CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Castle found the discarded backpack just after sunrise.
It lay about ten yards off the trail amid scuffled leaves. The bac kpack held an empty cardboard toilet paper tube, a quart-sized zip loc k baggie that held some granola crumbs, and a dog-eared novel by someb ody named Charlaine Harris. Judging from the pastel colors on the cove r, Castle figured the book belonged to the girl. He couldn’t imagine G oodall reading much of anything besides survival manuals and the Bible.
Except his own headlines, he heard The Rook’s voice say in his head.
The zippered section of the backpack contained a sealed condom, a can opener, and a pack of matches from the Bull’s Eye Bar amp; Grill in S tone Mountain, Georgia. Goodall had been careful in his first bomb att ack, leaving few clues despite the heavy concentration of agents assig ned to the case. Some believed if Goodall had been content with that o ne blow for perceived justice and had slipped back into the remote wil ds of the upper Midwest, his identity would still be a mystery. Instea d, he had grown increasingly reckless, and now that he’d been discover ed, he had nothing to lose.
He never had nothing to lose in the first place, said The Rook’s voice.
“Look,” Castle said, feeling stupid for talking to himself. “He le ft this here for me to find. He doesn’t care that I’m after him.”
Oh, he does care. Remember the assessment. Everything’s a cry for attention with him.
“Oh, yeah, if you’re so smart, why did your ass get hauled off by some weird bat-winged creature that doesn’t exist?”
I respect your experience, partner, and you’re about the squarest man I’ve ever met. If I were your shrink, I’d lie down on the couch an d let you do the analyzing, then gladly pay the bill later. But ri ght now you can’t trust your own head. You haven’t had a wink of sleep, you’re delirious, you’re hungry, and three weeks in the wilderness c an do strange things to anybody.
Above, the treetops veered in an autumnal spin of rust, gold, and dying green.
“Fuck,” Castle said. “I’m talking to myself.”
It’s okay to talk to yourself, came The Rook’s voice-that same combination of sidekick pep and college-professor smugness that plagued some behavior science guys and pissed off the SWAT types. After all, this is your show.
“That doesn’t bother me so much,” Castle said. “The thing that bothers me is you’re probably dead.”
You’re probably right.
“What the hell happened to you?”
You know as much as I do.
“That’s a stretch. You’ve got three degrees, as you like to keep reminding me. I’m just a dummy with a narrow set of skills that happen to come in handy if you ever need to kill a man. Oh, and I have clumsy feet.”
They didn’t teach about monsters in college.
“I don’t believe in monsters.”
Audible sigh here. You can’t lie to me. I’m inside your head, remember?
“Reckon so.”
You’ve always believed in monsters.
“What on Earth would the Bama Bomber be doing with a condom?”
Maybe he likes to make funny animal balloon shapes. I’ll bet he does a great poodle.
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
Why should I? I’m probably dead, remember?
Castle peered down the trail. He couldn’t see the river, but he could hear it and sense its power behind the wall of trees. He tossed down the backpack. “I’m talking to myself.”
I don’t know, just postulating a theory here, but I’m betting the monsters only come out at night. So you can relax a little. You have about eleven good hours of daylight left.
“I’ll get him for you.”
No, you’ll get him for you. I’m just a figment of your imagination and therefore have no influence on your behavior.
“Whatever. Just shut the fuck up, will you?”
Castle scolded his tired legs into action and descended to the river.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“My feet are tired, Ace.”
Ace’s feet were kind of tired, too, and it didn’t help that his boots had gotten wet. He could picture his toes, pale and shriveled as maggots on a griddle, skin peeling from his heels. As a member of the Dakota Sons of the Cross, he’d camped in the sub-zero winters of the Grand Tetons. The number-one rule of survival was to keep your socks dry. Food was no problem, not when you could stomach bark, leaves, and berries. You could melt snow in the mountains, or built an igloo, or dig into a stump and find sleeping grubs. You could always eat the corpses of your traveling companions if necessary. God wouldn’t hold a grudge over a thing like that.
Wet and tired feet were another matter altogether. But that didn’t mean you had to bitch about it. “We just rested a half hour ago,” he said.
“You said they were dead. They can’t catch us.”
“But their buddies will be swarming before you know it.” He squinted at the sun, which was now clear of the horizon and slanting through the golden treetops. Light glinted off the river, liquid diamonds, kicking up foam like Schlitz from a shaken keg tap.
“What will we do when we get there?”
Ace didn’t know where “there” was, but he wasn’t for a second going to let on. “The river empties out onto a lake, and where there’s a lake, there’s rich people. We can steal a boat or hot-wire a car, head north.”
“North where?”
“Anywhere the heat’s off.”
“Like Virginia?”
Damned women, always asking too many questions. Always yammering. Couldn’t shut up and appreciate the fine music of the outdoors. Couldn’t appreciate silence. Didn’t want peace, and didn’t want any man around them to have it, either. It’s a miracle God didn’t make Eve choke on that apple when the serpent passed it on down to her.
Eve was to blame. Original sin, eating of the tree of knowledge, the curse of reproduction. Got Adam drove out of the garden. Brought death to the world. Ace figured the serpent did a whole lot more to Eve than just feed her the piece of forbidden fruit. Knowing her, knowing all women, she most likely had the thing curled around her legs, moaning for joy while good old Adam was out tending to business.
As if they hadn’t caused enough trouble, they wanted to take the choice of life or death into their own hands and out of God’s. Ace couldn’t understand why God would even create such a nasty creature in the first place. Come to think of it, give him a snake any day. The odds of being poisoned were a lot lower.
“Maybe Virginia, for a start.” His feet burned, and he was sure he had a blister on his left big toe. Nothing rubbed raw like a damp sock. “Okay, let’s rest a minute.”
They sat on a flat rock the size of a double bed. “The river’s gotten faster,” she said.
“Deeper, too. Wish I had a pole.” He glanced upstream, where water squeezed between piled boulders like spit between crooked teeth. He grinned and nodded his head. Sometimes, you didn’t even have to offer up prayers to get them answered. Sometimes, God knew what you would ask for before you even thought of it yourself. “Fisherman’s fucking luck,” he said, giving Clara a smile more sinister than that of any reptile.
Clara’s eyes followed his gaze. Two people were heading toward the boulders in a canoe, the sun dancing off their white helmets. They both furiously worked paddles, flailing arms protruding from thick orange vests. One of them shouted, but the rush of water swallowed the words. The canoe twisted sideways and they beat at the water with their paddles, trying to orient the watercraft.
“They won’t make it past those boulders,” Clara said, as calm as a spectator at a golf match. She had her tennis shoes off and was rubbing her feet.
“Damn right they won’t.” Ace retrieved the backpack and rummaged inside. He brought out the Python and let his shooting hand rest in his lap.