City of Heretics (24 page)

He pulled out his knife and walked toward it.

Crowe woke with a cry on his lips.

It was night still. The driver’s side window was rolled down and cold air rushed in. He had the usual moment of anxiety, not knowing where he was or how he’d gotten there—this time it was even more pronounced because even after a few seconds he still didn’t know.

He was in the car, pulled off on the side of the road on a long empty stretch of two-lane highway. He craned his head around, looking for any other signs of life, but he was completely alone.

No memory of how he’d gotten there.

His heart rate slowed down eventually and he rolled up the window and sat there shivering.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

The nightmare was vivid in his mind. He could still feel the sensation of fur on his fingertips, could still taste the copper tang of adolescent rage.

His muscles ached horribly. He fumbled around in his pockets until he found the pain pills. He popped them open, shook two of them out onto his palm. He stared at them. Then he slid them back into the bottle and closed it and put it back in his pocket.

Go with the pain, he told himself. Go with it, let it keep you focused. Let it guide you right to the Ghost Cat. And let it be the power that puts a bullet in Peter Murke’s heart.

He drove the rest of the night, east on 40 again but this time past Germantown and Bartlett and well away from Memphis. At a little town about sixty miles west of Nashville he stopped for gas and coffee and a couple packets of little chocolate donuts.

He remembered the GPS in the car then, cursed himself for letting his brain get so foggy, and stopped at a rest station until a blue Saturn with Ohio plates pulled in. A lone guy, probably a salesman, piled out and hurried to the restroom. Crowe got out of his car, unscrewed the plates, switched them, and then got the Saturn going. Within four minutes, he was off again, heading east.

The sun was coming up, gray and cold, when he finally stopped at a motel just east of Murfreesboro. He got the key to his room from an old geezer who looked as miserable as Crowe felt, made it into the bed, and fell asleep still dressed.

It was icy in the room when he finally woke up, a good ten hours later. He lay there for a long time, studying a long crack in the ceiling that ran from one corner to the other. In the room next to his he could hear a woman saying something, a man laughing in response. Their TV came on, but he couldn’t make out what program it was.

Getting up was harder than he’d expected. Ten hours of sleep, unmoving, had stiffened his abused body, and every step toward the curtained window sent shimmers of pain up his back and through his shoulders. He made it to the window, peeked out through the curtain at another gray evening. It was just after six, and the sun had already disappeared.

The battery in the cell phone Vitower had given him was dead, had been for a while without him noticing. He tossed it in the little plastic trash bin in the bathroom.

His temple throbbed where Wills had smashed him with his gun. Gingerly touching his head, he flipped the dial up on the thermostat to get some heat, hobbled to the bathroom, peeled off his clothes and took a long shower. He cleaned his wounds and the effort of it took away the little reservoir of strength he had left. Naked, he crawled back into bed and fell asleep again.

He didn’t leave the motel room for another two days.

All sorts of ugly thoughts played through his head during that time. The Ghost Cat was a recurring visitor in his nightmares, leaving a stain of guilt on that really belonged to someone else; but maybe it belonged to him after all, maybe it belonged to everyone, everyone who could let a monster like Murke live.

Or maybe the guilt was simply for being what he was.
You’re no different than them
, Garay had said.
You think you’re better, but you ain’t
.

Well, no kidding, Garay.

Crowe hated Vitower enough to want to kill him, and really, he’d done nothing to him and Crowe knew that and it still didn’t matter.

He hated Murke too, that was the thing. He hated him and that hate felt different, it felt a bit closer, a bit more real. He’d killed Faith.

And by killing Faith, he’d shown Crowe what he really was, what all of them really were.

Murke’s first victim was haunting him and forcing him to see the world through the warped eyes of an angry, screwed-up boy. He hated Murke for making him recognize the similarities between them.

It could’ve been Crowe. That’s what the Ghost Cat was telling him.

So he stayed in that room for two days and told himself he was recuperating. Longbaugh, that was where this would all end, and he didn’t know what the ending would mean and he was no longer sure he wanted to know.

Crowe called the desk clerk to bring a travel kit with a toothbrush and a razor, but he didn’t use either. The first night he ordered delivery from an awful Chinese place next door to the motel and the second night a pizza. He kept the heat turned up and didn’t wear clothes and was in constant pain but didn’t take a single pill. He kept the TV on all the time, even when he was sleeping, which was often.

On the third morning, about four AM, he woke up knowing that the time had finally come and he got up before giving himself a chance to change his mind. He showered and got dressed and finally used the toothbrush and the razor. He looked at his face in the mirror, examined the ugly scar that ran from temple to jaw, and thought about how it changed his whole face and made him look more like the scarred man he was inside, and that little bit of melodrama made him laugh.

Losing it, he thought. Getting soft or something.

He checked out of the motel, bought a roadmap of Tennessee from the display stand in the office, and started the long drive to Longbaugh.

The flatlands of western Tennessee had given way to hills and woodlands and twisting road long before he’d made it to Nashville, but the farther east he went the more pronounced the differences became. It was already spring here, the trees sprouting new leaves and the world turning various shades of green. He drove past great sloping slabs of red clay that loomed over the highway. He drove through dark narrow tunnels that opened out onto curves, clinging to the edges of startling drop-offs into deep valleys. Pine trees and kudzu everywhere, mountains in the distance and little towns far below. The smell of wet earth. It couldn’t have been more different from Memphis.

He stopped for gas at a lonely little station isolated by the woods just outside some Podunk town off the freeway. While he was there he bought a gallon gas can made of bright red plastic, filled that up too. He put it in the trunk of the Saturn. Then he drove without stopping, and by early evening he’d reached the outskirts of Longbaugh.

It was south of Chattanooga, a good twenty miles off the highway. A long two-lane road wound through woods so thick with new spring-like growth they formed a canopy over the road and it was like driving through a silent cathedral. The setting sun cast rippling shadows on the path ahead of him.

At first, Longbaugh was nothing but a few meager houses hiding behind the trees, but soon little signs made themselves known, one by one—a gas station/auto repair shop, a bait store, a couple more houses, a package store, a shoddy-looking motel. The road curved sharply to the left, and there was downtown Longbaugh.

There wasn’t much to it. Crowe drove right through the heart of the place in less than three minutes. A few minor streets leading off left and right, and between them a dry goods store, a video rental place, a bar. Down the side streets he saw modest houses, economy cars, battered pick-up trucks and SUV’s. On a street to the left, he saw the tall spire of what could only be a church.

Could finding the Church of Christ the Fisher actually be that goddamn easy?

He drove past it, wanting to get a look at the rest of the town first. There were a couple of women standing near the road, in the wide gravel parking lot in front of the bar. A little farther down, a young man with a Buffalo Bill beard and a tee-shirt braved the cold weather with stoic idiocy, loitering in front of his pick-up truck. A few other people were around, and they all stopped and stared as he drove past.

Driving, it took him a minute to realize he’d actually been through Longbaugh and out the other side. The buildings thinned out and next thing he knew he was surrounded again by the forest.

He managed to turn the car around on a wide spot in the road and headed back.

The same people who’d eyed him before eyed him again. The two middle-aged women who’d been in the bar parking lot approached the road as he pulled near and one of them waved for him to stop.

He stopped, rolled down the window. The woman who’d waved leaned down to get a look at him. She smelled like rum and cigarette smoke. She said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said.

“You lost or somethin’?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I only ask ‘cause you was driving back and forth and all.”

“No, not lost. I’m heading back to that motel I passed.”

She looked in the direction he’d indicated, like she wasn’t aware of any motel. She said, “Oh. No kidding?  I don’t know that anyone’s bedded down there in a while. Maybe it ain’t even open.”

“Guess I’ll find out.”

“Guess you will at that,” she said, and smiled. All her bottom row of teeth were missing. “That’s some scar you got, mister, if you don’t mind me saying.”

He said, “Is this bar the place to be in Longbaugh?”

“If it ain’t, no one gave me the good word.”  Her friend leaned in closer, trying to get a look at him, and the one at the window pushed her away, saying, “Geddoff, you drunk bitch,” and then, “It’s the bar or the church, and the church ain’t open ‘cept on Sundays. You thinking of coming by for a drink?”

“Thinking of it.”

“I’ll be around. Buy me one, I’ll spend some time with you.”

Her friend pushed her back enough to share the same space by the car. She was a little younger, a little easier to look at, but not by much. She said, “Willie’s such a slut, don’t pay her no mind.”

“You bitch!  I ain’t a slut!”

“Every time some man comes through town, she just loses it.”

They started giggling and pushing each other around, like two teenage girls, and then the one called Willie decked her friend hard with a balled-up fist and a full-on fight had started.

Crowe pulled away, glanced in the rear-view to see them fall to the gravel, punching and kicking. Two men came rushing out of nowhere to break it up and Crowe took the right toward the church and couldn’t see anymore.

Church of Christ the Fisher
, the sign on the sparse lawn read.
Services Sunday 8-11 AM & Wed 7-9 PM
. The letters were neat and blocky, the sort that can be changed periodically, but these didn’t look like they’d been changed in a long time. Plexi-glass covered the sign, held in place with a simple lock. In smaller letters on the bottom it read
Society of Christ the Fisher
.

The church itself was unremarkable. Aside from the spire that rose up in front about two stories, it could’ve been an industrial building— tan slabs of painted wood, small windows, battered steel door. Crowe pulled into the small empty parking lot and got out of the car, muscles aching from the long drive.

From the front of the church, he could barely see the main road he’d just left, and the far corner of the bar’s parking lot. But for the most part the church seemed pretty well-secluded; woods on both sides and behind, and only a single modest house directly across.

He could probably break in to the place without raising an alarm.

The idea juggled around in his head for a minute or two, until he set it down and opened the trunk of the Saturn. He pulled out the plastic gas can, closed the trunk and walked back to the church. He set the can at the corner of the church, hidden by a ragged shrub, well out of casual sight. He got back in the car. It could wait another couple of hours, until dark.

Back at the main street, a bunch of men had broken up the fight, and a crowd of about eight people had gathered. They all stopped to look at Crowe again when he paused at the corner, and continued to stare after when he headed back toward the motel.

Wouldn’t it be just my luck, he thought, if every single one of these bastards knew the truth about the Society?  If every last man, woman and child had been initiated into its bloody rites? 

That was a ridiculous thought, of course, he knew that, but the idea of an entire town full of religious fanatic murderers, surviving in this strange and remote town far off the grid, sent a chill of apprehension down his spine.

Motels had become a way of life for him this last week, and this one was the worst yet. The door to the small lobby was off its hinges, resting against the outside wall, and the battered screen door creaked when he entered. The lobby was close and icy cold, bare wooden floor unswept, and instead of a counter there was a beat-up metal desk next to the entrance. The place smelled wet and musty, like rot.

From the next room, he could hear a TV show. Dr. Phil, it sounded like. Someone said, “Hey, yeah, hold up a minute, here I come,” and a second later a man showed up in the doorway. He wore a ratty bathrobe and a baseball cap and hadn’t shaved in a good long time. He had a bowl of cereal in his hand, and milk dribbled down his chin.

“Oh,” he said. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Crowe said. “Can I get a room?”

He giggled. “I dunno. Can you?”  Then, “Just kiddin’. My old English teacher, she used to do that. I’d say, can I go the bathroom, and she’d say I don’t know, can you?  Like that. Trying to tell me, you know, I meant to say
may
I go to the bathroom.”

Crowe said, “
May
I get a room, then?”

“Right,” he said. He ambled over to the metal desk, set his bowl of cereal down and pulled a ledger out of one of the drawers. “Yeah, right, a room, sure.”  He sat down, flipping through pages of the ledger. “Ain’t had nobody here in a while, sorry if I’m not lookin’ too presentable-like.”