Autumn stared up at him. She said, “You need to shave. All your whiskers are white. You’re old.”
Ethan decided in that instant that he’d do whatever he had to to keep that little kid in his life. He wanted to watch her grow up, with Joanna—
Blessed stared at Autumn for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “You haven’t seen old yet, Autumn. You just wait. Now, if you two want to stay conscious, you walk over to the barn.”
Joanna didn’t move. “I want Autumn with me.”
“I want to be with my mama,” Autumn said.
Blessed stared at her, then released her hand. Autumn ran to her mother. Joanna clutched her child to her, dropped a kiss on her hair, another on her forehead.
When they reached the barn, Blessed walked ahead of them to the huge set of double doors, so rotted Ethan didn’t know how they were still standing. Blessed pulled the door out enough to slip inside. He stuck his head out. “Come this way.”
When their eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior, they saw rotted hay bales stacked haphazardly, rusted tractor parts strewn over the rotted wooden floor planks, the parent of the parts, an ancient John Deere tractor, sitting off in a dim corner, missing two tires. The air smelled fetid and stale. At least it wasn’t as hot in here as it was outside. Ethan’s foot crushed down on an animal carcass.
He realized then that all the display of rot, the rusted machine parts—it was all staged. This was what someone thought an abandoned barn should look like, down to the John Deere tractor.
They watched Blessed push aside a couple of hay bales and two old car seats, the material covering them long rotted, and kick away straw from the floor, clearing about a four-foot space. He leaned down and pulled on a rusted old handle that was nearly flat against the wood, and a hole appeared in the floor. Blessed stepped back and smiled, waved his hand toward it. Joanna and Ethan looked down onto blackness.
Blessed reached down into the darkness and pressed some buttons. There came three short beeps, and then light suddenly filled the dark hole, but there was still nothing to see except wooden stairs that led downward. Blessed nodded to them. “The two of you will climb care-fully down the stairs. When you get to the bottom, wait for Autumn and me. Don’t forget, I’ve got Autumn, so don’t try anything.”
Joanna and Ethan climbed down the wooden stairs. They were solid pine, thirty of them; Ethan counted them.
The stairs ended in a small square room with whitewashed walls and a clean wooden floor. There was a single table with a telephone sitting on it, and nothing else.
They heard the trap door close above them, the low hum of air-conditioning. The air was cool. It had to take a good-sized generator, Ethan thought, to run this place.
Blessed walked past them to the phone, picked it up, and said, “The Keeper is here.”
Joanna arched an eyebrow at Ethan.
At the end of the small room they watched a panel in the opposite wall slide silently open. Blessed nodded for them to go inside.
Joanna went first, Ethan close behind her.
A young black man came through a white door set into one of the walls. He was wearing a white linen shirt and loose white pants, a thin rope tied around his waist. His feet were bare.
“Hello, Kjell,” Blessed said. “I’ve got her.”
57
WINNETT, NORTH CAROLINA
It was late afternoon when the black FBI Bell helicopter landed at the small airstrip two miles west of Winnett. The mountains were thick around them, and yet it was so hot and humid when Savich stepped out of the helicopter, he wished he could strip down and find a hose. He helped Sherlock out, and both of them stood there a moment, even the hot gush of air from the helicopter blades better than the still, dead air.
Holding hands, they ducked down and ran toward a small tin building thirty feet away. They turned to see the helicopter lift off. The pilot, Curly Hames, waved to them. They veered off into the shade of the buildings to where a dark green Subaru sat next to a banged-up truck and a rotted-out SUV.
The keys were in the ignition. Savich gave the interior a tolerant look and turned the key.
Sherlock sniffed. “The car smells new; that’s big of the field office. Okay, we’re going to meet Cully at the Chevron gas station on Market Street, only about half a mile from Victor Nesser’s apartment on Pulitzer Prize Road. Then we’ll go to Victor’s apartment, meet up with Bernie Benton, and wait until Lissy and Victor show.” She grinned. “Weird name. Turns out that Winnett native Marvin Hemlick won a Pulitzer some forty years ago for writing about a nasty Ku Klux Klan chapter here. Anyway, when last I spoke to Cully, he said he and Bernie had Victor’s place covered, but nothing was happening, and time was moving slow as molasses in this heat and both he and Bernie were getting antsy.”
She pulled out her cell and dialed Cully’s number. There was no answer, only voice mail. Sherlock frowned, dialed again, got voice mail again. “Why doesn’t he pick up? I told him I’d call the minute we were here. Cully’s known for being so type A, his shoes nearly walk by themselves. What could he be doing?”
“Do you have Bernie’s cell phone number?” Savich asked as he negotiated a left turn onto Market Street.
She shook her head. “Let’s get to the Chevron station, see if Cully’s there. Maybe his phone’s dead.” Like either of them believed that, Sherlock thought, and tightened her seat belt. Even the seat belt smelled new.
“We’ll be there in a minute; hang on, sweetheart.”
She noticed the countryside was quite pretty as they drove by— tree-covered hills rising slowly to higher hills, and finally they saw the mountains behind them. Pine and oak trees crammed the slopes, enough for a thousand houses, Sherlock thought, without making a dent.
Savich slowed through Winnett’s small downtown. The three-block center was set squarely on flat land; the townspeople must have long ago taken a bulldozer to smooth it out. Red brick and wooden buildings crowded together along Market Street, and wherever there weren’t buildings, there were trees crowding in. It was quite lovely, really, but it was so hot even in the late afternoon, Savich imagined you could fry spit on the sidewalk.
The downtown was quiet, dead, only a couple of teenagers milling around outside.
The Chevron sign appeared ahead on a right-hand corner. An old man stood in the doorway of the Quik Mart, arms folded over his chest, watching a young guy pump gas into a white Mustang convertible. There were a couple of cars waiting to be serviced, but there was no sign of Agent Cully Gwyn.
Savich didn’t pause. “Let’s go over to Pulitzer Prize Road, take a look at Victor’s apartment building. Maybe they’re there, watching, forgot the time, whatever.”
Sherlock didn’t say anything, but she didn’t like it. She was tense, on edge. She punched her cell phone’s GPS on, and a dulcet female voice told them to turn right in point-five miles. A minute later, they pulled onto Victor’s street in a neighborhood of the small ranch-style houses set back from the road on big yards with pine and oak trees cozied up to the houses. They were lucky it rained here a lot, or the town would never have survived forest fires for so long.
Pulitzer Prize Road was unexpectedly long. Finally the houses began to peter out, and at the very end of the street, on the very edge of Winnett, stood Victor’s apartment building. It wasn’t much, a two-story brick building with maybe six apartments. But the yard was big and green, like all the other yards, and there was a red brick walkway that led up to the door. There was only one house beyond the apartment building, the grass overgrown, its
