The Binding (41 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

T
he next morning, John drove down Hanover Road and parked thirty yards down from the tree where Margaret Post had been hung. He waited for two cars to pass him, then made a U-turn and parallel-parked between a Land Cruiser and a Jeep Cherokee. John killed the engine, hit the button to pop the trunk, and got out. Inside the trunk was the rake he’d placed there after breakfast. He hoisted it out and carried it across the street.

He was tired of thinking about
nzombes
and spirits and travelers and the rest of it. That was Nat’s specialty; Nat was smarter than him and would figure it out. He’d decided to go back to what he knew. He was going back to inspect the crime scene again. Forensics had inspected the site, but it never hurt to look again.

Should have done it a few days ago
, John thought.
This voodoo shit has me all discombobulated.
Back to basics now: hard work and a fucking Glock 19 on his hip.

But he didn’t want the
Northam
News
spotting him out here and coming around to ask questions. He hadn’t brought any crime scene tape or any of that. He was wearing his old green Dockers work pants that he used to work around the house, and a Red Sox ball cap. If people mistook him for a Wartham maintenance man prettying up the shrubbery, it was all good. No one needed to know.

John stood in front of the tree and studied the thick branch where he’d found Margaret’s wrists tied. It looked normal. Only a thin strip of bark missing where the rope had scraped against the tree as Margaret struggled for her life. The breeze kicked up, and
the bare branches above his head began to knock into one another in a whispery rhythm. In between the hard
clacks
, he could hear the indrawn breath of the wind.

He inspected the foot of the tree. The day of the murder, it had been drizzling. The branches above, even without their leaves, had protected the ground from any rain falling directly on it, but eventually the water had seeped through and dripped onto the ground. There’d been a struggle when the killer grabbed Margaret, a hell of a struggle, he’d guessed. He’d remembered the ground being all mashed up, no footprints as such—he’d checked, and forensics had confirmed—just churned-up mud. Now John dropped the teeth of the rake onto the far edge of the patch and said a little prayer.
Let me just find something, God. Lead me to the killer.

He pulled on the rake handle. The metal prongs kicked up dirt as they went, and objects shot out ahead of the moving pile of dirt. John leaned over, picked up the biggest one—a rock—and tossed it aside. When he’d reached the end of the dirt patch, he went back and sifted the freed-up dirt, sweeping through the grit slowly with his big hand. Nothing.

He took up the handle and went back to the far edge, resting the last tooth in the final row he’d made on the first run. Then he jerked back and pulled it through again.

Two Heineken bottle caps and three more rocks on the second pull. John bent down and picked up one of the bottle caps, brought it out onto the sidewalk to get a little sunlight on it. It showed faint ridges of light red rust running along the creases where the opener had bent the metal. That had to take a little time, he thought. The caps had been down in the mud a couple of weeks at least, which told him he was going deep enough with the rake.

He tossed the cap and went back to the patch, lifted the rake to the edge, and pulled. Nothing this time, just clumps of mud and a few broken twigs that had been trampled down into the earth.
An SUV came riding up Hanover, a silver Honda Pilot, slowing as it approached John. He pivoted away, toward the brick wall, and leaned on the rake, pretending to rest. The car slowed even further; John stood there, willing the SUV to keep moving. Finally, the engine revved and he saw the Pilot continue down the street.

John walked slowly back, moved the rake farther to the left, and went again. He was halfway through the patch when something silver and dirt-encrusted spit out from the right side of the rake. It disappeared into the churned-up mud, and John leaned on the rake, looking for it.
Where the hell’d it go?
He walked around the edge of the patch, propped the rake on the brick wall, and returned, squatting down over the last place he saw the flash of silver. John slowly ran his fingers over the center of the mud patch, sifting, feeling for something odd. He brushed away the top layer of dirt—as light as chocolate shavings—and peered at the stuff beneath it. Nothing. He grunted, moved left a few inches, and repeated the procedure.

I’m sure I saw something
, he thought.
Too heavy to be an old pull tab from a soda can, and too evenly shaped to be a piece of slate or a shiny rock. Where the hell—

He brushed a little mound of dirt with his fingers and there it was. A little glint of silver. John picked it up and began to rub the dirt away with his thumb. It was a medal, round and heavy in his hand. It showed a bearded man striding across what looked like a river with a little boy on his back, the man’s calves half submerged in the water.

John Bailey knew his saints. There it was, written at the bottom in raised letters:
St. Christopher protect us.

I’ll be damned
, he thought.

He turned it over. On the back, in flowing script, was written:
To Becca, from her father, 4-9-2008.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

C
harlie entered his Gmail password—
Patriots88
—and his in-box came up. There were two new e-mails, the first from someone called FoxyRedhead, but he quickly deleted it and moved down to the next one. It read
LeahSD72
. That was Mommy.

He opened the e-mail:

My big boy—

Don’t worry about Daddy, he’s probably just working too much. As usual. Has he yelled at you a lot? Charlie, has he hit you ever, even once? I won’t get Daddy in trouble but that’s something you can always tell Mommy.

I don’t want you to tell Daddy this, but I’m planning a surprise visit—well, it’s not much of a surprise anymore, is it?!!—in a few weeks when I can get away from work. I will come to see you as soon as I fly into the airport. There might even be an early birthday present in my luggage, but only if you can be a good boy and keep our secret. I don’t know about an Xbox, baby, Mommy’s job isn’t giving her the hours she needs, but I will bring you something special.

Charlie, if Daddy does anything that really scares you, just let me know and I’ll send Grandma over to get you right away. That might get me in trouble, but don’t worry about that. We’re a team, right? You and me. So if you feel afraid, EVER, just write me.

I’ll see you soon, baby, and we’ll go for ice cream at Mrs. Cathay’s, I don’t care how cold it is. The ice cream out here is so terrible you wouldn’t believe it.

Don’t worry, my love. I’ll see you soon.

Love,

Mommy

Charlie frowned and clicked the
Sign Out
button and turned off the power. He stared at the dark screen.

He wanted to see his mother, but he was afraid of a fight between her and daddy. And why didn’t she tell him what to do? Maybe there was a medicine his Daddy needed. Or a book he could get to tell him what was wrong.

Charlie didn’t even want the Xbox anymore. He just wanted his daddy to go back to being normal.

John sighed deeply. He was sitting in the front seat of his car. Between the pad of his thumb and his right index finger was the St. Christopher’s medal, turned upside down. He was rubbing it as his thoughts wandered, always returning to the same uncomfortable place. He could feel the scratchy outline of the inscription underneath his thumb.

He was thinking of Nat.
This will kill the poor bastard
, he thought. John often worried about Nat being alone,
wanting
to be alone. As much as John kidded the guy about his primo bachelor existence, Nat took it to extremes. He’d never let himself care about anyone, except Charlie and himself. It was like they were the only real human connections the man had. He was the most popular loner John had ever met, always keeping people just far enough away so that they wouldn’t have any
claims on him.

But Becca? Nat’s eyes went wide when he talked about her. The girl had gotten to him.

And now this.

“Goddamn it,” John said quietly, rubbing his right temple with his fingers. A headache was taking root right under the skull. What if Becca
had
killed Margaret Post? It was, at best, a murder by—what do you call it? Murder by proxy—he remembered it from one of his academy classes. That’s when you convince someone to kill on your behalf.

But what do you do when the real killer might be some dark presence, a long-dead Haitian sorcerer? And could Becca Prescott really have slit Margaret’s throat, gutted the poor girl, while that thing was inside her? Goading Becca on?

John closed his eyes tight and rubbed his temple harder. The headache seemed to shoot its tentacles to every part of his brain.
Go back to what you know, John. Police work. Bring the woman in and charge her if she’s the one. At least you’ll get one of the creatures off the street.

“Ah, hell,” he said, picking his phone up off the center console and dialing Nat’s number.

In his condo, Nat sat back slowly on his couch, his cell phone to his ear.

“What’s going on?” he said.

John’s voice was scratchy, and sounded far away. “There’s been a development in the Margaret Post case. I found something. I’m coming over—”

“Just tell me.”

He heard John sigh. “I found a piece of jewelry belonging to Becca.”

Nat closed his eyes, a feeling of dread rising in his gut.
“Where?”

“Right under the tree. Where the struggle was.”

Nat, his eyes still closed. He saw in his mind not Becca’s face but the gouges in her wooden door, down the gloom of that airless hallway. He could not keep the thought away: What if it wasn’t a possessed Walter Prescott who was chopping at that door, screaming to kill his innocent daughter? What if Walter seized a rare moment of sanity, when the traveler’s “thought stream” was weak, and tried to kill the source of his misery and his family’s destruction? What if that was the true message of those horrible murderous gashes on her door?

“Fuck,” he said finally. “John—”

“Take it easy, bro.”

“Listen to me. Even if it’s her . . .”

“Nat, I know—”

“No, you don’t. Even if it’s her, it’s not
really
her. Okay? Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear you. But Nat, listen to me . . . what if she’s the one?”

A feeling of horror spread through Nat’s mind like black ink. “The one what?”

“Nat. The traveler.”

“Don’t you think I’d
know
?” Nat practically shouted.

There was a pause. Nat knew what John was thinking. Chase Prescott—the murderer. The random murderer who’d gone off to Williamstown and shot innocent people in cold blood, people he didn’t even know. But at least one of his victims turned out to be the great-great-nephew of Private DeMott of the Marine squadron in Haiti.

Maybe the traveler had passed through the Prescott family like a snake dropping down branches of a tree. Using one member of the family, then killing him off and finding another host. Nestled in that gloom-ridden house. Orchestrating the deaths of the twelve families, including the Prescotts. History repeating it
self every generation, over and over.

Now Becca was the last one.

“Nat?” John’s voice was quiet again. The gentle giant. Worried about his little boy. Worried about Becca causing Charlie to hang him—

Nat shut the thought out.

“Meet me at her house,” Nat said tersely. “It’ll be quicker.”

“All right,” John said. Nat heard the ignition kick in in the background.

Nat put down the phone and closed his eyes. He began to shake.
What if it’s true? How am I to know?

He could not shake the depression sweeping through his mind. It was as if a black hood had been thrown over his head.
It’s not just that the worst will come true
, he thought.
But I am part of the darkness that is coming.

I invited evil into my life
, he thought,
and now I have to pay the price.
Nat opened his mouth but nothing came out. He felt his skin go cold. He suddenly cupped his hand over his mouth.

The worst part isn’t here yet, but it’s coming
, he thought.
It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

N
at was waiting in his car, the driver-side window down to get some air, when John pulled up. Snow drifted down lazily like confetti. His friend’s Malibu pulled in front of the Prescott driveway. Old cop trick, he knew. Block the exit, but make it seem casual.

John approached the car, slapping a long black flashlight against his thigh. Nat watched him come.

“You okay?” John said, leaning on the Saab’s door.

“Yeah.”

Nat took a deep breath, turned the key in the ignition to give the Saab some power, and slid the driver’s window up against the snow. He got out of the car, taking a deep breath, the air so cold it had a taste, like raw peppermint.

“You look like shit, buddy,” John said, a sorrowful smile on his face.

“I know.”

“I can do this if you want to stay out here.”

“No,” Nat said grimly. “I’m okay.”

They walked up the path toward the house.

Nat glanced up. 96 Endicott looked shabby in the light. It needed a fresh coat of paint. Was the thing already decaying now that Walter was gone? How odd to think that this malicious place needed primer and varnish just like any ordinary house.