The Kingdom - Peter Collinson

They reached the sagging corner of the barn. Tom Duggan pointed to Dr. Rosen to stay there, theoretically within sight of Polk, then went ahead with Rebecca, plodding through the snow to the tall double doors.

There were the boot prints, blunted and deep. The barn doors were unlocked and hanging ajar. Snowfall beneath the outside threshold was skimmed back from the door indicating it had been recently pulled open.

Rebecca removed one glove and pulled the heavy pistol out of her coat pocket. Rebecca Loden, author, standing in a near-blizzard with a loaded gun in her hand. She looked up at the sky and the snow spilling out of it.

Tom Duggan hurried past the doors to the far corner of the barn. He pulled off his hunting cap and ducked his head around the corner, two quick glances, pulling back fast. Then he pushed his cap back on his head and crept around the corner.

Rebecca shivered, anticipating a hail of bullets. She twisted to look back at Dr. Rosen, who was hunched under the sagging corner stud, his gun gripped in two gloved hands.

Tom Duggan reappeared, shaking his head. Nothing there.

He retraced his steps next to the stranger’s tracks to the doors. He pulled on the handle and the big door swept open before he could catch it, stopping with a clatter. The entire barn quivered and snow slipped angrily off the roof. Something fluttered inside. Tom Duggan peered into the opening, and so did Rebecca.

There was a half-dismantled tractor, bales of hay stacked high, a rusted jungle gym lying on its side, horse blankets and rusted tools. In the rear sagged a ladderless loft of rotting wood. Below that, a sun-faded billboard advertisement for Barclay cigarettes against the far wall.

Tom Duggan glanced both ways as he stepped inside. Rebecca followed, at once relieved to have dirt under her feet instead of the sucking snow, but wary of the weakened roof overhead. It looked like a dark cloud about to burst.

Tom Duggan pointed out the clumps of snow on the floor, spaced like footsteps, diminishing ahead. Other than the rear of the loft above, the only area hidden from their view was the space behind the stacked bales of hay. That was where the snow droppings led.

Rebecca backed just outside the door so that Dr. Rosen would see her and not panic. He looked miserable, stealing a glance back at the snow-shrouded house. Then she returned to Tom Duggan and started toward the hay.

He moved deliberately. She wondered where he found his courage, or maybe it was simple determination. Maybe “bravery” was a task-specific term. Digging a grave in the frozen earth wasn’t brave, but walking alone to those hay bales was, and yet she supposed the same impulse lay behind each act. Maybe she could be brave too.

A crow lifted from behind the stinking bales of hay, fluttering to the rafters. Tom Duggan grabbed her arm and she grabbed his. Neither of their guns went off. She was ready to turn back, but he kept going forward, now pulling her along with him toward the corner of hay.

There were two bodies. They were seated shoulder to shoulder against the warped wall, inordinately still, one head tipped forward at a ludicrous angle and the other set back crooked, bloodied mouth open. Rebecca recognized Bert and Rita’s cross-country snowsuits and a scream caught in her throat, cutting off all breath.

She was weak with revulsion. Her mind was sluggish and the particulars came to her in waves.

The half-open eyes.

The splayed legs.

The slashed necks.

There was something inside Bert’s mouth. It looked like a piece of paper, pastel blue and wrinkled. Tom Duggan went to him. He had attended to hundreds of dead bodies, but none of them murder victims. He was haggard and red-cheeked. He reached for Bert’s downturned head and pulled the paper from his mouth, then backed away to Rebecca and opened it.

It was a flier. Gilchrist Public Library. Rebecca Loden tonight, reading from her bestselling novel Last Words.

Rebecca stared at the piece of paper, still slow to think. She turned back fearfully to the twin corpses. Their boots were off and she could see their ankles, their severed Achilles tendons.

Rebecca turned and looked wildly about the barn. She remembered the loft overhead, previously dismissed as uninhabitable. He could be anywhere. Panic began to suffocate her.

She ran for the door of the barn as though it were being closed. Outside, she forgot her stride in the high snow and flopped forward on all fours. She expected him there, waiting for her, but it was only Dr. Rosen, a drip hanging off his nose, wondering what was taking them so long.

She ran back through the snow. She ran as though she were being chased, the cold and the flakes disorienting her, fear stinging her eyes. She reached the corner of the house and stumbled past the sleds to the back door, fumbling with the handle. She fell inside, scuttling across the kitchen linoleum as though he were at her heels, knocking over a chair as she hit the corner cabinets and turned holding her gun.

She trained it on the open kitchen door, waiting for him. Noises in the house, shoes on the stairs, like gunshots in her mind. A form filled the doorway, and Dr. Rosen saw her on the floor with the gun and reeled backward into Tom Duggan.

“Shut it!” Rebecca screamed. “Shut the door!”

Tom Duggan shut the door behind them.

“Lock it!” she said.

Tom Duggan turned back to the knob. “There isn’t one.”

“That chair!”

He picked up the chair she had knocked over and jammed it securely under the knob.

Still, Rebecca aimed, training the gun on the part in the window curtain.

“What?” yelled Dr. Rosen, crazed. He hadn’t seen anything. “What is it?”

A form appeared around the center island. Rebecca swung her gun madly, but it was just Polk with the biathlon rifle. She stopped then and set the handgun down on the floor between her legs and stripped off her knit cap and unzipped her coat collar, choking for air.

Tom Duggan told the others about the bodies in the barn, then showed them the flier.

She tried to speak but the words forming in her mind made her sick and she waited through a tangy wave of nausea. “Jasper Grue,” she said. “My killer in Last Words .”

Dr. Rosen hurried away from the door. “Jasper Grue — he was out in that barn?”

“It was Bert and Rita,” said Rebecca, starting to cry. “Bert and Rita.”

“Okay,” said Tom Duggan, approaching her slowly. He helped her up off the floor with a hand to her arm and got her into a chair. “How are you so certain it’s Grue?”

“Because I know him!”

Polk said, “Who is Grue?”

Tom Duggan explained, “Some sort of serial killer, if I recall. Ms. Loden writes thriller books. Her villain was Jasper Grue.”

“Inspired by,” she said. “Inspired by Jasper Grue. And he’s not a serial.” She tried to collect herself. “The Achilles tendon. Grue cuts them with bolt cutters to cripple his captives so they can’t run. Kills them by cutting their throats.”

“He was here?” said Dr. Rosen.

“He is here.” She pointed, aware that she was yelling. “He’s out there.”

“Then why haven’t they come after us?”

“He won’t be with the other prisoners,” said Rebecca, shaking her head. “He’s on his own.”

“On his own?”

The questions were good, they kept her from hysteria. “Trait’s black. Grue would never trust him.”

Tom Duggan said, “But how did he find us?”

It came to Rebecca right then. “He followed us from the country club. He followed us last night.”

Polk pointed upstairs. “You said Kells said no one could follow.”

“Right — no one except Grue. He’s a survivalist, an expert tracker. A hunter. He was raised on nature. Never uses a gun, doesn’t trust them. He likes the knife because it’s personal. Also crossbows, but he prefers hunting knives with serrated edges. He likes to do it face-to-face, talking you through. He collects last words. That’s what it’s all about. Used to keep them in a notebook, that was the main piece of evidence at his trial. And, if he has time, he pulls teeth for trophies. Makes jewelry out of them. Bragged to the press that he’d make a tiara out of me if he ever got the chance—”