True Evil

pop of a woodpecker. Beneath all this, the low hum of distant trucks on Highway 28. But nothing in the varied symphony gave him a clue to the presence of another human.

Then he smelled fire.

Somewhere out to his left, wood was burning. He set off in that direction, moving with long, sure-footed strides through the trees. The farther he walked upwind, the more intense grew the smell of smoke. And meat. Someone was cooking out here! That made him doubt it was Tarver, but he had to make sure.

A moment later he found himself in a small clearing, at the center of which sat Eldon Tarver. The big pathologist was tending a cast-iron skillet over a small fire, and the sound of sizzling meat filled the clearing. Hanging on a wire beside Dr. Tarver was a dead fawn, freshly skinned but only partly butchered.

'Take a seat,' Tarver said in his deep baritone. 'I'm cooking the tenderloin. It's sinfully good, Andrew.'

By killing the fawn, the pathologist had broken a sacred rule of the camp. By killing it out of season, he had broken several state and federal laws. But Rusk wasn't going to say anything about that. He had bigger problems to deal with, and whatever rules and laws Dr. Tarver had broken, he had done so with full knowledge and intent. Tarver speared a shaving of tenderloin with a pocketknife and held it out in the air. Rusk took the knife and ate the meat as a sign of their bond.

'It's good,' he said. 'Damn good.'

'As fresh as it comes, this side of raw.'

'Have you ever eaten it raw?'

A bemused look crossed the pathologist's face. 'Oh my, yes. When I was a boy…but that's another story.'

I'd like to hear that story sometime, Rusk thought. When I have more time. I'd like to know what could turn a boy into a character like this. He knew a little of Dr. Tarver's history, but not enough to explain the man's odd behavior and interests. But today was not the day to tease out that kind of thing.

'We have a problem,' Rusk said bluntly.

'I'm here, am I not?'

'Two problems, really.'

'Don't rush things,' Tarver said. 'Sit down. Have some more venison.'

Rusk pretended to look down at the fire. He saw no rifle near Dr. Tarver, not even a handgun. There was a Nike duffel bag near his feet, which might contain a pistol, or even a submachine gun. He'd have to keep an eye on that. 'I'm not really hungry,' he said.

'You'd prefer to move straight to business?'

Rusk nodded.

'Then we should get the formalities out of the way first.'

'Formalities?'

'Take off your clothes, Andrew.'

Adrenaline blasted through Rusk's vascular system. Would he tell me to strip if he wanted to kill me? To save himself the trouble of stripping my corpse? No. What would be the point out here? 'Do you think I'm wearing a wire, Doctor?'

Tarver smiled disarmingly. 'You said we have an emergency. Stress makes people do things they might not ordinarily do.'

'Are you going to strip?'

'I don't have to. You called this meeting.'

That made sense. And if Rusk knew Tarver, nothing substantive was going to be said unless he complied with the doctor's order. Thanking God he had left his own pistol in the Porsche, he bent and untied his Cole Haans, then unsnapped his pants and stepped out of them. Next he removed his Ralph Lauren button-down, which left only his shorts and socks. Tarver seemed to be watching the campfire, not him.

'Is this far enough?' Rusk asked.

'Everything, please,' Tarver said in a disinterested voice.

Rusk swallowed a curse and pulled off his shorts. He felt an odd and surprising shyness at this point, and it disturbed him. He had stripped in front of men hundreds of times at the health club, and he'd spent his whole youth doing the same in locker rooms around the state. He certainly had nothing to be ashamed of, not by the standard measure, and several women had commented that he was well-hung. But this was different. This was stripping naked in front of a guy with God only knew what sexual perversions, and a pathologist to boot-a man who had coldly stared at a thousand corpses, sizing up every anatomical flaw. It was creepy. And Dr. Tarver wasn't making it any easier. He was now staring at Rusk's body like an entomologist studying an insect mating.

'You've been working on those latissimi dorsi,' Tarver observed.

It was true. Lisa had commented that age was taking a toll on his back, so Rusk had been putting in extra time on the Nautilus at the club to remedy the alleged deficiency. But how the hell Tarver knew that from a single glance-

'You should spend more time on your legs,' the pathologist added. 'Weight lifters are obsessed with their upper bodies, but underdeveloped legs ruin the whole effect. Symmetry is the thing, Andrew. Balance.'

'I'll remember that,' the lawyer said with a trace of bitterness. Rusk knew he had skinny legs, but they had been good enough in college. Besides, he had more to worry about every day than working out. And who the hell was Tarver to talk? The guy was big, sure, but what kind of tone did he have? Rusk suspected that underneath the unseasonable flannel shirt was a jellied wall of beer fat.

'Get dressed,' Dr. Tarver said. 'You look like a turtle without its shell.'

Rusk pulled on his shorts and pants, then sat down to put on his shoes. 'The last time we were here,' he said, 'you told me you hated the woods.'

The doctor chuckled softly. 'Sometimes I do.'

'What does that mean?'

'You know so little about me, Andrew. Even if I told you…my experience is wholly outside your frame of reference.'

Rusk tried to read this as arrogance, but it hadn't been intended that way. Tarver seemed to be saying, You're from a different tribe than I am-perhaps even a different species. And this was true. However Dr. Tarver felt about the woods, he was certainly no stranger to them. On that last trip-five years ago now-he had come to Chickamauga as the guest of an orthopedic surgeon from Jackson. For two days he had killed nothing, to the increasing amusement of the other members, who were killing record numbers of deer that year, albeit mostly does, and on the smallish side. But all anyone talked about that weekend was the Ghost, a wise and scarred old twelve-point buck who'd managed to evade the best hunters in the camp for almost ten years. After two seasons of invisibility, the Ghost had been sighted the previous week, and everyone was gunning for him, man and boy alike. Each night, Tarver had listened in silence as the members told Ghost stories by firelight-some true, others apocryphal-and each morning he'd vanished into the woods before dawn.

On the third day-a Sunday, Rusk recalled-Eldon Tarver had marched back into camp carrying the 220-pound carcass of the Ghost across his shoulders. He upset quite a few club members by killing their near-mythical beast, but what could they say? Tarver hadn't shot the Ghost from a tree stand, the way most of them hunted now, waiting in relative comfort for a deer to walk right under them-a tactic that regularly allowed eight-year-olds to bag a deer their first time out. Dr. Tarver had gone out and stalked the Ghost in the old way: the Indian way. He stalked the big buck for three days across the length and breadth of the camp, a damned tough slog through thick underbrush and rainy-autumn mud. Tarver had never revealed more than that (he seemed to cling to the ancient superstition that telling a thing lessened its power), but eventually the members had pieced together a legend. Those hunting from tree stands reported hearing odd sounds just after dawn on the day of the kill-mating calls, fighting grunts-sounds that could only have been mimicked by a master hunter. Then had come a single rifle blast, a perfect spine shot that would have dropped the Ghost right where he stood. It was as close to a painless death as