and a salute.
“Right. See you later.”
Gurney went out quickly to his car, grabbing his jacket from the mudroom on his way. He was hardly aware of driving down the pasture lane, until he reached the place by the pond where the grassy surface merged into the gravel of the town road. At that moment he caught sight of Madeleine.
She was standing by a tall birch on the uphill verge of the pond, her eyes closed, her face raised to the sun. He stopped the car, got out, and walked toward her. He wanted to say good-bye, say that he’d be home before morning.
She opened her eyes slowly and smiled at him. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“What?”
“The air.”
“Oh. Yes, very nice. I was just on my way, and I thought-”
Her smile caught him off balance. It was so… so intensely full of… what? Not sadness, exactly. Something else.
Whatever it was, it was in her voice as well. “Just stop for a bit,” she said, “and feel the air on your face.”
For a moment-a few seconds, a minute perhaps, he wasn’t sure-he was transfixed.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she said again, so softly that the words seemed to be a part of the air she was describing.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to go before-”
She stopped him. “I know. I know you do. Be careful.” She put her hand on his cheek. “I love you.”
“Oh, God.” He stared at her. “I’m afraid, Maddie. I’ve always been able to figure things out. I hope to God I know what I’m doing. It’s all I can do.”
She placed her fingers gently on his lips. “You’ll be brilliant.”
He didn’t remember walking to his car, or getting into it.
What he remembered was looking back, seeing her standing on the high ground above the birch, radiant in the sunlight in her profusion of colors, waving to him, smiling with a poignancy beyond his understanding.
Chapter 48
The countryside between Walnut Crossing and Cayuga County presented one classic bucolic vista after another-small farms, vineyards, and rolling cornfields, interspersed with hardwood copses. But Gurney hardly noticed. His mind was on his destination-a stark little cabin in a black-water bog-and what might happen there that night.
It wasn’t yet noon when he arrived. He decided not to go into the property right away. Instead he drove slowly past the dirt entry road with its skeleton sentinel and sagging aluminum gate. The gate was open, but its very openness appeared more ominous than inviting.
He proceeded a mile or so, then made a U-turn. Halfway back to Clinter’s forbidding driveway, he saw a large, decrepit barn in the middle of a weed-choked field. The roof was sagging dramatically. Quite a few boards were missing from the siding, as was one of the double doors. There was no farmhouse in sight-only a disheveled foundation that might once have supported one.
Gurney was curious. As soon as he came to what he suspected had formerly been the entrance, he drove slowly up into the field, all the way to the front of the barn. It was dark inside, and he had to switch on his headlights to get a sense of the interior. The floor was concrete, and there was a long open passageway extending from the front clear through to the shadowy back of the building. It was filthy, with decaying hay everywhere, but otherwise it was empty.
He made a decision. He drove slowly into the barn-as far as he could into its dark recesses. Then he took his file of
He proceeded on foot down through the tangled field and along the road to Clinter’s driveway. Walking in along the narrow causeway that traversed the beaver pond and adjacent swamp, Gurney was struck again by the godforsaken loneliness of the place.
As promised, the front door of the cabin was unlocked. The interior, which seemed to consist of one large room, had the musty smell of a place whose windows are rarely opened. The log walls contributed another smell, woody and acidic. The furniture looked like it had come from a store specializing in the “rustic” style. It was a man’s environment. A hunter’s environment.
There was a stove, a sink, and a refrigerator against one wall; a long table with three chairs against the adjacent wall; a low single bed against another wall. The floor was made of dark-stained pine boards. The outline of what appeared to be a trapdoor in the floor caught Gurney’s eye. There was a finger hole drilled near one edge, presumably as a way of lifting it open. Out of curiosity, Gurney tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. Presumably, at some time in the past, it had been sealed shut. Or, knowing Clinter, there might be a concealed lock somewhere. Perhaps that’s where he stored the “collectible” guns he sold to other “collectors” without the need for a federal firearms license.
There was a window that provided some illumination over the long table, as well as a view of the path outside. Gurney settled down there in one of the three chairs and tried to arrange his thick handful of papers in a practical sequence for the hours ahead. After making a few piles, shifting items from pile to pile, and moving the piles into various orders of priority, he abandoned his efforts at organization and decided to start wherever he felt like starting.
Steeling himself, he picked up the sheaf of ten-year-old autopsy photos and chose the ones that documented the head wounds. Once again he found them horrific-the way the massive traumas distorted the facial features of the victims into grotesque facsimiles of living emotions. Once again the gross violation of their personal dignity outraged him, renewing his resolution to give them the respect they deserved-to restore, by bringing their killer to justice, the dignity that had been stolen from them.
That sense of resolution felt good. It felt purposeful, uncomplicated, energizing. But the good feeling soon began to fade.
As he looked around the room-this cold, uninviting, impersonal room that served as a man’s home-he was struck by the smallness of Max Clinter’s world. He couldn’t be sure what Clinter’s life had been like prior to his encounter with the Good Shepherd, but surely it had withered and contracted in the years since. This cabin, this little box perched on a mound of earth in the middle of a bog in the middle of nowhere, was the den of a hermit. Clinter was a deeply isolated human being, driven by his demons, by his fantasies, by his hunger for revenge. Clinter was Ahab. A wounded, obsessed Ahab. Instead of roaming the sea, he was Ahab lurking in the wilderness. Ahab with guns instead of harpoons. He was locked in his own quest, envisioning nothing but the culmination of his own furious mission, hearing nothing but the voices in his own mind.
The man was utterly alone.
The truth of it, the force of it, brought Gurney to the verge of tears.
Then he realized that the tears weren’t for Max.
They were for himself.
And it was then that the image of Madeleine came to him. The recollection of Madeleine standing on the little rise beyond the birch. On the little rise between the pond and the woods. Standing there, waving good-bye to him. Standing in that wild burst of color and light, waving, smiling. Smiling with an emotion that was far beyond him. An emotion beyond words.
It was like the end of a film. A film about a man who had been given a great gift, an angel to lovingly light his way, an angel who could have shown him everything, led him everywhere, had he only been willing to look and to listen and to follow. But the man had been too busy, too absorbed in too many things, too absorbed by the darkness that challenged and fascinated him, too absorbed by himself. And finally the angel was called away, because she had done all she could do for him, all that he was willing to allow done. She loved him, knew all there was to know
