Rise the Dark (8 page)

The thundering sound of the truck engine's starting jerked his attention away. They were ready to leave, and that was both good and bad, because he knew what was coming once they were gone.

Almost immediately there was a
whoosh
of ignition, and the closed door at the top of the cellar stairs was outlined in a thin orange line.

The house was burning on top of him.

He went up the stairs, crossing over her body. Then he pulled the door open and almost fell back down the stairs in the face of the wave of flames that met him. The kitchen was aglow with fire; flames climbed the walls. Somewhere in the living room, what was left of the gas can exploded, and the blaze that followed it had a flash of blue trapped in the orange and red.

Mark slammed the door against the heat, and the cellar returned to blackness, but there was heavy smoke already, and he knew time was short.

He left the stairs and stumbled to the window. It had an iron lock, rusted shut. He hammered on it with the butt of the .38 but made no progress, and the smoke was thickening already, so he gave up on the lock and bashed the butt of the gun into the center of the glass. The old pane fractured but didn't give, and he swore and smashed it again and this time it broke and he put his hand through the window and over the glass, razoring his thumb open. He balled his jacket in his fist and used that to clear the remains of the glass, then he put his right foot on the old generator nearby, the massive hunk of rusting steel, and stepped up high enough to reach through the small window and get a grip on the exterior wall.

It was tight, but he'd wormed through tighter spaces in caves in Indiana, and with the fire crackling just behind him, motivation was not an issue. He dragged himself through, leaving thin ribbons of flesh behind as he swept over remnant teeth of glass, and he was on his belly in the grass, gasping for air, when he saw a figure just ahead. He fumbled to get his gun upright and had nearly pulled the trigger when he recognized the boy from the orange tree, illuminated by the flames. He was offering a hand.

Mark accepted it and the boy helped him to his feet and they stumbled away together as a window blew out somewhere upstairs and the fire roared through the old house.

“It wasn't me,” Mark said.

“I know.” The boy released him and stepped aside, regarding the burning home with curiosity but no evident fear. “I saw them. I didn't know you were inside, though. I saw them with the gas cans.”

A siren rose over the sound of the flames and they both turned toward it. No emergency lights were visible yet, just the sound. The flames cast flickering orange glows over the palm leaves but out beyond the village was dark.

“I think they hurt Dixie,” the boy said.

“Yes,” Mark said. “They hurt her.” He rubbed his eyes as if to remove the image of the woman's body jammed indifferently under the cellar stairs. “Do you know who they are?”

The boy shook his head. “No, but they said the name you asked about before. The strange one.”

“Garland?”

“That's it. They're going to him now.”

“Where?”

“They didn't say a place. And they said another name too. Eli.”

Eli. It meant nothing to Mark. He said, “Do they work for Garland, is that it? Is he in charge?”

“No. The one named Eli is in charge.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I just am. I know things, sometimes. Everyone here does. One day I'll be better at it than I am now. But I know some things already. Eli is the worst one.” The boy was backing up as the flames grew taller and hotter. “He's very bad.”

Mark had trouble imagining anyone worse than Garland Webb, but he nodded and said, “Okay. Thank you for telling me. And wait, please. I need something from you. Please, it's important.” He fumbled in his pocket with a bloody hand. “Son, I need you to take something for me and keep it until I'm back. Can you do that? It's very important. It will help me find them and stop them from hurting anyone else.”

He extended his cell phone with its photographs of the red truck's license plate from earlier in the afternoon. He didn't want to have it on him when the police came, didn't want to have to explain any of the photos. He needed a head start. The boy regarded it suspiciously.

“Why don't you give it to the police?”

“Because I need to find those people before the police do.”

The boy looked into Mark's eyes for a second and then turned his chin slightly, his gaze drifting up and over Mark's shoulder.

“I shouldn't do it, but Walter says it's fine.”

A few short hours ago Mark would have told the boy to stop telling his tales about ghosts. Now he said, “Listen to Walter, son. It sounds like he knows something about what happens when bad people stay out of prison.”

By the time the police arrived, the boy had pocketed the phone and was standing in the shadows just outside the circle of firelight, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered.

“Is there anyone inside?” an officer asked.

“Yes. But you're not going to be able to help her now,” Mark said, and then he glanced back for the boy, but he was gone.

D
oug Oriel, known in Cassadaga as Myron Pate, had driven through the night and Janell slept as Florida fell behind them and they carved into the Georgia pinewoods. She had dreamed often and well in Cassadaga. Sometimes, they were memories of the Netherlands, her first days with Eli. Other times, visions of the dark world and the horrified faces of the foolish people who feared it. In the truck, though, she struggled to find deep enough sleep for dreams at all, and when they came, they were more like flashes of recent memory, Novak behind his circle of light, shining it into her eyes.

Their first stop was well north of Atlanta, an obscure spot on the map that would have been forgotten completely if not for the interstate that ran through it. Doug pulled into a gas station beside a pump, shut the engine off, and looked at her.

“It's your role,” he said. “I can call him, but he will say that—”

“No. I'll call. I'm senior.”

Usually this grated on him, but today he was relieved. This was the very reason he hadn't been granted leadership. He was a weapon, nothing more. An operator. Without her guidance, useless.

“If he needs to hear from me, I'll back up your story.”

“Just pump the gas,” she said, and got out of the truck.

In the backseat was a black bag designed to hold a laptop computer, innocuous-looking, invisible. She unzipped it and selected one of the forty cell phones inside, then powered it up for the first time. The gas was pumping, but she could see Doug watching her, and she walked away from the truck and into the shadows at the far end of the parking lot. Then she dialed the first of three carefully memorized numbers. Each one asked for a new number, rerouting her, rerouting her, and rerouting her again. Then, finally, a ring.

Her throat was tight and her skin prickled. When he spoke, she thought she would not be able to answer. It was that wonderful to hear his voice again. For months, their only communication had been short e-mail messages.

“It's me,” she said. “We are in motion.”

“But Novak is alive?”

“I believe so.”

“You
believe
so?”

“It is my understanding he escaped the house unharmed.”

“Then this is not a question of belief. This is a fact.”

“Yes.” The fact that she had failed.

“What does he understand?”

“Nothing.”

“That seems impossible.”

“It's true. His interest is only in Garland.”

“He can't see beyond that?”

“His whole world exists in that ditch where his wife died. It is all that he sees. I spent extra time with him to assess this. Now I wish I hadn't.”

“It's important to know.” He sighed. “But Garland taunted him. If he can possibly track Garland here, we will have to deal with him.”

She was unaware of the taunt and wanted to know more about it, but he didn't like questioning or prolonged phone calls, so she stayed silent. For a time, so was he. Thinking, no doubt, about her failure. She could picture Novak in the darkness, his hands in hers, and the memory made her wince. She'd been so close. A few seconds faster, that was all she'd needed to be. She hadn't expected him to move so swiftly. Hadn't expected him to move at all. He'd obliged her every request to that point, so there had been no sense of a rush.

“The house was clean?” he asked at last.

“Completely.”

Silence once more. She could hear wind from his side of the call and tried to picture his surroundings. She'd imagined them many times but never seen them. They'd been apart so long, Amsterdam seemed like another life.

“We will need to move faster,” he said. “That's the only choice. I've already taken steps to expedite operations here. You will have to hurry to join us, and you must not be stopped.”

“We won't be.”

“It will be different energy for you now. Not as strong as it was there. You'll have to find it in yourself.”

“Not a problem,” she said, and truer words had never been spoken.

“So it begins,” he said, and she wasn't fearful, but joyful.

It had been a long wait.

She powered the phone off, smashed it against the concrete wall until fragments of it scattered, and threw the remains into the trash. Doug was waiting nervously beside the truck, and she extended her hand for the keys.

“I'll drive now,” she said. She couldn't keep the smile off her face.

It was not the way things were supposed to have begun, but they were in motion now, and that was all that mattered.

T
he jail reminded Mark of many he'd known in his youth.

It was a rural jail, and the deputy who'd arrested him shared a last name with his booking officer, suggesting that good-ol'-boy policing flourished in Volusia County. At least here, though, the good ol' boys were polite enough, if confused. In the jails of Montana and Wyoming, Mark had met plenty who weren't so polite. In those days, the officers also hadn't had cameras recording them, and they'd been drinking buddies with the prosecutors and the judges.

Tonight, the deputies didn't know what in the hell to do with him, so they'd put him in the drunk tank. He'd gotten one phone call and had used it to reach Jeff London, offering no details beyond his location. Then they'd locked him up and gone off to consider the situation and determine whether he was a murderer or an arsonist or both.

Mark passed the time sitting on a bunk beside the stainless-steel sink and water fountain that were mounted on the back of the toilet, a one-piece unit. If you desired a drink of water, you'd better hope there wasn't another drunk vomiting or shitting. Fortunately, Mark was alone and sober, and—all that really mattered, as he recalled the blond woman down on her knees before him in that dark room, her hands so close to the waiting knives—he was alive.

The police who eventually came for him weren't local. It wasn't the arresting deputy but a captain from DeLand, along with an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. They took his statement, recording all the while.

“He told you his name was Myron Pate, and she didn't give you a name?”

“Correct. She pretended she was Dixie Witte, but she didn't give a name. He said he was Myron Pate, but I think he lied.”

“We think so too.”

“Okay. Then I can't help you. The only person who would know is Dixie Witte, and I never spoke to her. I assumed it was her body that I found in that basement.”

“You assumed right.”

“It's a small town,” Mark said. “Someone has to know who they were.”

If the police had heard any names mentioned, they didn't care to share them. They returned to asking questions, and Mark answered them. Most of them. The captain from DeLand was most interested in why he hadn't fled the house when he'd had the chance.

“I was curious.”

“Not curious enough to call the police, even though you thought you might have just escaped a murder attempt?”

Mark shrugged.

“A woman was killed in that house, Mr. Novak. You don't seem committed to helping us understand how that happened.”

“A woman was killed in Cassadaga more than two years ago,” Mark said. “It's why I was there. You now know everything I know about the woman who was killed tonight. We can talk through it again, but you've already heard it.”

They wanted to talk through it again.

It was somewhere around four in the morning when Jeff London managed to rouse a judge from sleep and convince her that Mark's questioning had reached excessive lengths if he wasn't going to be booked.

Jeff met him outside the jail.

“Let's talk in the car,” Mark said. “I've spent enough time here.”

Jeff drove, and they talked.

“Unless they were better at bluffing than I think,” Mark said, “the police don't know any more about who was renting that house from Dixie Witte than I do. Am I wrong?”

“No. From what I've been told—and this comes from the prosecutor here, a guy I've known for years—all they're sure of is that Dixie rented the place for cash, didn't keep records, and was a big believer in respecting privacy. The neighbors all agree on this. Most of them didn't like her tenants, and a couple of them saw the guy you know as Myron go into the house with the blond woman, both of them carrying gas cans, right before it went up. That's good news for you.”

“Anyone mention a young boy? He was there.”

“A boy? Not that I've heard of.”

“He was the one who told me people in the house turned over often. And once you're inside, it is pretty clear that the various tenants think it's a special home,” Mark said, remembering the wild words scrawled in paint.

“Tell me what happened,” Jeff said, and Mark did. It was the same speech he'd given the police, with one addition.

“I have a license plate I need you to run. But first I need to find the kid who has my phone, assuming he kept it. I think he did, because he believes I've got the support of a dead man. It's like being a made guy in the Mafia, apparently. In Cassadaga, a dead man named Walter vouched for me.”

Jeff stared at him. Mark shrugged. “It's a different kind of place.”

“I'm familiar with that. What I want to know is why in the hell you chose not to give the evidence on your phone to the police.”

Mark didn't speak. Jeff grimaced and said, “Don't go down this road. Please, do not go down this road.”

“I need to find Garland Webb before the police do.”

“There are other victims now. Not just Lauren. And other suspects. It's bigger than you, bigger than her.”

“They know where he is,” Mark said as if Jeff hadn't spoken. “And the police have had their shots.”

“There's no coming back from the choice you're making.”

“Would you drive me to the town, at least? If I can find the kid and get my phone, I'll figure out another way to get the license plate run. My PI license is still valid, even if I don't work for you.”

Jeff's voice was sad and distant. “We'll get you the plate.”

Mark hadn't expected him to agree to that. He said, “You're losing your faith in the system a little bit yourself, aren't you?”

“No, Markus. Not even a little bit.”

“Then why help me?”

A mile passed in silence before Jeff said, “Because she died on my watch. Working for my company, on my case. The things you feel? I don't pretend to know them. It's not the same. But that doesn't mean I don't feel anything.”

“It wasn't on your watch.”

“Like hell. I could have stopped her if I'd wanted to. She pushed it, but I could have said no.”

“She pushed it?”

Jeff nodded. He usually looked far younger than his years, but not now. “It was her idea. She didn't just ask to go. She
demanded,
almost. She wanted to see the town, she said. It was odd, and I shouldn't have allowed it. So, yeah, it was on my watch. Her interest in the town was strange, and I didn't listen to my instincts. She never belonged there, and yet I facilitated it.”

“How she could put any kind of faith in the stuff they're selling in that town, Jeff, it just kills me. Because it's so
obviously
a con. And she was too smart to fall for a con. Too analytical, too by-the-book. She knew the psychic claims wouldn't be worth a damn in court, and all she cared about was building courtroom product. I didn't understand it the day she left, the last time we spoke, and I still don't. She
knew better.
”

He heard the anger in his own voice. So absurd, but so hard to avoid. The grief never left, but the anger came and went, just like the boy had said of the people at that evil house in Cassadaga. It came and it went, an outlandish, self-righteous rage:
How
could you let yourself get killed, Lauren? Didn't you understand how much I loved you, needed you, how absolutely lost I am now and always will be without you?

As if it had been selfish of her to die.

Jeff pinched his brow and held it for a few seconds. Then he said, “You're a good detective, and a better man. You might actually find Webb first. And when you do, you'll make the right choice. You don't believe that anymore, but I still do.”

They didn't speak for the remainder of the drive.