by Bob Bickford
She reached out a hand and stopped me in the water. “You know why?” she asked. “Because they didn’t have time. That’s all. They didn’t have time.”
We started to swim again. The dock came into view as we rounded the final point of land. We were almost done. Blue stood at the end and barked at us.
“Love that lasts is messy,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t get what you want right when you want it. This isn’t perfect, and I’m sorry I’m putting you off. If you love me enough, you’ll wait for me. I don’t blame you if you don’t, but that’s what we have.”
I thought about it. She was climbing out of the water, and I spoke to her back. “I’d rather wait for you always and not get you, than have someone else. I’ll wait.”
She turned and looked at the gray sky. It was getting light enough to be sure we wouldn’t see a sunrise. I looked at her standing over me, and thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“No show today,” she said. “Let’s go get dry.”
She left me and headed to the cabin to start coffee. I toweled off and was just about to follow her when I spotted an early fisherman gliding by in a wooden canoe. He was about thirty yards from the end of the dock. His craft was green, long, and appeared to be very old.
He wore a snap-brim fedora. His face was shadowed and indistinct, but the long red hair that reached his shoulders was a startling splash of color in the dim early light. He paused in his paddling and touched the brim of his hat. It was a curiously old-fashioned salute. I gave him a small wave in return and went inside.
CHAPTER 32
Sam and Jenny Latta,
Atlanta, Georgia, Sunday, August 7, 1965:
She rolled onto her stomach and propped herself on her elbows. It was the first really warm day of the year, and the bedroom window was open.
“You don’t look pregnant,” he said. “How can I tell?”
She kissed his forehead and smiled. “You can’t. Not yet. I can feel the difference, but you won’t see anything for another month.”
He rolled off of the bed and padded over to the dresser to retrieve his cigarettes. He looked back at her and waved the package. She looked at him over her shoulder and shook her head.
“I’m quitting those. I read somewhere it can give the baby a lower weight at birth.”
“You believe that?” he asked.
“More and more people are saying smoking isn’t good for you. I’m not taking the chance.”
He tossed the pack back on the dresser and came to her side of the bed and sat beside her.
“I’ll quit, too,” he said. “No more for me.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Do I usually do what I say I’m going to?”
She turned into him and pulled him down into a kiss. Eventually, he broke it and stroked her belly. “I thought we’d have five kids by now,” he said.
Her face clouded for a moment, then cleared. “We’ve been busy. Better late than never.”
“What are we going to name it?” he asked.
“Don’t say ‘it.’ We should call him Michael.”
“What if he’s a girl?”
“He isn’t,” she said. “He’s a boy. I like Michael. He’s the angel that killed dragons.”
“Not dragons, I don’t think. He fought demons.”
“Killing demons is good, too.” She giggled. “It would be very handy to have a little boy around who can kill demons.”
A shadow passed across him. He stared at the curtains moving gently in the open window. His face was empty.
“Sam?” She touched his cheek. “Where did you go?” she asked.
He shook it off and looked down at her and smiled. “I’m right here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I hope he never has to fight dragons or demons or anything else, at least not while he’s a little boy.”
“You look so sad,” she said. “Why does that make you sad?”
“He has me to protect him.”
“Of course, he does.” She smiled. “Anyway, I’m sure he won’t have to, at least not until he’s older, but it will be nice to know he can if he has to. You never know when you’re going to run into a demon, do you?”
He stroked her belly. “Michael, then,” he said. “God help him. I hope he really wants to be an angel.”
***
Present Day:
My cell phone vibrated. I answered, but the caller was silent.
“I’ve walked away from you, Arthur,” I said. “Do yourself a favor and do not push this. I’ll make sure you’re stuck in jail until you’re so old they have to wheel you out. Now fuck off.”
I snapped the phone closed and tossed it on the seat beside me. As soon as it hit, it started to vibrate again. This time Sydney’s number in Atlanta was displayed.
“You didn’t just call me, did you?”
“No, why?”
“I’ve been getting odd calls, and Molly actually had the caller say ‘I know what you did.’ She’s positive it’s the same voice as on my dad’s answering machine. With Wanda gone, we’re sure it’s Arthur. I’m debating how to handle him.”
“If you just now got a call, I can tell you it’s not Arthur,” she said. “Arthur Sutton is dead.”
The shock I felt was physical. “Hang on a sec.” I said. “Let me pull over.”
I was driving through Ansett. It was raining, and traffic was even slower than usual. Cottagers were kept off of the water and, tired of being cooped up inside, were inventing reasons to come into town.
I squeezed the jeep into a corner of the liquor store lot and shut it off.
“He’s dead?” I asked. “How? When?” I had a sudden dreadful vision of the big man hanging from a rope in the old general store.
“Someone shot him. He was watching television in his living room last night. Someone walked into the front yard and emptied a gun into the room. Shot him right through the glass.”
“Shit. I was going to call you today. I was about ready to lay this out for the police.”
“Wanda and Arthur may have been the blackmailers--but as for the callers, I don’t know. That theory’s falling apart. You better put a timeline of when these calls came into you and Molly, but if you just got one now, it wasn’t the Suttons, unless they were calling from the afterlife.”
I hadn’t ruled that out, but I kept it to myself. “The caller and the blackmailer have to be the same person,” I said. “Makes no sense otherwise. Could his death be tied in somehow, you think?”
“No. His shooting doesn’t seem related to any of this. There was a witness. Neighbor heard the shots and saw a black male, alone, coming out of the yard. He saw him under streetlights when he went on the street. Not much a description. Black guy, dark car. This sounds like a drug thing.”
She paused, and I heard her lighting a cigarette on the other end.
“How’s the quitting smoking coming along?” I asked.
“Great,” she said. “Persistence is the key.”
I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Anyway,” she went on, “small-timer like Arthur selling drugs? He probably stepped on someone’s toes. Suspect pool’s an ocean. They won’t arrest anyone.”
“How did you find out so fast?”
“Aha. Very good question. You’d be good at my job. Cops called me for a different reason--because the medical examiner in Fulton raised some questions about Wanda. Seems she had some bruising and scratches consistent with one hell of a fight. She might have had some help hanging herself.”
I thought about the figure in the old store, swinging at the end of the rope, kicking and trying to pull herself up. I shuddered.
“One of the slippers she was wearing was found in the store. She kicked it off when...you know. The other was in her house.”
“Arthur told me that himself,” I said. “He found it in the front hall when he came home. He thought someone killed her.”
> “Interesting. He could have been blowing smoke, if he did it. Trying to divert you.”
“So now they don’t think it was a suicide?” I asked.
“She definitely died from hanging, they say, and they don’t think she was hoisted up there. She may have hurt herself, but the condition of the body has them curious. She wasn’t light, and even though Arthur was strong, it would have taken more than one person to do that. She might have climbed the ladder herself, under duress.”
“What kind of duress makes you put a rope around your own neck?”
“Gunpoint?”
“Wouldn’t be enough to make me hang myself,” I said. “I’d rather get shot.”
“You’d probably do anything to buy you one more minute. It’s human nature. If someone holds a gun on you and says, ‘I’ll shoot you right now, or you can do what I say and climb that ladder and have a few more seconds to live’, you’d do it. Anyone would climb, and hope something might happen to save them.”
“Whether she chose hanging in the old store, the same death as her mother, or someone chose it for her,” I said, “there’s a symbol there. Same as my dad. This is all connected to Eli Tull.”
“That occurred to me.” Her voice changed. I could tell she was feeling some strain. “I called for two reasons, really. The first was to let you know that the police may be in touch. Don’t worry about that, but they’re re-interviewing everyone, which is why they called me. We found her body, so we’re on the list. The second is this. Your dad dead, now Wanda and her son--that’s almost everyone connected in any way to the main players in the Eli Tull story gone, except you--”
“And Roy Tull,” I finished for her. “You think there’s a connection here?”
“It’s just too weird,” she said. “You hire me to find out what happened to your dad, and the more we pull on loose threads, the more the Tull story seems to be at the center of it. It’s like every member of every generation is gone now, except a couple of loose ends. You and Roy Tull.”
“Someone’s making these calls,” I said. “But if everyone connected to the story is gone, who’s left to be doing it? And why?”
“I’ve been trying to reach Roy Tull all morning. No luck. I’m worried about him.”
“I’ll try him later,” I said.
I was worried about him, too. It would just about kill Molly if anything happened to him.
***
I met Molly at the Echo Island Pie Company. I spotted her in the baking area behind the counter with a mop in her hand. Kate was at the cash register.
“You see how I treat family when they come in here,” she said, nodding at her niece. “Your days of eating up all my pie are almost over. This baby gets here, I’ll be handing you a broom before you get a crumb.”
I laughed and headed for a table. “Let me know when the time comes. I’ll enjoy my status in the meantime.”
In a few minutes, both women joined me at the table. I felt enveloped in their easy familiarity. The baby had made me an intimate. We busied ourselves for a few minutes with rituals of cups and spoons and small talk. Finally, I broke in.
“I’ve got some disturbing news,” I said.
The two of them watched my face while I recounted the circumstances of Arthur Sutton’s death, and the new suspicions surrounding Wanda’s suicide.
“I hate to say it,” Kate said, “but in a sense isn’t that good news? I’m sorry about the people, but it puts an end to all of this, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head no. “Not necessarily. We assumed it was Wanda making the calls, then after she died we figured it must be Arthur. The last call couldn’t have been made by either of them.”
“So you’re back at square one?” Kate asked.
“The thing that disturbs me most,” I said, “is that Arthur accused me, the last time I saw him, of harassing his mother. He said that I was phoning her at all hours. What if she was getting calls from the same person?”
I absently played with the silverware on the table, arranging it like my thoughts.
“My father was terrified when he ran up here and died. We know he went to Wanda and Roy, told them about the men he had killed. He was trying to heal things, but did he end up stirring someone up? Who else did he tell? Did he get someone angry enough to kill? Is someone taking the people connected with this, out, one by one?”
“There are a couple of things that don’t make sense to me,” Kate said. “Why call Molly with this warning? Or you?”
“Whoever it is, they’re crazy,” Molly said. “They probably don’t have to be logical. The thing is, only Wanda had both of our phone numbers. They were written down in front of Arthur, so I can also see him as the caller, but now you say he was dead when at least the last call came in to your phone.”
“I want to ask you both something, and it’ll seem crazy,” I said.
I took a deep breath, really not even sure what I was asking.
“Eli Tull is central to this whole thing. The kiss and his murder are central to all of it. I keep seeing him. He wants me to see him. He’s joined me on the island. I want to try to talk to him. I can see these...spirits, sometimes, but I’ve never been able to communicate really. You guys can.”
“You want us to try to talk to Eli?” Kate asked.
“Yes,” I said. “On the island.”
“I’m not doing a stupid séance,” Molly said, shaking her head. “On the island? No way. You have no idea how much this stuff messes me up, Mike. We have a baby to think about.”
Kate also shook her head at me. “I don’t know exactly what the island is, Michael. It’s a busy place, though, in the spiritual sense. Enough happens there without looking for trouble.”
“I’m not asking you to play with a Ouija board,” I said. “I just think that Eli has something to say, and I can’t hear it. All three of the children who were behind that store are dead now. I tried to walk away from this, and it won’t let me.”
Both women were silent.
“Roy Tull may be in serious danger,” I pleaded.
Kate looked at her niece for a long moment before she turned to me. “Molly stays out of it,” she said. “There’s a baby to think about now. I’ll come out tonight. I’ll be out there late. Meet me at the dock, please. I have no desire to stumble around your woods in the dark.”
She stood up and headed back to her ovens. “Don’t make me tell you,” she called back over her shoulder.
“I know, I know,” I muttered. “eat my damn pie.”
I smiled at Molly. She didn’t return it.
CHAPTER 33
Dr. Roy Tull,
Hollow Lake, Canada, Saturday, July 2, Present Day:
Roy thought he was lost. For the last hour his headlights had revealed nothing but endless trees, broken by vast pools of blackness that were lakes. Lights twinkled on the far shores. Twice he had seen eyes glowing from the shoulder of the road. A deer or a moose, he supposed, or worse, a bear.
He was no stranger to the pines of Georgia and had lived many of his years away from city lights, but the huge expanse of the wilderness here was unnerving. The forest pressed in on both sides of the road. It went on and on. It was summer, when the region was at the height of activity, full of city-dwellers escaping to cottages and camps, but he saw other vehicles only occasionally. He could hardly imagine the loneliness of these forests in the winter, when everyone had left.
He shuddered, thinking that he wouldn’t live in Canada for anything in the world.
Finally, the green-and-white exit sign for Ansett appeared to his right. He found the gravel turnoff for the marina road. The small rental sedan slid a bit on the loose surface. It was well after midnight, and meeting another vehicle was unlikely, so he was able to stay in the center of the road.
So close to his destination, he began to feel a sense of urgency. Time was short, things were wrapping up, and this whole sorry mess was coming to a close. He had travelled all day, and he was tired. He felt every one of
his seventy-five years.
The road weaved and turned, since it had been laid according to the contours of the land rather than blasted straight through. He had a moment of anxiety when he thought he had passed the marina, but then the sign appeared in his lights. He remembered Bill and Diane fondly. He didn’t think that he would see them again. He had set himself against a great evil, though, and in the greater scheme of things he was paying only a small price if he didn’t survive.
As it was, he was sick, and had been for several months. The curse of being a member of the medical profession was that knowledge allowed none of the false hope that sustained most people who were in his position. His time was limited, regardless of the events that were about to play out on the lake.
He turned onto the lake access road just past the marina, and he was on the last leg of his trip. Hollow Lake appeared on his left, looking like an immense, dark sea. The moon was bright and the water sparkled with white light. If there was more time, he could have stopped the car and watched the lake’s slow currents at work in the pattern of illumination on its surface. After he had seen Molly, he was going to have to make his way out to Echo Island. He knew that Mike’s cabin was a straight shot north from Molly’s dock, but the thought of finding a single small tree-covered rock in this vast body of water, in the dark, was frightening.
There was something about the island that called to him, and he knew that his brother’s story was going to end there, over a thousand miles and more than sixty-five years from where it had started. The kiss had come to this.
He looked forward to seeing Mike and Molly, the woman especially. She had confided in him from the beginning of their acquaintance. He wished that he had been permitted to have children. She seemed like the daughter he might have had. Michael, Sam Latta’s son, was also connected to him by something deeper than blood. He thought of Molly’s baby. Had he ever been a father, he would have recognized the peace that a man finds in his grandchildren.