James Burke - Light of the World

“It’s what’s under the hood that counts,” he said. “I’ll let you have a test drive upstairs.”

He worked his thumb deeper into the muscle of her arm, inching his fingers up on her shoulder, kneading the flesh along her collarbone, his mouth coming closer to hers.

Her reaction was not emotional, nor could it be described as vengeful. She didn’t consider it of much consequence and wondered that either man could have expected a different outcome.

“What do you say, babycakes?” Caspian asked.

“Say about what?”

“Going upstairs. You’ve got beautiful arms,” he said. “If the Venus de Milo had arms, they’d look like yours.”

“That’s a great come-on line. If I ever go trans, I think I’ll give it a try.”

“Are we on or not?” Jack Boyd said.

“You sure you guys want to do this?” she asked.

“Say the word,” Caspian said.

“What the fuck,” she replied.

“You won’t regret it,” Caspian said.

“But you will,” she said.

She ripped her elbow into Jack Boyd’s face and drove her fist between Caspian’s eyes. Then she pulled her blackjack from her side pocket and whipped it across the back of Boyd’s head and backstroked it across Caspian’s jaw, knocking the spittle from his mouth. She hit him on the collarbone and the points of his shoulders and shoved him through the open French doors onto the floor. Behind her, she heard Jack Boyd trying to rise to his feet. “Run,” she said.

“Do what?” Jack Boyd replied, barely supporting himself on the back of a chair. She brought the blackjack down on top of his hand. He cradled his arm against his chest, the color draining from his face.

“Run! Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”

She stepped toward him. He bolted through the yard, looking back once, knocking the concrete bowl of a birdbath off its pedestal. She turned to Caspian Younger and slid a pair of needle-nosed pliers from her back pocket. He was sitting up on the floor, pressing his palm against his mouth, looking at the thick red smear on his hand. She got down on one knee. “Do you know what I’m about to do to you?” she asked.

“I don’t know where Surrette is,” he said.

“Where do you want me to start?”

“Start what?”

“Pulling off your parts.”

“Please. I didn’t have a choice. He’s not human. You may think he is, but he’s not. He’s what he says he is.”

“So what is he?”

“I don’t know.”

She bent down closer to him, the pliers extended in front of her. His eyes were tightly shut. There are always lines, she heard a voice say.

He was probably telling the truth, she told herself. If he gave up Surrette, the feds would take him off the board, and no matter how the legal implications played out, Caspian Younger would be free of the man who had probably extorted him for years.

There was a problem, and it didn’t have to do with Surrette. Caspian had said he didn’t know where his father was. This was after his father had left him a note of endearment, one that should have made him conclude he was of some value to someone. Would he have brought a teenage girl onto the property, with the intent of debauching her, if he had no idea of his father’s whereabouts or the approximate time of his return?

She touched the point of the pliers to his cheek, just below his eye. “Where did your father go? You do not want to give me the wrong answer.”

“He has a place on Sweathouse Creek. He goes there because it reminds him of growing up in East Kentucky. Clouds of fog in the hollows and all that hillbilly crap he’s so fond of.”

“You brought the girl here and didn’t worry about him coming back unexpectedly?”

“She just came here to swim.”

“You told Bertha Phelps where he was, didn’t you?”

“No,” he replied, clearly forcing himself not to blink.

“You know what a professional liar never does?” she said. “Blink. His eyelids stay stitched to his forehead. It’s a sure tell every time.”

“I survived, just like you. You know the edge I got on Wyatt Dixon? I don’t care whether I live or die.”

“Dixon is like your father. He’s a self-made man. I don’t think you’re anything at all. You’re a condition, not a man. I feel sorry for you.”

“Tell me that when I take a shit on your chest, because that’s what I’m going to do when I get out of here.”

She tapped him lightly on the tip of the nose with the pliers, then stood up. “Go wash your face. Come around me again for any reason, and I’ll blow your head off.”

She went out the front door and left it open behind her. There were squirrels playing overhead in the trees. She watched them for a moment, then started her pickup and drove away. She tried to think of all the things he had just said to her. Two words stood out in bold relief and were not in harmony with his self-congratulatory statements about being mobbed up in Vegas. What were the words?

Flathead Lake? Why that choice of location for his metaphor about getting rid of Clete Purcel?

It was 4:48 P.M. when Clete and I starting knocking on doors at the end of the hollow, up the road from Albert’s ranch. The first place we stopped was a remodeled barn that a young couple from California had rented for the summer. They said they taught at Berkeley and knew Albert and his work and sometimes hiked along the ridge above his house but hadn’t seen any other hikers there. They were nice people and invited us in for coffee. I did not want to tell them that Surrette was somewhere in the neighborhood. “Do you all have children?” I asked.

“No, we don’t,” the husband replied, trying not to show offense at the personal nature of the question. “Can you tell me what you guys are looking for?”

“A man named Asa Surrette has been around here. He’s a serial killer who escaped from a prison van in Kansas,” I said. “He may be long gone, or he may be close by. Have you seen any vehicles that don’t belong here? Or somebody up in the rocks above your house?”

The wife looked at the husband, then they both shook their heads. “This is a little disturbing,” the husband said. “Nobody else has told us about a serial killer.”

“He’s the guy who abducted the waitress up by Lookout Pass,” Clete said.

“There’s a minister who lives in that two-story house with the cedar trees in front,” the wife said. “He has his congregation there on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. His name is Ralph, I think.”

“Did you see anybody unusual over there?” I asked.

They shook their heads again. “Sometimes after their services, they throw a football back and forth in the yard,” the wife said. “I saw Ralph chopping wood earlier. I think his church friends come and go. This serial killer is probably gone by now, isn’t he?”

“Probably,” I replied.

“By the way, I saw the girls’ car pull into the driveway earlier. I’m pretty sure somebody’s home,” she said.

I wrote my cell number on the back of my departmental business card and left it with the couple.

Clete and I knocked on the doors of two more houses in the hollow with the same results. The four houses in the natural cul-de-sac were spaced a considerable distance apart, all of them set in the shadows of the mountains, and the people in the houses apparently had amiable but not close relationships. In effect, it was a community where insularity came with the property deed.

Our last stop was at the minister’s house. An old Toyota Corolla was parked in the driveway and a Bronco in the garage. The window shades were down, the front door shut. The glider on the porch rotated slightly on its chains in a mild breeze blowing down the canyon.