James Burke - Light of the World

“I’m not convinced this man exists.”

“He tortured and killed people in his hometown for two decades, under the noses of the FBI. You don’t think he could escape a wrecked jail van and be killing people in this area? How about the waitress who disappeared up by Lookout Pass?”

“I didn’t hear about that.”

“Which means none of your investigators bothered to look into it. Or they didn’t tell you about it.”

His gaze went away from mine. When he looked at me again, the confidence was not in his face. “What happened to the waitress?”

“She didn’t show up for work. Her house was locked and dead-bolted from the inside. Her bracelet was placed on a rock in the middle of the St. Regis River. It’s all part of Surrette’s pattern. He feeds on attention and the confusion and angst he instills in others.”

“What does the sheriff in Mineral County say?”

“The sheriff will do everything he can. If Surrette is the abductor, that won’t be enough. Does it strike you as ironic that I have to explain these things to you, sir?”

He didn’t answer. He kept staring at me inquisitively, the way a clinician might.

“Do you want to ask me something?” I said.

“I’m trying to figure out what you’re after.”

I couldn’t believe his statement. “I told you. I’m afraid it didn’t do much good.”

“Earlier you called me a son of a bitch. I don’t hold that against you, because you were speaking honestly about your feelings. But I think you have an agenda. You resent others for their wealth. Everywhere you look, you see plots and conspiracies at work, corporations destroying the planet, robbing the poor, that sort of thing, and you never realize these things you think you see are a reflection of your own failure.”

“Mr. Younger, if I harbor resentment toward anyone, it’s toward myself. I couldn’t prevent my daughter from interviewing Surrette in prison and writing articles about him that exposed him to a capital conviction. He won’t rest until he kills her.”

“You told her not to do it?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then it’s on her.”

I wondered what it must have been like to grow up in a home governed by the value system of Love Younger.

I heard someone knock tentatively on the kitchen door. Through the glass, I saw a blond man in shades. Caspian was standing behind him, raising up on his toes to see inside the house. Love Younger opened the door. “What do you want, Kyle?” he said.

“Caspian thought I ought to see if you needed any help.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be right outside.”

Younger shut the door but continued to look through the glass at his son’s back. “I never get over it,” he said.

“Sir?” I said.

“When I look at Caspian, I always see the little boy, not the man. I don’t know if you’ve had that experience. He was always a little-bitty chap tagging along after the others. He’d have his elbows poked out, like a rooster that wants to fight. When he was about nine or ten, I took him to visit the hollow where I grew up. The kids there went barefoot in the snow and were meaner than spit on a church wall. Caspian wanted to pretend he was as tough as these poor little ragamuffins. He’d say ‘ain’t’ and ‘he don’t’ and talk about putting on his ‘britches’ in the morning. He loved to say ‘britches.’ ”

The content of our conversation had flown away, along with any apparent awareness on his part of who I was. He continued to stare through the glass, his hands on his hips. Then he shook his head and turned to me as though addressing an old friend. “Smart at figures and dumb as a turnip about everything else. Where did I go wrong with that poor boy?” he said.

“When I look at Alafair, all I see is the little girl. I guess that’s what I came out here to tell you,” I said.

There are moments when our common humanity allows us to see into the souls of our worst adversaries. I wanted to believe this was one of them. It wasn’t.

“Well, I guess I started this saccharine introspection,” he said. “Now that you’ve accomplished your objective, Mr. Robicheaux, you can be on your way.”

Any illusions I had about Love Younger were gone. I realized that I had the same importance to him as any number of servicepeople who swam in and out of his ken every day.

I walked outside onto the lawn, into the breeze and the popping of flags and pennants atop the canvas tents and canopies. The guests of Love Younger were not bad people. They worked hard and loved their country and were fiercely self-reliant. They didn’t apologize for their values or their belief systems, and their physical courage was unquestionable. My quarrel was with the illusion into which I felt they had been lured. I had thought earlier that the gathering at the Younger ranch was akin to a medieval festival. It was no such thing. Love Younger was not an ideologue. Politics had nothing to do with the energies that drove him. His invitation to his ranch was a charade, a mask for the design of a willful and imperious man who had spent a lifetime controlling and destroying the people he loved most.

Why my lack of charity? Because the security man named Kyle, who did the bidding of his master, was staring at me from behind his sunglasses with far more interest than casual curiosity. His khakis were belted high up on his hips, his long-sleeved shirt snap-buttoned at the wrists. His body English did not serve him well: His arms were folded, an unconscious mechanism that often indicates repressed hostility or retention of information the individual takes pride in not sharing. It was his boots that caught my attention. They were cordovan, and from the stiffness in his trouser legs, I guessed they were stovepipes. Perhaps Tony Lamas.

I walked toward him. Caspian stood at his side, inserting a pinch of Copenhagen inside his cheek. “I was admiring your footwear,” I said.

“I bet one day you’ll have a pair of your own,” Kyle said.

“Are they Lamas?”

“Justins.”

“I’d like to have a look at them. Would you mind?” I said.

He laughed to himself and turned his face into the breeze. His hair was long, over his collar, stiff with gel. He looked back at me. There was something wrong with his eyes. He seemed to gaze at two objects simultaneously, or to be thinking about something that had nothing to do with the subject at hand. “Can I help you find a table?”

In the background I could see Alafair and Clete watching us from under a canopy. Clete held a foaming beer cup in one hand and a huge barbecue beef sandwich in the other. “No, thanks. My daughter and a friend are with me,” I said. “I’d still like to have a look at your boots, though.”

Kyle smiled at nothing and lifted the toe of one boot off the ground, the heel anchored on the grass. “They’re first-class. I recommend them,” he said. “Anything else?”

“You look like you’ve got a nasty cut under that bandage on your neck.”

“You got that right. My girlfriend is a biter. She’s a screamer, too. But what are you gonna do?”

“I bet your Justins are hand-tooled. Can you let me see the tops?”

Kyle looked at Caspian Younger, grinning. “Buddy, you’re a case,” he said.

“A lot of people tell me that. You know what a short-eyes is?”

He looked thoughtfully into space. “A pygmy?”

“That’s a guy who’s gone down for molestation of a child. A guy with a short-eyes in his jacket has a hard time inside. My suspicion is that most child molesters are capable of gang rape as well. What’s your opinion on that? Did you know any gang rapists inside?”

“Kyle answers to me,” Caspian said. “If you have a beef with him, talk to me about it.”