John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

We took one further turn, and here the cypress overhung the road. We rattled over a wooden bridge, the wood gradually returning to its original color as the paint flaked and disintegrated. In the shadows at its far end I thought I saw a giant figure watching us as we passed, his eyes white as eggs in the darkness beneath the trees.

“You see him?” said Woolrich.

“Who is he?”

“The old woman’s youngest son. Tee Jean, she calls him. Petit Jean. He’s kinda slow, but he looks out for her. They all do.”

“All?”

“Six of ’em live in the house. The old woman, her son, three kids from her second-eldest’s marriage-he’s dead; died with his wife in a car crash three years back-and a daughter. She has five more sons and three daughters all living within a few miles of here. Then the local folks, they look after her too. She’s kind of the matriarch around these parts, I guess. Big magic.”

I looked to see if he was being ironic. He wasn’t.

We left the trees and arrived in a clearing before a long, single-story house raised above the ground on stripped stumps of trees. It looked old but lovingly built, the wood on the front unwarped and carefully overlapped, the shingles on the roof undamaged but, here and there, darker where they had been replaced. The door stood open, blocked only by a wire screen, and chairs and children’s toys littered the porch, which ran the length of the front of the house and disappeared around the side. From behind, I could hear the sound of children and the splashing of water.

The screen door was opened and a small, slim woman appeared at the top of the steps. She was about thirty, with delicate features and lush dark hair drawn back in a ponytail from her light coffee-colored skin. Yet as we stepped from the car and drew nearer, I could see her skin was pitted with scars, probably from childhood acne. She seemed to recognize Woolrich for, before we said anything, she held the door open so I could step inside. Woolrich didn’t follow. I turned back toward him.

“You coming in?”

“I didn’t bring you here, if anyone asks, and I don’t even want to see her,” he said. He took a seat on the porch and rested his feet on the rail, watching the water gleam in the sunlight.

Inside, the wood was dark and the air cool. Doors at either side opened into bedrooms and a formal-looking living room with old, obviously hand-carved furniture, simple but carefully and skillfully crafted. An ancient radio with an illuminated dial and a band dotted with the names of far-flung places played a Chopin nocturne. The music followed me through the house and into the last bedroom, where the old woman waited.

She was blind. Her pupils were white, set in a huge moon face from which rolls of fat hung to her breastbone. Her arms, visible through the gauze sleeves of her multicolored dress, were bigger than mine and her swollen legs were like the trunks of small trees ending in surprisingly small, almost dainty, feet. She sat, supported by a mountain of pillows, on a giant bed in a room lit only by a hurricane lamp, the drapes closed against the sunlight. She was at least three hundred and fifty pounds, I guessed, probably more.

“Sit down, chile,” she said, taking one of my hands in her own and running her fingers lightly over mine. Her eyes stared straight ahead, not looking at me, as her fingers traced the lines on my palm.

“I know why you here,” she said. Her voice was high, girlish, as if she were a huge speaking doll whose tapes had been mixed up with a smaller model. “You hurtin’. You burnin’ inside. Little girl, you woman, they gone.” In the dim light, the old woman seemed to crackle with hidden energy.

“Tante, tell me about the girl in the swamp, the girl with no eyes.”

“Poor chile,” said the old woman, her brow furrowing in sorrow. “She the fust here. She was runnin’ from sumpin’ and she los’ her way. Took a ride wi’ him and she never came back. Hurt her so, so bad. Didn’t touch her, though, ’cept with the knife.”

She turned her eyes toward me for the first time and I realized she was not blind, not in any way that mattered. As her hands traced the lines of my palm, my eyes closed and I felt that she had been there with the girl in her final moments, that she might even have brought her some comfort as the blade went about its business. “Hush, chile, you come with Tante now. Hush, chile, take my hand, you. He done hurtin’ you now.”

As she touched me, I heard and felt, deep within myself, the blade cutting, grating, separating muscle from joint, flesh from bone, soul from body, the artist working on his canvas; and I felt pain dancing through me, arcing through a fading life like a lightning flash, welling like the notes of a hellish song through the unknown girl in the Louisiana swamp. And in her agony I felt the agony of my own child, my own wife, and I was certain that this was the same man. Even as the pain faded to its last for the girl in the swamp, she was in darkness and I knew he had blinded her before he killed her.

“Who is he?” I said.

She spoke, and in her voice there were four voices: the voices of a wife and a daughter, the voice of an old obese woman on a bed in a wine-dark room, and the voice of a nameless girl who died a brutal, lonely death in the mud and water of a Louisiana swamp.

“He the Travelin’ Man.”

Walter shifted in his chair and the sound of his spoon against the china cup was like the ringing of chimes.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t find him.”

WALTER HAD BEEN silent for a while, the whiskey now almost drained from his glass. “I need a favor. Not for me but for someone else.”

I waited.

“It has to do with the Barton Trust.”

The Barton Trust had been founded in his will by old Jack Barton, an industrialist who made his fortune by supplying parts for the aeronautical industry after the war. The trust provided money for research into child-related issues, supported pediatric clinics, and generally provided child-care money that the state would not. Its nominal head was Isobel Barton, old Jack’s widow, although the day-to-day running of the business was the responsibility of an attorney named Andrew Bruce and the trust’s chairman, Philip Kooper.

I knew all this because Walter did some fund-raising for the trust on occasion-raffles, bowling tournaments-and also because, some weeks before, the trust had entered the news for all the wrong reasons. During a charity fete held on the grounds of the Barton house on Staten Island, a young boy, Evan Baines, had disappeared. In the end, no trace of the boy had been found and the cops had pretty much given up hope. They believed he had somehow strayed from the grounds and been abducted. It merited some mention in the newspapers for a time and then was gone.

“Evan Baines?”

“No, at least I don’t think so, but it may be a missing person. A friend of Isobel Barton, a young woman, seems to have gone missing. It’s been a few days and Mrs. Barton’s worried. Her name’s Catherine Demeter. Nothing to link her with the Baines disappearance; she hadn’t even met the Bartons at that point.”

“Bartons plural?”

“Seems she was dating Stephen Barton. You know anything about him?”

“He’s an asshole. Apart from that, he’s a minor drug pusher for Sonny Ferrera. Grew up near the Ferreras on Staten Island and fell in with Sonny as a teenager. He’s into steroids, also coke, I think, but it’s minor stuff.”

Walter’s brow furrowed. “How long have you known about this?” he asked.

“Can’t remember,” I replied. “Gym gossip.”

“Jesus, don’t tell us anything we might find useful. I’ve only known since Tuesday.”

“You’re not supposed to know,” I said. “You’re the police. Nobody tells you things you’re supposed to know.”