Without looking at him, she said, “I know who you are.”
“What did you see, Nyx?”
“I looked through that stovepipe hole.” She glanced over at the hole in the floor in the corner of the room.
“What did you see?”
“I saw him wiping off the blood. I saw him burning his clothes.”
“Was there anyone else? Nyx, did you see anyone else besides Daniel Knecht?”
Nyx turned to face him and said, “Of course not.” She turned back to stare at the wall, and he realized that Nyx had gone somewhere else.
What Kamp couldn’t see was that she’d traveled six months back in her mind to a warm Sunday afternoon in June a few days after a stranger named Daniel Knecht had moved into their house. She saw herself on the railroad trestle next to Shawnee Creek.
Nyx’s parents had taken her sisters to Bethlehem. Earlier in the day, their one day off from working in the coal mine, her father and Knecht had begun building a fence that would “line the whole road,” as her father said. From her bedroom window, she’d watched them working together.
Before they left for Bethlehem, she heard her father tell her mother in the kitchen, “We done good, honest work today. Especially Daniel.” Then he turned to look at Daniel Knecht and said, “Well done.”
Nyx had stolen a glance at Knecht, who was looking down at the floor. To her, it appeared as if he felt embarrassed and proud. She’d heard her father say, “We didn’t get as far as we wanted, but it was a decent start. We’ll get back to it next Sunday. Fence won’t go nowhere until then.”
She’d also heard Knecht say that he’d be going back to Easton later in the day. So Nyx thought she was alone that Sunday afternoon. She listened to a breeze whispering to the branches overhead and farther away the songs of robins. Then Nyx picked up other sounds. Hammering and digging. She walked up the road and in the distance, she saw Daniel Knecht working on the fence, alone.
She went back to the house, made a sandwich and filled a cup with raspberries. She wrapped up the food and took it to Knecht. As she drew closer, Nyx watched him swing the sledgehammer, driving in a post. She could see that he’d perspired through his shirt. He worked with his back to her.
She said, “Daniel.”
He didn’t hear her. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he whirled around.
“I brought you this.” Nyx handed him the food. Then, she turned and went back to the trestle. She lay down and listened to the breeze and the water as it burbled into the swimming hole under the bough of the chestnut tree and then back out again. She may have dozed on that warm afternoon, and she may have been sleeping when she became aware that Knecht was on the trestle. Nyx opened her eyes and saw him standing a few feet away. She felt no fear.
“Nadine, I just wanted to say thank you.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Knecht wore work clothes, and he was covered with dirt and sweat. Nyx could tell he felt self-conscious.
“Wanna go for a swim?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“A swim? Swimming. There’s a deep spot.”
In a graceful motion, Nyx stood up, threw off her dress and jumped in the water. Knecht turned to face in the opposite direction.
“Dammit, Nadine.”
Nyx shouted, “Jump in the water!”
“Shhh!”
“Oh, come on!”
“Nadine, this ain’t right. I hafta to go back to the house. I can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
Knecht stood frozen in place for a full minute, then removed his boots and socks and then took off his shirt. He jumped off the trestle into the cold, green water. When he came to the surface, he called to Nyx, “You just stay over there!”
When they got out of the water, Nyx lay naked and prone on the warm concrete trestle. Knecht got fully dressed and sat close by but facing away from her.
He said, “Please put on your clothes. That’s shameful.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well, if anyone sees you like that, I’m done for.”
“Probably.” Nyx laughed, then laid her head down and closed her eyes again.
Knecht scanned the road and listened for carriages. He heard nothing.
“Nadine, why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“The food. Now this. What do you want from me?”
There was another pause, total silence.
She asked, “Well, what do you want from me?”
Knecht swung his head around to look at Nyx who was now lying on her back, propped on her elbows and staring into the sky.
He looked away again and said, “Put your clothes on, girl. Please.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Tell me,” she said, “I want to.”
Knecht saw all the locks falling from the box inside himself in which he’d buried the truth. He felt terror and shame. He said, “No.” Nyx slid closer to him on the trestle. She gently ran the back of her fingertips across his shoulders.
“You can tell me.”
Knecht took several deep breaths, and he let the box open. “Things happened to me, Nadine. Terrible things.” He slumped forward, trying to hide his face from her.
“What kind of things?”
“Awful things. Shameful and wrong. All my fault.”
“I can tell you’re a good person. I can see it. Look at me, Daniel. I want you to know.” He turned and let himself look into her eyes.
He said, “I’m broken, Nadine, no more than a wretch. You’re too beautiful, far too beautiful for me.” Nyx leaned forward and put her head to his chest, long enough to feel his heart pound out a few solitary beats.
They heard the clopping of hooves on the hard road, then the creaking of a wagon. Knecht scrambled to his feet as Nyx hurried to get dressed. Through the trees they could see Jonas, Rachel and the girls rounding the bend in the family’s wagon. In a moment they’d have a clear view of the trestle. Knecht jumped down from the trestle and wound his way through the brush and back to finish the day’s work on the fence. As she watched him go, Nyx knew that he was doomed.
SHE BECAME AWARE of someone’s hand on her shoulder, and eventually she could focus on the man sitting opposite her, that guy Kamp. She scanned the room and saw all the objects once familiar to her now utterly foreign.
“You’re here, Nyx,” he said. She looked straight in his eyes. “It’s not your fault.”
“What’s not?”
“What he did to your parents. It’s not your fault.”
Her gaze hardened. She gnashed her teeth and said, “No shit.”
“Why did he do it, Nyx?”
“Do what?”
Kamp said calmly, “Hurt your parents.”
“He came in here. He wanted me. I said no.”
“Are you saying he thought they were keeping you from him?”
She said, “No,” and her expression went blank.
“Then why would he want to hurt them? Is he a monster?”
Nyx fixed her gaze on him again, and she said, “He isn’t a monster. He’s a sad little boy who believed a lie.”
“But why did he hurt them?”
“Same reason anyone hurts another person. Because something went wrong.”
Kamp rubbed his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger, then glanced out the window and saw sleighs lining the road as far as he could see. In Jonas Bauer’s yard alone he saw dozens, even a hundred people. He started devising a way to get Knecht to the jail.
TWELVE
THE BEDROOM DOOR FLEW OPEN, and George Richter stomped in, holding the shotgun across his chest.
Richter said, “District Attorney needs her to talk to his jury in the next room.”
He set his gun down in the corner and held out a hand to Nyx. She stood up and walked slowly out of the bedroom. As she left, Hugh Arndt walked in carrying a knife.
Richter stood directly in front
of Kamp and said, “We don’t want this thing to go Elijah Sample on us.”
“It won’t.”
“Well, we’re gonna make sure.”
Arndt said, “Sample slaughtered his whole own goddamn family and they let him walk away. Insanity.”
Kamp said, “This is different, George.”
“This here Knecht is crazy as they come. We ain’t taking no chances. Hugh, get going.”
Arndt pulled aside the mattress, cut the rope and began to unstring the lattice. Kamp lunged for Arndt, but Richter caught him and pinned him hard against the wall by jamming his forearm into Kamp’s throat.
Richter growled, “People want to see for themselves. See the truth.”
Kamp heard more commotion downstairs and women screaming. Arndt coiled the bed rope, fifty feet or so, put it in the crook of his right arm and left the room. Richter eased the pressure on Kamp’s neck enough to let him breathe.
He picked up his shotgun and said, “Kamp, you just make sure that girl is all right. We’re gonna do what needs done. Do what’s right. District attorney said so.”
Kamp went to the next room, where Philander Crow’s jury had assembled, eight men, most of whom Kamp knew by name. Nyx sat in a chair in front of them, and they listened, rapt.
She said, “I saw him burn his shirt. Then, he washed his hands and arms.”
Kamp stood in the doorway and motioned to Crow, who walked over to him.
He whispered, “Has the jury decided?”
Crow said, “We’ve just started.”
“Did you tell Richter to do anything?”
“Who?”
KAMP SCRAMBLED DOWN THE STAIRS and onto the front lawn. A group of men clumped at the door of the barn where he’d left Daniel Knecht.
The men shouted, “Bring him out! Let us see that devil!” The door opened, and Knecht emerged, head down. The crowd parted as Arndt slammed Knecht squarely between the shoulder blades with the butt of his rifle. Knecht stumbled forward and crashed to his hands and knees in the snow.
A man shouted, “He deserves worse!”
Across the yard, a woman screamed, “Lynch him!”
The mob surged around Knecht. Richter and Arndt guided him across the road and toward Shawnee Creek. People strained to tear at Knecht, slap his face and spit on him. Kamp tried to pick his way through the mob to get to Knecht, to restore order. But he was repulsed. The mob had already become a single living, swelling organism, a beast.
Kamp scanned the scene for Druckenmiller or other police officers who must have arrived by now. He saw none. They must be in the house, he thought, and they’re not coming out. They’re going to let it happen.
Richter and Arndt guided Knecht across the road toward the creek. They didn’t drag him, because they didn’t have to. Knecht offered no resistance and appeared to drift along with the deadly current toward the base of a spreading chestnut tree. Richter slammed Knecht against the trunk face first, producing a cheer from the mob.
Richter said, “Somebody hold him here once.”
Immediately, two men Kamp didn’t recognize stepped forward, grabbed the condemned man and yanked his arms behind his back. Knecht still did not protest at all. He stared at the ground. Arndt handed Richter the coiled rope. A noose had already been fashioned at one end.
Shrieks rang out all through the mob. “Hang him! Hang him!”
Richter looked up the trunk of the chestnut tree and at its branches. A large bough extended up and over the ground, fifteen feet overhead. Richter dropped the coils of rope on the ground and held the noose, gauging its heft. He swung it back and forth a couple times to gain momentum, then hoisted the noose skyward. It fell far short of clearing the bough. Richter tried once more. Same result. People began laughing and shouting suggestions.
“Tie a rock to the other end and throw that over!”
“Ach, why don’tcha just shoot the son of a bitch!”
As Richter and Arndt discussed their options, a boy, perhaps ten years old, stepped forward.
The boy said to Richter, “I can do it.”
Richter hissed, “Step back, junge.”
“No, I can do it. I can climb it up there and throw it back down.”
The mob weighed in. “Let him do it!”
“He can’t do no worse than you, George!” A low chuckle rippled through the crowd. The boy reached for the noose, and Richter handed it to him. Another cheer rose.
Kamp knew that the only weapon capable of stopping the mob at this point would have been a punt gun. Apart from that, he wouldn’t be able to keep this monster from finishing its grim business. He also had to consider the possibility that the mob would turn on him and that he’d end up hanging alongside Daniel Knecht.
All Kamp could think to do at that moment was to take Jonas Bauer’s four-barreled revolver from his waistband, raise it above his head and pull the trigger. The sound, he hoped, would rouse the mob from its collective nightmare. He wanted to break the spell. And the sound did, in fact, stop the proceedings cold. Everyone ducked and then looked for the source of the noise. They saw Kamp holding the smoking pistol over his head. The gunshot’s echoes died, followed by a moment of total quiet.
Kamp shouted, “You will release this man into my custody! You will hand over this man!”
The people stared at him, then turned to look at Daniel Knecht. The men who were holding him let him go. Knecht kicked idly at the snow on the ground, as if he weren’t even aware of the events unfolding around him. He made no move to get free.
Kamp said, “Let him go under penalty of law.”
The boy said something quietly to Richter, and Richter clapped the boy on the back.
Someone in the crowd yelled to Richter, “What’d he say?”
“The boy said, ‘This is the law.’”
The mob erupted.
“Go home, Kamp! You’re not needed here.”
“This is our business. Leave it alone!”
“He’s right! Look at that fiend. He knows what he done!”
The mob heaved forward again. Kamp felt hands grabbing him under his arms. Another hand closed over the pistol and yanked it from him. Three men dragged him backwards to the road and threw him to the ground. One man kicked him in the ribs. He lay there, breathing hard. The three men left him and rejoined the mob. Kamp rolled onto his belly, then climbed to his knees.
Richter placed the rope coils around the boy’s shoulders so that the boy could use both hands as he went up the tree trunk. The people’s eyes shifted from the boy to Daniel Knecht and back to the boy. Knecht never looked up. He drew circles in the snow with his foot. No one paid attention to Kamp, who looked on from the perimeter of the mob. Kamp prayed the boy would fall out of the tree.
As the boy worked his way higher, women shouted up to him.
“Be careful once!”
“Well done, junge!”
The boy reached the bough and began to shinny out over the mob. When he got directly above Knecht, the boy clamped himself to the bough with both knees and gently lifted the rope off his shoulders. He dropped the noose to Richter who reached for it eagerly. The boy dropped the other end of the rope to the ground, and his mission was complete. Another cheer rose from the mob as the boy climbed back down. Hugh Arndt grabbed Daniel Knecht in a bear hug, and Richter fitted the noose around his neck. The mob pressed in even tighter. Men fought each other to lay hold of the rope, and women surged forward to get a better look.
Kamp felt an intense need to get as close as possible too. But instead of wanting to take part in or even to witness the execution, he was seized with a desperate urge to keep Daniel Knecht alive. He wanted to keep this mob, this group of quiet farmers, from becoming murderers themselves. He wanted to save the boy from the stain of having been their accomplice. But more than that, for reasons that he could not comprehend in that moment, Kamp believed that Knecht must not die this way.
He launched himself into the mob, crouching down and using his elbows to sho
ve people aside. He reached the base of the chestnut tree before anyone else realized that he was coming, and he went straight for the noose, attempting to pull it off Knecht’s neck. For his part, Knecht did nothing to help. He stood straight up and did not try to remove the rope himself. He and the mob had begun their death dance. In fact no one, including Knecht, even seemed to notice Kamp was there.
He shook Knecht by the shoulders. “Danny, Danny!”
“Oh, hello.”
“Help me!”
Knecht said, “Do you know what it means? What I told you before?”
“What?”
“Quia merito haec patior. Do you know?”
RICHTER CINCHED THE NOOSE, and Knecht let out a gurgle. Kamp knew he wouldn’t be able to remove the noose, and he was certain that he could not wrest the other end of the rope from the half dozen men who held it. He saw the slack coils of rope on the ground and he wrapped them around his own arm. In this way he placed himself directly between Knecht and the killing force of the mob.
George Richter shouted, “Now!” and the men yanked the rope in unison. Since Kamp had looped the rope around himself, he, not Knecht, jerked violently off the ground.
Richter said, “Again!”
The men dug their heels into the frozen earth as best they could, gritted their teeth and leaned back. Everyone wondered why Daniel Knecht had not been lifted from the ground yet. The rope cut hard into Kamp’s arm. He could feel it going numb. He was now suspended at an odd angle six feet above the earth. With his free hand, he tried to right himself, to no avail.
Richter shouted, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! Leave it go.”
The men relaxed their grip, and Kamp slammed the ground. The force of the landing knocked the air from his lungs. For a moment he could not breathe at all. He found himself looking straight up at Knecht, who raised his eyebrows slightly, cocked his head and gave a little smile.
Knecht said, “I done it for them, Kamp. I done it for them.”
Hugh Arndt unwrapped the rope from Kamp’s arm.
Richter yelled, “OK. We’re trying again. Go!”
When the rope went tight, the noose cinched hard against Knecht’s throat. This time nothing kept him from going airborne. He shot up a couple of feet, then glided slowly toward the blue sky. The mob let out a large, satisfied cheer.
Ax & Spade: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 1) Page 11
