A Time of Torment (42 page)

She didn’t move.

‘You still think the Cut killed him, don’t you?’

‘I’ve ruled out ghost Mexicans.’

‘Why do you hate the Cut so much?’

‘I don’t hate them.’

‘You do. You may not know it, but I can see it in you.’

Henkel tried to find the right words, but couldn’t, so he settled for:

‘They’re just wrong.’

‘But you’ve got no proof.’

‘They have a history of violence and criminality.’

‘So the stories go, but even if they were like that in the past, it doesn’t mean they’re the same now.’

‘You sound like you’re on their side.’

‘I’m not on anyone’s side!’

‘Not even mine?’

She shook her head.

‘I don’t want to see you hurt.’

‘You think the Cut will try to hurt me?’

‘If you keep pushing them.’

‘Seems to go against what you were saying just a few seconds ago.’

‘They don’t have to hurt you physically. They can exert pressure on people, make sure that you lose the election. Once they have someone in place who they can manipulate, you’ll be forced out of the department, even the county too, assuming that you don’t resign immediately after the votes are counted.’

‘There are enough people in Plassey who don’t believe the Cut should be the law here. That’s how I got voted in to start with.’

‘And the Cut have seen what you can do, and know for sure that you’re not on their side. They don’t like it.’

‘That’s the voice of the well-informed.’

‘Anyone with two ears can hear what’s being said.’

Henkel drained the last of his milk, went to the sink, and ran some water into the glass.

‘Why are you with me?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Why are you here, with me, in this house, in this …’

‘Relationship?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because I like you.’

‘Do you respect me?’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t be with you otherwise. It would mean that I didn’t respect myself.’

‘Then you must understand why I can’t let the Cut be. And it’s not just about Perry, or what’s happened in the past.’

‘Then what is it?’

He hadn’t told anyone else. He wasn’t sure it would make any sense. But he liked her, and she was a woman, so it might be that she’d understand.

‘They have a building in the woods, up back of the Cut’s heart. I looked in it. They told me it was used for storage, or a place for folks to sleep if they weren’t getting along with their families. It seemed like it had been occupied recently. I caught a smell of soap in the air, the kind a woman would use, and there were hairs in the shower drain that looked damp.’

‘So? They have women in the Cut, and I know I’d want to get away from some of their menfolk once in a while if I was married to any of them. One of those women could have been using the hut.’

‘The hut has a lock on the outside, but not on the inside. There isn’t even a bolt.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That it can only be closed from the outside. If I was staying in a hut to be safe, I’d want to be able to lock it myself. Admittedly, there is a second inner door, and that could be locked, but it still doesn’t sit right with me.’

She thought about it.

‘That is odd.’

‘I also couldn’t see any switches inside, or even electrical outlets. It’s wired for light and heat, but the lights are covered in steel grids so no one can get at them.’

Irene joined him at the kitchen table. She sat across from him and held his hands in hers, but said nothing.

‘That’s not a place for people to live,’ he said. ‘It’s a place for people to be kept. It’s a cell.’

‘But who would they keep in there?’ she asked. ‘Perry?’

‘No, not Perry.’

‘Then who?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

And they stayed like that for a time, joined by touch, unspeaking in the listening dark.

T
o the west, in her comfortable German Village home, Norah Meddows ran a bath and poured herself a glass of wine to drink while she lay soaking. Her mother had been born in Columbus, but had married a man from Plassey County. It hadn’t lasted, so maybe it was in the family genes, but Meddows had retained an affection for the city of her mother’s birth. She’d always loved German Village in particular, with its cobbled streets and gaslights, and it had taken a lot of saving and going without to build up enough money for a deposit on a house there, even if it was one of the smallest on the street. If she looked out of her bedroom window, she could just see the lights of the Old Mohawk restaurant, a former general store that had operated as a brothel and speakeasy during Prohibition before opening as a tavern in the thirties, serving a famous soup made from turtles raised in the mud pit in the basement. It had brick walls, a pressed tin ceiling, and a $10.99 sirloin steak special on Sundays. It was her escape and refuge. She’d gone there earlier – not to eat, just to drink. The familiar environment helped to calm her nerves. With one call, she’d condemned the private detective to death, but the likelihood of his murder wasn’t what had driven her to the Old Mohawk’s bar. Instead, she just hoped that none of it rebounded on her.

Sometimes, Columbus seemed too close to West Virginia and the Cut for comfort, but it had been made clear to her after her husband’s actions: they wanted her near, just in case anyone came calling. It had taken years, but eventually someone did.

The lawyer Starcher had always been her point of contact with the Cut. She’d known about him since her time in Plassey County, when her father had got into some trouble with the Cut over a land deal and Starcher helped straighten it out. It was to Starcher that she turned when she came up with the plan to rob her husband of his gems and split the proceeds with the Cut. He’d also acted as the attorney for her divorce under a
pro hac vice
admission. It had been made clear to her that she didn’t have much choice in the matter, and the Cut had levied a fine on her settlement, just as it continued to do on her business each month. She could have complained, since it was their fault a simple robbery had deteriorated into a gunfight that left two of them dead, but the consequences would have been an increase in the levy at best, and at worst a shallow grave somewhere, with any number of unpleasant gradations between those two extremes. The Cut blamed her for what had happened in Maine, and she was unlikely to be forgiven for it in this world.

The bath was slowly filling. She lit a cigarette. She never smoked in the store because she didn’t want to make the clothes smell, but she liked having a cigarette with a glass of wine. She looked at the burning tip, and thought of Harpur Griffin. She still couldn’t figure out why they’d killed him.

The doorbell rang. She walked to the intercom in the hall and pushed the button.

‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Is Hector, Miss Meddow.’

He always called her Miss Meddow. He just couldn’t get his tongue around that final ‘s’.

‘Is it urgent? I’m about to take a bath.’

‘We have fire at storage. Is big mess.’

‘Shit.’

She dropped the cigarette in the bathroom sink. Cinching her robe tighter her around her, she turned off the faucet in the bathroom and headed for the front door in her bare feet. She noticed that a thread had come away from the robe, and the phrase ‘loose end’ came to mind. Was that why they’d killed Harpur Griffin? God, had Parker come calling on him as well, and did he tell the Cut about it?

And a fire. A fucking fire. That was all she needed.

She opened the door. Hector was standing on the step, but behind him were two other men. Both wore black ski masks, and both held pistols. The pistols were .22 Rugers, and barely used, each fitted with a suppressor. The bullet from the first hit Hector in the base of his skull, severing his spinal cord and causing instant paralysis from the neck down. As he collapsed, the shooter stepped forward and dragged the dying Hector into the house while the other man kept his gun on Meddows.

The door closed behind them. Hector, Meddows noticed, wasn’t bleeding much. She thought that was odd. She would have expected more blood. Only then did she start to tremble.

One of the men lifted his mask, revealing the face of Marius Hobb.

‘I didn’t tell him anything,’ said Meddows. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Marius.

He struck her once with the gun. Meddows went down.

She did not even hear the shot that killed her.

E
arly the next morning, after stopping at Shelby’s to pick up coffee and a doughnut, Henkel made a circuit of the Cut, but no vehicles emerged from it and he saw none of its people. The evergreens formed a barrier around it, a physical manifestation of its essential impenetrability. He had led searchers into the Cut, yet was no closer to discovering its secrets.

Henkel ate only half the doughnut. He’d ordered it without thinking, but now when he snacked on something that he shouldn’t be eating, he felt his heart hurt. He had to confirm a date for his procedure soon. Once he did, his health problems would all come out. There would be no way to keep something like that a secret, not even if he recovered rapidly. The Cut would exploit it. A sheriff with a heart condition? Folks, they’d whisper, would need to be careful about voting for a man with such a weakness.

The Cut was winning. He realized that now. It always won. You didn’t survive for centuries without learning the skills to cope with those who might mean you harm. The Cut had escaped being connected to the murder of Killian and Huff, and had so far avoided being implicated in the disappearance of Perry Lutter. Perhaps Irene was right: he had allowed all of this to become personal, and it might be that it was blinding him to the truth. And in the end, what did it matter? Most of the people in Plassey County didn’t want the Cut to cease to exist. They had grown accustomed to its evil, to the point where they no longer even recognized it as such. Its malevolence had become diffused over the years. It was in everything and of everything, and so its presence was hardly registered any longer. Even the disappearance of Perry Lutter was already being explained away.

Perry fell. He had a fit. You know what his kind are like. They’re special, but they don’t live as long as normal folk. The Cut? Nah, the Cut wouldn’t harm Perry Lutter. Nobody would, not in this county.

The law, for what it was, existed only to provide a counterweight. Henkel wasn’t excessively loved by the county. No man whose job description included the words ‘tax collector’ would ever inspire any lasting affection in the general populace.

As he circled the Cut, Henkel determined to let the dice fall as they may. He would book his appointment at the hospital; he would let the relevant people know why he was taking some time off, and they would whisper it to the rest of the county; he would run for re-election the following year, and if he didn’t get the job, well, he might just head west to be closer to his kids.

He drove to the sheriff’s department, where a message was waiting for him, asking him to call Major Alvin Martin of the West Virginia State Police.

Henkel vaguely knew Martin from conferences, and the occasional telephone conversation when county and state business intersected. Martin’s position was essentially administrative. He no longer took an active role in investigations, which probably explained how he managed to stay so neat and clean. For some reason, Martin always reminded Henkel of a new car before it was driven off the lot.

Henkel closed his office door, sat at his desk, and dialed Martin’s number. It was a direct line, and Martin picked up on the second ring. They exchanged pleasantries, asked after each other’s families, and then Martin started talking about some inter-agency initiative designed to combat sexism in recruitment procedures, at which point Henkel’s ass began slowly unscrewing with boredom. He couldn’t understand what was so urgent about this shit. Martin could have sent it in an e-mail, which would have made it easier for Henkel to ignore. He wasn’t sexist. One of his best deputies was a woman, and he’d hired her. She was one of only two hires he’d been permitted in three years due to budget constraints and an absence of retirements and resignations among existing deputies. If this was what Martin was being paid to do, then Henkel wanted some of the good money that the state was clearly throwing around freely in the vicinity of Jefferson Road.

Henkel tuned out, so it took him a moment to realize that Martin had ceased talking.

‘When did you stop listening?’ Martin asked.

‘A while back,’ said Henkel. ‘Nothing personal.’

‘Well, if anyone asks, you can tell them the official reason for my call.’

‘Is there an unofficial reason?’

‘You have a man coming to your county. His name is Charlie Parker. He’s a private investigator out of Portland, Maine.’

‘If he’s here to sightsee, we don’t have much.’

‘I think he’s going after the Cut.’

There was a long silence.

‘Why would you say that?’ asked Henkel.

‘You read about that guy got himself set on fire in his car up in Portland?’

‘Harpur Griffin.’

‘One of yours, right?’

‘From a ways back. He hasn’t troubled us with his presence for a long time, helped by a judge putting him behind bars.’

Henkel sat up straighter behind his desk. He hadn’t immediately connected Griffin’s immolation to the Cut. There had been no cause. But this was interesting.

‘Well, he’s unlikely to be troubling you again,’ said Martin. ‘Burning: story was that, in the dim, dark days, it was the way the Cut dealt with folk who crossed them.’

‘So they say. Was Griffin a friend of this investigator?’

‘I don’t imagine so. One of Parker’s clients has gone missing, and there’s a link to Griffin. I’ll let him tell you the rest.’

‘He ask you to call me?’

‘No, he asked me
not
to call you.’

Henkel had picked up a pen and doodled a hanged man.

‘What do you want me to do here, Major?’

‘That’s up to you. In my experience – my bitter experience – you have two choices: you can cooperate with him, or not cooperate with him, but whichever you decide, it won’t make much difference. He’ll stay with it until the job is done.’