Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

  “The Valley’s old and it’s mean,” Herzog said. He’d drained several beers and it was hitting him hard.

  I’d gotten a taste of the prevailing eeriness, its “colorful” characters, and had no desire to see much more of the Valley’s fabled dark side. Reason one hundred and one to conclude my investigation and slap a bow on it as soon as possible.

  “What’s your opinion on the supercollider project?” I said. “Were you sorry to see it fail, or good riddance to bad rubbish?”

  “Oh, they’re still screwing around over there on the sly. Seen lights, heard noises at all hours.” He sucked on his pipe and belched tire-fire smoke. “Tell you this much: whatever plans were in store for the finished site weren’t nice.”

  “Such as?”

  He shrugged.

  “I dunno. Redlicks were involved; it was something bad.”

  “Whoa, there. Aren’t you friends?”

  “Their company gives me shit money to do a shit job. The way it’s always been with our families. Doesn’t make us friends, does it?”

  “Seems lonely here in the hills,” Lionel said. “I mean, it’s peaceful.”

  “Lonely? No. I have my fun too. I play jokes on my dog.”

  “Jokes?”

  “Oh, like I’m dead. Anyway, I’ve got company. Gracie and the coons and whatever else comes around at night.”

  “Such as?” Lionel said. “Bear? Deer? Ghost horses?”

  Herzog rocked gently on his heels. The lantern light cast a shadow over him and he could’ve been a woodblock illustration of Rip Van Winkle after that long nap, or Rumpelstiltskin, crouched near a campfire in a fairy-tale forest, gloating that the queen would never guess his name.

  “Well, let me tell you.” He scratched his dog’s ears. “Gracie’s a hell of a watchdog. The other morning, she stalked the edges of the yard, whining and growling. I kept my rifle handy. Bear are thick in this area and that was her bear growl. Blackies this time of year want a few last meals before they go to sleep. They aren’t normally a threat, but a man can’t be too careful. A couple of nights later, Gracie barked her head off. I figured she’d treed a coon or somethin’, right there ten feet from the door in that old pine.”

  We reflexively turned our heads to follow his gesture to the tree in question.

  “I shined my light at the crown and saw a man ogling me. Face white as dust, and half-hid among the branches. He hung there, upside down, like a spider. Then he grinned.”

  “What did you do?” Lionel said. His eyes were wide.

  “Ran inside and barred the damned door is what I did,” Herzog said. “It had to be Shanks Mathis, a logger. Disappeared one autumn in the nineties. He was cutting the top out of a tree and it corkscrewed. Shanks and the top of that tree were flung into Twenty-Mile Gorge.”

  “Logging is a hazardous business,” I said.

  “Rangers didn’t recover his body. They brought in dogs and a chopper. Rough piece of country, you know. Now we see Shanks in the woods. People round here leave offerings for him on his jaunts.” To demonstrate, he popped the top on a beer and set it on the porch. “If Shanks is passing through, this’ll be gone come sunrise.”

  I was thinking if he turned his back on Lionel, it would be gone in two seconds.

  “Why do they call him Shanks?” I asked the obvious.

  “On account of his rusty climbing hooks.” Herzog pointed at his shin. “Buckle it on like cowboy spurs, except these are yea-long spikes. A veteran climber with hooks and a strap can scamper up a tree faster than a coon.” He rose and limped over to the pine and rubbed the bark. “See these gouges where the sap bleeds? Fresh. More of them go all the way near to the crown. Spurs made those marks.”

  I pointed at a mobile of bird bones dangling from another tree.

  “Aren’t those charms supposed to keep bad spirits at bay?”

  “There’s worse than Shanks. That’s what them charms are for.”

  Bellow produced a crumpled pack of Benson & Hedges and drew one. An inveterate smoker since youth, he’d told me he wanted to quit during one of our periodic conversations. As a former brother in bondage to nicotine, I empathized with the struggle. He considered the cigarette and stuck it back into the pack with a forlorn sigh. A quiet demonstration of a man holding on to his temper with both hands.

  “Mr. Herzog. Thank you for the story. My blood ran cold. Could you, would you, find that piece of paper we need?”

  The old man flapped his hands dismissively. He resumed digging into the cartons. Soon, we had our prize. Herzog scribbled on a notepad and handed it to me. I didn’t recognize the names.

  “Sean Pruitt is who you want, yeah?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t have an apartment. Quarters were reserved for out-of-towners and supervisors. Pruitt shacked with his buddies when he stayed at the camp. I wrote it there. Robert Thorpe and Daniel Buckhalter.”

  “You recall anything about them?” I said.

  “No, sir. Faces in a crowd.”

  I checked the names against my phone database. Thorpe’s name was on the lengthy list of known associates I’d acquired. An electrician by trade. Late thirties, married with children. Danny Buckhalter, fifty, was born and raised in Horseheads; Valley High graduate. Thorpe lived in Pittsburgh. Buckhalter was currently in the wind—last known address was the Jeffers Colony. He’d gotten in on the ground floor when the project started. After the implosion, he vanished into the ether.

  Herzog wrote directions to the Jeffers Colony and said he’d meet us midmorning to unlock the gate and the apartment. We’d have an hour to snoop around.

  “Shucks,” Lionel said to me as an aside. “This setup takes me home. Almost sorry we aren’t crashing for a sleepover.”

  “I could leave you and nobody around here would notice,” I said.

  “Something, something about a dog returning to his vomit.”

  As we made to leave, Lionel huddled with our gnomish host. He shook some of Herzog’s tobacco into a baggie and stuck it into his pocket.

  Guided by a pale, sickly beam from Bellow’s keychain penlight, the three of us walked in the dark along the rugged path to the SUV. Nobody spoke. Though we were packing heat, Herzog had spooked me and maybe Bellow. Lionel not so much. He was the type to challenge ghosts and goblins to a fight.

  I took the wheel and headed the rig toward the highway. I’d had my fill of country for one day.

  * * *

  ■■■

  Bellow nodded off in the back.

  “I think the old guy dragged his feet so we’d hang around and tip some brews,” Lionel said. “He misses the missus.”

  Our headlights didn’t shine far. The road and the trees were a throat.

  “What did you think of him?” he said.

  “He’s a coot who’ll be fortunate not to get raided by the FBI once Bellow makes it back to HQ,” I said.

  “Yeah. Crazy ghost story, huh?”

  “Considering where we are, could have been crazier. The world is swimming in small, dark miracles. We’re jaded; we hardly notice unless one jumps out of a bush at us.”

  Lionel lit a cigarette and lowered his window a notch.

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Do I believe Herzog’s encounter with the numinous?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I generally believe people when they say they’ve seen something. Not my job to assess their veracity. Herzog claims he saw a pasty white boy grinning in a tree. Why not?”

  “Why not?”

  “You bought in like you thought the Tooth Fairy was going to tuck a quarter under your pillow. Besides, I’ve seen enough weird white boys the past few days to easily suspend any disbelief.”

  “Say you aren’t converting into a true believer,” he said.

  “I’m a
devout agnostic. Let Herzog have his tall tales. The stakes are low. It doesn’t matter either way. So, why not?”

  “When are the stakes ever low?” He wasn’t talking to me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I’d spotted a respectable motel on the edge of town where Bellow and Lionel could bunk until we rendezvoused the next day. I tried to escape while the boys were chatting with the clerk, but Lionel caught me in the lot and insisted on drinks. I told him he’d had plenty of drinks (two of Herzog’s Blue plus a six-pack of Genesee) and he said, nonsense, besides, neither Johnny Law nor I had done our share. Hell’s bells, amigo, it was scarcely half-past eight. No way were we letting a perfectly fine evening go to waste. What was the name of that village up the road near the Jeffers Colony? Morrow? That settled it; we were gonna see what the locals had for a bar and write it off as recon.

  I glanced toward Bellow in an appeal to common sense. He shrugged and said a couple of shots didn’t sound bad.

  Half an hour later we arrived among a jag of buildings somewhere in another scenic patch of backwoods hill country. Morrow was as old as the surrounding forest; moss and grapevine threaded street signs and climbed the infrequent lamp pole. Gas station, post office, general store, and a tavern was the sum of Main Street. Bramble reared neck-high to a giraffe between copses of trees. I was sure houses lay hidden farther back. Two drunks stumbled into the middle of the street, yelling at each other. One of the men tripped over a pothole and busted his ass. His buddy shrieked laughter and busted his ass too. I parked under an oak and sat there while the engine ticked.

  “This ain’t no tourist trap.” Lionel gestured toward the sultry allure of a neon silhouette of an hourglass woman who beckoned thirsty travelers to the Black Powder Tavern. Mist crept in from the woods and the electric light of the sign tinted it crimson. “She is what the hipsters refer to as authentic.”

  “I’m soaking it in.” I eyed the collection of 1970s and ’80s cars and trucks in front of the tavern. Trans Am, Corvette, a cherry Pontiac Firebird, and some junkyard-treasure pickups. A handful of motorcycles as well. At least two-thirds of Morrow’s adult population must’ve been bellied up to the trough getting plastered. I’d left my brass knuckles at home, more’s the pity.

  Several patrons smoked near an oil drum. Their cool appraisal made clear we were recognized as tourists. The joint was hopping, but not packed. Low, water-stained ceiling; sawdust floor; a knotty bar, hewn and stained; jukebox and two pool tables; strong odors of booze and sweat. Loud, of course. I snagged a booth in the corner as a pair of woozy dudes in mismatched plaid vacated. Lionel bought a pitcher of something cheap and sudsy.

  We finished the beer. Lionel excused himself and chatted with a woman in mirrored Lennon glasses, a halter top, and hip-hugging jeans dithering by her lonesome at the far pool table. He slapped quarters down. She shrugged and they played. A contingent of bikers (bearded, leather-clad, and obstreperous) at a nearby table ended their banter and watched with what I can only describe as sullen amazement. Their expressions of ill humor deteriorated further when a curvaceous blonde detached from the group and joined her friend. This called for hard booze. Bellow said he was in the mood for blended scotch, nothing fancy. I weaved through a small crowd to the bar and ordered doubles. J&B for Bellow; Buffalo Trace for myself. Made it back without spilling. Bellow had settled in, arms spread against the booth back, relaxed as I’d ever seen him. That moment it seemed possible he might defy Lionel’s prediction and survive his impending retirement.

  “Isaiah, what the hell are you doing?” He spoke genially. An uncle, a father.

  I tasted my bourbon. There didn’t seem to be any percentage in answering a rhetorical question. But I decided to try.

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “The hell I do,” he said.

  “Trying to make sense of it all. Before it’s too late.”

  “It’s four years too late for Pruitt.”

  “Maybe not for his mother. Maybe not for me.”

  “Oh, this about you? Is Mom under the mistaken impression detectives actually solve crimes?”

  “She is. Everybody is. I’m doing it because the younger me wouldn’t have. Because there are people, not so different from those who used to run my life, who emphatically don’t want me to do this. And the more flak I receive, the more stubborn I’ll become.”

  The set of his jaw changed. Respect, perhaps. Or amusement.

  “You leaning one way or the other?”

  “Too early,” I said. “Death by suicide appears to be a slam dunk . . .”

  “It does.”

  “Yet it doesn’t. My intuition isn’t satisfied.”

  When I’d desperately needed inside dope on the Tri-State Killer/Croatoan files last year, Bellow played ball. He hadn’t asked for an update, and wouldn’t, for both our sakes. I sensed his curiosity. I had my own questions. Why had he helped me? Perhaps a subconscious acknowledgment that I could travel certain paths into darkness that he was morally and philosophically forbidden. He felt guilty because he hadn’t been aiding my cause. Using me like a tool would be more accurate. My impression of the situation, anyhow.

  “Your intuition isn’t satisfied,” he said. “I don’t knock intuition. There wasn’t much of an investigation on the local end, or from DC. I reviewed the files. An agent shined a flashlight around and asked personnel if anybody saw anything.”

  “Did he shout it down the hole?”

  “Probably. From where I’m sitting, that was all the circumstances justified.”

  “I intend to check the boxes and cross the t’s.”

  “A placebo for June Pruitt’s sake. You really are going soft. Proud of you.”

  “The police won’t listen to her and the last guy her brother hired didn’t get far.”

  He looked through me into some bleak distance.

  “Early on with the Bureau, I was assigned to a joint taskforce hunting for a serial killer on the Gulf Coast. The search had gone on for a while before I arrived and it went on and on after I was reassigned. Fifteen years of murders, disappearances, false leads, dead ends. The team filled a shipping container with reports, interviews, photographs, and small pieces of evidence collected from the death sites. People graduated from Quantico and joined the case, like me. Agents were reassigned, like me. Agents retired and bequeathed their notes to an ever-dwindling pool of investigators. Marriages, divorces, firings, heart attacks, strokes, suicides.”

  Bellow swallowed his drink in one go. Didn’t even shudder as it hit bottom.

  “You pursue a case for years; sludge through marshes, scoop bodies out of rivers, flatten your arches tracking down witnesses; your hair thins and your sanity does too. The faces of victims haunt your nightmares. Finally, a traffic cop in the Midwest pulls the perp over for a busted taillight and cracks it wide open. Instead of relief, you feel emptiness. Instead of elation, there’s a nagging sense of disappointment.”

  “The gist of that story being . . . ?”

  “I understand being the next man up. I understand your stubbornness. I understand irrationality. Chasing ghosts isn’t for people who want to stay in their right minds.”

  “Another round?” I said.

  “Sold,” he said.

  * * *

  ■■■

  I brought the drinks and we sipped and watched Lionel and the women shoot pool. The lady in the halter top touched her hair and laughed frequently. The blonde wore Lionel’s hat. They took turns chalking his cue and blowing off the excess dust. Meanwhile, the throng of bikers reminded me of a dormant volcano grumbling to life.

  “What made you decide to become a cop?” I said.

  Bellow held his glass and turned it in the dim light. Those ghosts he’d invoked swam beneath the surface of his skin, jostling for primacy, blending, then separating. His child self, young agent, family man, widow
er, jaded professional.

  “Ask what made me stay a cop.”

  “I’ll bite.”

  “It’s 1971, I’m at the breakfast table and my dad is reading the paper. I see a photo with a headline that doesn’t match until I get a chance to read the fine print later. A black-and-white media shot of convicted murderer Juan Corona. Owned a peach ranch in California. Maybe you never heard of him. He’s in a suit and tie. Cuffed, but the chain is almost slack. Grinning like a comedian. He’s clowning for reporters. A deputy sticks a hand in his short ribs, guiding him forward. The cop scowls in weary disgust, but Corona gobbles the attention as he does the cha-cha-cha toward the prison bus and a permanent stay at the crossbar hotel.

  “I study the photo and think he doesn’t look like a bad guy. Nah, he looks like my dad’s pal from work, a fella we called Uncle Jim. Jim swaggered into the family barbecue, several margaritas under his belt, and entertained the kids with a slapstick routine. That’s how Corona seemed in that photo. He murdered twenty-five people with a machete, did Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, Mr. Vaudeville, Mr. Psychopath. Itinerant laborers on the ol’ peach farm. Dig a hole, plant a tree. In college, I reacquainted myself with his lurid case history in a true-crime magazine. An inmate welcomed Corona to prison by stabbing him good and proper. Another disgruntled con gouged out Corona’s eye.”

  “Render unto Caesar,” I said.

  “Amen.”

  “Ted Bundy smiles in almost every photo. Every damned photo except that candid shot where he’s caught off guard, snarling like a carnivore.”

  “That bestial face is the last thing thirty-something women saw before they died,” he said. “Everybody in America used to know him on sight. He could’ve been on a trading card in a pack of bubblegum. Bundy, Gacy, Ramirez . . .”

  “Corona.”

  “Corona. Anymore, you invoke those names and you get a blank stare.”

  It bodes ill for a society to forget its monsters.