What Comes Next by John Katzenbach

with troubling ambiguities—the victim had been Viet Cong, Brian had been certain, as had the men accused of assaulting her. So she was the enemy—they were all sure of it—although there was no concrete proof. And so, whatever happened to her, well, she probably deserved it, or at least that was the justification for five men in a hooch, taking turns until she was nearly dead, which left them with only one remaining choice. It was one of those cases where there was simply no moral good side, where finding out the truth about what had happened in a small sideshow of the war had created no good. A rape took place. The commanding officer ordered Brian to investigate. People were guilty. But nothing happened. He filed his report. The war went on. People died.
    Brian shouldered his rifle and pointed down the road.
    “That direction,” Brian said. “It might be tedious but it has to be done. Do you think you can keep remembering what you’re supposed to ask? You don’t want to forget…”
    “You’ll have to keep reminding me,” Adrian said. “Things sort of slide out of my mind when I’m not paying enough attention.”
    “I’ll be there when you need me,” Brian said.
    Adrian wanted to reply that he wished he’d been able to say the same. He hadn’t been there when his brother needed him. Simple as that. It made him want to cry and then he understood that desire signified he was having trouble controlling his swinging emotions. He knew he couldn’t actually break into tears in the middle of a bright, clear, mild morning, standing in the parking lot of a pharmacy at the small, busy shopping center on the edge of his college town. It would draw unwanted attention. It wouldn’t be appropriate.
    Not for the detective he had to become.
    Adrian slipped behind the wheel and started to drive home to his neighborhood, which suddenly seemed to him even in the bright spring sunshine to be far more dark and mysterious than he’d ever believed it could be.
    Of the first score of doors he knocked on nearly half didn’t respond, and the others weren’t helpful. People were polite—they assumed he was selling something, or going door-to-door fund-raising for some cause, such as clean water or whale saving, and when he showed the hat and mentioned the name they were taken aback, but didn’t know the girl.
    He was alone with Brian marching just in front. His brother had slipped on aviator-style sunglasses against the morning glare and he had the energy of a young man, which usually put him a few strides ahead of Adrian.
    Adrian felt very old as he walked along, although he wasn’t tired and he was secretly pleased to feel his leg muscles taut and uncomplaining as he kept pace with his brother’s ghost.
    He stopped, letting the morning sun fill his face, staring up into shafts of light as they danced with shadows. It was always a contest between bringing light and finding darkness. This made him think of a poem; his favorite writers were always working on imagery that trod the line between good and evil.
    “Yeats,” he said out loud. “Brian, did you ever read ‘Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea’?”
    Brian unslung his rifle and paused a few feet ahead. He hunkered down, dropping to a single knee, staring ahead, as if it were a jungle trail he was surveying, not a suburban neighborhood. “Yeah. Sure. Second-year seminar on poetic traditions in modern verse. I think you took the same class I did and got a better grade.”
    Adrian nodded. “What I liked was when the hero realized he’d killed his only son… the only recourse was madness. So he was enchanted and set to fighting with sword and shield against the ocean waves.”
    “ The invulnerable tide …” Brian said, quoting the poet. He held up a fist, as if to slow a platoon of men in single file behind him instead of his only brother. Brian’s eyes centered on a redbrick pathway. “Take the point, Audie,” he whispered. “Try this house.” These words