Chasing China White by Allan Leverone (best time to read books TXT) 📗

the guy up and then they carry him out. Nobody threatens me, nobody talks to me, nobody even fucking looks at me. Those are my terms. Anybody violates them and I’ll blow my brother’s head off.”

He listened a little longer and then said, “Right now. Let’s do this.”

Then he hung up the phone and waved the gun in Greg’s direction. “They’re coming in for the cop,” he said. “Get over here behind the counter and let’s wait together.”

It didn’t take long. Not three minutes after the phone conversation, two men wearing flak vests and carrying a stretcher walked out from behind an ambulance parked alongside several police cruisers. They moved slowly to the diner’s front door and knocked twice. Then they entered without waiting for an invitation.

Derek had placed himself directly behind Greg, who stood at the back of the counter at a forty-five degree angle from the front door. His brother’s breathing was fast and labored and he smelled as though he’d just run a marathon on a ninety-degree day. Even with all that had happened, Greg felt certain Derek would never follow through on his threat to the cops to shoot him, so his tension was understandable: he was giving up his security blanket.

The medics—Greg didn’t doubt they were really police officers, and wondered whether they were armed despite Derek’s demands to the contrary—worked quickly. They placed the stretcher on the floor next to the cop and then slipped him onto it, doing their best to keep from jostling him any more than absolutely necessary.

One thing they did not do was address Derek. They were all business, and inside of ninety seconds had secured the patient to the stretcher. Then one man moved behind the wounded cop and the other to the front and they lifted on a whispered count of three. They held the door open awkwardly and slipped through. Greg watched their backs through the plate glass window as they approached the ambulance and disappeared behind it.

And Greg and Derek were alone.

Derek sighed deeply, and before he’d finished exhaling the phone rang again. This time there was no fearful jump, no angry rant. He seemed to be expecting the call.

He looked at the phone and then at Greg, and Greg said, “Gonna answer it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not ready to talk to them yet.” He walked toward and then past the phone and resumed pacing.

Greg watched him for a few seconds and said, “You need to give yourself up.” He wasn’t sure why he tried again. His brother had made perfectly clear that he was terrified of what would happen were he to go to prison. But he had to know there was no reasonable alternative to surrender, because there was no way in hell the police would allow him to walk away from the diner now that they’d spirited their comrade to safety and had the Boxford killer in their sights.

Derek ignored him and for a moment said nothing. When he finally spoke, his words came out of left field. “Why do you think Dad always hated me?’

Greg shook his head. “Don’t you think you have bigger problems than worrying about a guy who’s been dead for three years?”

“Pretend it matters. Why do you think he hated me?”

“He didn’t hate you.”

“He never treated me the same as you.”

“He understood me, Derek. He just didn’t understand you. But he never hated you.”

“Could’ve fooled me. When you fucked up he gave you break after break. When I stepped out of line, even a little, he was on me like a ton of bricks.”

“I don’t remember it that way,” Greg said. He still didn’t understand why they were having this conversation now, but it seemed to be calming his brother down, talking him off the ledge in some weird way, so he kept going. “I don’t remember him treating us differently at all. He was kind of an asshole to both of us, really.”

“You just didn’t see it, then.”

“Even if that’s the case, Derek, even if he was tougher on you than on me, maybe it’s because he could see you needed more guidance, like somehow he could sense your tendency toward addiction and self-destructive behavior.”

Derek snorted derisively. “Guidance? He never gave me a second’s worth of guidance the whole time I was growing up. All he ever did was criticize and nitpick. It’s like he was trying to drive me away. Eventually he did.”

“I’m not saying he handled you in the right way. I already agreed he was kind of a dick to both of us. But that doesn’t mean he hated you. In fact, it was just the opposite.”

Derek stared at Greg like he’d sprouted a second head. “How can you say that? He never had an encouraging word to say to me, ever.”

“Dude, you have no idea how many times after he found out you were using that I caught him crying when he thought nobody was around. When he was in the garage supposedly working on the car, or pacing the house late at night when he thought nobody was awake, or behind a locked bathroom door. I would hear him sobbing or walk around a corner and he would turn away and wipe his eyes trying to hide it.”

Derek had stopped pacing and now stood perfectly still. He continued to gaze at Greg through unblinking eyes. “I never saw Dad cry. Never. Not one time.”

“Neither did I. Not until you sank so deeply into addiction you were oblivious to everything around you. Then you left home, and how would you know after that?”

“I didn’t ‘leave.’ He kicked me out.”

“He never wanted to do that, Derek. I know exactly what happened when all that went down. He offered you the chance to go to medical detox and then to long-term rehab, which he was going to pay for, and he was by no means a rich man. When you refused to go, he felt he had no alternative than to kick you out.”

Derek hadn’t