Bad Men (2003) Read online

  Dupree didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t sure that he should, but then both men already seemed to know as much as he did, or more.

  “They found insect matter in her mouth, and beneath her fingernails,” he said. “It came from a moth, a tomato hornworm. They’re big and ugly and they’re all dead by September, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever even seen one on this island until recently.”

  “I saw one on a tree in the cemetery, when they were laying Sylvie Lauter down,” said Jack. “I took it home, looked it up in a book, then pinned it to a board. Thought I might paint it sometime.”

  “Paint it badly,” said Amerling. “You’d have to stick a note on it so folks would know what it was.”

  “I’m not that bad,” said Jack.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You came to my exhibition at the Lions Club.”

  “There was free food.”

  “I hope it poisoned you.”

  “Nope, it was pretty good, unlike what was on the walls.”

  Dupree interrupted them.

  “Gentlemen! You’re like two old dogs fighting. It’s embarrassing.”

  He picked up his cap and flicked at some dust.

  “I was out at Doug Newton’s place. There was a moth there too, same type. I saw it on the curtains in his mother’s bedroom.”

  But he wasn’t talking to the two older men as much as to himself. He ran his hands through his hair, then placed his cap carefully on his head. Moths. Why moths? Moths were attracted to flames, to light. Was that what it was, some form of attraction toward Sylvie Lauter and the old Newton woman? What did they have in common?

  The answer came to him immediately.

  Dying, that was what they had in common.

  “How long have we got?” asked Dupree.

  “Not long,” said Amerling. “I go outside, it’s like I can hear the island humming. The birds were the last sign. It’s bad news when even the birds fear to fly.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Dupree.

  “We wait, I guess. We lock our doors. We don’t go wandering near the Site at night. It’s coming soon, whatever it is. Then we’ll know. For good or bad, then we’ll know for sure.”

  Chapter Seven

  Moloch allowed them to rest for the remainder of the day, choosing to travel north under cover of darkness. Later that morning, Powell and Shepherd headed down to Marie’s Home Cooking and bought enough takeout for the day. On the way back to Perry Avenue, they stopped off at Big Gary’s Liquor Store and picked up two bottles of Wild Turkey to keep out the cold. Dexter and Braun took an opportunity to rest, once they had finished conversing softly with Shepherd in Karen Meyer’s kitchen.

  Moloch had learned enough about Meyer from their past dealings to know that she was the kind of woman who would have few visitors. Her house was the last on the street, sheltered by trees and not overlooked by any of her neighbors. He didn’t know if she had a lover, but there were no photographs on the refrigerator, no little tokens of love on the shelf by the cookbooks. He went through her studio, heedless of the fingerprints that he left behind. If they found him, they already had more than enough evidence to justify the taking of his life. It mattered little to him if they added Karen Meyer’s name to the final tally.

  The studio was neat and her computer was password protected. Moloch guessed that anyone trying to gain access to it without the password would probably have just two or three chances before the computer automatically commenced erasing its memory. He searched her bedroom and found a shoe box on the top shelf of her closet. It contained a collection of letters from a woman named Jessica, most of them expressions of love except for the most recent, dated October 1997, which detailed her reasons for ending the relationship. Jessica had met someone else, apparently. Moloch found it curious that Karen Meyer had retained the breakup letter. It seemed to suggest to him an element of emotional masochism in the forger’s personality. Perhaps some part of her might even have enjoyed what Willard and Leonie had done to her in the basement, although he somehow doubted it.

  Her body still lay on the basement floor. She had resisted for longer than he expected, which surprised him. He had always thought of Meyer as a pragmatist. She must have known that she would have to tell him what she knew eventually, but something had made her hold out for so long that he feared she would die before she revealed the location of his wife and son. She had feelings for them. Moloch wondered if Meyer and his wife had been lovers. The possibility angered, and aroused, him.

  Marianne Elliot. She had kept her first name almost intact, simply expanding it from the original Marian. It was a smart move, typical of Meyer. Moloch knew that those who assumed new identities sometimes gave themselves away in the first few months by failing to hear their new name when they were addressed by it, or by signing checks, rental agreements, or bank documents with their old name. The easiest way to avoid it was to give them a new name that began with the same letter, preferably even the same two letters, as their old name. So James became Jason, Linda became Lindsay.

  Marian became Marianne.

  His son was now named Danny, not Edward as they had agreed. Well, perhaps “agreed” wasn’t the right word. His wife had wanted something simple and boyish, but Moloch liked formal names. Trust the bitch to give his son a name like Danny as soon as she was out of his sight.

  Moloch didn’t much care what happened to the boy. He might take him with him when he left the island, or he might leave him. He might kill him, or he might corrupt him. He hadn’t decided yet. All he knew was that he felt no paternal instincts whatsoever toward him, but his wife would understand before she died that it was within his power to do whatever he chose with his son.

  He overturned the shoe box and watched as a jumble of photographs fell on Karen Meyer’s unmade bed. He went through them with his fingertips, turning over those that had landed facedown, until he found the one that he had suspected—even hoped—might be among them. She was a little different now: her hair was darker and she seemed to be downplaying her natural good looks. When he had met her first in Biloxi, she had used makeup with a delicacy that had impressed him, his experience of casino waitresses having led him to expect all of them to resemble the brides of Mary Kay. Now her face was completely unadorned, her hair lank. Her face was very pale and the photograph, taken in a photo booth, suggested that she had not slept well in a very long time. A perceptive man might look twice at her and begin to see something of the beauty that she was trying to disguise, and a very unusual man might suspect something of the history of pain and abuse that had led her to take such steps. The boy was on her lap, his finger raised to the camera, a birthday crown upon his head.

  He had underestimated her, and that was what troubled him more than anything else, even more than the betrayal itself. He had thought that he knew her, knew her as intimately as only one who had explored both pleasure and pain through her could know her. He believed that he had broken her, for what was she but a thing to be used, part of a front to fool those who might come after him, the loving family man with the neat house, the pretty wife, the little boy who must surely have represented the first step on the road to a home filled with children and grandchildren?

  Moloch’s was not the routine abuse of drunks and petty sadists, the kind that might at last force the object of their hatred to turn on them with a gun or a knife out of an instinctive desire for survival. No, Moloch’s capacity to hurt—emotionally, physically, psychologically—was more refined than that. The pain, the stress could never be allowed to become unbearable, and needed to be interspersed at times with moments of kindness, even tenderness; reminders of love, need, dependence. Yet somehow, despite it all, she had managed to keep something hidden from him, some vital part of herself that he was unable to touch, and it was that which had enabled her to escape him. He was impressed by what she had achieved. Perhaps they were closer in spirit than he had ever imagined.

  He placed the photograph in his jacket pock
et, then went back downstairs and turned on the television. Already, the TV news bulletins were describing how the search for the escaped man was expanding, extending the net to take in not only those states along the border but also the southern states as far north as Maryland. Worse, they had trawled for possible accomplices and now, in addition to Willard, he had to worry about Dexter and Shepherd. Their pictures had appeared on every news show, along with all known aliases. Their continued involvement was a risk, but a calculated one. Once they got to Maine, they could complete their work in a matter of hours, then head for Canada. Most of the routes across the border were unpatrolled, and those who chose to make the journey could easily slip across. Dexter would make sure of it.

  Dexter was clever. That was why he had been entrusted with so much of the organization once it became apparent that Moloch would be forced to face the grand jury. Where Dexter went, Braun and Leonie would follow. As for Shepherd, he was a curious beast. He seemed to drift through his existence, never allowing himself to experience the extremes of pleasure or hatred. He appeared to take little from life, apart, occasionally, from the lives of others. There was no sentimentality to him, and while he was loyal, it was the loyalty of one who has signed a contract and proposes to remain strictly within its bounds. Any breach of its clauses by another would render the contract null and void and Shepherd would do whatever was necessary to extricate himself from its requirements.

  As for the redneck, Powell, and the belligerent Tell, with his cornrows knitted tightly against his skull, tight as his pent-up rage at the world, Moloch knew little of them, except that Dexter vouched for them. They were men who would work for the promise of money, and that was enough. Moloch was not sure how much of his cash the bitch had spent, but there would be enough, he felt certain, to divide the best part of $500,000 between them, maybe even $600,000. The hardest parts—the escape, the associated killings, and the pinpointing of her location—were already behind them. With luck, their work would be done quickly and they would be scattered within two days. If there was less money than they had expected, then Powell and Tell were expendable. The others could take whatever was left. Moloch needed only enough to get him out of the country. After that, he would find ways to make some more. Perhaps he would ask Dexter to join him, once the time was right.

  Except there was now a fatalism to Dexter that Moloch had not noticed before, although Moloch had often seen it develop in men like him. After years of violence, the odds in favor of meeting a violent end increased with every passing week. They had stayed too long in the life to imagine that they could enjoy an easy escape at this late stage. Dexter had not become reckless, as some of his kind did, and neither did he appear to have become overly cautious. Instead, that fatalism, that resignation, was written across his face. He looked like a man who wanted to sleep, to sleep and forget.

  Moloch had seen him talking with Braun and Shepherd. He had not intervened. He knew the subject of their conversation: Willard, who now lay sleeping in the room across the hall. Moloch loved Willard, and knew that the love was reciprocated. There was a purity to Willard that was almost as beautiful as the boy himself, and unlike Shepherd, he would be loyal unto death. Moloch could only guess at what went on inside Willard’s head, and sometimes wondered what it would be like to probe the younger man’s mind. He feared that it would be similar to briefly inhabiting the consciousness of a vaguely self-aware spider: there would be blackness, patience, and a ceaseless, driving appetite that could never be sated, but there would also be inquisitiveness and rage and sensuality. Moloch had no idea where Willard had come from. He had not sought Willard out; rather, Willard had found him, and attached himself to him. He had approached Moloch for the first time in a bar on the outskirts of Saranac Lake, but the older man had been aware of him for some time, for Willard had been hovering at the periphery of his vision for a number of days. Moloch had made no move against him, although he took to sleeping with his gun close at hand and the locks in his hotel rooms carefully secured. The boy interested him, without Moloch really knowing why.

  Then, exactly three days after Moloch had first sighted him, the boy had entered the bar and taken a seat in the booth across from him. Moloch had seen him coming, and in the time it had taken the boy to walk from the door to the booth, Moloch had unholstered his pistol, secured it with a silencer beneath the table, and wrapped the gun in a pair of napkins. It now lay between his legs, Moloch’s right index finger resting lightly upon the trigger.

  The boy sat down carefully and placed his hands flat upon the table.

  “My name is Willard,” he said.

  “Hello, Willard.”

  “I’ve been watching you.”

  “I know. I was beginning to wonder why that might be.”

  “I have something for you.”

  “I’m straight,” said Moloch. “I don’t want what you have to sell.”

  The boy showed no offense at the deliberate insult. Instead, his brow simply furrowed slightly, as though he didn’t fully understand the import of Moloch’s remark.

  “I think you’ll like it,” he continued. “It’s not far from here.”

  “I’m eating.”

  “I’ll wait until you’re done.”

  “You want something?”

  “I’ve eaten.”

  Moloch finished his plate of chicken and rice, eating with his left hand, his right remaining beneath the table. When he was finished, he laid down a ten and two ones to cover the food and his beer, then told Willard to lead the way. He picked up his coat, wrapped it around the gun, then stayed behind the boy until they left the bar and found themselves in the parking lot. It was a midweek night and only a handful of cars remained. Willard began walking toward a black Pontiac, but Moloch called him back.

  “We’ll take mine,” he said.

  He tossed Willard the keys.

  “And you can drive.”

  As the boy caught the keys, Moloch struck him hard with the butt of his gun and forced him against the Pontiac. He pushed the gun into the boy’s head, then frisked him. He found nothing, not even coins. When he stepped back, there was blood on Willard’s face from the wound in his scalp. His face was completely calm.

  “You can trust me,” said Willard.

  “We get to where we’re going, I’ll help you clean up that cut.”

  “I been cut before,” said Willard. “It heals.”

  They got in the car and Willard drove, unspeaking, for about ten miles, until they were close to High Falls Gorge. He turned left off 86, up a secluded driveway, then pulled up outside a two-story summer house.

  “It’s in here,” he said.

  He opened the door and moved toward the front of the house. Moloch stayed about five feet back from him.

  “Anything happens, anything at all, and I’ll kill you,” said Moloch.

  “I told you, you can trust me.”

  Willard knelt down and took a key from the flowerpot by the door, then entered the house. He hit the hall lights so Moloch could see that they were alone. Despite his assurances, Moloch searched the house, using the boy as a shield as they entered each room. The house was empty.

  “Who owns this place?”

  Willard shrugged. “I don’t know their names.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They left on Sunday. They come up here for weekends, sometimes. You want to see what I have for you? It’s in the basement.”

  They reached the basement door. Willard opened it and turned on the light. There was a flight of stairs leading down. Willard led, Moloch following.

  Near the back wall was a chair, and in the chair was a girl. She was seventeen or eighteen. Her mouth was gagged and her arms and legs had been secured. Her hair was very dark and her face was very pale. She wore a black T-shirt and a short black skirt. Her fishnet stockings were torn. Even in the poor basement light, Moloch could see track marks on her arms.

  “No one will miss her,” said Willard. “No one.”
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br />   The girl began to cry. Willard looked at her one last time, then said: “I’ll leave you two alone. I’ll be upstairs if you need anything.”

  And seconds later, Moloch heard the basement door close.

  Now, years later, Moloch thought back to that first night, and to the bound girl. Willard knew him, understood his appetites, his desires, for they existed in a similar, though deeper, form within himself. The girl was a courtship gift to him and he had accepted it gladly.

  Moloch loved Willard, but Willard was no longer in control of his hunger, if he had ever truly been able to rein it in. The death of the woman Jenna and the damage inflicted on the bait for the escape indicated that Willard was spiraling down into some dark place from which he would not be able to return. Moloch loved Willard, and Willard loved Moloch, and love brought with it its own duties.

  But then, as Moloch knew only too well, and as his wife was about to find out, each man kills the thing he loves.

  Danny was kicking up a fuss, as he always did when his mother tried to leave him for an evening. It came from not having a father around, she believed. It had made him dependent, maybe even a little soft, and that worried her. She wanted him to be strong, because at some point he was going to have to learn about the world they had left behind, and the man who had contributed to his creation. But she also wanted him to be strong for her own selfish reasons. She was tired; tired of the constant fear, tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of having nobody on whom she could depend. She wanted Danny to grow up to be big and tough, to protect her as she had protected him. But that day, it seemed, was a long way off.

  “Where are you going?” he asked again, in that whining voice he adopted when he felt that the world was being unfair to him.

  “I told you already. I’m going out to dinner.”

  “With Joe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like Joe.”