Chapter 29

1

“This is a problem. A big fucking problem. What we don’t need on top of CNN or the networks tromping through this place, is to stoke the already embittered hostilities of the locals. A lot of them don’t want us here. They don’t. Andy, you’re a political hire.”

            “Ned Stevenson was already a cop when I came to Reedy Creek.”

            “It doesn’t matter.” Bob Arnold was pacing, and for a moment he stood by his desk and looked down at the sheriff. The E10 council was convened at the distillation plant for an impromptu brainstorming. Because that’s what brain trusts did. “I’ve heard the rumors. Mayor Jenkins has kept his ear to the ground, and we’ve got loyal deputies who’ve served the Creek for decades turning over the force to a fucking professor of…of what, ecology, some New Age claptrap, and the first person people are going to pin their blame on is you for not seeing the signs. And that includes the veterans, Andy. They’ll throw you under the bus and this whole goddamn snafu will hang around the council’s throat like a scarlet letter.”

            “There weren’t any signs to see,” Andy said, defensively. He was sitting next to Hector, and Mary next to the principal. Trevor sat on the lounger by the window overlooking the cornfields to the north, with Paul Holdren leaning forward thumbing through a copy of The Economist on the table and Norris Serkis casually tapping his fingers together. Mayor Jenkins stood by Bob’s desk, its ornate oak legs like furniture pieces, and the pictures of his wife contrasted against business reports, forecasts, and what looked like maps of Reedy Creek.

            “It doesn’t matter,” Bob retorted. He sat back on his desk and drummed his fingers on the edge. “Building a business like this, it’s a community effort. And how do you think that will work if the community protests and fights back against the business? Then we’re no longer symbiotic but a virus, and the host is trying to repel us. You guys were brought onto this project to prop up the PR, beyond that academic shit you’ve been sending to the review journals to convince the Greens this experiment is sustainable. Paul, why else would we have even brought you into this?”

            “You’re throwing a lot of accusations without evidence,” Paul said, dropping the magazine. He spoke with an astuteness and surety Trevor envied. Trevor felt like he’d lost that part of himself after the debate with Scott Woods.

            “This is the evidence. Harold’s been enlightening me with somewhat of a character profile of your suspect.”

            “Rumors have it—or suspicions if you like that term better—Ned was a closeted faggot.”

            “Mayor,” Paul scolded.

            Harold Jenkins, an older man with a growing bald spot on his crown and burst capillaries on his face that gave his cheeks a roseate hue, stepped forward and stood next to Bob. “I forget I have to watch my mouth around you zealous lefties.” He smiled. “I apologize. But the insistence of this meet up is to clean, pre-emptively, any negative press on the Creek’s business opportunities as a result of this guy murdering people and leaving tags on their bodies. The latest one read what, sheriff?”

            “Rapist.”

            “And was he?”

            “How the hell do I know?”

            “Shit, sheriff. The Creekers know. That’s who. I’ve been in this town for thirty years, and you learn to read people and see between the lines. And that’s where the problem comes in with matters of import coming through your council. People haven’t a clue what your purpose here is. They see stodgy intellectuals and think your values contrast against theirs, and they don’t understand the rationale.”

            “I don’t understand your point,” Paul said.

            “My point is,” the mayor replied, his voice hoarse. Trevor knew the man was a sex addict. He knew the man bussed in prostitutes from Davenport to keep his hands clean in Reedy Creek, and he knew the man spent tax dollars from the public coffers on his own cocaine habit. He knew, and he understood because of his role in the council and in ensuring Reedy Creek would accommodate the corn project and Holdren’s own experiment, which had some significant funding as well (private or public, Trevor did not know), that Jenkins would remain safe from scrutiny and out of any of Grimwood’s tapes. Same with Bob Arnold who, if what Andy said was true, starred in a few sex romps with another man thanks to the camera he could see mounted near the ceiling, and nearly indistinguishable above the windows. “My point is a few girls in Reedy Creek might have suspected something happened to them after a kegger but they carried no proof. But they read between the lines because sometimes people do bad shit, they do. They do bad shit but people here want peace. Ultimately. So in an effort to keep the peace, they bury bad intentions. To protect the community. Because what you don’t understand, what I can’t believe you haven’t noticed, is that these people, they hold small town values that don’t quite mesh with your principles. They can accept notions of evil as long as the people remain on a first name basis because there’s something safe about that. Quintessentially American. But now, now, there’s a whole slew of new people moving in. You, big city people, you’re all coming in for this project, bringing new money, bringing new ideas, and everything is expanding. Reedy Creek has always been small. Has never mattered. Has never been brought up in presidential elections or state politics. But now Reagan’s been talking about the product we’re churning. Now we suddenly matter, and the national stage is novel. People don’t quite like it. Maybe they never will. Because what they could bury before for the sake of the community, for the sake of retaining that first-name-basis respectability, it’s souring for the sake of the manufacturing machine that’s turned so much of America into a faceless corporation. And here we’ve got a fucking serial killer digging up the secrets that were once ours. Were once the Creekers’. That kid, Matthew Hodges, maybe he is a rapist. Was. That’s a very powerful accusation. And that prig Halliburton. Maybe he was screwing Ms Darling. Ned certainly thought so if he marked them. What’s happening in Reedy Creek, what’s happening right under your noses, is the town showing its discontent for how it’s changing.”

            Paul Holdren laughed. And Norris followed. The rest of the council remained silent and somewhat baffled. “That is a level of horse shit if you actually believe it, mayor.”

            “I don’t have to believe it to know it’s true, Mr Holdren.”

            “And your secrets, then, your honor. Is that what has you so concerned about what Ned Stevenson might be targeting around this nice little community? That if he’s sought out an adulterer and a rapist, that he might look into what you’ve buried yourself?”

            Harold’s cheeks turned a deep purple and his brow scowled. His eyes turned into small pinpoints tucked into sallow, doughy vats, so distant but so incriminating. Paul’s eyes remained earnest and curious. “I’m not sure what you’re implying?”

            “You brought us here to spread the blame. I understand that. But don’t expect I will throw Andy under the bus because he didn’t foresee Ned’s apparent murderous streak from hiding or miscalculating his own sexuality, whether or not it means the man prefers cock to the embrace of a woman, if you’ll excuse the crudity.” Paul folded his arms. “You want the culprit caught and punished before the voters understand just who’ve they’ve put in townhall: a philanderer, a man with avaricious tastes but very small means; a man who keeps his wallet in the public treasury and his nose over the rails. You’re afraid because it’s your legacy at stake here, correct, your honor?”

            Harold was silent for a moment. He swept his hand through his thinning, graying hair, and slowly exhaled. “Is that a threat, Mr Holdren, because I opened up this town to you under the mutual interest that I stay out of your way and you out of mine while the federal subsidies kept pouring in. This was never a part of the equation, this rogue fuh—faggot cop…” He started stuttering and quickly shut up.

            “Not a threat, your honor, any more than I believe that the town created these murders to prove its discontent that we’re here. Because that implication is insane. From what I’ve gathered, Reedy Creek is only the culmination of gossip mills, and people are talking about these murders excited by the prospect of their novelty. Nobody is afraid their secrets are going to be unearthed. That’s the talk of self-important people, not Main Street. So you and your whores and drugs, your honor, are safe from public scrutiny. That goes for your tastes as well, Mr Arnold.”

            Bob went to speak but stopped himself. Trevor saw a sparkle of the truth gleam in the man’s eye: that the assistant outside his door, the younger man with the chiselled jaw, the man who was so quick to get Bob coffee and even shared a knowing smile when he returned with the mug, a smile that meant there were rewards for such actions, was an accomplice to his own secrets, secrets that could ruin a reputation and marriage in one fell swoop. And that was a part of Paul’s power here. That’s what he was proving. Paul’s surveillance project, the experiment in this town that he was selling without their even knowing it, was a means of lording people’s secrets over them if the mask ever started slipping to prove the council wasn’t here just to sell the ethanol project to the world. Paul knew about the mayor’s whores and his coke, and Paul knew about Bob Arnold’s foray into extra-marital affairs. And there was proof. A lot of it.

            “Look. Things have gotten heated here. That was never the intention,” Harold said, looking to Bob and then back to the council. “Tensions are high. That’s what these murders mean. And we have to get out in front of them. We have to settle everybody before the kettle boils.”

            “I agree,” Paul said.

            “That’s what we are trying to do,” Andy added. “And part of it is muzzling that fucking scoundrel Cole Moore.”

            Harold nodded. “I’m just thinking about the town. That’s always been my worry.”

            And the coke and pussy, Trevor thought, but he didn’t say anything. He would keep mum during these proceedings. Because he had his own questions for the council. His own reservations. He thought about how Lew looked on the couch when he heard Adam screaming, louder even than the thunder of that storm raging outside. He thought about how empty Lew’s eyes seemed, staring beyond them and into what came next, whether you believed in the afterlife or the nihilism of becoming nothing more than worm chow.

            “If this is some pissed off cop,” Bob said, “we need to set the expectation that he is being hunted. Because the effort here is to keep this project from going up in flames. The feds have sunk in a shit ton of money, but we all know government is a wastrel, and they’ll just cap the mistake here and issue bonds for a new investment in sustainable energy elsewhere, where there isn’t a serial killer. No harm, no foul. But our efforts will have gone to shit, and I am starting to like it here.”

             You’re starting to like the guy outside this door, the guy with just a hint of 5 o’clock shadow and broad shoulders creating that V taper you sometimes hear women pine about, Trevor thought.

            “And if it’s not Ned?” Andy asked.

            “It doesn’t fucking matter. The suspicion is already there. You’ve got the evidence. So for now it is. And we create the story that cops are working day in and day out to find the guy. To find their own. Out of honor and anger for the disloyalty. It’s an easy story to tell. Mayor Jenkins is going to do a presser tomorrow. We’ve already gotten requests from Davenport and Cleveland, Omaha, even some national junkets for questions about what’s going on. And the interest isn’t in the ethanol but the murders. Cause that’s where human interests lie.” Bob smiled. “So we’ll assuage their interests with the story as it’s been told here. Bad cop, taking moral law into his own hands. That way we separate the murders from what we’re doing, from the corn, from the government project. Because the two have to be separate for this to work. Do you all agree?”

            Mary and Hector nodded. Neither of them looked like they wanted to be here. They both had other stuff on their mind, and Trevor knew they’d have a brief council meeting after this to air their own dirty laundry. Because this, the murders, the bloody messages left behind, none of this was anything they agreed upon or voted to do. This went beyond anything Trevor was comfortable with. And he was starting to assume Mary and Hector were agreeing with him and may even start to vote nay when the new tapes rolled in. Paul’s threat to the mayor and Bob seemed calculated beyond its veiled candor about what he knew those two wanted buried; Trevor thought Paul was beginning to understand and sense the potential mutiny within his own ranks. Yes, Trevor could read between the lines as well. And a part of him wished he’d never picked up the phone that day after the Low Breed had left him a broken man.

            “Then it’s settled. We nip this thing in the bud and carry on. The mayor will control the murder narrative during the conference, and you can sell the advantage of the Reedy Creek Project. We keep the stories separate, and hopefully the voters are too fucking stupid to relate the two.”

2

“The only real question we can ask, is this what we signed up for? We can agree there is a problem that has to be solved, but is the solution really…leaving bodies with accusations written in blood?” Mary Napolitano took a sip of her coffee. She wasn’t loud. It wouldn’t be wise to raise her voice. The Diner was pretty empty. The waitress was casually chatting with the chef in the grease spattered apron, and the only other patron, an old man wearing a newsie cap, was drinking coffee and eating tuna casserole.

            Andy sat back and folded his arms.

            “It seems like Henry is playing a game with your deal,” Trevor said. “The guy understands he’s a fall boy, doesn’t he?”
            “We don’t have to agree with the method. But we voted—”

            “We voted yes to put an end to that pedophile. We all did. We each at this table raised our hands when we saw the footage. If we’ve come to Reedy Creek for anything, to make hard choices about how to combat what we’re doing to this planet, we shouldn’t be sending adulterers to the guillotine. If I’m just talking out of my ass here, let me know. I’ve already had my argument with Andy behind closed doors.” Mary took another gulp of coffee just to busy her mouth.

            Trevor looked up at the cameras in this place. He wondered if Grimwood was watching them right now. Four members of the council. The last time Trevor was in here, he’d grabbed the first batch of VHS tapes of Holdren’s candidates. And he’d thought about how similar to his old janitor, Mr Spigget, Grimwood really was. And how those old bad dreams seemed to surface when Grimwood was around. And he thought about the animals at the farmhouse. The clearing of dead animals. Grimwood has his own secrets, or he wouldn’t keep cutting the wires to the cameras directing their focus back at him.

            “Mary’s right. The rule of law here cannot be arbitrary. If there are standards, and if we all agree, then we must follow through or our very principles, the reason we’re even acting here and asking of ourselves to permit these actions for the greater good, will have been compromised. That Salim al-Taloub guy. The Arab. We each saw what he’s done and what he still does. Paul has given him what he called immunity by association because he’s some sort of asset. That’s what I don’t agree with here.”

            “Hector, my assumptions are that Paul’s building to some greater point here,” Andy said. “I’ve told Mary the same. You don’t have to agree with the sin, hell, you don’t even have to acknowledge it, if the pros to one’s character outweigh the perversions.”

            “Christ, Andy,” Trevor said, “I don’t think we want a balance scale to determine if Salim’s association with Paul’s asset is of more vital importance than the crimes he’s committed.”

            “That’s not what I’m fucking saying, and you know it.” Andy was defensive, and when his voice rose, the old man turned around to have a look, his eyes somewhat glassy. What Trevor always thought was the first stage before glaucoma. He wondered if Paul had ever monitored the man, had Norris check his medical records to determine if his death was worth more than his life.

            “Is that our pro, then? That we’ve made the decision, democratically mind you, to end a life because the oceans may rise in a few decades or the temperature a centigrade or two. So our complicity in the act of murder is…is overwritten by our long-term intentions. That’s what the balance scale mindset is inferring.”

            “The three of you, then,” Andy said, sitting back. He was in uniform. He liked to be in uniform. That’s what Trevor thought. Because when Andy was in uniform he meant something to this community beyond the secrets of the council. He was respected. No matter his actual beliefs about the system, about the police and the state, he preferred it when people noticed him to when people didn’t. “You’re all having second thoughts? We all voted the same having watched the footage. Didn’t we?”

            “I voted for the adulterer,” Mary said. “But not for the young woman. He made a choice to betray his wife. She was young and stupid and probably saw in him the opportunity to do something better. And now that doesn’t matter. She never had a chance because she didn’t carry any purpose that might have saved her. It’s funny how classist we’ve become.”

            “You can’t pick and choose.”

            “Then maybe we end this all together,” Mary blurted. “Or maybe we entertain the notion that the voting process is more like a negotiation: that we can barter one life for another.”

            “That’s grim,” Trevor whispered.

            “And your proposal would be?”

            “You saw what Salim did. You have the proof to blackmail him, to expose him. Maybe you take your discontent, whatever it is the mayor was blathering on about, and look for real justice on your own time. Get your hands dirty.”

            “He’s a fucking pedophile, Trevor,” Mary said. “If I had the heart, I’d take my husband’s gun to the man’s front door and put a bullet in his cock and watch him bleed out. I would.”

            “But that’s not what we’re built for,” Andy said. “Not us. Because no matter what we say or write, what we believe, you have those people in power who make the decisions, and those without who are acted upon. I already know which side I want to be on. If Paul’s project expands. If Reedy Creek works out, who knows what happens next? I do know where I want to be standing when it does.”

            “What happens if the decisions aren’t ours to make any more?” Trevor asked. He had a mug of coffee but he hadn’t touched it. He didn’t like the taste of it at this place. Didn’t like how acrid it was once it touched your tongue. “The democratic process is slow. And if there’s contention, how can you reasonably move forward on majority vote if even one person abstains? Because then there’s already been a judgment cast. Then that one minor split can grow and grow until the movement itself collapses under its original intentions and the project is forced to go underground. To remove oversight and go dark.”

            “What are you on about?”

            “My father-in-law died last night.”

            “Jesus, I’m so sorry,” Mary said, touching Trevor’s arm. Hector nodded and threw in his own platitude.

            “I know how you felt about the guy,” Andy said, “but that’s always tough. Always.”

            “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You know how I felt about the guy. So did Paul. And Norris.”

            Andy cocked his brow. As if he understood where this was going.

            “My son was raving mad last night. Certain, goddamn certain he saw somebody come into the house before we found Lew’s body.”

            “And?”

            Trevor looked at Hector, wondering how they could each sit here and rank the sins of those they’d seen in private and believe they were somehow protected from their own. You gambled with your family’s life. Your sin is the greatest. You lost your way when you realized the life you led contradicted the life you preached, and you valued your principles enough to abandon the luxuries you gave your family to protect your own self-interest, to protect your fucking legacy. And look what happened. Your friend convinced you to invest in his S & L bank, and you did because trust carries only so much value when your principles have left you starving; but your friend fucked you, he did, like all bankers, always after the almighty dollar, and when the Ponzi went belly up, when Roger’s little outfit failed, he put a bullet in his head and the money lenders came for yours.

            “I don’t know. But it did get me thinking.” Do you tell them? Do you? “What if there are more layers to this project.”

            “More layers? I don’t understand—”

            “Norris and Paul have been working together since the late 70s. Since Project Gaia. Paul took the chairman role, and I think he did great things there. Some might have said they were a little extreme, but that’s what gets people’s attention. Controversy. That’s why I ever sent donations. I donated a ton of my book money. I called it penance back then. And maybe I still believe that. If we’re going to be honest, I indebted the outfit about $250,000 in total. I’m not the only one. So when the shit did go down there, when Paul was ousted for, well, for allegedly trying to poison an entire roster of Gaia’s members, including the elite donors, I thought he was just capitalizing on Jim Jones and the events at Jamestown. I thought he was calling attention to overpopulation with some publicity stunt, but people took it seriously. They didn’t see the symbolism. They saw the criminal intent.”

            “We all know the story. What’s your point?”

            “My point, Andy, is how do we know that we’re not just one layer of the fucking onion in Reedy Creek? Who are Paul’s donors now? I mean, look.” He pointed at the cameras he could see in here. And he knew there were more outside. “How much money and pull do you think it takes to set up this kind of operation? If he holds an asset in an Arab pedophile, is there money coming in from him that outweighs his sin? And then there’s Grimwood. The monster underground…the one who could blow up and expose this whole thing. But he doesn’t. Why? We can’t know because we’re one layer. Like Henry’s your fall boy, Andy, what if we’re Paul’s? What if the end game here is the same as Project Gaia? And what if we’re voting on a much smaller scale, and the greater experiment involves an unsanctioned kill list? What if my father-in-law was targeted for both his age and his potential as a dissident?”

            “That’s a mouthful,” Hector said, looking at the cameras skeptically. Mary was silent. It was as if she’d had similar thoughts. Maybe they all had.

            “Christ, Trevor. I’ve read your book and your papers, I have, but I never took you for a conspiracy theorist. We already have a conspirator in Reedy Creek; we’ve seen the footage of him following the prick in the blue truck, and we’ve already made him a candidate of the Cause. But you. And the two of you, you’re buying it? You think Paul’s going to convince us to drink arsenic?”

            “We’re just asking questions,” Mary said. “If that wasn’t expected asking us here to be a part of something like this, then maybe Paul didn’t do his homework.”

            “Do you really think Holdren would have had your father-in-law whacked?”

            “I think we need to make sure we’re doing this for the right reason. I don’t like the secrets.”

            “And if I had Henry clean up his act? If I told him no more fucking around, no more of this serial killer shit, you’re getting the mayor up in arms, would that wise you up at all?”

            “I just think we’re in over our heads,” Mary said. She tapped her mug and looked at Hector, who nodded in agreement. “It was easier at first when we were dealing with sick people. When we were looking at prognoses. Now we’re arguing about morality. Who’s next on the list? We have the Thief, that fat guy with the ponytail, and we’ve got the Addict. If I could change my vote on both, I would. Especially knowing now what it means. What it all amounts to.”

            “I think the pattern’s already been set. Boy, girl, boy. So the Addict,” Andy said. “That’s the file I’m showing Henry, at least. Paul’s given me control over that much.”

            “That’s not control. That’s bidding,” Trevor said. He saw Andy’s cheeks flush.

            “This means something here. In the end, this is what people see.” He pressed the badge on his chest and then ran his hand through his hair. “Paul might be running this fucking operation. He might be calling the shots. But nobody in Reedy Creek could pick him out of a line-up. They come to me when there’s trouble. That’s fucking control, Trevor. That’s purpose.”

            Andy stood up, dropping a couple dollars on the table, and he nodded at the waitress, who nodded back indifferently. He walked outside and climbed into his cruiser, where there was a file on the front seat. He was going to be a very busy man. Because the bodies would keep piling up.

3

Norris picked up the payphone. He was standing across the street from the Diner. He’d followed the council here.

            “You were right. They’re meeting without us.”

            “Do you know what they are talking about?”

            “They’d see me if I approached.”

             “It doesn’t matter. They were always brought here to see how far they would be willing to go. The project required it of them. If they have reservations they’d rather not discuss in front of us, then give them their powwow. Sometimes just to air grievances is enough to know you’re not suffering alone.”

            “And if they talk to the press?”

            “They won’t. Because they’re smart. They understand complicity works both ways.”

            “But if they do?”

            Paul Holdren was silent on the other end. Norris understood what that meant. He thought about that boy, Matthew Hodges. He thought about dragging his body out into the belt. Placing him in the brush, just far enough away from the path to make it appear authentic, but not far enough to hide the evidence for too long. He thought about cutting the boy’s wrist with a scalpel and smearing the tip of his fingertip, warm beneath the tight surgical glove, with his blood so he could mark him. The rain had tapered off by then. The message wasn’t going anywhere.

              “There’s something else,” Norris finally said. He looked down. He was holding a file. He had found a box wrapped in brown paper, its edge leaning on his windshield when he parked his Porsche at the ethanol plant for the meeting; the top flaps had been taped shut. Or re-taped, Norris figured. It was an anonymous gift. No note. Inside he’d found the folder. He looked at it now, licking his lips. There were so many secrets in Reedy Creek. “I know why Trevor Kramer’s been taking so many trips to Davenport.”