Gideon (46 page)

* * *

The house was uninhabitable. There were gaping holes in the roof where the wood had rotted away. There was no foundation, so the front of the porch had sunk into the ground and was at an ominous tilt. The windows had been replaced by spiderwebs and any life that had once existed inside had been replaced by darkness, loneliness, and emptiness.

Nonetheless, Carl recognized it. It was the house that Danny and Rayette had lived in. It was the house in which Danny had murdered his baby brother.

They walked around the back of the house, the four of them—Carl, Amanda, Luther Heller, and the woman known as Momma One-Eye—through the overgrown weeds and the cracked, hardened mud. There was an ancient barn there, which seemed to have survived better than the house. The paint had long since cracked and the swinging door had rotted through, but it was standing. An overwhelming smell of manure emanated from within, and the buzzing from the swarm of flies that lived there was audible in the silence of the countryside. This was a property that time had forgotten. No, Carl thought, not forgotten. Time had cursed it. Had done its best to make it disappear.

Amanda clutched at Carl’s arm. He covered her hand with his and squeezed as reassuringly as he could manage.

Momma led them to the back of the barn. Beyond it lay a forest, thick with oak and pine trees. She walked to the edge of the woods and stopped in front of a tall oak. Its leaves provided a large patch of shade on the burnt grass. Momma turned to face them; then she looked straight down at the ground.

She said nothing. Just stepped aside.

They had stopped off at the alderman’s house to pick up a shovel. Carl now took a deep breath, grabbed the shaft of the shovel, hand over hand, and began digging. The sweat poured off him, but he dug ferociously and rhythmically. The ground was hard and rocky and filled with twisted roots. But in half an hour, there was a hole perhaps six feet long, three feet wide, and four feet deep. Carl stopped digging, ran a hand through his wet hair, then wiped it on his pants. He looked up at Momma One-Eye, who just nodded again impassively. Carl swung the shovel one more time, plunging it into the dirt. He pulled it back, lifted it to swing again, then stopped suddenly, holding the shovel steady in midair.

He was breathing hard but trying to keep the breaths even and under control.

“Amanda,” he said quietly.

She took a step over to the hole, leaned over, and stared inside. Carl dug the shovel into the ground again, and then several more times, delicately now, carefully sweeping the dirt away from the center of the hole.

“Oh, my God,” Amanda said. “Oh, my God.”

They all stared into the hole. There was something there, a small wooden box wrapped in a faded and torn blue blanket. Pieces of the blanket were missing, dissolved by the passage of time, but stringy blue patches of cloth still clung tenaciously to the rotting wood. Carl brushed the remaining layer of dirt off the box, lifted it up, tossed the remains of the blue blanket off to the side, and pried open the lid.

Inside the box was a tiny human skeleton. It was absolutely intact, which made it all the sadder. The head, the arms, the legs were positioned so the body could have been asleep. The fingers were thin and fine, the skull small and perfectly formed. Carl felt as if he knew this child, as if the skeleton were a child still, capable of sitting up and walking and crying. The reality of what he was looking at sliced through Carl as vividly as a winter wind, making him shiver despite the southern summer heat. He picked up the top of the box—the makeshift coffin—and put it back where it belonged, covering back up the bones of a baby boy, murdered nearly half a century earlier.

He looked up at the old black woman, who was crying quietly.

Amanda was struggling not to cry herself as she asked Momma One-Eye, “Who is it?”

“You
know
, don’t you?” Momma One-Eye said. “You know who his brother become.”

“Tell us,” Carl said slowly. “It’s the only thing we don’t know. So please, please tell us.”

“That boy, the smart boy, that boy I loved when he was so little … he become the president of the United States.”

Carl and Amanda stared at each other. Her hand reached out unsteadily for his and he took it, just as unsteadily. Luther Heller staggered one step backward and moaned a low, anguished moan.

“That’s why I never told anybody,” Momma said. “Who’ll believe this nigger woman when I say the president killed a little child? Nobody gonna believe me. Like nobody gonna believe you. They ain’t never gonna let you tell nobody, don’t you know that? Never.”

Carl turned toward the aged black woman. “What was the baby’s name?” he asked.

“This baby?” Momma One-Eye said. “This devil-child buried here in this ground? It don’t make no difference now.”

“Yes, it does,” Carl said. It was almost a whisper. “What did they call him?”

“This baby’s name was Gideon. They called him the baby Gideon.”

He had known that was coming. In a flash, he had known it as surely as he’d known anything in his entire life. Yet when she said the words, he reeled as if staggered by a heavy blow. Now it was all clear. There was no more doubt. As he looked at Amanda he knew that she too understood what was at stake: the very White House itself. Carl had seen the notes, studied the diaries, had just enough information fed to him, and been hired to write a book revealing that the president of the United States had cold-bloodedly killed his own brother. Somehow one of Tom Adamson’s political enemies had discovered the truth—and had come up with the idea of using a book to destroy him. He’d used the code name Gideon to let the president know he had the whole story, to make sure he knew there would be no mercy. But Adamson had fought back. Refused to go away. He’d destroyed Maggie. Then Toni, taking no chances that she might have learned something by mistake. Then Harry, the messenger. And, Carl knew, Adamson was still using his considerable power to destroy
him
. That’s what it was all about. Adamson’s reelection. It’s why all of this was happening. Politics. Control. Power.

“What are we going to do with …?”

Amanda’s question jarred him out of his reverie. He realized she was pointing at the skeleton.

“We can’t just leave it here,” she said.

“No,” Carl agreed. “And we might need it. It’s the only proof we’ve got right now.”

“I can take it to the mortuary for safekeeping.” Luther picked the box up, cradled it in his arms.

Carl started to issue a warning. “No one can—”

“No one will know,” Heller cut him off. “People owe me favors in this town. It will be done quietly and discreetly. We’ll hide it until you tell me the time for secrecy is—”

A tremendous boom shattered the silence of the deserted farmhouse and prevented Carl from hearing the last word of Luther’s sentence. Carl momentarily thought a car had backfired. Or a thunderstorm had begun. For an instant no one realized what had happened. Then Carl saw the red spot on Luther Heller’s shirt. There was no car. No thunder. A bullet had been fired. It had entered the alderman’s back and exploded out his chest.

Heller fell to the ground, a stunned look on his face, as he finished the thought he’d begun: “—over.”

Before he toppled, his hands flew straight out and he tossed the small coffin into the woods, behind the first line of small pine trees.

Carl flung himself at Amanda, threw her down just as another boom sounded and another bullet hissed by them. It cracked into the trunk of the oak tree to the right. The oak tree that had marked the grave of the baby Gideon.

Amanda scrambled on her hands and knees, lunged into the front line of the woods. Carl swung around, picked up Momma One-Eye and hurled her behind the oak, then jumped in after her. A bullet kicked up dirt six inches to his right. Carl rolled over to grab the box.

“Go, go, go!” he screamed, and all three of them dove farther back into the forest, gaining some protection from the thicker branches and cluster of trees.

They sprawled on the ground, waiting. There were no more booms. No more cracks. Only something much more frightening. Silence.

Luther Heller lay on the ground, maybe ten feet from them. The dirt to his right was stained a deep, dark red. With every passing second the stain was spreading, growing. There was no other movement that they could see.

“Don’t,” Amanda said as Carl gathered his legs beneath him. She knew he was going back out into the open to pull Luther in with them.

“I have to,” he told her.

“You can’t.”

“She’s right, boy,” Momma One-Eye said. “Luther be dead. No point in you followin’.”

Carl stared at the motionless black man. He closed his eyes, a half second of tribute, then gathered himself and turned to face the two women. “All right,” he breathed. “Momma, do you have the strength to run?”

“I can run,” the old woman said, “but I sure can’t run far.”

“Then can you tell Amanda how to get through these woods and back to town?”

“Nobody knows there wood like Momma.”

“Carl—” Amanda began.

“Just listen. Listen to me and do what I tell you. The shots had to come from over there. And I guarantee you whoever’s doing the firing is moving closer and closer. So head that way. As fast as you can. Move quickly and keep zigzagging. Momma’ll tell you how to circle back, but make sure you’re far enough away before you come out in the open. Then head back toward town, someplace where there are people who can help you.”

“Suzi’s Café,” Momma One-Eye said. “That’s my niece. She lives right on top, on the second floor. Just tell her I sent you. She’ll hide you.” Then Momma told her how to cut through the woods and where to go when she came out the other side.

Carl said, “Okay. You go to the diner and we’ll try to meet you there. Amanda, can you carry the box? It’s not heavy, a few pounds.”

“Yes, of course. But please”—Amanda spoke urgently—“just let’s all go. What are you trying to do?”

“Look,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of time. Momma’ll never make it at your pace. I want you to go.
Now
. She’ll follow, go her own way, a different direction. I’ll stay behind, try to keep them occupied. I’m the primary target. You’ll have a better chance if we separate.”

“No,” Amanda said. Her voice was insistent. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

“You have to,” he said. And when she didn’t budge. “You
have
to. Amanda, if one of us survives, it has to be you. You know everything now—and somebody might believe you. If I get out of here, it doesn’t really matter. If I tell them what happened, it’ll be the rantings of a desperate criminal. But you can tell people—you can make them understand.” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You know I’m right.”

She nodded once, holding back her tears, and started to say something else. But he cut her off. “Just go. Please.” He handed her the box with the small skeleton. “I’ll meet you at the café as soon as I can.”

Their eyes met, making it clear that neither one of them believed his last words. Then Amanda turned away, clutching Momma One-Eye by the hand, let go, and tore off into the woods.

He watched until she disappeared. Then he turned to the old woman. “Momma, now it’s your turn. You do your best to get out of here. If you can’t get far, just hide the best you can.”

“What’ll you be doin’?”

“I can take care of myself. But I promised you I’d stop people from hurting you, and I want to keep that promise. Go now, so you don’t turn me into a liar.” He watched the old woman turn and hobble off as quickly as she could. A bullet sprayed to the left, and Carl immediately sprinted in the opposite direction, getting about twenty yards before another shot rang out and he tumbled behind a thick pine for safety.

Carl peered around for some kind of weapon. Something, anything, he could use. He came up empty. Fallen branches were useless. He couldn’t even spot a weighty-looking rock. And he had a hunch that a barrage of pinecones wasn’t going to do the trick. There was nothing. He stayed crouched behind the tree for perhaps three of four minutes. Then he began to hear the crunching sounds of footsteps. Carl remembered when he was a child, he used to think that if he closed his eyes, he could become invisible. No one could see him. He wondered if he should try it now; he had nothing to lose. But one more bullet kicked off just inches from him and he decided he’d be better off with his eyes wide open.

Eyes open, he sprinted another thirty yards into the woods and dove behind a tree, as two shots blew by. Okay, this was good. Whoever it was, he was keeping him busy. Amanda was getting farther away.

The footsteps rustled around him. Carl tried to see through the branches, thought he saw a blurred shape, but didn’t want to risk further movement to get a better look. The footsteps stopped. The good news was that he could no longer hear the running steps of Amanda and Momma. Unfortunately, that was the only good news. Whoever was after him was close by. Very close by.

“Okay, asshole,” Carl heard. “Come on out now and make it easy on yourself.”

He said nothing. Tried to remain as still as possible.

“I hate the fuckin’ woods,” the voice said. “If I have to spend a lot of time lookin’ for you, I’m gonna get pissed off. If I see a goddamn snake, I’m gonna get really pissed. And if I get really pissed off, I’m gonna hurt you bad before I kill you. So why don’t you come out now so I can just kill you nice and quick?”

Carl looked at his watch. Amanda had gotten a ten minute head start. He hoped that was enough, because it didn’t look as if she was going to get a helluva lot more time.

He tried moving, thought he could make it farther back into the woods. But a tree root spoiled his plans. He took three, maybe four steps before he tripped over it and went sprawling. He crawled on his knees to position himself behind another tree. But now he was really screwed. He was pretty sure his ankle was sprained. He tried putting his weight on it and almost cried out in pain.

“I’m comin’ after you for real now, asshole,” the voice now said. “I tried to be nice, but you had to go and fuck it up.”

Carl heard footsteps off to his right. Then nothing. Then something off to his left. The cracking of a branch, the rustling of a few leaves. Then silence.