The Lonely Dead (13 page)

'Gone. Every single one. Disappeared. Nobody living, no sign of bodies. Personal possessions left behind. No sign of a cross carved anywhere. There was the word 'Croatoan', however, carved on a gatepost.'

'Okay,' I said. 'That's kind of spooky. So what happened?'

He shrugged. 'That's the last sure thing anybody knows. White wanted to know what had happened to the people he'd left behind, but the captain and crew of his ship couldn't care less, so he was forced to go back to England. He tried to get another expedition out there in late 1590 but by this time Raleigh and his investors had lost interest. Since then lots of people have tried to put the thing together, starting with a guy called John Smith who was at the Jamestown settlement twenty years later.'

'And?'

'Smith talked to the locals and came up with a few ideas, and they're pretty much the ones still floating around. It turns out the word 'Croatoan' was applied not just to a tribe but also to a large and not very well defined geographical area. So it could have been carved to indicate a destination, as agreed with White. Alternatively it could have implied that the Croatoan themselves had a change of heart and started helping the hapless colonists. Or, if you choose to believe it meant the named tribe had started attacking, then you could theorize that the colonists were forced to head inland. Either idea leads to the possibility that some or all of the settlers (some theories have the male colonists being killed, leaving just the women and children) became assimilated into a local or not so local tribe, and there are a couple of native peoples — notably the Lumbee — who have long-term claims in this direction, some of which sound pretty solid. This theory has been taken seriously since the mid-1800s at least, and speculated about since Jamestown. There's stories of a minister in the mid-1600s meeting friendly natives in the area who spoke English, and talk of some German explorer whose name I couldn't track down who claimed to have had meetings with 'a powerful nation of bearded men' — i.e. possible descendants of the settlers.'

I'd thought the carvings on the door of the cabin hadn't made much impact on me, but as John said this, I found myself suddenly cold, out in the middle of nowhere, in the company of the dead.

Zandt waved an arm to catch the waiter's attention. The waiter started to explain he was busy, caught the look in Zandt's eye, and went to get him another beer. 'The question is why it was carved on the cabin door we found.'

'A quote?' I said. 'Some reference to the Roanoke mystery? But what sense would that make?'

'He's trying to tell us something.'

'I really don't think that place had anything to do with Paul. There was nothing to tie him to it. And anyway — why would he care? Why would he want to tell us stuff?'

'He spent half of Sarah Becker's incarceration lecturing her. Then there's the piece you found on the web three months ago, the diatribe about how everyone except the Straw Men are infected with a social virus which made us start farming, and started the slide towards being civilized. He's on a mission to inform.'

We paused, as drinks were put in front of us. 'The big thing about Paul,' I said, 'is that he doesn't think he's just another lunatic'

'None of them do, Ward. None of these men get up in the morning and think 'I'm going to do something evil today'. They do what they do, and some of them understand that it's bad, and some don't, but either way it's not why they do it.'

'Yes,' I said, irritated at his tone. 'I understand.'

'They do it because
that's what they do,
just like addicts jack themselves with smack. They're not trying to kill themselves. They're not trying to fuck up their lives. They just have to have some heroin, as you need a cigarette and some people need their shoes to be clean and others have to make sure they tape their daily shows or check the door's locked three times when they leave the house. Everyone's got their magic spell, their maintenance rituals, the private things they do that they believe make the world work.'

'What's yours these days — beer?'

'Fuck you.'

'What's the deal with you and Nina?'

'It's none of your fucking business.'

'Yes it is,' I said, angry now. 'There are three people in the world who know about the Straw Men. I've spent three months skulking around the country keeping out of the way. I beat the shit out of some poor guy in Idaho because I thought he'd come to clip me. I'm out on a very long limb with very few resources. You two are it.'

'What about the money from your folks?'

'Gone,' I said. 'Not spent. Wiped. They got to it.'

'Shit,' he said. 'I'm sorry to hear that.' He looked across the street for a moment. 'Things got fucked up,' he said eventually, apparently watching a man who was moving paintings around in a gallery window. 'I moved in. You know we'd been together before, back when I was married. I thought it might work. We both did. But… She's quite intense.'

'Right. Whereas you're just a big fluffy teddy bear.'

He turned his head back, his gaze ending on me as if I was by only a narrow margin the most interesting or relevant object in vision. 'I've always thought so.'

'What were you doing down in Florida?'

He just shook his head. He was beginning to really piss me off.

'Okay, so what else have you found out?'

'Nothing,' he said.

'That's
it,
for a month of looking? You came all the way over here to tell me this? That's your big news?'

'I haven't spent my entire time on it, Ward, and I don't report to you. I've been trying to have a life. There are other things that are important. The Straw Men aren't everything in the world. The Upright Man is just another killer.'

'Bullshit,' I said, loudly. 'He killed your daughter and my parents. He's not just another anything. And your investigative response is some crap that happened four hundred years ago?'

'Sometimes you have to go back a long way to do what needs to get done.'

'And that means… what?'

He shrugged. He'd said all he had to say.

'So what are you going to do now?'

'Check into a hotel somewhere, I guess.'

'This one's not bad.' I felt exposed the moment I'd said this, and wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

He smiled. 'Too expensive for the likes of me, Ward.'

Digging myself deeper: 'So accept a loan.'

'A loan? I thought you were the guy with no resources.'

'John, why are you being such an asshole?'

He stood, and dropped ten bucks on the table.

'Because it's going to take more than this to do something about them,' he said.

He walked away, up the street, and didn't look back. I watched him until he had disappeared from sight, and then went upstairs to pack.

12

It was a little after six and Tom was standing on the balcony that ran along the entire front of the two-storey, L-shaped motel when the car pulled into the lot. He was feeling better in most ways, but worse in others. Getting out of the police station had helped. Also changing his clothes. The deputy had been patient about waiting while Tom picked up new jeans and a fleece jacket and everything that went underneath. What else he had owned prior to His Time Away was stowed in the trunk of the rental car, now sitting down in the lot.

A long hot shower and a sit in the room's single chair had got him to the point where he more or less felt able to go in search of food. His old clothes were stashed in the bag the new ones had come in. Though it seemed hard to believe they'd be wearable again, he felt a superstitious bond with them. A part of his mind — the part that had kept every wallet he had ever owned — was prepared to impute power to the inanimate, to believe power lay lodged in
things.
Without those clothes, who knows what might have happened?

Though he would not quite have been able to admit it, even to himself, there was another aspect to it. The clothes were his witness. They had been there. They knew what he had seen, or felt. In all the time he'd been struggling through the wilderness, desperate for civilization, Tom had kept one thought in his mind. Not only did he now want to stay alive after all, he had a reason to. He knew something. He was bringing news.

The experience had not gone quite as he'd hoped.

He still believed in what he'd seen — or had felt. It was evident that no one else did. The sheriff's position had been starkly clear, and the deputy took his time from him. The fifteen minutes he had spent in the little clothes boutique across from the market had shown Tom that news travelled fast. He'd already guessed this from the fact that the Patrice woman had heard enough to come and drop her drab bombshell (she had spent five minutes afterwards apologizing profusely to Tom, which had somehow just made things worse). People quickly knew what he'd said he'd seen. And by the time he was handing over a credit card for his purchases, it had become evident to Tom that everyone now thought he was a crazy person.

He was drunk in Frank's, you know, couple nights before. Tried to kill himself in the forest, but not with a gun or something hunky like that. Pills, I believe. Passed out, thought he saw something. Then spent two days lost. How funny is that!

Funny, or sad. The girl behind the register didn't articulate any of this, but her very, very kind smile said it all. The man behind the motel's reception desk hadn't given him much eye contact either; but at the end, again there was a slanted smile. Tom got the message. He was one step away from laughing stock. And two steps away from something far worse. If Connolly said anything about what he'd found out, the kind smiles would stop. And Connolly didn't know the whole of it.

He had spent some of the time in the chair staring at the phone, wondering whether he should call home. It had been three, four days. He couldn't remember whether he'd called the night before His Time Away. He knew this didn't speak well of his state of mind. He didn't believe he'd done so, thought he'd wisely denied himself the temptation to say something big or portentous. He felt he owed Sarah a call now, to let her know he was all right, but knew she had no reason to suspect he wouldn't be. His radio silence would be nothing more than additional evidence for the 'Tom is an asshole' school of thought. He wanted to tell her his news. He had to tell someone, and one of his key insights in His Time Away had been that he still cared about Sarah very much. He wouldn't have to tell her why he was out in the woods in the first place (though she might find out later, so he'd have to leave room for that revelation): he could just say what he'd found. The problem was that, as he stood trying to hang onto the feeling he'd had in the forest, that of being in danger but being worthwhile, his news looked flawed.

Without it there was no reason to call 'home', and nothing new to say. And what did it amount to, after all?

That thing which everyone knows doesn't really exist? The big silly furry one that always turned out to have been faked? I saw it. I was
that
close to a mythical beast. It stood over me and I smelt its terrible breath. At least…
I
think I did
—
while I was drunk out of my mind, and half asleep, and a retch away from death. And then I saw a footprint. Though maybe I didn't, and if the truth be told I was hearing voices at the time. That's my news. PS I love you.

Ought to win her respect right back. She'd probably leap straight down the phone, just to be with him again. My brave explorer. My … stupid fucking fool.

No. What she knew already was bad, but not as bad as what she might some day find out. For them to stand any chance against that, any chance at all, things had to be good from now. She would have to believe his word against that of others. He couldn't call her now sounding like a lunatic. Didn't want to even send her a text message. When he communicated with her again, it had to be the start of an upward track. But no matter how long he stood out on the balcony, he couldn't work out where one of those might start.

The car pulled around the lot in a smooth arc and came to rest right in the middle. The driver's side door opened almost immediately and a man got out. He was a little over medium height, had brown hair cut well, and was dressed like city folk.

He looked up at the balcony and gave a little wave. 'You wouldn't be Tom Kozelek, by any chance?'

Tom frowned at him for a moment. 'Yes,' he said, eventually. 'Who are you?'

The man grinned. 'How about that? Come a long way fast to talk to you, and there you are, just like that.'

'Okay,' Tom said. 'But who are you, exactly?'

The man pulled a card out of his wallet, and held it up. It was too far for Tom to read the words, but the logo looked familiar.

'I'm someone who wants to hear your story,' he said. 'Now — should I come up there, or are you going to let me buy you a beer?'

—«»—«»—«»—

At quarter of seven Al Connolly was still sitting at his desk in the station. There was no real reason to be. Phil had gone off duty but his other deputy, Conrad, was killing time out in the front. Connolly could have been at home, but the truth was there wasn't a great deal to do there. Still, he was just about to get up and head on out when there was a knock on his door. He looked up to see Melissa Hoffman standing outside.

'Doctor,' Connolly said. 'What can I do for you?'

'Well,' she said, 'it's nothing really. Just … well, I found something out, and I thought I maybe should tell you.'

He looked towards the machine in the corner and saw it was half full. 'You want a coffee?'

She nodded, sat down diffidently. People always did. No matter how much they wanted to look at ease, all but a few looked as though they wanted to have the cuffs clapped on right away, in case there was some sin they'd forgotten. The few who didn't look that way were always genuine criminals, who at some deep, deep level just didn't understand.

He fixed them both a cup, sat back at the desk, and said nothing.

'Okay,' she said. 'I did something naughty. When I was in here this morning, checking the mountain guy, on the way out I spotted something in his bag.'

'What kind of thing?'

'This,' she said, and put something on Connolly's desk. He picked it up, turned it over. It looked like a small clump of weeds. Old weeds. 'I probably shouldn't have taken it.'

'Probably,' he said. 'What is it?'

'That's just it,' she said. 'I saw it there — actually it was one of several in the bag — and I wondered what it was. Here you've got a guy who's making outlandish claims which we know aren't true.'

'That's all been squared away,' Connolly said, comfortably. 'Turned out there was a confusion.'

'Oh,' Melissa said, disappointed. 'Then maybe this isn't news after all. I just thought I should check it out. Didn't want to find it was some bad stuff he'd got locally, and we were going to have a rash of drug nuts popping up all over.'

'It was a good thought,' he said. 'So…'

'So I have a neighbour who knows about plants and herbs. I took it to her, see if she could tell me what it was.'

'Would this be Liz Jenkins?'

Melissa looked very slightly uncomfortable. 'Yes.'

'She understands a lot about herbs, I know. Matter of fact, you get a chance, you might want to find a way of hinting to her she might want to be a bit more discreet about her use of one of them. Her boyfriend, also.'

'I will,' Melissa said. 'And I know about all that, and it's part of the reason I went to her.'

'Oh yes?'

She flushed.
'Yes.
I thought she'd be able to recognize the kind of thing that people might want to smoke.'

Connolly smiled. 'Whereas you'd be at a complete loss.'

'Exactly.' Melissa cocked her head and smiled back, thinking not for the first time that Connolly was a better guy, and a little bit more subtle, than most people gave him credit for. 'Shall I go on?'

'I'm agog. Did she know what it was?'

'Actually, it's two things.' Melissa placed a piece of paper on the desk and smoothed it out so they both could read — or attempt to read — Liz's baroque handwriting. 'If you look closely you can see one stalk has the remains of some tiny flowers on it. I didn't see them at first. That one is called
Scutellaria lateriflora,
or skullcap or sometimes Quaker bonnet or hoodwort.'

She leaned forward to disentangle another of the scraggy strands, which to Connolly looked indistinguishable from the rest. 'And this other stuff in amongst it is
Valeriana officinalis.
Now.
Scutellaria
grows all over the US and Southern Canada. It's not especially rare. But the interesting thing is Liz said a group called the Eclectics back in the nineteenth century used it as a tranquillizer or sedative, to treat insomnia and nervousness.'

Connolly nodded. He sensed there was more.

'And valerian is mentioned by a pre-Civil War herbalist called Thompson. He says the earliest colonists found several Indian tribes using it, and he called it, and Liz showed me the quote, 'the best nervine known' — by which he meant 'tranquillizer.' Complementary therapists use it today for anxiety and headache and (again) insomnia, and Liz claims it's been favourably tested against Valium.'

'That's real interesting,' Connolly said. 'Amazing what you can run across out there in the woods.'

'It is, isn't it?'

'So you're saying this stuff is just local flora, and it got brushed into the guy's bag as he was stumbling along in the night.'

'No, Al, I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying that for three reasons.' She put her coffee down, and counted off on her fingers. 'The first is it would be a family-size coincidence that two known herbal remedies happened to fall into his bag, especially ones that sound perfect for the mental state of the guy at the time. The second is that if you look down at the lower end of the stems there, it looks a little like one of the stalks has been used to bind them all together.'

'Can't really see that,' Connolly said. 'Could just be the way they were mushed together in his bag.'

'Okay,' Melissa said. 'Be that way. But here's the thing.
Scutellaria lateriflora
is a perennial. It dies back in the winter.'

Connolly said nothing.

'Al, that guy could have dragged his bag from here to Vancouver and none of that stuff is going to end up inside. Which means it was put there deliberately.'

Connolly looked at her for a long moment, then reached across and picked up the coffee pot again. He raised it at her, but she shook her head. He took his time pouring another cup for himself, quietly wishing he had gone home just a little earlier.

'I don't really see where this is leading,' he said, finally. 'Okay, so the guy went to a herb doctor recently. What's the big deal?'

'Maybe there is none,' Melissa said. 'But I don't see him doing that, getting these kind of dried remedies and taking them along on an admitted suicide jaunt. Does that make sense to you?'

'No, I guess it doesn't.' Connolly could have suggested that the plants were left there from some earlier time or trip, but he'd already noticed that backpacks just like the one Kozelek had were for sale right there in Sheffer. 'So where does that leave us, Mrs Fletcher?'

Melissa laughed attractively. 'Nowhere. Just thought I'd pass it on. We're having supper over at the Wilsons' tonight anyhow, so it was on our way. I left Jeff over in Frank's, and actually, unless I want to lose the Wilsons as friends and dining companions, I should go haul him out of there before he gets into another round.'

Connolly accompanied her out to the street, and stood watching as she walked the long diagonal across the wet road to Frank's double-lot spread of warm light and neon, treading carefully to avoid messing up her dinner party shoes. She was a good doctor, and it didn't matter to him if she and Liz Jenkins spent the occasional private evening not making much sense. Al had enjoyed some nights like that himself, back in the day. She'd most likely drop the stuff about the plants. Wasn't really anywhere it could go.

But he walked back to his office just the same, sat at his desk, and thought a while.

—«»—«»—«»—

Tom and the journalist were just starting on their second beer in Frank's when the doctor lady came in to pick up a guy who was presumably her husband. This man had been sitting talking affably with the barman on the other side of the room. She calmly but firmly made him leave his drink on the counter, and led him back to the outside. Tom turned to watch them crossing the lot and saw her laughing hard at something her man had said. Tom had made women laugh sometimes, too. Suddenly he missed the sound very much.

'Anyone you know?' the journalist said.

Tom shook his head. 'Local doctor. The police got her in to look me over.'