“No, I didn’t. I swear I never would’ve—”
She placed her finger over his lips, shook her head. “You saw us together that one time. It was outside the Royal Wee. He had hoisted me up against a wall, and I’d wrapped my legs around his waist. You watched the entire thing. You told yourself I was the seductress, the one to blame. He was a god who could do no wrong. You forced yourself to forget what was true.”
The memory beat in Kyle’s skull, brought him to his knees. Mia half naked in the chill night, his mentor thrusting into her in the alleyway.
“You told him the kind of person you thought I was,” she continued. “A cheat, a whore. And you were right. I know you loved me, but I wasn’t ready to feel so strongly about anyone, you or him. That is why I’m bones and dust now. If I’d truly loved you both, I might still be here.”
Kyle hugged his legs to his chest. “I caused this.”
“No, no, no.” She crouched down and took his head in her hands. “He would’ve done this to me no matter what. The only difference is you would’ve never been involved.”
The scent of sour apples tickled his nose. She had moved in for a kiss and he accepted, her soft lips just like he remembered. A knock at the door made him pull away.
She seemed frightened. She removed the bathrobe and crept toward the window. The knocks grew louder and louder, pounding to get inside. He covered his ears. She opened the window, letting in swirls of cold air, and climbed out into the night. He got to his feet and thrust open the door, but the knocking continued, a plague between his ears.
Knock. Knock. KNOCK.
* * *
KYLE WOKE UP sweating under the comforter. Devil’s Hopyard had been tossed to the floor. Loud knocking continued at the door and then it suddenly went silent. He got out of bed and flung open the door, desperate to ask Mia a thousand more questions.
Perched in the snow was an envelope sealed with a W. He glanced around to see who had left it, but the parking lot was empty. He grabbed the envelope and closed the door. The window had been left open and he shut that too. He ripped open the envelope and discovered a note written in blood.
You’ve toyed with something of mine
Now I’m going to toy with something of yours.
But you’ll have to finish the book
To know where to find her.
For in the end is a map of a gruesome literary scavenger hunt through Devil’s Hopyard
That will lead you back to her pretty little hands
(should they still have life in them if you don’t take too long).
Your mentor, W
The note spiraled to the floor, his worst fear come true. He grabbed his phone and called Jamie, getting her voice mail. He left a frantic message, begging her to call him back, praying she was all right. He told her how much he loved her, that he never meant to hurt her, that she was his everything.
Lying on the floor, the manuscript seemed to stare up at him. He cursed at it as he tucked it under his arm and threw on a pair of shoes without even remembering a coat. Then he headed to the car to drive to Devil’s Hopyard, his mind racing about how he would end this tale if he were the writer, knowing that for the most dramatic impact, Jamie had to die, that every great novel ends in some kind of death so the other characters can learn and grow from that experience.
One question remained: Who would survive the last page, and who—like Mia—would become bones and dust?
36
SHERIFF PEALEY HAD Loretta figure out how to use the jump drive with the manuscript from Kyle Broder. He didn’t trust technology, still using a rotary phone and a typewriter; Loretta handled all his e-mails. A psychologist once told him he was stuck in the year Ann-Marie passed, but he’d been a technophobe long before—even though a part of him blamed all the Wi-Fi/radio frequencies in the air for her sickness.
When he finally sat down in front of Loretta’s computer with a jelly donut and a coffee, he wasn’t prepared for the horrors on the screen. After not thinking about Mia for some time, William Lansing had brought her back to life. She became tangible again. He had never met her before, and he realized from reading Devil’s Hopyard that he never really knew her—nor did he want to know her in this way. When Loretta knocked on the door after an hour to ask if he wanted a coffee refill, she found him hunched over her desk, his face red with tears.
“Sheriff Pealey?” she said, running in and placing her hand on his back.
“Can you print the end part for me? I need to go.”
He put on his cap and grabbed his holster with the loaded gun already in it.
“Sheriff, are you okay? You’re crying. I haven’t seen you like this since—”
“Print these last pages, Loretta. C’mon!”
She jumped in place, not used to him speaking to her like that. He maintained a laconic manner in the office. “Let the world fall to pieces around you, but never let it shake you up.” Sheriff Lee Mucken, the toughest son of a bitch he knew and the prior sheriff of this county, told him that when they came across his first dead body.
Loretta printed out the forty or so pages he asked for and handed them over. He knew she wanted an explanation of what was going on, but that would take too much time.
“I gotta go, Loretta.”
He was out the door before she could say anything more. He couldn’t explain what he’d just read. The depravity of the writer’s mind, the details that felt so eerily true. Mia’s bones and dust buried somewhere in Devil’s Hopyard. He thought of past interactions with William Lansing. Once at Gussie’s General Store, he’d witnessed William being very rude to old Gussie. William needed lye to raise the soil pH in Laura’s garden and Gussie was out of it. William got very angry and Pealey had to come between them. Gussie didn’t like being talked to in a certain way, and even at her elderly age could be provoked into a fight. The sheriff managed to deescalate the situation. Eventually, William simmered down and apologized. He said something about having problems with his kids recently, but Pealey couldn’t remember what exactly. One of those holes in his memory, lost forever.
With the last pages of Devil’s Hopyard, he drove to the Lansings’ house. He never made night calls unless it was an emergency, so they would clearly know something was up. He rang the doorbell, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier the only sound on the quiet block. He recognized the piece well. Ann-Marie had been a classical-music nut and broadened his musical tastes beyond country.
Laura Lansing opened the door, a slight tremor in her hands that became more pronounced when she saw him. Always a tiny, fragile woman, she seemed to have shrunk since he’d seen her last, her nervous energy whittling her down to practically nothing.
“Sheriff Pealey?” she said, looking him in the eye and then looking away. “What brings you here?”
“Is your husband home, Mrs. Lansing?”
He peered inside, viewing the house from an entirely new perspective. Anything could be evidence.
“No. I believe he’s at Bentley, writing,” she said. “But he could be anywhere at the college. Sometimes in his office, sometimes the library, there’s also a coffee klatch on campus—”
“Does he have an office at home, as well?” he interrupted. Pealey had always been suspicious of babblers who thought that talking a lot might cover up their guilt.
“Yes, it’s right up the stairs,” she said. “What’s this about, Sheriff?”
He knew the truth wouldn’t work, especially if she was involved at all.
“It seems like there’s some trouble with that student of William’s I was here about last week…”
“Yes, what about him?”
“It appears things have taken a turn for the worse. May I come in?”
“Yes … of course.”
She held the door open and he entered. A spotless house, always a sign of something hiding beneath the surface. Just another show this family had put on for years if everything he read was true.
“No tea, thank you,” he
said, because she always offered it upon entering. “So, Kyle Broder has made a formal threat against William.”
Laura fingered her cross. “Oh, Lord.”
“Now sometimes these threats stay idle and then die away, but we do have to look into them.”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“Has Broder been at this house?”
She thought for a moment. “No, I don’t believe he has.”
“He said he was here today in William’s office.”
“What?” she said, and then stopped herself, genuinely shocked. “There was another man here today … my husband’s publisher. And I did think he looked too young to be at such a high-up level.”
“Was he in your husband’s office?”
“Why?”
“I think he may have left something there. May I check?”
Pealey made a move for the staircase, but Laura grabbed his arm.
“Bill really doesn’t like people going in his office.”
“Laura, there could be evidence there I need.”
“It’s just … he keeps everything just so. It’s an environment he’s created that allows him access into the world of his book, that’s what he said. Any bit of interruption—”
“I promise, Laura, I’ll keep everything how it is.”
“O-okay,” she said, but he was already marching up the stairs, his hand on his gun belt. When he was out of earshot, he made a call to his deputy for backup just in case.
He got out his gun and pointed it at the office door. He’d been so spooked from reading Devil’s Hopyard, he half expected William to come charging out with a syringe. He pushed open the office door with his gun. No William inside. He’d spied the framed diploma, which let him know that Kyle Broder had really been here. He reholstered the gun and moved aside the area rug. He got out a knife and picked the silver keyhole. He took out the black box and lifted the handle to find a heart-shaped rock covered in dried blood.
“Well, fuck me sideways and call me Sally.”
He heard a crash, the sound ringing in his ears. He tipped over and hit his face on the floor. Liquid covered his eyes that he realized was blood. He turned onto his back, groaning as if someone had ripped open his skull.
Laura Lansing stood over him with a candlestick in hand.
“I said not to go into in Bill’s office.”
* * *
MERCIFULLY, LAURA DIDN’T hit Sheriff Pealey twice with the candlestick, but she was holding it out threatening to strike him again.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said.
She was shaking madly. The candlestick fell to the floor and clanged. The tears came. She crouched down and got to her knees, wobbly on her feet.
Pealey clamped a hand over his wound to keep the blood from spilling out. He reached into his holster and pointed the gun at her. This made her cry even more. She started babbling, sounding like it was in a different language until she finally got herself under control.
“What … what has he done?” she said, fearful.
“Damn, you really hit me,” Pealey said, as if he just realized. “Got a bit of my brains on the floor.”
He helped her up and she felt weightless in his arms. He hated to do it but had to aim the gun at her again.
“Now where is your husband, Mrs. Lansing? Is he in the park—Devil’s Hopyard?”
“He’s on a walkabout,” Laura said. “He said he’s on the final chapter of his novel and has to wander around for it all to come to him. He’s a great writer.”
“That is true, ma’am. Wouldn’t argue with that.”
“What did he do, Sheriff?”
Her eyes told the sheriff that she was expecting the worst. He guessed she’d been waiting for this moment for so long that it had become a part of her life, a nagging reminder of how easily everything could fall apart.
“Where is the shack that he goes to in Devil’s Hopyard?”
“The shack?” Laura said, disappointed. More tears came. “That was where he’d take her.”
“Take who, Mrs. Lansing? Mia Evans?”
Her mouth dropped wide open.
“How did you know?” She steeled herself to continue. “That’s where they would go. Just the two of them. It was their spot. To make love.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“I followed them once. He knew I knew about her, and we coexisted like that for some time. I have my own issues. Back then, I was agoraphobic, didn’t go outside for a year except for my garden. Don’t know why. I just wanted to stay in my home. So I should have known he’d stray. She was beautiful, I’ll give him that, but rather tawdry. I don’t know—I wouldn’t have expected her type to catch his eye, but there she was, the two of them holding hands as they got out of his car—our car, what I am saying? They were in that shack for hours, and when he stepped out, he seemed … alive. It was as if the man I knew had actually been dead up until that moment, and … well, my heart broke. But I hid instead of confronting him. I couldn’t be the one to take away his happiness, isn’t that foolish? It seems foolish now. And then she disappeared.”
“Do you think William had something to do with that?”
Laura stared at him as if she’d left reality and returned to it in a crash landing. She gave one sad nod.
“Where is the shack located, Laura?”
“In its heart,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“If you look at a map of the park, the shack is located right where the heart would be. The park is kind of shaped like a human body. I know this because he told it to her when I saw them. He said he found a place for them to make love that was located right in the heart of Devil’s Hopyard. And it was perfect because she was his heart. He couldn’t live without her. That was what he said.”
* * *
BACK IN HIS car, Sheriff Pealey got out a map of Killingworth and found Devil’s Hopyard. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it was sort of shaped like a human body just like Mrs. Lansing described. He circled right where the heart would be. Then he made a call to his deputy to come and take Mrs. Lansing into custody for more questions. He had handcuffed her to the couch’s leg—after she had tended to his wound with a bandage. Both wound up apologizing to each other. His deputy would be there in ten minutes to get her. Then he put up his siren and floored it to Devil’s Hopyard, thinking the last time he’d used his siren for such an emergency was probably when Mia went missing.
37
WHILE DRIVING TO Devil’s Hopyard, Kyle got out a map of the park that William had inserted toward the end of the manuscript. On the next page was the first clue. All it said was, As I Lay Dying at the entrance. He feared seeing Jamie’s dead body upon pulling up to the park and was relieved to find nothing at the entrance when he arrived. The gates were still open since the park closed around ten at night. He was about to head inside when he spotted a copy of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying perched against the gate.
He got out of the car into the heavy snow and realized that he’d forgotten a coat. At least he’d remembered shoes. With frozen fingers he picked up the book—the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor rural family’s quest to honor her wish to be buried in her Mississippi hometown. Faulkner wrote the novel over the span of six weeks from midnight to four in the morning and didn’t change one word. Kyle tried to think of what clue it might offer and flipped through the text until a dollar bill fell out into the snow. On the bill had been written, It hadn’t bothered me much.
Kyle wondered about the significance of the sentence. Was William saying he hadn’t been bothered much about something? Possibly, but Kyle didn’t know what that had to do with finding where he’d taken Jamie. Then he thought it was a quote from George Washington, but he couldn’t figure out how that related to As I Lay Dying either. He got back in the car, quieted his shivers, and flipped through the book again. Faulkner had written it from the perspective of multiple characters, and he recalled the character of C
ash—the oldest sibling who was a carpenter and built the coffin for his mother, Addie. While crossing a river, Cash fell and broke his leg. After enduring the pain of a cement cast, Cash said, “It never bothered me much.” Kyle knew Cash represented the Christ-like figure of the novel who sacrifices his own pain to push forward so Addie can be buried.
Feeling like he was getting closer to deciphering the clue, Kyle spread out the map of Devil’s Hopyard on the dashboard. The different parts of the park all had various names, and he searched for one referencing Christ. No dice. At the bottom of the map was a spot called Phantom Limb. He wondered if William had chosen that because of Cash’s wounded leg. If he had any chance of saving Jamie, he needed to go with his gut and not second-guess himself, so he took off.
It was a circuitous journey to Phantom Limb, since he had to take many of the side roads. Obviously, this was a destination no one traveled to and he could see why. At the edge of the park, a solitary cliff thrust out, the river lapping beneath. He left his brights on and exited the car, two yellow beams creating the only paths of light in the dark expanse. The snow was coming down harder now, and he had to shield his eyes. A book was propped up in the center of a white mound, practically covered. When he got closer, he wiped away the snow and saw it was George Orwell’s 1984, the dystopian novel that takes place in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation.
Kyle picked up the book and turned through the pages. In angry black marker William had written Big Brother is watching, Big Brother is watching, Big Brother is watching, over and over. Kyle glanced around, as if he were being spied on. Only a hooting owl seemed to have eyes on him. It took off into the night. He stared at the mound of snow that 1984 had been stuck into. Upon closer inspection, it resembled the shape of a leg. Though his hands were numb from the frigid temperature, he moved aside the coating of snow until he discovered a severed leg, hacked off at the thigh.
He doubled back, tripping over himself, screaming and hearing his echo rustle through the trees. He threw up to his side, unable to look away from the severed leg. Was it Jamie’s? He crept closer and saw that it had slightly decomposed, making it impossible to tell if it belonged to her. Jamie had no identifiable marks on either of her legs. He grabbed the copy of 1984 and locked himself in the car, the beams of yellow light illuminating the gruesome scene.
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