Michael Marshall - The Straw Men

The skull lesion most certainly denoted a head injury, though one that had been far more significant than Mittel and Baxter realized — a childhood injury profound enough to wake a portion of the brain that in most men remained regrettably dormant. The evidence of cribra orbitalia was likewise not merely of import with regard to geographical positioning. It was indeed often related to iron deficiency, and sometimes anaemia of a congenital or haemolytic type, but it could also have a far more interesting genesis. Excessive exposure to lead could cause the condition. This, the man knew, wasn't 'poisoning' at all, but a gift that could combine with other factors and lead to alterations on a genetic level, changes that woke suppressed parts of the human genome and allowed them to become manifest.

It was not Mittel and Baxter's misinterpretation of the forensic evidence that was most at fault, however, but their inability to judge the true nature of the site. The man in the centre of the cemetery grid had not died first. Of course not. He had died last. In his own time, and by his own hand.

At the centre of his creation.

14

The realtor leaned forward on his elbows, opened his little mouth, and spoke. 'And what kind of bracket would you be looking to purchase into? Please be frank. I appreciate that

these are early days in our relationship, Mr, uh, Lautner, the dawn of our search for a potential home — but I'm going to come right out and say it'll promote our settling into a mutually beneficial mode if I know exactly how much you're hoping to realize into real estate at this time.'

He sat back in his chair and squinted knowingly at me, evidently pleased to have laid his cards on the table. There was to be no pulling the wool over this guy's eyes, I gathered wearily. If I only had eight dollars and change to spend, or was maybe hoping to barter with shiny stones, he intended to know right away. He was middle-aged and skinny with red hair, and his name — scarcely credibly — appeared to be Chip Farling. I'd already talked to several very similar people, and my tolerance was getting lower and lower.

'I'd like to cap it around six,' I said, briskly. 'For the time being. Something special, I may go higher.'

He beamed. 'That would be cash in full?'

'Yes it would.' I smiled back.

Chip's head bobbed, and his neat little hands moved a couple of pieces of paper around on his desk.

'Good,' he said, still nodding. 'Excellent. That gives us something to play with.'

Then he pointed a finger at me. I frowned, but soon realized this was merely a prelude to his next action, which involved putting his hand up to his chin and rubbing it while staring shrewdly into the middle

distance. This I understood to mean he was thinking.

After nearly half a minute of this, he refocused. 'Okay. Let's get to work.'

He bounced up from the desk and walked briskly to the other end of the office, clicking his fingers. I sighed into my coffee, and prepared to wait.

I'd gone to UnRealty first, of course. It was shut. A notice on the door thanked people for their patronage and explained that the business was being wound up on account of the death of its owner. It stopped short of adding that his heir being an asshole had been an additional factor. I leaned close to the window and peered in. It doesn't matter if the desks and filing cabinets remain, if the computers sit in place and a year planner from the local print shop still hangs on the wall, vacation time firmly plotted by the office anal retentive — you can tell at a glance whether the business has air in its lungs. UnRealty didn't. I'd known it would be that way, but the sight still stopped me short. I realized I hadn't tried to work out whether the discoveries of the last forty-eight hours made my father's actions over UnRealty any more explicable. I couldn't make the thought go anywhere.

So I moved my body instead, and took myself around all the realtors I could find on foot. A rough index of a small community's status can be taken from the number of real-estate businesses on its streets. In Cowlick, Kansas, you're going to have to look real hard. Everyone wants to get out, not in, their only proviso being that it not be through the medium of their death. Preferably. Somewhere of moderate wealth you'll find one or maybe two offices, mixed in amongst the other businesses by the process of commercial Brownian motion. In a place like Dyersburg you can't move for realtors. Even more than the scarves and the galleries and little restaurants, what that kind of town is selling is an idea: the notion that you could live this way all year round, that you could be one of the people who carve off a piece of the good stuff and put a sturdy fence round it; that you, too, could sit in a custom-built log home with cathedral ceilings and feel at one with God and his angels. All over America, the rich are carving out their hidey-holes. Ranches that used to support cattle or simply beauty are being bought up and subdivided into twenty-acre home sites where you can rejoice in stunning views and neighbours who are absolutely just like you. I'm not dissing this. I want one of these views, I want one of those lives, held in the palm of the mountains in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. I just don't want what comes with it. The golf. The part-share in a Lear jet. The cigar humidors. The bland, screamingly serene androids who live in these country clubs and lodges: bluff men with leather tans and firm handshakes, women with their steely eyes and surgery-tight cheeks; conversations that are one part greed, two parts self-satisfaction, and three parts eerie silence. I think it would drive me insane.

After a little while Chip reappeared, clutching a handful of prospectuses and two videotapes. 'Mr Lautner?' he breathed. 'It's time to find the dream.'

I dutifully watched the tapes, taking care to make occasional grunts or moues of interest. Neither had anything that resembled what I was looking for. Then I leafed through the brochures, which featured faux wooden lodges interior-decorated by some cowboy on drugs, or gleaming white boxes of such Modernist sterility they looked like they'd been discovered on the moon. The only thing that varied, and that not by much, was the hilariousness of the prices. It had been this way with each of the previous realtors. I was on the verge of dutifully asking for Chip's card and leaving, maybe calling Bobby to check how he was getting on with his task, when hidden amongst the glossies I found a single piece of paper.

'The Halls,' it said, in an attractive typeface. 'For people who want more than a home.'

It went on, in three paragraphs of curious restraint, to describe a small development up in the Gallatin range. Ski-in, ski-out convenience, naturally. End-of-the-road seclusion, of course. A two-hundred-acre tract of highlands, fashioned into a community of such ineffable perfection that Zeus himself probably bought a town house off plan — and yet the copy wasn't trying very hard to sell. There weren't even any

pictures, or a price, which piqued my interest further.

I picked up one of the other brochures more or less at random, just making sure it was expensive.

'Like to take a look at this one,' I said.

Chip checked, nodded delightedly. 'It's a peach,' he said.

'And while we're in the area,' I added, as if an afterthought, 'let's check this place out too.'

I shoved the single piece of paper across the desk at him. He glanced at it, then folded his hands

together and looked at me.

'With The Halls, Mr Lautner,' he said, judiciously, 'exclusivity is very much the name of the game. We would be looking at very high-end, in monetary terms. Six million would no longer suffice. By quite some

margin.'

I gave him my best and richest smile.