The Reckoning

“I looked in your briefcase,” she said.

He looked at the briefcase and back at her. He was confused. “Yes?”

“I know who you’re not,” she said. “I want to know who you are.”

“Molly?”

She had made a mistake. She didn’t have the strength for this. He was too practiced at his masquerade, or too far over the edge. But she had started it now. “I’m trying to understand,” she said.

“What is it?” He was earnest. He pulled the briefcase onto his lap and opened it. He lifted up papers, his sketchbook of nonsense, someone’s plastic booklet of snapshots from MotoPhoto, a decomposing British passport, a plastic badge that said UNTAC. He saw what she had seen, and none of the musty pile seemed out of order to him. Was he more harmless out of his mind than in it?

“Where did you get those things, Duncan?”

He frowned, trying to grasp her point. “My documents?” He spoke without a hint of self-defense.

“Are these your children?”

“My children?”

“In that photo of the setter.”

He studied it. A frown appeared. He had not seen the children before. Then his eyes clarified. “You mean my brother and sisters,” he said. “With Bandit. He was a dog’s dog. There’s his scarf I told you about.” He showed her.

“But you’re not in the photo,” she said.

He looked at it again. He thought. “Dad was teaching me how to use the camera.”

“How old were you?”

“Gee, probably eight. I liked Cheerios.” There was a box of Cheerios in another photo.

“Duncan.” She didn’t know what else to call him. “Look at the date.”

He couldn’t see it. He opened one hand helplessly.

“The digital numbers along the side,” she said. “It was taken two months ago.”

His lips moved. He held the photo closer and rubbed at the date with his thumb. Then he flinched.

His face aged. It was the firelight shifting, she thought. The laugh lines turned into deep creases. His forehead blossomed with worry.

“What’s this?” he muttered.

“I thought you could tell me.”

He was trying to think. The date confounded him. Plainly, he’d never seen the children before. He’d plagiarized the photo for a dog, nothing more. Where was the harm in that?

He pawed through more of his documents. The Hustler spilled open, all tits and labia. Postcards, photos, yellow news clippings.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked.

“How long, what?” He was disoriented.

She chose her words carefully. No harsh accusations. He looked so frail suddenly. “Borrowing,” she said. “Stitching together a masquerade.”

“Molly?” He spoke her name as if it were a lifeline.

She wanted to believe in him. Amnesia would pardon him. It would make him a virgin almost, an understudy to everyone he’d ever stolen from. That would make sense of the skin mag and its nudes and all the rest. He was simply trying to catch up with the world.

She kept hold of the gun. Someone had planted those mines on the bridge. Someone had trapped them in here.

The light twisted again, and his face drew into itself. It didn’t collapse exactly, but some aspect of him seemed hollowed out. The shadows were invading. The furnace blast of light dimmed.

The rain, she despaired, not taking her eyes from him. It was winning. She’d made a mistake. Wounded and ill, she’d chosen the middle of a storm at the beginning of night to unlock this man’s asylum.

“The fire,” she said to him. If she could keep the light strong, if she could keep Duncan occupied, if she could wear him down, if she could make it to dawn, some opening would present itself.

He peered at her. His eyes had a glaze to them, a cataract glaze. Old, she thought again. “Sorry?” he said.

“The fire needs more wood.”

“Yes, I’ll do that.” He spoke softly. He sounded broken inside.

It took willpower not to reach across and pat his arm. He had saved her time and again. She didn’t want to have to pronounce sentence on him. What difference was there between an angel and the devil except for a fall from grace? Was it his fault that he had stumbled among the ruins?

He closed his briefcase and laid aside the plaited strips of bark. He brushed his legs clean. His big hands looked thinned. The fingers trembled.

He had never seemed frail to her. Her heart was racing. Had she broken his mind? Or was he only pretending…again?

He started to scoot out through the doorway, then stopped. Something stopped him.

Molly tightened her grip, praying he wouldn’t turn to her. But he kept staring ahead. She darted a glance through the doorway.

Luke was out there, waiting for them on the far side of the fire.

38.

Duncan’s steeple of logs collapsed. Sparks and steam erupted. Molly turned her face away from the fiery heat, and when she looked again, the flames were strong and Luke was still there.

He stood so close to the fire his rags of clothing were smoking. His shirt had torn open, exposing one very white shoulder, his mortality on display. The rain poured off the planes of his face as if over ceramic. His hair was gone. He’d shaved himself bald.

He was the trickster, all along. Who else? Their captor. The devil.

Duncan was frozen. He couldn’t move. It occurred to her that he was Duncan’s monster. Or his master. Which was it?

As a photographer, she’d learned to shoot first, ask later. But that was with photos. And what if she was wrong? She kept Kleat’s Glock hidden behind her thigh.

“Where have you been, Luke?” she said. “We missed you.”

Luke didn’t answer. He was staring at Duncan. Into Duncan.

“You had us worried,” she said. “We called for you. We thought you’d left.”

“Our wandering brother.” Luke spoke to Duncan. Brother, not father. And Duncan had left, she understood. But now was back.

She tried bravado. “What the hell do you want?”

She brought the gun up from its hiding place. It held Kleat’s bidding in it, like a spirit resident. How else could she explain pointing it at another human being? This was her hand, but it couldn’t possibly be her willpower. The gun found its perch in the space between them.

“Did you lay those mines?” she said.

Luke turned to look at her. She remembered his eyes in the restaurant, cornflower blue. Now they were rolled up into his head, only the whites of them showing. She’d known a prisoner who did that. Every time she started to snap his picture, he would roll his eyes into his skull, a one-man Black Sabbath.

“You have a job to do,” he said to her. Just as she’d feared, they weren’t being allowed to leave.

“Duncan,” she pleaded. She didn’t know what to demand with this weapon. A declaration of guilt? A promise of aid? Surrender? An end to the war? Say something, she thought to Duncan. But he was connected to Luke, or Luke to him.

“We saw what you did to the bones,” she said.