Lights out was usually at nine p.m., but both women had small battery-powered book lamps to use for reading, and a pair of flashlights that weren’t much more powerful than the lamps. The computer was charged for them twice daily since the hut had no outlets that the women could access. It was currently fully juiced, so Paige watched a couple of episodes of That ’70s Show from a box set that someone from the Cut had bought well used. Gayle didn’t join her, and Paige didn’t laugh at the sitcom. It was just an escape – meaningless sound and light in which she could lose herself for a while, because she didn’t think she could focus on a book, or even a magazine article. For the first time since she had been abducted, someone from outside the Cut had come to the house, and it was probably a lawman. What had brought him? Was there progress at last into the investigation, something to link her or Gayle to the Cut? No, it couldn’t be that: a solid lead would have resulted in more than a cursory examination of their prison. Nevertheless, an outsider had been here, in this room. He would have heard her if she’d been able to cry out.
So close, so close.
And what then? The Cut would have killed him, lawman or not. Kidnapping was good for ten years in West Virginia – Paige had read about it in a newspaper article – and a single rape conviction could put someone away for up to thirty-five years, never mind multiple charges linked to any number of women. Nobody that Paige had encountered so far in this place – not Cassander or Oberon, and certainly not fucking Hannah – was going down without a fight.
Sherah came to check on them shortly after nine, and then the main lights were extinguished. Paige had gone to the bathroom while there was still power, but Gayle had not, and Paige heard her fumbling around by the flashlight’s illumination while she undressed in her own room. Paige ran her hands over the swelling at her belly. She felt heavy and tender. She also thought that she might have to pee again. She wished Gayle would hurry up. She pulled her nightgown over her head and sat on the edge of her bed. A few minutes later she heard the toilet flush, and then Gayle appeared at her door.
‘I have a present for you,’ she said. As she came closer, Paige could see that she was smiling.
Paige wasn’t sure that she liked the sound of this. She knew all of Gayle’s possessions by heart. There was nothing that the girl could give her, or nothing that she might want.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
Gayle held out her hands, palms down, clenched into fists. She had big hands for a small girl, with long, muscular fingers. She’d told Paige that she used to play the piano, before – well, before whatever it was that had made her run away, which she still hadn’t shared with Paige, but about which the older woman had her suspicions. It was in the way Gayle said the words ‘my mom’s boyfriend’, and the expression on her face that came with them, like she’d just swallowed something bad.
‘Pick one.’
‘I need to pee.’
‘Please, just pick.’
‘The left.’
Gayle opened her fist. Lying in the palm was a section of red brick: a good heavy one, too, by the looks of it. Paige took it from her, and weighed it in her hand.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘The same place I got this,’ said Gayle, opening her right fist to reveal a long, narrow stone, with a kind of dull point at the end, like some ancient tool discovered in the course of an archaeological dig. ‘In the basement. I dug them up with my fingers while we were stuck down there.’
Paige stared at Gayle with new eyes. While she’d been listening to voices and footsteps that might represent the possibility of rescue, and thinking about how much she hated Hannah, Gayle had been proactive.
These weren’t just stones. These were weapons.
‘So when can we use them?’ asked Gayle.
Paige tightened her grip on the piece of brick, lifted her hand, and brought it down in a single swift movement. Yes, she thought, I can do this. She pictured Sherah’s nose breaking, and Hannah bleeding from the ears.
‘Soon,’ said Paige.
Real soon.
IV
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Deuteronomy 12:3
71
Parker headed east not long after his talk with Alvin Martin, just as the light was starting to fail. The clouds hung low over verdant hills, white wisps trailing from the woods like the smoke from unseen fires. He passed houses with too much junk in their yards, and too little money to maintain them. He saw cheap signs for clothing alterations, barbers and hair salons, the kinds of businesses that could easily be opened with only a little investment, and just as easily closed again. Mailboxes gaped emptily for houses hidden among the trees, and he lost count of the number of PRIVATE ROAD signs. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians fought for believers alongside roadside churches that gave no hint of the substance of their beliefs beyond plain crosses and plainer exteriors, most of them indistinguishable from the beaten-down stores and battered homes that surrounded them. If there were any Catholics down here, Parker thought, they were staying low, and out of range.
He had learned little from Norah Meddows, but had anticipated as much. It was enough that he had rattled her, and through Alvin Martin he now believed that he had a name and location for those involved in the torment of Jerome Burnel: the Cut.
If, as he thought, Meddows was involved in all that had befallen her husband, she would call her accomplices in the Cut, and the decision would be theirs to make: whether to continue to ignore Parker’s interest in their affairs – which seemed unlikely, even unwise – or take action against him. They might delay for a time, but eventually, if only by his presence, he would force them to move against him. He would draw them down upon himself, and in doing so, they would reveal themselves. After that, he could start picking them off.
He did not think it strange that the investigation into Jerome Burnel’s disappearance had brought him into contact once again with Alvin Martin, just as he had not considered it particularly odd that Ian Williamson’s grandfather should have provided him with a link to the Dead King. Parker was a weapon in the hands of an unseen god. He walked tangled paths, and the surprise was not that they sometimes crossed, but that they did not do so more often.
But seeing Alvin Martin had reminded Parker of another time, when he was less than he was now, a creature composed of rage and pain, risking his own destruction by seeking out the man who had butchered his family in order to avenge himself upon him. Speaking with Martin brought Parker back to the Traveling Man, and a house in Brooklyn that had once promised so much, and a vision of himself bathed by police lights with the blood of his wife and child on his hands. Some of that anger still remained within him, but now he could feed on it without allowing himself to be consumed in turn.
Or so he assured himself.
He drove in silence toward Plassey County until the rain came and the road grew slick beneath his wheels. A tiredness came over him, and his side and back began to ache. He saw a red-and-yellow light manifest itself among the trees, and he pulled into a parking lot sprinkled with woodchips, behind which stood a low building with a log façade, and windows of stained glass. It appeared more church than diner, but the sign – RICKETT’S COUNTRY PROVISIONS – promised coffee and baked goods, along with ‘hand-crafted religious iconography’. Ordinarily, the promise of the latter might have caused Parker to seek more conventional surroundings in which to rest, but the pain was insistent, and he needed to get out of the car and stretch his legs.
Inside, Rickett’s smelled of coffee beans and freshly shaved wood. A counter to the left held mugs and paper cups, and a glass display case with muffins, cinnamon rolls and slices of pound cake. A series of windows ran along the wall behind it, while in front were three tables with mismatched chairs. Choral music was playing in the background, although Parker
could not identify it. It didn’t matter. His attention was on the rest of the interior.
Every available space – walls, floors, even the beams under the roof – was covered with carvings. Some were merely heads or busts, others entire bodies. All were images of saints and angels, although Parker recognized only a handful, a holdover from a childhood that had included time spent as an altar boy. Icons of the four evangelists were in a cluster to his left, each depicted in various forms, so that Matthew was a winged man with a lance in one version, and in another he held a purse; John bore a chalice with a snake emerging from it, but beside it, in the form of a smaller carving, he carried an eagle on his arm. Elsewhere, Francis of Assisi was surrounded by a phantasmagoria of birds, fish, and wolf heads, while behind him an armored Gabriel blew a trumpet blast to herald the resurrection of the dead and the coming of the Lord, although Parker recalled Father Flannan telling him that the Bible did not identify the herald by name, and such iconography was a product of Byzantine art, of which Parker knew little then and less now.
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.’