She tore the pages out at random, reading their headings as they came to hand: Corinthians, Proverbs, Matthew, Luke, John:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us.
And the light shineth in darkness: and the darkness comprehended it not.
She crumbled the pages one by one, setting them with gentle care among the pieces of piled wood. Satisfied that there were enough, she picked up the matchbook she had brought from the car, looking with sad amusement at the name on the cover: “The Carlyle.” Where was A.C. James now? To what fate had she left him on that street in Savannah?
She struck a match. It flamed and glowed and went out. Leaning closer to the pile, using more caution, she struck another, holding it carefully until the flame caught the cardboard stem. Then she moved it gently toward the nearest edge of holy paper. The flame spread along it, climbing. Soon, it was all touched with burning, a smoky, smoldering fire, but a relentless one. If God were opposed to her deed, he did not prevent it.
She opened the Bible again, at the beginning, turning to the first of the front flyleaves reading over the carefully penned old-fashioned writing—some of it practiced script, some of it crabbed scrawl—all names and dates, births and deaths. There were dozens and dozens of long-dead people here, some of them buried on this island. At Camilla’s hand, they were dying once again, vanishing forever—as though they had never lived.
A.C. set his anchor, let the boat pull out the length of the anchor line, then, holding his pistol high, jumped into the water, surprised by its depth. He found solid footing, however, and pushed forward, ascending the slippery, sandy slope till he was at last able to gain dry land. He paused to empty the water from his Top-Siders, then put them back on and started back down the shoreline to where he had left Lanham, staying close to the trees.
The policeman had moved away from the boats, and was crouched at the tree line in the shelter of a sandy hummock, his pistol in hand. A.C. came up quietly and knelt beside him.
“No one’s come out,” Lanham said. “There’s a house on the other side of these trees. I saw a chicken. No people.”
“What do we do?”
“It’s not a big island.” He stood up slowly, looking both ways down the beach, then stepped up into the woods, moving as carefully and quietly as an Indian. He waved A.C. back and to the side, the veteran sergeant leading a patrol. A.C. had never led troops in the field in his army time, but he remembered his training. Squad tactics. Keep an interval. Stick to cover. Stay off the paths.
A.C. held the heavy pistol straight before him. He’d reloaded it in Savannah, and it was ready for more violent harm. He’d destroyed a man’s leg with this weapon. The paper had said it had been amputated. What power, to take a man’s leg so simply and easily.
Jacques Santee had killed that easily. He’d be ready to do it again. He could be bringing a gun to bear on them at this very moment, waiting for them to clear the trees.
Lanham moved on, relentless. They were so near what they all had come to find.
They reached the edge of a clearing. There were several houses, all rudely painted—most of them an odd, eerie blue—strung out along either side of a grassy, sandy lane. Wide boards had been laid out on top of some concrete blocks, forming a crude table. Some old laundry tubs were set on the ground beside it. Fishing nets were hung over the low limb of a dark, mossy tree. A rusted car, lacking wheels, was set up on concrete blocks. Another, just as old and in nearly as bad a condition, sat serviceably on muddy tires. The red pickup truck they had seen was farther along the lane, canted slightly to the side.
In the middle of the clearing, brightly red, was Camilla’s car.
A.C. looked at Lanham, who ignored him, his eyes searching the farther woods.
A chicken appeared from behind the concrete blocks, moving in a slow, arch, antic strut. A large dog lay on its side by the steps of a small house, only a flick of his stringy tail indicating life. Birds flew and swooped and called. Insects buzzed.
A sudden movement, a flash of pink, caught A.C.’s eye and he turned with his pistol. It was a little black girl, skipping barefoot from between two houses, singing to herself. She failed to notice them, and kept on down the lane to the right.
Lanham was watching her, his gun lowered. Moving quietly, A.C. went over to him.
“There are people here,” Lanham said softly. “They’re all here. They’re in their houses.”
“Should we try to talk to them?”
“They’ll be scared shitless.” Lanham turned to the left. “I think we should look down that way. We’ll take, either side of the path. Just keep the noise down.”
He moved off, slipping from tree to tree. Reaching the path, he crouched down, hesitated, then hurried to the other side. A. C., with some struggle, set forth through the brush, moving sideways to slip between the grasping brambles and twigs.
The ground was mucky, and sucked at his shoes. A bramble tore at the skin of his calf. Some of the insects bit and sweat began to trickle down his back. He ignored it all. They were hunting, and his thoughts were cold. His attention was fixed ahead.
He saw Lanham suddenly raise his arm. A.C. halted.
Ahead, around a slight bend in the path, was a small, crude footbridge with a single wooden railing. Just in front of it was what looked like a pile of dark rags.
Lanham continued now, very slowly. A.C. kept pace, creeping forward. It was a person there, lying as though in wait, close to the ground, a military ambush.
A.C. raised his pistol, keeping the sights near the prone form. It had to be Jacques. Camilla had long blond hair. If the figure moved, he’d fire. He wouldn’t wait for Lanham. It could cost him his life—both their lives.
He hated this. He was furious with himself for being here.
The form remained motionless. At last, Lanham stepped out into the path, motioning A.C. to join him.
The pile of rags was a man, lying sprawled on his back, his arms flung back toward them, his eyes staring upward, motionless. He’d been facing the other way. There was a huge, ragged hole in his dark blue shirt, the flesh of his chest beneath all blackened and bloody.
Flies buzzed around the dark, handsome face. One perched on the lower lip. It flew off as A.C. knelt close, next to Lanham.
The man’s dark hair was very curly. On impulse, A.C. touched it, then drew his hand back.
“It’s him,” he said, finally. “Jacques Delasante.”
“The man on the motorcycle.”
“Yes.”
In Jacques’s belt was a large, ungainly automatic pistol with a square-edged receiver. Lanham gently pulled it free, holding it by the seat of the barrel.
“It’s a machine pistol,” Lanham said. “German. A war relic.”
“It looks like it works.”
“It worked.”
Lanham set it on the man’s chest, then rose, studying the marshy woods across the bridge. “You said you’d handle Camilla,” he said.
A.C. moved on ahead, sticking his pistol back into his belt and walking down the middle of the path. As far as he was concerned, the combat patrol was over. If Lanham wished to be more cautious, that was his option. If he wished to do her violence … A.C. had trust enough in Lanham to believe that he would not. The policeman had had a chance to shoot her in Virginia, and had not taken it. A.C. could not imagine Detective Raymond Lanham wanting to add another death to this long trail of killing.
They found her in another clearing, a very small one, in front of a sagging, weathered shack so decrepit it seemed more a work of nature than of man. Camilla had built a fire in the grass, and was kneeling over it, as though for warmth
. Then A.C. noticed the objects around her, and that she was tearing pages from a book.
He stood quietly, near the heat of the flames, waiting for her to take note of him.
“Camilla?” He spoke her name gently.
She looked up sharply, as though startled from a dream. Her eyes widened, and then became questioning.
“What are you doing, Camilla?”
She stared at him, as though thinking of what to say, or do. Turning her head, she saw Lanham standing near.
“Camilla?”
She went back to her strange work. He saw that it was a Bible she had. The pages she was tearing and setting carefully into the fire were covered with handwriting. He wondered if in the course of all this horror she had gone mad, if all the Delasantes were lunatics.
“Camilla!”
Her eyes were very sad now as she lifted her head again, almost imploring. He wished Lanham were not there. He wanted suddenly to help her, though he was far from certain what it was she would desire him to do.
She closed the Bible and dropped it into the fire. The flames flattened and retreated from it, then curled back.
“Every family in the South has its Bible,” she said, her voice very weary, almost ghostly, but at least sounding sane and rational. “Noble or poor. White families, black families. They hold the names of the born and the dead, generation after generation. This is the Bible of the Hingham family. A black family. They lived here, but now they’re all dead.”
She took a packet of letters from the ground beside her. The envelopes had aged to a pale brown, the old-fashioned handwriting on them faded to a brown of a darker hue. Camilla snapped the frail ribbon holding them together, tossing it into the fire, and then began throwing in the envelopes, one after the other. The paper was so very old it disintegrated as much as burned.
The letters might well contain what a court could construe as significant evidence in these murders, but A.C. didn’t care, even though the evidence might bear tellingly in a trial concerning the murder of Bailey Hazeltine. Camilla seemed to be explaining herself. He would let her do so, unhindered.
Lanham was standing stone still, watching patiently, his pistol in his hand, but lowered.
“Before the War Between the States,” Camilla said, “the Hinghams were slaves. They were owned by the Tramore family, which owned the entire island. But the Tramores were driven out by the Union army. The plantation was burned. They lost everything. They never came back. The land was cut up into small plots, and sold for nominal sums to the former slaves.”
Though she spoke so strangely, and her clothing was dirty and torn, she reminded A.C. of the elegant Southern ladies who served as guides and docents at historical houses, reciting their speeches and answering questions with well-mannered reverence for their subject. This was no tourist guide’s tale, however.
“The Hinghams had been the most prominent Negro family on the island. Many of them could read and write, though it was forbidden by law. One of them served as the Tramores’ majordomo. Another had been sold to a Tramore relative in Virginia and he had bought his freedom. He had moved north and worked for the Abolitionist party. He wrote tracts and lectured and even wrote a book. I believe it’s in the slave museum in Charleston. His name was Samuel Hingham.”
Lanham had sat down, holding his gun on the ground beside him. A.C. still stood. Camilla was looking up at him, though she continued to feed the envelopes into the fire.
“After the war, he came back to Tawabaw. He was elected to the U.S. Congress and served a term there. For a time, he served as minister to Liberia. When Reconstruction ended, all that ended. He lived on here at Tawabaw, where he was a man of much consequence. Even the white people on the mainland thought well of him. These are his letters, what’s left of them, and some letters that were written to him.”
Another went into the flames, and then another.
“With Reconstruction, some of the Delasantes from up in the Piedmont came down here. They bought up or took most of the best land on the island from the Negroes. They worked it for nearly ten years, but never made much of it. They tried rice and sea cotton, but it didn’t take. Tawabaw was good only for oystering and crabbing, and growing roots like elephant ear. They kept some of the land along the coast, but sold the rest back to the Negroes and left. Many of the blacks left, too, especially after the last World War. The poverty was very bad here, and the people ended up not much better off than when they had been slaves. But they kept up the old life here. They’re very proud and independent. Their biggest fear has been that the white man would come and make this into another resort island like Hilton Head. Pierre was buying up land on Tawabaw. He was negotiating with developers. I found the papers in his lawyer’s files.”
“Is that why Jacques killed him?” A.C. said quietly. “Is that it, that Pierre was selling out to resort people?”
She ignored his question as though it had not been asked, reaching into the oilskin pouch and pulling forth some photographs. The smaller ones, brown images on white, were mounted on cardboard, and had probably been taken around the turn of the century. Camilla tore each in half before adding it to the fire.
“These are relatives of Samuel Hingham. The Delasantes took most of these pictures. This is one of his daughters. He had many children, not all by his wife.”
The daughter went into the flames. Camilla picked up a larger object, an old tintype showing a handsome black man, wearing a high collar and old-fashioned cravat.
“This is Samuel Hingham. A fine-looking man, wasn’t he? He had fairly light skin, and that was rare in the sea islands.”
Gripping the tintype on both ends, she leaned back slightly and brought it down hard on her knee. When it remained intact, she brought it down again even harder, a slight cry escaping her lips when it broke into three pieces, cutting the skin of her hand and her knee. The metal fragments went into the fire, blackening swiftly.
She picked up the last photograph, holding it gingerly, staring at it with some fascination before turning it for A.C. to see.
“This is one of Samuel Hingham’s sons. His name was Robert. Very handsome. He looks white, doesn’t he? He was raised as white. His mother was a Delasante. Some of the letters here are hers, written to Samuel after she had moved away from the island.”
She placed the photograph on top of the other burning objects with great care, as though this was the last act in a religious ritual.
“This Robert Delasante was my stepfather’s father. He was Pierre’s grandfather, and my brother’s grandfather, and my sister’s. They were all part Negro. They were Negroes. My mother never learned the truth until it was far too late, but she had married a Negro. Do you understand what that means? She married a Negro.”
She sat back and took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on his.
“Now you know,” she said. “The proof is burning up. There is no other proof, but you know.”
A.C. came nearer to her. “Did it matter that much to you? That’s all I want to know, Camilla. All that’s happened, all that you’ve done …”
“Matter to me? I would have been proud to have had Samuel Hingham among my ancestors. I doubt that you believe that, but it’s true. My mother, though, my poor mother. This would have destroyed her. Jacques killed his father because of this. My sister Danielle committed suicide, because of this. My mother, she’s the family. She’s all that’s left of us in Charleston.”
She looked down at her hands, at the blood on the one. She rubbed it off on her skirt, then slowly, stiffly got to her feet. A.C. noticed that Lanham did the same.
“Up in Washington, Pierre had a taste of being very rich,” she said. “When he got in trouble, he wouldn’t give it up. He took money from me, from all of us. My brother sold his horses. My mother gave him jewelry. This”—she pointed to the fire—“this was the only reason we did it. This is all that kept Pierre alive.”
She turned and looked all around her, as if the little clearing and the shack and t
he island offered some final explanation.
“I’m glad that Pierre is dead,” she said. “In the end, I’m glad Jacques did that. But the people on this island. They’re related to Samuel Hingham. These poor people …”
“Your brother would have killed them,” Lanham said, his voice weighty, as though rendering a judgment.
“I’m so sorry, A.C. But I’ve been sorry for such a long, long time.”
She turned away. He sought words to stay her. The ones he found were unwanted, but they had to be said. At least once.
“Camilla. Who killed your brother?”
She hesitated, head down, then continued on, going to the door of the shack and stepping carefully inside. A.C. glanced at Lanham. He had not moved.
Camilla came back out into the light, holding a shotgun. She gripped it by the barrel, carrying it stock down in front of her. Moving around the fire, she came before A.C. and held the weapon out to him, as though it were a gift.
As he took it, she looked away from him, then started walking slowly toward the little wooden bridge, her head down, her hands held together. When she reached the bridge, she stopped and gazed back at them, waiting.
Neither man moved. A.C. stared at Lanham. He looked back, though A.C. could see only the glare of sunlight on his glasses.
“Do you want to go with her?” Lanham asked quietly.
“What?”
“Do you want to go with her, to wherever she’s going? This is your chance, your only chance. After this, you’ll never find her again. Do you want to take it?”
“Just go? No questions asked? You’ll let me?”
“No questions asked. I have all my answers.”
She was starting across the bridge, still walking slowly.
“No,” A.C. said.
She had come into his life in the fantasy of a fashion show. Now she was leaving him in a fantasy of black magic, having brought him to this place of witchcraft and death. If he let her go, if he did not follow, all she would ever be to him again was a fantasy. Little wisps of memory of her would come to him in old age—the color and scent of her hair, the haunting magic of her eyes when she had first looked at him.
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