dying part coupled with the screaming in a language he could never understand. It was like his mother knew she was leaving this life and wanted the Lord to know she was coming, only he might be deaf so she had to really belt it out. He thought Jesus was going to drop into his mother's bedroom any second just to get the poor woman to shut the hell up.
She hadn't talked to him in her last hours, though he'd sat right beside her, fat tears running down his thin cheeks, telling her he loved her, wanting with all his heart for her to look at him, say something like, 'I love you, Sammy.' Or at least, 'Goodbye, boy.' Maybe it was somewhere in the tongues, he couldn't be sure. He'd never learned that language. And then she'd let out one more scream and just quit breathing and that had been that. Not much fanfare, actually. It had amazed him really, how easy it was to die. How straightforward it was to watch someone die.
He'd waited a bit to make sure she was actually dead and not merely resting in between screams to the Lord, then shut her eyes and folded her arms over her chest like he'd seen them do in the movies.
His daddy hadn't even been there when she'd passed. Quarry found him later that night drunk in bed with the wife of one of his farm workers who was laid up in the hospital after having a reaper tear up his leg. He'd carried him out of the woman's house over his shoulder and drove him to Atlee. Even though Quarry was only fourteen he was already two inches north of six feet and farmer strong. And he'd been driving since he was thirteen, at least on the back roads of early 1960s rural Alabama.
He'd pulled the old car into the barn, cut the engine, and grabbed a shovel. He'd dug a grave for his father close to where he'd buried the Patriot. He'd walked back to the barn. On the way he'd contemplated how best to kill his old man. He had access to all the guns at Atlee, and there were a lot of them, and he could fire every single one of them with skill. But he figured a blow to the head would be far quieter than a gunshot. He certainly wanted to murder the old adulterer, but he was smart enough not to want to trade his life for the privilege either.
He'd dragged his father out of the car and laid him facedown on the barn's straw-covered floor. His plan was to deliver the killing blow to the base of the neck, like you would an animal you were planning to do in. As he was readying the sledgehammer to strike his father had abruptly sat up.
'What the hell's going on, Junior?' he'd slurred, staring at his son through the blur of drunken eye slits.
'Nothing much,' Quarry had said back, his courage fading. He might've been as tall as a full-grown man, but he was still only a boy. One look from his daddy was all it took to remind him of that.
'I'm hungry as all get out,' said his father.
Quarry had put down his murder weapon and helped his old man up, supporting him as they made their way to the house. He fed his father and then half carried him upstairs. He kept the light off in the bedroom, undressed the man, and laid him in bed.
When the man woke up the next morning next to his cold, dead wife, Quarry could hear the screams all the way to the milking barn where he sat pulling cow teats for all he was worth. He had laughed so hard, he'd cried.
Quarry walked back to Atlee after burying the gun. It was a fine evening, the sun ending its stay in the sky with a glorious burn right down into the foothills of the Sand Mountain plateau on the southern big toe of the Appalachians. Alabama, he thought, was just about the prettiest place on earth, and Atlee was the finest part of it.
He went to his study and lit a fire though the day had been hot and the night was muggy with the predator mosquitoes already on the prowl for blood.
Blood. He had lots of blood in those coolers. He'd locked them up in the big safe his granddaddy had kept for important documents. It was in the basement next to the old clattering furnace that was rarely needed in this part of the country. The safe had a spin dial that as a child he'd whirled as hard as he could, hoping it would land on the right numbers and reveal its contents. It never had. His father's last will and testament had finally given Quarry the proper numerical sequence. The thrill just hadn't been the same.
The fire building up fine, he took the poker, dipped it into the flames, and got it good and hot. He sat back in his chair, rolled up his sleeve, and placed the reddened metal against his skin. He did not cry out, but just about bit through his lower lip. He dropped the poker and looked down at his throbbing arm. Gasping with the pain, he bent his mind to studying the mark the heated metal had left behind. He had made one line with it, a long one. He had three more to go.
He unscrewed a bottle of gin he kept on his desk and drank from it. He poured some on the mark. The blistered skin seemed to swell more with the bite of the alcohol. It looked like a tiny mountain ridge forming after a million- years-ago hiccup of the earth's bowels. The gin was cheap, all he drank anymore, mostly grain with other crap piled in, locally bottled. That's all he did anymore: local.
He hadn't been lying to poor Kurt. There was madness in his family. His daddy clearly had it, and his daddy before him too. Both men had ended up in the state mental hospital where'd they'd finished their days babbling about stuff nobody wanted to hear. The last time Quarry had seen his father alive the man was sitting naked on the dirty floor of a room, smelling worse than an outhouse in August and jabbering on and on about damn LBJ the traitor, and the coloreds, though he had not used such a polite term. It was right then that Quarry had decided his father was not insane, just evil.
He sat back in his chair and studied the flames popping and hissing back at him.
I might be some sorry-ass redneck from nowhere, but I'm gonna get this done. I'm sorry, Kurt. I'm truly sorry, son. One thing I promise you, you won't die in vain. None of us are gonna die in vain.
CHAPTER 13
THEY TRAVELED to Tuck's sister-in-law's house in Bethesda, Maryland, where the kids were staying. John and Colleen Dutton were still in shock and knew very little. Michelle had sat with seven-year-old Colleen and tried her best to coax something out of the girl, but mostly to no avail. She'd been in bed in her room that night. The door had opened, but before she could look, someone grabbed her and then she felt something on her face.
'Like a hand or a cloth?' said Michelle.
'Both,' said Colleen. Tears welled up in her eyes when she said this and Michelle decided not to push it. Both children had been given a relaxant to help keep them calm, but it was obvious that the kids were still in the grips of numbing grief.
Ten-year-old John Dutton had been sleeping in his room too. He had awoken when he felt something near him, but that was all he could remember.
'A smell? A sound?' Sean had suggested.
The boy shook his head.
Neither of them knew for sure where Willa had been in the house. John thought with his mother downstairs. His little sister believed she remembered hearing Willa on the steps going to the second floor a few minutes before Colleen was attacked.
Sean showed them a copy of the markings that had been on their mother's body but neither of them knew what they meant.
The usual questions of strangers lurking around, odd letters in the mail, or weird telephone calls had gotten them nowhere.
'Would either of you have any idea why your mom might want to see me? Did she talk to you about that?'
They both shook their heads.
'How about your dad? Did either of you see him last night?'
'Daddy was out of town,' said Colleen.
'But he came back last night,' noted Michelle.
'I didn't see him,' said John and Colleen at the same time.
The little girl desperately wanted to know if they would get Willa back.
'We'll do everything we can,' Michelle said. 'And we're pretty good at what we do.'
'Now what?' said Michelle as they drove away from the stricken family.
'I got a message from Jane. Tuck will see us.'
'We can talk to everybody, but if we don't have access to the crime scene and the forensics we don't have
