The White Road

by John Connolly

  “Were any of them close to Marianne Larousse?”

  “No, not if you mean intimate with her, but like I said they grew up with her brother and would have known her socially. Well, maybe not Landron Mobley but certainly the others.”

  “And what do you believe is happening, Mrs. Foster?”

  She took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring, her head rising, then released it slowly. In the gesture there was a trace of a spirit that had been subdued by the black clothes and it was possible to see what had attracted Elliot to her.

  “My husband killed himself because he was afraid, Mr. Parker. Something he had done had come back to haunt him. He told Elliot, but Elliot wouldn’t believe him. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Instead, he pretended that everything was normal, right up until the day he went into the garage with a length of yellow hose and killed himself. Elliot is also trying to pretend that things are normal, but I think he knows better.”

  “What do you think your husband was afraid of?”

  “Not what. I think he was afraid of someone.”

  “Do you have any idea who that person might have been?”

  Adele Foster rose and, with a movement of her hand, indicated that I should follow her. We ascended the staircase, past what, in the house’s former days, would have been used as a receiving room for visitors but was now a large and very luxurious bedroom. We paused in front of a closed door, in its keyhole a key, which she now turned to unlock the door. Then, keeping her back to the room, she pushed the door open and revealed its contents.

  The room had once been a small bedroom or dressing room but James Foster had transformed it into an office. There was a computer desk and chair, a drafting board, and a set of shelves against one wall lined with books and files. A window looked out onto the front yard, the top of the flowering dogwood below the window visible above the bottom of the frame, the last of its white blooms now fading and dying. A blue jay stood on its topmost branch, but our movement behind the glass must have disturbed him because he disappeared suddenly with a flash of his blue rounded tail.

  Yet, in truth, the bird was only a momentary distraction, because it was the walls that drew the eye. I couldn’t tell what color they had been painted because no paint showed through the blizzard of paper that seemed to have adhered to them, as if the room was in a constant state of motion and they had been propelled there and held in place by centrifugal force. The sheets were of varying sizes, some little more than Post-it notes, others larger than the surface of Foster’s drafting board. Some were yellow, others dark, some plain, a few lined. The detail varied from drawing to drawing, from hurried sketches executed with a flurry of pencil strokes to ornate, intricate depictions of their subject. James Foster had been quite an artist, but he seemed to have only one main theme.

  Almost every drawing depicted a woman, her face concealed, her body swathed in a cloak of white from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. The cloak spread out behind her like water pooling from an ice sculpture. It was not a false impression, for Foster had drawn her as if the material that covered her was wet. It clung to the muscles in her legs and buttocks, to the sweep of her breasts and the thin blades of her fingers, the bones of the knuckles clearly visible where she gripped the cloak tightly from beneath.

  But there was something wrong with her skin, something flawed and ugly. Her veins appeared to be above rather than beneath the epidermis, creating a tracery of raised pathways across her body like the levees over a flooded rice field. The result was that the woman under the veil seemed almost to be plated, her skin armored like that of an alligator. Unconsciously, instead of drawing closer I took a single step back from the wall and felt Adele Foster’s hand come to rest gently on my arm.

  “Her,” she said. “He was afraid of her.”

  We sat over coffee, some of the drawings spread on the coffee table before us.

  “Did you show these to the police?”

  She shook her head. “Elliot told me not to.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “No. He just said that it would be best not to show them the drawings.”

  I rearranged the papers, setting the depictions of the woman aside and revealing a set of five landscapes. Each depicted the same scene: a huge pit in the ground, surrounded by skeletal trees. In one of the drawings a pillar of fire emerged from the pit, but it was still possible to pick out, even there, the shape of the hooded woman now clothed in flame.

  “Is this a real place?”

  She took the picture from me and studied it, then handed it back to me with a shrug.

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Elliot. He might know.”

  “I can’t do that until I find him.”

  “I think something has happened to him, maybe the same thing that happened to Landron Mobley.”

  This time, I heard the disgust in her voice when she said Mobley’s name.

  “You didn’t like him?”

  She scowled. “He was a pig. I don’t know why they let him stay with them. No-” she corrected herself-“I do know why. He could get things for them: drugs, booze when they were younger, maybe even women. He knew the places to go. He wasn’t like Elliot and the others. He didn’t have money, or looks, or a college education, but he was prepared to go places that they were afraid to go, at least at first.”

  And Elliot Norton had still seen fit, after all those years, to represent Mobley in the impending case against him, despite the fact that it could bring no credit to Elliot. This was the same Elliot Norton who had grown up with Earl Larousse Jr. and was now representing the young man accused of killing his sister. None of this made me feel good.

  “You said that they did something, when they were younger, something that had come back to haunt them. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

  “No. James would never talk about it. We weren’t close before his death. His behavior had altered. He wasn’t the man I married. He began to hang out with Mobley again. They went hunting together up at Congaree. Then James started going to strip clubs. I think he might have been seeing prostitutes.”

  I laid the drawings down carefully on the table.

  “You know where he might have gone?”

  “I followed him, two or three times. He always went to the same place, because it was where Mobley liked to go when he was in town. It’s called LapLand.”

  And while I sat talking to Adele Foster, surrounded by images of spectral women, a disheveled man wearing a bright red shirt, blue jeans, and battered sneakers strolled up Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side of New York and stood in the shadow of the Orensanz Center, the oldest surviving synagogue in New York. It was a warm evening and he had taken a cab down here, electing not to endure the heat and discomfort of the subway. A daisy chain of children floated by, suspended between two women wearing T-shirts identifying them as members of a Jewish community group. One of the children, a little girl with dark curls, smiled up at him as she passed and he smiled back at her, watching her as she was carried around the corner and out of his sight.

  He walked up the steps, opened the door, and moved into the neo-Gothic main hall. He heard footsteps approach from behind and turned to see an old man with a sweeping brush in his hand.

  “Can I help you?” said the cleaner.

  The visitor spoke.

  “I’m looking for Ben Epstein,” he said.

  “He is not here,” came the reply.

  “But he does come here?”

  “Sometimes,” the old man conceded.

  “You expecting him this evening?”

  “Maybe. He comes, he goes.”

  The visitor found a chair in the shadows, turned it so that its back was facing the door, and sat down carefully upon it, wincing slightly as he lowered himself down. He rested his chin on his forearms and regarded the old man.

  “I’ll wait. I’m very patient.”

  The old man shrugged, and began sweeping.

  Five minutes went
by.

  “Hey,” said the visitor. “I said I was patient, not made of fucking stone. Go call Epstein.”

  The old man flinched but kept sweeping.

  “I can’t help you.”

  “I think you can,” said the visitor, and his tone made the old man freeze. The visitor had not moved, but the geniality and passivity that had made the little girl smile at him was now entirely gone. “You tell him it’s about Faulkner. He’ll come.”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again there was only spiraling dust where the old man had stood.

  Angel closed his eyes again, and waited.

  It was almost seven when Epstein arrived, accompanied by two men whose loose shirts did not quite manage to hide the weapons they carried. When he saw the man seated on the chair, Epstein relaxed and indicated to his companions that they could leave him be. Then he pulled up a chair and sat opposite Angel.

  “You know who I am?” asked Angel.

  “I know,” said Epstein. “You are called Angel. A strange name, I think, for I see nothing angelic about you.”

  “There’s nothing angelic to see. Why the guns?”

  “We are under threat. We believe we have already lost a young man to our enemies. Now we may have found the man responsible for his death. Did Parker send you?”

  “No, I came here alone. Why would you think Parker sent me?”

  Epstein looked surprised. “We spoke with him, not long before we learned of your presence here. We assumed that the two occurrences were related.”

  “Great minds thinking alike, I guess.”

  Epstein sighed. “He quoted Torah to me once. I was impressed. You, I think, even with your great mind, will not be quoting Torah. Or Kaballah.”

  “No,” admitted Angel.

  “I was reading, before I came to you: the Sefer ha-Bahir, the Book of Brightness. I have long been considering its significance, more often now since the death of my own son. I had hoped to find meaning in his sufferings, but I am not wise enough to understand what is written.”

  “You think suffering has to have meaning?”

  “Everything has meaning. All things are the work of the Divine.”

  “In that case, I got some harsh words to say to the Divine when I see Him.”

  Epstein spread his hands. “Say them. He is always listening, always watching.”

  “I don’t think so. You think He was listening and watching when your son died? Or worse: maybe He was and just decided not to do anything about it.”

  The old man winced involuntarily at the hurt that Angel’s words caused him, but the younger man did not appear to notice. Epstein took in the rage and grief on his face. “Are you talking about my son, or yourself?” he asked gently.

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “He is the Creator: all things come from Him. I do not pretend to know the ways of the Divine. That is why I read Kaballah. I do not yet understand all that it says, but I am beginning to comprehend a little.”

  “And what does it say to explain the torture and death of your son?”

  This time, even Angel recognized the pain that he had caused.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, reddening. “Sometimes, I get angry.”

  Epstein nodded-“I too get angry.”-then resumed.

  “I think it speaks of harmony between the upper and lower worlds, between the visible and the unseen, between good and evil. World above, world below, with angels moving in between. Real angels, not nominal ones.”

  He smiled.

  “And because of what I have read I wonder, sometimes, about the nature of your friend Parker. It is written in the Zohar that angels must put on the garment of this world when they walk upon it. I wonder now if this is true of angels both good and evil, that both hosts must walk this world in disguise. It is said of the dark angels that they will be consumed by another manifestation, the destroying angels, armed with plagues and the avenging wrath of the fury of the Divine, two hosts of His servants fighting against one another, for the Almighty created evil to serve His purposes, just as He created good. I must believe that or else the death of my son has no meaning. I must believe that his suffering is part of a larger pattern that I cannot comprehend, a sacrifice in the name of the greater, ultimate good.”

  He leaned forward on his chair.

  “Perhaps your friend is such an angel,” he concluded. “An agent of the Divine: a destroyer, yet a restorer of the harmony between worlds. Perhaps, just as his true nature is hidden from us, so too it may be hidden even from himself.”

  “I don’t think Parker is an angel,” said Angel. “I don’t think he does either. If he starts saying he is, his girlfriend will have him committed.”

  “You think these are an old man’s fancies? Perhaps they are. An old man’s fancies, then.” He dismissed them with a graceful sweep of his hand. “So why are you here, Mr. Angel?”

  “To ask for something.”

  “I will give you all that I can. You punished the one who took my son from me.” For it was Angel who had killed Pudd, who had in turn killed Epstein’s son Yossi; Pudd, or Leonard, the son of Aaron Faulkner.

  “That’s right,” said Angel. “Now I’m going to kill the one who sent him.”

  Epstein blinked once.

  “He is in jail.”

  “He’s going to be released.”

  “If they let him go, men will come. They will protect him, and they will take him out of your reach. He is important to them.”

  Angel found himself distracted by the old man’s words. “I don’t understand. Why is he so important?”

  “Because of what he represents,” replied Epstein. “Do you know what evil is? It is the absence of empathy: from that, all evil springs. Faulkner is a void, a being completely without empathy, and that is as close to absolute evil as this world can bear. But Faulkner is worse still, for he has the capacity to drain empathy from others. He is like a spiritual vampire, spreading his infection. And such evil draws evil to itself, both men and angels, and that is why they seek to protect him.

  “But your friend Parker is tormented by empathy, by his capacity to feel. He is all that Faulkner is not. He is destructive, and angry, but it is a righteous anger, not merely wrath, which is sinful and works against the Divine. I look to your friend and I see a greater purpose in action. If evil and good are both creations of the Almighty, then the evil visited on Parker, the loss of his wife and child, was an instrument of the greater good, just like Yossi’s death. Look at the men that he has hunted down as a result, the peace that he has brought to others, living and dead, the balance that he has restored, all born of the sorrow that he has endured, that he continues to endure. In his response to all that he has suffered, I, for one, see the work of the Divine.”

  Angel shook his head in disbelief.

  “So this is some kind of test for him, for all of us?”

  “No, not a test: an opportunity to prove ourselves worthy of salvation, to create that salvation for ourselves, maybe even to become salvation itself.”

  “I’m more concerned with this world than the next.”

  “There is no difference. They are not separate, but linked. Heaven and hell begin here.”

  “Well, one of them sure does.”

  “You are a wrathful man, are you not?”

  “I’m getting there. I hear another sermon and I’ll arrive.”

  Epstein raised his hands in surrender.

  “So you are here because you want our help? Our help with what?”

  “Roger Bowen.”

  Epstein’s smile widened.

  “That,” he said, “will be a pleasure.”

  18

  I LEFT ADELE FOSTER and headed back into Charleston. Her husband had begun visiting LapLand prior to his death, and LapLand was where Tereus worked. Tereus had hinted to me that Elliot knew more than he was telling me about the disappearances of Atys Jones’s mother and aunt, and from what Adele Foster had told me Elliot a
nd a group of his former boyhood friends were now under active threat from some outside force. That group included Earl Larousse Jr. and three men now deceased: Landron Mobley, Grady Truett, and James Foster. I tried Elliot’s phones again, with no result, then swung by his office close by the intersection of Broad and Meeting, what the locals called the Corners of Four Laws since St. Michael’s Church, the federal court, the state courthouse, and city hall each occupied a corner of the intersection. Elliot occupied a building with two other law firms, all three sharing a single, street-level entrance. I headed straight for the third floor but there was no sign of life behind the frosted glass door. I took off my jacket, placed it against the door, then used the butt of my gun to break through the glass. I reached in through the hole and opened the door.

  A small reception area with a secretary’s desk and shelves of files led into Elliot’s office. The door was unlocked. Inside, filing cabinet drawers were open and files lay scattered across the desk and chairs. Whoever had gone through the files knew what he or she was looking for. There was no Rolodex or address book that I could find, and when I tried to access the computer I found that it was password-locked. I spent a few minutes going through the alphabetically ordered files, but could find nothing on Landron Mobley and nothing on Atys Jones that I did not already have in my possession. I turned out the lights, stepped over the broken glass at the door, and closed it softly behind me.

  Adele had given me an address in Hampton for Phil Poveda, one of the by now rapidly dwindling group of friends. I drove out there in time to find a tall man with long gray-black hair and a flecked beard closing his garage door from the inside. As I approached him he paused. He looked nervous and skittish.

  “Mr. Poveda?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I reached for my id. “My name is Charlie Parker. I’m a private investigator. I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

  He still didn’t reply, but at least the garage door remained open. I took it as a positive sign. I was wrong. Phil Poveda, who looked like a hippie computer geek, pulled a gun on me. It was a.38, and it shook in his hand like unset Jell-O, but it was still a gun.