by J. A. Kerley
She jumped up and glanced through the window, then turned to me. “I don’t know what the fuck a rod holder looks like; tubular things like pipes?” She looked outside again, seemed to relax, the visual input matching what she’d been told. “He looks restless, about to leave. Guess this is one client you’ll have to miss, Ryder. The one that got away.”
She laughed, walked past me, slashed the knife an inch above my eyes, and went back to the kitchen.
Jacob Willow climbed into his truck, slipped the key into the ignition. He had a while to go before the ferry headed to Fort Morgan, maybe take a tour of the Estuarium at the Sea Lab, it’d been a few years. Make a drive-by after that, see if Ryder was here. Best leave a note. Willow grabbed a pad and pen from the glovebox.
I was here at 3.00. I’m as worked up as you are. Might check out the Sea Lab until the next ferry. Take ten seconds Ryder and CALL AND TELL ME WHAT’S HAPPENING!!!
Sincerely,
J Willow
He tried to jam the note between Ryder’s door and frame at eye height. The seal was too tight. Willow grabbed the doorknob and pushed, trying to put a little space between them. To his surprise, the knob turned. Willow gave it another quarter turn. The door opened.
Ryder had left his house unlocked. Willow pressed the door inward six inches, peeked into the cool house, scanned the room. Ryder’s white linen jacket was draped over a chair. Something beneath it caught Willow’s eye, a webbed strap.
What the hell?
Willow scrambled inside, picked up the jacket. Beneath it was Ryder’s shoulder holster and service weapon. What kind of cop takes off without his piece? Willow wondered, staring at the blued nine-millimeter tucked into its holster. Willow never went anywhere without at least an ankle gun, like the little .380 AMT he was wearing now; only held five rounds, but at 500 grams, it wasn’t a burden. Things were too weird out there not to pack something, crazies storming the barricades from all directions.
Willow went to the door, stepped out on the porch. His imagination followed Ryder down the steps, into his vehicle, driving away. Unarmed, probably. Why?
He let his eyes wander to the house to the west, where the woman had gone minutes before. A vacationer, probably; had the look. Willow studied the small sloping dunes between the two houses. There were faint depressions in the sand. By their spacing, they could only have been footprints.
The Gulf breeze blew steadily into his face. Gusting every now and then. Willow wondered how long would it take for prints to fill on a day like today?
What would be a comparative?
Willow thought a second, then walked down to his truck. Beside it were the footprints from his arrival fifteen minutes ago. They were already filling in, smoothing out. He again studied the prints between the houses. Probably not older than ninety minutes, max. Much longer and they’d have disappeared.
Was the woman a vacationer, or did she live there? What if she was a friend of Ryder’s? Had he run over to tell her something important?
Questions. Willow had always hated questions.
He tipped back his hat and followed the footprints across the sand.
I heard shoes crunching through the sand and shells outside, someone walking this way. Lydia ran to the window.
“It’s that old fuck. Probably wants to ask if I know where you are.” She smiled at me and affected a bimbo voice: “‘Oh my goodness, I do believe Mr Ryder’s gone to Birmingham to visit a sick friend.’ What you think, Ryder? Get rid of old Mr Fish and I’ll be your guide for a little while? Take you some places you’ve never been before?”
The feet paused, like Willow was looking up at the house. They continued, louder now, crunching over the shells in the drive.
I played out the upcoming scene in my head. The door opens, Willow’s on the stoop. Would she recognize him? When had she last seen him? What would Willow do? Would he know her? Did he ever, or had she simply turned to smoke back in 1972?
Feet ascended the stairs.
Lydia said, “He’s coming up, Ryder. Stay put, I’ll be right back. Don’t despair, we’ll get our fun in before I catch my ferry ride out of here.” She nodded at the frozen head at my knee, winked lasciviously. “Keep Rubin company ’til I get rid of the geezer.”
I nudged the head of Rubin Coyle. Icy. There were drips falling from the softening hair, but the rest of the ghastly thing seemed hard as a bowling ball.
Knocking at the door.
My mind raced, adrenalin blazing through my neural network: the disassociative moments…if she wasn’t expecting Willow and he suddenly appeared before her, would it stop her engine for a few seconds?
Lydia called out, “Just a second, please. Be right there.”
I looked at the head at my knees and studied the shining floor. Lydia took a final glance to make sure I was out of sight of the entry. She tucked the knife into the back of her slacks. Crossed the last few feet.
Opened the door.
I took a deep breath and snapped my legs sideways with everything I had, nudging the head of Rubin Coyle.
Jacob Willow held his hat down against the wind. The door opened. Willow nodded. The woman smiled back, said, “Can I help -”
That was all she said. The moment she looked into his eyes, her face went blank. Absolutely still, like a dead face. She looked like a statue. Damn strange, was she all right?
“Ma’am?”
There was something faintly familiar about her face; that was strange, too.
But an even stranger thing happened next. A human head - nothing but the head - skittered slowly across the floor a half-dozen feet behind the woman. It stopped, gently rocking to and fro. The woman didn’t seem to notice, her mouth drooping open, her eyes absent.
Willow was reaching for his boot when the woman’s eyes returned.
They were on fire.
Chapter 53
The head seemed to move in slow motion, almost without sound. I heard Willow say, “Ma’am?”
I held my breath as the head stopped a few feet behind Lydia. All I could see of her was her back. There was absolute silence.
Then Lydia screamed as if she’d exploded into flames. Her hand grabbed the knife from her slacks. She dove out the door, jabbing and slashing. Willow roared with outrage. Someone tumbled down the steps. Then, four gunshots. Fast. They sounded like firecrackers.
Another moment of silence. All I could hear was my heart.
Lydia walked in, knife in hand, the silver blade now crimson. There were two red dots in the center of her blouse. She stopped and studied the room as if it were brand-new to her, or a dream. Then she saw me. There seemed no recognition in her eyes, like she had walked through the last door of madness; I was nothing but easy prey. Lydia lifted the knife and started toward me. She stumbled into the suitcases by the door, kicked them aside. The red dots on her blouse caught her attention. She looked down at them with a kind of wonder, as if mystified at how they’d gotten there.
Her face went slack and she stopped moving.
Two seconds later the machinery clicked on. Her head snapped up and she advanced three steps.
Until her eyes were drawn to her wounds and she again shut down.
Off, then on. She moved to me in a tick-tock motion, closer each time. I shrieked beneath the tape as if my blind terror could ward her off.
Off, on…until she stood above me.
Raised the knife high.
And seemed to pause in the middle distance between off and on.
It occurred later I didn’t hear the fifth shot. Instead, a small red flower bloomed quietly in Lydia’s side. She quivered when it bloomed. Paused to touch it. This time she didn’t shut down, but seemed to understand something. The knife dropped from her hand and she fell to the floor with a sound like thunder.
Jacob Willow pulled himself into the house with one hand, the other clutching his side, a wide swash of red following him. He half-crawled, half-swam across the floor, reached out a bloody hand and pulled the tape
from my mouth. “She cut me good, Ryder,” he mumbled, looking down at his side. “My liver, I think. I got slow over the years.”
He stared at Lydia, confusion on his face.
I said, “She’s Calypso, Jacob. Call 911, you’re bleeding out.”
“Calypso? Calypso?”
“A switch-off beneath the veil. She’s hustled the collectors for years. Get to the phone, Jacob. Now.”
The phone was twenty feet away, mounted on the wall. He looked at it and sighed.
“I can’t.”
“Untie me. My hands.”
He struggled to his knees and fumbled at my wrists but the wires were too tight for his wet and failing fingers. His blood-soaked shirt squished as he swayed above me.
“The phone,” I said. “You’ve got to try to -”
He slumped back to the floor, exhausted. “Shhh, Ryder. It ain’t gonna happen. Calypso, you’re sure?”
I nodded. He thought a moment, then choked out a laugh and tapped my arm, like sharing a joke. “Know what Hexcamp told me in the courtroom, Ryder? Laying there dying. Just before he told me to follow the art?”
“What, Jacob?”
“He said, ‘She lied.’”
“She lied?”
“Don’t you…get it, Ryder?” he said, his voice getting thinner. “She lied. Calypso told Hexcamp she was coming to save him. Instead, she sent someone to kill him.”
I understood. “That particular game was over. She was ready to move on.”
Willow nodded, pushed up on his elbow. “Follow the art. Didn’t understand…until now. Hexcamp was asking me to track down Calypso, his lover, then his murderer.” He laughed weakly, his breath almost gone. “I spent…thirty-five years…avenging Marsden Hexcamp.”
“You nailed Calypso, that’s what you did. She was a killing machine, a monster. You saved lives, Jacob.”
He shifted his eyes to the motionless form at my feet, whispered, “Guess it worked out, then.” His head dropped to my chest. His eyes stared fearlessly into mine: we both knew.
A minute later I watched Jacob Willow’s final moment. Nothing poured out, no mud, no wriggling horrors, no heat. It was simply as though something else caught his attention, and he wandered that direction.
Epilogue
I heard once more from Inspector Bernard Latrelle. He expressed me a large envelope. When I opened it, a color photograph fell out, along with a brief handwritten note:
This photograph documents an object reported missing in April, 1970. If you ever find it, I would swim the Atlantic to see it.
Yours, B. Latrelle
I picked up the photograph and took it outside in the sun. After studying it, I called Dr Prowse at the institute, then Danbury, and finally Harry.
“We’re going to the institute, bro.”
“Haven’t you had a rough enough time, Cars? You don’t need to see Jeremy. And I sure don’t.”
“We’re not seeing Jeremy. We’re seeing Trey Forrier. You want to be there, Harry, trust me on this one.”
I lay in the back seat during the drive up, lost in thought, barely speaking. Harry and Danbury shot each other glances, but asked no questions of me.
Vangie allowed all three of us to meet with Trey Forrier. We went to his room, stark, nothing more than a bed, a chair, a desk, and a battered leather trunk in the corner. The walls were white.
“Harry, this is Trey Forrier.”
Harry held out his massive hand. Forrier studied Harry’s face for several seconds, then, surprising me, reached over and gently touched his palm. I leaned against the wall and clutched the envelope.
I said, “There are two things I want to talk about, Trey. A piece of your art was outside the walls. It had my face on it, a simple, perfect drawing. Do you know how it happened?”
Forrier cupped his chin in his hand and thought for a long time.
“Je crois qu’il est arrivé il y a déjà des années. J’y suis venu, j’ai rencontré votre frère…”
Danbury again translated between us, making conversation as effortlessly as if Forrier and I were speaking directly. “I think it happened years ago. I came here, met your brother. He was sad because he had no photograph of you. You were still angry at his crimes and refused to send him one. Sensing the depth of his pain, I offered to draw you for your brother.”
Forrier went to the trunk in the corner, opened it.
“When I arrived, I was allowed a few personal belongings. Among them these small studies…” He produced a few pieces of painting on canvas, held them up. The colors were glorious. He turned their reverse sides to us, white canvas.
“He advised me when you were coming for a visit some years back. I peeked out my window as you passed my door and took a mind photograph.
“I practiced sketching you on the back of one of my studies, happy to put it to use. I worked in pencil. Such pointed items are not allowed, but they are here, of course. When your brother was happy with your face I created a lasting drawing for him with pen and paper. He keeps the drawing in his desk and looks at it often. It is his favorite possession. He will never tell you this.”
The room began to shimmer. I closed my eyes; swallowed hard. Forrier said, “I always erased the studies. I did not want it known that I draw. The doctors will pick at me if they find out.”
I now knew what had happened, thanks to Lydia’s boasting. “The art was stolen.”
“Thieves are everywhere. Several of my scraps disappeared.” He pointed to the trunk. “I now keep it locked.”
“The Eiffel Tower was behind me in the drawing, Trey. Why?”
“A view from a little park. It was my favorite place so long ago. Jeremy told me of your difficult childhood, and I decided to place you somewhere happiness could be found.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What is your second subject?” Forrier asked.
I pulled the photo out of the envelope, set it on Forrier’s desk. Harry and Danbury drew close. “My God,” she whispered. Harry just stared, stunned into silence.
In the photo, the color faded somewhat, the paper brittle, a thirtyish Trey Forrier - a decent-looking man with blazing eyes in a normally shaped face - stood in a studio to the side of a large painting. In the bottom quarter, the painting was a nightmare jumble of skulls and blood and excrement and destruction, the section revealed in the mask. Golden worms spun through the carnage.
A quarter of the way up, the painting began to change: horrific blacks and reds and umbers lightened. The chaos was replaced by a sense of calm. The worms began spinning themselves into a shimmering figure both human and ghostlike.
Forrier stepped close. Tapped the photo with a delicate finger.
“Les vers sont la lumière de la creation…”
“The worms are the light of creation, the seeds of the soul. They learn to crawl amidst death and filth. It is necessary to the journey, how they learn the direction of heaven.”
By mid-point in the painting the figure stretched skyward, ascendant. The central form seemed to glow, the light as pure as the silvery luminescence of Vermeer. In the upper third of the painting, the transformed figure exploded into light and color, the richness of Chagall, the raw power of van Gogh. It was as though Forrier had mixed his paint with photons. Despite the intensity of the expression - or perhaps because of it - the painting emanated a transcendent sense of peace and harmony. It was a journey that ended well.
“Incredible, Mr Forrier,” Danbury said.
“It was only a study,” he replied.
“A study,” Harry whispered, shaking his head.
“There are other paintings?” Danbury asked. “Please say there are.”
Forrier walked to his bed, sat. There seemed no more aura of madness in his manner.
“On a préparé mon affaire au procès…”
“My case was prepared for trial. There was evidence against me, though I had hurt no one. I could never hurt a soul. It is a transgression.”
“B
ut you stopped protesting your innocence,” I said. “Admitted everything.”
“Me croyant fou, on m’a installé dans une cellule tout seul…”
“Believed mad, I was sent here. It was a revelation. Everything was white: the floor, the walls, the ceiling. I began painting on them.”
“You said you never did art here,” Danbury said, confused.
Forrier walked to the wall and began conducting. No, not conducting. He was wielding a brush, not a baton.
He was painting.
“I realized everything I wanted to do in painting was better without paint. Without canvas. Without brushes. Without people watching, waiting to steal your work.”
Danbury stared at the blank wall. “You mean that…”
Forrier nodded. “I have covered many of the walls with my art. It is a long process. But I am learning so much.” He nodded toward the photograph Latrelle had sent. “I am no longer sad about the painting taken by Marsden. It is crude and ugly compared to my new work.”
I opened the door and looked down the white hallway, from it branched other halls. There were resident rooms, meeting rooms, a cafeteria.
All white as snow.
I stepped into the hall and Trey Forrier followed. Harry and Danbury were right behind. I looked into the sea of white. “Tell me about your new work, Mr Forrier.”
“Comme toujours, l’art du moment final…”
Danbury said, “As it has always been: the art of the final moment. Where everything begins.”
I touched the wall, amazed. “And it’s all around us?”
Forrier held his arms out to the sides and spun in a circle with childlike delight. “On passe à travers le cœur de Dieu!” he laughed.
I turned to Danbury.
“He says we are walking through the heart of God.”
Still dumbstruck, we managed to thank Trey Forrier for his time and help. We left him in the charge of a guard and turned toward the door. We were three dozen feet away when Forrier called after us.
“Amis! Friends!”