But the last thing he wanted was for her to see what he suspected he’d find in the boathouse, so he denied her the chance to argue. He turned and loped along the trail, the death-smell growing stronger with every foot he moved. Twenty feet out, the scent was thick enough to catch in the back of his throat. Another ten, and the last doubt vanished. Whatever was dead, it was in the structure or near enough to make no difference. Michael cast a quick glance behind him, but Elena was lost in the dark. He hesitated, knowing she was frightened and confused, but risks were mounting with every step he took-the risk of being caught, the risk of making a mistake-so he built compartments in his mind and pushed Elena from his thoughts as the boathouse rose before him, taller than he’d expected, longer. At its rear edge, the woods fell away, and he saw hints of gravel where a roadbed slit the grass. He paused, and then made for the back corner, stooping as he hit a final stretch of open grass. He reached the structure, and stopped. Beneath his fingers, the stone felt damp and cool.
Edging around the corner, Michael saw an empty parking area that was overgrown with weeds. Beyond it, pastureland rose to forest on a high ridge. The grass was cropped short, but brush-choked swales snaked down slope to the water’s edge.
Turning back to the boathouse, Michael stepped onto the decking that ran along the wall and extended over the water. Moss grew on stone, and the wood was soft with rot so that whole place smelled not just of death, but of decay. A shuttered window appeared and Michael touched feathers of paint that flaked under his fingers. Ten feet farther, he came to the door. The smell was stronger here, unmistakable. A heavy lock hung from a broken hasp, the steel twisted, a half-dozen screws bent by whatever force had torn them from the wood. The door itself stood open several inches, a line of black in the gap. Like the shutters, the door’s paint was flaked and thin, adding to the pall of neglect that hung over the place.
Michael eased open the door and a wave of heat and stench welled out, so strong it would have gagged another man. He gave his eyes a moment to adjust, and then stepped across the threshold. Inside, it was quiet, but for the sound of water. Michael eased right to avoid being outlined in the door. His hand found a light switch, but he was reluctant to turn it on. The lake itself was so dark that the light would show for miles. Instead, he pulled a match from his pocket and lit it. When it flared, he caught a vague impression of a vast, largely floorless space. Most of it was shadow and darkness, but he saw hints of black water and canoes on racks. Sailboats lay in a jumble against the far wall. A wooden motorboat rested on slings. It was dusty, and half-covered with a tarp; cracks showed in the once-fine varnish. On the back wall was a workbench littered with ropes and sails and dusty tools.
The match burned out.
Michael lit another and stepped gingerly toward the back. On the bench, he’d seen a gooseneck lamp next to a toolbox and a spill of faded, orange life jackets. He bent the neck until the bulb pointed back and down, then threw a filthy rag across the top of it and turned it on. Yellow light burned through the rag, so muffled and low that Michael doubted it would carry. It lit the boathouse, though-and the body. All Michael saw at first were legs. Protruding from behind one of the sailboats, they were thick and swollen, one straight and the other twisted beneath it. Leather work boots covered the feet. Blue jeans. A tooled leather belt.
Michael stepped over a pyramid of varnish cans, then moved around the stern of the boat. It was eighteen feet long, fiberglass. It looked as if the body had been jammed behind it; perhaps it had fallen that way. He saw hints of the body but the shadows were deep, so he dragged the sailboat away, its keel grinding on the wood, ropes shifting, a coil sliding off the hull. Returning to the body, Michael saw a middle-aged man who’d been dead for some time. The torso was distended, the skin mottled and gray. The face had the slackness peculiar to death, the utter loss of humanity that Michael knew too well. One eye showed, milky-pale, and whiskers were stark on the skin of his face. He was four inches over six feet tall, maybe two hundred and sixty-five pounds, a large man, but unfit. Calluses thickened the pads of his hands; the nails were dirty. Beneath the jaw line was a denim shirt stained black with blood. A knife handle protruded from his neck, and it was the knife that made pieces shift and click. It was the knife that made the picture whole.
“Ah, shit.”
Michael rocked back on his heels. The blade had not entered the dead man’s neck at the precise place and angle of the blade that killed Hennessey, but it was close. Right side. Just below the ear. More than the wound was familiar-there was something about the face, too. Michael felt hair lift on his arms. He studied the face for long seconds, then checked the shirt pocket, the front pockets of the dead man’s jeans. Finding nothing, he shifted the body. It moved loosely, so he knew that rigor had come and gone. A few days, he guessed, probably three, based on when Julian showed up a gibbering wreck. The body was cold and loose and Michael’s fingers sank into the fat. He grunted once, and the dead man flopped onto his side, one arm striking a second boat, dried blood making a slight tearing sound as the body rolled. Michael used a rag and two fingers to remove the wallet from the man’s back pocket. He saw a few bills, some credit cards. The driver’s license confirmed what he already suspected. Michael knew the guy, and so did Julian.
His features had roughened with age, but Michael had a remarkable memory for faces, especially for those he considered enemies. After Hennessey, few kids had done more to wreck Julian’s life than Ronnie Saints. At the age of eleven, he’d pulled three years in juvenile detention for beating a neighborhood kid half to death in a fight over a stolen pistol. When he finally got out, his parents were gone, either dead or lost in some hillbilly meth trailer in the mountains of north Georgia. Speculation had lasted a week or two when Ronnie first rolled into Iron House; after that, nobody really cared. He was just another fuck-head in from juvie.
Michael studied the driver’s license. Saints was thirty-seven years old and lived in Asheville. Michael memorized his address, then rolled him onto his back. Keeping the rag over his hand, Michael put one finger on the handle of the knife, right at the end. The blade was utilitarian, the handle stained wood with brushed, metal rivets. A fishing knife, maybe. Something similar. He put pressure on his finger, but the blade barely moved. It was jammed in deep, wedged against bone and gristle. Michael took his finger off the knife and checked the body. He saw no other defensive wounds, no signs of struggle. There was spatter, but beyond that there was no blood except where he’d found the body.
When it happened, he thought, it happened hard and fast.
Michael wasted no time thinking about the whys of it; the old patterns rose as if never forgotten. Julian was in trouble, and Michael was going to fix it. It’s what brothers did, what family was all about. He stood and thought of the steps he would take in the next three minutes. He laid them out in his head, mechanical and precise. He needed a boat that wouldn’t sink, something heavy enough to drop a body and keep it down. The floorboards were heavily grained, and the blood had soaked too deeply to be scrubbed out, but the place was a mess and clearly unused. He could shift boats, spill some varnish.
He found a pair of old gloves on the workbench and slipped them on. The first canoe he checked was wooden and decayed beyond his willingness to trust it. The second was aluminum. He heaved it off a rack and lowered it to the water, where it settled with a splash and loud clunk against the wooden slip. A canoe would be tough for heaving bodies in and out. It was narrow and easy to tip, but also light and fast through the water, quiet. Michael bent low, caught the dead man’s boots and dragged him across ten feet of floor. He stopped at the edge. The canoe rocked two feet down; the water beyond was burnished black. From a shelf on the far wall, Michael retrieved a twelve-pound anchor and a coil of heavy line. Bending, he placed the anchor on the dead man’s chest and cinched it tight with multiple loops around the torso and waist. It was hard work; the man was heavy and loose. A final loop went around his ankles, and Michael lifted the legs to cinch the knot tight. That’s when he saw Elena.
She stood in the door, one hand over her mouth, her face so pale it was translucent. How long she’d been there, Michael couldn’t guess, and under the circumstances he didn’t care. The sun was rising half a state away. They had forty minutes, maybe less.
“Help me,” he said.
She bent at the waist, overcome by the smell. She gagged twice, then said, “I don’t understand.”
“There’s chain there.” Michael pointed. “I need it.”
Her eyes drifted down and right, settled on a mound of filthy chain in a hollow space beside the door. She looked back at the body as Michael tore the knife from its neck and tossed it, clattering, into the canoe. “Did you…”
