THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES

ALSO BY MARCUS SAKEY

The Blade Itself At the City’s Edge Good People The Amateurs

MARCUS

SAKEY

THE TWO DEATHS OF

DANIEL HAYES

A NOVEL

DUTTON

DUTTON

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First printing, June 2011 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © 2011 by Marcus Sakey All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-525-952114

Printed in the United States of America Set in Sabon

Designed by Leonard Telesca

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For Scott Miller and Ben Sevier, who’ve had my back from the beginning

ACT ONE

“There is no future without an identity to claim it, or to be obligated to it. There are no caging norms. In its very precariousness the state is pure and free.”

—Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup

H

e was naked and cold, stiff with it, his veins ice and frost. Muscles carved hard, skin rippled with goose bumps, tendons drawn tight, body scraped and shivering. Something rolled over his legs, velvet soft and shocking. He gasped and pulled seawater into his lungs, the salt scouring his throat. Gagging, he pushed forward, scrabbling at dark stones. The ocean tugged, but he fought the last ragged feet crawling like a child.

As the wave receded it drew pebbles rattling across one another like bones, like dice, like static. A seagull shrieked its loneliness.

His lungs burned, and he leaned on his elbows and retched, liquid pouring in ropes from his open mouth, salt water and stomach acid. A lot, and then less, and finally he could spit the last drops, suck in quick shallow lungfuls of air that smelled of rotting fish.

In. Cough it out. There. There.

His hands weren’t his. Paler than milk and trembling with a panicky violence. He couldn’t make them stop. He’d never been so cold.

What was he doing here?

Like waking from sleepwalking, he couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. The cold was filling him, killing him, and if he wanted to live he had to move.

He rolled onto his side. An apocalyptic beach, water frothing beneath a shivering sky, wind a steady howl over the shoals, whipping the saw grass to strain its roots. Not another person as far as he could see.

Had to move. His muscles screamed. He staggered upright and tried a tentative step. His thoughts were signals banged down frozen wires; after an eon his legs responded. His feet were bloody.

One step. Another. The wind a lash against his dripping skin. The beach sloped hard upward. Each step brought muscles a little more under his control. The motion warming them, oh god, warming them to razors and nails and blood gone acid. He concentrated on breathing, each inhale a marker. Make it to the next one. Five more. Don’t quit until twenty. Goddamn you, breathe.

The boulders the ocean had broken to pebbles gave way to those it hadn’t yet, broad stones with moss marking the leeward side, spaced with pools of dark water where spiny things waited. He stumbled from one rock to the next until he reached the top.

As lonely and blasted a stretch of earth as any he’d seen. Black rocks and foaming sea and sky marked only by the passage of birds. No. Wait.

He blinked, tried to focus. Two thin dirt tracks led to a splotch of color, a boxy shape. A car. Legs cramping. Breath shallow. He couldn’t force his lungs to take. To draw enough. Air. The shivering easing. Bad sign. His feet tangled and he fell. Inches from his eyes, pale grass spotted and marked by the appetite of insects. The ground wasn’t so bad. Almost soft. Easy now. Easy to go.

No.

Crawl. Elbows scraping. Knees. Forearms going blue. Blueberries, blue water, blue eyes.

He reached the trunk, pulled himself up, the metal burning cold. Slouched his way to the door and bent stiff fingers around the handle.

Please.

The door opened. He maneuvered around it and fell into the smell of leather. His legs wouldn’t move. It took both arms to pull them in, one at a time. Gripping the burnished handle, he yanked the door shut. The wind’s laughter died.

Instead of a key there was a push-button start. He slapped at it, missed, slapped again. The engine roared to life.

The man turned the heat all the way up and collapsed against the seat.

5

A soft time. Warm air making his body ache and tingle and finally ease. For a while the man stared at the ceiling, head lolled back. Content to watch the drifting spots in his eyes. Tiny floating things that he could only see when he didn’t try to look at them. He didn’t think about where he was, or why, or who the car belonged to and when they might return, or whether they would be happy to find a naked man dripping on the leather seats.