The Killing Kind (34 page)

“Not yet. I intend to find out, though.”

“Your intentions and mine may conflict, then.”

“Maybe we both have similar aims,” I suggested. “No, we do not. Yours is a moral crusade. Those who engaged me for this task have a more specific purpose.”

“Revenge?”

“I do only what is required of me,” he said. “No more.” His voice was deep and the words seemed to echo inside him, as if he were a hollow man without substance, only form. “I came to give you a message. Do not come between me and this man. If you do, I will be forced to take action against you.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

I didn't even see him move. One moment he was in front of me, his hands empty, the next he was close by my side and a small center-fire derringer was at my throat, the twin barrels pointing upward to my brain. From out of the darkness, the Beamshot laser sight on Louis's gun projected its light as he tried to find a clear shot, but my body and the darkness of the Golem's clothes shielded him from both Louis and Angel.

“Tell them to back off, Mr. Parker,” he whispered, his head behind mine. “I want you to walk me to my car. You have two seconds.”

I shouted out the warning immediately, and Louis killed the beam. The Golem pulled me back through the trees, guiding my footsteps. The sleeve of his overcoat had rolled up on his arm and I could see the first of the small blue numbers etched on his skin. He was a concentration camp survivor. I also saw that he had no fingerprints. Instead, the skin and flesh appeared to have collapsed inward, creating a puckered, indented scar at the tip of each finger. Fire, I thought. It was fire that did this to him; fire that scarred his head, fire that took away his fingerprints.

How do you create a clay demon?

You bake it in an oven.

When we reached his car, he made me stand in front of the driver's door, the gun at my back, as he lowered himself into the driver's seat.

“Remember, Mr. Parker,” he said to my back. “Do not interfere with my work.”

Then, his head low, he sped away.

Louis and Angel appeared from the trees. I was shaking as I reached up and felt the twin marks where the derringer had been pushed into my flesh.

“You think you could have hit him before he killed me?” I asked, as his lights faded away.

Louis thought for a moment. “Probably not. You think he'd have bled?”

“No. I think he'd just have cracked.”

“What now?” said Angel.

“We eat,” although I wasn't sure how steady my stomach was. We began to walk back to the house.

“You sure pick colorful people to fall out with,” said Louis as he fell in beside me.

“Yes,” I said. “I guess I do.”

All three of us heard the car approaching from behind at the same time. It turned into the yard at full speed and we were frozen in its headlights, our guns raised and our eyes wide. Instantly, the driver killed the beams, and still blinking, we scattered left and right. There was silence for a moment, then the driver's door opened and Rachel Wolfe's voice said:

“Okay, no more coffee for you guys. Ever.”

After we had eaten, Rachel went off to take a shower. While Angel sipped his beer by the window, Louis sat at my table finishing a bottle of wine. It was Flagstone sauvignon blanc, from some new winery in Cape Town, South Africa. Louis had two mixed cases imported especially twice yearly and had brought two bottles with him in the trunk of his car. He and Rachel had spent so long cooing over it that I thought one of them must have given birth to the bottle.

“If you're a private eye,” asked Angel at last, “how come you ain't got no office?”

“I can't afford an office. If I had an office, I'd have to sell the house and sleep on my desk.”

“Wouldn't be such a big stretch. You got next to nothing in this old house anyway. You ever worry about burglars?”

“Burglars in general, or just the one who happens to be standing in my kitchen right now?”

He scowled. “In general.”

“I don't have anything worth stealing.”

“That's what I mean. You ever think of the effect a big empty place like this is going to have on some guy who goes to the trouble of breaking into it? You better hope he ain't agoraphobic, else you gonna have a lawsuit on your hands.”

“What are you, some kind of organizer for Burglars Local three-oh-two?”

“No, just a fly on the wall. One of many, judging by the state of your kitchen.”

“What are you implying?”

“What am I always implying? You need some company.”

“I was thinking of getting a dog.”

“That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. How long you planning on keeping her at arm's length? Till you die? You know, they don't bury you side by side. You won't be touching under the ground.”

“Opportunity only knocks once, man,” drawled his partner. “It don't knock, knock again, then leave a note asking you to give it a call back when you got your shit together.”

Behind us there came the sound of bare feet on boards. Rachel stood at the door, drying her hair. Louis glanced at me, then rose and placed his empty bottle in the recycling bin.

“Time for my bed,” he said. He jerked his chin at Angel as he reached the door. “You too.” He kissed Rachel on the cheek and headed out to the car.

“You two kids don't be staying up late smoochin' and all,” Angel said, then followed Louis into the night.

“Brought together by a pair of gun-toting gay matchmakers,” I said as we heard their car pull away. “It'll be something to tell the grandchildren.”

Rachel looked at me, as if trying to determine if I was being flippant or not. Frankly, I wasn't sure myself.

She immediately cut to the chase. “Did you hire people to watch over me in Boston?” she asked.

“You spotted them?” I was impressed with her, although I got the feeling that it wasn't mutual.

“I guess I was on my guard. I called in the license plate of their car when I saw them change shifts. One of them followed me all the way to your front gate.” Rachel's brother had been a policeman, killed on duty some years back. She still had friends on various forces.

“I was worried about you.”

Her voice rose. “I told you, I don't want you feeling you have to protect me.”

“Rachel,” I said, “these people are dangerous. I was concerned for Angel too, but at least he carries a gun. What would you have done if they came for you? Thrown plates at them?”

“You should have told me!” She slapped her hand hard on the table. There was real anger in her eyes.

“If I had, would you have let it go ahead? I love you, Rach, but you're stubborn enough to head up the Teamsters.”

Some of the fury in her eyes died and the hand on the table curled into a small tight fist that shook as the tension gradually eased from her.

“How can we be together if you're always afraid of losing me?” she asked gently.

I thought of the dead of St. Froid, crowding a narrow street in Portland. I thought of James Jessop and the figure I had glimpsed leaning over him, the Summer Lady. I had seen her before: in a subway train; outside the Scarborough house; and once, reflected in the window of my kitchen, as if she were standing behind me, but when I turned to look there was nobody there. Sitting in Chumley's only a few nights before, it seemed that an accommodation with the past might be possible. But that was before Mickey Shine's head was impaled on a tree, before James Jessop emerged from a dark forest and took my hand. How could I bring Rachel into that world?

“I can't compete with the dead,” she said.

“I'm not asking you to compete with the dead.”

“It's not a question of asking.” She sat across from me, cupped her chin in her hands, and looked sad and distant.

“I'm trying, Rachel.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you are.”

“I love you. I want to be with you.”

“How?” she whispered, lowering her head. “On weekends in Boston, or weekends here?”

“How about just here?”

She looked up, as if unsure of what she had heard.

“I mean it.”

“When? Before I'm old?”

“Older.”

She slapped at me playfully and I reached out to touch her hair. “We'll get there,” I said and felt her nod against my hand. “And sooner rather than later. I promise.”

“We'd better,” she said, so quietly that it was almost as if I had heard her thoughts. I held her, sensing somehow that she had more to say, but nothing came.

“What kind of dog were you planning to get?” she asked after a time, as the warmth of her spread across me.

I smiled down at her. She had probably heard my entire conversation with Angel and Louis. I think she had been meant to.

“I hadn't decided. I thought you might help me pick one from the pound.”

“That's a very couply thing to do.”

“Well, we are a couple.”

“But not a normal one.”

“No. Louis would never forgive us if we were.”

She kissed me, and I kissed her back. Past and future receded from us like creditors temporarily denied their demands, and there was only the brief, fleeting beauty of the present to hold us. That night, I gathered her in my arms as she slept and tried to imagine a future for us together, but I seemed to lose us in tangles and weaves. Yet when I awoke my fist was clenched tightly, as if I had grasped something vital in my dreams and now refused to let it go.

21

I LAY WITH RACHEL and listened to the rising wheeps of a flycatcher from high in the trees. His stay in New England would be short; he had probably arrived in the past week, and would be gone by the end of September, but if he managed to avoid the hawks and the owls, then his little yellow belly would soon be filled with a smorgasbord of insects as the bug population exploded. Already the first of the horseflies were circling, their large green eyes glittering hungrily. They would quickly be joined by greenheads and locusts, ticks and deerflies. At Scarborough Marsh, clouds of golden saltmarsh mosquitoes would converge, the males sipping on plant juices while the females scoured the waters and the roadsides for meatier pickings.

And the insects would feed, and the spiders would grow fat upon them.

Beside me, Rachel murmured softly in her sleep, and I felt the warmth of her back against my stomach, the line of her spine beneath her pale skin like a stone path blanketed by new fallen snow. I raised myself gently to look at her face. Strands of red hair had caught between her lips, and carefully, I brushed them away. She smiled, her eyes still closed, and her fingers softly grazed my thigh. I kissed her gently behind the ear and she leaned her head into the pillow, exposing her neck to me as I followed its lines down to her shoulder and the small hollow at her throat. Her body arched as she pressed herself against me, and all other thoughts were lost in sunlight and birdsong.

It was almost 1 P.M. when I left Rachel singing in the bathroom while I went out for bagels and milk, conscious still of the weight of the Smith & Wesson in its holster beneath my arm. It made me uneasy how quickly I had slipped back into the old routine of arming myself before I left the house, even for something as simple as a trip to the store.

It was, by then, late in the morning, but today I hoped to find Marcy Becker. Circumstances had forced me to postpone the hunt for her, but more and more I was convinced that she was the key to what had taken place on the night Grace Peltier died, one more piece of a greater picture whose dimensions I was only now beginning to understand. Faulkner, or something of him, had survived. He, in collusion with others, had slaughtered the Aroostook Baptists and his own wife, then disappeared, eventually reemerging veiled by the organization known as the Fellowship. Paragon had merely been a front, a dupe. The real Fellowship, the substance behind the shadow, was Faulkner, and Pudd was his sword.

I parked the car and took the bag of groceries from the front seat. I was still rearranging my thoughts, shifting possibilities, as I reached the kitchen door. I pushed it open and something white lifted from the floor and tumbled in the air, carried upward by the draft.

It was a sugar wrapper.

Rachel was standing at the entrance to the hallway, Pudd at her shoulder pushing her into the kitchen. She was gagged with a scarf, and her arms were secured at her back.

Behind her, Pudd froze.

I dropped the bag and reached for my gun. Simultaneously, Rachel twisted in Pudd's grip and slammed her head back into his face, connecting with the bridge of his nose. He staggered backward, swiping at Rachel with the back of his hand. My fingers were already brushing the grip of the Smith & Wesson when something struck me hard on the side of the head and I went down, bright white pain erupting in my brain. I felt hands at my side and then my gun was gone and red droplets were exploding like sunbursts in the spilled milk. I tried to get up, but my hands slipped on the wet floor and my legs felt heavy and awkward. I raised my face to see Pudd's fist raining down blows on Rachel's head as she sank to the floor. There was blood on his face and palm. Then a second impact connected with my head, followed by a third, and I didn't feel anything else for what seemed like a very long time.

I came to in slow, arduous steps, as if I were struggling through deep red water. I was vaguely conscious of Rachel sitting on a kitchen chair by the table, still wearing her white cotton robe. Her teeth were visible where the scarf had been pulled tightly into her open mouth, and her hands were tied behind her back. There was bruising to her cheek and left eye, and blood on her forehead. Some of it had run down to stain the gag. She looked at me wide-eyed and her eyes flicked frantically to my right, but when I tried to move my head I was struck again and everything went black.

I drifted in and out like that for a while. My arms had been tied separately, each wrist bound to one of the struts of the chair by what felt like cable ties. They bit into my skin when I tried to move. My head ached badly, and there was blood in my eyes. Through the mists I heard a voice say:

“So this is the man.”

It was an old man's voice, faded and scratched like a recording heard through an old radio. I tried to lift my head and saw something move in the shadows in the hallway of the house: a slightly hunched figure, wrapped in black. Another, taller shape moved beside it, and I thought that it might be a woman.