She did, but it didn’t matter. Suddenly she was crying. It came over her in an unexpected flood, as if some flimsy dam had finally burst inside her. She leaned to her sister, who held her.
“I know it’s crazy,” she confessed. “Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t help it. The moment I saw him, I knew. It was like I was meant to find him.”
“It’s okay,” Anne said and smoothed her sister’s hair. “I understand.”
“I was so scared out there. Scared for him and Dad and me. I didn’t know if we were going to make it. All I could think about was that poor girl in the cabin and what had been done to her, and would they do the same to me, and, God, what would they do to him?” She drew away from Anne and reached down, pulled the baby from the basket, held him and went on crying.
“It’s all right,” Anne said. “It’s over, Jenny.”
“Is it? We don’t know who that man out there was or why he wanted the baby. Because it was the baby he was after. That much I’m sure of.”
“Okay. But we’re all here to help protect him. He’s safe now.”
“Then why am I so afraid?” She ran her hand along the baby’s soft cheek, then gave her sister a desperate look and spoke words that came out of some dark place of knowing deep inside her. “Can’t you feel it, Annie?”
“Feel what?”
Jenny clutched the child as if some terrible force were trying to wrench him from her. “It’s not over yet,” she said. “The worst is still to come.”
TWENTY-NINE
How far to Stump Island?” Cork asked.
“Another five miles,” Kretsch said. “It’s the last of the islands before you hit the big water, so it’s pretty far out there.”
The wind was against them, and Bascombe, at the helm, gripped the wheel and seemed tense as they bounced through the chop of the waves. They’d passed to the west of Massacre Island, which lay on the other side of the boundary line with Canada, and then Little Oak Island, and finally Garden Island, where the lake had opened up in front of them. On the horizon far to the south, Cork could see nothing. The big water, he knew. There was something about that vast expanse of looming emptiness that was a little frightening. He much preferred the sense of intricacy created by the tangle of islands behind them. Or better yet, the intimacy of the small, clear lakes of home, Tamarack County.
“What do you know about the folks who run the camp?” he asked Kretsch.
The deputy squinted against the wind, and lines cracked the suntanned skin of his face. “Not much. Not quite as accessible as the Baptists used to be. Keep pretty much to themselves, but no trouble. They have money, apparently. They bought the island outright with cash.”
“What denomination are they?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“No particular denomination,” Bascombe said to them over his shoulder. “They call themselves the Church of the Seven Trumpets.”
“Never heard of them,” Cork said.
“Pretty fundamentalist, I understand. Holy Rollers or something,” Bascombe said. “But like Tom was saying, no trouble. Me, I think religion is for the faint of heart.”
“What do you mean?” Kretsch asked, a little edge of irritation to his voice.
“I know you’re a good Catholic boy, Tom. But it seems to me religion mostly offers false comfort to folks afraid of dying.”
Stephen had seemed intent on studying the islands as they passed, but now he turned to Bascombe. “You’re not afraid of dying?”
“Sure I am. But when I’m standing at that door, I don’t want some pasty-faced young minister telling me things are going to be better on the other side. Hell, how would he know? You man up to things in life, and I figure death’s no different. That’s all I’m saying.”
Stephen looked off toward a small gathering of bare rocks surrounded by angry water and seemed to think about Bascombe’s comments. Finally he said, “Mr. Bascombe, I respect your opinion, but for me, my religion’s about a way of living, not dying.”
Kretsch’s clear blue eyes sparkled with approval, and the deputy gave Stephen a broad grin. “I’ve never heard it said better.”
Bascombe glanced back and said affably, “Call me Seth, son.”
Stephen looked again at the great water across which they bounded. Cork was proud of his son. Stephen, in his short life, had suffered great blows. He’d been kidnapped when he was very young. He’d seen his father shot—nearly fatally—right in front of him. He’d lost his mother. Yet his faith was strong. And Cork knew it wasn’t the result alone of his Catholic upbringing, nor was it strictly Christian. Of all his children, Stephen was the one in whom the blood of the Anishinaabeg ran most powerfully, and his spirituality came as much from the teaching of men like Henry Meloux, the old Ojibwe Mide, as it did from the text of the New Testament.
“There it is,” Bascombe hollered over the wind and the slap of waves. “Stump Island.”
He pointed south, where a long gray-green worm seemed to sit on the sun-stained water. As they drew nearer, it grew into a flat, heavily wooded island. Cork could see nothing beyond it but the blue horizon. It felt to him as if he was looking at the last outpost in a great liquid desert.
“Anybody else on the island besides the camp folks?” he asked Kretsch.
“Nope. They’ve got the whole place to themselves. Don’t need outside help. For their electricity and heat, they’ve got solar panels and that big wind generator.” He pointed toward a white wind turbine that stood high above everything else on the island. “Propane for backup. They filter their own water, grow a lot of their own food. Pretty much self-sustaining.”
The island was easily a half a mile long, flat and heavily wooded, and the shoreline looked to be all rock. Bascombe guided the launch around the west end, where a gathering of cabins and other buildings came suddenly into view, spread out along the finger of a broad peninsula. The cabins were clapboard painted cedar red. Two structures stood out: the tall wind generator, bone white, and the dark metal spider webbing of another tower currently under construction. The tower looked as if it might, when finished, be used for radio broadcasting. Bascombe guided them toward a long dock, where a couple of big powerboats were moored. Near the dock stood a large boathouse. As they approached, two men came from the boathouse to meet them. The first was tall, blue-eyed, black-haired, gothic looking in the angular cut of his jaw and the long slope of his nose. He wore a denim shirt with sleeves rolled back and clean, faded jeans. The other man was younger, slender, willowy, handsome in a brooding way. He had the same black hair and blue eyes as the other man, and even without having been introduced, Cork figured they were family. They both cradled rifles.
“What’s with the hardware, Gabe?” Bascombe called as they motored up.
The taller, older man let the rifle hang in one hand, barrel toward the ground, unthreatening. “Just making sure that I knew you and that you’re friendly, Seth. We had someone trespassing last night, someone with a firearm. Took a couple of shots at us.”
“Anybody hurt?” Kretsch asked.
“No, thank God.”
“You see who it was?”
“Didn’t, Tom. But it was someone in a cigarette boat, I can tell you that much. Took off fast once we came after him.”
Bascombe said, “Noah Smalldog?”
The man named Gabriel nodded. “That’s what I figured. There’s a soul bound for hell as surely as I’m standing here.”
They tied up, and when they’d all disembarked and stood together on the dock, Cork asked, “Why would Noah Smalldog come here in the middle of the night?”
Cork placed the tall man in his early forties. His hair, wild in the wind that blew across the big water, gave him a restless, almost manic look. He had eyes so blue-white they seemed made of crystal, and those eyes were looking at Cork pretty sharply.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“My name’s Cork O’Connor. And I think this Smalldog may have taken a potshot at
me, too.”
“Well, I guess that puts us in the same boat.” The man shook Cork’s hand. “I’m Gabriel Hornett.”
“This is my son, Stephen,” Cork said.
“Stephen, eh? Fine Christian name, that. A brave Christian martyr.”
“Yes, sir,” Stephen said with a brief, courteous smile. “Is that Hornet, like the insect?”
“Two t’s at the end, son. Makes my sting twice as dangerous.”
Hornett laughed, and Cork could tell it was a line he used often and was fond of. “This is my brother, Joshua.” He indicated the willowy man with brooding good looks who stood at his side. The younger Hornett gave a silent nod in acknowledgment. Cork placed Joshua in his mid-twenties, a good fifteen years younger than his brother.
“What does Smalldog have against you?” Hornett asked.
“Long story,” Cork replied.
“And part of the reason we’re here,” Kretsch said. “Can we go somewhere out of this wind and talk?”
“Sure thing. Let’s go to the community hall. This way.”
Hornett turned and led them away from the shore. His brother brought up the rear, following a few steps behind the others. Hornett took them into the heart of the church camp, a clean and pleasant place. The cabins and buildings, all sturdy-looking structures, had been recently painted and were in good repair. In addition to the metal tower under construction, there was another major project under way: a long wooden skeleton, a two-story framework of studs that appeared as if it might become a dormitory, or maybe even a barracks. The grounds were immaculate, and the paths through the trees were of crushed limestone, beautifully white against the green of the grass and the trees. There were a number of people about, all busy with the various constructions as well as the normal work of a camp—repairing steps on a cabin or raking leaves or collecting garbage. No one seemed to take any particular notice of Cork and the others.
“Quite a place you have here,” Cork said.
“The Lord has guided us well,” Hornett replied. “We call it the Citadel.”
“And your church is the Church of the Seven Trumpets, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
“Interesting name. Where does it come from?”
“Read your Revelation, Cork. The Apocalypse is coming, make no mistake. We’re preparing ourselves and our souls here.” He gave Cork and Stephen a sidelong glance and added, “We open our arms to anyone wanting to accept Jesus before it’s too late.”
“You’re talking End Times?” Cork said.
“You say that with a smirk, sir, which I’m sorry to see.”
Cork thought the man was way too sensitive, but in his experience, a lot of deeply religious people were. In his own mind, there was often a profound difference between those who thought of themselves as religious people and those who preferred to think of themselves as spiritual. Given a choice, he’d go with the latter every time.
The community hall was a new structure, large and simple, a great room with high ceilings and thick rafters of dark wood. Half the area inside was taken up with tables. The other half held chairs arranged in rows that faced a simple altar. The wall behind the altar was dominated by an enormous banner that held the image of a man with black hair and a black beard and crystal-blue eyes that, no matter where you stood in the great hall, seemed to follow you.
“One of the prophets?” Cork asked.
“In a way. The Reverend Jerusalem Hornett, founder of the Church of the Seven Trumpets.”
“Any relation?”
“My father,” Hornett said.
Because of the severe blue eyes in both men, Cork wasn’t surprised in the least.
“The hall serves two purposes,” Hornett explained. “We gather here for our communal meals, and this is where we worship together. We think of it like the upper room of the Last Supper, a place where we nourish both our bodies and our souls.”
“I don’t know what you’re having for dinner tonight,” Bascombe said, “but it smells like heaven.”
“Esther’s in charge of that. My wife,” he said for the benefit of Cork and Stephen. “Why don’t we all sit down so that we can talk?”
Gabriel Hornett leaned his rifle against the wall next to the front door, walked to one of the dining tables, pulled out a chair, and sat down. The others joined him, all except his younger brother, who stayed near the door, rifle still in hand, as if on guard duty. Gabriel Hornett folded his arms on the table, leaned toward Cork, and said, “Tell me about your trouble with Smalldog.”
Cork recounted the story of the ordeal on the remote island. Hornett listened without comment but clearly looked disturbed. At the end, Cork said, “Seth and Tom think the dead girl might have been Lily Smalldog and the man who shot at me her brother, Noah.”
“No,” the younger Hornett said from the door. “That couldn’t be Lily.”
Cork had paid no attention to Joshua Hornett when telling his story, but now he saw how stricken the young man looked at the news.
“Why?” Cork asked.
“Lily drowned,” he insisted.
“Or,” the elder Hornett said, “someone made it look that way, Josh. And my guess would be Noah Smalldog.” He frowned and shook his head. “That poor girl, that poor tortured soul. Dear Lord.” Then he eyed Cork and Stephen and Kretsch, each in turn, with a look of profound solemnity. “This barbarism is just further proof. End Times, gentlemen. You understand now why we see so clearly that the Apocalypse is upon us. Everywhere we look, the signs are there.”
“The signs?” Stephen said.
“Eighteen signs, Stephen,” Hornett replied with evangelistic fervor. “Five given by our Lord Jesus Christ himself to indicate his coming and the end of the age.” He lifted his right hand and began counting off on his fingers.
“One, Matthew twenty-four, eleven: ‘And many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.’ Think about it for a moment, Stephen. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden, the Dalai Lama. All falsely using the name of God to lead masses away from the true path shown to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Two, Matthew twenty-four, six: ‘And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars.’ Stephen, when was the last time you turned on your television or radio or connected to your Internet and didn’t see some report of war somewhere in this world? The death toll rises daily, and everywhere nations are preparing weapons of mass destruction.
“Three, Matthew twenty-four, seven: ‘For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.’ When we were in Zimbabwe, Stephen, we saw the good Christian farmers there being driven out and replaced by godless men growing poppies that supply twenty-five percent of the world’s drug trade. Now Africa hungers. There’s famine in Pakistan and India and China, and mark my words, very soon there will even be famine here in America as the climate begins to change because of God’s wrathful hand. As for earthquakes, there have been more recorded in the past one hundred years than in all history before that. Soon the whole earth will shake so badly that people will tremble for fear it’s falling apart.
“Four, Matthew twenty-four, nine: ‘Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.’ Christians are scorned today, Stephen, under attack around the world. The Muslim nations would love nothing better than to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth. It has been bad, but it will get far worse.
“And the last sign, Stephen, Matthew twenty-four, fourteen: ‘And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.’ You saw the tower we’re building out there? That’s a radio tower and will have a powerful signal. When we’re finished, we’ll be able to broadcast the word of God for a thousand miles. We already have an Internet site, and every year here we train men and women to travel to the darkest places imaginable to preach the holy word. Make no mistake, S
tephen, the end is almost upon us. And those who haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as their savior will suffer torment you can’t even begin to imagine.”
When he’d finished, Hornett looked hard at Stephen, as if trying to melt the young man’s flesh with the fire in his eyes.
Stephen didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said, “Do you have a bathroom?”
“A bathroom?” Hornett seemed caught by surprise.
“Yes, sir. I have to pee.”
A flicker of irritation crossed the man’s face, and he pointed toward a door at the far end of the great hall. “Over there.”
“Thank you.”
Stephen left the table, and Hornett followed him with a cold, disappointed stare.
“Long boat ride,” Cork said. “You told me Noah Smalldog trespassed last night and did some shooting. What time?”
“Shortly after midnight,” Hornett replied. “Everyone was sleeping.”
“What woke you up to his presence? Did he shoot first?”
“I happened to be up. Some nights I can’t sleep, and so I come here to pray. I was on my way to the hall when I spotted him.”
“Where exactly?”
Hornett looked at Cork with the same irritation Stephen seemed to have engendered. “Does all this really matter?”
“Cork’s got a long background in law enforcement, Gabe,” Kretsch said. “Just where did you spot Smalldog?”
“Sneaking around Josh and Mary’s cabin.”
“Mary?”
“Joshua’s wife.”
Cork glanced toward the door where the younger Hornett stood. The man stared at the floor, frowning, lost in deep, unhappy thought. He didn’t appear to have heard his wife’s name mentioned.
“Did Josh or Mary see him?”
“No, they were sleeping.”
“Is that where he fired at you?”
“Yes.”
“And you returned fire?”
“I did.”
“With that?” Cork nodded toward the rifle Hornett had left near the door.
“No, with my handgun.”
“What kind?”
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