Chapter 39

1

Ange decided to walk to school alone. Wendy had gotten it in her head that appealing to the wants of the popular boys would reveal to her some form of magic. As if popularity had that power.

            You used to think so.

            That didn’t matter so much anymore. Talking to the Minitrue under the bleachers, even if they disappointed in their intent and cowardice, opened her eyes to far more than she’d ever truly seen in this town. The cameras. The imposition of an unknown power. Maybe you’re meant to be a lawyer. To fight the system. To fight for privacy rights. Think about it. The People v. Reedy Creek. The honorable Judge Angela Nelson prevails!

            This thought carried her when the grey Honda Odyssey pulled up next to her. She vaguely heard it slow down next to the curb. Dave was sitting in the driver seat. Oliver in shotgun. The backdoor opened and Brad peered out. She felt her body flush and she clutched her backpack. Wishing she’d brought something hard. Something she could swing at the boys if the going got tough.

            “Ange. Come on. Hop in.”

            It was Wendy’s voice. She was sitting next to Brad.

            “We won’t bite,” Brad said. The other boys laughed.

            She looked forward. Down the street. The horizon was blurry. Faded. She let her bag dangle from her fingers and she made the choice that would keep her from school today. Her and Wendy.

            It would be a good day to miss.

2

Andy downed a shot of whiskey and felt his throat burn. He was sitting in his cruiser, an opened bottle of Jack sitting on the passenger side seat next to the manuscript he’d found stuffed in his mailbox. If Trevor was really going to the press, then he figured he had a couple choices to make: he could roll over and take it up the chute with the rest of the council when word of what they were doing in this town came to pass, or he could go down blazing and right some wrongs. It was all about accountability.

            There was a file in the cruiser as well: the next candidate. A picture of a fat man with a ponytail was clipped to the front. Had Henry done what he was told, maybe things would have gone differently with Trevor when he stopped by. Maybe he would have felt the principled compunction to stop his friend. And for a moment he did think about it. He’d pulled out his gun, and a very distant part of him thought about pressing its barrel against Trevor’s forehead with the threat that if he did go to Cole Moore, that little fucking pest, he’d have to pull the trigger. And likely turn the gun on Mary as well when she found out. Because Reedy Creek was too important to stop. But Henry didn’t kill the Addict. She was likely sitting next to her husband in the hospital, maybe holding his hand, watching him in that dreary between state while machines controlled his recovery. Henry went out of bounds with a couple messages. And Andy received them both. The shit didn’t follow orders, and he’s got your balls in a vice. A man’s reputation controls his legacy. Bethany Roberts knew what she was getting into when she gave you permission to use the poem, she did. So however Henry got his hands on the draft he shoved into your mailbox with the mighty P word that stripped you of your tenure, he’s set the precedent he’s no longer going to cooperate in this little experiment. So you’ve gotta do something about it.

            He’d parked down the street from Henry’s apartment. Andy had kept his tabs. If the council was going to commission an outsider to patrol the drug trade and present Reedy Creek with its very own serial killer, he had to retain some control in the relationship. A leash was only realistic if you knew where it was staked. The place was a rental put up by the Corners for re-locaters looking to rent before making any long-term investments. Once the migrants saw what Deermont and Deer Run and Deer Field offered, their eponymous commonality a play on their proximity to that greenbelt realtors emphasized in their listings (Wanna live IN nature?), they usually scrimped and saved and hit up the Reedy Creek Trust hoping to secure a mortgage and an opportunity to put down roots. This place was just temporary. A liminality between here and there. It was the sort of place he figured a guy like Lazarus would live. He wasn’t one to take his cut of the trade and put up his feet in suburban bliss, because a lot of what he was, who he was, had to be the result of how much he disliked himself. Because he disfigured himself. The rumors had it the guy put a gun in his mouth because of a girl; the context of what happened, what he couldn’t successfully finish, prompted him to work in the shadows. And what better place to remain hidden in sight than a complex built specifically to house transients before they found something a little more permanent.

            Andy poured himself another gulp of Jack and stared at it before tossing back the shot and feeling the burn. The cornfields were to the east, the stacks at the plant to the southwest; the isolation of this place meant it was right. It did. He watched a few people walk by, some nodding at him, likely ignoring the opened bottle sitting next to him. He enjoyed that level of immunity. A few cars rolled slowly by and only casually glanced at him, wondering if he’d come this way for business, if somebody had broken the law. If Ned had struck again.

            He killed the engine and picked up the manuscript, opening the door and standing in the morning sunshine. He wondered what Trevor was up to about now. If he extended the same invitation to Hector and his wife. He supposed it didn’t matter. He looked at the cameras on the light posts lining the sidewalk and remembered how important he thought all of this was when he’d first come. When Paul had taken him on the grand tour. “We’ll have access to everything. The security detail I’ve hired, they’ve given us eyes everywhere. I was told an old Cold War bunker is under this place. Town is already pre-wired for surveillance. Part of suspected KGB activity in sleeper cells or something. Likely bunk, but the feds throw money at the anti-Soviet efforts. McCarthyism never really died. Middle America buys that hokum more than anybody. You should know. Academics find Communism intellectually invigorating.”

            The control, Andy had said, and Paul smiled. Yes. It was the control. And here it was the same. Reedy Creek was all about control. And Andy felt like that was severely lacking in his life.

            He went into the apartment’s lobby, a drab and grim room with mailboxes, a few planters (the plants inside were mostly dead), and a payphone next to an up-to-date housing registry, if one wished to be buzzed access to the elevator or main floor hallway. Glassman, H. Andy looked at the name and pressed the button. He looked at the intercom and wondered if the prick would ever admit him.

            There was no conversation. No salutation. The door into the main hall just buzzed and clicked open. Andy entered and went to the elevator. Glassman was on the third floor. He could smell pot. He could smell cigarette smoke. He could smell the vagaries of tenancy. He wished he’d brought the whiskey with him.

            He stepped inside the elevator, pressed for floor three and waited during the rickety ascent inside the silent shaft; there were cigarette butts on the floor, and somebody had written on the side paneling: FUCK BUSH, VOTE 3RD PARTY OR BUST. The tragedy of the commons, he thought. The dispirited affectation of public property, and one of Andy’s many arguments against the Marxist mandate of his fellow profs in that world he used to belong to.

            The elevator doors opened and Andy exited into a dank hallway, its carpet red and stained, the liner already starting to pill and pull away from the vinyl baseboards laid along the wallpaper. Henry was in 306. The door was already open.

            It’s real now. What do you even plan to do here? He didn’t know. He knew what he wanted to do. Not the action he aspired to, but the reaction of his id to so mean a joke; Andy had once been against guns. He’d written a scathing indictment against the NRA and the Second Amendment, something he actually penned himself without the inspiration of a grad student hoping for academic favors. When he took the Sheriff role in this town, he did so with the intent of chastising his deputies for open carrying, and had even thought of performing a series of lectures to the bullpen in the fashion he was once used to in classrooms. Mary had warned him that it was his duty to blend in, and that their roles here as part of a council with legislative powers would cast a wavering shadow over the town’s loyalties. Especially when a few of those deputies, veterans of the police for decades, were passed over by Mayor Jenkins in the cooperative re-structuring of the town’s government with Pure Ethanol. Now he was ready to pull the trigger. He knew that.

            Henry Glassman’s apartment was small but tidy. There was a humming refrigerator next to the door in what could only be classified as a kitchenette; its faucet slowly dripped, plink after plink, in an empty sink, and pizza boxes from the Parlor on Main sat stacked by an old camp stove. There was a corkboard by the fridge with pictures tacked into it. Andy looked at the Polaroids, his hand on the butt of his pistol, still holstered but ready to draw. Wanting to draw. They were pictures of a beautiful woman. The date stamps had her pegged for some 60s flower child, maybe, the type of girl he would have once taken to ‘Nam protests hoping to fuck her in the backseat while they heard other students hollering about Johnson; there were some Polaroids of a boy too, one with long hair but a handsome face. Andy recognized the boy’s eyes, recognized them but didn’t, because these were innocent and alive. They were cogent and appealing, like something out of an ad in GQ or Esquire; and here this boy was with the pretty girl, her alluring eyes gazing at Andy, into him, from a photo taken twenty years ago. Andy wondered who she was. He wondered where she might be now. How she might look. Because he understood time was evil and indiscriminate.

            You know who the boy is. You know because you understand even a kid like Henry has a past he wants to hold onto. He understood that. He wondered if that was the precious angel that prompted Henry to pop the gun into his mouth. He thought it was likely. If a girl like that high-tailed it to greener pastures, the depression that followed could provoke any number of reactions. There was a couch ahead, and something of a coffee table acting the buffer between the seating and an old television. Andy realized there was something on TV. That it wasn’t just a reflection he’d seen when he walked in, the muted recall of the apartment echoed in a convex, or even the atonal hum of a dead channel; he was still clutching the manuscript under his arm and he absently dropped it on the table. The image on the screen was strange. It was shot from above, but crisp, showing a patch of earth and fallen leaves, the twisted bole of some tree spiralling up and out of frame, and the mossy growth of what Andy called underlings filling in the gaps where light streamed.

            It was a videotape. The VCR on top of the TV was rolling, and the tape had been playing for about five minutes. Did the fucker know you were coming? Did he leave this tape playing, leave the door open after buzzing you in only to jet down the stairwell because he saw you traipsing to the place from your cruiser after tossing back some Jack? He turned toward the main hallway. The door was still open but there was nobody out there. No noises. It was as if the entire complex was empty. That the place was just a shell, hollow, a gimmick meant to draw him in. It’s the booze. Hit ya harder than you thought. Andy sat on the couch, sinking into the cushion, remarking on how comfortable it was. He stared at the television, at that simple spot in some unknown forest, some secluded oasis where the world hadn’t yet reached. Except for the camera. The camera imposed on its isolation. Which means somebody had found the place, and it had interested him enough to provoke wiring it, watching it. It’s like what they had done to Reedy Creek. He thought about what Paul had told him when he’d first come. “A lot of the camera work was already done here. Already installed. In the local businesses. What Grimwood’s team is doing is wiring the expansion. And they are very good at it. He has two employees, guys named Steve and Bernard, who he pays to play roles, to invent roles to blend in. They might be electricians in the housing district one day mapping out Deermont for surveillance positions, or movers for the big wigs at the plant transporting furniture into private offices where vantage points would be rather difficult to secure. They are excellent at mining what was once isolated. At giving us eyes into the world’s soul.”

            “And this is legal?”

            “Not yet,” Paul had said. His confidence in the answer intrigued Andy. It still did, even as he sat in this decrepit apartment, another stack of Polaroids on the table by his knees, and the unwavering image of that tree on the television—

            And then somebody walked into the frame. Andy nearly let out an audible gasp. It was like seeing a ghost. The figure stood by that tree for a moment, and then he sat down in the leaves. Andy could imagine them crunching under the person’s weight. The person was a boy, despite the long hair. It would only take a second for Andy to realize he was looking at Henry. Is this now? Is he there now? Did he leave a trap in here? Is this the punchline to his joke? Is this why the place is so quiet, because he’s got it rigged to a fucking bomb? But then he looked at the VCR. It was a tape. Whatever this was, it had happened, hadn’t it? It was a recording.

            And the Henry on the television screen didn’t have a scar on his face. He looked like the boy in the photos. The image was so crisp on the TV; he didn’t understand how something most likely shot in 1968 could look this good. The definition of everything he was seeing, the resolution, bared even the vascularity of the fallen leaves, even the minute husks of bark on the trees peeling away like scabs. The Henry from then, from long ago, looked up at the camera. Not as if he had seen it, no, but as if he had seen Andy sitting here watching him. The boy pushed back his hair, as he was wont to do even now, pulling the longest strands behind his ears, still looking up at Andy, staring at him not just with recognition but almost as if the two shared an inside joke. And maybe they did. Because Henry had a gun just like Andy’s, brandishing it in both hands now, massaging it much like a blind man recognizing an object by touch.

            Andy leaned forward. “What is this?” he whispered. “Henry, you fucking prick, what is this?”

            The Henry on the screen did not answer. And couldn’t. Because this had happened; the chasm of time separated the two, but the connection between them was still palpable, real. Henry still looked at Andy the way he would in the future, in the now, because it was his MO to question authority. Henry slowly brought the pistol up to his temple, holding the barrel against the side of his head, unblinking in his glare at the camera perched above him. Just staring. Andy saw that the boy was crying. He couldn’t hear him, but he could see the tears, could see his shoulders heaving with each sob. He dropped his arm and the gun sat aslant on his lap, where the leaves blew to and fro between his splayed legs. He took the gun again and brought it to his mouth, pressing it against his closed lips.

            Andy realized he’d drawn his own pistol. That he’d been dangling it between his legs, squeezing the handle in pulses. He didn’t remember grabbing it. Something about the image on the television was coaxing him, was encouraging him like an old teacher he remembered from grade school. Mr Clay. “Do as you’re told, Mr Napolitano, or it’s the strap.” Henry opened his mouth to the barrel, and Andy could taste the cold metal on his tongue, could feel the scrape of it against his teeth. Because you are tasting it. You’ve put the barrel in your mouth. Are you hypnotized? Are you mesmerized? Spit it out or die. He stared down the charcoal pasture of his gun at the television just as Henry pulled the trigger; he watched the boy’s head buck back against the tree, and he saw the spatter of blood billow in black clotted streams against the scabrous bark, into the leaves, just as the white flash dissipated from the muzzle like Henry’s soul blinking off in the cavernous tomb of his mouth.

            Andy was crying. He could taste his tears as they traveled their course and fed into his throat along the ridge of his gun, its barrel still gritted between his teeth, his finger gently rested on the trigger, threatening him beyond his control to do anything. Henry’s body was still, open eyes staring up at the camera, at Andy, and for just one moment Andy saw something else, someone else, standing next to the body in the woods. It was a woman, black hair spilling down her shoulders, bare beyond the straps of an exotic, Oriental sundress, its patterns distorted some by the belly jutting below her breasts; and there were bloody gores in that stomach, dripping freshets of ink black viscous into the leaves as she turned toward the body and knelt down to close his eyes, to close those wide staring eyes.

            Andy closed his eyes. His heart hammered his rib cage with a marching beat.

            “You came here to kill me.”

            The voice came from behind him. When Andy opened his eyes his gun was back in its holster, and the television was turned off. As if it had never been on.

            “What have you done to me?”

            Henry Glassman of Now, the boy with the scars, walked around the couch and sat on the table across from Andy. “You came here to kill me, didn’t ya boss?”

            “Yuh—yes,” Andy stammered.

            “Shit, chief, I hate to see ya this way.” Henry patted Andy’s knee, and for a moment he saw the boy as he imagined he must have looked in the woods. The wound in his face was fresh and gleaming; his teeth were gone and his jaw hung ragged and exposed through bits of ligament and skin, gristle plastered to wet leaves on his chin, his cloudy eye nearly hanging from a torn socket. “Ya can’t kill me. I hope you know that. You can’t die twice.”

            Henry’s face was normal again. Andy thought he might have pissed himself. Or maybe that was just sweat, the heat of his blood rushing through his veins.

            “If I’m Alive.” Henry picked up the manuscript and dropped it on Andy’s lap. “Ironic, ain’t it? Shit, Boss man’s always been symbolic. He knows where to scratch before there’s an itch. Or he makes the itch. Fuck, I don’t even know. If anything, chief, I’m glad ya stopped by. I’m leaving town. Don’t have anything to pack. We from Death’s Locker don’t bring much when fools come knocking. We just take our place in the waiting room to be given our orders. It’s what we owe when we take from Death, don’t ya know. A fuckin’ duty for those with an early departure. You earn your judgment if you burn the temple. I’m just happy we got to say our proper goodbyes.”

            “Goodbyes? Whuh—why did you give me this poem? Why did ya cut Golding’s husband? You’re just goin’ to hang me and leave?” Andy whispered.

            “Shit, Sheriff, you’re fuckin’ dumb if you think I give a shit whether or not you popped some undergrad’s cherry and took off with her prized work. You uni profs were always on the edge, weren’t ya? Writing the rules for a bit of pussy. Breaking the rules.” Henry laughed. His knotted scars cinched around his mouth and eye. Almost the color of soap. “You really don’t know who your friends are. Jesus, chief, it’s no wonder you had to plagiarize.”

            “Fuh—fuck you.” It was weak, without conviction.

            “Ya know what I get for sticking a gun in my mouth and pulling the trigger? The duty to send out a bomb into the world. This morning I finally lit his wick. Wish I could stick around to watch.”

            “Whuh—what did you do?”

            Henry stood up. “I’d pick up that wife of yours, Sheriff. That school is ground zero. Leave town if ya know what’s good for you. But fuck what you’ll miss if you do.” He tapped his temple where he once held the barrel of a gun that was likely buried under mulch and moss now. “You never had any control here. Not over me. Not over Reedy Creek. Control is his illusion. When you’re satisfied with yourself, you won’t see him coming to pick you to scraps for the roaches. That’s why this is so surprising for you. Even now.” He picked up the stack of photos on the table and walked around the couch back to the door.

            Andy turned to watch him leave. He loathed him. But that urge, once so fresh, to draw his gun and pull the trigger never returned. Because a part of him believed what Henry had said. “Where are you going?”

            “The memories you keep with you, chief, are they good ones? Are they memories you cherish, or are you ashamed of the life you lived?” Henry plucked each photo off the bulletin board and added them to the shuffled pile.

            Andy slowly stood up. He did not answer.

            “That’s what follows you. Not any judgment but the memories. What you keep here and here,” he said, touching first his temple and then his chest, “is your eternity.”

            Henry opened the door with a nod and closed it behind him.

            Andy scurried over, suddenly finding the energy that had evaded him before. He swung open the door and bounded into the hallway. Henry was not there. He was nowhere. The hallway was quiet and gloomy, in spite of the sun streaming in from the far window. He stared at it, disbelieving. There were cameras lining the ceiling along the corridor, evenly spaced in intervals across from each doorway. They were damnation. The Eyes of God. Weren’t they?

            Andy turned around to close Henry’s apartment door. And he uttered a short gasp.

            The door was still open, the number 306 screwed to the front and slightly askew, with the peephole nearly centered in the zero, but there was nothing in the room. There was no television. No couch. No table. Andy suddenly felt like laughing. This is the edge of madness, he thought, and when he looked down at the manuscript clutched against his side, he noticed the name of the author on the title page. Dr Andrew Napolitano. Bethany Roberts had dissipated with the VCR and cassette of Henry Glassman blowing off half his face.

            As if just a memory.

3

Paul Holdren did not know he was being watched. He was aware of Cole Moore the way a man is aware of a fly in his general proximity. He went to the bungalow and a strong part of him believed it would be for the last time. That his experiment in Reedy Creek had come to a head and that he might likely even come face to face with the one he’d been seeking. What will you say if you do meet him? He did not know. Not exactly.

            Paul rang the doorbell and the big man, Salim, opened it to him with a silent nod, his black hair like silk and slicked back against his scalp showing tidy white rows where his thick hair clumped. The man wore a constant frown, his brow sculpted in furrows over his black eyes, the muscles in his arms gyrating in spasmodic twitches as he gestured his head toward the dining room. Paul knew his way. He did not smile at this man. This man was only an accessory. His contact had many over the years.

            He went toward the kitchen and could smell green tea. He could smell spices. The house was eerily silent, gloomy, its walls bare, its furnishings sparse beyond a couch and the table at which the man in the wheelchair was sitting, wearing headphones with a cord that dangled into his Walkman. There was a cup of tea sitting in front of him, steam still curling from its inside. Paul sat across from him. The man was older, and he wore a scraggly black beard, showing signs of white now, that traced like a chinstrap, a beard shorn of its mustache. His keffiyah, red and resplendent, was usually worn atop his head like a bandanna, something Paul imagined a pirate once wore, but now it sat dangled from his shoulders like a Mexican serape, his balding head tanned and wrinkled, the gleam of his headphones cuffed through graying strands matted to his pate and immersed in the tangles over his ears. He was nodding gently, his eyes closed, his fingers clasped to the table’s edge tapping. Ever so slightly.

            He opened his eyes.

            “Assalamu alaikum,” Paul said as the old man slowly removed the headphones and set them on the table.

            “Wa alaikum ussalam wa rahmatu Allah.” The old man cleared his throat. Paul could hear the music murmuring from the headphones, could hear something like a drum beat, percussion. “People often wonder what I am listening to, Mr Holdren. They think because of the religious dressing,” he tufted the keffiyah, “that we all abide by the boredom of your misperceptions of our pieties. That is a Shia falsehood, something the Ayatollah’s mustered to make his revolution stand out against the western influences of the shah before him. Purge the secular devil and resist his temptations and you will live a pious life. But that always bored me. The Persians might as well be godless, like their forbears, and insha’Allah this war will end with the Americans carving Iran into heathen duchies while the Baathists watch in horror their Marxist strongholds cave to Arab wealth and influence. But the desert bores me. The war bores me. It’s why I’ve come here. Because I can wear these and listen to music. And I don’t have to hear the adhan over loudspeakers every day. I can listen to Michael Jackson. Billie Jean, Mr Holdren. That beat, what Michael is able to convey with his body to rhyme that percussion, it is just as godly as the salah. Allah would not abandon us to live deaf to the talents He inspires of us.” The old man smiled. He clicked the stop button on his Walkman and set it on the table.

            “Your phone call, your excellency, made it seem like you had an urgent matter to discuss.”

            “Yes. Yes. Always to business. Never one for conversation. I like America, Mr Holdren. You know I do. I like the culture, because the expression of such freedom is to cherish the creative license for the unexpected. What is happening in Reedy Creek is very strange. Especially when I expected the transition here to be rather tame. We wrote you the checks you asked for, Mr Holdren, without question or strings attached because I trust in our alliance. I have since meeting you during your brief foray with Gaia. Your principles have aligned with Saudi interests, and we are not so daft to ignore pivotal alliances. It was requested I come to this place to monitor your progress. To say my contacts, the ambassador, are growing impatient would belabor the point. We have two exports, Mr Holdren. The first pays for the second. The Americans bow to Saudi royalty and walk away with black gold, and the money in exchange helps us export our ideas. Because as we both know, the world is truly only a scale upon which certain ideas can thrive while others die. And Islam must persist. Even as the Iranians seek to topple the Sunni kingdom. What we’re funding here promised us it would take care of the Americans’ little project with domestic energy production to keep their reliance elsewhere. And all we’ve witnessed is the sickness of a serial killer marking his way through town.”

            “Our experiment had to course correct, your excellency, but I promise this will by no means derail what we’ve already accomplished in our actions against Pure Ethanol.”

            “I don’t understand.” The old man cocked his brow.

            Paul cleared his throat. “We are the serial killer.”

            “Pardon?”

            “My council here in Reedy Creek. We’ve arranged the murders in order to shift focus on their implications versus the town’s sustainable ethanol production.”

            “To what end?”

            “The inherent distaste for big city rot by townies. I can already sense the tension, and I’m sure you would as well if you sat in public to soak it in. The malaise over this town isn’t just fear, it isn’t. Not just of Ned Stevenson, our mascot, our murderer. It’s hatred. It’s mistrust. Like standing over the pressurized sands of a live well. Soon that pressure needs an escape valve.”

            “I’m not sure my contacts have the patience to witness the psychology of a town on the brink, Mr Holdren. Not when they could just as easily send in a bomb to that grand plant and leave the horizon scarred. It was enough just to persuade them to finance the expansive surveillance infrastructure.”

            “If you wanted terrorism, your excellency, I don’t think you would have funded me,” Paul said. “We’ve had this conversation. If your intention is to breakdown an idea, it is far more difficult to close a door when you’ve invited in an enemy; that’s what Americans lose their minds over. A good old-fashioned war. And if her desert ally suddenly grew teeth and a taste for her domestic oil, I’m not sure your immunity in this country would save you from the gallows.”

            “Is that a threat, Mr Holdren?”

            “You know it’s not.” Paul looked up at the man, Salim, as he walked toward his Excellency and leaned over to whisper in his ear. The old man only nodded and stared at Paul with a sort of curiosity and bemusement. He’s just a means to an end. That’s all he ever was. That was true. Every experiment that brought him closer to testing the boundaries required funding, and every approach required a specific idea or movement to line up behind. Paul Holdren didn’t have any beliefs. Not in God. Not in Godlessness. He existed somewhere in the vacuum of space where ideas lingered in their sincerest forms, shorn of or bastardized from their humanity, because it was man who fucked everything up. And he would until the end, until the earth stood alone again in its orbit, meaningless but content because meaning had always been the post-modern intent of the thinking man, of the hubristic man who quantified reality through the perspective lens of his experiences and nothing else. The world would always persist.

            “But there have been threats, Mr Holdren. Which is why I called you here. And maybe it’s why I am so angry about all of these cameras. Everywhere I go, there’s some sort of reflective lens judging me. And I do not know who is on the other end. It would be simple to tell you to cease and desist operations, but I think we’re past that point now, aren’t we?”

            Paul ignored the old piece of shit. “What do you mean there have been threats?”

            The old man gestured to Salim and the big guy, the accessory, only nodded and scurried off like the vascular jackrabbit he was. Paul was mesmerized by the sway of his silk pants, the litheness of his hulked frame as he bounded off. The man in the wheelchair leaned forward so that his elbows were on the table. He hadn’t touched his tea. “We are men both used to luxuries afforded us beyond the capabilities of this place. It wasn’t dishonor to come here, not as much as it was displeasing. And so our patience has worn thin. Perhaps because there are expectations of our own indulgences that others might find strange.”

            “I don’t follow.”

            “One of your own has turned the cameras on us, Mr Holdren.”

            Salim walked back into the kitchen carrying a folder. His face was still stoic, stern. He set the file in front of Paul and stepped back beside the old man. Paul looked down at the file and calmly opened it. Inside there was a single sheet of paper, upon which somebody had written: I know. And soon the people will decide what to do to you. At the top of the page was a graphic font typical to personal stationary, something one might have made at a print shop. FROM THE DESK OF M. NAPOLITANO.

            “Did you know?”

            “Did I know what?” Paul asked, still staring at the sheet.

            “I don’t agree much with my friend’s night time proclivities. I don’t. But as long as he has the money to endow and the consent of those he purchases, I can only offer him the entertainment of one stranded so far from home. I have said the same to Arafat.”

            Paul turned the cover page over and found the photographs. He understood why he was brought here. Did Mary Napolitano go out of bounds and contravene a specific order? Salim had a special car bring in young men, boys, from only God knew where and a special escort bring them to the door. Likely part of some sex trafficking game in the American interior that the perverse and indecent could somehow always find while the federal government remained blind to its actions. What Salim did with these boys remained a distant part of one’s imagination. Paul didn’t quite care. He understood the council had splintered. Maybe he’d pushed them as far as they would go. That was fine. He’d already set in motion his end game. The calls had been made, and Trevor Kramer would be taken care of, likely before the idea would ever arise to go to the press. Because he knew a man like Kramer would squeal like a fucking pig. And Paul enjoyed poetry insofar as it rhymed.

            “I can see the judgment in your eyes, Mr Holdren. My associate does not demand your respect, no, but his afflictions are not his alone. The people he calls to make such arrangements are utilized by many in your government. Shining a light on him would cast away the shadows on many important people. I hope you know that cannot happen.”

            Paul closed the file and slid it toward the old man, butting it against the Walkman. “No. Of course not. Nobody will see these.”

            “Good,” the old man said, nodding and smiling. He finally tipped his cup to his mouth and took a quick sip of the tea, which had cooled since their conversation started. “I feel like this is the start to a very good day. I’m glad to hear our arrangement is still on course, Mr Holdren.”

            Paul stood up and bowed to the old man. When he went to the front door, unaware that Trevor Kramer had already picked up his boy and was now climbing into his wife’s Acura to make the trek to the house next door to this bungalow for a long chat with Reedy Creek’s reporter, Salim grabbed his arm with a hand like vice grips. Paul turned to look into the man’s black eyes, like coal pits into which bodies would be thrown to smolder. He was holding the file.

            “I am going to kill the bitch who sent these pictures. I hope you know that.” It was a whisper. Maybe so that the old man wouldn’t hear. Paul assumed he’d already put on his headphones and was bopping away to another Michael Jackson gem. “If you tell her, I’ll kill you.”

            Paul Holdren didn’t give a shit. It would be one less body that he’d have to worry about.

4

“You’ve got interesting taste in boys, Ange,” Brad said. The guys were laughing. Dave drummed the steering wheel to the beat of N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police”, and Oliver nodded his head, rapping with the Californians as they browbeat what Angela considered to be the conventional norms of radio friendly music. “Your sister likes ‘em with long hair, zits, and scrawny arms.”

            Wendy only stared out the window. Dave was swerving in and out of the lanes now and tapping the brakes, jerking the Odyssey while Oliver chuckled. Typical boys. Ange figured they were showing off. And she didn’t think it was for her or Wendy’s benefit; she thought they were showing off to Brad.

            “First it was that motherfucker Randy, Ange. Guy cuts his hair and puts a comb through it and you’re suddenly wet in the—” Brad reached down to touch Ange between her legs. She could feel the sickly cold of his skin, remembering what he’d done to her, remembering how he pushed against her and how his eyes rolled back into his head as she cried. She swatted away his hand. “—panties. Your laundry bill must have skyrocketed after you went under the bleachers with that quartet of cum-gugglers.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “But you do. Turn that shit down. We’re trying to talk back here.” He had swivelled toward the front and Dave quickly killed the music. Oliver only stared at himself in the side-view mirror. There was an element of madness in Brad’s tone, and Angela wondered if the three boys had been driving around with Wendy, entertaining her, while Brad silently looked out the window trying to find her. Trying to find the girl that got away. He grabbed Ange’s hand and gently rubbed it. She hated the feel of him, the suffocating gesture of one trying to be kind but failing because it was so inauthentic. She’d already seen the genuine side of Brad. She had seen what he could become; she had reached up and clawed at him only to be forced on her stomach, forced to muffle her cries in the couch, tasting the dusty old cushion wondering if she might die. Hoping she would. “I saw you, Ange. Don’t bullshit me. I saw you with that faggot. Byron. That his name?”

            Ange only looked down at her lap, at her jeans. She wondered if Wendy could see her knees trembling. You got in the car for Wendy. Because you know what these guys are apt to do. You know what could happen. She always heard about the responsibilities of the big brother, the bodyguard, but she saw herself in that same role, she saw herself as Wendy’s and Horace’s compass or signpost or fence. However you looked at it. “Who cares, Brad? He’s a friend.”

            “Is he? He fuck you? They all fuck you? That why you went under the bleachers?”

            “Brad—”

            “Shut up, Wendy,” Brad yelled. He did not turn to look at her. Wendy’s cheeks turned into twin rouge blossoms and she clenched her fists.

            “None of your business. Guys. Would you mind stopping here? My sister and I can walk the rest of the way.”

            “You pull over and I swear to God I’ll skull fuck you both,” Brad said, his tone congenial and earnest. Dave did as he was told. Oliver just ignored the situation. They were both cowards. Angela understood that. Soon their cowardice would decide everything. Brad was wearing a black T-shirt, and Ange could see his muscles, could see them flexing, spasming; she knew it was a twitch, the sort of thing a madman would show as his tell, would project when he’d made up his mind. “Ange. We’re good together. You know that. I know that. Shit, you used to be all over me. Used to call. Phone rang off the fuckin’ hook. My mom thought you were stalking me, but shit if it didn’t make me stiff. Wendy, your sister is hot as fuck. You know that, right? Course you do. Cause you want to be like her. You’d be my sloppy seconds because you care what she thinks about you, and because that would make you closer to her in someway. Isn’t that how you little bitches think?”

            Wendy cleared her throat as if to say something, anything, but she bit her tongue. “Don’t listen to him,” Ange said. “He likes to belittle you. Break you down. If you’re not worth anything to yourself, you can’t put up a fight.”

            “Is that right?” Brad said, his voice inflecting. “Is that what you did? Put up a fight? And under the bleachers, when Byron pulled out his pecker, did you put up a fight then? How about when Randy stuck his tongue in your mouth?”

            “Stop the car,” Ange demanded.

            “You stop the car and I will kill you!” Brad screamed. His face was red with strain and Wendy yelped. She cozied up against the window, a part of her trying to escape, trying to squirm through the glass. Dave didn’t let up on the gas. They’d already veered off Main and Ange could see the woods, could see the south end forest that skirted the Creek and buffered the 34. Away from this place. This hellhole her father had guaranteed would offer the Nelsons a new life, an opportunity for something great. Or greater. But in her vain search for popularity, for something that might help brace the change from Utah, she found him, Brad, the monster, and she’d dragged her sister into the miasma with her. She felt guilty.

            “Please. Dave. Grow some balls,” Ange demanded and Brad snickered.

            “You gonna let her talk to you like that? Pussy.”

            Dave didn’t answer.

            “Just let us out. You’ve had your fun.”

            “Have I?”

            “Brad. She’s my sister.”

            “I haven’t tasted her yet, Ange. Maybe you might like to watch. Maybe I can win you back. Maybe you just need to watch me win you back.” He turned toward Wendy and pulled her away from the window, first stroking her chin with his forefinger and thumb, and then running his hand through her hair, brushing it away from her forehead. He could feel her body tensing against him, could feel her trembling. He cupped her neck and brought her toward his mouth so he could lick her lips, so he could reside between them, press against her teeth; he moved his hand down toward her collarbone, pinching the cotton collar of her sweater before forcefully grabbing her breast, kneading it. He turned to look at Angela as he held Wendy and felt her heart beat frantically.

            “Stop…” Wendy whispered, but there was nothing in her voice to mark her defiance.

            “Take your hands off her!” Ange screamed. She watched herself swing at Brad; she didn’t feel any control, didn’t feel the motor impulse that moved her arms, but there they were and there they went. She felt the heel of her palm strike Brad on the nose. She felt the car veer when Dave turned to look. She heard Wendy strike the side of the Odyssey, heard her muffle a grunt. And she felt Brad’s strong hands clasp her shoulders and push her against the seat.

            “You bitch!” Brad slapped Ange. The sound echoed in the caravan like a clap in a canyon.

            Wendy grabbed Brad from behind, as if her reactions had been delayed. As if the hate and anger she had festering when the guy groped her suddenly surfaced. Brad was pulled back as Wendy dug her nails into his scalp. She was just now seeing what he could be. What he actually was. Ange could see his intentions, could see them mapped in his eyes; she watched as Brad grabbed Wendy’s flailing arms and shoved her against the window. She thought the glass might have cracked against her skull, and now Dave did swerve toward the curb, driving up into the grass and skidding; Oliver had turned around now, watching with what appeared to be indignation, shock.

            “Brad, stop it man,” Oliver said. Dave echoed the sentiment. He’d pulled the Odyssey to a full stop near a copse of firs, a knot of sparrows dispersing into the sky.

            Ange had already pulled Brad off of Wendy, feeling his tensile strength as he turned on her, his hair pulled up in clumped spikes. She thought he might have been bleeding. She could see trickles of red in his scalp where Wendy had really dug in, and for that one moment Ange was satisfied.

            “Keep driving you fuckin’ faggot,” he demanded.

            Dave killed the engine. He left the keys in the ignition, but he was invested now. So was Oliver. “Come on, man. Let ‘em go. Please. We could get in trouble.”

            “We have my last name. I-M-M-U-N-I-T-Y.”

             “Brad…please man…”

              Brad brushed Ange’s cheek with his fingers. “What you have, all you are, it’s because of your face. You’re pretty, Angela. You always have been, I bet. Dreamed of prom with the football ace.” His voice sort of stammered with the intensity of his delivery.

            “Brad—”

            “Either drive or leave, cocksucker,” Brad said, turning toward Dave. And now Dave saw that void in his friend’s eyes. That void that wasn’t quite madness but the edge of something far meaner; it was sociopathy, the way one might look at an insect or button. Brad’s eyes were indifferent. “But shut the fuck up. This is between me and her.”

            “Please,” Ange whispered. “Let my sister go. We can talk. You and me. She doesn’t have to be here. She hasn’t done anything to you.”

            “She wants to,” Brad smiled. “I can see it in her eyes. She wants to.”

            “Let her go.”

            “No,” Brad whispered. “You were supposed to be mine, Ange. We had plans. Remember? You were gonna hang on my arm after the game, you were gonna make the other fuckers jealous of what I had. I was your QB. This,” he touched his chest, “this, all of me, it was for you. It was yours. And you saw something in…Randy? What am I supposed to say? What?”

            Ange closed her eyes. She thought about what Brad had done to her. She thought about the quiet in the house, she thought about the taste of his mouth as they kissed, how it felt both incredibly right and incredibly wrong at the same time. And she thought about the only thing on her mind then. The single idea that seemed to mean everything to her. You’re with him because he’s the best. The coolest. The hottest. He will give you what you want, make you what you’ve always wanted to be. He will. So she had let him touch her, sneak his hands under her shirt, moving aside her bra with his fingers. They felt so experienced, and even as they danced across her nipple she didn’t let her instinct to stop him dominate. Not yet. Because she knew this was what he wanted. She knew this was what he needed. And if he got what he needed, she would by association become what he was. He had unbuttoned her jeans. She had felt his hands reach down there, and she hadn’t stopped him. Not yet. It wasn’t curiosity either but surprise. Naivete.

            “You…you raped me,” Ange finally whispered.

            “You wanted it,” Brad countered. “She wanted it. She’s lying. Tell them you’re lying.”

            She only shook her head. She didn’t look at Dave, at Oliver. She didn’t care what they might think or how they might have been looking at her. She had carried that secret for too long. It had rotted her. A part of her had tried to lie, tried to repress the actuality of what Brad had done in order to protect her, protect Wendy. To maintain what they had already started building in Reedy Creek. But you didn’t have to become the piece of meat he wanted to feel validated. Randy Hopson proved that to you. And maybe that’s why he’s so goddamn important to you. Because he wasn’t Brad and you felt better for it.

            “Tell them! You bitch!” Brad slapped Ange again. Her head rocked back against the seat; she felt the sting of his fingers immediately, and then her jaw numbed.

            “Brad! Enough man! Enough!” Dave yelled. His voice sounded distant.

            “Fuck you. You know who my grandpa is. You know. This is bullshit. She just wants money. She’s lying for money. The bitch!”

            “Leave her alone…”

            Wendy’s voice was slurred, uncommanding.

            “She knows my grandpa’s…the mayor…she knows…and the moment she…accuses me, accuses me of…of rape, she knows my family will pay her to sweep it under the rug. Cause an accusation on me is an accusation on…on him…”

            “You’re a monster,” Ange said defiantly, sitting forward now to stare the prick in the eyes. “We’re leaving.”

            “You’re a liar. A fucking…a fucking…” Brad couldn’t finish the thought. He was holding a switchblade. She didn’t remember him pulling it out of his pocket. Or maybe it was in his hand the entire time. She wasn’t sure. Its blade caught the light and she could see the scuffs on its surface. “Tell them you’re lying. Tell them.”

            “Your friend’s a rapist. He raped me. I don’t want money. I want to leave. We want to leave—”

            Brad choked her. Her voice turned into a gargled string of incoherence, and then she felt the knife press against her cheek. She remembered in that instant the pressure of his body on top of hers, the force of him as he finally entered her, as he overcame her reluctance and ignored her cries, and she remembered the low grunts he uttered with each thrust. Somewhere in the distance she heard Dave. Or was it Oliver? She didn’t know. “Brad, cut it out. This shit isn’t funny…” And Wendy was sobbing now. Or was that from her memory? She looked at Brad, watched him, saw that uncanny meaninglessness in his eyes, the pinpoint of indifference.

            “Tell them you’re lying. Tell them. Or I’ll scar you. I’ll fucking cut the pretty out of you. You bitch.”

            She wondered if he had the guts. If he did. If he would actually slice open her face, if he had the temerity to see it through, to actually see it. To see the blood. It was a strange thought, but in the back of her mind she knew Brad was a little boy, was a coward and strangled by insecurities. Bullies always were. She smiled at that thought. Her lips curled away from her teeth, bunching her cheek against the edge of Brad’s knife, and his eyes turned from anger to confusion. For just a second. Over Wendy’s sobs, over Dave or Oliver’s pleading, Ange thought she could hear the one thought rolling over and over again in Brad’s head: she sees right through me. The act. She does. And if she tells these guys, if news of it ever leaves this car, I’m done.

            And then there was a stolid resolution in his gaze. She understood it was when Brad decided her accusation and his reputation couldn’t co-exist, and the nature of reactions took over. From instinct, from moral compunction. From everything. It was just the effect.

            It was when Brad Jenkins cut Angela’s throat. When he saw that first spurt of blood, she knew he regretted it. She did. He looked like a child who’d broken his mother’s favorite tea cup. He’s trying to shut you up. You can’t say rapist without vocal chords. There wasn’t pain. Just a spreading numb and expanding warmth; it was like drinking hot chocolate too fast, she figured. She brought her hands up to her neck and felt the warm gush of blood. There was so much of it.

            “Fuck! Fuck!” Dave screamed. “It’s getting everywhere! Jesus!”

            She was out of the car now. Brad had pushed her. Or did she fall out? She wasn’t sure. Wendy was standing over her. Ange was coughing. And she could taste blood now. She thought she was choking on it. Wendy pressed the sleeve of her sweater against Ange’s throat. She heard the Odyssey’s engine, could smell the exhaust now, and over everything she could hear Brad’s voice—

            “You lying bitch! It’s your fault. You did it to yourself. You took the knife from me. You did.”

            Ange closed her eyes while Wendy pleaded that she didn’t, that she stay with her. She heard the Odyssey peel away. Could hear the grass tearing up in clumps. She looked up into the trees and could hear the sparrows. The lovely little sparrows.

            It was the last thing she heard the day of the Reedy Creek massacre.