Page 86 of A River Red With Blood
“I’ve been spending time in the Kennebec Valley,” she said.“I went searching for Mallory Norton.”
“And?”
“I could find no trace, and I looked hard.She may be gone.”
Someone not paying attention, or unfamiliar with her ways, might have concluded that Sabine didn’t care.I didn’t make that mistake.We both knew that a person could bear only so much of the pain of others.One insulated oneself as best one could.
“Anything else?”
“I’m driving to Bingham right now,” she said.“I don’t know when I’ll be returning to Haynesville.I’ve met someone.”
“That’s … nice?”It came more like a question than intended, and also more skeptical.
“You sound ambivalent,” said Sabine, “though whether you’re more concerned for him or me, I wouldn’t like to speculate.Regardless, it’s important that we meet.I’d encourage you to make it sooner, not later.”
I saw no point in hiding my travel plans from her.
“I’m leaving for The Plains today,” I said.
“Then let’s meet.”
“Sabine, I—”
“Listen to me,” she said.“Something up there knows your name.Something very bad.”
Chapter 83
Ioffered to meet Angel and Louis at one of our usual haunts—the Bear, or Bayou Kitchen—but Angel said they’d prefer to speak somewhere more private, so I told them to come to the house.
I knew something was wrong from the moment they stepped from the car.It was in the way Angel was keeping his head down, and Louis was looking anywhere but at me.I was worried I might somehow have caused them hurt until I noticed Louis was not so much refusing to acknowledge me as he was checking the surroundings for potential threats.Louis rarely behaved this way when he came to my home.In the years after a gun attack in my yard almost took my life—had taken my life, as my heart stopped three times on the operating table—I had cut back much of the undergrowth and installed a monitoring system capable of detecting the presence of any creature larger than a possum.If an intruder, animal or human, approached the house, it would also be captured on camera, day or night.A stranger might have regarded this as paranoia, but a stranger would not have known of my wounds, or the pain with which I woke first thing in the morning and with which I went to bed at night, and I wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the next person who came for me.Then again, I only had to look in the mirror to see my recently busted nose, and I could trace with my fingertips the scar that the same block of wood had left on my scalp.As any expert in close protection will tell you—or won’t tell you, especially if you’re a client paying through the nose for it—if someone wants to get to you badly enough, they will.The rest is delaying the inevitable.
We sat at the kitchen table as Louis spoke of the contract that had been taken out on him; of Kade and the broker; of Epstein and his reflections; and finally of Sturgis, with his pornographic angel and false hope of redemption, because if a man like Sturgis could be absolved of sin through murder, the very concept of redemption was rendered meaningless.
“And Sturgis named Brightwell,” I said, when Louis was done.
“He did.”
I saw a goitered child, Brightwell reborn, being swallowed by the Great North Woods.We had once thought Brightwell dead, and not without cause, since I could still see a chunk of his skull detaching as the bullet exited his head.But Brightwell’s figure had been a recurring one for centuries, an imp of the perverse captured in text and art, so while the form of his return might have been a shock, the fact of it should not have been.However, back then we were still learning, and a lot had changed in the interim.We were now dreaming the same dreams.
“Did Southwood pull anything useful from Sturgis’s computer?”
“He did a lot of reverse engineering based on the pornography,” Louis replied.“Sturgis’s contacts and suppliers will soon begin receiving visits from the FBI.But if you’re referring to the Colonial Club, then no, beyond confirming the rescindment of Sturgis’s membership.”
“So they learned of his tastes and tried to distance themselves from any potential fallout,” I said.
Angel spoke, he who, as a boy, was abused like Sturgis’s victims.
“Southwood says they must have known about Sturgis for years, but as his addictions grew, he got careless, and that carelessness became a liability.”
“We need to look again at all the material you’ve gathered,” said Louis, “including that list of names salvaged from the plane.Somewhere we’ve missed a connection, or we spotted a gap but couldn’t identify the link.What if it’s Sturgis?What if he’s thekey?”
“His name isn’t in the documents,” I said.“I’ve never even heard it mentioned until today.”
“We could ask Southwood,” said Angel.“He can run everything you have against what was on Sturgis’s computer.Let him tear Sturgis’s life apart, from the moment his mother purged her womb until Louis silenced him.”
“I don’t have that kind of money,” I said.“Also, I’ve never met Southwood.He’s just a voice at the end of a phone, and a mercenary one at that.I don’t know that he can be trusted.”
“He can,” said Louis.“I guarantee it.And he’ll help for free, or payment in kind.”
