He knocks and hears voices from a television inside. They make it impossible to hear whether or not someone is approaching the door from the other side, so when it opens suddenly, Blake finds himself standing almost nose to nose with Vernon Fuller. Both men jerk back, but it’s too late for Vernon to hide the revolver he’s got in his right hand. He’s got no choice but to act tough; he tucks it firmly in the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back.
“Can I come in?” Blake asks.
The man once had an angry, seductive slant to his eyes that used to remind Blake of the handsome Eastern European politicians he sometimes glimpsed on cable news. But like most of his facial features, it has collapsed some with age, giving him a perpetual suspicious squint. He’s wearing jeans and work boots and a white tank top that displays the lingering huskiness of a former athlete, and it’s clear Blake has disturbed him in the middle of getting dressed.
Blake smells coffee, not the stink of hard alcohol, and the living room behind Vernon is cluttered but not the reality-show ruin Blake had hoped for. The fact that Vernon Fuller isn’t living in his own filth as penance for his sins, that he’s preparing for his day like some normal commuter, fills Blake with a rage that drives him to cross the threshold without being officially invited.
Beneath his shirt, the vine clutches his chest more tightly, thirsty for the hot pulse of anger in his veins.
A wall of sliding glass doors looks out onto the plain swell of grass that tapers down to the water’s edge, and in the corner of the living room the WWL Eyewitness Morning News plays on a boxy television piled with unopened bills. Police lights splash a haggard-looking roadside motel, and then the screen fills with the face of some pimply teenager, his jaw tensed as he squints into the harsh glare of a camera light. The reporter just off camera says, “You do realize this story is hard to believe, don’t you, sir?”
After the reporter sticks the mic back in his face, the kid answers, “I do. I do realize that and I know what I saw, and what I saw was a lot of bugs killing those people.”
“Right. But you’re also saying—”
“It was the cheaters,” the kid says. Dazed, but slightly perturbed, as if he’s being asked to give simple directions once more to an elderly and confused relative. “They killed the cheaters.”
There’s an empty two-second beat while the reporter gives the kid a chance to recant this insane statement, and the kid does nothing of the kind. Instead he lifts a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the camera light but remains rooted in place, ready and willing, it seems, to answer more questions.
Vernon kills the television with the remote, settles into a tattered leather Eames chair, and begins shaking a cigarette out of a rumpled soft pack. On top of a short cabinet just a few inches from his right elbow sits an eight-by-ten photograph of John Fuller, taken only months before he was murdered. Blake knows this because Blake took the photograph, on the levee, not too far from where he was later killed. John is beaming, revealing small, unobtrusive teeth, perfectly aligned by braces he’d shed the year before. It’s a smile that crinkles bright eyes with the same beautiful Slavic slant his father lost to old age. His swath of black hair, lightly gelled as it always was, is tossed by the wind off the lake and covers most of his forehead.
“Do you want me to stop?” Vernon asks.
For a second or two, Blake thinks he’s referring to the cigarette he’s just lit. He exhales smoke through both nostrils like a parody of a dragon, but his glassy-eyed stare searches Blake’s face even through the cloud.
“My… visits, I mean,” he continues. “Is that why you’re here? You want me to stop?”
Blake had planned to take his time and uncover as many more secrets as he could. But the news report just reminded him he doesn’t really know how much time he’s got left. An hour? Two or three more? They will come for him out of the sky, and they will take him just like they took Caitlin. And if Vernon Fuller fails the test Blake is about to lay out for him, he will be forced to watch, which isn’t exactly what Blake wants, but it will be better than nothing.
With a start, Vernon realizes he’s sitting on his own gun—that he failed to remove the revolver from the back of his pants before he sat down. He eases forward slightly, eyes on Blake, and pulls the gun free. Blake expects him to slide it in a drawer, but instead he sets it atop the cabinet nearby, just inches from John’s photo. He does, however, take care to turn the barrel so that it isn’t pointing directly at Blake.
“I know why you come and see me at work,” Blake says.
“Do you?”
“Yes. You killed your son.”
Vernon Fuller’s eyes water. First his lips purse so tightly it’s as if he’s pressed one finger to them, and then his jaw tightens so much his chin quivers in response. His hands are resting on his knees, but he’s leaning forward as if at any second he might propel himself out of his chair and close his fingers around Blake’s throat.
And that will be just fine. Fine, but not perfect. Blake is hoping for a gunshot, because a gunshot will unleash enough blood to feed the vine on his chest. Because that’s the deal Blake has made with himself, to confront Vernon with what he knows, and allow Vernon’s response to seal his fate. Not Blake. Not the vines. Not Caitlin. And not the furious ghost of Virginie Lacroix. No one but Vernon should decide his fate. It might not be the justice of the earth the slaves at Spring House saw before they escaped its destruction, but it’s as close as Blake can get in the final hours before he’s ripped from this world.
But Vernon Fuller hasn’t reached for the gun, or even moved an inch. Blake takes a step toward him, grateful when the glare from a nearby lamp moves across John’s framed and frozen smile.
“Mike Simmons. Kyle Austin. The other one…”
“Fauchier,” Vernon answers in a whisper. “Scott… Scott Fauchier.”
“Yes. They’re dead. All three of them.”
“You? Did… you?”
“Yes. I killed them.”
Is it a lie? Worse, is it a betrayal of the promise Blake made to himself, not to deceive Vernon into spilling blood? It feels like the truth. It feels as if he murdered those three men. Was there something in Blake’s soul that wanted those men torn limb from limb, and did the vines consume it and follow its instructions? Could they have done their terrible work without his rage?
Scott Fauchier, he thinks suddenly. The vines killed Scott Fauchier and I didn’t even know who he was, went most of my life never trusting my instinct that there’d been a third assailant, a third killer, so it wasn’t possible for me to hate that man in my heart. Or in my blood. I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like. I only knew his name because Kyle Austin said it to me on the roof, before the vines tore him apart. Because the vines knew. The crime was written in my blood somehow. And that’s why they killed Scott Fauchier too. But the vines knew what he’d done, because his crime was written in my blood somehow. So they knew and they went for him.
Vernon is waiting for Blake to strike, and when he doesn’t the man reaches for his revolver with a tentative, shaking hand. He doesn’t aim the gun at Blake with a killer’s confidence. Rather, he draws the handle close to his stomach. The barrel trembles.
“You don’t know why I come,” Vernon finally says. “You’ve got no idea why.”
“You picked the guys on your team you knew would say yes. Then you told them where John and I were meeting and you told them to—”
“I told them to scare you!” Vernon roars. “You two, I thought it was just some kind of game. I thought if you didn’t have anywhere to go that you’d just… you’d just move on!”