Say Goodbye

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Harold was ten feet up, dangling out on a limb now, edging closer to the body. The tree branch dipped down precariously. Harold whistled nervously.

  “I found the end of the rope,” he called out. “He has kind of…an elaborate system here. From what I can tell, the rope loops around a variety of branches, almost like a pulley system. I think if I partially cut the rope here, then climb up to the highest branch and yank hard, I might gain enough rope to lower the body to the ground. At least, fairly close.”

  “How close?” Rachel demanded.

  “I don’t fucking know,” Harold called out in exasperation, which raised Rachel’s and Kimberly’s eyebrows as they’d never heard Harold swear before. He seemed to catch himself, soldier on. “We could try a ladder,” he started to say, then, “ah jeez.”

  The body was moving again. The nylon bulging around the crisscross pattern of the rope wrapped around the mummified form. It didn’t look like arms and legs struggling to get free. It looked…alien. A separate life-form, rippling beneath the surface.

  “Rachel?” Harold called down in a strained voice.

  “All right. Do what you think is best. But save the knot.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Harold muttered, earning more raised brows.

  There was the sawing sound of Harold working on the rope. Then a deep, concerned sigh before Harold resumed his climb up to the higher point of the subject’s pulley system.

  This limb was noticeably thinner than the lower branch, and as Harold once again eased out on his stomach, the branch began to dip. Then several things happened at once.

  The rope snapped at the half-sawed cut, whipping up the tree with a scissoring slice. Harold yelped, grabbed for the nylon line with his gloved hands, and the whole body careened down five feet before yanking to a halt.

  “Holy mother of…” Harold exclaimed. “I can’t…It’s gonna…Shit!”

  He lost the end, and the body crashed down another five feet before the rope tangled and the body lurched to a halt. Harold wasted no time, sliding down the tree trunk in a shower of green needles. He reached the lower branches, shimmied straight out, and grabbed the rope again.

  “Incoming!” He untangled the line. The body dropped, two deputies rushing to grab the form and lower it gently onto the waiting tarp.

  This close it was easy to discern the tightly bound shape of a human body, wrapped in a camouflage-patterned fabric, bound with brown rope. The nylon material rippled again, and with a little yelp, one of the officers fell back.

  “All right,” Rachel said, taking control of the situation as Harold swung out of the tree and everyone gathered around the twitching form. “Anyone who is not me drop back. We’re gonna do this slow and controlled.” She donned booties, as well as a hairnet, mask, and gloves. The tarp was the crime scene, meant to catch whatever trace evidence fell out from the nylon wrapping. Rachel’s job was to limit cross-contamination of the scene.

  “I’ll do it,” Harold said immediately, reaching for the knife Rachel had in her hands.

  “It’s okay, Harold. This is why I get the big bucks.”

  Despite her brash tone, Rachel approached the form warily. For the first time, Kimberly could catch the smell. Decay, light but pervasive.

  Harold hunkered down at the edge of the tarp. Kimberly moved closer to him. Sal, too. They watched as Rachel gingerly made her way across the blue plastic, eyeing the thick rope that started at the ankles and wound all the way up the body.

  She was looking for knots, Kimberly knew. It was always important to preserve knots. Just ask the officers who pursued the BTK killer in Kansas.

  Rachel found the first knot at the ankles. She went an inch above it, slid the blade of her knife beneath the rope, and carefully sawed through the tough nylon. It took some time. Then the rope gave, falling away from the feet. Rachel pulled gently, easing the rope from underneath the body, slowly starting to unwind.

  The whole form shifted slightly, seemed to sigh. Rachel caught herself, continued on. She was crouched above the head now, the majority of the body directed away from her, allowing for a quicker getaway.

  She fished the last of the rope from around the neck. Now Kimberly could see the folds of the nylon fabric, how it wrapped around the form.

  “All right,” Rachel said quietly. “I’m gonna start at the middle. Everyone, look sharp.”

  She stood up. Bent over. Grabbed the first seam of fabric at the body’s waist, gave it a firm tug.

  The form exploded. Like Jiffy Pop, Kimberly thought wildly. The unbound material burst open and a flood of spiders poured out, black and brown, big and small, eight-legged shapes scurrying desperately from their nylon prison while Rachel screamed and fell back, and Harold leapt to his feet, shouting, “Well, look at that!”

  Then a rifle boomed from the trees and red bloomed across Harold’s shoulder and he exclaimed a second time, “Well, look at that!”

  Harold fell to the ground.

  “Take cover!” Rachel cried, already scrambling for the bushes.

  As Sal fell on Harold’s injured form, Kimberly leapt toward her father and Rainie’s side, hunkered behind a larger boulder.

  As they all learned what the Burgerman knew how to do best.

  FORTY-ONE

  “Experiments with the venom of the brown recluse have shown that both sexes are capable of inflicting poisonous bites to mammals.”

  FROM Biology of the Brown Recluse Spider,

  BY JULIA MAXINE HITE, WILLIAM J. GLADNEY, J. L. LANCASTER, JR., AND W. H. WHITCOMB, DEPARTMENT OF ENTOMOLOGY, DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, FAYETTEVILLE, MAY 1966

  THE RAIN STOPPED, THE SUN BREAKING THROUGH briefly before once more being replaced by the gray pall of dusk. By mutual agreement, Rita and the boy didn’t turn on any lights. They maintained their vigil from the relative sanctuary of the shadowed kitchen, supping on cheese and crackers, the occasional sip of orange juice.

  Together, they had wrestled an old armoire through the house, propping it against the back door, which Rita perceived as the weakest point in their line of defense. Next, Rita had brought down old linens, holding them in place while the boy tacked them over the lower-level windows. She didn’t want the man peering in, watching their movements, planning his attack. And if he did break the glass, she hoped the tangle of old fabric would buy them precious minutes. Three, four? She wasn’t sure, and as she and the boy went from room to room, reinforcing and reconfiguring, it occurred to her that their hastily erected defenses, geared at keeping one man out, inevitably trapped both of them in.

  She did not tell the boy this. He had his knife strapped to his thigh with a strip of cloth he’d torn off an old pillowcase. She thought he had enough on his mind.

  She didn’t dial 911, or bother to contact the local sheriff. Mostly because she knew the boy would bolt before talking to men in uniforms. Also, what was there to say? She and the boy were at war. They knew their enemy. They understood the battle that must be fought. But in practical terms, she had nothing to report.

  She had never met the man who lived in the old Victorian. She had never spoken with him, never looked him in the eye. She feared now her first glimpse of him would be her last. But she was tough, she had her Colt pistol. She liked to believe that she and the boy would have the last laugh yet.

  By five p.m., as the sun sank and the shadows grew long, she yawned conspicuously. It had been a long night, followed by a longer day. She yearned to stretch out on the parlor loveseat, rest her tired bones.

  They should sleep in shifts. Isn’t that what sentinels were supposed to do? She wished Joseph’s ghost could talk, because she’d never been at war before and she could use some advice.

  The boy was studying her, waiting to see what she would do next.

  She said, “You should take a nap. Sleep until midnight, then we both must look sharp.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Nonsense, chi
ld. Even soldiers rest. What’re we gonna do tomorrow if neither of us sleep tonight?”

  “He’ll come.”

  “But he’s not here yet. So sleep, child. While you can.”

  He scowled, but her words must’ve made some sense, or he was even more tired than she had guessed, for he nodded reluctantly and dragged himself toward the stairs.

  “I’ll set a timer,” she called out softly behind him. “Wake you in six hours.”

  “Three,” he said stubbornly. “Then it’s your turn.”

  “Six. At my age, there is no such thing as sleep. The body seems to know that eternal rest is coming soon enough.”

  The boy didn’t argue anymore. She thought his shoulders were more hunched than she remembered, his feet scuffing across the floor like a dead man walking. He expected the worst, she realized. Every night, when he went to bed, he expected not to wake up again.

  She wondered how long it had been like that for him. And even if they made it through tonight, what did morning really mean for a boy like him? She thought if he ever chose to talk, he would tell stories not even Joseph could have imagined.

  And she wished she were younger, because, Lord help her, she would like to keep this child. She would hold him close, smooth his hair when he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, take his hand on the bad days, when all his memories were dark and he forgot that he was still innocent and loveable and good. That the bad things were not his fault. That there were people in the world, people like her, who were proud to know him.

  She had never been much for prayer. In Rita’s world, if you wanted something, you set out yourself to get it done. But she prayed now. Because night was falling. Because she loved this child. And because she knew, from the bottom of her heart, that an almost ninety-year-old woman did not stand a chance against someone like the man on the hill.

  Fate was coming for her. She prayed to be strong and mostly, to save the boy.

  Rita dozed off. She didn’t mean to, but she must’ve, because next thing she knew, the doorbell rang, and she startled upright, almost falling out of her little wooden chair next to the kitchen table.

  The doorbell was followed by a light knock, so Rita planted her hands against the table and struggled to her feet. Curiosity, more than anything, led her to the front parlor, Colt tucked in the waistband of Joseph’s old pants, hidden by the encompassing shape of his favorite green flannel shirt.

  Would the bad man be so audacious as to simply show up and knock? Maybe for all her strategizing, she had missed the most important piece of the puzzle—the boy did not belong to her, and if the man appeared with police officers demanding the boy’s return, there was nothing she could do.

  She was wrestling with that piece of knowledge when she arrived at the front door, gingerly pulling back one corner of a draped sheet to peer out the side window. Not a hulking, scary man after all. Just the girl from down the street, chomping away on a wad of gum while holding the neighbor’s big ol’ black tomcat by the scruff of its neck.

  Midnight must’ve done something in the girl’s yard. Maybe buried a few presents in the garden, or eaten her favorite chipmunk. Rita didn’t see what the girl could complain about, given that she lived in a double-wide and most of her front yard consisted of crabgrass. Rita had never really spoken to the girl, just seen her come and go during the odd hours of the night, probably working at a local bar doing God knows what.

  The girl knocked again, looking impatient now, so Rita went to work on the locks.

  She’d barely opened the door before the girl thrust the cat at her. The tomcat yowled. The girl shook him impatiently.

  “This your cat?”

  “That’s Midnight. He belongs next door.”

  “If he belongs next door, then what the hell was he doing sitting on your patio? Looks to me like he feels mighty comfy here.”

  “Midnight’s a tomcat. He feels comfortable anywhere.”

  The girl scowled as if she didn’t believe Rita, taking a step into the house, still wielding the cat.

  “I’m telling you now, I’ve had it to here with this damn cat. You like him at all, you’d better start keeping him inside, ’cause the next time I catch him digging up my yard, I’m filling his backside with buckshot.”

  “For the last time—”

  “Rita.”

  The voice came from behind her, so quiet she barely heard it. Rita half-turned, saw the boy standing in the doorway. And she could tell from the look on his face that she’d made a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake.

  “Hey, Scott,” the girl said flatly. “Burgerman says hi.”

  The girl flung the tomcat at Rita. Rita fell back, her feet tangling in Joseph’s baggy pants. The next instant, she crashed to the ground, her old brittle hip giving with a crack as Midnight raked his claws over her forearm, then went springing across the parlor.

  “Run,” Rita cried feebly to the boy. “Run!”

  The boy took off. The girl paused long enough to slap Rita across the face and produce a fistful of zip ties.

  “I’ll deal with him, soon enough.” The girl dispassionately looped one tie around Rita’s tiny wrists and yanked it tight. “That’ll keep you busy for a bit, old lady.”

  Then the girl slammed the front door shut and set out after the boy.

  Rita remained on the floor, the pain in her hip spreading steadily down her body, rooting her in place. She could not move her legs. She could not move her hands. Her first confrontation with evil and she hadn’t even made it thirty seconds.

  Her eyes stung. She thought she might cry and that bothered her so much, she rolled onto her stomach, gritted her teeth against the dizzying pain, and started to crawl.

  “Joseph,” she whispered. “Be patient for my soul, brother dear. Help me tonight. One last night. Then I will be with you soon enough.”

  FORTY-TWO

  “Spider evolution, though, has mostly murderous ends.”

  FROM “SPIDER WOMAN,”

  BY BURKHARD BILGER, New Yorker, MARCH 5, 2007

  GUNFIRE. LOTS OF IT. IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

  The deputies had spooked. Maybe the federal agents, as well. Most had drawn their handguns and were firing wildly into the trees, trying to provide enough cover for Sal to drag Harold out of the clearing, toward the massive boulder that sheltered Kimberly, Rainie, and Quincy.

  Rachel Childs was fifteen feet away, hunkered down behind a tree, Glock in one hand, radio in the other. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, “Officer down, officer down. We are under fire. I repeat, we need immediate backup and medical assistance. I want choppers, SWAT, National Guard, I don’t fucking care, just get me armed choppers and a medical evac now, now, now. We are on Blood Mountain. Requesting immediate assistance.”

  Kimberly had her Glock drawn, mentally urging Sal on as she scanned the surrounding woods for sign of the gunman. Sal made it two feet. Three. Another rifle shot cracked in the distance. Sal dropped on top of Harold’s body, shielding the fallen agent’s face with his arms as bark exploded off the tree beside him.

  “There,” Quincy breathed. “Over there. To the left.”

  He pointed with his finger and Kimberly obediently opened fire, allowing Sal to dart up again, grab Harold under the armpits, and heave. He wasn’t going to make it. Not one man pulling one hundred and eighty pounds of deadweight across such an expanse. Someone needed to help him.

  She tensed her legs immediately, ready to leap out, and then…

  She stopped.

  She wasn’t going to go out there. She couldn’t go out there.

  She was pregnant. She could risk herself, but she had no right to risk her child. Oh God, she was going to become a mom and one of her first acts of motherhood was going to be staying behind this damn boulder, watching as her own teammate was gunned down.

  The rifle cracked again, a distant boom with local consequences. Sal dropped. Kimberly opened fire. Her teammates joined in, a last-ditch effort against an enemy they cou
ldn’t see.

  Beside her, Quincy was breathing hard, one hand on Rainie’s shoulder, his other on Kimberly’s arm as he scanned the trees with an intent look.

  “Kimberly,” he started.

  “Go,” she gritted out. “Help him, dammit. Someone has to help him.”

  Quincy dashed out. And Kimberly resumed cover fire, aware of Rainie’s taut form beside her and the tears now pouring down both of their cheeks.

  Another shot rang out, just as Quincy reached Sal’s side. The GBI agent flinched, but did not go down. Quincy grabbed Harold’s right arm. Sal grabbed his left. They started to run, Harold’s limp body crashing across the bumpy ground.

  Just as Kimberly thought they might make it, that heroism would indeed persevere, another shot rang out, and Sal lurched to his left and tumbled down.

  Vaguely, she was aware of Sheriff Duffy rising from behind a dead tree fall. Rifle butt against his shoulder, sighting a light that had flashed in the distance, pulling the trigger. The crack of the rifle, the jerk of his solid body, absorbing the recoil.

  Then Quincy had dragged Harold to safety, and Rainie had her arm around Sal’s shoulders, guiding him behind the rock.

  Duff ducked back down.

  The forest finally, eerily, fell silent.

  Harold’s shoulder looked bad. Kimberly ripped open his shirt, trying to clear dirt and debris from the pulpy mess. Harold’s pulse was erratic, his eyes rolled back into his head. If he didn’t get immediate medical attention, he wasn’t going to make it.

  Sal propped himself up against the boulder, holding his side. Rainie had tugged away his white dress shirt to reveal a deep furrow along his left rib cage. The wound appeared painful, but on a relative scale, he was in good shape and knew it.

  “We need first-aid supplies,” Kimberly murmured. “Bandages, saline flush, an antiseptic solution. It’s all in the packs.”

  “Where are the packs?” her father asked promptly.

  Kimberly jerked her head toward the other side of the boulder, and her father peered around long enough to wince.

  “That’s not going to be easy,” he observed. Most of the packs were still in the clearing, a good twenty feet of exposed space away.