She got back into the Jeep and slammed the door. ‘North,’ she said. ‘We have to follow the main highway.’
Sam looked at her solemnly. ‘I did, as a matter of fact.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I did look at you one time and think that I wouldn’t mind taking you to bed, for carnal relations.’
‘Oh.’
‘As a matter of fact I thought it two or three times. But especially that one time. It was the first week of July, and there was a wind blowing, and you were standing in your yard in a yellow cotton dress with blue flowers on it, and you hadn’t fixed your hair up, so that it was all flying up in the air.’
‘You should have said something.’
‘No, Sissy. Some things are better left as daydreams. I’ve seen myself in the mirror, doing my press-ups, and believe me, that’s not a sight to stir any woman’s libido.’
Sissy reached across and squeezed Sam’s hand. ‘Let’s go north. I get the feeling that whatever it is, we’re coming pretty close to it.’
Blood on the Snow
Feely followed Robert around to the side of the house.
Robert said, ‘You fell on your feet here, kid, that’s for sure.’
‘I didn’t think you were coming back.’
‘You should of trusted me. I never let anybody down, ever. I never let my children down, I never let my friends down. I know I let my wife down, but that was just a misfortune of marriage.’
‘A vagary,’ said Feely.
‘Yeah,’ said Robert. ‘That too.’
He bent down and pulled up the garage door. Inside, one of the spaces was taken up by a beige Toyota Corolla, while the other space was stacked with sawn-off logs. At the back of the garage was a long workbench, and rows of shiny tools, screwdrivers and wrenches and tenon saws, all pedantically hung up according to size.
‘Neat freak,’ said Robert. But Feely had never seen inside a suburban garage before, except on TV, and he stood and looked at it in wonder.
Robert found a long-handled ax, cleaned and oiled and fastened to the wall. ‘OK, Feely, you going to give me a hand here? You can carry the logs outside, and I’ll split ’em.’
Feely was touching the tools on the workbench. He couldn’t imagine what most of them were for, but he was fascinated by the way they shone, and the way they smelled. Robert came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
‘Know what this is? A vise. Every man has his own secret vise.’ Feely blinked at him, but he said, ‘Joke. Get it?’
They went outside, into the snow. There was a chopping block by the side of the garage, under the trees. Feely carried out logs while Robert swung the ax around. ‘You know what? This feels so good. You don’t realize how much you’re going to miss all of those simple chores, until your home gets taken away from you. Splitting logs, burning the leaves, clearing out the gutters. And your kids, playing in the yard while you’re doing it. And your wife, you can see her through that brightly lit window, baking a cake.’
‘You really miss it, don’t you?’ said Feely.
Robert shrugged, and then he said, ‘No. Who gives a shit?’
He propped a log on the chopping block, stood back, and swung at it. The log split neatly in half, and the whack of the ax echoed and re-echoed around the street. Feely picked up one of the fallen halves and balanced it back on top of the chopping block, so that Robert could split it again.
‘Hold it up straight,’ said Robert.
‘Hold it? You might cut my hands off.’
‘Didn’t I tell you to trust me?’
Feely nervously held the log up, but just as Robert brought the ax down, he whipped his hands away, and the log toppled sideways.
‘You think I’m going to hurt you?’ said Robert, in exasperation.
Feely kept his hands tucked firmly into his armpits. ‘Not with any premeditation. But you might do it inadvertently. And you’ve been drinking.’
‘For Christ’s sake. I’m an expert. I’ve been splitting firewood since I was big enough to pick up an ax.’
Robert picked up the piece of firewood and held it steady with his left hand. He closed one eye, to get his aim, and then he swung the ax down with his right. He split the firewood, but he also chopped off the top of his left index finger, just below the first joint, and the tip of his middle finger, just below the nail. Blood spattered sharply across the snow, and onto Feely’s new pants.
‘Shit!’ screamed Robert. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’
He held up his hand and blood was spurting out in two pulsing jets. ‘I cut my fingers off! I cut my freaking fingers off!’
Feely took one look at him, open-mouthed. Robert was shouting and waving his hand around and it was so much like a cartoon that Feely started to laugh. He could almost believe that Robert had chopped his fingers off on purpose, to entertain him.
‘What the blue hell are you laughing at?’ Robert screamed at him. ‘You think this is funny?’
He clamped his right hand over his left hand, trying to stop the bleeding, but blood streamed into his sleeve and dropped across the driveway.
‘Give me that!’ Robert reached out and dragged off Feely’s white woolen scarf. He wrapped it tightly around his fingers and then he held his arm up high, as if he were giving a salute.
‘Hey, Robert, that’s my new scarf,’ Feely protested, as he saw the blood soaking through it. ‘Serenity just gave me that.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, you’d rather see me bleeding to death in front of your eyes?’
‘It was so funny,’ said Feely. ‘You went wop! And then you went huh? And then you went argghh!’
‘You distracted me, you clown. If you hadn’t distracted me—Look for my fingers!’
‘What?’
‘Look for my fingers, you moron! I can stick them back on!’
‘Oh,’ said Feely. He looked all around the chopping block, but he couldn’t see any sign of them, only blood and bits of firewood. Robert pushed him aside and started searching for himself, his left arm still lifted, his right hand ferreting into the snow.
‘There—there’s one of them,’ he said, at last, holding up the tip of his middle finger. ‘Fill your hand with snow. That’s right, fill your hand with snow. That’ll keep it from decomposing.’
Feely held out a handful of snow. Robert carefully laid his bloody fingertip in the middle of it, and said, ‘Don’t lose it, OK? Whatever you do, don’t lose it.’
Feely looked down at the fingertip in disgust. The nail had been bitten and for some reason that made it all the more revolting. Almost immediately, Robert found the other fingertip and laid that in Feely’s hand, too. ‘How are you going to fix these back on?’ asked Feely.
‘I’m going to stick them with BandAids, what else?’
‘Do you think they’ll take?’
‘There’s a good chance, isn’t there? The cuts are still fresh, they’ll heal up just like normal cuts.’
Feely shrugged. In his opinion, Robert ought to go to the emergency room, and have his fingertips sewn back on by doctors.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Robert.
Feely said, ‘I think you ought to go to the emergency room, and have your fingertips sewn back on by doctors.’
‘Well, yes, smartypants, you’re absolutely right. But the fact is, I can’t.’
‘I could call 911.’
Robert said, ‘Feely, I am supposed to be a ghost. I am supposed to be traveling around unseen and unnoticed.’
Feely looked at him standing in the driveway with his left arm raised and a bloody scarf wrapped around his fist. He would only go unnoticed if nobody happened to be looking. Fortunately, Orchard Street appeared to be deserted, except for a red Jeep parked twenty yards down the street, with exhaust fluffing from its tailpipe.
‘We’d better go inside,’ said Feely.
At that moment, the front door opened and Serenity appeared. ‘How are my two lumberjacks getting on? We’ve almost finished our last bask
et of logs!’
‘Not too good,’ said Feely. ‘Robert’s had a misadventure.’
‘He distracted me!’ Robert retorted. ‘You can’t take this retard anywhere.’
Feely went over to the front door and held out his handful of pink-stained snow. ‘See? He chopped his fingers off.’
‘Ew,’ said Serenity. ‘Ew ew ew squared.’
Robert, in pain and frustration, kicked over the chopping block.
The Watchers
‘That’s them,’ said Sissy, lighting up her third cigarette.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Absolutely positive. Don’t you remember the cards? Two men cutting wood. Then La Faucille Terrible. The man poking his eye out, and the other man laughing. What you just saw, that was exactly what the cards predicted, coming to life.’
‘Not exactly. That guy didn’t poke his eye out with a pruning-hook, did he? He walloped his hand with a damn great ax.’
‘Sam, those cards were first published in 1763, but they clearly foresaw that a man would hurt himself while he was working and another man would laugh at him, over two hundred forty years later. I don’t think we need to be too picky about exactly how he did it, do you?’
Sam lit a cigarette, too. ‘Do the cards foresee that we’re ever going to give up smoking?’
‘Well, I’m going to, I don’t know about you.’
‘I’m not so concerned about me. It’s you I’m worried about.’
‘I’ll give up when I’m good and ready. Who are you, my dad?’
‘Sorry,’ said Sam. ‘It’s just that—’
‘I know, Sam. You care about me. You wouldn’t have driven me all the way up here, if you didn’t care about me. But this is really, really important. It’s hard to explain it to anybody who doesn’t feel it for themselves, but what’s happening here . . . it’s people’s lives, Sam. People are going to die, if we don’t do this. I mean it.’
‘So what are we going to do now?’ Sam asked her.
‘There’s not much we can do, not today. But at least we know who we’re dealing with, and that’s going to make it much easier to predict what’s going to happen next.’
‘Do you think that those people had something to do with that woman getting herself shot?’
‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Shouldn’t you tell the police?’
‘I may do, if the cards tell me that they’re going to do it again. Just at the moment, though, I don’t have any proof, do I? Only a quivering feeling, and a quivering feeling won’t stand up in a court of law, will it?’
‘Do you know something?’ said Sam. ‘You’re a very rare woman, Sissy Sawyer. I think I’m going to take you into New Milford this evening, and treat you to dinner.’
As they sat there, Feely reappeared from the house, went across to the garage, and brought down the up-and-over doors. Then he kicked snow across the driveway, so that it concealed the blood spatters from Robert’s severed fingers. Finally he picked up three of the logs that Robert had intended to split, and carried them inside.
‘Les Trois Araignées,’ said Sissy. ‘One black, and two white, but all of them spinning the same web.’
‘I think you should talk to the police,’ said Sam.
‘And say what? “Excuse me, officer, my two-hundred-year-old deck of cards tells me that three people are going to be causing all kinds of mayhem in the Canaan area.” Come on, Sam. They wouldn’t stop laughing for a week.’
‘Don’t be so sure. From what I read, the cops are much more ready these days to listen to oddballs.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean to be rude. What I meant was, they don’t dismiss things out of hand these days, just because they’re unconventional. They use psychological profilers, don’t they, and psychics, and even mediums. Remember that young boy who went missing in Wyantenock Park, last summer? They used an Algonquin shaman to find him.’
‘OK, but I need to read the cards at least one more time. I don’t want to send the police off on some fool’s errand, do I? And I don’t want to look like a fool myself.’ She looked at her watch. It was almost a quarter of four now, and it was beginning to grow dark. ‘So where are you taking me to dinner?’ she said, with sudden enthusiasm. ‘How about Adrienne’s? I haven’t had any of their home-raised pheasant pot pie since Gerry went on his way.’
Ghost Van
‘We’ve identified the van,’ said Doreen.
Steve was frowning at his PC screen. He was reading up on random snipers, including Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, who had terrorized Washington, D.C., and the unknown rifleman who was picking off innocent passers-by in Ohio.
Doreen handed him a computer printout. ‘It’s a 1998 Ford Econoline, first registered to Waterbury Tree Surgeons . . . hence the letter ‘W’ that our witness says he saw. Motto: ‘A healthy tree is a happy tree.’
‘Waterbury Tree Surgeons went out of business in February, 2002, and the van was sold to Peter Koslowski, of Meriden, who ran a two-man removal outfit. It was involved in a traffic accident on November 11, 2003, and Koslowski sold it to Middletown Auto Spares, for scrap. Middletown Auto Spares have records showing that it was stripped and broken down for usable parts, but presumably somebody stole it before that could happen.’
‘OK,’ said Steve. ‘I need to know the name of every single individual who was working at the auto wrecking company when the van was first brought in there, and their employment record.’
‘Done,’ said Doreen. ‘Trooper MacCormack and his people are checking through them now.’
Steve pointed to his PC screen. ‘See this? I’ve been reading through the case histories of random sniper incidents. All the way back to the freeway shootings in Los Angeles in 1976.’
Doreen leaned over his desk and peered at it with interest. ‘Learn anything useful?’
‘Oh, sure. I learned that every case is completely different in every material respect, except for one thing: the mentality of the perpetrators. Random snipers are without doubt the saddest, most clueless individuals on the planet. Look here—this is Malvo, one of the Beltway Snipers. He said that he wanted ten million dollars to stop shooting people. The idiot really believed that he was going to get it.’
‘So what do you think our sniper is after?’
‘Money, revenge on society, notoriety. Maybe nothing at all. The only thing these case histories tell me is that he isn’t likely to be very bright, and one day soon he’ll give himself away—either because he’s careless, or incompetent, or he’s so intent on shooting somebody that he allows himself to be spotted—or else because he wants us to find him, so that he can have his moment of glory.’
‘He won’t get too far in a van with a laughing tree painted on it.’
Steve shut his PC off. ‘You know what I think? I think people have lost their self-respect. They don’t feel like they’re worth anything any more, and maybe they’re not. They’re uneducated, inarticulate, and they don’t have any ambitions any more. The only way they know how to make an impression is by hurting other people, or killing them.’
‘You’re having more trouble with Alan?’
Steve looked at her sharply. ‘You know me better than anybody, don’t you?’
‘I went through it myself, Steve, with my Damien. The drinking, the drugs, the language. He’ll grow out of it.’
‘I don’t know. I’m just glad that I’m not his age, not these days. It seems like nothing’s sacred, any more.’
Trooper MacCormack rapped loose-knuckled on the door. ‘Detective Wintergreen? I think I may have something here. There was a mechanic called William Hain working at Middletown Auto Spares from September 4, 2002, until January 16, 2003. According to his personnel file, he was repeatedly warned for lateness and careless workmanship, and for generally having an attitude.
‘Mr Koslowski’s damaged van was collected from his premises in Meriden on January 13, 2003, and towed to Middletown. On Ja
nuary 15, William Hain entered into the company’s record books that it had been dismantled. The next morning he called in sick and that was the last that Middletown Auto Spares ever saw of him.’
‘The dates fit,’ said Doreen.
‘Yes,’ said Steve. ‘And William Hain sounds like the kind of guy who considers that the world owes him a favor. Do we have any other information on him?’
‘Only his personnel file. He gave his address as 7769 Lamentation Mountain Road, Middletown. His date of birth was May 12, 1974, and his social security number was 046-09-6521. When he first applied for a job at Middletown Auto Spares, he gave references from Green Peak Engineering and Kyle’s Auto Repair, both in Hamden.’
‘Right, then,’ said Steve. ‘Send somebody to Middletown Auto Spares, and let’s check those references, too. There may be somebody at one of those auto shops who knows William Hain, or remembers him. More than anything else, I want a description.’
He stood up and lifted his coat off the back of his chair. ‘Doreen—you and me can go to Lamentation Mountain.’
He was halfway down the stairs when his cellphone rang. ‘Wintergreen.’
‘Steve, hi, it’s Roger Prenderval, in Torrington.’
‘How’s it going, Roger? What can I do for you? I’m kind of tied up right now, with the Mitchelson case.’
‘I thought you ought to know that we picked up your boy.’
‘Alan? What do you mean, you picked him up?’
‘I’m sorry to tell you that we had to arrest him. Thought you’d rather know, before Helen.’
Steve stopped. Doreen stopped, too, but he waved his hand at her and said, ‘I’ll meet you in the parking lot.’
‘Trouble?’ asked Doreen.
‘Just give me a minute, OK?’
Trooper Prenderval said, gravely, ‘He’s been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.’
‘Sexual assault? My Alan? Are you serious?’
‘I’m sorry, Steve. We had a call from a house in the Burntwood district. It seems like the owners returned home unexpectedly and caught Alan trying to climb out the kitchen window. Their daughter was upstairs naked in a state of shock and she claims that Alan was trying to force her to have sexual intercourse against her will.’
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