Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

  ‘No way,’ he said now, deleting her number.

  No way was he ever going to help anyone write another word about him and demolish what little was left of his life.

  The beep of new mail on his laptop cut off his bitter thoughts.

  He opened it.

  From: Reaper at Whirlwind

  We know all about pain and bitterness. We understand isolation.

  But the time has come for us to help one another.

  Wouldn’t you like friends to lean on, Michael Rider?

  Whirlwind wants you to join us.

  Whirlwind needs you.

  ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’

  Hosea, chapter 8, verse 7.

  He went on staring at the message for a while.

  Other words abruptly coming back to him – those he’d found on his desktop after his stolen laptop had been returned. Yours, I believe.

  That possible connection had not occurred to him when he’d received the first of these emails from ‘Reaper at Whirlwind’, but suddenly it seemed more than probable.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said angrily.

  He stabbed at the junk key, and the message vanished.

  But its words lingered.

  Along with that intrusive use of his name again. Right after Liza Plain digging into his privacy – and might she be the sender?

  ‘No way.’

  He might have been pissed at her for letting him down years ago and later for just being a journalist, and he was mad at her again now for hunting him down, but if he was honest, he still remembered how much he’d liked her, that he’d been intensely attracted to those clear blue eyes and petite, curvy body – and most of all her ease with the kids. She’d been relaxed around them, there’d been no fakery.

  Whatever this was had nothing to do with her.

  ‘Reaper.’

  Maybe – probably – it was the same person who’d stolen his computer, trying to get into his head for fuck-knew what reason, and he’d had enough of jerks screwing around with him.

  Only one way to try and find out who this was.

  He went into his junk folder and opened the email up again.

  Clicked Reply, and typed: I’m interested in learning more about Whirlwind.

  He held back one more moment, then clicked Send.

  Gone.

  SEVENTEEN

  At around eleven a.m. on December 3, the man known by some as Reaper emerged from the walk-in doctor’s office in the strip mall on Shiloh Road and went next door into the drugstore. It was cold and damp, and he moved slowly, a little shakily, needing his cane badly, his face gray with pain.

  Inside, the store was quiet, the pharmacist obliging and kindly, directing Reaper to a chair, dispensing two pills within minutes along with a plastic cup of water, advising him to rest until the remainder of the drugs were ready.

  ‘You should eat something,’ the man said after Reaper had paid him. ‘You need to keep up your strength.’

  ‘That I do,’ Reaper said.

  ‘Jack’s, two doors away, is pretty good,’ the pharmacist told him. ‘The special’s always the best, if you’ve the appetite, but most things are fine.’

  Reaper thanked him, took his advice, found a table near the back of the small diner and ordered a turkey sandwich, because that usually seemed to sit well with him, and because the pharmacist had been correct.

  No time for weakness now.

  Places to go.

  Shiloh, to be precise.

  Where, having parked his rented Ford Focus on Elm Street, he was now taking a walk, and the medication and food had helped, or perhaps, it occurred to him, he felt stronger, almost invigorated, simply by being here at last.

  Before long, dusk would fall and lamps indoors would be turned on, but for now, on this early December afternoon, the sun still shone out of an almost clear sky, and there was an air of relaxation about the place.

  It never changed much. The shops changed hands now and then, and parking restrictions grew tougher, same as in most places. The Shiloh Inn stood, part white clapboard, part old red stone, on the site where, as attested to by a plaque on a side wall, the elementary school had once stood, a handful of people sitting out in the inn’s pretty yard despite the cold, smoking. A few tourists roamed up and down Main Street, snapping each other with their phones, and Reaper walked too, taking it slowly, glancing in at an antique store, looking at the pastel-painted narrow town houses, moving toward the far end of Main Street, to St Matthew’s Church.

  Nothing special about him to attract attention. Just a tall, thin, gray-haired man with a slight stoop and a polished black cane, walking up the steps to the church’s main entrance, holding the heavy door open to allow a woman to enter before him.

  And going inside.

  EIGHTEEN

  1995

  The woman he’d abducted earlier from Christ’s Church on Farnum Pike, a pretty green road near the village of Primrose, close to the town of North Smithfield in Providence County, had worn a clergy blouse, and was more than probably the Reverend Laura Farrow, associate rector of the church, though there had been no opportunity for introduction before he had choked her into unconsciousness with the black tippet he’d spied hanging in the vestry, where she had been engrossed in writing what might have become her next sermon.

  She should, by now, have been dead, ready to join the others below, her grave already dug, but she was not quite gone, and he found himself glad of that.

  Glad she was not yet quite extinguished.

  Because it meant he had to finish her.

  Do it again.

  Kill her again.

  The hunger was already rising, a beast devouring him from the inside.

  No beast, he knew that, even now, in the heat of it. All him.

  The woman was watching him through her one undamaged eye, the rest of her face too destroyed to allow speech, though grotesque, bubbling sounds were emerging through the bloodied, swollen flesh and splintered bones. Sounds of suffering and of appeal.

  The eye, glinting in the light of the candles that he had lit to see the grave, knew that there would be no help, no stay of execution, and maybe, he thought, the appeal was not her plea for life, but for death.

  ‘Finish me,’ the eye said.

  So he did.

  NINETEEN

  2014

  There were times when it was hard not to believe in fate.

  If Liza had brought a cup of coffee to Nancy Schön’s Make Way for Ducklings bronze statues on a warm summer’s day, it would have seemed far less coincidental, because so many people were drawn to that popular spot in the Boston Public Garden each year. But this was December 4, and the weather had turned cloudy, threatening rain, and Liza had come here simply because she felt in need of something to boost her spirits.

  And there he was. Michael Rider sitting cross-legged on the grass nearby, apparently lost in thought, looking at the sculptures but not really seeing, she thought.

  Not seeing her either, which was presumably how she’d managed to get so close.

  ‘Michael?’

  He looked up, startled, brown eyes dark with anger. ‘Liza.’

  ‘I’m not stalking you,’ she said quickly, lightly.

  ‘Just a lucky strike, right?’ He stood up. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Couldn’t we talk?’ she asked.

  He was already moving away but she wasn’t letting him go, walking beside him.

  ‘We have nothing to talk about.’ He increased his pace. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  ‘I’d really like to talk about what happened to you in 2003.’

  He made an impatient sound then carried on walking, and at closer quarters than last time he didn’t look exactly shabby, just worn down and mad at the world, certainly at her.

  ‘After I read about that, I wrote to you,’ she said, ‘but the letter came back, so I gave up.’

  ‘I didn’t receive a letter.’

  ‘I wanted
to help.’

  ‘You couldn’t have.’ He kept moving. ‘Would you please stop following me.’

  ‘I will.’ Liza was still alongside him. ‘Only I was just so sorry, hearing that your mother had died.’

  He stopped abruptly, wheeled around, his face furious. ‘Write one word about my mother, and I’ll—’ He stopped and turned, strode away.

  Momentarily thrown, Liza stood still, then hurried after him.

  ‘Is that what you wanted?’ Michael asked. ‘More violence from the killer’s psycho grandson?’ He ground to a halt again. ‘You know, I did like you back then, up at Walden Pond, and I really believed you were going to write something worthwhile. And maybe it wasn’t your fault that you didn’t, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to start talking to you now, any more than I would to any other journalist.’

  He began walking again, a little more slowly, and Liza stayed with him.

  ‘I don’t work for gutter press, Michael,’ she said. ‘I don’t actually work for any newspaper right now.’

  ‘And you figure a story about a loser like me might help you change that.’

  ‘I don’t see you that way.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn how you see me.’

  ‘I just want to understand what really happened to you.’

  ‘And I just want to be left in peace,’ Michael said. ‘Is that so hard for you to comprehend? Is your skin really so thick?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but—’

  He stopped again. ‘No buts. No more talk. Not one more word.’

  Finally, she knew she’d lost him. Had never had him.

  ‘Got that?’ he said, wearily.

  She nodded.

  ‘Got it?’ he repeated.

  ‘Loud and clear,’ she said.

  Without another word, Michael walked on.

  This time, Liza stayed put.

  TWENTY

  2005

  It had been a long time.

  The hiatus not by choice.

  The Messenger had been very patient. Opportunities hard – impossible – to come by.

  Patience finally rewarded.

  Hope Church near Harmony was small, yet aesthetically pleasing, white and clean, with three attractive stained-glass windows of contemporary design, a triptych worthy of a grander church.

  One of the windows was under repair of some kind this evening.

  Someone up a ladder inside, visible through the cross in the center section.

  Lights already out, he killed the engine, coasted down the slope to the rear of the church, quietly pulled up the handbrake, got out and opened the tailgate, then walked around to the front and went silently inside.

  Not so much as a squeak from the door.

  And no one else in there.

  No need for the Messenger to tell him what to do.

  It had been so long, and he was hungry for it, and here it was, like an invitation.

  He approached the foot of the ladder.

  The man at work on the stained glass was young, listening to music through ear phones, immersed in his intricate labor.

  ‘As the shaking of an olive tree,’ the Messenger quoted from Isaiah inside the head of the man standing below.

  Not one to tolerate being left out, the Messenger.

  No tree here, just a ladder.

  So he shook that instead.

  TWENTY-ONE

  2014

  Until today, seven days after his last encounter with Liza Plain, Michael had been having a fair week. Volunteer ushering at the Harvard Film Archive one evening, same gig at the Tate Museum of Fine Art for three, and that was the one he’d been hoping for, because the TMFA liked long-term commitment, so maybe it might lead someplace, and though Michael was the oldest usher in the museum, his line manager seemed to like him, and he guessed he’d been rubbing along pretty well with the visitors. And so, yes, this week he had been almost happy …

  And then there they were.

  Edward and Julie Parks.

  The architects of the beginning of his ruin, and the wreckers of his last attempt at rehab. Here again now, eighteen months later, their stares furious enough to make him aware that he was finished at the Tate before he’d really begun.

  His line manager was embarrassed and apologetic.

  ‘They’re generous patrons, Michael,’ he told him. ‘I know it’s unfair, but we have no choice but to let you go.’

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ Michael told him.

  Beyond disconsolate, he left the museum and walked home, hoping the exercise might help him burn off some of the anger, considering stopping at a bar and getting hammered, knowing it wouldn’t really help his blues; besides which, he couldn’t afford it.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ he muttered, still walking, wishing his mind would just stop, wishing he would stop, because he’d been screwed yet again, and how much more could a man take?

  Back in his room, legs aching, he put the kettle on the stove to make coffee, then turned on the laptop.

  And there it was.

  From: Reaper at Whirlwind

  If there was a way of proving to the world that Donald Cromwell did not murder Alice Millicent, would you take it? If there was a way to avenge the destruction of your family and the theft of your personal happiness, would you take that?

  ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’

  Hosea, chapter 8, verse 7.

  The shock was profound. Anger flaring first, familiar and sickening, before it dissipated and his legs turned to jelly and he had to sit down, trying to make sense of the new, unanticipated burst of longing suddenly overwhelming him.

  This was insane. He needed to delete it, from the PC and from his mind.

  But Emily’s face was suddenly right there, and his awareness of the ruination of her childhood, about her struggles rather than his own, and none of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for the murder, and what if his grandfather had been innocent – as she’d believed – and what if this ‘Reaper’ was someone who really could help him prove that?

  His hand moved to the trackball and hovered.

  ‘Crazy,’ he said.

  Don’t go there, his rational mind told him.

  Michael ignored it.

  He moved the cursor onto Reply and tapped out his answer.

  One word.

  Yes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Seated in the comfortable armchair in his wood-paneled room at the Red Door Inn in Woonsocket, Reaper nodded, satisfied.

  This place was a gift to himself. A night or two of real comfort while preparations continued. There’d been too many nights of discomfort and ugliness, years of endurance, then of making ends meet while he worked things out. Life in a trailer, for a time, though that had made his chest worse, and he’d known he had to survive a while longer.

  The Ford rental had been exchanged for a Volvo XC70. The right car for the job, whatever the weather, he’d been assured.

  His short home movie already prerecorded, only his voiceover to add.

  No script needed. Just a tumbler of malt whisky – strictly proscribed by the last doctor he’d seen before the man on Shiloh Road a week ago.

  No more doctors for him now, ever, if he had his way.

  The movie was on his screen, ready to run, first clip selected, voiceover primed.

  Shiloh Village in the fall. Nature rendering it pretty as a picture.

  As deceptive as some of its inhabitants.

  He began to speak into the built-in microphone.

  ‘I present you with some of the citizens of Shiloh. All of them witnesses for the prosecution against the then town council president, Donald T. Cromwell.’

  Second clip of a white-haired elderly man emerging from a clapboard house.

  ‘Seth Glover. Owner of the local food market at the time, and the only eye witness to the abduction, who testified to having seen Alice Millicent climbing into Cromwell’s Cadillac Seville. Glover’s retired now, but
his son Adam has expanded the old business …’

  A shot of a store on a busy main street: Glover’s of Greenville.

  ‘… into one of the finest markets in Providence County.’

  Cut back to Seth Glover, walking down his pathway.

  ‘Seth’s a grandfather, but he still lives in his old Shiloh house, in an add-on built by Adam and Claire, his daughter-in-law.’

  The next clip was of another man of similar years, well-dressed, gray-haired and paunchy, walking into the Shiloh Inn, once the school.

  ‘John Tilden, formerly of Tilden’s restaurant, now the proprietor of the village inn, who made remarks during the trial about the councilor’s womanizing habits. The defense objected and the judge sustained. Tilden’s eighty now, but doesn’t he look fit and prosperous? He lost his first two wives, but then he married Eleanor.’

  The movie cut to the bar at the Shiloh Inn, to a strong, vigorous-looking blonde woman in her mid-sixties, pouring drinks for customers.

  ‘Ellie used to run her own café, but now she pretty much rules the inn and their marriage, and I’ve heard it said that she’s cut her husband’s drink tab in half.’

  Reaper froze the frame and reached for his own glass. The whisky burned as it went down, but he relished it anyway, wanted it – and other motivations aside, wasn’t all this ultimately about what he wanted?

  He replaced the glass, began to cough, and opened the small bottle of water standing beside the whisky, drank a little, fought to try to prevent the cough from having its way, felt it settle, then threaten again.

  ‘No,’ he told it, and it subsided.

  He restarted the movie.

  Another clip: a third elderly, tall man climbing slowly out of the passenger seat of a Chevy.

  ‘Dr Stephen Plain. Answers given by the now-retired doctor to the prosecution’s loaded questions concerning Cromwell’s “inappropriate closeness” to Emily, his own daughter, raised furious objections by the defense. They were the last pieces of testimony heard by the accused before he took his own life.’

  Reaper paused to cough again, took another sip of water, then forged on.