Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ he agreed, reluctantly.

Which was when a silver Acura came round the bend, slowed at the forecourt, then continued on its way, but not before Parker caught a clear view of the driver.

‘He’s here,’ said Parker to Griffin. ‘It’s Nealus.’

Nealus Cade put his foot down but didn’t panic. In a way, this was the best outcome he could have hoped for. He hadn’t wanted his brother to be the one to corner him at the end, just as he hadn’t wanted it to be Griffin or his people. Jurel had managed to cover up Nealus’s killing of Patricia Hartley and block any attempt Griffin might have made to involve the state police in the Kernigan investigation. But Parker was an outsider, and unbeholden to the people of the county or the state. To bury the truth of what Nealus had done, they would have to bury Parker as well, and Parker didn’t strike Nealus as the kind of man who’d go down easily.

The final act was never destined to take place at the gas station. Oddly, his father had dictated the setting by insisting on placing a big sign on the main Kovas site, trumpeting the company’s arrival and thus advertising his own arrogance. Everything would conclude there with a crucified girl, and the land would be poisoned forever as a consequence.

But it had been poisoned all along, as Nealus knew, poisoned ever since some explorer with a smattering of classical education had come upon this place, naming it Karagol, and men were foolish enough to raise a settlement nearby. Nealus’s acts were simply the natural conclusion to a sequence of events that had begun a century and a half earlier. It might even have been said that the land made him do it, because he and his family were a product of it. The land was in their blood, and their blood was bad as a consequence.

Maryanne McCullough had stopped kicking. Perhaps she sensed a change in circumstances with the acceleration of the car and now had hope. She might even have cause for it. Nealus was no longer sure he’d have time to kill her, or not as he might have wished. He’d try, though, he certainly would. He’d thought about dumping Sallie Kernigan’s body at the site, but he hadn’t enjoyed killing her as much as the others, and her death had not been a matter of choice, but necessity. It had been her bad luck to turn up the narrow road to her home just as Nealus was dragging away the unconscious body of her child.

But the appositeness of this conclusion was appealing to him: a chase, a confrontation, and an arrest on property earmarked for Kovas, with a dead girl at his feet. Besides, he didn’t think he’d get another chance. Whatever happened in the minutes to come, no more young women would pass through his hands, which was a source of regret to him. What began as revenge had transmuted into something much greater.

Nealus Cade had become a god of ruination.

Parker was trying to stay on the phone with Evan Griffin, but the signal kept cutting out. Louis was following behind in the Mustang, Angel having elected to stay at the garage and wait for whomever Griffin might be sending.

‘Where’s he—?’

Griffin cut out for the third time. By now, Parker was beginning to tire of hitting redial. When Griffin’s voice came through for the fourth time, Parker didn’t bother with any niceties. He knew now where Nealus Cade was heading.

‘The big Kovas site,’ he said. ‘Just get to it.’

Nealus could now see the Karagol to the west, like a smear of dirt on a painting of the landscape. He turned toward it. As he did so, Parker’s car appeared in Nealus’s rearview mirror, a second vehicle close behind. Nealus was only a minute ahead of them, but a minute was all he required. He was approaching the main Kovas site on the left, with its bright new sign promising a bright new future to which Nealus, by his actions, would give the lie.

But then a Cargill PD patrol car pulled out from among the trees at the site entrance, and another ascended from behind the brow of a hill a little way farther down the road. Nealus twisted the wheel to the right, sending the Acura over a shallow ditch and through the fence that marked the boundary of the Karagol Holding. The lake was ahead of him as he bounced over the rough ground, coming to a sideways halt by the low brow that surrounded it. As he did so, the trunk popped open, and it was a miracle that the McCullough girl wasn’t sent sailing into the air. Instead her body slammed against the upper frame of the trunk, breaking two of her ribs but also preventing her from being thrown from the car. Nealus got out and ran to grab her, but some preservation instinct caused the girl not to try to run, or even fight, but to pull the trunk closed again with her bound hands. Nealus heard it lock, but the keys were still in the ignition, and he didn’t have time to get to them, not with the pursuit cars now pouring through the gap he’d left in the fence. He retreated up the bank of the lake, stones slipping beneath his feet as he climbed, until he was standing above them all, watching his destiny unfold. One, two, three, four cars, the first of them now grinding to a stop before him. Evan Griffin emerged from it, already reaching for his gun. Kel Knight came next, then Parker, and finally a black man whom Nealus did not recognize, but who had been with Parker back at the garage.

Nealus was happy now, happier than he had been since his mother died.

Griffin raised the gun and leveled it at him. He didn’t look angry, just sad, as though he had expected better of Nealus.

‘Have you got a weapon, son?’ he asked.

‘I have a knife.’

‘Then throw it aside and get down on your knees.’

‘I don’t think so, not yet.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I want you to listen.’

‘Okay, I’m listening.’

But Nealus was looking beyond Griffin, to where Parker stood. He also had a gun drawn, as did Kel Knight and the black man. Nealus thought that Knight didn’t seem happy at having an unknown black man standing so close to him with a sidearm, but the black man didn’t appear bothered one way or the other.

‘Do you want to tell them,’ said Nealus to Parker, ‘or should I?’

‘Hollis Ward,’ said Parker.

‘What about him?’

‘I think he abused you and your father colluded in it, or chose to let it slide.’

‘And why would my father have done that?’

‘Because Ward was useful to him, more useful than you were, and he was the keeper of the family’s secrets. So you waited: you waited until you were strong enough to tackle Ward, and then you tortured him to death; you waited until your father was on the verge of concluding the deal that would crown the efforts of a lifetime and assure the Cade family a place in Arkansas history, before you started killing vulnerable young women; and you waited for someone like me to come along, someone from outside, before baiting the hook, because you wanted to be captured, but only by the right person.’

‘That’s very good,’ said Nealus. ‘You glossed over the nastier details of what Hollis Ward did to me, but that’s understandable. Also, our relationship was more complex than you make it sound. I think I had a kind of love for him. He cared for me, or perhaps it was just easier for me to believe that he did. He killed Estella Jackson, you know. I watched him do it. I might even have helped him a little, although it’s hard for me to remember all the details. I suppose you could say I learned from the best.’

‘Why did he kill her?’ said Parker.

Nealus tilted his head in surprise, as though the question were so unnecessary as to be hardly worth answering.

‘Hollis liked inflicting pain. He said he’d hurt other girls – boys, too, because he wasn’t particular – and I can’t see why he would have lied. He thought Estella Jackson was uppity, and wanted to teach her a lesson, but I didn’t think she was uppity. She was just a regular girl.’