out to either side of the highway, moving further from the road and deeper into the fields. Some lingered by the shoulders of the road and leaned against open patrol car doors and spoke into radios.
A young deputy flagged him with a wave when Reggie rode near and he braked in front of the man. Reggie squinted in the morning sunlight and visored his eyes with a hand to look up at the deputy.
‘How’s it going, kid?’ the deputy asked. He chewed gum or tobacco like cud as he spoke, and hooked his thumbs in his belt like a movie marshal swaggering into town.
‘Fine, officer,’ Reggie said, being respectful as his parents had raised him to be.
‘Where you off to?’ the deputy asked, not really looking at Reggie as he asked the question. He looked this way and that to either side of the highway, like he wanted to be out there with the others, and not on the sidelines directing bicycle traffic.
‘Town,’ Reggie said. ‘It’s summer break.’
‘Yeah,’ the deputy said, turned and spat a large black wad, ‘well, just be careful.’
‘What happened?’ Reggie asked, following the deputy’s lead and turning and looking out into the barren desert fields where others were fanning out, checking ditches, peering behind pathetic gnarled trees and rocks.
The deputy looked at Reggie for the first time. A hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth.
‘There’s a dangerous man out there,’ he said, not doing a good job at keeping the amusement from his tone. ‘A really bad, dangerous man.’
‘That so?’ Reggie asked, trying to sound interested and worried at the same time.
‘That’s so,’ the