The hawk burst from the grass and soared. Its talons clutched something small, perhaps a field mouse, which struggled in terror, or didn’t. At this distance, you couldn’t be sure.
Cottle’s voice was a file rasping on ancient wood. “If I don’t do exactly what he wants me to, he promises to put my face in a jar. And while he harvests it, he’ll keep me alive, and conscious.”
In the bright pellucid sky, the rising hawk was as black and clean as a shadow once more. Its wings cleaved the shining air, and the high thermals were the pristine currents of a river through which it swam, and dwindled, and vanished, having killed only what it needed to survive.
98
Rockless in the rocking chair, Ralph Cottle said that he lived in a ramshackle cottage by the river. Two rooms and a porch with a view, the place had been hammered together in the 1930’s and had been falling apart ever since.
Long ago, unknown rugged individuals had used the cottage for fishing vacations. It had no electric service. An outhouse served as the toilet. The only running water was what passed in the river.
“I think mainly it was a place for them to get away from their wives,”
Cottle said. “A place to drink and get drunk. It still is.”
A fireplace provided heat and allowed simple cooking. What meals Cottle ate were spooned from hot cans.
99
Once the property had been privately owned. Now it belonged to the county, perhaps seized for back taxes. Like much government land, it was poorly managed. No bureaucrats or game wardens had bothered Ralph Cottle since the day, eleven years ago, when he had cleaned out the cottage, put down his bedroll, and settled in as a squatter.
No neighbors lived within sight or within shouting distance. The cottage was a secluded outpost, which suited Cottle just fine.
Until 3:45 the previous morning, when he had been prodded awake by a visitor in a ski mask: Then what had seemed like cozy privacy had become a terrifying isolation.
Cottle had fallen asleep without extinguishing the oil lamp by which he read Western novels and drank himself to sleep. In spite of that light, he hadn’t absorbed any useful details about the killer’s appearance. He couldn’t estimate the man’s height or weight.
He claimed the madman’s voice had no memorable characteristics. Billy figured Cottle knew more but feared to tell. The anxiety that now simmered in his faded blue eyes was as pure and intense, if not as immediate, as the terror he described in the photograph of the unknown woman from whom the freak had “harvested” a face.
Judging by the length of his skeletal fingers and the formidable bones in his knobby wrists, Cottle had once been equipped to fight back. Now, by his own admission, he was weak, not just emotionally and morally, but physically. Nevertheless, Billy leaned forward in his chair and tried again to enlist him: “Back me up with the police. Help me—”
“I can’t even help myself, Mr. Wiles.”
“You must’ve once known how.”
“I don’t want to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Anything. I told you—I’m weak.”
“Sounds like you want to be.”
Raising the pint to his lips, Cottle smiled thinly and, before taking a drink, said, “Haven’t you heard—the meek shall inherit the earth.”
“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
Licking his lips, which were badly chapped by the heat and by the dehydrating effect of the whiskey, Cottle said, “Why would I?”
100
“The meek don’t stand by and watch another man destroyed. The meek aren’t the same as cowards. They’re two different breeds.”
“You can’t insult me into cooperation. I don’t insult. I don’t care. I know I’m nothing, and that’s all right with me.”
“Just because you’ve come here to do what he wants, you won’t be safe out there in your cottage.”
Screwing the cap on the bottle, Cottle said, “Safer than you.”
“Not at all. You’re a loose end. Listen, the police will give you protection.”
A dry laugh escaped the stewbum. “Is that why you’ve been so quick to run to them—for their protection?”
Billy said nothing.
Emboldened by Billy’s silence, Cottle found a sharper voice that was less mean than smug: “Just like me, you’re nothing, but you don’t know it yet. You’re nothing, I’m nothing, we’re all nothing, and as far as I care, if he leaves me alone, that psycho shithead can do what he wants to anybody because he’s nothing, too.”
Watching Cottle screw open the pint-bottle cap that he had just screwed shut, Billy said, “What if I throw your ass down those stairs and kick you off my land? He calls me sometimes just to wear on my nerves. What if when he calls I tell him you were drunk, incoherent, I couldn’t understand a thing you said?”
