The White Road

by John Connolly

  As for those who had been killed by the old sinkhole, I lied and said that they had died at the hands of Tereus and the woman, taken by surprise before they even had a chance to react. Tereus’s body had floated to the surface, but there was no sign as yet of the woman or Earl Jr. As I sat in the interrogation room, I saw them falling once again, disappearing into the dark pool, sinking, the woman dragging the man down with her into the streams that lay beneath the stone, holding him until he drowned, the two united unto death and beyond.

  At the Charleston airport terminal, a limousine waited, the tinted windows up so that no one could see the occupants. As I walked to the doorway, my baggage in my hand, one window rolled slowly down and Earl Larousse looked at me, waiting for me to approach.

  “My son,” he said.

  “Dead, like I told the police.”

  His lips trembled, and he blinked away tears. I felt nothing for him.

  “You knew,” I said. “You must have known all along what your son did. When he came home that night, covered in her blood, didn’t he tell you everything that he had done? Didn’t he beg for your help? And you gave it to him, to save him and to save your family name, and you held on to that piece of worthless land in the hope that what had happened there would remain hidden. But then Bowen came along and got his hooks into you, and suddenly you weren’t in control anymore. His people were in your house, and my guess is he was bleeding you for money. How much did you give him, Mr. Larousse? Enough to bail Faulkner, and then some?”

  He didn’t look at me. Instead, he retreated into the past, descending into the grief and madness that would finally consume him.

  “We were like royalty in this city,” he whispered. “We’ve been here since its birth. We are part of its history, and our name has lived for centuries.”

  “Your name is going to die with you now, and they can bury your history with you.”

  I walked away. When I reached the doors the car was no longer reflected in the glass.

  And in a shack on the outskirts of Caina, Georgia, Virgil Gossard awoke to a feeling of pressure on his lips. He opened his eyes as the gun forced itself into his mouth.

  The figure before him was dressed entirely in black, its face concealed beneath a ski mask.

  “Up,” it said, and Virgil recognized the voice from the night at Little Tom’s. His hair was gripped and he was dragged from his bed, the gun trailing spittle and blood as it was pulled from his mouth. Virgil, wearing only his tattered briefs, was pushed toward the kitchen of his pitiful home, and the back door leading to the fields beyond.

  “Open it.”

  Virgil began to cry.

  “Open it!”

  He opened the door and a hand at his back forced him out into the night. Barefoot, he walked through the yard, feeling the coldness of the ground beneath his feet, the long blades of overgrown grass slicing at his skin. He could hear the man breathing behind him as he walked toward the woods at the verge of his land. A low wall, barely three bricks high, came into view. A sheet of corrugated iron had been laid across it. It was the old well.

  “Take the cover off.”

  Virgil shook his head. “No, don’t,” he said. “Please.”

  “Do it!”

  Virgil squatted down and dragged the sheet away, exposing the hole beneath.

  “Kneel down on the wall.”

  Virgil’s face was contorted with fear and the force of his tears. He could taste snot and salt in his mouth as he eased himself down and stared into the darkness of the well.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

  He felt the pressure of the gun in the hollow at the base of his skull.

  “What did you see?” said the man.

  “I saw a man,” said Virgil. He was beyond lying now. “I looked up, I saw a man, a black man. There was another man with him. He was white. I didn’t get a good look at him. I shouldn’t have looked. I shouldn’t have looked.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I told you. I saw-”

  The gun cocked.

  “What did you see?”

  And Virgil at last understood.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I saw nothing. I wouldn’t know the guys if I saw them again. Nothing. That’s all. Nothing.”

  The gun moved away from his head.

  “Don’t make me come back here, Virgil,” said the man.

  Virgil’s whole body shook with the force of his sobs.

  “I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Now you stay there, Virgil. You keep kneeling.”

  “I will,” said Virgil. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the man.

  Virgil didn’t hear him moving away. He just stayed kneeling until at last the sun began to rise and then, shivering, he rose and walked back to his little house.

  V

  There is no hope of death for these souls, And their lost life is so low, That they are envious of any other kind.

  – DANTE ALIGHIERI, THE INFERNO, CANTO III

  27

  THEY BEGAN TO drift into the state over the next two days, in groups and alone, always by road, never by plane. There was the couple that checked into the small motel outside Sangerville, who kissed and cooed like the young lovers they appeared to be yet slept in separate beds in their twin room. There were the four men who ate a hurried breakfast in the Miss Portland Diner on Marginal Way, their eyes always returning to the black van in which they had arrived, tensing whenever anyone approached it and relaxing only slightly when they had passed by.

  And there was the man who drove a truck north from Boston, avoiding the interstate whenever possible, until at last he found himself among forests of pine, a lake gleaming in the distance before him. He checked his watch-too early-and headed back toward Dolby Pond and the La Casa Exotic Dancing Club. There were, he figured, worse ways to kill a few hours.

  The worst-case scenario came to pass: Supreme Judicial Court Justice Wilton Cooper carried out the review of the decision to deny bail to Aaron Faulkner. In the hour preceding the decision, Bobby Andrus and his team had presented their arguments against bail to Wilton Cooper in his chambers, pointing out that they believed Faulkner to be a substantial flight risk and that potential witnesses could be open to intimidation. When he asked them if they had any new evidence to hand, they had to admit that they had not.

  In his submission, Jim Grimes argued that the prosecution had not presented sufficient evidence to suggest that Faulkner might have committed formerly capital crimes. He also offered medical evidence from three separate authorities that Faulkner’s health was deteriorating seriously in prison (evidence that the state itself was unable to contest, since its own doctors had found that Faulkner appeared to be suffering from some illness, although they were unable to say from what, precisely, except that he was losing weight rapidly, his temperature was consistently higher than normal, and both blood pressure and heart rate were abnormally high); that the stresses of incarceration were endangering the life of his client, against whom the prosecution had not yet been able to establish a substantial case; and that it was both unjust and inhumane to keep his client in prison while the prosecution attempted to amass enough evidence to shore up said case. Since his client would require medical supervision of the highest order, there was no real risk of flight and bail should be set accordingly.

  Annoucing his decision, Cooper dismissed most of my testimony on the basis of the unreliability of my character and determined that the decision by the lower court not to grant bail had been erroneous, since the prosecution had not demonstrated sufficient probable cause that Faulkner had himself committed a formerly capital offense. In addition, he accepted Jim Grimes’s submission that his client’s poor health meant that he was not a danger to the integrity of the judicial process and that his need for regular medical treatment meant that he did not constitute a flight risk. He set bail at $1.5 million. Grimes announced that the
cash was on hand. Faulkner, chained in an adjoining room under the guard of U.S. marshals, was to be released immediately.

  To his credit, Andrus had foreseen the possibility that Cooper would set bail and, reluctantly, had approached the FBI and requested that they serve a warrant for Faulkner’s arrest on federal charges should he be released. It was not Andrus’s fault that the warrant had been improperly presented: a secretary had misspelled Faulkner’s name, rendering it null and void. When Faulkner left the courthouse, there was no warrant waiting.

  Outside Courtroom Number One, a man in a brown Timber-land jacket sat on an empty bench and made a call. Ten miles away, the cell phone in Cyrus Nairn’s hand buzzed.

  “You’re good to go,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  Cyrus killed the phone and tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road, then started his car and drove toward Scarborough.

  Flashbulbs opened fire as soon as Grimes appeared on the courthouse steps, but Faulkner was not with him. Instead, a Nissan Terrano, with Faulkner hidden beneath a blanket in the rear, turned right from the courthouse and headed toward the Public Market parking garage on Elm. Above it, a helicopter buzzed. Behind it, two cars shadowed. The AG’s office was not about to let Faulkner disappear into the depths of the honeycomb world.

  A battered yellow Buick pulled in behind the Terrano as it reached the entrance to the garage, causing the following traffic to brake suddenly. There was no need for the big jeep to pause for a ticket because its arrival had been prepared for well in advance: the ticket dispenser had been disabled by the simple application of industrial adhesive while the security guard was distracted by a fire in a garbage can and the garage had been forced to leave both the entrance and exit barriers permanently raised while the damage was being repaired.

  The Terrano passed through quickly, but the Buick following itground to a halt, blocking the entrance. Crucial seconds passed before the police in the tracking cars realized what was happening. The first car reversed, then headed up the exit ramp, speeding, while two detectives from a second car rushed to the Buick, pulled the driver from his seat, and cleared the entrance.

  By the time the agents got to the abandoned Terrano, Faulkner was long gone.

  At 7 P.M. Mary Mason left her house at the end of Seavey Landing for her date with Sergeant MacArthur. Beyond her house, she could see the marsh and the waters of the Scarborough River as they wended their way around the pointed finger of Nonesuch Point and into the sea at Saco Bay. MacArthur was her first real date since her divorce had come through three months earlier, and she was hopeful about a relationship with him. She had known the policeman by sight and, despite his rumpled appearance, thought him kind of cute in a hangdog way. Nothing in their first date had caused her to revise her estimate downward. In fact, he had been quite charming and when he had called her the night before to confirm that a second date was still on, they had talked for almost an hour, surprising him, she suspected, as much as she had surprised herself.

  She was almost at the car door when the man approached her. He came from the trees that hid her property from the view of her neighbors. He was small and hunched, with long dark hair that trailed his shoulders and eyes that were almost black, like those of some underground, nocturnal creature. She was already reaching for the Mace in her bag when he struck her backhanded across the face and she fell. He knelt on her legs before she could react again and she felt the pain in her side, an immense burning as the blade entered below her ribs and began to tear its way across her stomach. She tried to scream but his hand was over her mouth and all she could do was wriggle impotently as the blade continued its progress.

  And then, just as she felt that she could take no more, that she must surely die from the pain, she heard a voice and saw, over the man’s shoulder, a huge hulking figure approach, a beaten-up Chevy idling behind him. He had a beard and wore a leather vest over his T-shirt. She could see the tattoo of a woman on his forearm.

  “Hey!” said Bear. “The fuck you doing, man?”

  Cyrus had not wanted to use the gun. He had wanted this done as quietly as possible, but the big and strangely familiar man now racing up the driveway left him with no choice. He rose from the woman before he could finish his cut, took the gun from his belt, and fired.

  Two white vans took the Medway exit off I-95 and followed 11 through East Millinocket toward Dolby Pond. In the first van were three men and one woman, all armed. In the second sat another man and woman, also armed, and the Reverend Aaron Faulkner, who was silently reading his Bible on a bench in the back of the van. Had one of the state’s medical experts been on hand to check on the preacher, he would have found that the old man’s temperature was virtually normal and that all signs of his apparent ill health had already begun to fade.

  A cell phone disturbed the silence of the second van. One of the men answered, spoke briefly, then turned back to Faulkner.

  “He’s coming in to land now,” he told the old man. “He’ll be waiting for us when we get there. We’re right on schedule.”

  Faulkner nodded, but did not respond. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on his Bible and the account of the trials of Job.

  Cyrus Nairn sat behind the wheel of the Nissan at the Black Point Market and sipped a Coke. It was a warm evening and he desperately needed to cool down. The car’s a/c was busted. It didn’t matter much to Cyrus anyway: once the woman was dead he would ditch the car and head south, and that would be the end of it. He could suffer a little discomfort; after all, it was nothing compared to what the woman was about to endure.

  He finished the Coke, then drove toward the bridge and dumped the can from the window into the waters below. Things had not gone according to plan over at Pine Point. First, the woman was already leaving the house when he arrived, and had gone for the spray in her bag, causing him to take her outside. Then the big man had come along and Cyrus had no choice but to use his gun. He had been afraid, for a moment, that people would hear but there had been no immediate fuss, no clamor. Still, Cyrus had been forced to leave hurriedly, and he did not like rushing his work.

  He checked his watch and, his lips moving silently, counted down from ten. When he reached one, he thought he heard the muffled explosion from Pine Point. When he looked out of his window, smoke was already rising from Mary Mason’s burning car. The police would arrive soon, maybe the fire department, and they would find the woman and the dead man. He had preferred to leave the woman dying, not dead. He wanted the noise of the ambulance, the distraction to the policeman MacArthur and his colleagues, even at the risk of her being able to provide a description of him. He suspected that he might not have cut her enough, that she might even survive her injuries. He wondered if he had left her too close to the car, if she might not already be burning. He didn’t want there to be any doubt about her identity. They were minor issues, but they troubled Cyrus. He wanted to be able to work on the redhead without interruption. The prospect of capture, though, did not concern him: Cyrus would die before he would go back to prison. Cyrus had been promised salvation, and the saved fear nothing.

  To his right, a road curved up into a copse of trees. Cyrus parked his car out of sight then, his stomach tense with excitement, proceeded up the hill. He cleared the trees and passed a ruined shed to his left, the white house now glowing before him, the dying sunlight reflecting from its glass. Soon, the marsh too would be aflame, the waters running orange and red.

  Red, mostly.

  * * *

  Mary Mason lay on her back on the grass, staring at the sky. She had seen the hunched man toss the device into her car, the slow fuse burning, and had guessed what it was, but she felt paralyzed, unable to move her hands to stem the bleeding let alone pull herself away from the car.

  She was weakening.

  She was dying.

  She felt something brush her leg, and managed to move her head slightly. A long trail of blood marked the big man’s painful progress toward her. He was almost
beside her now, hauling himself along by his ragged and bloodied fingernails. He reached out to her and grasped her hand, then pressed it against the wound in her side. She gasped in pain, but he forced her to maintain the pressure.

  Then, slowly, he began to drag her by the collar of her shirt toward the grass. She screamed aloud once, but still she tried to keep her hand pressed to the wound until at last he could pull her no farther. He lay against the old tree in her yard, her head resting on his legs and his hand upon her hand, keeping the pressure on, the expanse of its trunk shielding them both from the car when the device exploded moments later, shattering the glass in the automobile and the windows in her house and sending a blast of heat rolling over the lawn and the tips of her toes.

  “Hold on,” said Bear. His breath rattled in his throat. “Hold on now. They’ll be coming soon.”

  Roger Bowen sat in a corner of Tommy Condon’s pub on Charleston’s Church Street, sipping on a beer. On the table before him lay his cell phone. He was waiting for the call to confirm that the preacher was safe and on his way north to Canada. Bowen checked his watch as two men in their late twenties passed by, joshing and pushing each other. The one nearest stumbled against Bowen’s table, sending his cell phone tumbling onto the floor. Bowen rose up in fury as the young man apologized and replaced the phone on the table.

  “You fucking asshole,” hissed Bowen.

  “Hey, take it easy,” said the guy. “I said I was sorry.”

  They left shaking their heads. Bowen watched them climb into a car outside and drive away.

  Two minutes later, the phone on his table rang.