And Angel knew that they were about to be handed another piece of the puzzle.
Over coffee in the back offce, Ronald told Angel and Louis of what he had witnessed: a girl swallowed by the earth in the shadow of an old church while a group of older men and women, accompanied by a pastor and a policeman, stood by and watched. If the two men were surprised by his tale, they did not show it. If they were skeptical, Ronald could detect no trace.
'What do you think happened to her?' said Louis.
'I think something pulled her underground,' said Ronald.
'Something?' said Louis.
It seemed to Ronald to be the frst expression of any doubt, but he was mistaken. It came to him that these men had seen and heard things stranger even than this.
'It's not enough,' Louis continued. 'We need more. We can't go in blind.'
Ronald had thought on this too. He had ransacked his memories of tribal lore – the Cherokee worship of the cedar tree, based on the belief that the Creator had imbued it with the spirits of those who had perished during the times of eternal night; the Canotila or tree dwellers of the Lakota; the Abenaki's tale of the creation of man from the bark of ash trees; and the forest-dwelling Mikum-wasus of his own Penobscot people – but he could fnd no explanation in them for what he had seen. He had a vision of a great tree growing upside down, its leafess crown far below the ground, its trunk extending upward to roots that twitched and groped, breaking through the earth to the air above; and at its heart, surrounded by the husks of dead girls, was an entity that had come from far away, a spirit that had infused the stones of an old church, travelling with it as it crossed land and sea before retreating into the new ground in which the foundations of that church were laid, creating a form for itself from wood and sap. But the question that consumed him most was its nature, for he believed that men created gods as much, if not more, than gods created men. If this old god existed, it did so because there were men and women who permitted it to continue to exist through their beliefs. They fed it, and it, in turn, fed them.
Ronald took from his jacket a sheaf of photocopied pages and laid them before Angel and Louis. The images upon them were undated, but they depicted the carved heads that could be seen both inside and outside the Chapel of the Congregation of Adam Before Eve & Eve Before Adam. He had found the pictures buried in the archives of the Center for Maine History, and then, unbeknownst to himself, had followed a similar research path to the detective, staring at images of the foliate heads to be found on the churches and cathedrals of Western Europe. The English had called it the Green Man, but it predated that name by more than a millennium, and its spirit was older yet. When the frst men came it was waiting for them among the trees, and in their minds it formed itself in their image: a human face rendered in wood and leaf.
'It may be that it looks like this,' said Ronald.
Angel picked up one of the pictures. It was the face of winter, the bleakest and most hostile of the visages from the Prosperous church. He thought of what Ross had said to them back in Brooklyn. It didn't matter whether a thing existed or not. What mattered was the trouble caused by those who believed in its existence.
'You talked of roots,' he said.
'Yes,' said Ronald. 'I think roots drew the girl down.'
'Roots and branches,' said Angel. 'Wood.'
'And what does wood do?' said Louis.
Angel smiled as he replied.
'It burns.'
The killings in Asheville had not gone unremarked in Boston, for Garrison Pryor's people had been following trails similar to Angel and Louis, albeit a little more discreetly. The deaths of William and Zilla Daund simply confrmed what Pryor had begun to suspect: that the attack on the detective had been ordered from the town of Prosperous. This indicated that the decision to leave the Believers' mark at the scene had also been taken there, which meant, fnally, that all of Pryor's current troubles could be laid at the town's door.
Prosperous had rarely troubled Pryor until now. It was a community unto itself, and he saw no reason to interfere with it as long as it was discreet in its activities. Now the town's very insularity – its refusal to recognize its relationship to the larger world and the possible impact of its decisions upon those beyond the town's boundaries – and the commitment of its protectors to its preservation, at any cost, had disturbed this state of equilibrium.
Prosperous, by its actions, had made retribution inevitable.
The call came through to Angel's cell phone, its ID hidden. Louis felt that he should have been more surprised when Angel handed the phone to him and he heard the Collector's voice.
'Very impressive,' said the Collector. 'To be honest, I had wondered if Cambion might not have been right to bet everything on them, but clearly they weren't quite as accomplished as he believed them to be.'
'I think killing homeless men had blunted their edge,' said Louis.
'Oh, they've killed more than homeless men, but I won't disagree. They swam in a small pool.'
'How did you know about them?'
'A process of elimination. I asked questions and found out that Parker had been nosing around in Prosperous's business. It was possible that Prosperous might not have been involved, but Cambion sealed it for me. He's long been interested in the town's pet husband-and-wife killers.'
'You could just have told us. You could just have given us the name of the town.'
'But where would be the sport in that? And I know you, Louis, perhaps better than you know yourself. You're meticulous. You want to fll in the blanks. What did the Daunds give you? Prosperous, or more? Wait, names: they gave you names. You wouldn't have left without them. Am I correct?'
Louis put down his glass of orange juice. He'd just been settling into the business pages of the Times, but now he recognized that any interest he might have had in the newspaper or, indeed, the orange juice had largely dissipated.
'A name,' he conceded. 'The woman gave me a name.'
'Hayley Conyer.'
'Shit.'
'Oh, she wouldn't like to hear you swear like that. She's a god-fearing woman. That's "god" with a small "g", incidentally.'
'You interested in her? Looking for a date?'
'She's very old.'
'Begging your pardon, but I don't believe you can afford to be particular.'
'Don't be facetious. She's an interesting woman, and Prosperous is a fascinating town. You'll like it.'
'Is she on your list?'
'Oh yes.'
'So why haven't you taken her?'
'Because it's not just her, but the whole town. And
generations of it. To do the sins of Prosperous justice, I'd have to dig up centuries of bones and burn them on a pyre. The whole town would have to be put to the torch, and that's beyond my capabilities.'
Louis understood.
'But not beyond ours.'
'No.'
'Why should we destroy an entire town?'
'Because it colluded in what happened to the detective, and if you don't wipe it from the earth it will continue its traditions into future generations, and those traditions are very, very nasty. Prosperous is a hungry town.'
'So you want us to do your dirty work for you? Fuck you.'
'Don't be like that,' said the Collector. 'You'll enjoy it, I guarantee it. Oh, and pay special attention to that church of theirs. Flames won't be enough. You'll have to dig much deeper, and tear it apart with something far stronger.'
Louis sensed that the conversation was coming to a close.
'Hey, since we're being all civil and all, you fnd your friend Cambion?'
The Collector was standing in the premises of Blackthorn, Apothecary. He held a blade in his hands. Upon it was just a hint of blood.
'I'm afraid he seems to have made his excuses and left before we could become better acquainted.'
'That's unfortunate.'
And he meant it.
'Yes, it is,' said the Collector, and he meant it too.
S
econds passed.
'You told me that he lived here with someone else,' said the Collector.
'Yeah, big man. Dressed in yellow. Hard to miss.'
'And no other?'
'Not that I was aware of.'
'Hmmm.'
The Collector stared at the tattered, partial wreckage of a human being that lay on a gurney before him. The man had no eyes, no ears, and no tongue. Most of his fngers and toes were also missing. Stitches marked the site of his emasculation. The Collector had killed him as an act of mercy.
'You know,' he said, 'I believe I may have discovered Mr Cambion's missing physician. Be sure to send me a postcard from Prosperous.'
The Collector hung up. Angel looked up at Louis from over the Portland Press Herald.
'Are you two, like, all buddies now?'
Louis sighed.
'You know,' he said, 'sometimes I wish I'd never heard the name Charlie Parker . . .'
Garrison Pryor was sitting in a quiet corner of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He could see into the next public room, so he knew that he was not being overheard or observed. Since the FBI's visit to his offces, Pryor had grown concerned about surveillance to the point of paranoia. He no longer made or received delicate calls outside or on the offce phones, especially not when he was dealing with the Principal Backer. The most important of the Backers now exchanged numbers for clean cell phones each day but otherwise they had fallen back on a primitive but virtually untraceable means of communicating sensitive information like cell phone numbers, a simple code based around the print edition of the Wall Street Journal: page, column, paragraph, line. Many of the older Backers found the routine almost reassuring, and Pryor thought that some might advocate retaining it once the FBI had exhausted itself chasing after imagined breaches of fnancial regulations.
The Bureau's attention was irritating and an inconvenience, but little more than that. Pryor Investments had learned from past mistakes, and was now entirely scrupulous in its dealings. Of course, the company was merely a front: a fully functioning and lucrative one, but a front nonetheless. The Backers' real machinery had been hidden so deeply, and for so long, in established companies, in banks and trusts, in charities and religious organizations, as to be untraceable. Let the FBI and its allies expend their energy on Pryor Investments. Admittedly, it was unfortunate that the private detective in Maine had become interested in Pryor Investments to begin with. It was a piece of bad luck, and nothing more. But he had clearly spoken to others of his suspicions, which was why the FBI had ended up on Pryor's doorstep. But they would fnd nothing, and eventually their attention would turn elsewhere.
Now, in the quiet of the museum, he spoke on the phone with the Principal Backer.
'Who killed this couple in Asheville?'
'We don't know for sure', said Pryor, 'but we believe it was Parker's pet assassins.'
'They did well to fnd what we could not.'
'We were close,' said Pryor. 'The Daunds' blood was still pooling on the foor of their house when I got their names.'
'So they saved us the trouble of killing the Daunds ourselves.'
'I suppose they did. What now?'
'Now? Nothing.'
Pryor was surprised. 'What about Prosperous?'
'We let Parker's friends fnish what they started. Why should we involve ourselves when they will do the job for us?' The Principal Backer laughed. 'We won't even have to pay them.'
'And then?'
'Business as usual. You have mines to acquire.'
Yes, thought Pryor. Yes, I have.
53
Lucas Morland felt as though he had aged years in a matter
of days, but for the frst time he was starting to believe that Prosperous might be free and clear, at least as far as the law was concerned. The MSP had not been in touch with him in forty-eight hours, and its investigators were no longer troubling his town. A certain narrative was gaining traction: Harry Dixon, who had been depressed and suffering from fnancial problems, killed his wife, her halfsister, her husband and, it was presumed, his niece, before turning his gun on himself. Extensive searches of the town and its environs had failed to uncover any trace of Kayley Madsen. The state police had even done some halfhearted exploring in the cemetery under Pastor Warraner's watchful eye. The only tense moment occurred when some disturbance to the earth near the church walls was discovered, but further digging exposed only the remains of what was believed to be an animal burrow of some kind – too narrow, it seemed certain, to allow for the burial of a young woman's body.
Then there was the matter of the detective. The hit on him had been botched, and, just as Morland had warned, the attack had brought with it a series of convulsive aftershocks, culminating in the killing of the Daunds. Morland didn't know how the couple had been tracked down. Neither did he know if they had kept silent as they died or confessed all to their killers in an effort to save themselves or, more likely, their son, who had been held captive while his parents were shot dead in their own home. At best, those who were seeking to avenge the shooting of the detective were now only one step away from Prosperous. He had tried to get Hayley Conyer and the others to understand the danger they were in, but they refused to do so. They believed that they had acted to protect the town, and the town, in turn, would protect them. Why wouldn't it? After all, they had given a girl to it.
Now he was back in Conyer's house, sitting at that same table in that same room, sipping tea from the same cups. Sunlight fooded through the trees. It was the frst truly warm day in months. The air was bright with the sound of snow and ice melting, like the dimly heard ticking of clocks.
'You've done well, Lucas,' Conyer told him as she sipped her tea. Morland had barely touched his. He had begun to resent every minute he was forced to spend in Conyer's presence. 'Don't think the board doesn't appreciate all of your efforts.'
He was there only because that old bastard Kinley Nowell had fnally given up the ghost. He had died that morning in his daughter's arms. It was a more peaceful passing than he deserved. As far as Morland was concerned, Kinley Nowell had been severely lacking in the milk of human kindness, even by the standards of a town that fed young women to a hole in the ground.
But Nowell's death had also provided him with what might be his fnal chance to talk some sense into Hayley Conyer. The board would need a replacement, but she had vetoed the suggestion that the young lawyer Stacey Walker should be Nowell's replacement, despite the majority of her fellow board members being in favor. Instead Conyer was holding frm on Daniel Cooper, who wasn't much younger than Nowell had been when he died, and was among the most stubborn and blinkered of the town's elders, as well as an admirer of Conyer's to the point of witlessness. Even after all that had occurred, Conyer was still attempting to consolidate her position.
'We just need to stand together for a little while longer,' Conyer continued, 'and then all this will pass.'
She knew why he was here, but she wasn't about to be dissuaded from her course. She'd already informed Morland that she felt Stacey Walker was too young, too inexperienced, to be brought on to the board. Hard times called for old heads, she told him. Morland couldn't tell whether she'd just made that up or if it was an actual saying, but he rejected it totally in either case. It was old heads that had gotten them into all this trouble to begin with. The town needed a fresh start. He thought of Annie Broyer, and a question that had come to mind after he and Harry Dixon had spent a cold night burying her.
What would happen if we stopped feeding it?
Bad things, Hayley Conyer would have told him had she been there. She would have pointed to the misfortunes that had blighted Prosperous so recently – the deaths of those boys in Afghanistan, of Valerie Gillson, of Ben Pearson – and said, There! See what happens when you fail in your duty to the town?
But what if this was all a myth in which they had mistakenly chosen to believe? What if their old god was more dependent on them than they were on it? Their credence ga
ve it power. If they deprived it of belief, then what?
Could a god die?