“Who?” he says excitedly.
“Walken. Griggs. Traynor. A couple of others.”
“How do you know this?”
I hesitate, only because Cal doesn’t know the full story here either. But I’ve already opened my mouth, so I spill the rest of the story about the night I stood under the sheriff’s window. I get to the part about Walken threatening Traynor, and Corwin lets out a low whistle. “That guy’s got some balls if he tries to bully Traynor. That is not a man I would want to fuck with.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumble. Corwin arches an eyebrow at me and I show him my arm, the bruises still identifiable as fingers wrapped around my wrist. Cal lets out another growl as Corwin touches my hand gingerly. Corwin pulls out his phone and says, “May I?” I nod and he snaps some photos, first one side and then the other.
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” Cal says through gritted teeth. “Why couldn’t I see it? The thread? What is going on here?”
“What?” Corwin asks, bewildered.
I panic for a moment and shake my head at Corwin. “We’ll talk about this later,” I say to Cal.
“Planning on it,” he snaps at me.
“You think my father was murdered too, don’t you?” I ask Corwin. It feels odd, this certainty I feel. Having validation, after so long wondering on my own, is surreal.
He sits back against the booth and drums his fingers on the table with one hand, looking at the photo of my wrist on his phone with the other. “I talked to him three more times,” he finally says, “over a period of two months. Tried to trace the number each time he called, but he was smart. The numbers were for disposable cell phones. Couldn’t even ping them on any cell tower. He was quick with the phone calls.”
“I looked at his cell phone records after he died,” I say, wondering just how I missed all of this, how I could have been so blind. My father must have gone to great lengths to keep this hidden from us. I can’t help but feel anger toward him, that he could have kept this to himself, that he was making secret phone calls to the FBI without saying a damn thing about it. “The one for the store phone too. Never found anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. He made sure of that.”
“Hey,” Corwin says with alarm. “That’s not why I’m here, Benji. I’m not trying to dig at old wounds or say anything disparaging against your father. What he did was a brave thing, contacting us like he did. He didn’t have to. He could have kept on going with his life and not said a word. He spoke up.”
“And he died,” I snap. “He fucking died for it. What the fuck does that do for me?”
Corwin looks sympathetic when he says, “Sometimes we have to risk everything for the chance to do one thing right. I’d like to think your father knew that.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
His eyes widen. “What?”
“You convinced him to meet with you,” I say coldly. “That’s where he was going that morning. Not to see any friends. He was going to meet with you. He didn’t want to. He told you he didn’t. But you made him go anyway.”
Corwin flinches as if I’ve raised my hand to him. “The last time he called, I told him it was important for my case that he come in and meet me face to face. I told him that unless he was a material witness, nothing he’d told me would mean a damn thing. I couldn’t find enough proof to support the claims. I’d tried to convince him the other times he’d called, but… I pushed him this time. Hard.” Corwin looks away. “I told him to think about his son. Did he want his son to grow up in a place where he could be exposed to this bullshit? What if they found out he was speaking to me? Wouldn’t that put his family in danger?”
“You used us against him? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You have to understand,” Corwin pleads. “I thought I was about to lose this case. I had a witness who wouldn’t even give me his name, and a bunch of loose information that wasn’t connecting. I couldn’t find a damn thing about Walken or Griggs to support this. No evidence of money laundering, no embezzlement. The town books were in order. Hell, Roseland was audited in 2005 and passed with flying colors. There was nothing.”
“What I understand,” I grind out, “is that you killed my father.”
Corwin closes his eyes. “He finally relented. We set up a meeting. I offered to meet him halfway, but he wanted to come to Eugene. Said he wanted to get as far away as he could before he would meet me. We were supposed to meet at a park. Still wouldn’t tell me his name. Told me he was a big guy. That he’d be wearing a John Deere hat.”
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
I gave him that hat when I was eight years old. I’d been so proud of myself for
saving up money, doing extra chores and not telling anyone why. I wanted it to be a surprise. I’d convinced my mom to take me to the store to buy it, telling her she needed to wait in the car because I wanted to do it on my own. I’d gone in and told the clerk I needed the largest size because my father had the biggest head ever. I’d counted out the crumpled dollars carefully, adding coins when I ran out of paper. The clerk had wrapped the hat (so green it was, the words JOHN DEERE in bright yellow, like the sun) in tissue paper before putting it into a brown paper bag. I marched out of that store, feeling high and mighty for thinking of this all on my own. He would love it, I knew. He would think it was the greatest thing in the world.
But that quickly gave way to nerves a day later: Father’s Day, the reason I thought to buy it for him to begin with. I cursed myself as I nervously handed him the paper sack, wondering why I hadn’t saved a bit more money to get wrapping paper. He would hate it, I knew. It was such a dumb present. It was awful. Even as my mother murmured to him that this was all from me, that I’d thought of this all on my own, I felt my face burn. He lifted the tissue paper off as if he was unwrapping the greatest gift in the world. There was such reverence in his eyes, such excitement that I almost couldn’t bear the thought of disappointment taking over, a crushing look that would show how much I had failed. But it never came. He lifted the hat out of the paper, brushing his fingers along the brim gently. His eyes went back and forth as he read over the two words there. His voice was a little rougher than usual when he spoke. “You got this all on your own for me?” he asked, touching the hat again. I nodded at him, unable to speak. “Well, isn’t that… just something,” he said. “Isn’t that just fine. Why, it might be the finest hat I own. You know what we have to do to it, Benji?”
“Crack the brim,” I said, finding my voice, feeling very warm. “That’s right.” And with that, he took the brim between his two big hands and started to mold it in a semicircle, shaping the green. After, he put it on his head, and it fit just right without him having to undo the snaps on the back. “Very handsome,” my mother said with a smile.
He turned back to me and said, “Well?”
“Looks good, Dad,” I said. But inside, I was screaming with joy, knowing I’d done something right in his eyes. And only a moment later I found myself being pulled upward into a hug that seemed to go on for days.