Death Spiral (32 page)

“Somebody starved a boy to death. We’re assuming, for the time being, it wasn’t you.”

“He wanted to know if he was making the right choice. That’s all.”

“What choice?”

Cooney was beginning to look in as much pain as Kelly had the night before. “I gave the man my word!”

“What choice?” Wilf said again.

“Between his daughter and his God.” Cooney looked at Wilf, his eyes full of unmistakable anguish now. “Will you swear you won’t make an arrest on the strength of what I tell you? Because I can’t stand the thought of that. Then who am I?”

Wilf had gone as still and as rapt as any hunter in any woods. “I swear,” he said.

Cooney stood up. He examined the hammer in his hand for a full half-minute. Wilf waited.

“God’s Truth is,” he finally said, “Mr. Kelly wanted to save them both. His daughter and that child. But he couldn’t, not the way he saw it, so he wanted me to agree that God would understand his choice. And I kept telling him that he was exactly wrong, that only by saving them both could he truly and for all eternity set his daughter free. Mr. Kelly did not follow my counsel. And yes, his soul was wracked with the agonies of the damned. And yes, despite everything, the Lord had mercy on him last night. He was saved by the Grace of the Living God.”

“You knew what was going on for some time then. Is that what you’re saying? And you didn’t do anything?”

“What could I have done?”

“You could have gone to the police.”

“She was only twelve years old! Twelve!” He looked at Wilf as if just the mention of her age should elicit a sea of mercy.

“And?” Wilf said.

“And?” Cooney looked bewildered for a moment. “And you remember what it was like, don’t you? Ten years back or so? They were terrible times. No jobs to be found anywhere. Men riding the rails, tramping the roads. And all this little girl did was go for a walk down by the river. There were some men camped down there, and there was this man, this afflicted individual who was travelling with them, as a kind of amusement I suppose, as a kind of mascot. And the men took her and made a spectacle of her and dragged her down into the water. And they put him on her, all of them laughing and shouting and urging him on. This soulless witless man and this terrified girl.” Cooney looked away from Wilf, as if he were ashamed for himself and ashamed for the world. “When she made her way back home, all she said was that she’d fallen down. That’s all she said. She scarcely knew what had happened anyway. And when she started to show the child she was carrying, and she did tell her story, her mother and father faced a choice. Keep her home, say nothing, shield her from shame. Or trust that everything is for a good purpose in God’s Creation, that our fate is meant to free us, not imprison us. They chose to say that she was ill and kept her away from school, and when that hapless baby came and they saw what it was they were convinced that they’d been right. And in so doing, they trapped her in a lie and in darkness and in hatred for the rest of her life.”

“Why do you say hatred?”

“Because she hated that child. Hated it with all her might. She went off on her own at sixteen, according to her father, found work in some city, came home only rarely. And when she returned for her mother’s funeral and Mr. Kelly couldn’t get that boy to eat she wouldn’t even try. He wanted to take it somewhere, get it help. And she said, ‘They’ll ask questions, you’ll destroy my life.’ And she said, ‘No.’”

“What was its name?”

“It didn’t have a name.”

“They must have called it something.”

Cooney shook his head.

“Where’s the daughter now?”

“Mr. Kelly said she’s leaving today.”

“She’s out at the farm?”

“I suppose.”

Wilf turned and headed for the open doors.

“You understand, don’t you?” Cooney called out after him.

“Understand what?”

“That there are two victims here. She was a child, too. She was a victim, too.”

“I understand,” Wilf said.

Cooney’s voice cut like a knife through the air. “Then why don’t you leave her alone?”

Wilf drove back toward the Kelly farm. He turned into the muddy side road and coasted past their lane and pulled up behind a screen of trees.

His breath was coming too rapidly; it was threatening to disappear on him again. He got out of the car and walked into the edge of the trees. A wet urgent pungency was rising up out of the loamy earth. Random patches of snow were trickling away. Shafts of sunlight streaked down through the branches.

Wilf began to push his way deeper into the tangle. After a short struggle he came out at a snake fence running along the top of a slope. Kelly’s outbuildings and a gleaming pig wallow were just below him. A muddy corral sheltered a few sleepy cattle and a sagging haymow. Chickens were pecking about here and there.

A door slammed shut and Kelly came out of the house. He crossed the yard toward an old pickup truck and slumped down on its running board. He sat there for a while looking back toward the house and then he got up and walked toward the largest of the outbuildings. He pushed through the door and disappeared inside.

Wilf came out of the trees and made his way down the slope. He skirted around the henhouse, limped by an old rusting and padlocked gas pump and came up to the back of the truck. He looked toward the house. There was no one standing just inside the doorway; there was no movement behind any of the windows.

“Leave her alone,” Cooney had said. Pity the father, who sat there night and day listening to the boy’s cries grow weaker and weaker. Pity the mother, who is dead. And most of all, pity the daughter.

He couldn’t. Every instinct, every muscle, every heartbeat told him that the answer to the boy in the cage was in that house. He couldn’t stop.

Wilf crossed the yard, climbed up on the side porch and tried the door. It opened. Two suitcases were sitting on a linoleum floor. He stepped inside. The kitchen was long and shadowy, the ceiling so low it almost brushed his head.

He listened for a moment. Nothing but a muffled silence. No creaking floor above him, no sound of a door being drawn closed anywhere.A smaller door stood in front of him on the opposite wall. He crossed over to it and lifted the latch. It made a kind of scraping sound and swung open over a warped wooden step. There was a light switch on the wall.

Wilf turned it on and everything beneath his feet lit up.

He began to ease himself down step by step. He could smell musty air, feel its coolness move past his face. He could see the floor beneath, a red-coloured earth as smooth as clay. A tangle of vegetable and fruit baskets of every size and shape lay before him. A solid wall of preserves ran down the one side. A pile of ashes was mounded up in front of a furnace. And just past the furnace Wilf could see another door.

He made his way toward it and pulled it open. At first he couldn’t see anything in the gloom and then he began to make out a stovepipe running up a rough rubble wall. A blanket was wrapped around something just beneath it. He pulled the blanket away. A small heating stove and a scuttle half-full of coal came into view.

The floor was the same reddish clay as in the larger room and Wilf could see that a woven pattern had been pressed into it, as if a rough mat had laid there not so long ago. A whitewashed post was holding up the swaying ceiling. A single nail was sticking out of its side.

“What are you doing?”

Wilf swung around.

A young woman was standing in the dusty light by the open door. “I’m Wilf McLauchlin,” Wilf managed to say. “I’m with the town police. I’m investigating.” There was a profound wildness in her bony face and a wildness to her eyes and in the way her hair cascaded down past her waist. “Perhaps you saw me earlier today. Are you Mr. Kelly’s daughter?”

Her eyes moved to Wilf’s cane, lingered on his left leg, landed on his left arm. “What are you investigating?”

“Why your father would need a stove in a root cellar.”

“He needs to keep the potatoes from freezing.”

“I thought that’s what a root cellar was for.”

“You don’t know much, do you?”

“I don’t even know your name.”

The woman’s feral eyes came up to meet Wilf’s eyes and stayed there, remaining hard and motionless.

Wilf looked away. “I don’t see any potatoes here.”

“You broke in. You have no right.”

“I have a search warrant.”

“Let me see it.”

Wilf just stood there.

“Get the hell out of our house,” she said and disappeared from the door.

Wilf could hear her running up the stairs. He followed her, hurrying along through the baskets and hauling himself up the steps into the kitchen. He could see her through the open side door. She was running toward the largest of the outbuildings.

Wilf headed across the yard toward the truck. He knew he had time to do that much. If the keys were in it he’d drive it away. Let Andy explain everything. Let Andy get a search warrant. He wrenched open the door.

A key ring was hanging down from the ignition. House keys, extra truck keys, padlock keys all shining in a patch of sunlight, suspended there. Wilf came to a stop.

He began to fumble one-handedly with the ring. He managed to slip off three keys and shut the clasp again. He eased the truck’s door closed as quietly as he could. And then he ran, half-stumbling around the gas pump and past the henhouse, refusing to look behind him, hopping and puffing up the slope.

He reached the edge of the trees. He flung himself over the snake fence.

He looked back.

Mr. Kelly was nowhere in sight. Neither was his daughter.

* * *

Duncan was sitting in a tree. He could see the stone cottage and most of the yard that way. Carole had already come out and gone back in twice since Wilf had left earlier that morning. She seemed restless, afraid to be left alone.

She deserved to be left alone. He’d seen her the night before. He’d heard her, too. Her little mewing cries coming through the glass, moaning like any old barn cat in heat, her white legs waving in the air. He’d watched the whole thing and then he’d wandered half-blind toward the river.

Wilf McLauchlin and Carole. Just like his lawyer had said. Wake up, his lawyer had said. Wilf was never his wing man. Carole was never his friend.

Duncan had found the edge of the water in the pitch dark. He’d huddled under some bushes and wondered what he should do. He was on the wrong side of the river, for one thing. And he’d never find Babe and Dandy anyway. And the truth was, he was pretty much starved. He decided to finish the last jar of his mother’s strawberry jam he’d been carrying around in his coat pocket. By some miracle the jar was still sitting on the shelf in his closet, the special jar he’d saved from when all the rest was used up, because he knew there would never be any more. Never again the sight of his mother working in the kitchen, never again the smell of berries and sugar, never again watching clouds billowing up from all the pots on the stove.

Duncan lay down on the ground and ate the whole thing, spooning it out with his finger. He didn’t want to hurt Carole. But more and more, trying not to think about it, he kept thinking about it. He thought about it first when Wilf and Andy Creighton had started carrying out her furniture. And he thought about it after he’d snuck into the back of the truck. Her mattress was riding right there beside him all the way out into the countryside. He’d reached out and touched it. He was already sure she’d done the two-backed beast with Wilf McLauchlin. Already positive. And he’d been proved right.

But how would it all work out? What could he do?

He’d begun to shiver in the cold and the dark just thinking about it. He could wait for Wilf to leave the next day and then walk into the house. She’d look up from whatever she was doing. “I’m sorry, Duncan,” she’d say, but she’d be lying because there’d be fresh jism running down her legs again. And he’d grab her by her throat, and by her hair, and he’d press her face up against his crotch.

No.

She was his friend. A long time ago. “Hi, Duncan. Hi!” In the park. And he was swinging back and forth in a sweet daze just for her. Swinging. Higher. And higher.

He really didn’t want to hurt Carole.

He’d hang himself instead.

And he could see himself dragging her to that same mattress, ripping off all her clothes, her breasts loose once again, but this time he’d be able to touch them. Squeeze them.

Or wade out into the river. Hold his head under the water. He was brave enough to do that. He could do that for Carole. Take a deep breath and float away.

And she’d be screaming and screaming because she didn’t like him at all. Never did. Screaming and fighting against him. Because he was a freak.

Or he could roll over right where he was and take the empty preserve jar and break it over a stone. He could cut himself with it.

And he was on top of her now, pushing in a jagged piece of glass. And blood was gushing from his hand and from the hole in her neck and the feeling was rushing into him now, just like that time with Basil, only a lot more, lifting, lifting him up. And the mattress was turning red as a rose.