Worse Angels

by Laird Barron

Fortune favors the bold. Fortune also favors the prepared. Lionel and I were both. We’d studied maps of a small area north of Horseheads and toured several roads earlier that day. Marking bridges, turnoffs, blind curves, and the like; scoping the possibilities. This encounter could’ve unfolded along any number of trajectories. So far, it was breaking our way.

  I made it a shade over a mile before I realized my arm was leaking. Suit fabric had shredded. Muscle was gashed deep where dear sweet Nancy had latched on. The wound pulsed blood with every beat of my heart. I yanked off my tie and used my teeth to cinch it around my arm as a tourniquet. The Monte Carlo slewed all over the road as I made the emergency repairs.

  Meanwhile, the Mercury zoomed up, high beams blaring. Ichabod drove like a maniac to catch me, and now he attempted to pass on the outside lane. The predictable offensive moves would be to either force me into the ditch or zip ahead and block my path. I swerved across the line and cut him off twice. Each time, he dropped back, regrouped, then gunned the engine for another run. On the third attempt, I hit the brakes and roared down an off-ramp into a maze of country roads.

  Winding, narrow, generally deserted. Ichabod closed the gap, tailgated, eased off, faked passing, eased off, and repeated the cycle, headlights splashing my mirrors. The Monte Carlo was beefed up and it handled well, but Ichabod was a better driver, no contest. Barring divine intervention, he would’ve eventually prevailed and crashed me.

  Thumping across a girder bridge, I clicked the two-way.

  “Ten seconds.”

  We climbed a long grade and then were hauling ass through broken terrain. My pursuer pressed more aggressively. I doubt Ichabod or his homies noticed Lionel ease out from a dirt road as we roared by. Same stealthy maneuver cops use to nail speeders. His van would be running dark, slightly beyond the range of the Mercury’s taillights.

  Ichabod knew the landscape better than I did. For example, he was probably familiar with the T in the road a few hundred yards ahead. That fact didn’t save him. I waited until the last possible moment, braked, and turned left. It was ugly and I would’ve sworn to cornering on two wheels. I made it and that’s what goes into the record book.

  Ichabod coasted to the intersection. No hurry; after the past few miles of sparring, he would be confident that he could catch me at will. I whipped over onto the edge of the road and turned my head precisely as Lionel, still running dark, rear-ended the Mercury. The collision produced a metallic crunch as the van’s reinforced bumper and battering ram of a winch mount burst the Mercury’s trunk. The car was shoved through the intersection, sparks pinwheeling from where its front end scraped asphalt. It plowed over the embankment, ricocheted off a tree, and vanished. Not quite a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot drop into a ravine. Really damned steep, though. We’d paced it that afternoon and decided the killing descent would suffice. I’d estimate the Mercury performed two or three endos before pancaking in a shallow creek among some rocks.

  The van sat crossways in the center of the intersection. Headlights blinked on as it reversed, then rolled forward and parked, angled in my direction. Lionel, dressed in coveralls and a ski mask, emerged and waved. He carried an automatic rifle in his other hand.

  “Going to verify casualties,” he said over the radio. “Rendezvous at Farmer Brown’s in a bit?”

  I double-clicked, put the Monte Carlo into gear, and proceeded with the itinerary.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The farmhouse Lenny Herzog had told me about lay well up in the hills. I parked beside a blank mailbox. I didn’t know who owned the place, only who I hoped to find in the lair. Fallow pastures and thick copses of trees. Private, although not far from a heavily traveled road. The house was a homely panel-and-timber construction enslaved to rural agrarian traditions of the last century. Empty pens, empty barn; every structure collapsing. On this ground, generations of men had slaughtered sheep and cows. Chopped chickens in the neck. Gelded horses. A place of feeding and dying. Its vibe rivaled that of the infamous Kingston Murder House. Human bones rested beneath the potato patch. Always room for one more.

  My woozy brain gradually sobered. I busted into the first aid kit and did what I could as quickly as I could. Alcohol, gauze bandages, and twenty yards of tape stabilized the bleeding. I bound my arm like a mummy, downed a few aspirin, and declared it a fix. Should I wait for Lionel? Yes. I didn’t.

  It was a beautiful night to be on dire business. North and east, a bulwark of raw, primeval darkness held sway, and it enforced a zone of scarcely fathomable stillness that, for several moments, reeled my listening soul back to an epoch when a single mighty forest blanketed the mountains and the plains. Birds of prey glided silent as death; wolf packs yipped warnings to their rivals; a breeze rustled the canopy. During that misty stretch of prehistory, men wisely hid themselves after sunset. My soul strained to decipher the message of this beckoning quiet. The jawbone knife on my hip knew it well, had persisted through eons along an axis of immutable blood. Wild animals were yet animals in this digital age. Only we tool-making primates had radically evolved, and, for our pains, edged an inch or two nearer annihilation every day.

  Significant blood loss and the presence of death elicits my maudlin tendencies.

  Light shone from a porch window, revealing a station wagon. I walked along the driveway, sticking to the shadows. Once I got close, I saw a woman in a sweater moving around inside. Her hair was long and blond. No dogs. She was alone. The doorknob turned, so I walked in.

  Linda Flanagan froze. Very surprised and very afraid. Hey, if I saw me coming into the room unannounced, blood spattered, at night, in the woods, I wouldn’t have liked it either.

  She sat on a couch near the fireplace when I asked her to. The interior lived down to my expectations: a main room sparsely decorated with dusty furniture, tube TV, and no phone. The kitchen was several feet of counter and stove space against the wall. A narrow staircase led to the second floor. Grimy windows. Lamps in the front and rear corners provided illumination. The air was strong with the odor of unwashed bodies and spoiled meat.

  I introduced myself twice. She calmed down as it became apparent that I wasn’t necessarily there to murder her. She mentioned Danny was out with a friend; they were certain to return at any moment. Liquored to the gills and heavily armed too.

  “Been back to Healdsburg since the fire?” I said. “Or is the boondocks version of Castle Dracula your new home?”

  Linda was tan, athletic, and vigorous in the photos. Haggard now. Bloodshot eyes and matted hair. Shoeless, dirty feet. Her arms were sinewy and tough, though. I’d have to hit her fairly hard if she panicked and tried to bust a move.

  “Yes, I have. The house stands,” she said. “The trees were singed. You were there?”

  “Looking for you. But just to talk. It’s about Sean.”

  “I—would you care for tea?”

  “Relax, I’ve got it.”

  I went to the gas stove, one eye on her as I opened cupboards. I found instant coffee, a box of tea, and a .41 revolver hanging from a hook inside a cabinet. I pocketed the bullets and hung it again. She watched me get a kettle boiling on the stove. She then watched me dither, rearranging items, handling them as if I were the Farmhouse Pantry Inspector. Pretty soon we had steaming cups of tea.

  I sat opposite her in a rocker with my back to the hearth.

  “Aren’t you afraid of bumping into June Pruitt? She’s only a few miles away.”

  “What for?” Linda said. She was cooler now that she’d gotten her feet under her.

  “It might be uncomfortable. I don’t know.”

  She coughed dryly.

  “This is another world, Mr. Coleridge.”

  I sipped the tea; gave it a moment, then started in on her.

  “Sean behaved erratically over the last few months of his life, didn’t he?”

  “He was argumentative.”

  �
�Forgetful?”

  “His depression was exacerbated by stress. He could be extremely scatterbrained.”

  I set Sean’s ring and the photo of him and Linda on the coffee table.

  Linda’s face softened.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “Who’s Rita?”

  “I—” She examined the back of the photo. Her brow furrowed.

  “Rita was a golden retriever,” I said. “His dog in high school. This caused me to go over my interview notes with his coworkers, to call a few back and probe for anecdotes.”

  “You’re right. I totally forgot Rita. He used to cry over her on her birthday.”

  I’d watched a video of Sean as a child. Backyard barbecue; shaggy golden dog and the boy romping in the grass, Dr. Pruitt blasting them with a garden hose. The home video camera operator followed Rita’s exploits. She jumped into the pool, causing a ruckus. She stole a piece of cake off the picnic table and ran away with a slobbery grin. More ruckus. More shouts of, Rita! No! Bad dog! Rita didn’t mind; she got the cake.

  “Signing the photo that way,” Linda said. “Sean was confused, very confused, toward the final weeks of his life. More than I realized. We weren’t speaking much. And when we did, we were really only yelling past each other.”

  “I’m confused too. Was sleeping with Danny Buckhalter a fringe benefit of that generous insurance settlement?”

  Her eyes widened and became teary. She dabbed them with her wrist.

  “God, people talk.”

  “People talk in towns like Horseheads. People really talk in hamlets like Morrow. People flap their tongues like ceiling fans when they’re living cheek by jowl in construction camps. Nobody in authority asked those questions. But I did. A neighbor saw you and Buckhalter sharing a milkshake with two straws at the soda shop. The cleaning lady spotted you slow-dancing at a club. His car was parked outside your house while Sean was at work. Whatever, you got made. Classic.”

  The truth was, I’d decided to run a bluff and see how it went. This was her opportunity to deny, to retort with righteous outrage, or to flee the interview. The moment stretched. She exhaled four years of tension.

  “I loved Sean. We had issues. I fucked Danny because I needed someone to fuck.”

  “Past tense? Isn’t this his home? The stars seem to have aligned for you two. Melts my cynical heart to see a hardworking country boy get the girl and the cash.”

  “Are you implying that I seduced him to harm my husband in a money scheme?” There was more weariness than anger in her voice.

  “That would be the path of least resistance. When in doubt, look to the spouse. I’m suggesting Danny Buckhalter seduced both of you. Manipulating Sean was always the main goal. He was the chosen one. The ninth of nine.”

  “Chosen?” she said. The furrow in her brow reappeared.

  I did my damnedest to summon the literary specters of Holmes and Mason; Poirot and Fletcher.

  “Were you aware that nine deaths occurred at the Jeffers site over an eleven-year span?”

  She shrugged.

  “Yes, vaguely. I worried for Sean, so I tried not to focus on the hazards.”

  “All were attributed to human frailty or acts of God. A trench collapse and a small explosion took out five. Another worker was struck and killed by a car. Somebody was electrocuted. Another guy fell down a shaft. Sean jumped. So they say.”

  Her expression vacillated between puzzlement and extremely wary puzzlement.

  “Construction is dicey,” I said. “Dams, tunnels, nuclear reactors, atom smashers, are high-fucking-risk business, to put it in the vernacular of a buddy of mine. Badja Adeyemi also said something I can’t shake. He said the collider was constructed in reverence to blood, not science.”

  “Badja is a devil,” she said with a not unreasonable trace of fear. She sipped tea and immediately broke into a hacking cough that went on longer than it should’ve.

  I was implacable.

  “Nine deaths, including Sean. My darker nature whispered of a pattern. That less chivalrous part of me knows without reservation what happened to your husband. Because the pieces were right there, waiting to assemble their ugly picture. See, there’s a historical precedent. The colonial expedition that first explored the caverns beneath the Jeffers site numbered twelve. Nine died in the caverns. Died or disappeared. Two and a half centuries later, nine workers perished during the construction project. What an amazing coincidence!”

  “Okay,” she said, drawing it out.

  “Sean was friendly with a group in Horseheads,” I said to change gears. “A society or club, if you will, called the Mares of Thrace.”

  Her eyes flickered the way an amateur card-counter’s will when she’s doing the math.

  “Sean mentioned a clique.”

  “And what a clique! The Mares of Thrace are animists dedicated to the genius loci of the Valley of the Horses’ Heads. They’re a blood cult. Live longer, live better through murder. Add a dash of UFO-ology, and we’ve got real winners on our hands. Too melodramatic?”

  “It’s melodramatic,” she said.

  “Christians subscribe to a risen lord and foist original sin on a serpent talking some chick into biting a magic apple. For some reason, that’s mainstream.”

  “I don’t quite know how to respond. What do you want me to say?”

  “You never interacted with the Mares?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Danny B and his cronies weren’t interested in your husband as a friend. Sean was marked for death. That’s my theory. It gets worse. What if Sean was only the last in line? What if some, or all, of those accidents at the Jeffers site were orchestrated? Ritual sacrifices. Same as the Aztec priests and the Celtic druids. A lunatic’s notion of consecration.”

  She laughed in a short, harsh burst of incredulousness.

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Craziest motive for murder I’ve ever run across. Yet, here we are. Nothing new when it comes to innocent folks paying for the insanity of a grasping few.” I nodded at Sean’s ring on the table. “I’ve struggled with why he stashed these sacred items in a floor vent at his buddies’ apartment prior to his death. He was disoriented and brainwashed. A part of him clung desperately to sanity. The part that realized he’d gone down the path of no return. I spoke with a medical professional who provided an off-the-record diagnosis. Sean exhibited signs of early-onset dementia. There’s another explanation. A person who consumes quantities of tainted animal matter—rotten meat, for example—is at risk of contracting blood-borne illnesses. His autopsy didn’t screen for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, but I’d bet my bottom dollar he had mad cow disease, or a related virus. Slow, insidious, and terminal.”

  Linda massaged her forehead.

  “No.”

  “I strongly believe your husband intended to join a secret society. The night he died was to be his initiation. He came to that pit of his own free will, a supplicant seeking transformation. The Mares prefer the stench of black blood and green meat, but the sacred offering to the spirit of the Valley had to be pure. So, Sean was cleansed and anointed with oil and dressed in linen garments. He was escorted to Shaft 40 in the dead of night and thrown in. Danny Buckhalter and the others deceived him. They stole his life.”

  Linda covered her mouth and coughed that dry, ratcheting cough while I spoke. She lowered her hand.

  “Mr. Coleridge, I don’t know much. Except colors. I can wax rhapsodic about color theory. Hue and texture. The joys of and dangers of saturation. Value, tone, and mood. The color of genius. Of sorrow. Fury. Your color isn’t pleasant. You’re a mess.”

  “Linda, we’re both a mess. Have you done a spit check lately?”

  Over the course of my grilling, her features had sunk in exhaustion and beleaguerment. She was made of stern stuff, though. She glared and dug deep t
o fight back.

  “Detectives don’t solve this kind of case.”

  “We don’t?”

  “Detectives hunt down lost kittens and deadbeat dads. Detectives shoot pictures of cheating spouses in flagrante delicto.”

  “Oh, no, lady,” I said. “That’s what I do on a good day. Tonight, I’m not that kind of detective. Not to say I don’t empathize with your predicament. I’d bet my bottom dollar the insurance money is mostly spent and you don’t want to hear how you, perhaps unwittingly, contributed to a murder. Who would? Bad news is, there’s always something worse. I’ve got worse.”

  The glint of righteous anger kindling in her eyes made me thankful she didn’t have a weapon within reach.

  “June and Badja are behind this, aren’t they? That harpy won’t accept anything less than a villain’s head on a plate.”

  “One could make the argument it’s the least you and your boyfriend owe the lady.” I glanced at my watch. I fervently hoped Lionel would signal he was on the property. My earbud remained silent.

  “Oh, fuck her, and fuck you too,” she said. “This is ridiculous.”

  Teatime was over.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Oh Danny boy, the pipes are calling.” I said it conversationally, unholstering my .357 and resting it on my knee.

  An older man in gray long johns finished creeping down the stairs. Didn’t so much as squeak a board. Danny Buckhalter in the flesh. I’d surmised from the station wagon, and the occasional upward flick of her glances, that he lay in wait. The case I’d presented to Linda was as much for his consumption as hers.

  Buckhalter, or Slick, as I’d come to think of him after our brief encounters, stopped when he reached the foot of the staircase. Same ducktail haircut I remembered. Brutishly handsome. Unshaven. Lean with rough hands. I didn’t like the odd, segmented motion with which he’d descended the stairs, nor how he stood at the bottom, tipped forward the way some predatory insects do before they leap. I wondered if I’d made a mistake.