“Who killed it?” I asked softly.
“His own mother-so hopeful she’d produce something decent and pure, and so shattered when it turned out defective, like herself.” Considering the cast of characters we had, that could only be one person. The realization weighed in my chest like a stone. “Julie Wingate. ” He nodded.
I thought of the monstrosity of Sarris forcing Julie to have sex with his own tormentor. The twisted psychosis that would have seen poetic justice in that arrangement could only have belonged to a colossal egomaniac. It was ironic indeed that the same ego had precluded Sarris from simply handing Julie over to the police at the time she killed her child, thereby washing his hands of the entire affair and making himself look like a responsible citizen to boot. The high price of playing God was that when you stumbled, you brought your world down with you.
%238 I did some more mental mathematics, comparing the age of Julie’s child to when her parents had said she’d first told them of her “new friends,” almost three years ago.
“Julie was pregnant when she joined the Order.” Sarris was still studying the floor. “Yes. I believe Fox overdid it a bit in the recruiting.” “She was living with Fox when he died. I thought you discouraged that kind of attachement.” He shrugged. “He was a close friend, more of a cofounder than a member of the Order. He fell in love with her; I wasn’t going to argue. I have to admit, though, I didn’t see the attraction.” “Where is Julie now?” “I let her go,” he said simply.
I now understood Sarris’s odd mood when we’d first entered his house.
Perhaps Spinney’s little chat earlier had made an impression. By letting Julie go, Sarris had finally rid himself of his major problem, or so he must have thought until we’d returned to his doorstep.
“Where did she go?” Smith asked, speaking for the first time. “I don’t know. I let her loose like a minnow in the ocean, so that she might just disappear forever.” “How did she leave?” Hamilton asked.
Sarris looked up at him, his brow slightly furrowed. “I gave her the keys to one of those cars outside.” “Would you know which one?” “A white VW bus.” Sarris seemed totally disinterested in us now, and perhaps even in himself. The sense of caution which had made him guarded when we’d first begun to chat had vanished utterly, and he seemed content to answer whatever questions were asked of him. Hamilton and Spinney put handcuffs behind his back and escorted him from the room. “Well, that’s good news,” Smith muttered to himself. “What is?” “That she took one of those junkers. They’ve been sitting around for so long, they must be half-rotted inside. I doubt she’ll get very far before somethings breaks.” “Then we can ask her who killed Bruce Wingate.” Smith shot me a surprised look. “You don’t think Sarris did it?” “No, I don’t. I think he’s as much in the dark as we are.” %239 I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even bother undressing. I just lay on the bed with a blanket over me, staring at the ceiling and playing it over in my mind, time and time again. The picture, as such, was almost complete. Like museum restorers cleaning an old and valuable painting, we’d painstakingly rubbed away the obfuscating layers. But what we saw now was confusing-abstract art where we’d been expecting realism. The missing element, we were convinced, had to be Julie, a fractured, self-abused psychotic. At the end of all our rational deliberations, of all our archaeological thoroughness, we were reduced to combing the countryside in search of a pathetically sick girl with a brain full of secrets.
When Spinney called to say they’d found her vehicle, I was in my coat and out the door in under five minutes. Riding with Spinney through the predawn blackness, watching the icy sheen of the pavement racing beneath our headlights, I wondered what sad conclusion we were rushing to meet.
“So where’re we headed?” “Graniteville, near Barre. Our guess is she was sticking to the backroads-Route 5 to 2; Route 2 to 302 via the Perkinsville town highway; something like that, maybe even more roundabout. No way of telling where she was headed in the long run, but she ran out of luck near Graniteville. Busted radiator hose; Smith was right.” “So she’s on foot?” “That’s what we’re going to find out.
Bishop’s ahead of us with the others. I figured I ought to call you, considering.” “Thanks.” “Bishop’s got a dog with him, and some of Julie’s clothes from Sarris’s place-maybe they can pick up a scent.” We drove in silence for a while. Graniteville is aptly named, being the center for a handful of huge granite quarries, some of which have been producing tor well over a hundred years. I’d heard somewhere that if demand for the stone continued, the whole area could be productive for hundreds of more years. I didn’t see how they could miss, considering that much of their stone ended up marking graves.
There was only the slightest hint of predawn grey in the sky when we pulled up next to a cluster of marked and unmarked police cars by %240
the side of a narrow, black-topped country road. As soon as I got out, I saw John Bishop, surrounded by men with flashlights, holding a wad of clothing to the nose of an excited bloodhound. Keeping the clothes in place, Bishop then pulled the dog over to the driver’s side of a rusty, battered VW bus.
“Why not just track her?” I asked Spinney as we approached the group.
“Take too long. The engine was still a little warm when we found it.
Unless she got another ride, she can’t be too far away.” Bishop released the hound to the end of a ten-foot leash. Everybody stood back as the now whining dog darted feverishly back and forth along the ditch bordering the road. As his lithe body flitted in and out of the bobbing flashlight beams, I thought of what it must be like in Julie’s position, hearing voices, seeing those stabbing points of light, and being aware that a dog was on her scent. Years earlier, I’d heard of how rabbit hunters in Scotland released ferrets into burrows to encourage the residents to flee into a hail of welcoming buckshot. The trick, apparently, was to avoid hitting the one rabbit that would have the ferret firmly attached to the back of its neck. Despite the obvious differences, I still didn’t envy Julie her position.
The dog finally took off into the brush on the other side of the ditch, and with an increased babble of voices, the men crashed in after it.
Spinney jumped the ditch and looked back at me. “Coming?” “I’ll be there.” He waved and vanished into the gloom and the undergrowth. To be honest, I hoped I wasn’t there; there were too many undertones to this kind of pursuit to make me want to join in. Instead, mostly to fight off the early morning chill, I walked up the road a piece, playing my flashlight along the side, not looking for anything in particular.
Eventually, I came across a gravel road heading off to the same side the tracking party had taken. The dust showed the impressions of many wide heavy tires-and a single set of boot prints.
Earlier, off Lemon Road, John Bishop had muttered a pet adage, “There are no sharp edges in nature,” meaning that it didn’t take long for a print’s outline to soften on its way back to becoming undisturbed soil.
The prints I was looking at were very sharp indeed. I hesitated a moment, wondering if I should call the others, but they were already tracking Julie. What I had before me were probably the tracks of some quarryman showing up early for work, or maybe a supervisor or watchman.
I walked along the road for a quarter mile or so and came to a chain-link gate with a sign proclaiming, CELESTIAL %241 STONE
COMPANY-ANDREWS PIT. NO TRESPASSING-VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
The sign seemed to confirm my doubts.
I tugged at the lock uniting the chain that held the gate together. It was closed. I pushed at the wire mesh. It swung back a few feet, widening the gap between the two halves of the gate. I looked at the gap appraisingly, contemplating the challenge. Then I saw where the footprints had slipped through ahead of me.