“The game within the game, right?”
“That’s my boy.”
They were interrupted by the door sweeping open. A confused and almost guilty expression stole over Bobby’s face as the nurse walked into the room. She didn’t seem overly alarmed when she noticed McFall’s presence, just curious. “You removed your oximeter,” she said, moving to the bedside to reattach the device to Bobby’s finger. “We need the information it gives us at the desk.”
“Well, I’d better be going,” Larkin said. “Get some rest, Bobby. Big day tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good night, Mr. McFall,” the nurse said.
Larkin saw no need to etherealize for his return trip through the hospital. The hallway was dead, and the two nurses staffing the floor desk were busy gossiping about a doctor. Larkin took the opportunity to stop by Room 213 to pay a visit to Vivian Gregg. The widow had been feeling poorly, and although she was in remission from stomach cancer, the chemotherapy had worsened her heart arrhythmia.
The room was dark except for the tiny rows of red and green LCDs cast by her life-support machinery. Out of sentimental stubbornness, the woman had dabbed perfume somewhere on her frail body, although its scent stood no chance against the dueling odors of decay and antiseptic. She was sound asleep, or as near to that state as was possible for someone strolling the borderlands between life and death. Larkin regretted disturbing her, but she had a debt to pay. She had once accosted Archer McFall in a grocery store, demanding that he “quit that old red church and come to Barkersville Baptist.”
You wanted him to get right with God. And he did. Oh, yes, he certainly did.
He laid hands on her. He had the power to revive and restore her, just as he had done with the ravaged corpse of Stepford Matheson, but he didn’t feel like it at the moment. One good deed deserved another, but he was fresh out of benevolence after cheering up Bobby. And the Greggs had been arrogant and holier-than-thou for generations.
“Mrs. Gregg?” he whispered, gently shaking her. “Ma’am?”
“Hmm?” She twisted, weak and groggy under her thin flannel blanket.
“How are you feeling?”
She blinked, her eyes attempting to adjust to the dim room. Larkin knew she couldn’t see him, although he could see her just fine. All the way through.
“Are you … the doctor?” she said, the words crawling out of her throat like gravel sluicing from a broken cement mixer.
“No, ma’am.”
“Are you an angel?”
“Sure,” Larkin said. “What do you want more than anything in the world?”
Her eyes shone with confused hope. “To … get better?”
He gave her bony hand a reassuring pat. “We’re way past that now, Mrs. Gregg. Way past. Anything else?”
She was finally alert enough to realize she wasn’t dreaming. Her head shifted from side to side as if trying to shake herself fully awake.
“Don’t you want to die peacefully?” he asked, as gently as he could.
Her head shook more vigorously.
“No?” Larkin said, squeezing her hand harder until she gasped. “That’s not what you want?”
Her skeletal sack of flesh quivered as she drew in air for a scream.
“Okay,” he said. “If you insist, we’ll do it the other way.”
He showed his true face, and confronted with the flash of fire and smoke and ash and squirming filth, her eyes widened and the scream froze in her chest along with her heart. As her cardiac monitor flatlined, he laid her arm across her abdomen and gave it a soothing stroke. He was down the hall before the alarm beeped at the floor desk.
Outside, the night was brisk and cool, the storm clouds having streamed to the northeast. The fragrance of dogwood and azalea blooms enriched the air, and the whole world felt ripe with the promise of renewal. Larkin had taken up a cheerful whistle, but he stopped when he saw a small figure perched on a concrete wall along the sidewalk.
“Ronnie!” Larkin said. This was an unexpected delight; his night just kept getting better.
Ronnie folded his arms over his chest and drew back in a defensive posture. “Hello.”
“What are you doing out here at this time of night?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Mr. McFall. But I have a feeling this is your happy hour.”
Larkin laughed. “You must have come to see Bobby. I was worried about him, too, but he’s going to be just fine.”
“One of the deputies was supposed to give me a ride, but I guess he forgot. And my parents are probably asleep.”
“You want a lift?”
Ronnie looked around the hospital’s silent parking lot, and then at the bright windows of the drugstore across the street, as if willing some other transportation option into existence. “I can’t afford a cab, but it’s way out of your way. You live in town, don’t you?”
Larkin could hardly wait to drive Ronnie across the bridge and past the old burned church. Maybe they could talk about Melanie Ward along the way. Maybe even—
Headlights swept across them as a vehicle turned onto the adjacent street and rolled into the parking lot. Larkin could see the red emergency lightbar atop its roof. Ronnie hopped off the concrete wall and headed toward it without pausing. “My ride’s here. Thanks anyway.”
As the patrol car slowed, Larkin said, “Some other time.”
Ronnie had thrown the passenger door open and was about to duck into the cab when Larkin called his name.
“What?” Ronnie asked, squinting under the streetlights.
“Smile,” Larkin said. “God loves you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Heather Fowler clutched the crumpled envelope in a tightening fist as she stood in the hallway of the Pickett County courthouse.
The draft minutes of the planning board meeting wouldn’t be official until they’d been approved by a majority of the board members. But as Heather stared down at the sheet of paper for a second time, the same feelings of frustration and helplessness she’d felt at the meeting consumed her.
Below the listing of those present and the time the meeting was called to order was a single, simple paragraph:
The board unanimously approved the McFall Meadows development, to include all requests and variances, in addition to an amendment to allow for a wastewater treatment plant on site pending state and federal permits.
“I didn’t approve this,” she whispered.
“Did you say something?” asked a young man who was leaning against the wall outside a courtroom. He was probably waiting for a misdemeanor hearing. “Got a problem?”
“Not as many as you,” she said, hurrying over to the county manager’s office. She intended to confront the secretary and force her to change the minutes to reflect her opposition to the project. But as she reached the stairs, her eyes landed upon the deed office at the end of the hall. Her vote wouldn’t stop the project, but maybe she’d find another way to attack the property if she learned more about it.
“How can we help you, Miss Fowler?” said Rita Cooper, the Register of Deeds, when she walked in the room. Although Cooper’s position was an elected one, most county employees deferred to the commissioners who set their budget. Heather was uncomfortable with being treated as small-town royalty, but in this case, she was grateful for the fast track.
“I’m interested in some parcels along Little Church Road,” Heather said. “Could you please direct me to the tax maps?”
Instead of foisting the duty onto one of her clerks, Cooper escorted Heather into a storage room in which oversized, leatherbound books were arranged in narrow slots along the walls. Several computers sat on a long table in the center of the room, with a stack of papers piled beside them.
“We’re in the middle of digitizing our records,” Cooper said. “We’re starting with the oldest and working forward. Those old deeds relied on details like oak trees and fence posts to mark boundaries, so the whole thing’s a mess. But a few yea
rs from now you’ll be able to look up deeds online.”
“I doubt I’ll still be in office then,” Heather said.
Cooper checked a database on one of the computers. “Little Church Road stretches for three miles. Do you want to narrow it down a little?”
“The McFall property.”
“Ah, that’s easy.” She pointed to a large book lying out on the table. “We’ve had a lot of activity there. If he doesn’t slow down, we’ll wear out the pages.”
Cooper showed Heather the handwritten original records that bestowed the property to William McFall in 1772, purchased from the original owner, who had received a land grant from the King of England. “It was originally a thousand acres,” Cooper said. “But the family sold off pieces of it over the years.”
Heather looked at the list of family names—Buchanan, Potter, Matheson, Gregg, Absher, and Day—that encroached around the property in the newest iteration of the deed map.
Buchanan and Absher. The names of those two men who recently died.
Heather studied the two-hundred-acre parcel where Larkin McFall planned to build his development. She’d seen the property map in the permit application, of course, but it hadn’t provided any context. Now she could see where the development would fall in terms of the surrounding properties, the nearby Jefferson National Forest, the main road, and the river. “What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a slip of paper clipped to the edge of the map.
“It means there’s a new land sale in the area, and we’ll have to record it,” Cooper said. “It’s expensive to print these books, so we update them by hand and log the information into the computer as we go. When we have enough changes, we can justify getting new books printed.”
Heather folded the slip back so that she could see the typewritten words: “G. Buchanan property transfer to L. McFall.” The note bore yesterday’s date.
“That’s a fresh one,” Cooper said. “Like I said, Mr. McFall’s been a busy little beaver out there. Looks like he got another good deal.”
“What did he buy?”
Cooper turned the page. “Graham Buchanan had eight acres behind the Days. See, he’s listed there as ‘Grantor.’ Looks like Mr. McFall bought the parcel for twenty thousand.”
“Isn’t that insanely cheap?”
Cooper shrugged. “We’ve seen half-acre lots go for six figures, and we’ve seen steep hillsides sell for five hundred an acre. Like they say about real estate, it’s location, location, location.”
“How many other parcels has McFall acquired recently?”
“Four,” Larkin McFall said, entering the storage room. “Counting the one I’m here to record. Good morning, Miss Fowler, Mrs. Cooper.”
“Mr. McFall,” Cooper said with an unrestrained delight. “You sure are becoming a regular.”
Heather looked up from the book, trying to make sense of the expanding empire expressed on the paper with the calm, cultured, ordinary man standing before her. The room suddenly seemed far too small, and his odor—subtle cologne failing to mask an animal masculinity—overpowered the scents of pulp and dust from the books.
“I’ve persuaded Stepford Matheson to sell me his twenty acres,” McFall said. “He drove a hard bargain—you know how stubborn these old mountain families can be—but we finally arrived at a deal we could both live with.”
Bill Willard had told Heather once that the Mathesons would never sell their land, even to the point of losing it to tax foreclosure. “You’re assembling quite a property,” Heather said. “Maybe you can lower the density of your development.”
“I’d say that’s up to you, Heather,” he said.
Rita Cooper flung up her hands. “This is between you guys,” she said “I just log records. I don’t do politics.” Walking between them, she hurried back to her office.
Now that it was just the two of them, the room somehow seemed even smaller, and Heather was suffocating, as if all the air around her had been sucked away. “I told you, we’re on the same side,” McFall said. “We can both get what we want.”
“And what do you think I want?” Though they were in the middle of a public building, Heather felt strangely vulnerable and exposed.
“Your trail,” McFall said. “You want to preserve the ridge at McFall Meadows.”
“Not considering the way your development is planned out.”
“I can drop the density to half as many houses if you’d like.”
“If I’d like?”
“And I can establish a conservation easement on the trail and put a county park up there at the top, in that little glen with the great view that you love so much.”
“A county park?” Heather’s mind reeled with the possibility. This was all so out of the blue that she couldn’t reconcile the offer with the plan that had been approved by the board.
McFall flashed a boyish grin. “Fowler Park. What do you think of that? A lasting testament to your goal of preserving the environment. Anyone who looks up at the mountain from Titusville is going to see nothing but trees, and they’re going to remember who to thank.”
Fowler Park. That would really piss off the Good Old Boys.
“Why is my support so important to you?”
McFall glanced behind him at the open door, and then eased closer to her, dropping his voice. “Isn’t it obvious, Heather?”
She looked into his eyes, not trusting herself to speak. They were a dusky maroon, commanding, the center of the pupils glinting with—what? Mirth? Lust? The reflection of the table lamps?
A reflection of herself?
She moved past him, heading for the door, but he reached out and grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her close. Unaccustomed to her high heels, she was caught off balance, and she fell against him—sure, you lost your balance, right—and her breasts pressed against him as he wrapped a firm arm around her waist.
His face was inches from hers, those eyes piercing and forceful, his muscular body hard beneath the fine wool of his suit. “Fowler Park,” he whispered. “You can live forever.”
For just a moment, her lips parted, open in anticipation of accepting his, but the strangely corrupt smell of his breath was off-putting enough to bring her to her senses. That was when she noticed something else roiling in his eyes—a reddish glint like the front door opening to hell. She managed to push herself free.
“I don’t want to live forever,” she said. “I’d rather be alive now.”
She fled the room, wondering what she would have seen if that doorway in his eyes had opened completely. She was afraid she would have seen herself naked and sweating, limbs entwined with Larkin McFall’s as flames licked all around them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“No jokes about us being on a date,” Bobby said, wheeling the big Silverado to the back entrance of the Pickett High gymnasium.
“You’re not my type,” Ronnie said. “I’m not into blondes.” Bobby had agreed to give him a ride to the dance in exchange for his help setting up the band’s equipment. Ronnie had never pictured himself as a rock-n-roll roadie, but at least it gave him a decent excuse not to have a date. The dance started in two hours, which gave The Diggers plenty of time to set up and run through a sound check.
As Bobby dropped the tailgate, Ronnie said, “Don’t you think it’s weird?”
“I think lots of things are weird, including the fact that I just walked away from a crash that should have killed me. But what do you mean specifically?”
“You joked about asking Larkin McFall for a company truck. And now you have one.”
“Hey, I guess I’m on a roll.”
“A roll of Russian roulette, maybe. You dodged a bullet, but there’s always another in the chamber.”
“You think too much, that’s your problem. Now shut up and grab this kick drum.”
Ronnie carried the drum through the open back doors of the gym. The room was festooned with the school colors of blue and gold—crepe paper drooping from the metal rafters, bundles of ballo
ons bobbing from the bleachers. The junior marshals were busy setting up snack tables, with Principal Gladstone and Sgt. Morley, the jovial and unintimidating school resource officer, keeping close watch to ensure no one spiked the punch. A raised platform underneath one backboard served as a stage, and Dex was busy setting up the sound system.
When Bobby walked into the gym with an armful of cymbal stands, the excited murmurs stopped and a hushed awe descended. One of the members of the previous night’s search party had taken a blurry photo of the wreckage, which had made its inevitable way around the school. In a single day, Bobby had ascended to a legendary status that topped even his athletic and musical exploits. Three girls rushed over to greet him and ask about the accident, and Bobby was grinning like a fool.
Looks like Pickett High has a new Deathboy. Enjoy the bloody crown, my friend.
“Hey, Ronnie, come give me a hand,” Dex said after he’d made several trips hauling equipment in from the Silverado while Bobby basked in the girls’ attention.
Ronnie hopped onto the stage and followed Dex’s instructions, running cables and plugging them into the mixing board. Louise Weyerhouse was up there too, trying to mate a microphone to a cable, clearly out of her element. She might have been good at math and social studies, but she couldn’t tell a whammy bar from a trombone.
“You ever run sound?” Dex asked Ronnie.
“I can turn on a radio.” He was too ashamed to admit he couldn’t afford an iPod, much less a decent stereo.
“Easy breezy,” Dex said. “You can be an honorary Digger. I’ll turn you into an expert inside of fifteen minutes.” He lowered his voice. “If you don’t do it, Louise is going to volunteer.”
Bobby had joined them, and was busy setting up his high hat and cymbals. Floyd Frady turned on his amp and thumped out a few booming bass notes, making the principal cringe. Ronnie looked over at the senior class officers, who were gathered by the door. They were in charge of decorations, programs, and maintaining the appearance of decorum and civility until the mob mentality took over.
Amy Extine was wearing a loose-knit sweater, a black crop top visible through the mesh. Plenty of leg showed between her short skirt and the tops of her vinyl go-go boots. She waved and Ronnie looked behind him, thinking she’d waved at Bobby, but his friend was kneeling to assemble a drum pedal.
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