by John Saul
“But that’s what you told Judd Duval and Marty Templar,” Kitteridge pressed.
Amelie shrugged. “I warn’t feelin’ too good last night. I don’t remember what I said.”
Kitteridge sensed that he was on the verge of losing the woman entirely, and decided to change tactics. “But George was out last night?”
He could see Amelie relax a tiny bit. “He’s always out. Out fishin’, out drinkin’—don’t make no difference, long’s he ain’t here.”
There was a silence as the man in the boat and the woman on the porch eyed each other suspiciously. “Where is he now?” Kitteridge finally asked. “Did he come home last night?”
Amelie shook her head, and Kitteridge had the distinct impression that she would be just as happy if George Coulton never came home at all.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Amelie asked as if she’d read his mind. “You think I be lyin’, and it were George I found out there last night.”
Kitteridge said nothing, but met her gaze steadily.
“Okay,” she said. “Come on inside. I got a picture of George. You tell me if’n it’s the same man.”
Kitteridge climbed up onto the porch and followed Amelie into the shanty. Inside, though it barely seemed possible, the house was even more decrepit than outside. There was a tattered sofa covered with a worn blanket, and broken recliner. In one corner stood a splintering pine table and two more chairs. A wood stove filled another corner, and a makeshift counter had been built along the wall next to it. Through a door, he could see a second room, containing a bed frame on which lay a sagging mattress. There was no sign of a bathroom, and the police chief knew better than to ask about it. Here in the swamp there simply was no plumbing. Through an empty window frame he could see a lopsided outhouse, against which leaned a pile of traps. Well, at least he knew how George Coulton earned whatever money he made. Shaking his head at the poverty of the place, he turned around to find Amelie holding a picture. He studied it carefully, taking it out onto the porch to hold it in the sunlight.
It was a photograph of a couple, and the woman was clearly Amelie Coulton. The man next to her, a lean, gangling figure almost a foot taller than she, had the narrow face typical of the swamp, and empty eyes. His chin was covered with a stubble of beard, and a shotgun was cradled in the crook of his arm. His other arm was draped possessively over Amelie’s shoulder. Kitteridge flipped the picture over and read the scrawl on the other side: “Wedding day—me and George.” It was dated seven months earlier.
Kitteridge studied the picture again. Even allowing for the premature aging of the swamp rats, George Coulton couldn’t have been more than twenty-five when the photograph had been taken.
The man in the morgue had to have been at least eighty.
Silently, Kitteridge handed the picture back to Amelie, who had followed him out onto the porch. But as she reached out to take the snapshot from him, her face paled, her eyes widened, and her hand went to the great bulge in her belly. Unsteadily, she sank down onto the rocking chair.
“Oh, my,” she gasped as the sudden spasm of pain drained out of her. “I think mebbe it’s time.”
Kitteridge knew immediately what was happening. “Was that the first contraction?”
Amelie nodded. “I told George it was gettin’ close,” she said, her voice bitter.
Nice son of bitch, Kitteridge observed silently, thinking that if it had indeed been George Coulton whose body had been carried out of the swamp last night, at least he had found someone with a motive. But after talking to Amelie for a few minutes, he suspected killing Coulton would have been justified. When he spoke, though, he revealed none of his thoughts. “If you’re starting labor, we’d better get you into town. Do you have a suitcase packed?”
Amelie uttered a high-pitched, brittle laugh. “A suitcase? Ain’t nobody out here got one of them, an’ even if’n I did, ain’t nothin’ to put in it. All’s I got is—” Her words were choked off as another contraction seized her. When it had passed, she struggled to her feet.
Kitteridge helped her down the ladder to his boat and got her settled in the bow, then started the engine and cast off. But before he moved out into the channel, he glanced once more up at the house. “You sure you don’t need anything to take with you?” he asked.
Amelie laughed tightly again. “Like what? I ain’t even got a purse. Out here, nobody’s got nothin’. You’re born, you live awhile, and you die.” Her voice turned bitter. “Sometimes it seems like it’s the lucky ones that die young.”
As Kitteridge pulled away from the shanty, Amelie cocked her head and, for the first time, her eyes seemed to come alive. Kitteridge reflected that when George had married her—if, indeed, he really had—she must have been pretty.
Amelie laughed out loud, genuinely this time. “You’re lost, ain’t you?” she asked.
Kitteridge felt himself redden, but nodded. “How’d you know?”
“Easy,” she said. “You be goin’ the wrong way. Villejeune’s back there,” she went on, pointing past Kitteridge’s shoulder. “Not far, neither. Mebbe half a mile.” As he turned the boat around, she went on. “You take the main channel straight ahead, an’ cut through a little gap after the second island. Then bear left till you come to a big stump. After that, you can see the town.”
Ten minutes later they were there, and as they pulled up to the dock where Kitteridge had left his car, Amelie glanced nervously around, as if she expected someone to be waiting for her. Seeing him watching her, a veil dropped behind the young woman’s eyes and her lips twisted into a smile. “Thought he mighta been waitin’. He wanted me to birth the baby to home, but I won’t. Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ nothin’ happen to my baby.”
Kitteridge helped her out of the boat and led her up to the police car. Another contraction seized her just as she crept awkwardly into the passenger seat. “Take it easy,” he told her. “We’ll have you at the hospital in a couple of minutes.” Closing the door, he hurried around to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine. As he pulled away from the dock, Amelie turned to him, her face almost pretty as she managed a small smile. “Leastwise, it warn’t a complete waste of time, you comin’ out to my house today.”
Kitteridge smiled wryly. “But I still don’t know who the body is.”
Amelie shrugged. “You know who it ain’t,” she said. Her lips compressed once more into the bitter smile that seemed almost second nature to her. “Frankly, I was kinda hopin’ mebbe it were George. Leastways, if he was dead, I guess it’d be my house, wouldn’t it?”
Kitteridge shrugged noncommittally, not wanting to get involved in whatever domestic arrangement George and Amelie had evolved. But after less than an hour with Amelie, he was all but certain that there were no documents anywhere registering a marriage between them. Which, he suspected, was just the way George Coulton wanted it. As long as Amelie pleased him, fine. But if she didn’t, he could simply throw her out.
He pulled into the clinic parking lot, helped Amelie inside, and got her admitted. Promising to look in on her later, he left her in Jolene Mayhew’s care and started back to his office.
Dead end, he thought, as he began filling out the forms necessary to dispose of the body in the morgue.
Fingerprints had already been made, and before the body was interred, pictures would be taken and a dental chart prepared. But by this evening, before it could begin to rot in the heat and humidity, the nameless body would be in the Villejeune cemetery, laid to rest in one of the anonymous crypts owned by the village for just such purposes as this.
And yet, even as he set the bureaucratic wheels in motion, Tim Kitteridge couldn’t shake the feeling that the corpse was, indeed, George Coulton’s.
Once more he remembered the words Marty Templar had spoken that morning, as he’d been giving his own report of what had happened in the swamp last night: “You want to hear something really weird, Chief? The woman who found the body—Amelie Coulton—was talking abou
t someone called the Dark Man. Sounded like some kind of spook who came and took her husband away with him. Do you believe those people out there? They must be nuts!”
And he remembered the look on Amelie’s face when he himself had mentioned the Dark Man. Despite her claim not to remember what she’d said, he knew she was lying.
Lying, and frightened.
Amelie Coulton, he was sure, knew a lot more than she’d told him. But he was also sure, despite whatever motive she might have had, that she hadn’t killed the man from the swamp. Given the advanced state of her pregnancy, it seemed impossible for her to have attacked anyone.
No, someone else had killed him.
Someone he already suspected he would never find, given the refusal of all the swamp rats—except for Amelie—even to speak to him.
Yet Amelie knew something.
She had gone into the swamp alone, fully expecting to find the corpse of her husband. It wasn’t as if she’d simply stumbled upon the body and gone into a panic.
Making up his mind, he left his office and started back toward the hospital.
Amelie lay in bed, waiting for the next contraction to seize her. She was trying to keep track of how long it was between them, but she couldn’t concentrate.
She was still thinking about the police chief coming out to talk to her about George.
She knew he hadn’t quite believed her this afternoon—knew he suspected that the body she’d found last night was her husband, no matter what she’d said.
And what she’d told him hadn’t really been a lie, for until Clarey Lambert had appeared that morning to tell her that George wouldn’t be coming home again, even she hadn’t been certain the body was his. Indeed, Clarey herself had never quite said that it was.
Of course, when she’d looked into the lifeless eyes of the corpse in the water, she’d recognized George right away. It was the eyes—flat and dead. But when she’d finally been able to look at his face, instead of just his eyes, she hadn’t been so sure.
The man’s face had looked so old.
And George, when he’d left last night, hadn’t looked any different than he ever had. But he had looked scared.
So she’d gone off and found Judd Duval, which she probably shouldn’t have done at all.
What she should have done was just gone home, and never told a soul what she’d found. But she hadn’t, and then, when she’d come back with Judd and the other fellow, she’d seen the gaping wound in his chest.
Whether the body was George’s or not, she’d known what happened to him.
She shouldn’t have given herself away like that, talking about the Dark Man.
Still, the police chief hadn’t pushed her when she’d lied to him.
And, thank God, neither had Clarey Lambert.
This morning Clarey had rowed up and climbed onto the porch. Amelie knew right away why she’d come, so the old woman’s words hadn’t come as a surprise.
“George won’t be coming home no more,” Clarey had told her, easing her bulk into the rocking chair on the porch. She’d reached out and squeezed Amelie’s hand. “I don’t s’pose that’s the worst news you could’ve heard, is it?”
Amelie had said nothing, waiting for the real reason for Clarey’s visit. It hadn’t taken long for it to come. “I heard the people from town found a body last night,” she said, and Amelie was certain the old woman had deliberately not told her it was George. “So I figure they’ll come around askin’ everyone questions.” Her eyes had fixed on Amelie, two dark embers that felt like they were burning into Amelie’s very soul.
Amelie had thought quickly. If the old woman didn’t know it had been she herself who had led the police to the body, then she wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. “What you want me to do?” she’d carefully asked.
Clarey had been silent for a while, her tongue poking around in her mouth where her molars had once been. At last the old woman’s gaze had fixed on her again. “Don’t say nothin’. If they ask, you tell ’em George ain’t here and you don’t know where he be.” Amelie’s head had bobbed up and down, and Clarey heaved herself out of the chair. “They come around, don’t you say nothin’, you understand me?”
And she hadn’t said anything, not really.
She’d said only as much as she had to, and denied that the body she’d found was George’s.
Another contraction wrenched Amelie’s body, and she clamped her eyes closed in an attempt to shut away the pain. A few seconds later, as the pain began to ease, she opened her eyes again.
And froze.
Standing a few feet from the bed, framed by the doorway, was Tim Kitteridge. Instinctively, she turned her head away, but the police chief came and sat down by the bed, taking her hand.
“It was George you found last night, wasn’t it?” he asked.
Amelie tried to pull her hand away. “You got no business comin’ in here.”
Kitteridge’s grip tightened. “I need to know, Amelie. Was it George? Do you know what happened to him?”
Amelie’s eyes darted around, searching for help; but of course she found none. Another contraction seized her. When it finally subsided, she felt exhausted, too tired to defend herself against his question. “Maybe it were,” she breathed. “But I didn’t do nothin’ to him. An’ I cain’t even swear it were him. He didn’t look nothin’ at all like George. George warn’t old.”
“All right, Amelie. I won’t argue with you about that anymore. But do you know what happened to him?”
Amelie’s jaw set stubbornly, and Kitteridge felt her shudder under his touch. Now, in the face of her obvious fear, he repeated back to her once more the words she herself had spoken to Marty Templar the night before. “What did you mean, Amelie? Who is this Dark Man?”
Her face draining of color, Amelie shrank back into her pillow. “Don’t ask me,” she pleaded. “If you’re gonna ask anyone, ask Clarey Lambert. Or Jonas!”
“Jonas?” Kitteridge repeated. “Who’s Jonas?”
“He’s one of ’em,” Amelie breathed. “Just like George was.”
Kitteridge reached out to take Amelie’s hand, but she snatched it away. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Amelie,” the police chief told her. “What are they?”
Amelie gazed bleakly at him. “Dead,” she breathed. “They be the Dark Man’s children, and they all be dead!”
8
“This is pretty,” Kelly said, stretching languidly on the thick mat of grass that spread across the deserted picnic ground. They were twenty miles away from Villejeune, and they’d just finished the lunch they’d bought at a little store-and-bait shop that was all but hidden in the wilderness five miles away. When Michael had turned into the narrow lane leading to the picnic ground, Kelly had wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have come at all—the place was deserted, and she had the creepy feeling that if something happened to her, nobody would find her for years. But when she’d seen the pond that had been dredged out of the lagoon, and the sandy beach that edged it, she’d changed her mind.
“How come nobody ever comes here?” she asked now.
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know—I guess most people don’t like the swamp, and hardly anyone even knows about this place. Since I got the bike, I’ve been coming here a lot, and I’ve never seen anyone else.”
Kelly fell silent for a moment, then grinned mischievously. “Want to go for a swim?”
Michael cocked his head, wondering if she was kidding. “We didn’t bring any bathing suits.”
“So? Haven’t you ever heard of skinny dipping? You said no one ever comes out here, didn’t you?”
As Michael’s face turned scarlet, Kelly wished she hadn’t suggested the idea, even though she herself had intended to back out if Michael took her up on it. “I was just kidding,” she said quickly. “I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”
Michael gazed curiously at her. He still wasn’t used to the way she looked, and when she’d suggested taking off the
ir clothes and going into the pond, he’d been certain she meant it. “Did your friends in Atlanta go skinny dipping?”
Kelly started to tell him that of course they did, but then found herself telling him the truth instead. “I—I didn’t really have any friends in Atlanta. There were some kids I hung out with, but I hardly even knew them. You know what I mean? I always felt like …” Her voice trailed off, and there was a silence for a moment before Michael, his eyes fixed on the ground a few feet away, finished the thought for her.
“… like you were different from them? Like they were sort of all together, but you weren’t part of the group?”
Kelly stared at him. “How did you know?”
“ ’Cause that’s the way I always feel, too.” For some reason he didn’t quite understand, he felt that Kelly would know exactly what he meant, even though he’d never talked about the strange emptiness inside him before. “I always feel like everyone else knows something I don’t know, like there’s part of me missing.”
“But that’s the way I feel, too,” Kelly breathed. “It’s been that way ever since I can remember. I’ve always felt like there’s something wrong with me, you know? Like I can’t—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “ … like I can’t connect with other people.”
Michael said nothing for a few minutes, as he sorted out her words, examining them carefully. That was exactly how he’d always felt, too—as if he was missing some connection with everyone else.
Except in the swamp. When he was out there, all by himself, he sometimes felt that he wasn’t alone after all, that somewhere very close to him there were people who understood him. But he’d never seen or met anyone during his wanderings, and he’d finally decided the idea was crazy, that he was only trying to deny his own loneliness.
Now, sitting here with Kelly Anderson, he didn’t feel alone at all. Despite her pink hair, black clothes, and the weird jewelry covering her ears and wrists, he felt as though he was with someone who truly understood him.