His adversary was the best.
Chapter 16
On the second day, Lindsay rose before dawn and reported to the main house for work. Eva explained that one of the first low outbuildings to be built was an industrial kitchen, but it wasn’t quite ready to go live yet, and they were bursting at the seams in the house’s kitchen. To accommodate the burgeoning camp, the women had converted a small room off the kitchen into an extra pantry, a way station for the supplies shuttling between the new kitchen and the old one still in use. Eva gave her a quick tour of the first floor, pointing out the pantry, the powder room, and the living room, where a couple of women were drinking coffee, fortifying themselves for the breakfast rush. At the end of a long hallway was a closed door.
“What’s that?”
“Henry’s office,” said Eva, her eyes softening. “It’s easy to forget, but all of this,” she said, twirling her finger over her head to indicate the whole of the house and the compound beyond it, “is a lot for an old man. In fact, I don’t know how he does it.”
“Why does he do it? Hell of a way to spend your golden years.”
“Because he’s a great man,” she said, a little steel creeping into her voice. “Anyway, that’s the only place he can get some privacy. Let’s leave him to it.”
She asked about Lindsay’s cooking skills, and when she was met with a shrug, Eva eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then smiled. “You’ll learn. Until then, server. Let me introduce you to Donna.”
The kitchen and the household were the domain of Eva, Drexler’s beloved daughter-in-law, but Donna was her tough-as-nails second in command. She was a stocky woman with platinum blonde hair, but the roots were coming in dark, slowly overtaking whatever she once had planned.
“Don’t touch a fucking thing unless told and stay out of the way, girly girl,” said Donna.
“Pleased to meet you too,” said Lindsay.
Donna narrowed her eyes, then told her they were going to play a game of fetch. Lindsay spent the next two hours marching back and forth between the main house and the new, unfinished kitchen, doing inventory and gathering supplies for Donna. When breakfast was ready—massive trays of eggs and sausage and bread—she helped carry them to a covered pavilion close to the new kitchen. Lindsay fixed a smile on her face as she spooned eggs and sausage onto the paper plates of hundreds of her campmates: some genuinely friendly people, people who would not look her in the eye let alone smile, and others who openly leered.
Lindsay had to admit to herself that the women in the kitchen weren’t bad, even Donna. Some hazing was to be expected, but she sensed camaraderie among them. There were only a dozen women in the house, but they operated like a well-oiled machine, preparing for the sheer scale of the morning meal, serving it successfully, then beginning the cleanup and preparation for lunch. In the bustle of the kitchen, it was easy to forget the larger camp and its reason for existing, which was fine with Lindsay. She focused on the fact that they were feeding people and tried not to think too hard about the people they were feeding. She reminded herself that she was here to collect information, and the best way to do that was to earn the women’s trust. To do that, she would first need to earn their respect.
She walked to the sink without being told and began washing dishes.
“Not so fast, new girl,” said Donna. “Fix a big tray and take it to the barn. We have some prima donnas who sleep late and don’t like to wait in line.”
Lindsay heaped a tray with two plates of eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit and carried it outside. The barn was the nearest large structure to the main house, with the outbuildings and the field with its swelling tent city beyond it. She walked straight for it, concentrating on the tray instead of the men loitering at the pavilion and speaking under their breath. The barn door was open and she slipped inside. The smell greeted her like a balm for her soul.
Animals.
Her eyes watered for a moment. The barn’s aroma was like an arrow flying back, past the zoo, all the way to childhood. Her earliest memories. She collected herself and continued inside. The barn appeared to be empty.
Suddenly a long head swung over the door of a gate. A large bay colt with a white patch on its snout regarded her, his ears up and swiveled in her direction.
Lindsay brightened. “Hey fella.”
She looked around again, and seeing no one, crouched to place the heaping tray on the ground. She took a plastic knife and sliced an apple into quarters, then walked toward the attentive colt, passing other horses sleeping or lazing in their stalls.
She drew closer to the bay. All her life she had evaluated the mannerisms and behavior of animals. Her job, and sometimes her life, depended on it. She had done it countless times in zoos across the country, to bears and big cats, but she had learned to read horses as a toddler. These assessments were second nature to her, almost unconscious. The horse’s stance was relaxed, his eyes alert but steady, his ears slightly forward.
Her appraisal was nearly instantaneous.
“Who’s a good boy?” she said.
She held an apple slice aloft in her palm and let the horse sniff it. She felt the heavy breath on her palm, then the wet touch of his lips, and the apple slice vanished. She fed him the rest of the slices, cooing to him all the while. After the bay finished the apple, he hung his head over the gate and let her rub the white patch on his snout. It was her first happy, unguarded moment since arriving.
“What’s your name, buddy?”
“Glue,” came a voice behind her. “If I had my way.”
Suddenly the horse swung his head away from Lindsay, retreating back into his stall. His ears pinned back against his head and the horse stomped once, which echoed like a gunshot in the barn.
She turned to see Anson, leaning against a post, an apple in his hand. She had not heard him come in.
“That’s no way to talk about such a handsome boy,” said Lindsay.
“Oh sure, he’s being all sweet now, but trust me, he bites.”
“Horses are excellent judges of character.”
Anson smirked, pushed himself off the post. He walked toward her, taking a bite of his apple.
“Hm. Kinda mouthy, ain’t you? I like that.”
She leaned back against the stall, draping her arms across the stall’s gate, hooking her heel onto a slat. The effect arched her back and pushed out her chest, which Anson could have interpreted as an invitation. She looked nonchalant, a slight smile on her lips. If he drew too close, she planned to grasp the gate, heave her up legs, and drop-kick him like one of the horses.
He drew closer.
“You know, I run the stables. If things ever get too hot in the kitchen, you can always help out here with me. Visit the horses, take a breather in the hay…”
He drew closer still.
“Maybe get mouthy some more…”
“Anson.”
He stopped. An annoyed look passed over his face, then he said, “Morning, Carl.”
An older man was standing inside the barn’s doorway. Lindsay exhaled, relieved. As much as she would have enjoyed driving her heels into Anson’s grinning face, it would not have been a smart play.
Carl walked forward and extended his hand. “And who might you be, young lady?”
She was glad to take it. She introduced herself. “Just delivering breakfast to a couple of hardworking men.”
“Many thanks,” he said. “You’d best run along though. I’d hate for Donna to serve you for lunch.”
Lindsay laughed, bright and cheery, and threw a wave over her shoulder as she headed for the barn door.
“Later,” Anson called after her.
“Next time,” said Lindsay.
Chapter 17
Ben saw the first body on the third morning, their last at camp. He slept poorly each night, tossing and turning, though he had to admit that, despite his fear, Välkommen had been laid-back. As with most horrors, the anticipation of it was worse than the thing itself. Camp life was
mundane and banal. Still, after settling into routines—Lindsay working in the kitchen of the big yellow house and him hauling supplies for the builders around camp, trying to ingratiate himself with scumbags of every stripe—he felt like he needed a bath and his brain an industrial power wash. He did not relish getting closer to Felix and his crew, but after that first meal, they had been difficult to get close to. They were cliquish and wary of everyone.
He lay in the dark next to Lindsay, mindful of the clock. That night, he and Lindsay would take a stroll into the woods at the prearranged spot, walk fifty yards in, and Davis would lead them home. But he had nothing, no intel, nothing of use, and did not want to leave camp empty-handed. He was out of sorts, out of ideas, and tired of tossing and turning in the predawn, so he unzipped himself from the sleeping bag as quietly as he could, but Lindsay rolled over when he tried to unzip the tent flap and sneak out.
“Mm, s’up?” she mumbled.
“Just taking a leak. Go back to sleep.”
She was asleep again before he had exited the tent. He envied her. Neither of them had slept well since their encounter in Barcroft. Wisconsin had only made it worse. They both slept best in each other’s presence. When they passed out on his couch watching old movies, Gus curled in a ball between them, it reminded him of a den of animals, the greater their proximity, the more warmth and safety. It would present a problem if he ever decided to date again, but for the past year and a half, he happily chose sleep over romance. There were no prospects anyway, and in truth, he didn’t want any.
It was a cold, mid-April morning and in the predawn, mist clung to the field and encircled the base of the surrounding tents. If Ben squinted, they looked like the tops of mountains poking above the clouds. He decided to ignore the advice of their new tent neighbor Mitchell and forgo the latrines to walk the perimeter of the field, partially to get his bearings, but mostly to burn off nervous energy and center himself for another day of subterfuge.
He took the main lane between the tents, passing his neighbors quietly, until he reached open ground, and continued on until he reached the treeline. He turned left, then walked along its perimeter, circumnavigating the field. When he drew closer to the massive stage, he put it between himself and the rest of the camp and stepped to the treeline. He unzipped his fly and faced the woods. When he finished and turned back around again, he took a closer look at the great stage. It reminded him of a pier at the Jersey Shore, a wooden platform atop large pilings driven into the ground. There was a set of stairs leading up to the platform. He was going to walk up onto it, when he noticed that one of the pilings seemed to float, neither reaching the ground nor supporting the deck. He blinked and realized it was a body hanging lifeless, its head lolled to the side.
Without thinking, Ben moved around to the other side of the stage, eager to step away from the treeline. If he had been unconsciously curious to see the man’s face, once he did he immediately wished he hadn’t. It was blue and swollen, a black tongue protruding from its empurpled mouth. The angle of his head was all wrong, the result of a snapped neck. Even through the distortion, from the man’s height and long, stringy hair, Ben knew it was Mitchell.
“Jesus,” muttered Ben.
“Kind of puts a kink in your morning constitutional, don’t it?”
“Jesus!” yelled Ben. He spun to see the security man, Breaux, standing behind him. The man held a large knife at his side. Ben backed a step, his hands floating up instinctively. “What did you do?”
“Easy, boy. If I wanted you dead, you’d have bled out by now.”
He had a point. Ben hadn’t heard him approach and had no idea which direction he had come from.
“Thank you?” said Ben.
“Heh.”
“His name was Mitchell, right?”
“If that was his real name.”
“What’s that mean?”
Breaux shrugged and the knife danced in the air. Ben imagined he could hear it whistling. There was an inscription on the blade but he could not read it. He had never seen anyone holding a knife so casually. Between it and the man’s easy drawl, he was almost hypnotic. Like a cobra, thought Ben.
“He’d been here about two months. Kinda jumpy. Skittish. Like you.”
Hypnosis aside, Ben got angry. “I’d say expressing surprise when someone with a knife sneaks up on you as you discover some dude hanging like a tire swing is a perfectly normal reaction.”
Breaux let out a good-natured laugh. “Funny. What’s your name again?”
You know my fucking name, you have my ID, he thought. And nothing escapes your hooded eyes. “McCarver. Ben McCarver.”
He flung his knife into the dirt. It protruded handle-up from the ground, buried to the hilt. He offered his hand to Ben. He must have suspected Ben wouldn’t accept it if he were holding the knife, his idea of a courtesy. He was correct. Ben shook it.
“Duncan Breaux. If you’re normal, McCarver, you’ll be in the minority. And this place doesn’t favor minorities.” He bent and snatched his knife out of the ground with one motion. Ben imagined another whistle, air escaping the earth like a pierced balloon. “Drexler should call this place ‘Granola’ instead of Välkommen.” He pointed his knife at the end of the rope. “Nuts and flakes.”
“Which are you?”
“Cute. The one who keeps out the fruits and chocolate, I suppose,” said Breaux. In an instant, all traces of mirth vanished from his eyes. He looked at Ben with a preternatural calm that unnerved him. “Last count has camp pushing eight hundred people. You’re here for a few nights, yet him you know. How’s that, you figure?”
“Nothing to figure. He had a tent nearby. He asked Lindsay and me if we needed help.”
“So he was talking to your girl.”
“Not like that.”
Breaux marched past Ben, up the stairs, and onto the steps. “Grab him,” said Breaux.
“What?”
“Round the waist.”
“Fuck that. Leave him be.”
“No can do.”
“Don’t we have to call the sheriff or something?”
“Big, tough sovereign citizen,” said Breaux from atop the stage, already sawing at the rope with his knife. It made Mitchell’s body dance a horrible jig in the air. “Hates authority until there’s an itty-bitty body, then it’s all ‘Call 911.’ If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this world, it’s that you make your own luck.”
The hair on Ben’s neck stood on end.
“You just said there’s eight hundred nuts and flakes here. How do you know he didn’t…ah, dude, just wait!”
“Bombs away.”
Ben turned his back before the body fell free. There was a sharp, smacking sound as Mitchell hit the ground, his head of teeth rattling against the ground. Ben had not expected that. He thought it would be a dull thud, a sack of potatoes thumping against the grass, but it wasn’t. Ben shuddered involuntarily.
He turned around, but tried to keep his eyes on Breaux instead of the body. He had enough trouble sleeping and didn’t want to add the image of Mitchell to the nightmarish gallery already in his mind. Breaux dismounted the steps casually, as if he had just taken out the trash.
“It’s my job to maintain order, and a stretched Mitchell ain’t good for morale. The sheriff and I have an understanding.”
“Does your understanding involve not tampering with evidence?”
“Relax, funny boy. Everyone is going to wake up soon and camp’ll be buzzing. You want hundreds of people to stampede over here and obliterate a potential crime scene? Which, by the way, it ain’t. You might say Mitchell here had some demons.”
“He seemed friendly enough.”
“Smack. Even here it’s a problem. Tell me, did he have anything interesting to say? You know, when he wasn’t hitting on your girl.”
“Honestly?” Ben glanced down at the knife, at home again in Breaux’s hand. He remembered Davis then, telling him to stick to as much of the truth as possible. “
He told us to stay away from the woods.”
“Did he now?” Breaux glanced at the treeline, twenty feet off, which provided a natural backdrop to the stage. “Maybe he wasn’t so granola after all.”
Chapter 18
Lindsay Clark, the National Zoo’s assistant curator of Great Cats and secret cryptozoologist, thought Lindsay ruefully as she dropped a biscuit onto the next in line’s plate. Tonight was the rendezvous with Davis and they still had nothing. She thought of Mitchell, the first person friendly to her and Ben at Välkommen. She should be out in camp, figuring out what the hell was going on, not doling out biscuits.
Early that morning, Ben had returned to their tent shaken and had woken Lindsay. They lay face-to-face, practically nose to nose, as he passed the details quietly. She was horrified, but kept it to herself and reported to the kitchen on time to help. She had passed Breaux, the security chief, crisscrossing the field on her way to the yellow house, and he gave her an inscrutable smirk, as he did every day. The whispers were already flying in the kitchen, the nerve center of the entire camp, by the time she arrived.
Over the people waiting in line to be served, she saw a contingent of men walking across the field. One was dressed in a tan uniform and hat and Lindsay surmised it was the local sheriff. In tow were Breaux, the head of security, and two of Drexler’s black-clad personal guard. They were known as the Black Cadre and Lindsay had spotted a handful of them walking through camp throughout the night. She wondered why the old man would need a protective detail, but taking another glance at the agitated line of hard men in front of her, she had her answer. In the middle of the knot of men slowly crossing the field was Drexler himself, and she had an idea.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, turning to Donna, who was overseeing the operation.
“Now?” asked Donna, not bothering to disguise her annoyance.
“I really have to go,” said Lindsay, gritting her teeth and throwing her a knowing glare. She hoped to spark some female solidarity in a sea of men.
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