by Cameron Judd
That, of course, caused most in the crowd to look up and see what Custer was reacting to, and Eli flushed bright red with embarrassment. He was, at heart, a shy person. He backed away from the edge and stayed out of sight for a full minute, mentally berating Custer. Worst of all, he had noticed at the last second that Len Cosner, the photojournalist working on the PBS documentary about Buster and Custer, was at work below on the street and had caught Custer’s pointing and calling incident on video.
THE MOST RECENT PRESIDENT OF THE Chamber of Commerce had entered his job three years earlier vowing to shake things up in the usually staid and unadenturous world of supporting local enterprise. So far the only progress in “shaking up” that Roy Canter had made was getting the Chamber building painted a more garish shade of blue – which actually garnered him zero plaudits and plenty of complaints. That, and he’d added candy-tossing to the annual Tylerville July 4 Parade, making it more like the later Christmas parade, during which Santa (actually the Clarion’s “Chunky” Thunky Fincher in a fake beard and red suit) heaved handfuls of cheap sweets to the children and whatever adults weren’t too proud to scramble at the curb for what the younger ones had missed.
For Independence Day, Santa wasn’t to be found, and the candy-throwing was left to a trio of community theater actors dressed as Uncle Sam, taking turns based upon who was available. Roy Canter made sure the candy thrown by Uncle Sam was of better quality than the Christmastime Santa offerings, and the result of that had been what he’d hoped: his star rose in the community. The Chamber received actual letters of thanks from locals who appreciated the obvious effort that had gone into the whole business with the candy. They declared that they were speaking on behalf of their children, though all knew better.
On the Crosswaite performance float, Meggy Buckingham and friends got to enjoy some candy of their own in the brief break moments they were given between performances of their backup dance for the Twin Cousins. This was courtesy of the ever-thoughtful Buster Crosswaite who had brought a supply of candy for the girls because he knew they would not have opportunity to collect candy thrown by Uncle Sam.
Megan was gnawing away on a small chocolate bar when she saw the Asian man. It was only a glimpse, his face appearing at the rear of a clump of people on a street corner, but it was enough to make her drop her candy in fright and freeze in place. He was looking directly at her when she noticed him, and fancied he gave her the smallest of smiles.
“C’mon, Meggy!” urged one of the other girls. “We’re about to dance again!”
Megan did not move. She was certain that the man, whomever he was, had his eye on her. She had never felt so threatened, though she couldn’t have said exactly what it was that made her feel that way. One thing was sure, though: she had lost the will to dance, and even the memory of the steps of the routine. Right now all she wanted was to be away from public sight and off this rolling dance stage.
“Meggy! They’ll be mad if you aren’t in place when the music starts!”
“I … I don’t — ”
“Meggy Buckingham!”
The voice seemed to echo between the buildings on either side of the street, and Megan couldn’t really tell from where it came. Had the Asian man called her by name?
No, it wasn’t him. The voice called her name again, and she recognized it. Eli’s voice. She followed its sound and looked up to see him waving down at her from atop the four-story bank building. And she knew where she wanted to be.
Megan scrambled down from the dance float as fast as she could, and headed for the side door of the bank. It came to her just before she would have grabbed the door handles that the bank was closed today. Banks always were closed on July 4.
Meggy thought of running back to her float, but the memory of the Asian man’s face restrained her and even made her suddenly feel sick to her stomach, so real and overwhelming did that instinctive feeling of threat seem. She became distressingly aware that she could easily be stricken with nervous diahrrea. She fled into a nearby alleyway, panicked, so afraid of humiliating herself that she began to cry.
She reached the end of the alley and found a bank door she had never seen, an office-area entrance probably used only by bank employees. It was locked, too. Meggy leaned against the plateglass door and cried. Someone passed by the end of the alley, causing a shadow, and Meggy instantly was gripped by an assurance it was the Asian man, following her.
It wasn’t. It was a Tylerville policeman, a young one, and he approached Meggy slowly. She wondered if she was in trouble for having tried to open the door of a locked-up bank. Had she tripped a silent alarm?
“I’m sorry,” she said when the policeman was near. “I know I’m not supposed to be back here.”
“You’re Melinda Buckingham’s sister, I think,” he said.
“Yeah. I’m Megan.”
“My name is Officer Beaver. Jimmy Beaver. I went through high school with your sister.” He looked bashful a moment. “To tell you the truth, I kind of had a crush on her back then. But then, every boy in the school did, too.”
“I think I’ve heard her mention you.” It was a falsehood. Jimmy Beaver had never been talked about by any girls, especially class beauties.
“Are you lost, Megan?” Beaver asked.
“No, I just started feeling sick and I was hoping somebody might be in the bank for some reason and let me in.”
“Bathroom, huh? I’ve been in that kind of situation before myself.”
Beaver produced a key from somewhere and had the door open in moments. “The bank folks asked the police chief if he could assign an officer to hold a bank key and be available to deal with the newspaper fellow who would be on the roof to take pictures. Guess who got tagged.” He opened the door and waved the little girl in. “The restrooms are right down that little hall there.”
Megan was grateful for the opportunity, but kept the visit as brief as possible out of embarrassment at having a male waiting for her to come out again.
“Is it all right if we go up to the top so I can say hi to Eli?” she asked Beaver.
“I don’t see why not. I’ve met him, so I’ll say hello too.”
“He’s going to marry my sister, so he’ll be like my brother soon.”
“Yeah. He’s a lucky fellow, having such a great fiance.”
“Are you married? Yeah … I see your ring.”
“And we’ve got a baby coming along, my wife and me.”
“That’s good.”
They climbed stairs to the door exiting onto the flat roof. Eli was surprised to see the pair emerge and walk in his direction.
Meggy … with a police officer. Had something happened?
“Megan, are you okay?” Eli asked, coming to her.
“I’m fine, Eli. I was just feeling sick and Officer Beaver let me in the bank so I could, well — ”
“I get the picture. Are you better now?”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of scared.”
At first Eli thought she might meant scared to be on a high rooftop, then he remembered the Asian man.
“Scared of what?”
“There’s a man, one of the ones I saw watching our house. He’s at the parade today, and he was watching me, I think. I saw him.”
“The truth is, Meggy, I saw him too. I took some pictures of him from up here on the roof, using my long lense.”
“He scares me.”
“Is this the same fellow that had you and Melinda concerned the last time I saw you?” Eli appreciated Beaver’s wording, which did not reveal to Megan that he and Melinda had stood guard nearby her during her backyard camping night.
“That’s the one,” Eli said.
“Where did you see him?” the policeman asked.
They walked to the rooftop wall and looked down. The parade was still going on, though the end was literally in sight on up the street, Uncle Sam flinging confections to eager recipients.
“There’s talk of changing the process on parade candy, y�
�know,” Beaver said. “Maybe having people who walk along beside Santa, carrying buckets and handing the candy out. There’s a danger of kids getting over excited and getting under the tires.”
“I guess there is. I never much thought about it,” Eli said.
“There he is!” Megan exclaimed, pointing southwest. Eli and the policeman looked and saw him, standing with his back against the front wall of a lawyer’s office. Everything in the man’s posture and bearing indicated someone trying to look inconspicuous while keeping his eye on the people around him.
Looking at the man, Eli couldn’t help but mentally replay the image of the man and his companion spiriting out of Harvestman Lodge the girl who became known as Broken Flower. It made him feel queasy to consider that this same man apparently held an interest in his future little sister-in-law.
“I think I’ll run down and introduce myself to our friend there,”
Beaver said. “You two can make your own way out when you’re ready to leave. The bank doors are set to open for you when you go out, then lock behind you.”
“What are you going to say to our friend down there?”
“I have no idea, really,” the policeman said. He quickly shook Eli’s hand, patted Meggy on the shoulder, and departed.
BY THE TIME BEAVER REACHED the place Jang Bo-kyung had been, Jang Bo-kyung was gone. Jang had not become the best procurer in the employ of the Flower Garden without learning how to be aware of when and how he was noticed, and how to make a fast escape unseen.
He’d spotted the policeman coming his way as soon as the young cop emerged from the alley behind the bank. Jang had instantly stepped back into his own alley, made it fast across the wooden barrier that blocked the alley halfway back, and was meandering through a maze of older Tylerville buildings in moments. A climb onto a dumpster, a foot planted on a nearby window ledge, a grasp on a gutter downspout of thick copper, another window ledge, and in moments Jang was pulling himself onto the roof of a boxy apartment complex garage. Across the roof, down again, and he was making his way unseen to where he had parked the car he’d rented on a stolen credit card provided to him by the human demons who employed him.
Chapter Fifty-Two
JANG WAS GLAD FOR THE EMPTINESS of his car’s passenger seat as he made his way through Tylerville, driving mostly on the smaller neighborhood streets. That habit of movement was an old one, established in his years of association with the Flower Garden. He’d collected more than one excellent blossom on smalltown residential neighborhood streets such as these, sometimes by the sheer luck of turning a corner, and in a yard or playground spotting the exact kind of human flower needed to fulfill a particular order placed by one of the rich and powerful degenerates who formed the network’s clientelle.
Usually, though, Jang preferred to eschew chance and work in a planned and systematic way, locating his perfect target in advance and developing a scheme to attain her. He found his targets in many ways: school yearbooks shelved in public libraries, church directories with family photos, or newspaper photographs such as the one that had put him on the track of flawless little Megan Buckingham, whom he had seen in the flesh for the first time only today, thanks to the parade. Unexpected, that a girls’ dance class in Tylerville, Tennessee, where he’d enjoyed a particularly successful procurement years before, just happened to include the very kind of blossom he needed to fulfill the second half of the assignment that had brought him here. The first half of his task had been to kill the problematic Lukey Parvin. His second assignment was to procure a particularly perfect blossom of a child, one with specific qualities and characteristics. Once procured and secured, she would be delivered, via the Flower Garden’s usual secret avenues of transport, into the hands of a rich Slovakian reprobate already eagerly awaiting her in his dark and depraved world. Once in his grip, she would have as little chance of escape from it than did dead Lukey Parvin of escaping the rocky earthen throat that had so recently swallowed his corpse.
There had been a time when Jang was able to feel some degree of sympathy for the little girls he abducted and turned over to cruel men who destroyed them body, soul, and mind. That time was long past. He had trained himself to erase any human feeling when it came to his work. What he was collecting was a product, in his assessment: not a person, but a thing.
Lukey, stupid man though he had been, had proven helpful in regard to the targeted Buckingham girl. Lukey had been able to reveal exactly whom she was and where she lived … and had thus, ironically, rendered himself useless by having been useful. Now that Jang knew where the girl was to be found, it was only a matter of time and patience before he harvested her.
Jang was aided in his work by the fact that he himself had no attraction to the little girls he stole away and sent into darkness. He was no pedophile, just a thoroughly asexual man with an inexplicable ability to grasp and identify what pedophiles wanted, and the skill and lack of moral scruples that allowed him to actually find and deliver the desired human product. There were those patrons of the Flower Garden network who would purchase no “flower” if it had been procured by anyone other than Jang. He had a gift for his work, though even he would never think of that “gift” as God-given.
He also had a gift for avoiding detection, but today’s events had led him to wonder if he was losing his touch as he grew older. He’d put himself in a public situation that had allowed him to be photographed, something he strenuously avoided. He knew the young man shooting pictures from the bank roof had captured him, and suspected the attractive young woman walking the street with a video camera had done the same. Then that cop had walked toward him, and that was a troubling thing indeed.
What if they somehow knew who he was? What if the forces of the law were looking for him?
Even if that one young cop alone was looking for him, that was a significant danger in a town this small. Jang stood out here, despite years of experience in plain-sight hiding.
He could not linger long in this town, or in this state. He had to get his newest flower soon. The sense of danger here was strong.
He knew where she lived. It was summer, and schools were out. There should be opportunity.
THE WINNING FLOAT WAS A (NATURALLY) PATRIOTIC entry from Flea Plank Grocery. With a short-order cook whose hobby was chainsaw sculpture, the grocery/restaurant had given their man time, and a huge log, that he had turned into an amazingly detailed sculpture of Abraham Burchell, a noted early frontiersman who was one of the first white men to hunt in what became Kincheloe County. Burchell had been a noted early American patriot, a participant in the King’s Mountain fight, and a leading figure in the governance of the early settlements. With the intricately sculpted figure painted skillfully by a local artist whose work was in the state museum in Nashville, the final product was a true work of art. Even before the parade had wrapped up, there was already talk of how the wooden sculpture should be recreated in stone for permanent placement outside the courthouse … or perhaps at the outdoor theater where the upcoming bicentennial drama would be staged. A perfect project for another bicentennial looming eleven years ahead: the Tennessee bicentennial year of 1996.
Eli was in his office, looking over the July 5 edition with its huge spread of photographs from the parade. As usual, Lundy’s photo of the winning float was the one that made the front page, though Eli’s shots from the rooftop received plenty of ink, too, because of the inclusive perspective they provided.
Eli had just realized the Asian man was visible, though mostly hidden, in one of his own photos. He was examining the image with a magnifying glass when Melinda appeared at his open office door.
“Eli, you’re not looking down some poor woman’s blouse, are you?”
“No such luck. It’s our Harvestman Lodge Korean man. Well, he looks Korean to me, anyway.”
“I saw him too.” Melinda came over and looked over Eli’s shoulder. “Yeah. That’s him.”
“And he has to be the one Meggy saw watching your house.”
“Yep.”
“Chills me to the bone.”
“Original phrase there, Captain Cliche.”
“Ha ha.”
“Well, you gotta admit it was lame.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eli paused. “Melinda, listen: I’ve been doing some thinking. Hard thinking. About this Asian dude, about the film clip from my grandfather’s cellar, about the little girl, about the whole Harvestman Lodge business. This thing is big, Melinda. Real big. And the truth is, it’s too big for me to … to … ”
Melinda spoke. “To make sense of. To know what to do with. I think we might have been coming to the same conclusion, Eli. The conclusion for me is that we need help. Some wisdom. Guidance.”
“Feely.”
“Exactly.”
“Eli, I think we should sit down with Reverend Feely, and show him everything, tell him everything we know now. This isn’t something we can sit on. Somehow or other, this has to come out. But in the right way. And I don’t know what that way is.”
“I agree. Let’s call him. Right now. And if he can do it, we’ll go see him tomorrow.”
“Listen, Eli: something you don’t know yet. Len Cosner was in town for the parade, shooting for his Crosswaite documentary. He came over to say hi, and told me the Harvestman piece he’d been working on, the one that got stalled … well, it’s back in progress again. It’s a go. So even if Mr. Carl and David and the Sadlers and the Brechts and everybody want that subject to stay dead, it’s not going to go that way. Which to me makes it all the more urgent that the full truth come out. If it doesn’t, I don’t know what Len’s documentary will say.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to move on this. I’m calling Kyle Feely right now. Is tomorrow good for you?”
“I’ll be there.”
Eli made the call, and when he had Feely on the line, gave him a cursory preview of what they would be discussing, and why. Even without all the details, Feely said he already had some clear thoughts on the matter, then asked Eli if there would be objection to him inviting a couple of other “relevant individuals” to hear the discussion and see the film clip.