by M. M. Mayle
“Laurel!” he shouts as she lands a blow to his gut. “Jesus Christ!” he oofs and fends off the next blow. “It’s me. It’s Nate. You’re okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” Grateful that she didn’t happen to be carrying a garden spade, say, he grabs her in a disabling bear hug, maneuvers her onto the bench seat of the cart where they remain becalmed in a sea of turmoil while he fills her in.
At the finish of his unsparing briefing, Laurel asks the expected questions, principal among them having to do with Colin’s safety and whereabouts. Nate responds with the argument Colin gave to avoid house arrest.
She nods knowingly. “Of course,” she says. “He could hardly do otherwise, could he? That’s why I should be with him. That’s why I should be part of the search. Have you forgotten Anthony’s my son too? And maybe you’ve forgotten I’m the only one who’s seen Jakeway and can make a positive ID.” Her chin comes up in defiance; one foot strikes out to connect with the ground.
“Don’t even think about it,” Nate warns and jerks the cart into motion before she can bolt. “Your place is at the house. If Colin knew you were out here . . . Jesus, can you imagine what he’d do? Do you really want to add to his worries? And to the general confusion?” He argues that point to death, then stresses the importance of reliability and patience in situations like this. “Don’t forget, they also serve who only stand and wait,” he concludes in lame desperation.
“On His Blindness,” she responds.
“Whose blindness? Who are we talking about? You’ve lost me.”
“The quote you just gave—it’s the last line of a sonnet by John Milton. ‘On His Blindness,’ the sonnet’s called.”
Sheer blind luck that the quote came to him when it did because its substance seems to have brought about her surrender.
In the backwash of the blazing headlamps, she assumes the same rigid composure she displayed on the trip back to Manhattan after surviving the attack in her New Jersey garage. She appears impervious to the freshening wind that’s carrying enough rain to wet her face and dampen her shoulders.
At the merge with the main driveway, the wind is carrying the wailing of police sirens from outside the fence and the calls and shouts of searchers inside the barrier.
At the porte-cochère, they’re met by the remaining partyers, along with Gemma Earle and Rachel. Amanda is at the forefront of this group whose aggregate expression indicates they’ve pieced together enough to be deeply concerned.
Nate validates their concern without describing the hideous find in the oasthouse. Chris, Emmet, and Brownie Yates race out of the covered entranceway in different directions before he can stop their swelling the ranks of the ill-equipped and undirected volunteers threatening to turn a manhunt into a monumental clusterfuck.
Rachel reports that hers and Gemma’s search of Anthony’s favorite hiding places produced nothing to weaken Colin’s belief that the lad sneaked out to look for Toby at the oasthouses. “The torch kept in his room in case of a power cut is missing . . . oh, and so is that bedraggled Manchester United cap he’s seldom without. But that doesn’t have to mean he’s set on anything but deviling the little Thorne girls,” she says, the catch in her delivery at odds with her brave bearing.
Inside the main entrance hall, Gemma, when questioned, adds nothing to change that perception before bustling away with Rachel to advise the kitchen staff of a major change in plans.
Susa Thorne dashes off to check on her daughters, who are temporarily bedded down in one of the guestrooms. That leaves him alone with Amanda and Laurel, who still hasn’t said a word since referencing the Milton sonnet.
They move into the nearest sanctuary, the always welcoming winter parlor, where the hearth fire is down to embers, with toys and games littering one end of the room and a kiddie video still playing on the TV.
No one says a word until Laurel, fixed on the remains of the hearth fire, finds her voice. “Just tell her, will you? Just get it the fuck over with, will you please?” she says without turning away from the embers.
There’s no mistaking what she means. Nate waves Amanda to take a chair at the game table, clears his throat, shifts his weight, runs his fingers through his hair in a standard stall.
“Very well, I’ll do it.” Laurel forsakes the fireplace and targets Amanda. “This is what he didn’t tell the others just now. He didn’t tell them that along with incontrovertible evidence that Jakeway has been squatting in one of the oasthouses, he’s also been dining there. Colin found the bloodied feathers of Cyril the rooster in the barn and Nate found the missing dog, skinned, spitted, and partially roasted in the—”
“What?” Amanda says, her knuckles whitening on the armrests as she attempts to rise from the chair. “Omigod, what are you saying? They haven’t found . . .” She sinks back into the chair.
“No, they haven’t,” Nate says. “Not yet anyway.”
“Do you know for a fact the rat bastard has Anthony?” Amanda says.
“We don’t know that for a fact, but I’m afraid it’s a good surmise,” he says, avoiding eye contact with either woman.
Emmet saves him from further distress by bursting in fresh from a review of the CCTV security tapes with definitive proof Anthony strayed beyond the monitored perimeter soon after nightfall—just as Bemus claimed, just as everyone feared. That news impacts with the finality of a struck gong, stripping Emmet’s other news of any real importance.
“We’re not here to talk about the weather, for chrissake!” Nate explodes at the lawyer. “I think it might be more important to learn if you caught the timestamp on the incriminating tape than to hear you yap about the progress of a storm system that was still in the fucking Bay of Biscay last I heard . . . Well, did you?”
“Yes, I did. The timestamp would have the lad gone missing three hours and more, if that’s what you’re asking, and your atypical outburst would have you under a bit too much strain,” Emmet says without rancor. “Given almost any other circumstances I’d recommend a stiff drink, but absent that recourse perhaps a—”
“Nate can handle the strain without your help, thank-you-very-much.” Amanda rises all the way from the chair this time. “If you must hand out recommendations and advice, go back to the command center, go see what you can do about preventing well-meaning volunteers from endangering themselves and maybe even providing cover for the very guy they’re after, because that’s what I see happening as word spreads and everybody flocks to the cause like villagers with torches and pitchforks.
“And you . . .” Amanda takes a deep breath and turns to Laurel who has retreated to the spot in front of the fireplace. “You need to concentrate on the belief that the Jakeway creep won’t harm Anthony—saying he even has him—for the simple reason Anthony is Aurora’s biological child—something Jakeway can’t help but know, if not from the photo wallet he allegedly swiped, then from regular media sources—and his sick obsession with Aurora won’t allow him to harm anything of hers . . . At least that’s the way I see it.”
“You think, then . . . that if Jakeway does indeed have Anthony, it’s as a hostage . . . as one of the security people tried to sugarcoat it to me earlier . . . and that he is recoverable,” Laurel stammers.
“Yes, I do, I absolutely do and I’m not just saying that to make you feel better,” Amanda replies. “And here’s something else to hold onto. All signs say this freaking nightmare is very close to being over with. Have you thought about that? Every indicator says this is it for Jakeway, that this is his final effort, his last stand, that he’s worn down and doesn’t care if he’s caught. He’s taking huge humongous chances out there and that’s gonna be his downfall. Tonight. Virtually guaranteed.”
In the silence following Amanda’s gutsy pronouncements, Emmet slips out of the room without further comment. Laurel withdraws soon after, saying only that she needs to look in on Simon.
Left alone with Amanda, Nate regards her as he has countless times before—with unabashed wonder. “Jesus, I don�
�t know how you do it . . . how you keep coming up with those inspired little pep talks of yours.”
“I’m only saying what I believe. That Anthony won’t be harmed. That’s what you believe isn’t it?”
“I want to. I’m trying to, but—”
“But you’re not convinced.”
“I can’t afford to be. None of us can and that’s why—”
“I know. You have to go back . . . out . . . there.” She indicates “there” with an angry chop of her hand and turns away.
He catches her other hand, laces his fingers with hers and draws her close. “Pulchritudinous,” he mumbles a word once considered too overblown for thinking much less speaking.
“What?” she murmurs against his chest.
“Nothing . . . nothing, just a stray thought.” He kisses the top of her head, gives her a hard squeeze before letting go. “I love you, you know.”
“No! Don’t say that! Not now! You make it sound as though I might never see you again!” She jerks away from him, her eyes as wide and shiny-bright as he’s ever seen them.
— FIFTY-FIVE —
Late night, October 15, 1987
“Go, I said,” Hoop growls at the boy, who seems not to understand that the bindings have been removed from his ankles. “You’re gonna walk from now on and you’re gonna show me how to sneak into that big house you live in,” Hoop says directly into the boy’s ear after groping for it in the dark. “That’s the deal. You get me in the house and I don’t mark you with this.” Hoop presses the flat of the blade against the boy’s cheek. “Not yet, anyways.”
That gets the kid going, lurching along at the end of a tether fashioned by feel from the leather carry straps and now stretched taut between the kid’s neck and Hoop’s wrist. They work their way out of the dense stand of canes, where they laid low while searchers coursed all around in a confusion of crisscrossed flashlight beams and garbled shouts. Now, with the slapdash army moved on a ways, the time’s as good as any for following along like he’s one of them—like he’s the straggler in their midst.
Hoop jerks on the tether, cautions the boy to stay behind him and low to the ground. Then, as a test of sorts, he switches on the flashlight he took from the boy. The down-directed light doesn’t bring any attention, so he leaves it on and soon sees that they’re about to meet with a well-beaten footpath. But a footpath to where? He jerks on the tether again, signals that the boy should choose a direction and flashes the knife to remind that the direction he picks had better lead to the mansion house.
With the light still held low, they work their way to the top of a rise that offers a full view of the house that’s lit up like a national monument or famous nightspot. While his eyes get used to the sight, he dares loosen the boy’s gag in another test of sorts.
The boy doesn’t make a sound when the gag’s half loose and doesn’t holler out when it’s all the way loose; he doesn’t strike out when Hoop cuts through the bindings to his wrists. But that doesn’t automatically mean he can be trusted. There’s no forgetting who his father is, after all. He prods the kid into a stand of needled trees where there’s some protection from the rain and the wind-roar’s not quite so bad.
“Them-there outside lights on all the time?” Hoop asks, keeping his own light aimed at the ground.
“Only . . .” The boy struggles, then swallows hard. “Only when there’s shite like you about,” he croaks in a cheeky way that gets him a sharp tug on the neck tether.
“Again,” Hoop says like he’s got all the time and patience in the world. “Are the lights left on all night?”
The kid nods. And nods a second time when asked if the space around the house is covered with spy cameras. “The cameras are on all the time, day and night,” the kid says in the same croaky voice minus the cheek.
“But there’s ways to get in and out without being seen.”
“Not unless you’re me.”
Unsure if this is a boast or a true fact, Hoop doesn’t respond right away. And it’s a good thing because they’ve suddenly got company. A lone intruder bulks large against the distant wall of light and pushes through the lower branches of the evergreens, carrying on about drizzles having become sheets of rain and him having come away from shelter without even a windbreaker—not that it would have done much good in a full force gale.
This is said in a voice Hoop recognizes from his time in the church loft—a voice that didn’t say as much as the detective did that day, but still made itself heard. The owner of this voice kind of grunts when he sees he’s not alone and lets out a string of cusswords when he sees the boy and draws his conclusions. The next sound he makes is a gurgle that can’t be heard much beyond Hoop’s ears.
After he wipes the blade off on the intruder’s already soaked clothing, Hoop makes sure the kid understands what happened by shining the flashlight on the still-twitching body. The kid squeezes his eyes tight shut, makes a gagging noise, but he doesn’t puke. And he doesn’t commence squalling, either. But no one would hear him if he did; the snap-crack of breaking branches and the whoosh-thump of whole trees coming down won’t let you hear yourself think, let alone holler.
Unsure of how this development will affect his next move, Hoop gets caught up in realizing he broke his newest rule by neglecting to whack the intruder over the head before slicing his throat. Is it luck or know-how that let him pull it off without the kind of fight the detective put up? Does this mean he’s got one less thing to worry about when the time comes? And does it matter which one of Audrey’s bad-mouthers is draining there on the spongy ground beneath the evergreens? Where that’s concerned, one less is all that matters.
But what if there had been two? What if he’d had to deal with two intruders just now? Would he have held them both off by threatening to cut the boy? Would he have quick whacked one over the head before taking on the other? He’s pondering all this when the boy brings him back to present vexations by straining at the tether and waggling his head in the direction of the house that’s no longer surrounded by a wall of bright lights. Lights inside the house are still burning; lights outside the house are not.
“What’s going on? What’s that mean?” Hoop demands without getting an answer. He shakes the boy till his eyes blink and water flies off him as it would a dog, and still doesn’t get a reply. “You don’t know or you won’t tell. Which is it?” Hoop gives him one last shake and tightens the tether enough to show he means business.
“I d-don’t know. Honest.” The boy quivers, most likely from the weather because he has yet to show fear in any regular way.
“Okay,” Hoop says and loosens the tether some. “I’m gonna believe you for now, but if I find you’re holdin’ out on me, you’re gonna pay. Understand?”
The boy hunches his shoulders in what could be a shrug.
Certain deductions are possible without the boy’s say-so. The kid doesn’t have to confirm that the lights and cameras and other security precautions called for a fresh supply of electrical juice. Didn’t Hoop see that work being done with his own eyes the day he walked the fenced borders of the property? No one has to confirm that the new power hookup is separate from the one to the house. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? And with trees and tree limbs coming down all over the place, it doesn’t take much brain power to figure out what happened to the new power source.
This can only compare with the Red Sea splitting open in that story from the white man’s holy book. He couldn’t get a bigger break; he couldn’t feel more braced and bucked up if he already had the rock star’s blood on his blade with the lawyerwoman’s soon to follow.
As they edge clear of the evergreens, Hoop senses movement that’s not of the worsening storm. Before he can figure out what it is, he and the boy are knocked flat by the full force of the wind. When they try to recover they’re held to a low crawl the way the others are whose hindered motions prickled his senses.
In twos and threes, these others—the main band of searchers by the looks o
f them—are moving in the direction of the mansion house. In wild disarray, their flashlight beams point every which way without revealing anything but how bad the weather is.
At the end of this long-drawn-out parade of jackassed-fools, at a safe distance and with the boy tethered tight behind him, Hoop again brings up the rear.
— FIFTY-SIX —
Approaching midnight, October 16,
1987
Colin stops battling his captors as it becomes apparent their efforts would be better spent holding the golf cart upright. Bodily removed from the search when rapidly deteriorating weather conditions suspended the manhunt, his further resistance now will put them all at greater risk. And greater risk is all he’s heard about since Sam Earle’s dire weather predictions came into being.
But how the fuck much greater can a risk get when everything says a knife-wielding nutter with a taste for rooster flesh and dog meat has possession of your boy? How much worse can things get? How much sicker can he feel about a forced retreat from a strengthening storm whilst a far more threatening menace is bearing down on them?
Those thoughts intensify when their progress is halted by a toppled tree and they’re compelled to cover the remaining distance on foot—on knees and elbows, actually. Those thoughts loom so large he fails to notice the detested perimeter lighting has gone dark till the lack is pointed out by an anguished outburst.
“Sumbitch!” Bemus bellows. “You know what that means, doncha? That means the freakin’ cameras are out too!” In a commando-crawl he moves in the direction of the studio. Whatever else he had to say about this latest reversal is carried away by the vicious wind.
Clawing his way along the stonework of the porte-cochère, Colin reaches the massive, outward-opening main door to the house. Joined by two of the heftier security blokes, the three of them only just manage to pry it open against the tempest and slip inside before it can be torn from its pinning. Inside, there’s potential for another ordeal: confrontation with those awaiting news—any kind of news. But it they’re holding a vigil, it’s not here in the grand entry hall.