Chapter 31

1

The presser was starting at city hall, a shit stain just off Main with a parade of concrete stairs leading to a two-storey Soviet looking hangar with windows evenly spaced where the municipal bandits sat behind desks issuing building permits for the incoming Corners. A small crowd of people had already gathered. Interest was high in the Creek. Andy understood that. There were logoed news vans already bunching up the curbside and teams wiring their cameras, journalists micing up and checking their hair. The killings were becoming a big deal. And Andy had to staunch the effort or their little project here might overtake the bigger picture deal that even gave them a town to experiment on in the first place.

            He was sitting in his cruiser on Main, watching the bustle from a distance. He had a few deputies over there already attempting to keep a semblance of order, but most of them were just as awed of the grandstanding as the townies. He took a sip of his coffee and saw his mark walking down Main. People had routines in Reedy Creek. The older Creekers took their morning strolls finding gossip to spill about for the day. He saw Mrs Haverstine in the crowd of looky-loos crowing to other elderly observers, pointing to this station camera and that one. The seniors here worked faster than the reporters; he knew news of the General murders had already worked their way along the streets like worn tires before Cole Moore even put pen to paper and the printing press was powered up for the morning Post.

            Andy put his coffee in the cup holder and grabbed the folder sitting next to him on the passenger seat. He stood up out of his cruiser and stretched his back. Enjoying the late morning coolness, the stiff wind that would start to take the remaining leaves and turn the place into a skeleton of itself. Fall was symbolic in that regard, he figured; it exposed nature’s nakedness, what it would look like in death once the overconsumption of the world’s bounty left it with nothing to do but slowly decay.

            “Henry.”

            Andy patted the folder against his hand and saw the guy turn in his direction. Henry was carrying a VHS tape in his hand, wearing a ripped denim jacket with a hood sagging down his back. His hair was greased in curlicues over his scar. Andy was thankful for that. He didn’t want his stomach turning this morning so soon after eating a plate of eggs and bacon at the Diner, the waitress bringing him a bill with a big fat Zero under total owed, because like it or not, the badge carried with it a certain luxury. Like a tenured professor in the student union. He knew attention would be on the growing cacophony of journos and cameras, on the mayor standing at the pulpit getting ready to lie through his coke numbed teeth, so he could stand talking to the town pusher without the rumors turning the meeting into something only the imagination could make sense of. Like the cops are running the drug game here. Like that one?

            “Sheriff.”

            “You see all this? The circus?”

            “I ain’t blind.”

            “No, you aren’t, but you’re a shit stirrer, Henry.”

            “I don’t have time for this, chief.”

            Andy grabbed his arm. He hated this punk. Hated him. But understood that in his line of work, and as part of this ongoing experiment, that a certain level of trust among thieves was warranted. So a guy like Henry was suddenly important in the grand scheme of things, instead of rotting inside a prison cell. Where he belonged.

            “Take your fuckin’ paw off me.”

            Andy pushed him into the rear lane by the payphone, leading him by the arm he’d twisted behind his back. Wanting to feel him squirm. “Your little game’s gotta stop.”

            “What game?”

            “City networks are here. Reporters with big digs in Cleveland, the Lois Lane and Clark Kent types who walk the beat and record every fucking thing they see because topical history is only relevant if their names are on the bylines. All because you get a stiffy with this serial killer shit.”

            Henry didn’t say anything. He only stared at Andy with his empty eyes. Something about them was unsettling. He couldn’t really pinpoint it but he would later decide it was like looking at a taxidermied animal, its glare persistent and unblinking, but lifeless.

            “This presser is about the manhunt for Stevenson. I’m not sure where you’ve got him holed up, or what you’ve done to him. I won’t ask. The sick shit you’re apt to do pulling open the curtains of people’s perversities is enough to prove you’re playing a game of poking the bear in the eye. Remember, you work for me.”

            “I don’t work for you.”

            “What’s that?”

            “I don’t work for you. And I never have.”

            “Is that right, Henry? Immunity deal I’ve got proves you’re my bitch. And if I want your little game tagging these people to stop, then you damn well better listen. I could just as well haul your ass to holding and when I line up your criminal acts for a state prosecutor, you’d get the chair.” He patted his palm with the folder he’d brought from the car. “But I won’t do that. Because I give second chances.” He showed Henry the file and opened it. There was a photo of a woman wearing a business suit, blazer and shoulder pads, the masculinized axis around which the lib movement was revolving; in their effort to smash the patriarchy, feminists just re-appropriated its wardrobe. He didn’t think Mary would find that joke funny.

            “Her name is Wendy.”

            “I don’t care what her name is.”

            “That’s why you’re culpable for what’s coming to you.”

            “Culpable. That’s a big word.” Andy smiled. He didn’t quite like Henry’s tone. Didn’t like how he put a name to the subject. The Addict. “You thinking pre-law after you get your GED in prison? Assuming there’s time before they burn you.”

            “She got hooked on meth in University because of her course load.” Henry tapped the photo with his forefinger. “She has two kids. And her husband is a piece of shit. He doesn’t do anything. He loafs and she works as an exec at the plant, and she housekeeps while he drinks; she moved here for a quieter life and she found me because she missed the rush. She’s not an addict. She’s a survivor. You should have a picture of him instead. The world wouldn’t miss a drunk.” He took the file from Andy and ripped it in half before handing it back.

            “You’re signing your warrant here.”

            “I ain’t signing shit. I don’t work for you.”

            Andy went to touch his gun but stopped himself; his cuffs were dangling, and a part of him wanted to arrest the bastard, but he was far too busy today to worry about carting him away and booking him. And nobody would have had the time to do the paperwork. He looked down at the torn file. The photo of Wendy the Addict was cleanly ripped into two pieces, her face split down the bridge of her nose.

            “I never worked for you. I ain’t your serial killer. Never laid a hand on the pharmacist or the dude you found in the woods, and I don’t have your cop. This circus isn’t on me. You need to take a closer look at your own friends, Sheriff.” Henry smiled. “You hold dangerous company.”

2

Mayor Harold Jenkins stood at the podium they’d set up at the top of the concrete stairs, with the drab city hall looming above him. Bob Arnold stood behind him, and Paul Holdren, just off stage and off camera, wearing a nicely pressed suit and a black tie to mesh nicely with the politician and businessman wearing the same. The cameras were clustered together at the foot, and a smatter of people stood watching, with deputies lining the street to play foot patrol.

            Trevor watched this from his own perch to the side with Mary and Hector, who were playing hooky this morning from school to visit the proceedings, with Mary even sitting near the back at Lew’s service and remaining non-descript, sneaking out the front when people started getting up to check out the snacks in the kitchen. She didn’t want Adam and his friends to notice her. She’d said at times like this, when you’re remembering a loved one, you didn’t want to be supervised by those authority figures who carried some power in your life. Like a teacher. Your behavior changed as a result: a product of social conditioning, she stated.

            Adam had spoken his mind. He’d used the service as a confessional. And his brutal honesty proved his anger. You are not a good father. He never professed to be. But Adam had turned Lew into what Trevor never was: a friend, a dad. It hurt to hear. Not just the embarrassment that came with unveiling a truth, but the shame that came with understanding everybody in the room was thinking the same thing: that life was far too damn short to overlook your duty as a father in your quest to become an idealist. Lew never understood why your dreams and beliefs were ever bigger, more important, than what you and Barb made, right there in your home. That’s what you should have worked on. Then maybe things would have been different. That’s your penance right there. That’s what you owe.

            “Reedy Creek police are currently undergoing a massive manhunt for deputy Ned Stevenson. He is our suspect in what we are calling a string of passion murders. Based on the evidence on the scenes, and what our Sheriff has collected in partnership with State Troopers, officer Stevenson has a known history with the victims, otherwise his modus operandi would not involve the smearing of their reputations by imbuing his acts with a sense of moral duty. In recent interviews with Creek deputies, not a one has shared any suspicions of Ned prior to these events—”

            Trevor listened to Harold. He listened to this man who likely wiped white powder from the rims of his nostrils before he went on air. This whole thing was a farce. A fucking travesty.

            “Reedy Creek city officials, in conjunction with Mr Bob Arnold and the Pure Ethanol federal operation here, have formed a coalition in creating a safer town, and would warn residents not to overestimate this cause for concern, but not to underestimate it either. I am suggesting a curfew of 9:00 pm. 7:00 if you are in grade school. And should you not be able to abide by this imposed limit, I would ask that you never travel alone. Strength is always determined by numbers, and Reedy Creek has always been a very strong community. We will not let a madman deter us, nor will we forsake our friendly intentions to one another because a neighbor has spoiled like old fruit. Reedy Creek has always been about strong bonds. A growing community. We have opened our doors to opportunity, and our suspect has proven his distaste for what we’ve built. Let’s not give him the power to discourage our initiative. Because, Ned Stevenson, you will be caught, and you will be brought to justice.”

            There were questions from the press as Harold stood at his pulpit, staring down at the individual cameras. Trevor saw the local journo, Cole Moore, with his Nikon, staring curiously up as well, snapping a few photos. He thought a few of them were targeted past the mayor and focused on Paul Holdren. He knew if Andy had the immoral compunction, the sheriff would have already put Moore in cuffs and beat him to within an inch of his life.

            Tied to a chair.

            Trevor shuddered. Thinking about what Adam said. My dad got tangled up with some bad men. Paul whispered something to Bob behind the mayor as Harold answered a question from a young female reporter from Davenport. Somebody Harold would have likely paid to use the back entrance of his private estate so he could snort rails off her naked belly.

            Your penance is at home. It was always at home. Always. If you’d never looked at your life as a condition of contradictions, you would have never tried to reconcile your parts, to make your hypocrisies appear decent to those people you so wanted to impress. You would have thanked Scott Woods for pointing out the obvious truth during that debate. That debate you’ve given so much power to. You would have let Barb be the mother she wanted to be, not the woman you tried to turn her into. And you would have saved Adam from so many burdens. From his dreams. His nightmares.

            The Low Breed.

3

“Roger put a gun in his mouth. And he pulled the trigger. His assistant found him in his office.”

            “Jesus,” Barb says. They are sitting in their old kitchen. In the nice house in suburban Massachusetts with the Martha’s Vineyard elevation, dark navy clapboard and white trim, the fully wrapped stoop and flared columns, the dry stacked limestone columns. “Jesus…Christ.”

            “I invested in him. On his word, Barb. On his word. His bank was insolvent. He…he was selling fake shares in his S & L based on some investments in home computers, but he was trying to prop up his own savings based on shitty assets in oil. He swindled us. He went bankrupt and his investors came calling.”

            Barb is touching her stomach. She is pregnant. The only sound in the house is the clock ticking. Adam is asleep upstairs, under his ceiling of glow-in-the-dark stars. “We’ll be okay, Trev. We always are. We can live on your residuals.” She sees the hurt in Trevor’s eyes and stops talking.

            “Baby, we’re in trouble.” He looks around the kitchen, at the stainless steel built-in fridge, at the dishwasher and galley wall of white cabinets, at the expensive dangling chandelier in the nook by the bay windows where the backyard, with looming white ash trees and sumac where the creek wound its way near the back of the yard, stretches toward the darkness where deer sometimes come prancing to dip their heads in the water; this life is built on a lie. He understands that.

            “Trevor. You’re scaring me.”

            “He convinced me it was sure fire, Barb. Roger looked me in the eyes. He was a friend. I met with him after the debate at Harvard. I was…I was let go from the university.”

            “What?”

            “Baby, I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t know what I was thinking. Roger…Roger said I’d make back the loan in factors within the first year. That the, that the interest alone would take care of Adam’s school.”

            “You were let go? You had tenure.”

            Trevor is silent.

            “Where the fuck have you been going? What have you been doing?”

            “Making amends, Barb. Fixing myself.” He knows how it sounds after he opens his mouth to the words.

            “I don’t even know what that means. We’re having another kid, Trevor. How can we afford all of this? How much did you invest? What have we lost?”

            Trevor buries his face in his hands. He thinks of the donations made. The residuals deferred to Gaia, Greenpeace, Sierra. He thinks about how unclean Scott Woods made him feel as he stood inside Memorial Hall, a vacuous silence around him as he stood behind his lectern, his notes invisible to him, the moment ever fleeting; he saw his star fade like a supernova from a reversed telescope, what he was, what he’d become now as small as an atom.

            “What have you done? What have you done?”

            He feels her pull his hands away from his face. He isn’t crying. No, the crying would start soon. But there is a fear in his eyes. It is a fear that is suffocating.

            “We need to leave. We need to get Adam, and we need to leave,” he says, understanding how weak his tone is. How implicitly afraid he sounds. “They’ve been leaving messages. I’ve spoken to Carl and Muhammad on campus about the men showing up. I’ve seen town cars. Following me. And I know I’m not paranoid. I know it. I’ve missed my loan payment, Barb. And Roger’s teeth are in his fucking office wall now. It’s real.”

            “They? Who? Goddamnit, Trevor. Goddamnit.” Her voice is shrill, but she is still composed. She leans back in her chair, her belly, the future, so pronounced. 

            Trevor stands and goes to the kitchen counter; he thinks of the men as they patted him down when they first met. Looking for wires. “He’s on the up and up,” one of them said. And he spotted that same guy yesterday in a black Lincoln. Parked down the street, the reflection of the elm off his windshield. He was just watching, wearing shades, smoking a Pall Mall. He looks out the window. There are very few lampposts here. The properties are spaced with the privilege of money. He sees a black Lincoln, parked close enough to the hedges he can see the outline of the plush seats. The empty seats.

            “Get Adam.”

            “Trevor, answer me.”

            He turns to look at her and she sees something in his eyes she does not question. Something like acceptance, and she will remember the look in her mother’s eyes near the end. When she lay in that hospital bed, so frail, so powerless.

            “Get Adam. Now.” He blindly grabs for a butcher knife and clutches to its handle with a fierce resolve. He moves toward the front of the house by the winding staircase, beneath the even larger crystal light Barb had delighted in touching as it sat propped in the gallery, and when he surprised her with the purchase, when he saw her eyes, he found enough strength there to ignore his hypocrisy, to ignore the way they lived. It was something Scott Woods would not ignore.

            There are windows in the foyer, decorated with drapes that hang in folded pleats against the cold tile floor; he stands there a moment, and pulls aside one droop of thick fabric, holding the knife against his thigh, and he sees the empty Lincoln. He sees another parked behind.

            And there is a knock on the door. It startles him. Barb is standing behind him, breathing heavily. 

            “Who is it? Who’s here?” she whispers. She stands with her hand on the railing. Backing up. Her nerves showing now as if they were drawn on her face.

            Another knock. This time harder.

            “Mr New York Times Bestseller. You home?”

            He hears this voice through the door. Hears it and shivers because he understands what lies beneath the sarcasm. What sort of intention resides in that place where criminality and humor converge.

            “Get Adam,” Trevor whispers. “And hide.”

            He brings the knife up and opens the door. There are five men standing on his front stoop. Four of them wear ski masks and dark suits. The sort of suits you’d see on Wall Street. Their eyes are dark through the slit in each mask, and calculating. The man in front is not wearing a mask. Trevor recognizes him. He was there the first time Trevor met the Outfit. He cut the check for $40 grand, though the proceedings were not so formal; what he did was push toward him a satchel of stacked bills and asked him to count it. When Trevor did, the man smiled and told him his terms. “We ain’t a bank, motherfucker. Your collateral is blood. You hear me?”

            “Big time writer. There he is. There he is.” The man smiles as he steps into the house. He sees the butcher knife but does not bat an eye. Trevor knows he is not threatening; he sees that evidence every time he looks into the mirror. “We barge in while you were carving duck? Can you afford duck? That whatchyer spendin’ my money on, Ludlum?”

            Trevor drops the knife. Just as Barb rushes up the stairs behind him. He listens to it clatter on the tile floor, like tempered glass. “Please…I’ll get your money.”

            “You don’t get anything, motherfucker,” the man says. His breath is like peppermint; it smells like he spent some time with a candy cane while driving up. “You should already have. You’re past due and you’re ducking us. Ha. See what I did there? Duck. I can play word games too. That’s no way for a big-time writer to do business.”

            The men with the ski masks come into the house as well and close the door behind them. Trevor wonders if anybody has seen them come in; he wonders if his neighbors are calling the cops, checking the license plates on those cars, assuming these guys didn’t remove them already. He wonders if Arlington, that fat fucking security guard hired by the HOA here will drive by, or if these guys already slit his throat and left him to die somewhere out by the trees and river.

            Peppermint turns and a man in a mask, a man standing at least 6’4 and with hulking shoulders in his blazer, hands him a book. Trevor knows the book the moment he sees it. It is the copy of Population Problem he used as a reference when he first met this outfit, upon Roger’s endorsement. Hard copy. The latest printing with the New York Times Bestseller badge on its cover. He was always proud to see his name in conjunction with that honor; it is a short-lived sort of hubris, but real for as long as it lasted. Peppermint passes the book from hand to hand. Trevor notices each man is wearing black leather gloves.

            “You write this shit but you don’ believe it. Do you?”

            “Please,” Trevor squirms.

            “Population Problem. Guess that makes me an accountant. Folks need accountability if they’re allowed to survive in the sort of world you’re advocating. If there’s a problem, Mr Writer, then why in the fuck don’t you lead by example? Maybe that’s why we’re here. You ever think of that? Maybe that’s why you’re ducking us. Cause you’re too proper to swallow a bullet, so you’d like to leave it to us to make the hard choice for you.”

            He strikes Trevor across the face with the hardcover. Trevor feels the pain instantly, feels the swelling in his jaw as he bites his tongue, his head whipping to the side; he wants to cry out in pain, wants to, but he doesn’t. He’s afraid he’s bitten his tongue clear off, that if he does open his mouth it will fall out and dangle for a moment before hitting the floor, enwrapped in strings of bloody tendon and frothy saliva. He wants to fall to his knees.

            “It’s been six months. You’re a writer, not a mathematician, but telling time is fucking elementary. Retards do it. I told them I’d give you half a year. I told them returns aren’t as easy to expect a monthly schedule. They don’t understand how investments work. Long-term, I tell them. And guess what, they said okay. I bought you six months. At fifty percent interest. You were pretty confident, writer. You and your banker friend. Pretty fucking confident. You took that money. It’s on you. You owe me twenty-six thousand dollars right now. I rounded up. Because you pissed me off. And your book pissed me off.”

            “I…I don’t have…well, not on me…I…” Trevor stammers and then shuts up. He sees Peppermint’s eyes. He sees the crazy in them. The book swings at his face again and he closes his eyes and waits for it. For a moment everything goes dark. When he opens his eyes again he realizes he’s fallen forward to his knees, and that two of the men wearing ski masks have grabbed him under the arms; they hoist him toward a chair where another man in a mask waits holding cords of rope. He tastes blood. Breathing through his nose is difficult. He thinks it might be broken. He does not want to see a mirror. Does not want to see what his face looks like. You should have written a smaller book. He wants to smile, but understands it would not be wise. He will likely die here tonight.

            “There ya are. You back with us?” Peppermint snaps and watches Trevor’s eyes dance, flitting from side to side, his pupils contracting and dilating, trying to focus on something. He is sitting on the chair now and he feels ropes tighten around his wrists, chafing them, pulling them snug against the armrest.

            “I can get you the money.”

            “Can you now? Is it here?”

            Trevor only shakes his head.

            “Where does a big-time writer stash that kind of money? Huh? Because when a big-time writer comes to a guy like me for a loan, a big-time writer isn’t that big time anymore, is he?” Peppermint leans down so that he can look Trevor in the eyes. “You think you’re smarter than us. Don’t you?”

            Trevor shakes his head.

            Peppermint sets his copy of Population Problem on Trevor’s lap; he feels the weight of the book, feels the weight of his words and understands the consequences of his hypocrisy. Understands the chickens always come home to roost. He feels one gloved hand dancing lightly over his knuckles, the man’s fingers gently touching him. And then he feels Peppermint take his forefinger and lift it precisely from the armrest so that it rests in his palm; he holds it like a bike handle. For a second he understands what will happen. He tries to prepare himself. To comport himself accordingly. But when Peppermint pulls his finger backwards. When he hears the cartilage snap, he feels the nerves explode behind his eyes and he can only scream. He sees a white flash, and when everything in the room returns, when the men return, it is only the pain, those thick fingerlings of pain burrowing into the back of his skull.

            “That’s for lying, motherfucker. I read your book. Anybody who writes a book like this, who writes with such large words, looks down on the commoners, and suggests by its very content that if anybody should solve overpopulation, it’s the little people who don’t matter a fucking thing to smart guys like you.” Peppermint smiles. Trevor sees this gloating through a bleared smear of pain. “I hope this isn’t your typing hand.” The man takes a gun out of a docker’s clutch inside his jacket and looks at it for a moment, before pressing the barrel to the underside of Trevor’s chin. “Your friend. Your referral. Did you see what he did to himself? Did you see the mess?”

            Trevor only looks down at his forefinger; his knuckle is already swelling, and the finger itself just dangles over the side of the armrest.

            “He was brave. You’re making me do your hard work, writer. First you take my money, and then you insist I pull the trigger.”

            Before Trevor can even protest or react, Peppermint takes the middle finger of his swelling hand and snaps it back against his knuckle. The crack of bone and tissue is lost to his scream.

            “You lack accountability. You can write this shit, but you haven’t earned it if you haven’t lived.”

            “Please. I will pay you. I weeeeeeell pay you…”

            “Then you would have already, wouldn’t you? You think you can talk your way out of this. For every word you utter, writer, I will break another bone. Let’s see,” the man says, looking up, counting in his head. “What do ya say, writer? What will it be? You have five choices.” Peppermint breaks Trevor’s index finger while he is talking. There is no warning. Just the sharp, intense pain coupled with the pop of his joint severing. His finger balloons around his wedding ring. “Four.” Peppermint strikes him in the face again with his fist. His nose is numb, almost floating away from him now, tethered only by the sensation of that coppery taste in the back of his throat. “Three. Maybe two. Looks like your orbital bone is busted. Damn well hurt my fuckin’ fist.” He laughs. It is a staccatoed sound. Peppermint is still holding the gun. Trevor just wants him to use it now. Get it over with.

            Your wife is upstairs. Your son. If they finish this tonight, if they do, your family won’t live. You understand that, don’t you?

            He knows they will pour gasoline around the main floor and set a match. They will watch as the fire explodes in tendrils from the windows and climbs in bursts up the exterior clapboard, flickering its celebratory jig into the night sky, fingering the moon above in a taunt.

            “I’m sowwy.” Talking hurt. He thought his jaw might have been broken. Maybe.

            Peppermint gets down on one knee and looks at Trevor square in the eye. “You aren’t a bad man, are you? Maybe you think some bad things. Like this shit you write. Do you really believe that?”

            Trevor is silent.

            “You do, don’t you? To each their own. That’s what my ma used to say. Bless her heart. But fuck, man, if she ever met you, ever read your tripe, she would have revised that little saying to keep her sanity. Hell, she wouldn’t like much what I’m doing either.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Would ya, ma? But she’d understand why I have to do it. Your wife, your son. Are they upstairs?”

            “Leab bem awone.” Leave them alone. His goddamn mouth. His nose. His body is on fire.

            “That’s always been up to you, writer. Hasn’t it?” The man puts his gun back into its catch. “Your boy is almost ten. Right? They’re good at that age. Smaller holes to dig.”

            “Fuck oooo.”

            Peppermint breaks Trevor’s pinkie finger. Trevor screams. He wants to pass out, but doesn’t allow himself to. He stays awake. Because he knows if he’s gone, if he relents and allows the pain to win, they will just go after his family next. They will.

            “Pwease…”

            “Pwease? Elmer Fudd? You had six months. I bet you wrote that heap of shit in less time. If I give you an extension, then what? You pack up and move away and then I have to find you? I need some collateral, and a little boy fits the bill just fine. Take him to Sox games with me, I will.” He smiles and licks his teeth.

            “Muh faver-in-waw.”

            “What?”

            Trevor rolls his eyes up at Peppermint, who is standing now, staring down. Getting bored.

            “Muh wife’s fuh…faver.”

            “Your father-in-law?”

            “He can howp. Caww…caww him. My wife…I…she…” He feels the world, reality itself, breaking in front of him. Soon he will slump forward and the pain won’t matter anymore.

            Peppermint gestures his head to his masked partners.

            “If he knuh—knows his baby in twouble…” Trevor bites his tongue. He can feel the blood trickling in ribbons down his cheek, over his chin. Can smell it. Can taste it. He motions his head toward the stairs. Are you really sending them to find your family? Are you? He knows the voice of cowardice. He loathes it. But it is him. It is what he’s become.

            “You don’t deserve them. You pitiful fuck.” Peppermint strikes him again, and this time Trevor lets it take him away. The darkness. The blame. He lets that last thought linger, long enough to incriminate him. To brand him. You could have solved the population problem with your life, but you gave them your wife’s, your son’s, your unborn child’s. Because you hoped old Lewis Forsmythe, the ornery old fuck who hates you for stealing his daughter, will fix the error of your ways.

            Trevor Kramer gulps in the guilt and absorbs the darkness as Peppermint goes up the stairs. To become a nightmare.

4

“I think that went genuinely well,” Bob Arnold said as he descended city hall’s steps with Paul and joined Trevor on the sidelines. “The idea for a curfew is a great one. Because it’s binding. It puts everybody together again in the same basket.”

            Harold was still talking to a few reporters. Bob apparently trusted the guy enough to loosen the leash. Trevor agreed his talking points were well put together. But the council had a lot to do with that. The curfew bit was a new addition, and came as a surprise, but the rest, the singling out of Ned contrasted against the cohesion of a town fighting against one discouraging the opportunity for growth, was from a briefer Trevor helped pen.

            “Now we find the sick fuck and hang him for the media. They need a bagging now. Every story needs a dead villain.”

            Bob shook hands with people around him, leaving Paul and Trevor alone to walk down Municipal Ave toward Main. Trevor saw Andy with his deputies conducting an exit strategy for the press, most of them already packing up. A few stragglers were questioning the residents who’d come by to gawk at the extravaganza; it wasn’t often some of the big city correspondents ambled to the boonies for a headline piece. These reporters would get their sound bites or quotations to pad their pieces, and they’d likely never think about Reedy Creek again.

            “Do you agree with him?” Paul asked. He looked at Trevor with inquisitive eyes. The man was such a mystery. He was. And so was his operation here.

            “About what?”

            “Reedy Creek needing a villain. This place requiring a scapegoat. I think every story finds some resolution on the simple binary of good versus evil. I’m not sure Reedy Creek is that simple, but you and I both know we control how this ends.”

            “And how does it end?”

            Paul smiled. He was sharp looking. Refined. In a bygone era Trevor thought the guy would have been called a gentleman. “You’re having your reservations. About this. All of this. Our project. You didn’t expect it would come to this.”

            “I didn’t expect it would come to…come to the antics of a serial killer.” Trevor exhaled. “I thought your first stage made perfect sense, Paul, I did. Planting Norris as the GP in a town to determine the healthy from unhealthy, it was something I might have prescribed as a federal mandate should overpopulation, should the depletion of our resources demand that sort of action. But what we’re doing now. The…the moral statutes, they—”

            “You think those who break the law deserve due process. That is their right.”

            “I think that is our duty.”

            “What if the world doesn’t see it that way, Trevor? What if the world—nature, Gaia—what if she feels the weight of their sins? What if every law broken, moral or manmade, is another axe in her roots?”

            “You’re anthropomorphising nature.”

            “I’m—we’re—eliminating waste. You remember why you’ve come here, don’t you? Trevor, you used to believe in this.”

            “I still do.”

            “Do you?” Paul reached into his blazer and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket. They were standing on Main. The traffic was light this early afternoon. Any pedestrians who had stopped around the intersection were pointing toward the hall at the vans packing up, at some of the talking heads they recognized from out of town feeds, those correspondents from Davenport or Cleveland or Omaha. Trevor didn’t quite like the look in Paul’s eyes. The questioning in them. The scorn.

            “What is that?”

            “When did you stop trusting us, Trevor? I’m asking as a friend. And we are friends, aren’t we?”

            Trevor was silent.

            “This project was our chance to make a difference. You jumped at the opportunity when I first called you, Trevor. And I took a gamble on you as well. I saw your debate with Scott Woods. I’d read your book, and the man I saw frozen on that stage was a man who required saving from himself. Your donations to Gaia, they weren’t about me, about what I was doing with the organization. I knew that. They were about you. A man trying to climb out of the hole he’d dug himself into. And those men you took money from, Trevor. Those awful, awful men. They are the very reason what we’re doing here should matter. I didn’t pay them thirty thousand dollars so you could question my intentions.”

            “I’m not questioning anything, Paul. I’ve always been grateful. You know that. I just think I’m owed the courtesy to understand why we need these killings to…why we need a serial killer to settle our scores. We’re inventing something, something the press is going to proliferate. We’re putting Reedy Creek on the map for the wrong reasons.”

            Paul handed Trevor the piece of paper. When Trevor unfolded it he looked down at Barb’s medical records. From Davenport. “Where did you get this?”

            “Do you not trust us, Trevor?”

            Trevor swallowed. The biopsy results; the initial diagnosis, that malevolent C word that had once taken Barb’s mom and was now threatening to take Barb too. All there.

            “What I see there is a man who never trusted the council that took him in or its intentions to fix this planet. Did you think we would kill your wife? That we would take a vote on her life in your absence?”

            Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what he thought.

            “You disappoint me, Trevor.”

            “I was afraid,” Trevor finally whispered.

            “That was the point,” Paul said. “That was always the point of this. We were supposed to be above fear. We were supposed to stifle her cries of agony by shedding the blood of her castaways, culling the weeds. This was never about us. It was always about her. About Gaia. We were her Plague. Her Famine. Her Defense.”

5

Trevor sits by the bay window in the nook. He is alone. The house is quiet. He watches the small creek babble in and out of the oaks’ roots, the sumac swaying with the light breeze as the world outside ignores him.

            His hand is in a cast. His nose is in a splint, and the bruising around his eyes and the swelling of his brow have turned his face into something of a Jack-o-lantern. His son will not look at him; he does not think it is because the boy understands what he’s done. Not like Barb. It is because of what he looks like. A monster. He avoids the mirror. A part of him, growing stronger every day, wishes the Outfit had just taken his life.

            He sees a deer come to the brook and dip its head into the water; it looks up at him, alert, aware he is sitting there watching. The two share a staring contest for a moment before a gale of wind stirs the branches and startles the deer. Off it gallops, toward the horizon. Away from him. He is grateful.

            The phone rings. He lets it ring.

            When the silence returns he just closes his eyes. There are pills in the cupboard. Ambien. And whiskey in the liquor cabinet. He thinks about palming what’s left of the pills, taking their dry, acrid bounty on his tongue and following them with a hot shot of bourbon. Feeling that warmth drown his throat. And he would wait here for peace.

            The phone rings again. He does not answer it this time either. When it rings next, right as that incessant bray had just ceased, Trevor thinks of pulling the phone right out of the wall. But another part insists he pick up the phone, that maybe those men, Peppermint and the Gang, have taken his wife and son, have taken them until the rest of their debt is paid; that he will hear the man’s voice on the other end calling him Mr Bestseller, and he would only look down at his hand, his immobile hand in the rigid cast and remember the sound of each of his fingers breaking before he finally did.

            “Mr Kramer? Trevor Kramer?”

            “Yuh—yes,” he stammers.

            “You are a hard man to get a hold of. Assuming you are the same Trevor Kramer who wrote this passage: ‘Will the world survive modernity? We have always abided by the dictum that our progress is the arbiter of our evolution, and that as a result we have reached, and continue to reach, a peak, an apex in terms of our technological and innovative intuitions. But what if this is backwards? What if we look at the statistics instead to see the consequences of all our seeming ingenuities: we would see the effects of the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, of vaccinations and sanitation, of our stifling proliferation as a species that has seen us grow exponentially, with a global population that reached one billion in 1804, two in 1927, three in 1960, and only twenty-seven years later nearly doubled to five billion. Is our progress determined by the machines we’ve wrought, or the earth we’ve ransacked and consumed? We are besotted with our determination to advance. But what if nature is not? What if nature demands of us our own sins to cull the weeds? What if famine, war, disease are just the world’s defense mechanism against man’s hubris?’”

            There is silence. Trevor thinks about his book. The same book a man used to shatter his nose and nearly break his jaw. “Yes. Yes, I wrote that.”

            “Good. It’s an honor, Mr Kramer. I’ve wanted to pay you back in kind for a long time. Since I was with the Gaia Project. Your incredible donations were sometimes the only proof I was making a difference. I am here to return the favor.”

            Trevor listens. Still silent. He thinks of the money he donated to the Project. All of the money. Money Barb never knew about. For reasons she didn’t quite understand.

            “My name is Paul Holdren. And I have an incredible opportunity for you, if you’ll join me.”

6

Randy was sitting on the couch when Henry showed up; the digs were small, but Henry said the runaway could stay in his apartment for as long as he needed. There was a television, a bedroom, a small kitchenette that didn’t look like it had ever been used, and a small closet where a few jackets hung in no particular order. Randy had the couch. He didn’t mind. It smelled like something pulled from the trash, but it was his now. Safe from judgment. The place could be noisy. Randy heard a couple fighting above him during the night. He could hear trampling footsteps, could hear the bedsprings of a couple fucking. He assumed it was a couple. The place was dicey, and he figured if there was a sex game in Reedy Creek, a few of the lower-class hookers would find their way here in the northeast of the town, as far away from the suburb developments of Deer Run.

            “They had a press conference. Live. From city hall. Shit, I didn’t even know this place had one of those,” Randy said. He was holding a joint. “Hope you don’t mind.” He gestured to the spliff before plucking it back in his mouth.

            “Mi casa es tu casa.”

            “Fuckers are talking about a curfew. Government is like a parent now.”

            “If they ain’t sending you to your room, they’re sending you to war.” Henry dropped the VHS cassette on the couch next to Randy. “Gotcha something I thought you might like to see.”

            “What is it? Porn?” Randy chuckled. He felt good here. He did. Living at home, living under the same roof as his mom was just another reminder of what had happened. And this place wasn’t changing things at all. She was trying to replace his dad, and she didn’t understand that the very act of substitution was almost as bad. He didn’t need a dad. He knew what dads could do. He knew how they could break your heart.

            Henry didn’t smile. He didn’t take the joint when it was offered to him, and he never once took a slice of the cold pizza sitting on the low table in front of the TV. The pizza Randy had specifically ordered from the Parlor in honor of his first date with the girl who left him this mess. He slowly chewed a new piece of pepperoni, something he had delivered last night after hoofing it to meet Henry to confess the sad state of his life. Henry understood. Randy needed that. He wasn’t in the mood for school today. Not in the mood to see Brad and his lemmings. To see Ange or his brother, to have Cory plead for him to come home, because he knew his mom would use the little shit as her messenger. Maybe he doesn’t eat. Or eats out. His fridge was empty. Randy had the Pizza Parlor bring by a bottle of Coke and some of those tasty breadsticks they drizzled in butter and parmesan, and he left them both inside the humming appliance just to ingratiate it with a purpose.

            On the table next to the pizza box was a stack of Polaroids. Old ones. Henry kept them pinned to a corkboard mounted by the fridge. They were like the one he kept in his wallet. Of the gorgeous girl sitting on his lap, showing just the slightest hint of upper thigh. These were of her as well. They all were. Henry noticed they were sitting there, shuffled like playing cards, and sat down next to Randy on the couch, its ratty upholstery splitting at the seams to show some of the stuffing. “You jerk off to those?”

            Randy smiled, but saw the seriousness in Henry’s eyes. Saw the tuft of knotted flesh by his lip, hidden mostly by subfusc wisps of hair. “You haven’t fucking aged, man. It’s insane. Those pics say ‘68 on the date stamp. Twenty years and you don’t look a day older than you do here.” He picked up the photo on the top of the pile; Henry was leaning forward to kiss the pretty lady in this one, her lips already pooched and red, her back arched as she kneeled on a chair in what looked like a grove of some sort. Randy could see apple trees, could see flowers and birds, could see this magnificent solemnity that meant everything was and would be okay. Something about the image was a lie. Something he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but now, now with Henry sitting here with him he could nearly taste the bitterness under that first coat, like a cocoa covered coffee bean. “I know I’m not that high to make this shit up.”

            “Why’d you come to Reedy Creek?”

            “Ask my mom that bullshit.”

            “Was it her job?”

            Randy nodded for a moment then closed his eyes. “She says that’s why. But I think this whole thing was so she wouldn’t have to live in the memory of my father. Because he was always around. Like a ghost. Even though he fucked right off and left us alone. She’s just a piece of tail here. That’s what she’s become because she couldn’t just…”

            “Let bygones be bygones,” Henry finished.

            “Yeah. I think that’s it. She could have worked anywhere. She says it was a transfer, but that’s bullshit.”

            “Maybe it was a good thing.”
            “Ya think?”

            “Not knowing why you’re in a place allows you to make a purpose for yourself. I’m not sure if you believe in fate. Years ago I would have laughed in your face if you suggested the same, but shit, Randy, this place is teetering on the precipice of a thousand-foot cliff. All it would take is one little push.” Henry nudged Randy’s shoulder with his finger. “You ever think you had that kind of power?”

            “What power?”

            “The ability to set an entire town off course.”

            “Shit, I must be high, because I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Randy chuckled again. Henry took the joint from him and extinguished it in the pizza box, crushing it with his thumb.

            “I’m here because it was the next place he sent me to.”

            “Who?”

            “Boss man, Randy.” Henry grabbed the tape and tapped his hand with it. “You may not think much of your life right now because of a prissy little bitch and some bullies at school. Because of an absentee father and a mom stuck in his shadow. I get that. I get being lost. I was lost for a long time. But then I was found.” He touched his face, his scars, then looked down at the photo Randy had picked up of the apple grove, of the innocent kiss, of 1968. “People always wonder about my face. Always wonder about how it happened. I know you did. Everybody does. Fuck, man, I’d be upset if you didn’t. People around here call me Lazarus. The Bible thumpers, at least. In D.C. some of the uppity cunts called me Gorgon. Not to my face. And most of them didn’t even know I saved their lives. I stopped them from drinking champagne laced with arsenic. Some asshole wanted to poison them all, but they’re gawking at me. Because you’re a sideshow if you’re a blemish. Truth is, Randy, I got shipped to ‘Nam the year this photo was taken. Had to say goodbye to her. To Molly. I wasn’t part of the anti-war hoo-ha of those fucking hippies protesting just to get high and skip classes, to be a part of some organic revolution. Shit, the real protestors were the Buddhists on the front lines, burning their shit up like gas lanterns. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. A part of me actually wanted to kill me some fucking Viet Cong. Probably couldn’t tell looking at the picture, right? Long hair. Shit, me and a few of my buddies wanted to put a bullet in the French pastry chef to end this whole debacle and stick a mighty big middle finger at Johnson for deploying so many of us, just so he’d lose the election.

             “I hit up Saigon after the Tet Offensive. For some time the Viet Cong played dress up to ambush our troops. Maybe even replace, in costume, the fuckers they killed wholesale who represented any sort of threat in the idea game: the teachers, government officials. Shit, the bodies we found. The graves, Randy. All because of the idea game.”

             “I don’t understand,” Randy said.

             “We kill them because of their ideas, and they kill us because of ours. It’s always been that simple. These guerrilla fuckers were civilians, and one day my CO had me approach a woman in the street; he said his witness intel had her smuggling munitions. She had a belly. Like, playing pregnant. So I approached her. She was wearing a big dress. She was a pretty slight woman, ya know. She was. And her dress. So exotic. Like what you’d expect to see there. In the Orient. Rich and vibrant. And she turned on me. She turned right around. Maybe she heard me. And I reacted because I thought she was engaging. I did. That was my instinct. I thought it was combat. I pulled the trigger a couple times and I watched her eyes. That’s what I remember. Her eyes. Because they were so confused. When I shouldered my rifle, when I went to her, I saw the blood, I saw the blood all over the pavement, in the dirt, in the rocks, like…like coils of rope, or syrup, so thick. And she was on her side, she was. Jerking. And she rolled on her back as I came to her. She wasn’t carrying any fucking weapons, Randy. She wasn’t smuggling anything. She was preggo. And I shot that baby. I shot that baby and its mother, and she looked up at me. With hatred. She’d turned her confusion to fucking loathing. I’d taken everything from her. Everything. Whenever I close my eyes I still see her, writhing in the dirt, bleeding, until she looks at me. Until she looks at me and the fear and confusion is gone. And it is only hate. She calls me something. In English.” He touched his face and Randy noticed there were tears in his eyes. “Her curse followed me here.”

            “What did she say?” Randy whispered.

            “Monster. She called me Monster.”

            “Jesus.”

             “The world had moved on when I came home. Or maybe I let it. Because I didn’t deserve that life. I didn’t deserve her.”

              Randy looked at the photo of Molly. The next on the stack was only of her, posing demurely for the shot, propping her chin on the backs of her fingers with a very Hepburn-like pose. There was something alluring about her eyes. Something seductive.

              “I stopped writing her after that. After what I’d done. Because you always seek punishment for the shit you’ve done. Guilt is like swallowing molten lead and letting it settle in your gut. I’d taken two lives, Randy. And they weighed so heavily on my soul. It was like drowning. I’d gone mad. I didn’t want Molly to know this version of me. Of what I’d become. But that was always temporary. It hurts too much to be alone. When I did come home I needed her, I needed Molly, even though I pushed her away. I needed her. To be consoled. Not to make things right, but to let me believe I could move on.”

              “But she already had,” Randy said, seeing the answer before Henry could even speak. He felt bad for him, he did, because he’d had his own assumptions about the scars. Everybody did. He would never tell him with any candor what he’d actually thought when he first saw the guy named Lazarus: he who rose from the dead. Because the truth was, he thought Henry might have done it to himself by accident when he was high. You never look past the drugs. Past the purpose.

              “Engaged. To somebody who protested day and night why I even went over there. And maybe he was right. Shit, he was right. That poor girl came to me in my dreams every night. Every night. She and her unborn baby. They haunted me. Her eyes. Staring down at me as I slept. I could feel her standing over me, dripping her insides from the bullet holes, and I’d expect to wake up, to find my sheets bloodied. I didn’t believe in fate, Randy, until I put my gun in my mouth. I’d driven out to the woods and sat against a tree. So my parents wouldn’t find me. So nobody could stop me. So I could rot alone forever and ever. Forgotten. I knew I would do it. I’d decided I would have to. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t hear the gunshot. What I did hear was the man’s voice, waking me up. Asking me if I was okay.”

             Randy leaned forward.

            “He wore a surgical mask and I was in a bed. There wasn’t much pain. Just,” he touched his face, “a warmth here.”

             “Who was it?”

              “Boss man, Randy. Fate. He had an answer for me so I could move past what I’d done. What I was. People look at me, they look at my face and they’ve already decided what I am. They see in me what that poor woman did as I stood over her dying body. That is my punishment. But I give back lives now. I don’t take them. You wanna know why I think you’re in Reedy Creek? Because Boss man is interested in you, too.”

             “In me?”

             “Oh yes, Randy. Or else he wouldn’t have given me this to show you.”

              Randy took the tape and looked at the television; he’d turned it off after the press conference, but it was on again. A woman was on the screen, her black hair flowing behind her in tar ribbons as she galloped along the beach in a vibrant dress. Randy thought she might have looked like the woman Henry had killed. Was it murder in war, even if it was an accident? He wasn’t sure, but he figured the mind didn’t care. The conscience would eat you up. He stuck the tape in the VCR and pressed play, sitting back down to watch.

              There was a man on the screen now, sitting, watching television just as Randy was, his arms crossed, the furnishing around him suggesting he was upper class; the lamps on the table had an opulent look to them, like something a yuppy would scavenge antique shows to buy, and the bookshelf in the back corner was filled with bindings that hearkened old world libraries, the sort of dusty old places you’d find first editions of just about every piece of literature ever written. A young boy ran into the picture and jumped up into the man’s arms; he caught the little boy and gave him a hug, just as a woman walked into frame and sat next to them, setting her hand on the man’s lap just as the little boy bounded off to run out of the room. The little boy who looked like Cory. Who even ran like him but wasn’t him. Randy’s pulse raced. The man put his arm around the woman, her head resting nicely on the crook of his shoulder, and he looked up toward the camera. At you? Is he looking at you? The man stroked the woman’s hair and he smiled as he stared at the camera; his smile was so goddamn familiar, so blatant and teasing, so cruel and…absent.

              “Dad?”

              “The world moves on because it can.”

                Randy was crying. He quickly wiped his tears as he looked at the shameless asshole on the screen. The man who stared up at him from his perch in a home that was not Randy’s with a family that wasn’t his either. “Is this…is this real?”

                “We punish ourselves for something that is out of our control,” Henry whispered. “We’re both haunted, Randy. So we move on.”

                 "How?”

                  Henry picked up a photo of Molly and looked at the time stamp. 1968. “We make them notice us.”