The Reapers

by John Connolly

  “That’s Leehagen,” said Hoyle. “The photograph was taken five years ago. I understand that his cancer has taken its toll upon him since then.”

  Hoyle reached for one of the satellite images, and pointed to a white block at its center. “This is the main house. Leehagen lives there with his son. He has a nurse who lives in her own small apartment adjoining it. About a quarter of a mile to the west, perhaps a little farther”-he grabbed another photograph, and placed it beside the first-“are cattle pens. Leehagen used to keep a herd of Ayrshire cattle.”

  “That’s not cattle land,” said Louis.

  “It didn’t matter to Leehagen. He liked them. Fancied himself as a breeder. He felled forest so they could graze, and utilized areas that had been cleared by storm damage. I think they made him feel like a gentleman farmer.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Angel.

  “He sent them for slaughter a month ago. They were his cattle. They weren’t going to outlive him.”

  “What’s this?” asked Louis. He pointed to a series of photographs of a small industrial structure with what appeared to be a town nearby. A thin straight line ran along the bottom of a number of the photographs: a railway line.

  “That’s Winslow,” said Hoyle. He placed two standard maps side by side in front of Louis and Angel. “Look at them. See any difference between them?”

  Angel looked. In one, the town of Winslow was clearly marked. In another, there was no sign of the town at all.

  “The first map is from the 1970s. The second is only a year or two old. Winslow doesn’t exist anymore. Nobody lives there. There used to be a talc mine near the town-that’s what you can see to the east in some of the pictures-owned by the Leehagen family, but it gave out in the 1980s. People started to leave, and Leehagen began buying up the vacant properties. Those who didn’t want to go were forced out. Oh, he paid them, so it was all aboveboard, but it was made clear what would happen if they didn’t leave. It’s all private land now, lying to the northeast of Leehagen’s house. You know anything about talc mining, sir?”

  “No,” said Louis.

  “It’s a nasty business. The miners were exposed to tremolite asbestos dust in the mines. A lot of the companies involved knew that the talc contained asbestos, the Leehagens included, but chose not to inform their workers about either its presence or the prevalence of asbestos-related diseases in their mines. We’re talking mainly about scarring of the lungs, silicosis, and incidents of mesothelioma, which is a rare asbestos-related cancer. Even those who weren’t directly involved in mining began developing lung problems. The Leehagens defended themselves by denying that industrial talc contains asbestos or poses a cancer risk, which I believe is a lie. This stuff ended up in kids’ crayons, and you know what kids do with crayons, right? They put them in their mouths.”

  “With due respect, what does this have to do with the matter in hand?” asked Louis.

  “Well, it was how Leehagen managed to empty Winslow. He offered financial settlements to the families, most of whom had relatives who had worked in the mines. The settlements indemnified Leehagen and his descendants against any future action. He screwed those people to the wall. The amounts they received were far less than they might have been awarded had they been prepared to take their cases to court, but then this was the 1980s. I don’t think they even knew what was making them sick, and most of them were already dead when the first cases from elsewhere began coming before the courts a decade or more later. That’s the kind of man Leehagen is. It is ironic, though, that his own cancers may well have been caused by the mines that made him wealthy. They killed his wife”-when Hoyle said the word “wife,” he winced slightly-“and now they’re killing him.”

  Hoyle found another map, this one depicting the course of a river. “After he’d emptied the town, he got permission to redirect a local stream, the Roubaud, on some spurious environmental grounds. Effectively, the redirection allowed him to cut himself off. It functions as a moat. There are only two roads that cross it into his land. Behind Leehagen’s house is Fallen Elk Lake, so he has water at his back as well. He’s sown the lake bed with rocks and wire to prevent anyone from gaining access to the house from that direction, so the only way onto his land is over one of the two bridges spanning the stream.”

  Hoyle pointed them out on the map, then traced the roads that led from them with his finger. They formed the shape of an inverted funnel, cut at four points by two inner roads that ran through the property parallel to the eastern shore of the lake.

  “Are they watched?” asked Angel.

  “Not consistently, but there are still homes nearby. Some of them are rented by Leehagen to the families of the men who used to tend his cattle, or who work his property. There are a couple of others that belong to people who’ve reached an arrangement with him. They stay out of his affairs, and he lets them live where they’ve always lived. They’re mainly on the northern road. The southern road is quieter. It would be possible for a vehicle going down either of those roads to get pretty close to Leehagen’s house, although the southern road would be the safer bet, but if the alarm was raised then both those bridges could be closed before any trespassers had a chance to escape.”

  “How many men does he have?”

  “A dozen or so close to him, I’d guess. They stay in touch on the land through a dedicated, secure high-frequency network. Some have served time, but the rest are little more than local thugs.”

  “You guess?” said Angel.

  “Leehagen is a recluse, just as I am. His disease has made him one. The little that I do know about his current circumstances was dearly bought.” He moved on. “Then there’s his son and heir, Michael.” Hoyle found another photograph, this time of a man in his forties with something of Leehagen Senior in his eyes, but who weighed considerably less. He was wearing jeans and a checked shirt and cradled a hunting rifle in his arms. An eight-point buck lay at his feet, the animal’s head resting on a log so that it faced the camera. Louis recalled the man whom he had killed in San Antonio, Jonny Lee. He had looked more like his father, from what Louis could remember of him.

  “This one is quite recent,” said Hoyle. “Michael looks after most of his father’s business affairs, legal and otherwise. He’s the family’s link to the outside world. Compared to his father, he’s quite the bon viveur, but by any normal standards he is almost as reclusive. He ventures out a couple of times a year, but usually people come to him.”

  “Including your daughter,” said Louis.

  “Yes,” said Hoyle. “I want Michael killed as well. I’ll pay extra for him.”

  Louis sat back. Beside him, Angel was silent.

  “I never pretended that this was going to be easy,” said Hoyle. “If I could have dealt with this matter without the involvement of those outside my own circle, then I would have. But it seemed to me that we had a shared interest in putting an end to Leehagen, and that you might succeed where others had failed.”

  “And this is all you have?” asked Louis.

  “All that might prove useful, yes.”

  “You still haven’t told us how your beef with Leehagen began,” said Angel.

  “He stole my wife,” said Hoyle. “Or the woman who might have been my wife. He stole her, and she died because of it. She worked at the mine, helping with paperwork. Leehagen believed that it would be good for her to earn her keep.”

  “This is over a woman?” said Angel.

  “We’re rivals in many matters, Leehagen and I. I bested him repeatedly. In the process, I alienated the woman I loved. She went to Leehagen as a means of getting back at me. He was, I should add, not always so repellent in appearance. He has been ill for many years, even before the cancer took hold. His medication affected his weight.”

  “So your woman went to Leehagen-”

  “And she died,” finished Hoyle. “In retaliation, I stepped up my efforts to ruin him. I fed information about him to business rivals, to criminals. He came ba
ck at me. I retaliated again. Now we are where we are, each of us sealed away in our respective fortresses, each nursing a deep hatred of the other. I want this thing ended. Even weak and ill, I begrudge him his existence. So here is my offer: if you kill him, I will pay you $500,000, with a $250,000 bonus if his son dies alongside him. As a gesture of good faith, I will pay you $250,000 of the bounty on the father in advance, and $100,000 on that of the son. The balance will be placed in escrow, to be paid over on completion of the job.”

  He replaced the photographs and maps in the file, closed it, and eased it gently toward Louis. After only a moment’s hesitation, Louis took it.

  The call woke Michael Leehagen from a stupor. He staggered to the phone in his dressing gown, his eyes bleary and his voice hoarse.

  “Yes?”

  “What have you done?”

  Michael recognized the voice instantly. It dispelled the last vestiges of sleep from him as surely as if he had stood in the face of a raging, icy gale.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The old man. Who gave you the authority to target him?” There was a calmness to Bliss’s voice that made Michael’s bladder tighten.

  “Authority? I gave myself the authority. We got his name from Ballantine. He set my brother up, and he was meeting with Louis. He’ll make the connection. It will bring him here for sure.”

  “Yes,” said Bliss. “Yes, it will. But it’s not how these things are done.” He sounded distracted, as though this was not a development that he had anticipated or desired. It made no sense to Michael. “You should have spoken to me first.”

  “With respect, you’re not the most contactable of men.”

  “Then you should have waited until I called you!” This time, the anger in Bliss’s voice was clear.

  “I’m sorry,” said Michael. “I didn’t think there would be a problem.”

  “No.” Michael heard him breathe in deeply, calming himself. “You couldn’t have known. You may have to prepare for reprisals if the attack is connected to you. Some people won’t like it.”

  Michael had no idea what Bliss was talking about. His father wanted everyone involved in Jonny Lee’s death wiped from the face of the earth. How things were done elsewhere was of no consequence to him. He was interested only in the end result. He waited for Bliss to continue.

  “Call your men back from the city,” said Bliss, and now he sounded weary. “All of them. Do you understand?”

  “They’re already on their way.”

  “Good. Who fired the shots?”

  “I don’t think that-”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Benton. Benton fired the shots.”

  “Benton,” said Bliss, seemingly committing the name to memory, and Michael wondered if he had somehow condemned Benton by naming him.

  “When are you coming up here?”

  “Soon,” said Bliss, “soon…”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LOUIS STARED DOWN AT the man on the bed. Gabriel looked even smaller and more ancient than before, so old that he was nearly unrecognizable to Louis. Even in the space of a day, he seemed to have lost too much weight. His skin was gray, marked with a deep yellow in places where a salve had been applied to it. His eyes were sunken in blue-black pools, so that they seemed bruised, like those of a fighter who has spent too long trapped against the ropes, pummeled into unconsciousness by his opponent. His breathing was shallow, hardly there at all. The gunshot wounds, covered by a layer of dressings, had allowed some of his critical, and already dwindling, life force to dissipate, as though, had he been a witness to the shooting, Louis might have perceived it emerging from the exit holes, a pale cloud amid the blood. It would never return. It was lost, and an elemental part of Gabriel had been lost with it. If he survived, he would not be the same. Like all men, he had always been fighting death, the pace of the struggle increasing as the years drew on, but now death had the upper hand and would not relinquish it.

  He had expected a police presence near the old man, but there was none. It troubled him, until he realized that others would be keeping vigil over Gabriel now. There was a small camera fixed to the upper-right-hand corner of the room, but he could not tell if it was a recent addition to the decor. He assumed that they were watching him. He waited for them to show themselves, but they did not come. Still, the fact that he had been allowed to get so close to Gabriel meant they knew who he was. It did not concern him. They had always known where to find him, if they chose.

  He touched Gabriel’s hand, black on white. There was a tenderness to the gesture, and a sense of regret, but something else played across Louis’s face: a kind of hatred.

  You created me, thought Louis. Without you, what would I have become?

  The door behind him opened. He had seen the nurse approaching, her shape reflected in the polished wall behind Gabriel’s bed.

  “Sir, you’ll have to leave now,” she said.

  He acknowledged her with a slight inclination of his head, then leaned down and kissed Gabriel gently on the cheek, like Judas consigning his Savior to death. He was both a man without a father, and a man with many fathers. Gabriel was one of them, and Louis had yet to find a way to forgive him for all that he had done.

  Milton stood in a small office steps away from Gabriel’s room. The door was marked “Private,” and behind it sat a desk, two chairs, and an array of monitoring equipment, including both video and audio recording facilities. It was known in the law enforcement community as the Auxiliary Nurses’ Station, or ANSTAT, and was a shared resource, which meant that, in theory, all agencies had an equal call on its use. In reality, there was a pecking order that had to be observed, and Milton was king rooster. He hovered over the two armed agents, watching as Louis left Gabriel’s room and the nurse closed the door softly behind him.

  “Action, sir?”

  “None,” said Milton, after only a moment’s hesitation. “Let him go.”

  They stood in Louis’s office, Hoyle’s papers and maps spread across Louis’s desk. Louis had added his own notes and observations with a red pen. This would be the last time that all of the information they had would be presented in this way. Once this discussion was over, it would be destroyed: shredded, and then burned. On a chair nearby lay fresh maps, and copies of the photographs and satellite images that they would show to the others.

  “How many?” asked Angel.

  “To do the job, or to do the job right?”

  “To do it right.”

  “Sixteen, at least. Two to hold each of the bridges, maybe more. Four in the town for backup. Two teams of four approaching the property cross-country. And, if we lived in an ideal world, a big-ass chopper to take them all out once they were done. Even then, there would be problems with communication. There’s no cellphone coverage that deep into the mountains. The trees and the gradient of the land mean that there’s no line of sight, so walkie-talkies are out of the question for us.”

  “Satellite phones?”

  “Yeah, and maybe we could send the cops a letter of confession as well.”

  Angel shrugged. At least he’d asked.

  “So how many do we have?”

  “Ten, ourselves included.”

  “We could bring in Parker. That would give us eleven.”

  Louis shook his head. “This is our game. Let’s play it, see what numbers we roll.”

  He picked up four images, photographs of Leehagen’s house taken with increasing degrees of magnification, and set them alongside one another, comparing angles, revealed points of access, weaknesses, strengths.

  And Angel walked away, leaving him to his plans.

  They both understood that this was not the way such things were done. There should have been background checks carried out, weeks-even months-of preparation, alternative entry and exit strategies examined, yet they did none of these things. In part, they recognized the urgency of the situation. Their friends, their home, had been targeted. Gabriel had been grievously
wounded. Even without the information provided by Hoyle, they knew that it was in the nature of a man who would act in such a reckless way not to retreat after initial reverses. He would come at them again and again until he succeeded, and everyone close to them was at risk as a consequence.

  As in most matters that concerned them both, it was Angel who was the more perceptive, the one who recognized underlying motives, the one who instinctively homed in on the feelings of others. Despite all that remained hidden about his partner, he was attuned to the other man’s rhythms, his modes of thought and methods of reasoning, in a way that he believed was alien to Louis in their relationship. For a man who had lived so long in a gray world, drained of morality and conscience, Louis was always most comfortable with what was black and white. He was not prone to self-examination, and when he did analyze himself he did so entirely at one remove, as though he were a detached observer of his own follies and failings. Angel sometimes wondered if that was a consequence of the lifestyle he had chosen, but he suspected that it was probably an integral aspect of Louis’s makeup, as much a part of him as his color and his sexuality, a thing stamped upon his consciousness before he even left his mother’s womb, waiting to be called into being as the boy grew older. Gabriel had recognized that singlemindedness, and had harnessed it.

  Now circumstances had intervened and, in a way, Louis was once again serving Gabriel, although this time as his avenger. The problem was that his desire to act, to strike, to release some of that pent-up energy had made him incautious. They were moving too quickly against Leehagen. There were too many gaps in their knowledge, too many sides upon which they were exposed.

  So Angel broke a cardinal rule. He confided in another. Not everything, but enough that, if things began to fall apart, someone would know where to look for them, and whom to punish.

  That evening, they ate together at River on Amsterdam. It was a quiet meal, even by their standards. Afterward, they had a beer in Pete’s, once the office crowd had departed along with the free munchies, and half watched the Celtics make dull work of the Knicks. To amuse himself, Angel counted the number of people who were using hand sanitizer, and stopped once it threatened to move into double figures. Hand sanitizer: what was the city coming to, he wondered. I mean, he could understand the logic of it. Not everyone who used the subway was exactly spotlessly clean, and he’d taken cab rides that had required him to send his clothes to the laundry the following day just to get the stink out, but seriously, he wasn’t sure that a little bottle of mild hand sanitizer was the answer. There was stuff breeding in the city that could survive a nuclear attack, and not just cockroaches. Angel had read somewhere that they’d found the gonorrhea virus in the Gowanus Canal. On one level, it was hardly surprising: the only thing that you couldn’t find in the Gowanus Canal was fish, or at least any fish that you could eat and live for longer than a day or two once you’d consumed it, but how dirty did a stretch of water have to be to contract a social disease?