245 - Two Hundred Forty Five

Breaker Whiskey

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[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

I’ll—I’ll get to your latest in a second but first…

I’m already having a hard enough time ordering my thoughts—talking out loud on the radio and spending my days talking to Harry…it’s like my brain is more active than it’s been in months and I feel like I’m bouncing from thought to thought with no order or intention.

And it’s so much worse than usual right in this moment because Harry just told me something that…

I don’t know why she didn’t tell me this a year ago—maybe because when she first confessed everything I refused to hear more about it. But I talked to her about what I was saying yesterday, the messed up logic of her view of me and her view of Pete and she—she said it was different. Because what Pete did was cold blooded murder, not an accident, not an escalation of a confrontation. And I didn’t buy that, how could she know, she wasn’t there and she—

It was his partner. Um, two of the people who died—one was a teller who refused to open the vault and the other was um— (pause) was a seventeen year old boy who tried to take Pete’s gun away. And that’s—I mean, I didn’t expect one of them to be just a kid—but I figured that’s what happened, that something went wrong, someone tried to interfere, a gun went off and—

But the third person was Pete’s partner. His…mentee, his protege. The two of them, after they did get into the vault, after they—well, they, um, snuck out through the back and Pete—Pete shot him point blank in the head and left him in the alley behind the bank. Which…does put the other killings in a different light. Suddenly the death of the teller doesn’t seem like a robbery gone wrong, but instead…

It’s different. That’s what she said. I mean, she also said that she doesn’t want to kill Junior, that she doesn’t think that’s a way to solve anything, but that she’s had to think it all through anyway. She had to consider it, because if it was the way to make things right with me, then she would—

But she knows it’s not. She knows it wouldn’t fix anything, especially since she already learned that taking extreme action to protect yourself from the possibility of harm can lead to something so much worse. Because that’s why she turned Pete in. Because she felt it was just a matter of time until he did what he did to his old mentee again, but this time to me. She didn’t think she could convince me that he’d ever hurt me—and…she’s probably right about that—so she…made a different choice.

And now I have to live with this knowledge and figure out how it changes my entire world view and feelings about one of the most significant relationships in my life.

[click, static]

So…I’ve had some things to process. Clearly. But I’m not—I’m not ignoring you, especially since what you said—

“I’ll transmit safe location”. That’s what you said. Birdie does this mean…are we going to meet?

I assume you mean a safe location for you to…leave me something, or somewhere Fox can’t find us or…I don’t know. I know what I’m hoping for and I also know that I need to hold that hope tightly so it doesn’t grow out of control.

I don’t know how you plan to transmit a location without Fox or Junior hearing it, but I have no doubt you’ll come up with something.

So for now I’ll just…wait. I’ll wait and I’ll keep going North.

[click, static]