A Time of Torment (41 page)

Parker moved deeper inside, through carven stillness and sightless eyes, until he was brought up short by a form that sent him tumbling back through the years, just as his meeting with Alvin Martin had hours earlier, except this time with a force that was visceral and smelled of blood. It was a statue of Saint Bartholomew, life-sized and anatomically correct, his skin flayed from his body and draped like a stole over his shoulders and around his waist, covering his groin as it flowed to the right, and hanging almost to his feet at the left. He held a blade in one hand, and a Bible in the other.

And in the saint’s agony, Parker was reminded of the final sufferings of his wife and daughter, and in turn his own. He wanted to look away, but could not bring himself to do so, for the statue was at once both terrible and beautiful. He did not even notice the man who joined him until he heard an exhalation from behind, and discovered beside him a figure who might almost have been the image of a saint himself, some martyr from the ancient world, his beard white against his olive skin even in the dimness of the workshop, his head entirely bald and unnaturally smooth, with only the spectacles that magnified his light brown eyes to hint at his modernity.

‘You know who it is?’ he asked. His voice was soft and high.

‘Saint Bartholomew,’ said Parker.

‘Very good.’ He nodded his approval. ‘Some sources claim that he was put in a sack and thrown into the sea, but that’s not an image to inspire great art. The Christian tradition states that he was flayed alive in Armenia, and then beheaded. They called it the “Syrian Martyrdom”. The beheading part tends to be left out of depictions, though. It’s hard to make beauty from a headless martyr.’

‘Did you carve this?’

‘Well, this version is my work, but I can’t claim credit for any more than that. I copied it. The original was created by Marco d’Agrate in 1562, and stands in the transept of Milan Cathedral. I’d always hoped to visit it someday, but I don’t see it happening now. I worked from pictures. Funny – or maybe it isn’t, come to think of it – but nobody has ever asked to buy it. Not sure I’d sell it, though, even if someone did want it. Mind you, that would depend on what was being offered. Feel free to name a price, if the mood strikes you.’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Parker, ‘but thank you anyway.’ He tore his gaze from the carving. ‘Who
does
buy your work?’ he asked.

‘Oh, churches mostly,’ came the reply, ‘though not so many of the storefront kind around here; they don’t hold with idolatry. Some collectors. I’ve even sold to bars and restaurants, because it’s not like these statues have been blessed or anything. But they have a power, you know, doesn’t matter if they’ve been sprinkled with holy water or not. I make more of them than I’ll ever sell. They watch over me. When one departs, I carve another, but I always try to keep a few in reserve.’ He put out his hand.

‘I’m Thomas Rickett.’

‘Charlie Parker.’

They shook.

‘You know you share a name—?’

‘I know.’

‘Guess you’ve heard that before.’

‘Some.’

‘It’s no bad thing. I almost share a name with an ailment, but my father always claimed we were related to General James Brewerton Ricketts, who fought for the Union Army during the Civil War. He tried to keep that claim to family circles, being aware of which side of the Mason–Dixon Line he happened to reside on. You want a coffee or something?’

‘A coffee would be good.’

‘Take out, or a civilized man’s mug?’

‘The mug, if it’s no trouble.’

‘None at all. My wife usually takes care of that side of the business, but she’s out shooting the breeze with her sister.’

Rickett went behind the counter and poured the coffee.

‘Pastry?’

Parker ordered a slice of pound cake, although he wasn’t hungry. It just seemed proper to give Rickett the business.

‘It’s an unusual combination,’ said Parker. ‘A coffee shop and a religious workshop.’

‘The coffee brings folks in, and sometimes they buy a souvenir.’ He gestured to a set of shelves by the door, laden down with small crucifixes, nativity scenes, and statues of the Virgin Mary with rubber suckers on the bottom to fix them to a car dashboard. ‘It might seem odd, but it works.’

Rickett served Parker his cake on an old china plate.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Portland, Maine.’

‘What brings you down here?’

‘Business.’

‘Uh-huh?’ Rickett nodded politely, waiting for Parker to continue, if he chose.

‘In Plassey County,’ Parker added. He figured that it couldn’t hurt. He still knew very little about Plassey, beyond what he’d learned from Alvin Martin.

‘You’re right on the border, then,’ said Rickett. ‘Another mile, and you’ll be in Plassey. Only trees between here and there.’

‘You haven’t asked what business I’m in.’

‘That’s because if it’s to do with Plassey, could be I’d be better off not knowing.’

‘I might be a salesman.’

‘You don’t look like a salesman. You look like the law.’

‘Private.’

‘Like on TV.’

‘Just like it,’ said Parker.

He drank his coffee, and took a bite of pound cake, for appearance’s sake. It was good, so he ate some more.

‘You go into Plassey County much?’ he asked Rickett.

‘No, I do not.’

‘That sounds pretty definite.’

‘It is.’

Rickett’s expression never altered. It was benign, smiling, and very, very careful about what it kept concealed.

‘I see you wear a cross,’ he said.

Parker’s shirt was open at the neck, revealing a small pilgrim’s cross.

‘I do.’

‘Looks old.’

‘Byzantine.’

‘Well, that is old. Does it have any meaning for you?’

‘In what sense?’

‘Are you a Christian man, or is it just something beautiful to wear?’

‘Both, I think.’

‘Good,’ said Rickett. ‘No harm in beauty if it’s used right, but it’s the belief that imbues a thing with power. I believe that the spirit of God inhabits every one of these saints and angels. That’s why I really don’t worry too much about them going to fancy restaurants, or dark bars that are looking to buy some atmosphere. Can’t do the people in those places any harm to have a saint keeping watch over them.’

And in his comment on power and belief, Parker heard something similar coming from the mouth of Ian Williamson, and wondered again at the nature of the Dead King in the Cut.

‘You be sure to keep wearing that cross, where you’re going,’ Rickett continued.

‘In Plassey County?’

‘Yes, in Plassey County. If you’re going there, and you’re the law – private or not – you’re going to run into the Cut.’

‘You know about them?’

‘Most people in the county, and at its borders, know about the Cut.’

‘Are they criminals?’

‘They’re criminals, and more than that.’

‘How much more?’

‘I only know what the saints tell me,’ said Rickett.

‘And what do they tell you?’

‘That I’m not the only one around here who believes in the power of a graven image.’

Parker opened his mouth to speak again, but Rickett held up his right hand in warning.

‘No, I know what’s on your lips, but you don’t go saying that name aloud. Folks come in here – tourists, travelers – and they think they see a workshop, a store, a collection. But that’s not what this is. You want to take a guess at what I have here, Mr Parker?’

‘Protection?’

‘An army of it,’ Rickett confirmed. ‘All to keep at bay whatever lies in the Cut.’

He reached for Parker’s mug.

‘You want more coffee?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Parker. ‘That was enough. I’m done with the cake too,’ he added, although it was mostly crumbs by now.

Rickett took the mug and plate and placed them in a dishwasher under the counter. He looked at his watch.

‘I don’t imagine there’ll be any more business coming my way this evening,’ he said. ‘It’s time to turn off the lights.’

Parker took it as his cue to leave. He had more questions he wanted to ask, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to get much more from Rickett. He began walking to the door, and Rickett followed him.

‘I’m sorry about the statue,’ said Rickett, as Parker opened the door.

‘Why?’

‘The flayed man. I saw in your eyes how the sight of it affected you. It took me a little while to make the connection. Your name was familiar, but not because of music.’

‘Did the saints tell you that, too?’

‘You know, I reckon they probably did. I wouldn’t have spoken so openly otherwise.’

They both looked to the darkness at the east, where the Cut waited.

‘I used to think this was all about good and evil,’ said Rickett, ‘but it’s not.’

‘No?’

‘There’s a kind of evil that isn’t even in opposition to good, because good is an irrelevance to it. It’s a foulness that’s right at the heart of existence, born with the stuff of the universe. It’s in the decay to which all things tend. It is, and it always will be, but in dying we leave it behind.’

‘And while we’re alive?’

‘We set our souls against it, and our saints and angels, too.’ He patted Parker on the shoulder. ‘Especially the destroying ones.’

Parker walked to his car, got in, and started the engine.
The past is more real than the present
, he thought,
and we carry our histories with us
. He pulled out of the lot and turned right. Only when he was safely on the road was Rickett’s sign extinguished, leaving him with just his own lights to guide him. Parker was already half a mile away when he realized that every face in Rickett’s workshop had been facing east.

Toward the Cut.

Toward the Dead King.

H
enkel had been brooding over the Cut ever since the end of the search. Whatever he’d hoped to find there – and it wasn’t primarily Perry Lutter – had proved elusive. If he had been forced to put a name on it, he’d have called it ‘proof’: proof that his instincts about the Cut were right.

The hunt for Perry had gone statewide, and the newspapers and TV had picked up on it, because Henkel had made damn sure that they did. The staties also shook off some of their slack because Perry was the one who had discovered Killian and Huff, and Henkel had suggested to them that he might have seen whoever was responsible for disposing of them. Once again, though, he had no proof, and Perry’s parents were sticking to their story that Perry had told them nothing to indicate he was a witness to a crime. Henkel didn’t want to turn the screws on them, not yet. They were in a state of desperate equilibrium, afraid of the Cut on one hand, and of losing their son entirely on the other.

Henkel had heard through the local chain of whispers that Charlie Lutter had sent an intermediary, Morton Dryden, to the Cut after the search of its territory had concluded. That was a delicate, dangerous thing to do without effectively accusing them of committing a crime, but the message was couched carefully, or so Henkel’s informant told him. Dryden had apparently told Oberon that Charlie wished his son had never found those bodies, and neither Perry nor anyone else in his family knew how they had come to be there. Maybe they were hoping that, if Oberon was holding Perry, or had knowledge of his whereabouts, then he might release him, just in case Perry was being used as some kind of leverage until the investigation petered out.

But the investigation had already turned toward the cartels, so any move by the Cut on Perry would just have brought attention back to Plassey County again. There was no percentage in holding Perry in order to encourage his folks to remain silent, and if the Cut had taken him, they’d have been sure to let the Lutters know that Perry was with them. There was no point in keeping a hostage if nobody knew about it.

So if the Cut wasn’t holding Perry, what were the other options? Henkel was still hoping Perry might be found alive, maybe at the bottom of a hollow or down by a stream bed, with a busted leg that had prevented him from walking, but searchers had scoured Plassey pretty thoroughly and found no trace of him. Then again, Plassey might have been a small county, but there was still a lot of territory to cover, and an injured man might easily be missed, especially if he was unconscious, or too weak to cry out for help.

Sitting in the darkness of his kitchen, Henkel knew that hope didn’t count for much. He felt in his heart that Perry Lutter was dead, and if his death wasn’t accidental, then the Cut had to be responsible, because all that stuff about Mexicans was so much bullshit. But once again, like that image of the snake chewing its own tail, Henkel came back in a circle to the question of why the Cut would risk more trouble by killing Perry if the law was already looking elsewhere for the murderers of Killian and Huff. Oberon and his people would have to be desperate or foolish to do that, which meant that a) Perry Lutter definitely saw the man or men responsible for burying Killian and Huff; b) he could identify them, which indicated they were locals; and c) those involved were intimate enough with Perry to know that he liked to talk, and would inevitably reveal what he knew. Warnings wouldn’t be enough to dissuade him.

Henkel heard sounds from the bedroom, and Irene appeared in the doorway. He had left her in a post-coital doze. She was wearing one of his T-shirts, which showed off her legs to good effect. She was a fine-looking woman: long dark hair, forties, and with looks that were maturing with age. Henkel had no idea what she was doing with him, and didn’t even know much about where she’d come from. She’d said something about an ex-husband, but it was long ago and he was yesterday’s news. She and Henkel hadn’t discussed where the relationship might be going – it was all too recent for that – but for now he was just glad of the company.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.

‘Thinking.’

‘About what?’

‘Perry Lutter.’

‘I was hoping you might be thinking about me.’

‘I’m thinking about you now,’ he said. ‘Hard not to with pins like those.’

‘Come back to bed, then.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute. Just let me finish my milk.’