Free The Brethren by John Grisham

voice-over said, “Lake, Before It’s Too Late.”
    Not bad, thought Beech.
    He lit another cigarette, his last of the night, and stared at the envelope on the empty chair—$5 million lodged against him by the two families. He’d pay the money if he could. Never saw the kids, not before he killed them. The paper the next day had their happy photos, a boy and a girl. Just college kids, enjoying the summer.
    He missed the bourbon.
    He could bankrupt half the judgment. The other half was for punitive damages, nonbankruptable. So it would follow wherever he went, which he assumed was nowhere. He’d be sixty-five when his sentence was over, but he’d be dead before then. They’d carry him out of Trumble in a box, send him home to Texas, where they’d bury him behind the little country church where he’d been baptized. Maybe one of the kids would spring for a headstone.
    Beech left the room without turning off the TV. It was almost ten, time for lights-out. He bunked with Robbie, a kid from Kentucky who’d broken into 240 houses before they caught him. He sold the guns and microwaves and stereos for cocaine. Robbie was a four-year veteran of Trumble, and because of his seniority he had chosen the bottom bunk. Beech crawled into the top one, said, “Good night, Robbie,” and turned off the light.
    “Night, Hatlee,” came the soft response.
    Sometimes they chatted in the dark. The walls were cinderblock, the door was metal, their words wereconfined to their little room. Robbie was twenty-five and would be forty-five before he left Trumble. Twenty-four years—one for every ten houses.
    The time between bed and sleep was the worst of the day. The past came back with a vengeance—the mistakes, the misery, the could-haves and should-haves. Try as he might, Hatlee could not simply close his eyes and go to sleep. He had to punish himself first. There was a grandchild he’d never seen, and he always started with her. Then his three kids. Forget the wife. But he always thought about her money. And the friends. Ah, the friends. Where were they now?
    Three years in, and with no future there was only the past. Even poor Robbie below dreamed of a new beginning at the age of forty-five. Not Beech. At times he almost longed for the warm Texas soil, layered upon his body, behind the little church.
    Surely someone would buy him a headstone.

SIX
    F or Quince Garbe, February 3 would be the worst day of his life. It was almost the last, and it would’ve been had his doctor been in town. He couldn’t get a prescription for sleeping pills, and he didn’t have the courage to use a gun on himself.
    It began pleasantly enough with a late breakfast, a bowl of oatmeal by the fire in the den, alone. His wife of twenty-six years had already left for town, for another day of charity teas and fund-raising and frantic small-town volunteerism that kept her busy and away from him.
    It was snowing when he left their large and pretentious banker’s home on the edge of Bakers, Iowa, and drove ten minutes to work in his long black Mercedes, eleven years old. He was an important man about town, a Garbe, a member of a family that had owned the bank for generations. He parked in his reserved spot behind the bank, which faced Main Street, and made a quick detour to the post office, something he did twice a week. For years he’d had a private boxthere, away from his wife and especially away from his secretary.
    Because he was rich and few others were in Bakers, Iowa, he seldom spoke to people on the street. He didn’t care what they thought. They worshiped his father and that was enough to keep their business.
    But when the old man died, would he have to change his personality? Would he be forced to smile on the sidewalks of Bakers and join the Rotary Club, the one founded by his grandfather?
    Quince was tired of being dependent on the whims of the public for his security. He was tired of relying on his father to keep their customers happy. He was