“And what if he did?” It was Abigail’s turn to be angry. “They deserved it.” The senator raised a hand as if to strike her, but Abigail stepped even closer, chin up, eyes bright. “I fucking dare you.”
He lowered his hand. “Sometimes, my dear, the past seems to come out in you.”
“What past?”
“Little glimpses of what you were before I met you.”
“Take that back.”
He smiled a hard smile. “Bits of white trash…” He shook his head, threw her words back at her. “I fucking dare you.” He straightened his jacket. “Who raised you?”
Something dark moved in Abigail’s eyes. “Fuck you.”
“There it is again.”
“Mock me again, Randall, and I’ll make you regret it.”
“What are you going to do? Leave me?” She looked away, and his voice chilled. “That’s right. You like it here, don’t you. You like the power, the money. You like all of it. Little whore.”
Abigail brought her knee up, drove it between his legs. The senator staggered, hands on his knees, face red and slick. “Bitch. Fucking … bitch…”
“I warned you.”
“God … damn it…”
Abigail straightened, smoothed the same, white cotton. “You’re pathetic.”
She put a hand on the door, walked out into the long, lush hall.
“You’re no saint,” he called.
She closed the door, but could still hear him.
“You’re no goddamn, lily-white saint!”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Jessup stood in front of a small mirror in the bathroom of his quarters. He’d woken at six, taken a long, troubled walk in the woods, then made coffee in the same pot he’d had for fourteen years. He showered while it perked, shaved with great care and dressed himself in a white shirt and the crisp khaki pants he favored. In the mirror, his face was lean and lined, the deep tan of summer making his teeth and hair seem whiter than they actually were. He was trying to put a Windsor knot in a paisley tie, but his hands were shaking.
He took a deep breath; started over.
Abigail was lying to him. Not little lies, but big ones. First, she’d taken the gun, then she’d disappeared only to come back bloodstained and injured. She wouldn’t tell him where she’d been or what had happened. He didn’t know what upset him more—the thought that she was in danger, or the fact that she had not included him in whatever that danger was. The woman was his life.
Didn’t she know that?
Didn’t she care?
He finished the knot, cinched it tight and thought the worry showed in his eyes. They were blue and clear and too old to be looking out from the mirror with such hurt. But he could not change the man that sixty years had made him out to be, and didn’t want to, either.
He pulled a chain to turn off the light, then left the bathroom and walked into the tight, narrow living area where he’d lived so much of his life. He’d been here for two decades and knew every inch: the stone fireplace, the walls of books, the corner where he liked to lean the walking sticks Abigail had given him over the years. He sat on the sofa and looked at the boots he’d taken off after his walk. They were old and leather, built to protect the lower leg from briars and shale and snakebite. They stood in the same corner, and from sole to top were slicked with clinging, black mud. He’d seen the same mud on Abigail’s pants and shoes when she’d finally come home last night. The same damn mud, black as pitch and reeking of rot. Only one place on the estate had mud like that. So, he’d gone walking. He’d gone looking for something, and found it.
But what did it mean?
He sat for a long time, staring at those boots. He thought of many things, and only stirred when the knock came on his door. Then he rose quickly, because only Abigail came here. Because he knew the way she knocked. “Nice of you to think of me.” He stepped back and let her in. “I thought I would have to track you down.” The anger boiled up unexpectedly, the worry and fear, a sense of betrayal so profound he missed things he might otherwise have noticed.
“Jessup, I—”
“Save it.” He kept himself rigid. “I found the car.”
“What?”
“You ditched it in the bog at the south end of the estate. You ditched it and you walked back. You lied to me.”
“What if I did?”
“There’s blood all over it.”
Her stance hardened. “To hell with the car.”
He noticed the difference, then. The fierce, hot eyes and elevated color. The rapid breath. The sense that she was not her normal self. She swayed minutely as she stood, then stepped closer, sweat like dew on her skin, the smell of lavender and honey.
Something was off.
The eyes, he thought, but more than the wide, dark pits at their centers, more than the glassy sheen. It was like a different soul lived behind them, a dangerous, different soul.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“What?”
“Kiss me. Do me.” She touched his arm, and he stepped back.
“You’re not yourself.”
“No, I’m not. Life is a cruel joke, and I’m not myself.”
She pressed so close he felt the heat of her skin, the touch of her fingers on his belt. He saw the fine pores on the slope of her nose, the black hunger that drove her. “Stop.” The word came hard.
“I thought this is what you wanted.” She touched his buckle. “All these years…”
He lifted her hands from his waist. “Not like this.”
“Like what?”
He felt his features stiffen. “Please don’t do this to me.”
“Don’t you want me?”
“I want you to get out.”
“Jessup, please…”
He jerked open the door, voice breaking. “Stop torturing me and get the hell out.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Slaughter Mountain was as far off the main roads as you could get and still be reached by anything that looked remotely like pavement. More like rubble, Michael thought, slamming through a rut that held a foot of muddy water.
But he was close; he felt it.
Close to answers.
Close to something.
The dead boys were connected to Iron House. So were Julian, the senator and the senator’s wife. Salina Slaughter’s name was on the same list as Abigail Vane, the dead men he’d known as boys, and Slaughter Mountain was no more than thirty miles from Iron House. In a world this large, that was damn close. There had to be a connection.
But what?
The road dropped low, then bottomed out where a single-lane bridge spanned a fifty-foot gulley. It was early afternoon, but dim in the draw. Michael had not seen a car or a person since he’d actually found a gas station clerk who knew how to get to Slaughter Mountain. That was thirty minutes ago. Before that, Michael had already stopped three times with no luck. It wasn’t that people were unkind or unwilling, but that road signs seemed nonexistent and directions were hard if you didn’t know the dead pine at the edge of Miller’s Field or the bridge where that fool tourist kid fell in the ditch and broke his ass bone.
Michael rolled over the bridge and looked downslope. Through a break in the tree cover he could see flashes of the river, which ran fast and white. He eased forward, studying the left side of the road until he found a secondary road that cut through the trees as it rose up. It was narrow and overgrown, limbs pushing in far enough to make it dark as a tunnel. Michael turned, then stopped and got out. The sign was hidden by scrub, but exactly where the clerk had said it would be. Michael pulled off brambles and vines, saw the slab of granite that looked like a tombstone.
Slaughter Mountain
1898
He drove to the top of the mountain and found it ruined. Two-thirds of it had been carved away—blasted and split and hollowed out. He saw pit mines and dross piles, metal equipment that was broken and rusted and spent. The wreckage stretched for two miles.
Ruins
of a mansion perched on a far knoll.
Michael followed the road as it curved around the mine site. Stone was gray and shattered and pooled with water that caught reflections of the high, blue sky. He passed conveyors, shelled-out trucks and old, wooden structures fallen into decay. Mountains rolled off to the horizon, hazy blue, and Michael wondered how tall this mountain had been before the Slaughters stripped it down to nothing. He looked west, into Tennessee, east to Iron Mountain, then drove into more trees and up to the high glade and the rubble that dominated it.
One of the wings still stood, but barely. The rest of the structure had burned some time long ago. Grass grew around blackened timbers and mounds of chiseled stone; bits of glass winked in the sun. Four chimneys clawed up from the debris, but two more had collapsed. The house had been massive, once. Now it was as ruined as the mountain.
An old pickup truck was parked near the closest corner, its red paint faded to the color of clay, rust on the hood and knobby tires worn smooth in the center. Michael stopped next to the truck, opened the door and got out. A small bent figure was pushing a wheelbarrow down a path cleared through the wreckage. Michael waited until the man was close. “Need any help with that?”
The man started, and the wheelbarrow tipped. He tried to correct it, but his arms were thin and his load was heavy. The wheelbarrow toppled over. Bricks spilled out. The old man looked frightened, then angry. There was no way to put a number on the years he’d seen. He could be eighty-five or a hundred and ten. His face was a mask of lines and puckered skin, his body wiry and bent. He wore poor clothes and leather boots scuffed white. “Damn, son.”
“Sorry about that.”
The man squinted, one hand in his pocket like it might hold a knife. “I ain’t stealing nothing. Nobody owns this no more.”
Michael noticed that the truck bed was full of brick that looked hand-formed, and was probably worth something on the salvage market. He shrugged. “Take all of it for all I care.”
The old man looked him up and down. “You some kind of tourist?”
Michael shook his head. “Let me help you.”
He stepped onto the path, righted the wheelbarrow and started replacing the bricks that had fallen out. The man watched, then bent and began shifting bricks, his gnarled hands shaky but deft. “Sorry about that, I guess.”
“What?”
He pointed at the Range Rover. “Most rich people are assholes. Figured you’d be the same.”
“I work with my hands. You going to sell this brick?”
“Building a barbecue pit.”
“Really?”
“Might do some entertaining.”
Michael smiled, not sure if the man was pulling his chain. “This the Slaughter place?” he asked.
“What’s left of it.”
“What happened?”
“Burned. Thirty years, maybe.”
Michael picked up the last brick, then took the handles and started rolling the wheelbarrow toward the truck. “Any Slaughters left around these parts?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You sure?”
“Been here all my life. Reckon I’d know.”
They reached the truck and Michael set the wheelbarrow down. He picked up the first brick, dropped it in the truck bed. “Any idea where the family went?”
“Hell, I suppose.”
“All of them?”
“Far as I know, there was just the lady.”
“Serena Slaughter?”
“Meanest cocksucker ever wrote a check or broke a man’s back for working. Rich as God a’mighty, but nasty to her bones. She died in the fire, and I hope she died screaming.”
He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and honked his nose. Michael stared off at mountains that rolled blue and soft to the east. “Did you know her?”
“Most people around here did. Worked for her, anyways.”
“What can you tell me?”
“You already done shifting brick?”
Michael smiled again, then tossed more brick and watched the man use the same bandanna to mop his face. “Did you know her personally?”
“Never cared to.”
“Who owns the mountain now?”
“Couldn’t say.”
Michael put the last brick in the truck. “Does the name Salina Slaughter mean anything?”
“Nope. Catch that side, will you?”
Michael gripped the side of the wheelbarrow and they heaved it into the truck, wedged it upside down among the pile of brick. “Anybody around here that might be able to tell me more? Did she have friends—”
“Son, that’s like asking does a rattlesnake have friends, or if a rock gives two shits about the dirt it’s sitting on.” Michael’s disappointment must have shown. The man narrowed one eye and said, “Means something to you, does it?”
“I’m looking for answers, yes.”
“You squeamish?” The same glint caught in his eye, part humor and the rest mischief.
“Not at all,” Michael said.
“Then you’ll be wanting to follow me.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a nasty old woman who might be able to help you, and because you’d not find her in a million years if I weren’t to show you how.”
Michael followed the old man around the truck, watched him get in and slam the door. “Who is she?”
The man put an elbow through the open window, fired up the truck. “Far as I’m concerned,” he said, “she’s the crazy bitch what burned this place down.”
* * *
The old man was right. Michael would have never found his way to the place he was led. They went down the mountain, left and then right a half-mile past the draw. There was no sign or pavement or indication of any kind that making that right turn was a smart move. They followed a mud track that fell away and then split twice to end up in a narrow gorge divided by a two-foot trickle of water. Trees had been cleared for the most part—stumps jutting up—but there were enough trees left to put shadows on the ground and keep the whole place from sliding off the mountain. Michael guessed there were about thirty structures in the gorge, a few of them painted, but most of them not. He saw a few trailers that had been somehow dragged down the track, but most of the buildings were poor, unpainted shacks on cinder-block foundations. There were covered porches and oil tanks, ruined cars and dead appliances. Mud was the rule, but flowerpots made a splash of color here and there. Even though it was hot, smoke rose from chimneys. Michael noticed that there were no power lines snaking down from the road above.
The old man stopped by the largest structure, which had been painted white once. The windows were broken out, roof caved in. “You ever heard the term, ‘company store’?” He walked around to Michael’s window, pointed at the building. “There she sits.”
Michael climbed out of the Rover. “I don’t understand.”
The old man took a round can from his back pocket, pinched a half-inch of tobacco and stuffed it under his bottom lip. “Slaughters built all of this back in the day. Wrote mortgages so we could own our own place, then paid us with a mix of cash and store credit. Half the folks here either worked for them or watched their parents get old and broke doing it.”
“Half of them?”
“Rest are hippies and homeless and Mexicans. Lady you want is at the end of that track, last one back, where the water falls off.” He pointed at a sloppy, wet scar through the trees. “House used to be yellow. Sits on the creek’s edge, with a big, flat boulder for a front yard. Kind of pretty once upon a time.”
Michael stared off down the track. “You’re not coming?”
“That’s my house, right there.” He pointed at an unpainted shack fifty yards off. A half-built barbecue pit dominated the patch of dirt off the front porch.
“Your pit looks good.”
The man shrugged. “Been telling the wife I’d do it for twenty years.” He winked. “Figure building it’s the best shot I got of dying in peace. You
go on down, now. Her name’s Arabella Jax. She hears better than she sees, and has shot more than one dog what wandered onto her porch. So, let her hear you coming. Just don’t tell her I’m the one who sent you.” He squelched back toward his truck, but Michael had a few more questions.
“Why do you think she knows anything about Serena Slaughter?”
“Not sure she does, but everybody down here worked in the quarry or the mines. She’s the only one left who worked in the house.”
“Doing what?”
“Dishes. Laundry. Rubbing the old lady’s feet. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Why do you think she’s the one that burned the house?”
“They had some kind of falling out.” The man swung into his truck, spoke through the passenger window. “Mostly, she’s the only one down here mean enough to do it.” He put the truck in gear, lifted a hand. “Hang on to your wallet,” he said, and drove off laughing.
Michael watched his tires sling mud, then catch. He stepped back to his own vehicle and felt eyes watching him, caught movement in shady places behind open windows. It would be a short walk, he thought, but doubted the Rover would survive his absence. So, he drove.
The track went between two houses, then bent toward the creek and followed it deeper into the gorge. Michael had seen a lot of poverty in his time, but never as entrenched as this. This place had been here for a long time, and it had always been poor. No power. No phone. Trees chopped down for firewood.
The yellow house sat far back from the rest, and he saw how it could have looked once upon a time. The creek slid past the front of it, touched the side of a giant, flat boulder as it formed a wide, deep pool and then dropped off in a whisper of spray. There was a view down-gulley, and the river itself glinted far down in the green.
But that’s where the prettiness ended. Most of the gutters had fallen down years ago and lay rusted in the dirt. Those that remained were clogged and sprouting saplings two feet tall. A blue tarp covered part of the roof, and tarpaper showed where windowsills had rotted off the sides. Boards were missing in the porch. What paint remained was deep in the grain.
Michael turned off the car and got out.