Blood of Cain (Sean O'Brien (Mystery/Thrillers))

by Lowe, Tom

  A school bus was only a few feet from my car, dozens of kids getting off the bus. Two adults, probably teachers, stood near the bus instructing the kids to line up on their march down to the cliffs to view the island. Many of the kids had binoculars, and books depicting birds of the world. I walked by them and smiled, hoping I hadn’t pulled the stiches in my bullet wound, hoping blood wouldn’t soak through the bandage and shirt. And I hoped they wouldn’t see the body of the dead assassin.

  I got in my car and drove off, flying down the gravel road as fast as the rental could go, looking up into my rearview mirror. I couldn’t see anyone else following me. But because I couldn’t see them didn’t mean a thing.

  I put a battery back into my mobile phone. I waited a few seconds for it to boot up, then I called Dave Collins and said, “I need you to upload the video confession in the river.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s the only way I can return massive fire.” I told Dave what happened and said, “They’re following me, somehow. The video, if it goes viral, will keep them in crisis control up until the election. Since my voice is on the video asking questions, if I wind up dead, if my body is recoverable, maybe a good prosecutor can indict Logan for murder.”

  “And if you could find Courtney Burke, all of this could be moot when you prove she’s not the daughter of you and Andrea Logan.”

  “I think I’m getting closer.”

  “In Ireland?”

  “No, in the states. The priest left a mocking, sardonic clue.” I told Dave what he said and added, “Try to research Poe’s poem, The Raven, and let me know if you can find a physical location to the translation of Aideen in The Raven—I know it means east of Eden … maybe there’s a connection to a location in the states. That’s where I think I’ll locate my brother Dillon, and if I can get there in time—maybe I’ll find Courtney.”

  91

  It wasn’t an island. Not by the real definition of the word. I reached for the bottle of Jameson’s that Cormac Moore had given me, rolled my pants up to my knees, and walked from the shore of Derrynane Beach through ankle-deep water to Abbey Island. The pristine spot was about fifty miles south of Puffin Island on the western coast of County Kerry. Within five minutes of walking and climbing, I could see the ruins of an ancient stone abbey and the nearby cemetery. My heart pumped.

  The wind blew across the Atlantic, gulls chortling and riding the air currents off the cliffs. Cotton-white cumulus clouds floated like small nations across a cobalt blue backdrop of the universe. I scaled to what I knew was a sacred place in the history and hearts of Ireland. Suspended on what felt like the skybox of the Atlantic, on a high cliff overlooking the sea near the ruins of the old monastery, were dozens of graves marked with iron crosses, Celtic crosses, gravestones worn thin from time and the sea. It was the Abbey Island Cemetery, a place filled with the remains of Irish sailors, farmers, and their families. All of the headstones overlooked a horseshoe-shaped deserted beach that reflected the ice blue sky.

  I walked slowly through the cemetery, the smell of the sea mixed with damp moss and aged limestone. I saw the gravestone of Mary O’Connell. The inscription read that she was the wife of Daniel O’Connell, known as The Liberator–a man who fought for Catholic Emancipation in Westminster Parliament.

  I continued walking, carefully scanning each headstone for the name I’d come to find. Why? Why walk through an ancient cemetery off the Coast of County Kerry Ireland searching for the name of a person I never knew … would never know? What was the connection beyond the fact that my mother had told me about him. In the four hours I had with her, she painted a picture of a caring and kind man, a man who lived for his family, a man who eventually died for his family. I was only a baby when he was killed. I had no conscious memory of him. But my subconscious may have his whisper concealed. That was all the connection, all the bridge to the past that I needed. He was my father.

  And I was his son.

  I looked to my right, and there it was. A Celtic cross. For more than four decades it faced the Atlantic, faced the winds, sun and salt air. The old weathered cross was very much an old rugged cross, as was, I felt, the man buried beneath the cross—rugged and tough on the exterior, tender as a spring night on the inside. My mother had told me stories of his physical and internal strengths. How he could build a house from the ground up with plans he’d drawn and the expertise he had with his hands. And how inside his heart was at peace, and how he was her rock, her guiding light into an often too-dark world.

  The inscription read:

  Peter Flanagan

  1946 - 1970

  He trusted in our Lord

  He soared on the wings of eagles

  There was an old and faded embossed photograph of a man, and it was bolted to the lower part of the Celtic cross. I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture, almost as if it had a magnetic pull to it. He was dressed in a tweed sports coat, wide smile, angular face, thick dark hair and eyebrows. I felt as if I’d seen him before, dressed in the exact same clothes. But where? I looked at the old photo, the dark hair, the eyes, and I saw a little of myself.

  And then I remembered.

  It was at my mother’s funeral. Across the cemetery, after the others had left, the man appeared, fog swirling around his legs. He seemed to have worn the same style—the same cut of suit, same dark hair and rawboned face. Impossible. I felt fatigue build behind my eyes, my shoulder burning. Move on.

  I blew out a breath and poured a shot of Jameson in the plastic cup that Cormac had given me. I raised my cup and said, “Hello, Dad. It’s been a long time coming. I want you to know that the man who put you here is no more. I didn’t kill him, his evil did. Maybe it was time to collect … I don’t know. You probably already know that Mom’s gone, at least she’s not in this world anymore. I bet she’s in yours, maybe right beside you. I hope so. You have a granddaughter. Her name is Courtney … she’s Sarah’s only child. And right now, she’s in trouble, some serious trouble. I’ll do everything I can to help her, because I’m about all the family she has left on earth … and she’s about all I have, too. Mom told me you enjoyed a shot of Irish whiskey. I’m going to leave this bottle next to your picture. Maybe you can sip and enjoy here overlooking the sea.”

  I knocked the shot back and swallowed the whiskey, the breeze kicking up over the Atlantic, the smell of shellfish in the air, gulls calling out across the cliffs. I set the bottle of Jameson down at the base of the cross, just beneath my father’s picture and said, “I wish I could have known you.” Then I turned and walked away, walked barefooted down the hill and across the tidal pool, the sound of shrieking cormorants over Abbey Island, waves breaking against the rocks, and the undertow of my father’s voice pulling at the edge of my conscious mind.

  I stopped and glanced back at the island and somewhere under the breeze, I thought I heard or maybe recalled the murmur of his voice, like the whisper from the bottom of a well. “He doesn’t resemble his brother … Sean is different … different as the shamrock mark on his shoulder.”

  When I opened the door to the rental car, my phone rang. It was Dave Collins. “Sean, Logan’s people are scrambling. Doing whatever damage control and denial they can. The river confession video is viral, getting a hundred thousand views an hour, globally. The news media have ID’d your voice on the video asking the questions of the guy in the river. All of it, the near attack by the big gator, the gunshots, your questions and his hysterical, but real answers are more than convincing. It’s reality TV at its finest. The media are hunting for the guy you pulled out of the river and you.”

  “They won’t find him. And I’m sure there’s no public record of him in existence.”

  “I’m not so sure the pressure is off you. If the media can’t find you, they can’t corroborate this, and the Logan camp will contend it’s all manufactured by democrats who are hell-bent on political chaos. So it’s in Logan’s best interest to make sure you never surface again, at least until he’s
done with a second term. Where are you?”

  “A place called Abbey Island, near the Ring of Kerry, on Ireland’s west coast. I found my father’s grave.”

  “When you get home, when this settles down, we’ll sip an Irish whiskey and you can tell me how you found his gravesite. Speaking of finding places, that information you gave me from the priest with the God-complex, Father Thomas Garvey … a background check reveals a lot of skeletons in the priest’s closet, so to speak. Thomas Garvey was maybe the worst of the worst in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals during the seventies and eighties in Ireland. Beyond that, he was also known as an expert, a scholar in his knowledge and appreciation of nineteenth century poets and writers. Dickenson, Cummings, Carroll, and Poe, among his specialties.”

  “Let’s focus on Poe.”

  “The narrator in The Raven seems to get a perverse pleasure between his desire to remember and forget, like a shunned lover. Your brother Dillon, if he’s a master hypnotist, he specializes in causing people to forget or remember—to recall what he wants them to remember, and ultimately, to have them carry out his desires.”

  “And if the desire is murder?”

  “Like Nick mentioned, you might get a Manchurian Candidate, a pre-programmed assassin. Dillon could surround himself with these types.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Father Garvey used the word balm for the wound and your soul … in the Raven, Poe writes: ‘On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!’ Sean, the mention of ‘balm in Gilead,’ is found in Jeremiah eight – twenty-one, where it asks … ‘is there no balm in Gilead?’”

  “What’s your take on that?”

  “He may be referring to Mount Gilead. In biblical times, it was east of the Jordan River. Some speculate in the land of Nod, places were Cain wandered, east of Eden, if you will. There is a Mount Gilead in America, or at least there was.”

  “Was?”

  “Yes. According to my research, it was hidden in the hills of Virginia. An eccentric herbal doctor, a spiritualist, built a health commune there in 1821. Way atop a Virginia mountain he renamed Mount Gilead. Apparently it had the right elevation, natural springs, Goose Creek in particular—the spiritual vibe and so on. Anyway, the conditions may have been right, but something else wasn’t. A few serial murders happened back up in the woods, people fled, the Civil War arrived and the Goose Creek area became a blood bath. Eventually the county no longer maintained the one road leading into Mount Gilead. The settlement was literally at the end of a dead-end road, no highway to Heaven, for damn sure. The village became a ghost town. Father Garvey told you that Dillon found it and Aideen, but not you. What was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We do know Aideen is east of Eden, and the reference to balm and Gilead. Although there are two other towns with the name Mount Gilead in the states, one in North Carolina and the other in Ohio, I’d wager the ghost town in the mountains of Virginia might be pay dirt.”

  “And that’s where I’m going. Dave, rent a car at Dulles in your name. List me as one of the co-drivers. Make up a name for someone else.”

  “Okay.”

  “One thing, more.”

  “What’s that?”

  “On Jupiter, under the bed in the master, I have my Remington 700 there. It’s packed in a travel case. Wrap it in brown shipping paper and overnight it to the Red Fox Inn in Middleburg, Virginia.”

  “Is that where you’ll be staying?”

  “For five minutes. Book a room and tell the clerk someone will be picking up a package that’s being delivered to the hotel. Tell them the package is part of the accessories for a group meeting, part of visual presentation.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Be damn careful, Sean. Between the legacies of those serial murders, which were probably some kind of Hatfield and McCoy-style killings and a bloody Civil War battle, Mount Gilead has a very dark history.”

  92

  Courtney Burke tried to find something that wasn’t on the map of Virginia. At least not on modern maps of the state, and it couldn’t be located through satellite GPS. But it was there. Tucked away in a valley of ghosts, blurred by the lines of change and lost through the slivers in time. The remnants of the town were still there. Vine-covered buildings left standing. An old wooden post office. General merchandise store. A saloon. A half dozen ramshackle monuments to an age in Virginia of grist mills and moonshine stills. But like a faded tintype photograph of troops from the Civil War, the town of Mount Gilead, Virginia was a shadow of its former image.

  Courtney needed directions, and she needed them from someone who knew the mountains well. She drove the red Toyota truck over roads winding through the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was mid-morning and she felt that she was getting close, felt the nervousness, the anxiety of seeing him again, face-to-face. Sometimes, even after the years, she could smell his sweat, the stench of his cheap cologne, feel the scratch of his beard stubble on her skin—her thighs, and she remembered his filthy jeans. He never removed them when he raped her, only pulling his pants down to his knees or ankles. His flannel shirt was always half unbuttoned. God, how she hated the pattern of those red and black colors.

  She took one hand off the steering wheel, lowered it to the space between the seat and console, her right hand wrapping around the butt of the .22 pistol. She could do it, now she could. And he would never hurt another child. She knew he’d be wearing the ancient torc when she found him because he believed that was the source of his power. He believed all the crap about the druids, the Irish people of the Iron Age—how they thought forged iron and gold and locked in powerful spirits. They also believed in reincarnation and human sacrifice. He was just like them, the druids—the bastard.

  She eased the Toyota off the road and slowed to a stop in the potholed parking lot of a 1950’s era gasoline station and country store. There was one gas pump in the center of the lot, directly in front of the entrance to the store. She parked at the pump. The only thing that didn’t resemble the 1950s was the price of gas.

  Courtney entered the dim store, the smell of hoop cheese and pickles in the air. In one corner, two wooden chairs were next to an aged barrel with the stenciled words Jack Daniels on one side, a checkerboard on top of the barrel. A single paddle fan turned slowly, the uneven blades causing a slight squeak on each turn. Jars of honey, canned okra and green beans were sold from the top of a glass counter, hunting knives sold underneath.

  Courtney rang the bell on the counter. A half minute later, a slender middle-aged man appeared, using a red towel to wipe grease off his bony hands. He had a basset hound face with an Adam’s apple almost the size of a golf ball. He wore his denim shirt tucked into his jeans, the jeans tucked into his boots. “Hep you?” he asked, his dark eyes almost veiled under the bill of a John Deere cap.

  Courtney smiled. “I’d like to buy some gas.”

  “Don’t accept no credit cards.”

  “Okay. Here’s twenty dollars.” She slid the money across the counter.

  “Pumps on. You know how to pump it?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “Bet you have.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling.

  “You from around here?”

  “All my life.”

  “Maybe you’ve heard of a place called Mount Gilead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Can you give me directions to it?”

  “Ain’t much left. A few old buildings. A shut down grist mill. It’s a ghost town.”

  “I’m a photographer, and I’m documenting places like that. Where can I find whatever’s left of Mount Gilead?”

  “Take Highway 797 till you come to Goose Creek Road. Go left, ‘bout a quarter mile down there go right when you come to Shawtock. It’s dirt. Follow the road way up in the mountains. Road gets narrow, becomes one-way. You’ll have to back outta there. Not a good place to be
in the winter. A fella got back in there two years ago. They didn’t find his body ‘till the spring thaw.”

  “I plan to be gone long before winter.”

  He leaned closer, his gaunt hands splaying on the counter, the smell of pipe tobacco on his breath. “If you go, you’d be smart to be outta there before nightfall. And once the sun takes a notion to set, it sets pretty fast. Gets dark real quick up in the hollow.”

  ***

  Courtney almost passed it. An unmarked dirt road, maybe a half mile past a sign that read: Goose Creek Stone Bridge. She turned to her right, onto the unmarked road, scrub brush scraping against the side of the Toyota. She drove slowly through the winding back road, each turn gaining elevation, steep drop-offs less than three feet from the right side of her truck. She glanced down and could see a white water river hundreds of feet below her.

  After another mile, the road seemed to dissolve into the thick woods. The road simply ended. There wasn’t room to turn the truck around. She shut off the motor and opened the driver’s side door. The air was cooler, hickory trees and pines grew high, and a hawk circled the blue sky over the ravine and the river. She could just hear the rush of the white water against the rocks far below her, the sound like holding a seashell to her ear.

  Courtney lifted the pistol from between the seats and picked up her mobile phone off the console. She got out of the truck, not sure which direction to walk, or what exactly to say when she found him. She slipped a battery into her phone, waited a few seconds and then punched in the number. After two rings it went to his voice-mail. “Sean, it’s Courtney.” She blew out a long breath. “You said if I ever needed you … if I … never mind. I shouldn’t have called.” She disconnected and slipped the small phone into her bra. She quietly closed the truck door and began following the overgrown trail into the woods.

  She walked more than a mile down the narrow path. The farther Courtney walked, she felt, the closer she was to finding him. She stopped in her tracks when she heard pounding. With her eyes only, she followed the sound, the hammering coming from a tree. A pileated woodpecker, its tuft of bright red feathers resembling a cap on top of its head, scurried around the bark of a pine tree drilling for insects with the ferocity of a small jackhammer.