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saw them change shifts. One of them followed me all the way to your front
gate. Rachel's brother had been a policeman, killed on duty some years back.
She still had friends on various forces.
 I was worried about you.
Her voice rose.  I told you, I don't want you feeling you have to protect me.
 Rachel, I said,  these people are dangerous. I was concerned for Angel too,
but at least he carries a gun. What would you have done if they came for you?
Thrown plates at them?
 You should have told me! She slapped her hand hard on the table. There was
real anger in her eyes.
 If I had, would you have let it go ahead? I love you, Rach, but you're
stubborn enough to head up the Teamsters.
Some of the fury in her eyes died and the hand on the table curled into a
small tight fist that shook as the tension gradually eased from her.
 How can we be together if you're always afraid of losing me? she asked
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gently.
I thought of the dead of St. Froid, crowding a narrow street in Portland. I
thought of James Jessop and the figure I had glimpsed leaning over him, the
Summer Lady. I had seen her before: in a subway train; outside the Scarborough
house; and once, reflected in the window of my kitchen, as if she were
standing behind me, but when I turned to look there was nobody there. Sitting
in Chumley's only a few nights before, it seemed that an accommodation with
the past might be possible. But that was before Mickey Shine's head was
impaled on a tree, before James Jessop emerged from a dark forest and took my
hand. How could I bring Rachel into that world?
 I can't compete with the dead, she said.
 I'm not asking you to compete with the dead.
 It's not a question of asking. She sat across from me, cupped her chin in
her hands, and looked sad and distant.
 I'm trying, Rachel.
 I know, she said.  I know you are.
 I love you. I want to be with you.
 How? she whispered, lowering her head.  On weekends in Boston, or weekends
here?
 How about just here?
She looked up, as if unsure of what she had heard.
 I mean it.
 When? Before I'm old?
 Older.
She slapped at me playfully and I reached out to touch her hair.  We'll get
there, I said and felt her nod against my hand.  And sooner rather than
later. I promise.
 We'd better, she said, so quietly that it was almost as if I had heard her
thoughts. I held her, sensing somehow that she had more to say, but nothing
came.
 What kind of dog were you planning to get? she asked after a time, as the
warmth of her spread across me.
I smiled down at her. She had probably heard my entire conversation with Angel
and Louis. I think she had been meant to.
 I hadn't decided. I thought you might help me pick one from the pound.
 That's a very couply thing to do.
 Well, we are a couple.
 But not a normal one.
 No. Louis would never forgive us if we were.
She kissed me, and I kissed her back. Past and future receded from us like
creditors temporarily denied their demands, and there was only the brief,
fleeting beauty of the present to hold us. That night, I gathered her in my
arms as she slept and tried to imagine a future for us together, but I seemed
to lose us in tangles and weaves. Yet when I awoke my fist was clenched
tightly, as if I had grasped something vital in my dreams and now refused to
let it go.
21
I LAY WITH RACHEL and listened to the rising wheeps of a flycatcher from high
in the trees. His stay in New England would be short; he had probably arrived
in the past week, and would be gone by the end of September, but if he managed
to avoid the hawks and the owls, then his little yellow belly would soon be
filled with a smorgasbord of insects as the bug population exploded. Already
the first of the horseflies were circling, their large green eyes glittering
hungrily. They would quickly be joined by greenheads and locusts, ticks and
deerflies. At Scarborough Marsh, clouds of golden saltmarsh mosquitoes would
converge, the males sipping on plant juices while the females scoured the
waters and the roadsides for meatier pickings.
And the insects would feed, and the spiders would grow fat upon them.
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Beside me, Rachel murmured softly in her sleep, and I felt the warmth of her
back against my stomach, the line of her spine beneath her pale skin like a
stone path blanketed by new fallen snow. I raised myself gently to look at her
face. Strands of red hair had caught between her lips, and carefully, I
brushed them away. She smiled, her eyes still closed, and her fingers softly
grazed my thigh. I kissed her gently behind the ear and she leaned her head
into the pillow, exposing her neck to me as I followed its lines down to her
shoulder and the small hollow at her throat. Her body arched as she pressed
herself against me, and all other thoughts were lost in sunlight and birdsong.
It was almost 1 P.M. when I left Rachel singing in the bathroom while I went
out for bagels and milk, conscious still of the weight of the Smith & Wesson
in its holster beneath my arm. It made me uneasy how quickly I had slipped
back into the old routine of arming myself before I left the house, even for
something as simple as a trip to the store.
It was, by then, late in the morning, but today I hoped to find Marcy Becker.
Circumstances had forced me to postpone the hunt for her, but more and more I
was convinced that she was the key to what had taken place on the night Grace
Peltier died, one more piece of a greater picture whose dimensions I was only
now beginning to understand. Faulkner, or something of him, had survived. He,
in collusion with others, had slaughtered the Aroostook Baptists and his own
wife, then disappeared, eventually reemerging veiled by the organization known
as the Fellowship. Paragon had merely been a front, a dupe. The real
Fellowship, the substance behind the shadow, was Faulkner, and Pudd was his
sword.
I parked the car and took the bag of groceries from the front seat. I was
still rearranging my thoughts, shifting possibilities, as I reached the
kitchen door. I pushed it open and something white lifted from the floor and
tumbled in the air, carried upward by the draft.
It was a sugar wrapper.
Rachel was standing at the entrance to the hallway, Pudd at her shoulder
pushing her into the kitchen. She was gagged with a scarf, and her arms were
secured at her back.
Behind her, Pudd froze.
I dropped the bag and reached for my gun. Simultaneously, Rachel twisted in
Pudd's grip and slammed her head back into his face, connecting with the
bridge of his nose. He staggered backward, swiping at Rachel with the back of
his hand. My fingers were already brushing the grip of the Smith & Wesson when
something struck me hard on the side of the head and I went down, bright white
pain erupting in my brain. I felt hands at my side and then my gun was gone
and red droplets were exploding like sunbursts in the spilled milk. I tried to
get up, but my hands slipped on the wet floor and my legs felt heavy and
awkward. I raised my face to see Pudd's fist raining down blows on Rachel's
head as she sank to the floor. There was blood on his face and palm. Then a
second impact connected with my head, followed by a third, and I didn't feel
anything else for what seemed like a very long time.
I came to in slow, arduous steps, as if I were struggling through deep red
water. I was vaguely conscious of Rachel sitting on a kitchen chair by the
table, still wearing her white cotton robe. Her teeth were visible where the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]