Terry Brooks - Angel Fire East

His hands moved lovingly over the worn leather cover of his Book of Names. He called it that, a simple designation for his record of the humans he had dispatched in one way or another over the centuries. He didn't bother with times or dates or places when he recorded their passing. The details didn't interest him. What he cared about was collecting lives and making them his own. What interested him was the nature of their dying, what they gave up, how they struggled, what they made him feel as they took their last breath. Something in their dying could be possessed, he discovered early on. Something of them could be claimed. It was a tribute to his continuing interest in collecting the names that he could always remember who they belonged to. Common memories were pale and insubstantial. But a memory of death was strong and lasting, and he kept each one, many hundreds in all, carefully catalogued and stored away.

He sighed. When he quit being interested in seeing them die, he supposed, he would quit collecting their names.

"He's home, Gramps," Penny advised, cutting into his reverie.

He shifted his eyes to the front, watching as Larry Spence turned his car into a driveway leading to a small bungalow on Second Avenue, just off LeFevre Road.

"Drive past a couple of blocks and then turn around and come back," he instructed.

Penny took the car up Second for a short distance, then turned into someone's drive, backed out, and came down the street from the other direction. Just before they reached Spence's house, she pulled the car over to the curb and parked. Switching off the ignition, she looked over. "Now what, Grampa Gask?"

"Come with me," he said.

Larry Spence was already inside the house with his kids, and Gask and Penny heard the ticking of his still-warm engine as they walked up the drive. The house seemed small and spare from the outside, shorn by winter's coming of the softening foliage of the bushes and trees surrounding it, its faded, peeling paint and splintered trim left bare and revealed. Findo Gask reflected on the pathetic lives of humans as he knocked on the front door, but only for a moment.

Larry Spence appeared almost immediately. He was still wearing his church clothes, but his tie was loosened and he had a dish towel in his hand. He pushed open the storm door and looked at them questioningly.

"Mr. Spence?" Findo Gask asked politely, his voice friendly but businesslike. Spence nodded. "Mr. Larry Spence?"

"What do you want?" Spence replied warily.

Findo Gask produced a leather identification holder and flipped it open. "Special Agent George Robinson, Mr. Spence. I'm with the FBI. Can you spare a moment?"

The other's confidence turned to uncertainty as he studied the identity card in its plastic slipcase. "Something wrong?"

Now Gask gave him a reassuring smile. "Nothing that involves you directly, Mr. Spence. But we need to talk with you about someone you know. This is my assistant, Penny. May we come inside?"

Larry Spence's big, athletic frame shifted in the doorway, and he brushed back his dark hair with spread fingers. "Well, the kids are here, Mr. Robinson," he replied uncertainly.

Findo Gask nodded. "I wouldn't come to you on a Sunday, Mr. Spence, if it wasn't important. I wouldn't come to your home if I could handle the matter in your office." He paused meaningfully. "This won't take long. Penny can play with the children."

Spence hesitated a moment longer, his brow furrowed, then nodded. "All right. Come on in."

They entered a small hallway that led to a tiny, cramped living room strewn with toys and magazines and pieces of the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Evidently Larry Spence hadn't done his housework before going off to church. The little boy appeared at the end of a hallway leading farther back into the house and looked at them questioningly.

"It's okay, Billy," Spence said quickly, sounding less than certain that it was.

"Mr. Spence, perhaps Billy would like to show Penny his room," Findo Gask suggested, smiling anew. "Penny has a brother just about his age."

"Sure, that would be fine." Spence jumped on the suggestion. "What do you say, Billy?"

"Hey, little man," Penny said, coming forward to greet the boy. "You got any cool stuff to show me?"

She guided him back down the hallway, talking at him a mile a minute, Billy staring up at her like a deer caught in the headlights. Findo Gask hoped she would behave herself.

"Why don't we sit down, Mr. Spence," he suggested.

He didn't bother removing his coat. He didn't bother putting down the book. Larry Spence wasn't seeing either one. He wasn't even seeing Findo Gask the way he appeared. Gask had clouded his vision the moment he opened the door, leaving him only vaguely aware of what the man he was talking to looked like. The trick wouldn't work with someone like Nest Freemark, but Larry Spence was a different matter. Already beset by doubts and confusion, he would probably stay that way until Findo Gask was done with him.

They moved over to a pair of worn easy chairs and seated themselves. Sunlight filtered, sharp-edged, through cracks in the drawn blinds, and Matchbox cars lay overturned on the carpet like miniature accidents.

"Mr. Spence, as a law enforcement officer yourself, you are undoubtedly familiar with the work we do," Findo Gask opened the conversation. "I'm here in Hopewell because of my work, and I need your help. But I don't want anyone else to know about this, not even your superiors. Usually, we try to work openly with the local law enforcement agencies, but in this case that isn't possible. At least, not yet. That's why I've come to your house rather than approach you at your office. No one but you even knows we are here."

He paused. "I understand you are acquainted with a young woman named Nest Freemark."

Larry Spence looked startled. "Nest? Sure, but I don't think she would ever—"

"Please, Mr. Spence, don't jump to conclusions," Gask interrupted smoothly, cutting him short. "Just let me finish. The bureau's interest in Miss Freemark is only peripheral in this matter. Our real interest is in a man named John Ross."

Spence was still holding the dish towel, twisting the fabric between his big hands nervously. He saw what he was doing and set the towel aside. He cleared his throat. "I never heard of anyone named John Ross."

Findo Gask nodded. "I didn't think you had. But Nest Freemark knows him quite well. Their friendship was formed some years ago when she was still a little girl and highly impressionable. He was an older man, good looking in a rugged sort of way, and very attentive toward her. He was a friend of her dead mother, and Nest was eager to make the connection with him for that reason if for no other. I suspect that she had quite a crush on him. She formed a strong attachment to him in any case, and she still thinks of him as her close friend."

Gask chose his words carefully, working on the assumption that Larry Spence already felt possessive about Nest and would not welcome the idea of a rival, particularly one to whom she was attracted.

"John Ross is not the man Miss Freemark thinks he is, Mr. Spence," he continued earnestly. "He is a very dangerous criminal. She believes him to be her knight in shining armor, the man she knew fifteen years ago, the handsome, older man who paid so much attention to a young, insecure girl. She has deceived herself, and she will not be quick to change her thinking."

He was laying it on a bit thick, but when dealing with a man as enamored of a woman as Larry Spence was of Nest Freemark, he could get away with it.

"What's he done?" Spence demanded, stiffening in his seat, ready to charge out and do battle with his duplicitous, unsavory rival. Gask smiled inwardly.

"I'd prefer not to discuss that aspect of the case with you, Mr. Spence." Let him use his imagination, Gask thought. "What should be of concern to you, as it is to us, is not so much what he's done elsewhere, but what he may do once he comes here."