John Connolly - The Reapers

Louis opened the file. As he flipped through its contents, he saw that some of the material replicated what he had uncovered himself, but much was new. There were sheafs of closely typed pages detailing the Leehagen family history, business interests, and other enterprises, some of them, judging by photocopies of police reports and letters from the attorney general’s office, criminal in nature. They were followed by photographs of an impressive house, satellite images of forests and roads, local maps, and, last of all, a picture of a balding, corpulent man with a series of flabby chins folding into a barrel chest. He was wearing a black suit and a collarless shirt. What was left of his hair was long and unkempt. Dark pig eyes were lost in the flesh of his face.

“That’s Leehagen,” said Hoyle. “The photograph was taken five years ago. I understand that his cancer has taken its toll upon him since then.”

Hoyle reached for one of the satellite images, and pointed to a white block at its center. “This is the main house. Leehagen lives there with his son. He has a nurse who lives in her own small apartment adjoining it. About a quarter of a mile to the west, perhaps a little farther”-he grabbed another photograph, and placed it beside the first-“are cattle pens. Leehagen used to keep a herd of Ayrshire cattle.”

“That’s not cattle land,” said Louis.

“It didn’t matter to Leehagen. He liked them. Fancied himself as a breeder. He felled forest so they could graze, and utilized areas that had been cleared by storm damage. I think they made him feel like a gentleman farmer.”

“What happened to them?” asked Angel.

“He sent them for slaughter a month ago. They were his cattle. They weren’t going to outlive him.”

“What’s this?” asked Louis. He pointed to a series of photographs of a small industrial structure with what appeared to be a town nearby. A thin straight line ran along the bottom of a number of the photographs: a railway line.

“That’s Winslow,” said Hoyle. He placed two standard maps side by side in front of Louis and Angel. “Look at them. See any difference between them?”

Angel looked. In one, the town of Winslow was clearly marked. In another, there was no sign of the town at all.

“The first map is from the 1970s. The second is only a year or two old. Winslow doesn’t exist anymore. Nobody lives there. There used to be a talc mine near the town-that’s what you can see to the east in some of the pictures-owned by the Leehagen family, but it gave out in the 1980s. People started to leave, and Leehagen began buying up the vacant properties. Those who didn’t want to go were forced out. Oh, he paid them, so it was all aboveboard, but it was made clear what would happen if they didn’t leave. It’s all private land now, lying to the northeast of Leehagen’s house. You know anything about talc mining, sir?”

“No,” said Louis.

“It’s a nasty business. The miners were exposed to tremolite asbestos dust in the mines. A lot of the companies involved knew that the talc contained asbestos, the Leehagens included, but chose not to inform their workers about either its presence or the prevalence of asbestos-related diseases in their mines. We’re talking mainly about scarring of the lungs, silicosis, and incidents of mesothelioma, which is a rare asbestos-related cancer. Even those who weren’t directly involved in mining began developing lung problems. The Leehagens defended themselves by denying that industrial talc contains asbestos or poses a cancer risk, which I believe is a lie. This stuff ended up in kids’ crayons, and you know what kids do with crayons, right? They put them in their mouths.”

“With due respect, what does this have to do with the matter in hand?” asked Louis.

“Well, it was how Leehagen managed to empty Winslow. He offered financial settlements to the families, most of whom had relatives who had worked in the mines. The settlements indemnified Leehagen and his descendants against any future action. He screwed those people to the wall. The amounts they received were far less than they might have been awarded had they been prepared to take their cases to court, but then this was the 1980s. I don’t think they even knew what was making them sick, and most of them were already dead when the first cases from elsewhere began coming before the courts a decade or more later. That’s the kind of man Leehagen is. It is ironic, though, that his own cancers may well have been caused by the mines that made him wealthy. They killed his wife”-when Hoyle said the word “wife,” he winced slightly-“and now they’re killing him.”

Hoyle found another map, this one depicting the course of a river. “After he’d emptied the town, he got permission to redirect a local stream, the Roubaud, on some spurious environmental grounds. Effectively, the redirection allowed him to cut himself off. It functions as a moat. There are only two roads that cross it into his land. Behind Leehagen’s house is Fallen Elk Lake, so he has water at his back as well. He’s sown the lake bed with rocks and wire to prevent anyone from gaining access to the house from that direction, so the only way onto his land is over one of the two bridges spanning the stream.”

Hoyle pointed them out on the map, then traced the roads that led from them with his finger. They formed the shape of an inverted funnel, cut at four points by two inner roads that ran through the property parallel to the eastern shore of the lake.

“Are they watched?” asked Angel.

“Not consistently, but there are still homes nearby. Some of them are rented by Leehagen to the families of the men who used to tend his cattle, or who work his property. There are a couple of others that belong to people who’ve reached an arrangement with him. They stay out of his affairs, and he lets them live where they’ve always lived. They’re mainly on the northern road. The southern road is quieter. It would be possible for a vehicle going down either of those roads to get pretty close to Leehagen’s house, although the southern road would be the safer bet, but if the alarm was raised then both those bridges could be closed before any trespassers had a chance to escape.”

“How many men does he have?”

“A dozen or so close to him, I’d guess. They stay in touch on the land through a dedicated, secure high-frequency network. Some have served time, but the rest are little more than local thugs.”

“You guess?” said Angel.

“Leehagen is a recluse, just as I am. His disease has made him one. The little that I do know about his current circumstances was dearly bought.” He moved on. “Then there’s his son and heir, Michael.” Hoyle found another photograph, this time of a man in his forties with something of Leehagen Senior in his eyes, but who weighed considerably less. He was wearing jeans and a checked shirt and cradled a hunting rifle in his arms. An eight-point buck lay at his feet, the animal’s head resting on a log so that it faced the camera. Louis recalled the man whom he had killed in San Antonio, Jonny Lee. He had looked more like his father, from what Louis could remember of him.

“This one is quite recent,” said Hoyle. “Michael looks after most of his father’s business affairs, legal and otherwise. He’s the family’s link to the outside world. Compared to his father, he’s quite the bon viveur, but by any normal standards he is almost as reclusive. He ventures out a couple of times a year, but usually people come to him.”

“Including your daughter,” said Louis.

“Yes,” said Hoyle. “I want Michael killed as well. I’ll pay extra for him.”

Louis sat back. Beside him, Angel was silent.

“I never pretended that this was going to be easy,” said Hoyle. “If I could have dealt with this matter without the involvement of those outside my own circle, then I would have. But it seemed to me that we had a shared interest in putting an end to Leehagen, and that you might succeed where others had failed.”