Desert Places

by Blake Crouch

  Agent Trent took a deep breath, his exhaustion already evident on the screen that transported his image into my living room. He looked into the cameras and spoke words that would be repeatedly broadcast as sound bites in the coming days.

  “There’s a long road ahead of us,” he said. “It’ll take some time to verify if these are actually the hearts of missing persons or known murder victims. I pray it’s not the case, but this appears to be the work of a serial murderer. And if it is, he’ll continue to kill until he’s caught.” The sturdy black agent walked away from the microphones as reporters shouted questions that he ignored.

  The nation was captivated, and the media fueled its obsession. Rampant speculation ignited as the country fell in love with its own fear. Even before the FBI confirmed that the hearts represented actual murders, the media had conceived and birthed a monster.

  To the dismay of doctors, they would call him “the Heart Surgeon,” the professional title marred from that day forward. No one could say the words without provoking images of FBI agents and the Washington, D.C., bomb squad loading cardboard boxes, the work of a madman, into an armored truck.

  How strange it felt to be the only one who knew.

  19

  MIST whipped my face as my boat crawled toward the middle of the lake. I could hear nothing over the gurgling clatter of the outboard motor mounted to the stern of my leaky rowboat. The evening sky threatened rain as I glided across the leaden chop, scanning the empty lake for Walter’s boat.

  A half mile out from my pier, I cut the motor. The cold, darkening silence closed in on me, and I wondered if I’d make it home before the rain set in. Though I despised coming out on the lake, I couldn’t speak to Walter in my house anymore without fear that Orson was eavesdropping.

  I heard the groan of Walter’s boat before I saw it. My nerves took over, and I regretted not having knocked back several stiff drinks to facilitate what I had to tell him. Walter pulled his equally powerless rowboat beside mine, tossed over a rope, and I tied us together.

  “What’s up?” he asked when he’d killed the motor.

  “You see the news?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from his brown raincoat and slid a cigarette into his mouth. From a pocket on my blue raincoat, I tossed him a butane cigar lighter. “Thanks,” he said, blowing a puff of smoke out of the corner of his mouth and throwing the lighter back to me. “The media’s tickled pink,” he said. “You can see it in their ambitious little faces. I’ll bet they blew their load when they got the tip.”

  “Think they were tipped, huh?”

  “Oh, whoever planted those boxes knew exactly what they were doing. Probably called a dozen newspapers and TV stations after the drop. I’ll bet he told them there was a bomb behind the White House. Then that jogger called nine-one-one, confirming the story, and boom …media frenzy.” Walter took a long drag from his cigarette and spoke as the smoke curled from his mouth. “Yeah, the only person happier about those hearts than the press is the sick fuck who left them there. He’s probably sitting in front of a TV right now, jacking off, watching the nation drool over his—”

  “It’s Orson,” I said. Walter took in a mouthful of smoke, attempting to look unfazed.

  “How do you know?” he asked, coughing a little as he exhaled.

  “He keeps the hearts. In his cabin in Wyoming, there was a freezer full of them. They’re his trophies, his little keepsakes.”

  “Andy…”

  “Just listen for a minute, Walter.”

  A gust banged our boats together, and a raindrop hit my face.

  How do you tell a man you’ve endangered his wife and children?

  “The thing in Washington,” I said, “is small potatoes. My mother’s dead. Orson strangled her last night. He videotaped it.…It’s…” I stopped to steady myself. “I’m sorry. But I think I’ve put you in danger.” His head tilted questioningly. “I don’t know how, but Orson knows or suspects that I told you about the desert.”

  “Oh Christ.” Walter flicked his cigarette into the water, and it hissed as he put his face into his hands.

  “I should never have told you anything about—”

  “You’re goddamn right you shouldn’t have.”

  “Look—”

  “What did he say?”

  “Walter—”

  “What the fuck did he say?” His voice rang out across the lake. A fish splashed in the water nearby.

  “The exact words aren’t—”

  “Fuck you.” He wiped the tears from his face. “What did he say?” I shook my head. “Did he mention my family?” Tears, the first of the day, streamed from my eyes as I nodded. “He mentioned my family?” Walter hyperventilated.

  “I am so—”

  “How could you let this happen, Andy?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “What did your brother say? I want to know each word, each syllable, verbatim, and I dare you to say exact words aren’t important. Tell me!”

  “He said because I can’t keep my mouth shut…” I closed my eyes. I want to die.

  “Finish it!”

  “He was considering having a friend of his come visit you. And your ‘beautiful family.’”

  Walter looked back toward his pier and his house, concealed behind the orange leaves. It was drizzling now, so I pulled up the hood of my rain jacket. An inch of water had collected in my boat.

  “Who’s his friend?” he asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Is this—” He started to hyperventilate again.

  “Walter, I’m gonna take care of this.”

  “How?”

  “I’m gonna kill Orson.”

  “So you do know where he is?”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Tip the FBI.”

  “No. Orson can still send me to prison. I’m not going to prison.”

  Our boats rocked on the rough water. I felt queasy.

  “If I find Orson,” I said, “will you come with me?”

  “To help you kill him?”

  “Yes.”

  He guffawed sardonically. “Is this real? I mean, are you off your rocker?”

  “Feels that way.”

  The drizzle had become rain. I shivered.

  “I have to get home,” he said. “I’ve gotta take John David and Jenna trick-or-treating.”

  “Will you come with me?” I asked again.

  “Take a wild guess.”

  “I understand.”

  “No. No, you don’t. You don’t understand anything.” He started to cry again, but he managed to hold himself together for another moment. “Let’s get something straight, all right? Don’t call me. Don’t come to my house. Don’t e-mail me. Don’t think about me. Don’t do one goddamn thing that would make this monster think we’re friends. We clear?”

  “Yes, Walter. I want you to—”

  “Don’t you say another word to me. Give me the rope.”

  I untied our rowboats and cast the end of the rope to him. He cranked the outboard motor and chugged away, making a wide circle back toward his pier.

  It was nearly dark, and the rain fell steadily and hard into the lake. I started the motor and pressed on toward my pier. Were the safety of Walter and his family not in question, I would have been heading home to kill myself.

  20

  THE walls of my office consist almost entirely of windows, and because the room juts out from the rest of my house into the trees, I feel as though I spend my hours writing in a piedmont forest. My desk is pushed against the largest wall of glass, facing the forest, so that nothing but an occasional doe or gray fox distracts me from my work. I can’t even see the lake from my desk, and this is by design, because the water mesmerizes me and would only steal my time.

  Books abound, stacked on disorganized shelves and lying in piles on the floor. In one corner, there’s an intimidating stack of manuscripts from fans and blurb-seekers. A mammoth
dictionary lounges across a lectern, perennially open. There’s even a display case, which holds first editions and translations of my novels, standing on one side of the door; a small gold frame enclosing a mounted photocopy of my first, meager royalty check hangs on the other.

  Staring into the black forest as streams of rain meandered down the glass, I sat at my desk, waiting for the Web page to load. This would be the fifth college Web site I’d checked. I was focusing my search on the history departments of schools in New Hampshire and Vermont, but as the doors closed one after another, I’d begun to wonder if that cowboy’s memory wasn’t askew. Franklin Pierce, Keene State, the University of New Hampshire, and Plymouth had given me nothing. Maybe Dave Parker was Orson bullshit.

  When the home page for Woodside College had loaded, I clicked on “Departments,” then “History,” and finally “Faculty of the History Department (alphabetical listing).”

  Waiting on the server, I glanced at the clock on my desk: 7:55 p.m. She’s been dead twenty-four hours. Did you just leave her in that filthy basement? With his gig in Washington, I couldn’t imagine that Orson had gone to the trouble to take our mother with him. Depositing her body outside of the house would have been time-consuming and risky. Besides, my mother was a loner, and she’d sometimes go days without contacting a soul. My God, she could lie in that basement a week before someone finds her.

  The police would have to notify me. I hadn’t even given consideration to reporting her murder, because for all I knew, Orson had framed me again. Matricide. It seems unnatural even among the animals. I couldn’t begin to wonder why. I was operating on numbness again.

  At the top of the Web page listing faculty was a short paragraph that bragged about the sheer brilliance and abundant qualifications of the fourteen professors who constituted the history department. I scanned that, then scrolled down the list.

  Son of a bitch.

  “Dr. David L. Parker,” the entry read.

  Though his name was hyperlinked, his page wouldn’t load when I clicked on it. Is that you? Did I just find you because of one short exchange with a stoned Wyoming cowboy?

  The doorbell startled me. I was not expecting company. Picking up my pistol from the desk (I carried it with me everywhere now), I walked through the long hallway that separated my office from the kitchen and the rest of the house. Passing through the living room, I turned right into the foyer, chambered the first round, and stopped at an opaque oval window beside the door.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  “Trick-or-treat!” Children’s voices. Lowering the gun, I shoved it into the waistband at the back of my damp jeans. Because my house stood alone on ten acres of forest, at the end of a long driveway, trick-or-treaters rarely ventured to my door. I hadn’t even bought candy for them this year.

  I opened the door. A little masked boy dressed up as Zorro pointed a gun at me. His sister was an angel—a small white bathrobe, cardboard wings, and a halo of silver tinsel. A calamitous-faced man in a brown raincoat stood behind them, holding an umbrella—Walter. Why are you—

  “Give me candy or I’ll shootcha,” John David said. The four-year-old’s blond hair poked out from under the black bandanna. His mask was crooked, so that he could see through only one of the eyeholes, but he maintained the disguise. “I’ll shootcha,” he warned again, and before I could speak, he pulled the trigger. As the plastic hammer clicked again and again, I cringed with the impact of each bullet. Stumbling back into the foyer, I dropped to my knees.

  “Why, John David, why?” I gasped, holding my belly as I crumpled down onto the floor, careful that my Glock didn’t fall out. John David giggled.

  “Look, Dad, I got him. I’m a go see if he’s dead.”

  “No, J.D.,” Walter said as I resurrected. “Don’t go in the house.”

  I walked back to the door, caught Walter’s eyes, and looked down at the seven-year-old angel.

  “You look beautiful, Jenna,” I said. “Did you make your costume?”

  “At school today I did,” she said. “You like my wand?” She held up a long pixie stick with a glittery cardboard star glued to the end.

  “Take a walk with us,” Walter said. “I left the car by the mailbox.”

  “Let me see if I can find some candy for—”

  He rustled the trash bag in his right hand. “They’ve got plenty of candy. Come on.” I put on a pair of boots, grabbed a jacket and an umbrella from the coat closet, and locked the door behind me as I stepped outside.

  The four of us walked down the sidewalk, and when we reached the driveway, Walter handed his umbrella to Jenna. “Sweetie, I want you and J.D. to walk a little ahead of us, okay?”

  “Why, Daddy?”

  “I have to talk to Uncle Andy.”

  She took the umbrella. “You have to come with me, J.D.,” she said, bossing her brother.

  “Nooooo!”

  “Go with her, son. We’ll be right behind you.” Jenna rushed on ahead, and John David ran after her and ducked under the umbrella. They laughed, their small buoyant voices filling the woods. His toy gun fired three times.

  Walter stepped under my umbrella, and we started up the drive, the tall loblollies on either side of us. I waited for him to speak as the rain drummed on the canopy. The night smelled of wet pine.

  “Beth’s packing,” he whispered. “She’s taking the kids away.”

  “Where?”

  “I told her not to tell me.”

  “She knows about—”

  “No. She knows the children are in danger. That’s all she needs to know.”

  “Stoppit!” John David yelled at his sister.

  “Kids!” Walter shouted gruffly. “Behave.”

  “Dad, Jenna—”

  “I don’t wanna hear it, son.”

  I wondered where Walter’s anger toward me had gone.

  “Do you really know where he is, Andy?” he whispered.

  “I’ve got a possible alias in New England. Now, I can’t be sure until I get there, but I think it’s him.”

  “So you’re definitely going?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stopped and faced me. “You’re going there to kill him? To put him in a hole somewhere, where no one’s ever gonna find him?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “And you have no compunctions about killing your own brother?”

  “None.”

  We started walking again. I had an awful premonition.

  “You’ve called the police, haven’t you?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You told them about Orson.”

  “No, Andy.”

  “But you’re going to.”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Come here, Jenna!” Walter hollered. His children turned around and ran back to us, their umbrella so low, I couldn’t see them. Walter took his umbrella from Jenna and lifted it up.

  “Jenna, show Uncle Andy the tattoo you got at school.”

  “Oh yeah!” she said, remembering. “Look, Andy, isn’t it cool?”

  Jenna raised the sleeve of her robe and held up the delicate underside of her right forearm. My knees weakened. In pink Magic Marker, scribbled from her elbow to her tiny wrist: w—shhhh. o

  I looked up at Walter. His eyes flooded.

  “All right, kids.” He smiled through it. “Here. Go on ahead now. Let us talk.” Jenna took the umbrella and she and John David ran ahead as we continued on, the mailbox not far ahead.

  “She had it when she came home from school,” Walter said. “Beth noticed it when they were putting on her costume. Fuckin’ teacher didn’t know anything about it. Jenna said a nice man was drawing tattoos on all the kids at their Halloween carnival. She hadn’t seen him before.”

  “Jesus, Walter. I am—”

  “I don’t want your apologies or your pity,” he whispered. “I’m going with you. That’s what I came to tell you. We�
��re gonna bury Orson together.”

  The kids had reached the white Cadillac. We stopped ten feet from the end of the driveway and Walter turned to me. “So when are you leaving?” he asked.

  “A day or two. I’ve gotta go before my mother’s discovered.”

  His eyes softened. “Andy, I want you to know that I am s—”

  “And I don’t need your pity,” I said. “It won’t help either of us do what we have to do.”

  He nodded and looked over his shoulder at Jenna and John David. The umbrella cast aside, they were throwing gravel from the driveway at my mailbox, and coming nowhere close to hitting it.

  21

  THE eve of my departure for Vermont was our thirty-fifth birthday, and Orson mailed me a handmade card. On the front, he’d designed a collage out of photographs, all taken in the sickly orange light of his shed. There was a head shot of Shirley Tanner’s boot-bruised face; a full body shot of Jeff in a hole in the desert; Wilbur on red plastic from the waist up—inside out.

  Below the colorful collage, scrawled in Orson’s unmistakable hand: What do you get for the guy who has it all? On the inside he’d written, Not a goddamn thing. A big happy birthday from Shirley and the gang.

  Woodside is a foothill community in midwestern Vermont, isolated from the major cities of the North by the Green Mountains in the east and New York’s Adirondacks in the west. On an autumn day, it’s quintessential American countryside, breathtaking in its open vistas of rolling hills, endless mountain chains, and a quaint college town tucked into a vale.

  According to the gas station attendant, we were three weeks late. Then the forests had been burning with the brightest color in thirty years. Now, the leaves brown and dead, few remained on the trees, and the blue sky gleamed awkwardly against the winter bleakness of the countryside. Vermont in November smacked of the same stiff beauty as dolling up a corpse for its wake.

  Beyond the outskirts of Woodside, on the fringe of the Green Mountains, Walter and I approached the inn. Heading up a long, curving driveway, I saw a large white house perched halfway up the mountain. There was movement on its wraparound porch—empty rocking chairs swaying in a raw breeze.