The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

  “You want to know who’s responsible for it all,” Arlen said, “you need look no farther than Solomon Wade. Your daddy thought of him as a friend, I’m sure. But he’s the one who dug your daddy’s grave. Remember that.”

  He backed up, keeping the gun on them, and fumbled the door open. Fell in beside Paul and said, “Time to drive the hell out of here, wouldn’t you say?”

  He put the sheriff’s car into gear, backed it up, and then turned it and drove away. The McGrath brothers were paying no mind to the car, busy instead with climbing down into the ditch to find their eldest. Once he was cared for, they’d go after their father, Arlen knew. They wouldn’t like what they found.

  “There’s blood all over this car,” Paul said.

  “Yes,” Arlen said. “The sheriff didn’t want to let me borrow it.”

  The rain had begun to fall now, steady but quiet, and Arlen got the wipers going, then removed a waterlogged handkerchief and pressed it to the wound on his shoulder. Paul looked over at him.

  “Owen is—”

  “I know,” Arlen said. “We found him. They’d hung him upside down from the roof.”

  Paul shuddered.

  “How bad did it go?” Arlen asked. “You’ve taken a beating, clearly.”

  “Went fast, that’s all. One minute it was only Tolliver out in the yard and the next they were on us.” His voice was close to breaking when he said, “It’s all on me, Arlen. It’s on—”

  “Stop,” Arlen said. “There’ll be no more of that. It’s on Wade and these bastards who work for him. None other.”

  “Where’s Rebecca?”

  “Driving north,” Arlen said. “I sent her alone. Then I came for you.”

  “How?” Paul said. “How did you do this?”

  “Wasn’t easy” was all Arlen could answer. He thought of those gray trances and the harsh whispers of dead men and the snakes coming at him through the water, and he shook his head. The idea that he was in this car now with the boy at his side was incredible. Because he’d known from the start that he was going to die out there, and yet…

  He looked up then. Raised his eyes and shifted his face to the mirror. What he saw chilled even the searing pain of the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  There was still smoke in his eyes.

  How? He dropped back into his seat, lips parted and mind spinning. How in the hell could it still be there? He’d survived every challenge, taken every comer, was driving toward safety. The wound in his shoulder throbbed, but it wasn’t a killing wound.

  “What?” Paul said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Arlen said. He was remembering the battlefields of France, though, remembering the Belleau Wood and what he’d discovered there. The dead couldn’t save themselves. He could help those men with smoke in their eyes, but they couldn’t ever help themselves.

  He said, “Hey—look at me.”

  Paul turned to face him. He was a wreck, all right, covered with dirt and dried blood, but his eyes were clear. Nothing but deep brown. Not even a hint of those gray wisps.

  “All right,” Arlen said softly. “Let’s keep driving, son. Let’s not stop.”

  It was no more than a minute later that they rounded a bend and the bridge came into view and they saw the roadblock. The convertible was parked where Arlen had left it, and Tolliver’s body still dangled from the trees, but another car had been pulled in sideways on the other side of the bridge, blocking any attempt at exit. It was a steel-gray Ford coupe.

  55

  FOR A MOMENT they sat in silence and stared ahead. Arlen was squinting to see through the fractured windshield, and finally the bullet holes rang a bell in his mind and he said, “Get down, Paul. Get real low, out of sight.”

  The shots Arlen had taken at Tolliver had been clean and simple. He didn’t want to leave Paul exposed to the same.

  “Pass me that rifle,” he said.

  Paul handed him the Springfield. It felt good to have it in his hands again, but hard in his mind was the knowledge that he had one cartridge left. The other rifle was still in the weeds down there with the McGraths. In the moment he’d seen Paul, he’d forgotten it. All he’d wanted to do then was move, get the hell away from this place and do it fast. Now he was wishing for those extra rounds.

  No one was in sight, though. The rain fell gently and pattered off the hood of the sheriff’s car. Paul was crouched low, keeping his head below the dash.

  “That’s Solomon Wade’s car,” he whispered.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And that body in the trees, that was the sheriff.”

  Indeed it was. Tolliver’s body was swinging more vigorously now.

  Paul said, “Did you—”

  “Yes,” Arlen said. He was still staring at the Ford. It didn’t look as if there were anyone inside. The headlights were on, pointing down at the swollen, swift-running creek, but inside there was nothing but shadow. The rain was falling harder, making visibility difficult. Arlen’s left side was wet and warm. Blood.

  He was feeling a touch dizzy and nauseated, the pain working at him, and when he thought of the three McGrath boys back there, with vengeance in their hearts, he knew that he didn’t want to wait this game out. Wade had come down and parked his car in a way that blocked the bridge, but he didn’t appear to be in it. Perhaps he’d gone ahead on foot, or maybe he’d had a boat in the creek. Maybe he’d been accompanied by someone in another car and they’d taken that one and headed back up the road. Arlen wasn’t short on maybes. Just on time.

  The smell of blood was heavy in the car, his own blending with Tolliver’s. He wiped a hand across his mouth and then looked in the mirror again. The smoke was storm-cloud gray now, dark and dense.

  “I may need your help,” he said to Paul, watching the smoke waft from his own eye sockets. “I may not be able to do this alone.”

  “Okay. Just tell me what to do.”

  That was the question. And when he looked back at Paul and saw his clear eyes, he found himself shaking his head.

  “No,” he said. “Actually, you just sit here, all right? You sit low. Even lower than now. I don’t think they know you’re here. My guess is, anything happens out there, they’ll drive on by you.”

  He hadn’t been sure of this until he said the words. Now that they were out of his mouth, though, he could almost see it, was so certain that he found himself nodding slightly. If Wade thought Arlen was alone in this car, he’d drive on by and head toward McGrath’s. There was nothing about a bullet-riddled car that was worth his time. Not with the situation he was trying to handle today.

  “I think he’ll drive on past,” Arlen said, “and if he does, you let him go. You don’t move, hear? If any car comes toward you, do not move.”

  “Arlen, what are you saying? Don’t go out there and—”

  “Just sit low and watch your ass,” Arlen said. “Anything goes sour, use this pistol.”

  He passed him Tolliver’s pistol. There would be at least a shot in it yet. McGrath’s gun was still tucked in his belt, floating out there amid the mangroves and the snakes. If gunplay lay ahead, Arlen and Paul didn’t have much left for it.

  “I’m going to go move that car,” Arlen said.

  “What? He might be back there, Arlen. He might be just on the other—”

  “Well, if he is,” Arlen said, “he doesn’t seem to be inclined to move the car for us. So we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

  For a moment Arlen just sat there in silence in the pounding rain, and then he checked the mirror one last time, as if something might have magically changed. This time he didn’t stare at the smoke for long.

  “If Wade drives this way,” he said, “you let him go, and you count to one hundred, all right? Count nice and slow. When you hit one hundred, you get behind this wheel and drive. Drive as fast as you can, and as far.”

  He popped open the door before Paul had a chance to answer and stepped out into the mud. The Springfield banged against his th
igh as he swung the door shut, taking care not to look back inside, not to give any indication that he hadn’t come this way alone. He held the rifle in his good hand and walked up to the center of the road and on toward the bridge in the rain.

  Still no one was visible, and now he thought he could make out the interior of the Ford pretty well. If Wade was here, he must be out of the car and on the other side, using it for cover.

  He paused when he reached Tolliver’s body. For a moment he was tempted to reach out and take hold of it and try to get the dead man to speak. There was nothing to be gained, though. Tolliver would offer no more aid out of this life than he had in it. Ahead the rain pounded off the Ford, and the headlights glowed through the trees to where the creek continued to rise on its banks.

  His right foot came down on the first plank of the bridge with a hollow clapping sound. He paused again and now he swung the rifle up and pointed it at the Ford. What he wouldn’t give for a boxful of cartridges. He’d pound shots through that car until it was more holes than metal, shred Wade if he was back there waiting. But he had just the one round left.

  He crossed the bridge with the Springfield up, doing his best to support most of its weight with his right arm because his left was no longer working particularly well. There seemed to be a numbness spreading down from the shoulder. The Ford was no more than twenty feet away, and now Arlen was certain there was no one inside. He could see through the windows to the trees on the other side. He could also see his own reflection back here in the shadows—a skeleton with a rifle in hand.

  He stopped while he was still on the bridge, ten paces from the car. He’d studied the shadows underneath, searching for signs of a man hidden there, and couldn’t see any. Now he steadied the rifle as much as he could and called out, “Wade? It’s done. Let us pass.”

  For a long moment he could hear nothing but the rain. He thought, Maybe he’s actually gone, maybe it’s as simple as pushing that car to the side of the road, and then the shot came.

  There was no time for recognition or understanding—the bullet entered his back and blew through his chest and drove him forward. He pulled the trigger on the Springfield as he fell, an instinctive move, and his final bullet merely blew out the window of the Ford, taking Arlen’s skeleton image with it. Then the rifle was out of his hands and he was down on the boards of the bridge.

  He tried to move, tried to hide, just as any animal in its last moments will. He made it as far as the rail on the north side, thinking he could slip off the bridge and into the creek, and then he knew it was hopeless and he stopped moving and turned back to see Solomon Wade standing before him.

  Under the bridge, he thought. He hid under the bridge, but on the opposite side of his car. Just where he should have been. Just where you should have thought to look.

  It didn’t matter now. Arlen’s blood was running freely across the boards, and Wade was walking toward him with a pistol in his hand. He wore that white Panama hat, rain shedding off its brim. He smiled when his eyes met Arlen’s.

  “You liked that trick with my sheriff, did you?” he said. “Hanging him up to greet me. You’ll wish you hadn’t done that.”

  Arlen didn’t answer. The pain was radiant right now, and his blood looked very bright on the worn planks of the bridge.

  “Don’t you go so easy,” Wade said. “Wanted to drop you, not kill you easy. You’re going to beg me for another shot. Beg.”

  Wade had never so much as turned to glance back at the sheriff’s car. The last lobe of Arlen’s numb brain that retained capacity for thought registered that and whispered, Good. He doesn’t know. He’ll drive right past Paul without a look.

  Wade stepped over Arlen and picked up the Springfield. He hefted it, gave it one curious glance, and then tossed it over the bridge and into the creek.

  “Your mistake,” he said, “was in doubting my reach. You’re not the first man to have schemed against Solomon Wade. Won’t be the last, I’m certain. But you know what? I’m still standing now, and you’re down there choking on your own blood. That’s how it goes. That’s always how it will go.”

  Wade shoved his pistol into his coat pocket and then withdrew a knife. It had a six-inch blade with a hook at the end, the sort you used for gutting deer. When Arlen saw it, he closed his eyes.

  Picture Paul, he told himself, picture him driving fast and far. Driving north. Chasing the coast as far as he can go, all the way to Maine. Rebecca’s waiting there. He can find her.

  Wade knelt beside him, said, “No, no, no. You stay awake, tough boy. You stay awake for this.”

  You should have told Paul the town, Arlen thought sadly. The place where she’s going. Camden. You should have told him, so they could find each other.

  Wade registered the sound of the engine before Arlen did. One second he was kneeling over Arlen’s body with the knife in his hand, and the next he was gone, on his feet. The sound was clear in Arlen’s ears, but it had no meaning, not right away. Then he got it. A car. Coming this way, and coming fast.

  No, he thought, anguished, and tried to lift his head. No, Paul, damn it, all you had to do was wait…

  The sheriff’s car barreled on toward them, the engine howling and the tires spraying mud as it neared the bridge. Solomon Wade took one step back, into the center of the bridge, cleared the pistol from his belt, and began to pull the trigger.

  Arlen opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was blood.

  Wade looked entirely calm as he worked the trigger. Looked calm for his first shot, and his second, and his third, and only then, when the front wheels of the sheriff’s car hit the bridge with a bang, did his face show any concern. He fired once more, and then the trigger clicked on empty, and he turned to run. The edge of the bridge, and the safety on either side of it, was three steps away.

  He made two of them.

  The car missed Arlen, stretched on his side beneath the rail, by maybe a foot. It might have been less. It did not miss Solomon Wade.

  He was diving to his left when the hood caught him. The impact threw him into the air as the sheriff’s car came to a squealing stop with its front wheels on the road and its back still on the bridge. The side of Wade’s head smacked the top of the windshield and spun him sideways, and he landed on the bridge near Arlen.

  The door opened and Paul ran out of the car with the pistol in his hand. He went to Arlen first, but Arlen called him off. There was blood in his mouth when he spoke, but he got the words out.

  “Shoot him.”

  Paul turned and looked down at the man he’d just hit. Solomon Wade’s neck seemed to point in two directions at once, and the side of his face was a fractured, bleeding mess.

  “He’s dead,” Paul said.

  “Shoot him,” Arlen said again, and blood dripped from his lips.

  Paul shot him. Once in the head. The body jolted and then was still. Paul came back to Arlen and dropped to his knees on the bridge. He looked at the wound and then pulled his shirt off and pressed it against Arlen’s ribs. His face was very pale.

  “You’ll make it,” Paul said, but his voice was shaking. “It went in below the ribs. That’s good, isn’t it? You’ll be fine. You’re going to be—”

  He was talking too much and hearing too little. Arlen was trying to speak, trying so hard to get the words out, but it had become a terrible strain. Finally the boy heard him trying. He leaned closer.

  “What?”

  “Camden,” Arlen said.

  “Camden?” Paul echoed, his face registering nothing, and then he looked away from Arlen again and back down at the wound, and his lips pressed into a grimace as he began to work with his fingers. He was no longer paying any attention to Arlen, but that was fine.

  He’d heard the name.

  Camden.

  He had heard it. Arlen was sure of that. They would find each other.

  Part Five

  FAYETTE COUNTY

  56

  BARRETT WAS IN HIS GARAGE with five fed
eral agents from Tampa, counting the hours until they moved on the Cypress House, altogether unaware of the bloody swath that had already been cut through the county, when Paul Brickhill arrived in Solomon Wade’s Ford with Arlen unconscious in the backseat.

  One of those narcotics agents, a tough old-timer named Miller, had been a field medic in France. He took one look at Arlen and told Barrett and the others to shut the hell up and let him focus.

  They did.

  He was still alive when they got him to Tampa, which surprised everyone but Miller, who was confident in his work. Last thing he’d said before they’d started along the road was “We’re good. Just need blood.”

  It was an accurate diagnosis. The internal damage was minimal; the blood loss tremendous. It was a day before he was conscious again. In Tampa, then, in a hospital with guards outside his room.

  By then they thought they had the leak figured out. It hadn’t been Cooper, the man in charge of the planned bust in Corridor County, but one of his agents, who’d taken off as soon as word of the disaster came, leaving behind a bank account that was surprisingly well stocked. The manhunt for him ended five days later, when his body turned up in a Louisiana bayou, missing its hands.

  All three of the McGrath boys had been arrested at their home. They didn’t put up any struggle. By the time the police got there, the oldest had his leg wrapped with blood-soaked blankets, and Tate McGrath’s body, bloated with venom, was resting on the front porch.

  They told Arlen all of this amid their endless questions, and he didn’t care about any of it. What he cared about was missing. They asked about her hundreds of times, with techniques ranging from gentle prodding to outraged shouting, and he gave them nothing. What held him through it was one word, a word that became a talisman for him, a prayer: Camden.

  It was Barrett who seemed most dubious of Arlen’s account of the fight in the swamp. He never questioned it in front of the others, but once, he stood at the foot of the bed and asked if Arlen was willing to tell him the truth of what had happened out there.