But neither were they so naive as to believe that their theft of the money might be allowed to go unpunished, that, if they revealed what they knew of the plane’s location to Darina Flores or someone like her, the truth would be enough to buy them peace in their final years. Even the knowledge that the plane existed might be enough to damn them because they’d both examined that list, and some of those names were fused in Harlan’s brain. He could recite them, if he had to. Not many of them, but enough. Enough to see him dead.
Then again, if the man was here, it was probably because of the money. The money would have drawn him. Perhaps Harlan and Paul had not been as careful as they thought.
‘What are you doing in my wife’s room?’ he asked. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. It’s for family and friends only.’
The man wandered over to where Harlan’s wife lay, and stroked her face and hair. His fingertips trailed across her lips, then parted them obscenely. Angeline mumbled in her sleep, and tried to move her head. A pair of pale fingers entered her mouth, and Harlan saw the tendons flexing in the man’s hand.
‘I told you to sit down, Mr Vetters. If you don’t, I’ll tear out your wife’s tongue.’
Harlan sat.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘My name is Brightwell.’
‘What do you want with us?’
‘I think you know.’
‘Well, sir, I don’t. I want you gone from here, so I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have, but you’ll have had a wasted trip by the end.’
The sleeve of Brightwell’s coat fell back from his arm as he continued to stroke Angeline’s hair, and Harlan saw the mark upon the man’s wrist. It looked like a trident.
‘I understand that your wife has Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s?’
‘That’s right.’
‘It must be very difficult for you.’
There was no trace of sympathy in his voice.
‘Not as difficult as it is for her.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe that’s true.’
Brightwell glanced down at the sleeping woman. He removed his fingers from her mouth, sniffed them, then licked at their tips with a tongue that was almost pointed. In texture and color it reminded Harlan of a piece of raw liver The man allowed his other hand to rest on Angeline’s brow. Her mutterings grew louder, as though the pressure of his hand troubled her, yet still she did not wake.
‘Look at her: she barely knows who she is anymore, and I guess that, most of the time, she doesn’t know who you are either. Whatever you loved about her once is long gone. She’s just a shell, a hollow burden. It would be a mercy for you both if she simply . . . slipped away.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Harlan.
Brightwell smiled, and his hard, dark eyes looked at and into Harlan, and they found the place where Harlan hid his worst thoughts, and even though Brightwell’s lips did not move, Harlan heard the word ‘liar’ whispered. He could not hold Brightwell’s gaze, and he felt shame as he bent his face to the floor.
‘I could make it happen,’ said Brightwell. ‘A pillow over the face, a little compression on the nose and mouth. Nobody would ever know, and then you’d be free.’
‘You stop talking like that, mister. You don’t dare say that again.’
Brightwell tittered. It was a strangely effeminate sound. He even covered his mouth with his free hand while he did so.
‘I’m just playing with you, Mr Vetters. To tell you the truth, somebody would find out if she died under, um, unusual circumstances. It’s easy to murder, but it’s harder to get away with murder. That, of course, is true of most crimes, but particularly so with killing. You know why that is?’
Harlan was keeping his head down, and his focus fixed on his shoes. He was afraid that this man might stare into his eyes again, and see his guilt. Then he began to feel concerned that this might be taken as the aspect of a guilty man, that he was, in effect, admitting the crime before he had even been accused of it. He composed himself, and forced himself to look up at this loathsome intruder.
‘No,’ said Harlan. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s because murder is one of the few crimes that is rarely committed by practiced criminals,’ said Brightwell. ‘It’s a crime of rage or passion, and so is usually unplanned. Murderers make mistakes because they’ve never done it before. They have no experience of killing. That makes them easy to find, easy to punish. There’s a lesson to be learned from that: crime, of any kind, is a pursuit best left to professionals.’
Harlan waited. He tried to keep his breathing under control. He was grateful for the cold in the room. It stopped him from sweating.
‘Such sacrifices you’ve made for her,’ said Brightwell, and his hand began stroking Angeline’s hair again. ‘You can’t even afford new shoes.’
‘I like these shoes,’ said Harlan. ‘They’re good shoes.’
‘Will you be buried in them, Mr Vetters?’ asked Brightwell. ‘Are those the shoes you’ll want peeping out of your casket when they come by to mourn you? I doubt it. I reckon you probably have a pair in a box in your closet for just that eventuality. You’re a careful man. You’re the kind of man who plans ahead: for old age, for illness, for death.’
‘I don’t think it’ll make a difference to me one way or another how I’m tricked out when I’m dead,’ said Harlan. ‘They can put me in a dress for all I care. Now would you mind taking your hand off my wife. I don’t like it, and I don’t believe she does either.’
Brightwell’s hand left Angeline’s skin, and Harlan was grateful. She grew calmer, and her breathing deepened.
‘This is a nice place,’ said Brightwell. ‘Comfortable. Clean. I bet the staff are kind. No minimum wage employees here, right?’
‘I guess not.’
‘No whore nurses stealing small change from the lockers, taking the treats left by little children for Grandma,’ Brightwell continued. ‘No bored deviants slipping into rooms in the dead of night, fingering the patients, giving them a little something to remember, a relic of the good times. You never know, though, do you? I don’t like the look of that man Clancy. I don’t like the look of him at all. I can smell the badness on him. Like knows like. I’ve always trusted my instincts when it comes to deviancy.’
Harlan didn’t reply. He was being baited here, and he knew it. Best to remain silent, and not get angry. If he became angry, he might give himself away.
‘Still, no harm done, right? Your wife wouldn’t remember anyway. She might even enjoy it. After all, it’s probably been a while. Let’s give old Clancy the benefit of the doubt, though. Looks can be so deceptive, I find.’
He grinned, and fingered the growth at his throat, exploring its wrinkles and abrasions.
‘To return to the matter in hand, what I’m saying is that it must cost more than small change, this kind of ongoing care. A man would have to work long hours to make the payments. Loonnnng hours. But you’re retired, aren’t you, Mr Vetters?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I guess you put the pennies aside for a rainy day. Like I say, a careful man.’
‘I was. Still am.’
‘You were part of the warden service, weren’t you?’
Harlan didn’t bother asking how the man knew so much about him. The fact of the matter was that he was here, and he’d done his research. Harlan shouldn’t have been surprised, and therefore he wasn’t.
‘I was.’
‘Did it pay much, being a warden?’
‘Enough, and then some. Enough for me, anyways.’
‘I accessed your bank account details, Mr Vetters. It never seemed like you had more than nickels and dimes in your accounts, relatively speaking.’
‘I never trusted banks. I kept all of my money close by.’
‘All of your money?’ Brightwell’s eyes opened wide in mock astonishment. ‘Why, just how much of it was there? All: that could be quite a lot. That could be thousands, even tens of thousands. W
as it, Mr Vetters? Was it tens of thousands? Was it more?’
Harlan moistened his mouth and throat. He didn’t want his voice to crack. No weakness: there had to be no frailty in front of this man.
‘No, there was never very much of it. It was only the sale of my parents’ house after my momma died that left me with a cushion, you might say.’
Something that might have been doubt flickered across Brightwell’s face.
‘A house?’
‘They lived over by Calais,’ said Harlan. He pronounced it ‘Callas’, like the singer, the way everyone did in the state. ‘Me being the only child, it came into my possession. Fortunate, given what happened to Angeline.’
‘Fortunate indeed.’
Now Harlan met Brightwell’s gaze. ‘I told you at the start, sir: I don’t know what you came looking for here, but I warned you that you wouldn’t find it. I’d be grateful to you if you’d leave us now. I’ve had enough of your company.’
At that moment, Angeline opened her eyes. She stared at Brightwell, and Harlan expected her to start screaming. He prayed that she wouldn’t because he didn’t know how the intruder would react. He was capable of killing to protect himself, of that Harlan was sure. He could smell death on the man.
But Angeline did not scream: she spoke, and the sound of it brought tears to Harlan’s eyes. She spoke in a voice that Harlan had not heard for so long, in the soft, beautiful tones of her middle years, yet there was another voice behind hers, one deeper than her own.
‘I know what you are,’ she said, and Brightwell looked at her in surprise. ‘I know what you are’, she repeated, ‘and I know what lies imprisoned within you. Soul-keeper, binder of lost men, hunter of a hidden angel.’
Now it was her turn to smile, and it seemed to Harlan more terrifying even than any expression he had yet seen on Brightwell’s face. Angeline’s eyes were bright, and her tone was mocking, almost triumphant.
‘Your days are numbered. He is coming for you. You’ll think that you’ve found him, but it’s he who will have found you. Leave here. Hide while you can. Dig yourself a hole and cover your head with dirt, and maybe he’ll pass you by. Maybe . . .’
‘Bitch,’ said Brightwell, but his voice was uncertain. ‘Your dying mind is spewing inanities.’
‘Old hateful thing, trapped in a rotting body,’ said Angeline, as if he had not spoken. ‘Pathetic soulless creature, stealing the souls of others for company. Run, but it will do you no good. He’ll find you. He’ll find you and destroy you, you and all the others like you. Fear him.’
The door to the room opened, and the nurse named Evelyn appeared, carrying a tray on which she had placed two cups, and a plate of cookies. She stopped short at the sight of Brightwell.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Get help,’ said Harlan, rising from his chair. ‘Now!’
Evelyn dropped the tray and ran. Seconds later, an alarm began to sound. Brightwell turned to face Harlan.
‘This isn’t over,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe what you told me about that money. I’ll be back, and maybe I’ll steal what’s left of your wife and carry her in me, once I’ve finished with you.’
With that he swept by Harlan, Angeline’s bell-like laughter following him. Although the home had instantly been locked down no trace of him was found in the building, or the grounds, or in the town.
‘The police came,’ said Marielle, ‘but my father said that he didn’t know what the man wanted. He’d simply entered my mother’s room and found this Brightwell leaning over her. When the police tried to question my mother, she was already gone, and she never spoke again. The end came quickly for her after that. My father told Paul about what had happened, and they kept waiting for Brightwell to return. Then Paul died and it was just my father who was left to face him. But Brightwell never came back.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because the last word that my mother whispered to my father after that man fled was your name – “When it comes down, tell the detective. Tell Charlie Parker.” – and that, in turn, was the last thing that he whispered to me after he told us the story of the plane in the woods. He wanted you to hear this story, Mr Parker. That’s why we came. And now you know.’
Around us music played, and people talked, and ate, and drank, but we were no part of it. We were cocooned in our corner, surrounded by the silk-wrapped forms of the dead.
‘You knew who this man Brightwell was, didn’t you?’ said Ernie. ‘I saw it on your face the first time we described him to you.’
‘Yes, I’ve met him.’
‘Will he be coming back, Mr Parker?’ asked Marielle.
‘No,’ I said.
‘You seem very certain of that.’
‘I am, because I killed him.’
‘Good,’ said Marielle. ‘And the woman? What about the woman?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘With luck, maybe somebody killed her too.’
7
South, south: down Interstates and winding roads, past cities and towns, hamlets and scattered houses, across rivers and open fields, to a car on a lonely, dark stretch, to a woman leaving home, a woman who, if she could have heard the tale being told in a quiet bar in the Port City, might well have said, ‘I know of these things . . .’
Barbara Kelly had just left home when she saw the red SUV. A woman perhaps a decade younger than herself was hunched over the right front tire, struggling with a lug wrench. When the headlights found her she looked frightened, as well she might. This was a dark, relatively unfrequented stretch of road, used mainly by residents making their way to and from the houses at the top of the narrow laneways that fed into Buck Run Road like tributaries. On a night like this, with clouds gathering and a brisk breeze making it feel colder than it was, there would be even fewer cars on the road than usual. Sunday evenings tended to be quiet around there at the best of times, as the residents resigned themselves to the end of the weekend and the imminent resumption of the weekly commute.
The lanes all had names inspired by the natural world – Raccoon Lane, Doe Leap Lane, Bullfrog Lane – a decision made by the developers without any apparent reference to the reality of their surroundings. Barbara had never seen a doe here, leaping or otherwise, had never heard a bullfrog, and the only raccoons she ever saw were dead. It didn’t matter much, in the end. She had not raised the subject with her neighbors, or with anyone else. She had grown used to blending in. It made it easier for her to conduct her business.
Now here was an SUV with a flat tire, and a woman in trouble. A child stood beside her, a boy of five or six. He was wearing black shoes and blue jeans, and a blue windbreaker was zipped up to his chin.
The rain began to fall. The first drop landed with a loud pop on Barbara’s windshield, and her view became almost entirely obscured before she had time to hit the wipers. She saw the boy huddle into himself under a tree to escape the downpour. He pulled up the hood on his windbreaker while the woman doggedly continued trying to change the wheel. She seemed to have managed to get one of the lug nuts loose, and wasn’t about to stop now. Barbara admired her gumption, even though she could see how clumsily the woman was handling the wrench. Barbara herself would have done a better job. She was good with her hands.
She slowed down just as the jack slipped, the woman stumbling back as the SUV came down heavily on the damaged tire. She put her hands out behind her to stop herself from striking her head. Barbara thought that she heard her swear, even above the noise of the rain and the engine. The boy ran to her. His face was contorted, and Barbara guessed that he was crying.
Under ordinary circumstances Barbara would have driven on. She was not prone to helping others. It was not in her nature. Quite the opposite, in fact. Her life had, until recently, been devoted to their slow ruination. Barbara was an expert in the small print that taketh away, the legalese in contracts that permitted them to be manipulated in favor of the creditor but not the debtor. Then again, this assumed tha
t the contracts she negotiated were available to be read and examined, which was only sometimes the case. The particular contracts in which Barbara Kelly dealt were largely verbal in nature, except when it was advantageous to have them otherwise. Sometimes they involved money, or property. Occasionally they involved people. For the most part, they were promises of assistance made and accepted, favors to be called in at opportune moments. Each was a small cut to the soul, another footstep on the path to perdition.
Her work had made her wealthy, but it had also sapped most of her humanity. True, she would sometimes choose to engage in random acts of philanthropy, both small and significant, but only because there was a power in pity. Now, as she drew to a halt beside the woman and the child, she felt something of that power, mingled with an element of sexual excitement. Even tired and wet, the woman was clearly beautiful.
The surge of desire was both unexpected and welcome. It had been a long time since Barbara had felt it, not since the lump had appeared in her armpit. It hadn’t even hurt at first, and she’d dismissed it as just one of those things. She’d never been hypochondriacal by nature. By the time it was diagnosed as lymphoma, her lifespan was already being counted in weeks and months. With the diagnosis came fear: fear of pain, fear of the effects of treatment, fear of mortality.
And fear of damnation, for she understood better than anyone the nature of the bargain that had been struck. Voices had begun to whisper to her in the night, sowing seeds of doubt in her mind. They spoke of the possibility of redemption, even for one such as her. Now here she was, slowing down for a stranded woman and child, a warmth spreading from between her legs, and she did not yet know if she was stopping for reasons of goodwill or self-interest, or so she told herself.
Barbara rolled down the window.
‘You look like you’re in trouble,’ she said.
The woman was back on her feet. Because of the headlights and the rain, she hadn’t been able to tell if it was a man or a woman at the wheel of the approaching vehicle, but now the relief showed. She came forward, the rain streaming down her face. Her mascara had run. Combined with her dark dress and coat, it made her look like a mourner at the end of a particularly difficult funeral, but one radiant in her grief. The boy hung back, waiting until his mom told him that it was okay to approach. No, it wasn’t just that: Barbara was very good at picking up on the responses of others, and there was something in the boy’s reaction that went beyond obedience to his mother, or a child’s innate caution. He was suspicious of Barbara.