The story I heard, someone cut off his hands. Put them in a cigar box. You ever seen something like that?
Freak show. Lauren had been right—there was no chance that Mark could have come to this place and conducted an interview without telegraphing his scorn. Not then, and not now. He didn’t need to hear the spirit talk; he needed to hear the facts. When did Garland Webb move in, when did he leave, what did he do in between, whom did he speak to, who came to visit? That was where the focus would remain with Dixie Witte. No visions necessary, thanks, just the truth—if she even knew how to tell that.
He’d reached the end of the dirt lane. He turned right on Kicklighter Road and headed south, toward the place where his wife had died.
6
Jay Baldwin drove east out of Red Lodge with a gun pressed to the back of his head. The stranger instructed Jay to take I-90 away from the mountains and back toward Billings. The man had his wrist balanced on the seat just beside the headrest, and Jay thought that eventually his hand would begin to ache and he’d lower the gun.
He didn’t.
For a few miles, Jay attempted to talk to him. He asked what the man wanted, told him that they had more money than the house suggested—he and Sabrina were savers, always had been.
The stranger didn’t speak.
Jay changed approaches then and went from offers to pleas. To outright begging. He said that his wife was the only thing that mattered to him in the world, talked about the kind of woman she was, strong and smart and, above all, forgiving. If she had any weakness, it was an excess of empathy, a desire to believe the best of everyone at all times, a tendency to forgive what should have been unforgivable. If she was released, she would forgive this man for these sins. So would Jay.
The stranger never answered.
They were thirty miles out of Red Lodge, the last traces of the mountain snow falling behind them, when Jay finally asked a question that broke the silence.
“What is your name?”
“Eli Pate.” This came conversationally enough, said with the same cordial manner he’d demonstrated in the house. Jay thought that it was a pointless question, because of course the man would lie. Still, he wanted something to call him.
“Eli…whatever you want from me, it’s—”
“Stay eastbound. Continue the conversation if you wish, but I have nothing to say. When I have something to say, you’ll hear it.”
For the remainder of the drive, there were no words exchanged beyond Eli’s curt instructions. They crossed the plains and cut through the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. It was wide-open country, the famous Montana sky hanging above them unbroken and endless. In a one-stoplight town called Lame Deer, Eli ordered Jay to turn north. They passed the reservation school, an institution named Chief Dull Knife College, and drove alongside a creek. From the time they’d set out, Jay had hoped he was being taken to the same place as his wife. The farther they’d gotten from his home and the deeper into the desolate land, the more he’d believed this would be the case. While he still didn’t understand the purpose behind it all, he took some solace in the idea that they would be reunited, no matter how awful the circumstances.
It wasn’t until he saw the plumes of bone-white smoke that he began to fear he was wrong about the reunion and to suspect for the first time why he’d been selected for the day’s horrors. As they pulled into the small town of Chill River, Jay was praying that Eli would send him farther north, toward someplace unknown. The unknown suddenly sounded better than turning east.
“Right on Willow Avenue and head east,” Eli Pate commanded him.
Jay understood now.
They followed Willow Avenue outside of town and soon the source of the smoke appeared on their right—four mammoth stacks protruding into the sky like spires, clouds foaming out of them. A sign in front cheerfully welcomed them to Chill River. TOMORROW’S TOWN…TODAY!
“Pull over for a moment.”
Jay put the truck on the shoulder of the road.
“You have an idea what you’re looking at, I assume?” Eli Pate said.
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“You already know.”
Eli Pate shifted in the seat and used his right hand to produce his cell phone. He kept the gun to Jay’s head with the left, then extended the phone so that they both could see the display. No video feed this time, just a still image. Sabrina, bleary-eyed and confused, looking at the shackle on her wrist as if she couldn’t make sense of it. Jay had to remind himself how to breathe.
“Tell me,” Eli Pate said again. His voice was very low.
“A generating station.” The words croaked from Jay’s constricted throat. He couldn’t look away from the image of Sabrina. When Eli Pate pocketed the phone, Jay was torn between relief and sorrow. He didn’t want to see his wife like that, but he also couldn’t bear not to see her at all.
“What generating station?” Eli Pate said. “Give me some detail. I’m nothing but a rube, Jay. You’re an expert.”
Jay stared at the place where the smoke met the sky.
“The Chill River generation station,” he said. “We’re looking at a coal-fired power plant.”
“Sounds impressive. Do you happen to know how much power it generates?”
“Peak output is more than two thousand megawatts.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Second-largest coal-fired station west of the Mississippi.” The gun was still against Jay’s skull, but he’d stopped noticing the sensation. All of his physical attention was now on those stacks and the snaking high-voltage lines that led away from the power plant. All of his mental attention was on the way his wife looked in that picture.
“Quantify that for me, Jay. How many people are fed by this operation?”
“Nearly a million.”
“That seems hard to believe, considering how far out in the sticks we are.”
“The power goes two hundred and fifty miles west of here. There it’s distributed into different grids, different transmission systems. All the way to the West Coast.” His words came in a monotone, his mind on Sabrina. Where did this man have her? The frame of the camera was too tight to indicate anything about her location. Only her condition.
“Fascinating stuff,” Eli Pate said. “One more question: How does it move to those different grids?”
“Through the five-hundred-kV transmission lines.”
“And how many of those lines are required to move all that electricity from here?”
Jay didn’t want to tell the truth, but the man already knew it, so there was no point in lying. “Two,” he said.
Eli Pate whistled between his teeth. “Goodness. How oddly vulnerable, don’t you think? Imagine if the public knew! Why, the fear it would conjure…that would be something to behold. I’ve been told something about you, and please correct me if I’m wrong—did you once work on those lines? Before the move to Red Lodge?”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous work. There’s a technique, I understand, called barehanding. It requires very brave men, very specialized training, very sophisticated equipment. Helicopters, even, and sometimes high rope work. That’s you, correct?”
Jay didn’t speak. Eli tapped the gun lightly on his skull. “Do you know why you’re here now, my friend?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. But I’ll humor you, because you’ve humored me. You’re here, Jay, to shut this show down. You’re here to turn off the lights.”
7
In the last minutes of her life, Lauren had driven out of Cassadaga on Kicklighter Road, headed away from the interstate. That intrigued and confused the homicide detectives. No one was aware of any destination she might have had other than Siesta Key, where Mark waited for her with steaks on the grill as the sun settled behind the Gulf of Mexico. That route called for her to take I-4 West, crossing central Florida the same way she’d come, and I-4 was north of Cassadaga. She’d headed south instead, but she h
adn’t made it far before she pulled off the road. The investigators theorized that she’d stopped to get her bearings, realizing she’d made a mistake and not wanting to continue in the wrong direction down the wrong road.
The investigators didn’t know Lauren, though. This was a woman who, when Mark had asked her if she knew what state was west of Montana, had looked at him suspiciously, as if it were a trick question, and said, “Well, am I standing up in it or lying down?” He had great fun with that one, but it was a bizarre illustration of the way she considered maps: one-dimensionally; the only directions that mattered to her were right, left, and straight. Tell her to drive northwest and you’d get a blank stare in response. She’d graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida and aced the bar exam, but she had no interest in compasses.
All of this was part of the explanation for how she’d ended up driving southbound out of Cassadaga, according to the police. But again, you had to know her. One of the reasons Lauren was so bad with directions was that she’d always relied on technology as a crutch. Her Infiniti was equipped with a navigation system that she used constantly. If she was walking, she used the GPS on her phone. She’d do this even in St. Pete, let alone in a rural location she’d never been to before. A review of the GPS proved that she’d entered the address of the Cassadaga Hotel. When she’d headed south on Kicklighter, driving away from an unfamiliar town on an unfamiliar road, she’d had no guidance from the GPS, no programmed destination.
But she’d had a purpose. What was it?
Mark kept walking, passed an empty park beside a small lake, and then an opening appeared in the dense trees to his right. A path leading away from the road and into the woods.
His throat thickened and he felt pressure behind his eyes and heard a sound that seemed to come from inside his skull, a sound like a rubber band popping, stretched to its limits and about to snap. It was strange, disturbing. He blinked and rubbed his temples and the sensation faded and vanished. He stood there for a long time and looked at the road and the trees as if they would produce something, as if the dust would rise and swirl and materialize into a figure, someone with answers.
Not even the air moved, though.
It took him fifty paces to reach the spot. Her body had been found in a ditch just off the trail. The bamboo grew thick and tall around it, creating a jungle feel, a place of children’s nightmares, of dares to pass through alone at midnight. Up ahead, the trail curved to the right and opened up, and the world seemed brighter and welcoming and just out of reach.
The rain was falling steadily now, a silent soaking, the thunder gone. He looked at the dark water in the ditch for a long time, and he felt as if there was some gesture he should make, some words he should say. Nothing came, though. He turned from the ditch and walked back the way he’d come.
Directly across the road was a lake with a shelter house built at the end of a pier. He walked down the pier until he was beneath the roof and out of the rain. The lake’s surface was pebbled by raindrops, and trees bordered it in all directions. Close to the bank, thick layers of algae covered the water, giving it a swamplike look. Trash floated among the weeds, chip bags and plastic rings from six-packs and a stretched-out condom that looked like a sodden snakeskin. A beer can rode the water like a fisherman’s bobber.
He was leaning on the railing with his back to the road when he heard the truck. First the engine, then the crunch of the oversize tires on the gravel. The red truck from Dixie Witte’s property.
Next to the pier was a narrow ramp where you could put in a canoe or a johnboat. The lake wasn’t big enough to call for anything larger. The driver brought the truck all the way down the ramp until the front tires stood in at least a foot of water, although that didn’t even come up to the center of the hubcaps.
Mark didn’t turn away from the lake. The water was so dark it looked like a pool of oil. You couldn’t track the stems of the cattails for more than an inch beneath the surface. It was water that whispered of barely submerged alligators and slant-eyed cottonmouths curled around stumps, of rattling dredging chains, of men with badges and sunglasses working flat-bottomed boats, searching for bodies. In the rain, the lake’s surface looked like hammered metal.
When Mark finally turned to the truck, the driver rolled down the passenger window so he could see Mark clearly. Or, based on his stare and body language, so Mark could see him clearly. A big bastard with a wide jaw and a close-trimmed beard and a sleeveless shirt that facilitated the opportunity to appreciate his muscles and his tattoos. He sat there with his arm looped around the steering wheel, his triceps flexing and popping against his skin, the truck’s exhaust system growling like a tiger in a circus cage.
“Everything all right, bud?” he said.
“Just fine.”
“You want to tell me why you were walking around my property? Neighbor said you seemed mighty interested in my shit.”
Instead of answering, Mark watched the beer can bobbing among the green weeds and tried to match his breaths to it. He used to do the same thing with Lauren during sleepless nights. Match his breaths to hers until they were one. Sleep usually came fast for him then, but he never cared if it did. That was a good and peaceful feeling.
When the muscled-up man cut the engine, the loss of the big truck’s motor turned the lake quiet, the only sound the soft drumming of the rain on the metal roof of the shelter. It was falling slower now, and the air wasn’t stirring.
The driver’s door opened and then banged shut and there were twin splashes as his feet landed in the water, as if he hadn’t remembered how far into the lake he’d driven. Mark might have laughed about that, but as the big man rounded the back of the truck, he reached into the bed and grabbed a piece of rebar. It was about three feet long and had to weigh fifteen pounds. Swung with force, it would break a man’s leg.
Let’s not go this way, Mark thought, because he had worked so hard for so many years to bury this part of himself, to not be one of those grown men who fought like children for children’s reasons, almost all of them boiling down to egos in the end, and usually fueled by liquor. There had been a time when he believed he’d succeeded, that the lessons instilled by his uncles had been overridden by willpower and wisdom.
But then Lauren had died and occasionally the darkness would rise, and rise with a smile, because a taste for fighting was like a taste for whiskey—once you developed it, you didn’t rid yourself of it. Only controlled it.
The big man advanced, holding the rebar with strength and familiarity. Mark moved his hands from the dock railing, reached inside his jacket, and drew the .38.
The muscle-bound man came to a stop about two paces out on the pier, the rebar held in both hands and hovering in the air behind his right shoulder like he was a player in the on-deck circle taking practice cuts with a weighted bat.
“Right,” Mark said. “You’re already thinking maybe you should have been a touch more patient, aren’t you?”
He lowered the rebar. The free end banged off the pier. Mark could feel the shudder of impact through his feet.
“This seems stupid to you now, doesn’t it?” Mark said. “You’re thinking that it would be dumb to die just because you got all butt-hurt over someone walking around your yard and looking at your house. You’re right. But now that you’ve come this far, let’s talk. What’s your name?”
“Get fucked.”
“Your parents weren’t any more fond of you than I am, then. No surprise. Let’s try another one. How long have you lived in that house?”
This time he showed his middle finger.
“Does that mean one year?” Mark said.
“You’re lucky you were carrying today. Luckier that I wasn’t. Next time—”
“You will be,” Mark finished for him. “Sure. I believe it too. But the thing is? I wasn’t lucky to be carrying. I was prepared. Not everyone who’s passed through here in the past has been.”
The big man seemed confused by that mes
sage, but he didn’t have much room in his head for anything beyond hate right then.
“You really get that upset about me looking your house over?” Mark said. “Because to a rational mind, this seems like an overreaction.”
“I don’t know who in the hell you are. But I don’t want you on my property.”
“Duly noted. And my name is Markus Novak.”
The big man smiled, and Mark’s blood seemed to slow in his veins.
“That name amuses you?”
“You’re a little late,” the man said. “I wasn’t here when she got popped, bud, but I’ve heard the stories.”
When she got popped. Mark’s mouth had gone dry and each breath felt hot and dusty. The man was gathering confidence, pleased that he’d rattled Mark.
“That gun makes you feel pretty tough. Lucky you had it.”
“We’ve been over this,” Mark said as he started toward him through the gentle rain, and the part of him that did not want the fight was gone now, vanishing with the man’s smile as he’d said when she got popped, and the decision-making that came from above Mark’s shoulders had been subverted by the old memories that filled his blood and bones like a genetic code, a promise.
“It’s not luck,” he said. “My uncles taught me about guns. They had some hard-and-fast rules. One of them, well, it’s not particularly unique. Lots of people have the same rule. If you ever go so far as to draw the gun, you damn well better be ready to use it. You ever heard that one?”
The big man didn’t answer. His eyes were on Mark’s hand, and he was taking comfort in the fact that Mark’s index finger wasn’t near the trigger, and his thumb wasn’t near the hammer.
“It’s a good rule,” Mark said, and then he swung the barrel of the .38 into the center of the big man’s face.
Blood was flowing by the time he fell. He caught himself on the railing, went down on one knee, and the rebar dropped and rolled across the dock. He reached for it, but this time Mark did pull the hammer back.
“Technically, I just kept the rule,” he said. “We can let this count, or you can push for more.”
Rise the Dark Page 4