When they had cleared the opening in the canvas and traveled as far as the parking lot, the lights of the tent went out behind them. Charles stood in the center of the road. He could imagine what was going on in the blackness of that vast space. Unity would be displaced by fear in the dark, and that would grow to panic.
Henry pulled on his sleeve and formed the letter H. His hand moved up and down quickly to say, “Hurry.”
As they moved into a jog, Charles looked back over one shoulder at the silhouette of the tent against the evening sky. The crowd was dispersing to its individual parts, each seeking the way into the light. He watched them pour from the tent opening, ant-size and antlike. And then the tall poles caved in on one side, and the canvas structure listed like a great wounded animal, deflated by the sudden flight of Malcolm Laurie’s flock. Headlights came on in pairs, and a slow caravan of cars led away from the tent, moving toward the highway.
As Charles and Henry cleared one block of Owltown, the lights at their backs went out, and the night snapped shut behind them. The same thing happened on the next block.
And whose little miracle was this? Oh, just a guess, a shot in the dark – could it be Mallory?
Of course she had done it. She had hacked into the computer of a local utility company. He could think of no other explanation for the timing and selectivity of the power failure – and Henry’s appearance at just the right moment.
So, in addition to joining Henry’s list and the sheriff’s list, the Lauries now had Mallory’s attention as well. What a worthy opponent for a family of evangelists – Our Lady of Cyberspace. That irresponsible brat. Someone in that tent might have been killed.
Charles stopped at the windbreak of tall trees and turned back. Car headlights illuminated the fleeing mob. Henry pulled at his sleeve again, and they moved through the streets into Dayborn Square. As they passed the fountain, Henry slowed their pace to a comfortable walk. When they stepped outside the boundaries of the square, all the streetlamps and window lights went out, and Charles felt somehow responsible.
He cast his eyes over the woods on the other side of Upland Bayou and wondered what tree she perched in, watching their progress, switching off the lights behind them.
When Charles and Henry had crossed the bridge, the lights came on again, and the distant telephones of Owltown began to ring, all of them, ringing constantly, until one by one they were taken off their hooks as people returned home, almost as if their phones were calling them back to their houses and trailers.
As they were crossing the bridge over the bayou, Charles said, “Poor Malcolm. The collection plates never finished the first row.”
Henry smiled. “Then he didn’t make the cost of raising the tent. The first row is stocked with relatives.”
Herd instinct? Of course. Family members put all their money in the collection plates, and the rest followed suit.
A gunshot exploded in the woods beyond the bridge. Henry seemed unconcerned.
“It’s only Fred Laurie shooting owls again. I saw him go into the woods. Or maybe it’s Augusta shooting Fred Laurie. It’s a big mistake to fool with her owls.”
Fred Laurie searched the woods, his brown eyes alighting on each dark shape that moved. He raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger again. He crept closer to his target, and now he could see it clearly. He had killed yet another leaf – shot it straight through the heart. This was the third such bit of vegetation he had murdered while his brothers were playing to the crowd back in Owltown.
Jane’s Cafe had been a fund of information. In an overheard conversation, he had learned that the sheriff wouldn’t allow Jane to carry a dinner tray to the prisoner’s cell, and the lunch tray hadn’t been touched. The sheriff was twice as mean as usual, or so Jane told Betty Hale, and that useless new girl wouldn’t even look her in the eye when Jane asked if something was wrong.
Betty had allowed that not much got past Jane, and maybe Tom Jessop should have made her the new deputy.
Then the postman had chimed in with his bit of news: The sheriff had been driving the roads all day, looking for somebody, scanning every tree he could see from the car windows. But first thing this morning, he had torn out on the road to the old Shelley place like a bat out of Augusta’s attic.
The prisoner was gone all right, vanished. Everyone in Jane’s Cafe had agreed on that. “Just like her mother,” Jane had said.
Fred had searched the old Shelley place, hunting Cass’s brat, but found no trace of her. She would not have gone into the swamp around Finger Bayou. No one but Augusta could navigate that mire in the dark. This wood was the likely place. This is where he would have gone.
He emerged from the trees and stopped in a clearing to light a cigarette. He would not have found the dog’s body if he had not tripped over the canvas parcel concealed by broken branches. He struck another match and held it over a hollowed-out log. Black leather protruded from the opening. He didn’t have to pull it out to know it was the duffel bag that had sat for three days in the sheriff’s office. It belonged to her, as did this damned dog stiffening in the canvas shroud.
He blew out the match. Footsteps? Yes, someone was coming this way.
Fred moved quickly to replace the branches over the dog, and then he pulled back into the woods. He slung the rifle over one shoulder by its strap and reached up to a tree branch. He pulled his body up and into the cover of dense leaves before the woman entered the clearing.
She was soft-stepping like a deer. Every now and then, she stopped and listened, just as a deer would do. The tan of the deputy’s uniform was light against her dark flesh. When she paused against the black bark of a tree, the outline of her skin lost all definition, and there was a heart-stopping moment when Fred believed her uniform was haunted by a woman he could no longer see.
His heart was beating again, and harder now. He could swear he heard it thumping on the wall of his chest as her gun glided out of the holster, and the barrel pointed skyward. Though she never looked up, twice she had aimed the gun straight at him, and he forgot to breathe. Now she was very still, listening again.
Could she hear it – his heartbeat?
No, that’s crazy. But he held one hand over his chest.
Finally, Deputy Beaudare ran off into the woods, stopping once to look back, then running on, graceful as any animal he’d ever killed.
CHAPTER 13
They stopped by the telephone pole near Henry Roth’s cottage. Henry motioned him to stay, signing, “See you later.” Then he walked off and left Charles standing in the middle of a dirt road.
Later?
A familiar voice called out to him. “Look up, Charles.”
His eyes followed the pole’s long line high into the air. Silver spikes sprouted from its sides, and in the dark at the top of the sky, the thick shaft spread out wooden arms laden with thick cables and blinking lights.
Going on faith that Mallory was up there, he began to climb the silver ladder. When he neared the crossbeams, he could see her silhouette working over the wires. Closer now, nearly there, he grasped one arm of the pole, and then they were face-to-face. Her hair was luminous in the dark, curls catching light from a waxing moon, and where the strands strayed into wisps, the stars shone through them.
She gave him a brief smile in lieu of hello. She didn’t like to waste her words, or perhaps she didn’t understand the average human’s need of them. She had always preferred the company of machines, which were quiet, efficient and disinclined to argue. Behind her back and to her face, the officers of NYPD had called her Mallory the Machine.