Most humans hunted, too, those who weren’t so alienated from their natures that they retained nothing of their ancient selves. People hunted in different ways and places now: in offices, financial markets, laboratories, and dark city streets. A few still carried the spirit of the true hunter within their breasts. Alex Morse was one of these, and that only made sense. She had been born from a hunter’s loins, and she was simply fulfilling her destiny, as her genes bade her to do.
Right now she was hunting him.
Morse had a tough job ahead. Eldon knew ways of hiding that even animals did not. There had been times, he believed, when he had made himself literally invisible to people passing within a foot of him. Today was a good example. He wasn’t tearing across the country in a panic, as so many people who had killed would now be doing. He was living quietly, close to the earth, and still near the sites of his attacks.
He often felt a deep lethargy after a kill, the way snakes did after devouring large prey. It took time to digest the big things. Later, of course, he would begin to stir, to focus on research again. But now he felt a deep slowness in his veins, a reluctance to engage with life that almost frightened him. The feeling wasn’t new. Sometimes he felt like a retrovirus himself, neither alive nor dead, but rather half a helix—half a chain—eternally searching for a tie that would bind. He suspected that most human beings were like that: dormant, drifting, like living corpses until they infiltrated the barriers of another person. By insinuating themselves into that other life, they began to function, to act, to feel, and ultimately to reproduce. But after a time (varying in every case, but always inevitable) they began to kill the host body. Look at the desperate men and women who went to Andrew Rusk for help. Most had already attached themselves to a new host and were now consumed by a frantic impulse to flee the dying husk of the old one, the husk that they themselves had sucked dry. And they would not scruple to kill if necessary.
Eldon listened to the whisper of the creek and let his mind drift downstream. Sometimes he had trouble evacuating his bowels. Before his adoptive father came to believe that Eldon had been ordained by God to handle serpents, he had flown into rages and beaten the boy without mercy. All the anger that would have crashed onto the thick heads of his biological children was diverted onto Eldon by his wife, a living monument to passive aggression. But Eldon had understood none of that then; he understood only pain. Even now, he had more than a dozen burn scars on his body, souvenirs of his father’s Kafkaesque efforts to “prove” that he was not one of the elect, that he had been touched by the Evil One. (Being burned by the flame constituted damning proof of sin.) The red-hot iron had scourged Eldon in places he had not touched himself back then—the very iron they used in church to fulfill Luke 10:19: Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. And for the skeptical, there was Mark 16:18, which Eldon had heard repeated ten thousand times before he was fifteen: They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover—
The sound of a cell phone was alien in these woods, and many creatures stopped to listen. Eldon let it ring three more times before he answered.
“Yes?”
“Dr. Traver?”
Eldon blinked three times, slowly. “Yes.”
“It’s Neville Byrd.”
“Yes?”
“I think I may have him, sir. Or it, rather.”
“Go on.”
“The thing you were waiting for, you know? The mechanism.”
“Go on.”
“Andy Rusk just logged on to this Dutch Web site. It seems to me he’s going through an authentication protocol of some kind. You know, verifying his identity.”
“And?”
“Well…I mean, if he does that tomorrow, I’d say we’ve found the trigger, you know? Like, if he didn’t log in the next day, all hell would break loose. Or whatever it is you’re expecting.”
Eldon found it hard to adjust to the sudden intrusion of modernity. “Very good. Call me when…you’re certain.”
Neville Byrd sat breathing into the phone—he was almost panting, really, and obviously puzzled by his employer’s apparent detachment. “I’ll do that, Doctor. Is there anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay, then.”
The connection went dead.
Eldon hit END, then wiped himself with some broad leaves and walked slowly back to his motorcycle. He saw a shiver in the pine straw as he walked, a shiver that filled him with anticipation. Instead of halting, as most people would have, he threw out his right foot.
A thick black snake reared up before him, exposing the milky lining of its mouth and two long fangs. A cottonmouth moccasin. The tip of its tail vibrated like a rattlesnake’s, but there was no sound. This viper had no rattle like its cousin. Still, it stood its ground more fiercely than a rattler would have done.
“Agkistrodon piscivorus,” Eldon murmured. “Are you a sign, my friend?”
The cottonmouth seemed perplexed by his lack of fear. As Dr. Tarver moved forward, he opened his mouth and flicked his tongue in and out, an old habit from his snake-hunting days. The cottonmouth was not brilliantly hued like the coral, but corals were rare, and the one he’d found in the park was probably dead by now. Agent Morse would almost certainly survive, even if she’d been bitten. But she would never be the same. She would have tasted the enmity that God had promised in Genesis, and she would know that her present hunt was like no other.
The cottonmouth advanced in a quick rush, showing that he meant business. Eldon laughed and sidestepped the snake, whose body was nearly as thick as his forearm. Its diamond-shaped head was big as an average man’s fist. A snake like that could generate a lot of fear. In some contexts, it could be a very persuasive tool.
“I believe you are,” he said. “A sign of rebirth.”
As he shouldered his duffel bag and climbed aboard the Honda, his laughter echoed strangely through the trees.
CHAPTER 30
Chris was sitting at his kitchen table dictating charts when the cell phone Alex had given him began to ring. Ben was in the den playing Madden NFL on his Xbox, but they could see each other through the open door. Ben had already asked about the unfamiliar cell phone, and Chris had played it off as something the hospital had lent him. He debated not answering, then calling Alex back after Ben went to sleep, but that might be some time. He glanced at Ben, then got up and reached to the top of the refrigerator, where he’d stashed his .38. Slipping it into his pocket, he picked up the cell phone and a flashlight, then walked to the front door, calling, “I’m going outside for better reception, okay?”
Ben didn’t even look in his direction.
“Alex?” he said, walking across the driveway. “How’s it going up there?”
“Not so good.”
“You sound shaky.”
“Not my best day.”
“I’m sorry. Take another Ativan.”
“I’d like to, but they’re giving me a drug test in the morning. And it’s not voluntary.”
“Ativan’s no big deal. You’ve got a prescription.”
“Not in writing.”
“I’ll fax one up there tomorrow.”
“That won’t help. They don’t want me talking to you, Chris. They don’t want me talking to anybody associated with any of the cases. Actually, ‘noncases’ would be more accurate.”
“They still don’t believe you?”
“For a second, I thought I saw something in an old friend’s eye, but I was wrong.”
Chris switched on the flashlight and scanned his front yard. Two pairs of yellow-green eyes glowed to life on a hilltop sixty meters away. The deer reassured him, for the skittish animals would instantly vanish if someone were prowling the area. “Well, your big worry was that they would fire you. Have they done that?”
“Not yet. They offered
me a deal.”
“What deal?”
“If I give up everything, stop trying to find out what happened to Grace, they probably won’t fire me.”
Chris didn’t know what to say.
“They want me to go to a goddamn psychiatric hospital. They think I’m having some kind of breakdown.”
Though he didn’t want to confess it, Chris had suspected the same thing for a while.
In a small voice, Alex said, “Is that what you think?”
“Absolutely not. Listen, I spoke to my old hematology professor up at Sloan-Kettering today. He scared me to death, Alex. Murdering someone by giving them cancer is more than just theoretically possible. Connolly has done it himself, to mice.”
“How?”
Chris quickly recounted the scenarios Pete Connolly had outlined for him.
“My God. I wish I had talked to him a week ago.”
Chris walked through a flower bed and up to the den window. Ben was still glued to the television, his mouth taut, his hands flying over the game controller.
“Listen,” Alex said, “I called to let you know that I’m sending someone down to watch over you and Ben tonight.”
“Who?”
“Will Kilmer, my father’s old partner. You’ve heard me talk about him. He’s an ex–homicide detective, now private. He’s about seventy, and really nice. He’s also sharper and tougher than he looks. I just want you to know he’s going to be outside.”
“I’m not going to turn him away. I’m walking around with my gun, nervous as a cat.”
“That’s good. Just don’t shoot Will.”
“Don’t worry.”
There was a brief silence. Then Alex said, “I also want you to know something else.”
His stomach tightened in dread.
“Will has a detective staying up at the Alluvian Hotel. He’s watching Thora.”
Chris felt a surprising ambivalence about this. “Really?”
“I didn’t tell you because it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. But I had to do it, Chris.”
“I understand. Has the guy seen anything suspicious?”
Another hesitation. “The detective’s wife thinks she may have seen Shane Lansing leave the hotel about five thirty this morning. She’s not positive, though.”
The knots in Chris’s stomach eased a little. “I told you, I saw Lansing early this morning in Natchez. He couldn’t have made it back here from Greenwood in that time.”
“Unless he flew.”
“There’s no commercial service to Greenwood, and Lansing isn’t a pilot.”
“You’ve been giving this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”
Chris colored. “Of course. I even waited outside his office in my car this afternoon, to make sure he was really there working.”
“Was he?”
“Yes. But the fact that he hasn’t pressed assault charges is pretty goddamn suspicious.”
“We’ll know the truth soon enough, I think. Be nice to Will, if you see him. He practically raised me, and he’s doing this for free.”
“When will he be here?”
“Probably within the next half hour.”
“What am I supposed to tell Ben?”
“What time does he go to bed?”
“Probably an hour from now.”
“I’ll make sure Will doesn’t come up to the house until after that.”
“Thanks. When are you coming back?”
“I’m meeting with the OPR in the morning. They’ll probably ask for my badge and gun. There may be paperwork to do up here, but I’m going to try to get back as soon as I can. You just make sure you’re alive and well when I get there.”
Chris turned and looked over at the hilltop. The eyes were still there, like golden spheres floating in the night. “Don’t worry about that.” He started to hang up, but he felt that he should say one thing more before he did. “Alex?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe you should think about taking that deal.”
He heard only the hissing silence of the open connection.
“If we concentrate on the medical side of things,” he said, “if we use people like Pete Connolly, I think we’ll eventually have enough evidence to convince your superiors to look into this themselves.”
“Not soon enough,” Alex said bitterly. “Not for Jamie. I think he knows what his father did, Chris. He doesn’t admit it to himself, but at some level, he knows.”
“Have you made any progress getting the medical records of the other victims? From the families, maybe?”
“When could I have done that?” she replied testily.
“I understand. Look, just try to find out who their doctors were. Maybe I can get hold of them through a backdoor route.”
“That’s unethical, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s illegal.”
“Well, well. Things change when it gets personal, don’t they?”
A rush of anger went through him. “Look, if you don’t—”
“I’m sorry, Chris. I couldn’t resist. I’ve been alone in this for so long. You know I’ll do anything to get those records.”
“Okay. I need to get back to Ben. Don’t do anything crazy in that meeting tomorrow.”
Alex laughed, the sound strangely brittle through the cell phone. “That’s what everybody tells me.”
Chris hung up and looked over at the hilltop. Now there were five pairs of eyes. He clapped his hands together once, hard. As if controlled by a single mind, the eyes aligned themselves and focused on him. The cheep of crickets died, and even the frogs down at the pond fell silent. Chris whistled once, long and low, utterly perplexing the deer. They stared for a moment that dilated into something immeasurable, then bolted into the woods with a drumming of hoofbeats.
Gone.
As he walked back into the house, the floating eyes hovered in his mind like the afterimage of an exploding flashbulb. At about the same intensity, a shadowy film was running through his mind: Thora sitting astride Shane Lansing in a darkened hotel room, the air fetid with humid Delta heat, her body glistening with sweat, her eyes wild with abandon—
“Dad?” Ben called. “Where you been?”
“Watching some deer.”
“How many?”
“Five.”
“Yeah? Come play me a game.”
Chris stepped around the refrigerator and laid the .38 on top again. “Okay, buddy. I want to be the Colts this time.”
“No way!”
Chris lay on the sofa bed in his home theater, just up the hall from the master bedroom suite, and listened to the slow, regular sound of Ben’s breathing. Ben had asked him to open up the bed on the pretext that it was more comfortable for watching a movie, but Chris knew that with his mother gone, the boy wanted to sleep down here rather than upstairs in his room. Chris picked up the remote and switched off the TV, then got out of the bed carefully, so as not to wake Ben.
Thora had called from Greenwood about twenty minutes after his conversation with Alex. Her tone was light and breezy as she gushed about the quality of the spa, and she laughed as she read the names of treatments to Ben, who by then was on the other extension. The experience seemed surreal to Chris, who was thinking about the morning-after pill and his scuffle with Shane Lansing while Thora giggled out names like the Mississippi Mudpie, the High-Cotton Indulgence, the Sweat Tea Soul Soak, the Muddy Waters, and the Blues Bath. He thought she might get serious once Ben was off the line, but to his amazement, she told him that they should both return in a month or so for the Couple’s Renewal Treatment. No mention of Shane Lansing—nothing but sweetness and light. Chris wasn’t about to get into anything while Ben was awake, so he’d matched his tone to Thora’s and ended the conversation.
An hour had passed since that call, so he walked to the front door, opened it, and poked his head outside. “Mr. Kilmer?” he called. “Are you out there?”
No response.
He called out again, bu
t no one answered. Mildly annoyed, he walked back to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He was taking his first bite when someone knocked at the garage door. He walked through the pantry and put his eye to the peephole. Through its bubble lens, he saw a gray-haired man wearing glasses.
“Who is it?” he called loudly.
“Will Kilmer,” said a strong male voice. “Alex Morse sent me.”
Chris opened the door. Kilmer was about five feet ten, and in surprisingly good shape for a man his age, except for a paunch above his sagging belt. He wore khakis, a generic polo shirt, and gray running shoes. When he smiled and offered his hand, Chris shook it, getting the iron grip he expected from an ex-cop.
“I’m sorry you had to drive all the way down here, Mr. Kilmer.”
“Call me Will, Doctor.” Kilmer released his hand. “It’s no problem. I’m getting to where I can’t sleep more than three or four hours a night these days.”
“That’s pretty common with the onset of age, I find. The opposite of teenagers who want to sleep twenty hours out of twenty-four.”
“I was out here when you called from the front door, but that was the first time you’d showed yourself since I got here, and I wanted to see if anybody made a move.”
“You don’t really think somebody’s out there, do you?”
“From what Alex told me, I’d say it’s reasonable to expect trouble.”
“If someone were out there, wouldn’t they have seen you come up?”
“I walked in,” Will said. “And I’m pretty quiet when I put my mind to it. Parked out by that restaurant built in the shape of a black mammy, and I’ve got a night scope in my pack.”
There was an awkward silence. “Can I offer you something to drink?” Chris asked. “I was about to eat a sandwich.”
“I don’t want to put you out.”
“You can guard us just as well from inside as out, can’t you? Get your pack, and I’ll make you a sandwich. You can tell me why Alex Morse isn’t crazy.”
Kilmer chuckled softly. “Hard to turn that offer down. I’ll be right back.”