CHAPTER 4
Thomas was the first to move, but even so he was halfway up the stairs before he hit his stride, driven by a vague outrage he couldn’t explain. Jim followed, the lawyer a slow third at his back. At his brother’s bedroom door, Thomas twisted the handle as he crashed his shoulder against the timber, but the door did not give. For a second he thought he could hear movement on the other side, and then he was slamming repeatedly against it with all his weight and strength, suddenly angry.
“Thomas, wait!” said Jim, grasping his arm. “He could be armed. He could be . . .”
But Thomas wasn’t listening. He gritted his teeth and rammed the door again. Distantly through the noise of his efforts Thomas heard Jim tell the lawyer to go and call the police, and then the jamb splintered and the door shuddered open.
The room was deserted, the window open. He blundered in with Jim at his heels, grabbed the window frame and looked out, but could see no sign of tracks in the snow.
It all happened in a second: movement behind him, a muffled crunch, and a groan as Jim slipped to the floor. Parks—if that was his name—had been behind the door waiting for them. With Jim down, he now took a menacing step toward Thomas.
“Hold it,” said Thomas, raising one hand defensively, “what do you want?”
But the other man said nothing. He raised his right arm and Thomas saw that the fist was large and clublike, as if he were wearing an absurdly large glove or had wrapped something heavy around his hand.
Thomas backed up against the window, feeling the ledge against the backs of his thighs. He raised his fists and splayed his legs, waiting for the other man to come at him. Jim was still down and silent.
Parks now showed his other hand and Thomas felt his heart skip with panic that was as much alarm at the strangeness of the thing as it was fear for his own safety. The man was holding what could only be described as a sword, short—only eighteen inches or so—the blade leaf-shaped, sweeping to a point long and lethal-looking. It was the weapon of a psychopath or a cultist. Thomas faltered, unsure which way to go.
“We don’t have to do this,” he said, his voice unsteady.
“Au contraire,” said the other with a grim smile. He took a step forward and swung the sword in a broad arc toward Thomas’s face.
Thomas reacted instinctively, ducking back, swatting at the blade with his left hand as he closed to punch wildly with his right. He felt the stinging thwack of the sword’s cold steel against his splayed palm, a pain so sharp and sudden that it was a moment before he could be sure that he had caught the flat of the blade and not its edge. Parks pivoted his shoulder toward him, dodging his punch, and that was when he brought his right hand crashing down on the side of Thomas’s head. It was no glove, no fabric wrapped around his fist. It was as hard and unyielding as iron, and it sent Thomas to the floor as if his legs had been cut from under him. For a second he saw only blackness, and while he knew he was falling he could do nothing to prevent it.
He barely made a sound as he crumpled to the carpet, and though he didn’t completely lose consciousness he was, for a few moments, so completely disoriented that he could not move at all. He sensed Parks only vaguely as he clambered over Thomas’s stricken body, knowing only that he had gotten out the window to freedom long before Thomas was in any shape to do anything about it.
Even when he felt fully alert Thomas stayed where he was, gingerly testing with his hand the back of his head where he had been hit, and only then hunching himself into a cautious squat. A few feet away, Jim groaned.
“That went well,” said Thomas.
“What the hell was that thing?”
“The sword?”
“Sword? What sword?” said Jim. “I didn’t see a sword.”
“I think you were already down for the count by then,” said Thomas, resting his weight against the wall and sitting flat on the floor.
“You didn’t do so well yourself, Rocky,” said Jim. “Hellfire, what did he hit me with?”
“Same thing he hit me with,” said Thomas. “It was like a glove made of metal. Something between a gauntlet and the world’s biggest knuckle duster. You okay?”
“I think so. You?”
Thomas rose slowly, nodding only when he was completely upright and didn’t find the floor swimming back up at him.
“That thing could have cracked my skull,” he said. “I prefer not to think what he could have done with the sword.”
Jim was running his fingers over his left temple. There was a thin trail of blood where the blow had broken the skin, but the cut was nothing to the lump that was already rising.
“ ‘Wait,’ I said,” he intoned. “ ‘He could be armed,’ I said. But no. In the red corner we have Thomas Knight, all the way from Idiot’s Landing.”
“Thanks,” said Thomas. “Sorry.”
He turned and looked out the window to where footprints in the snow on the porch roof ended in a confused scraping at the edge. He leaned out to look down the street, but the impostor was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t even make sense of where the footprints led.
Goddamn it.
He wasn’t sure why he was so furious, and as he stood there leaning out into the cold the rage seemed to blow off him so that he felt only stupidly ineffectual and hard done by. He cursed under his breath and turned back to Jim, who was now perching gingerly on the bed, still cradling his temple. The lawyer had appeared in the doorway.
“Everything okay?” he said.
Thomas shot him a baleful look.
“Brilliant,” said Jim, sardonically upbeat.
“He was looking for something,” said Thomas, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed and taking in the carnage that had been visited upon the room: its papers scattered, its books strewn about, the meager remnants of his brother’s life hurled around with no remorse or respect . . .
“He asked me if I was Knight,” he said, thinking it through, trying to remember. “I assumed he meant me, but I think he meant my brother. He said his name was Parks, and I assumed he was the lawyer, but I think . . . I’m not sure. He didn’t know Ed personally, but I think he came specifically to see him. I think,” he added, troubled by the realization, “that he didn’t know my brother was dead.”
Jim frowned.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” he said, massaging his head.
“Neither do I,” said Thomas.
“Is anything missing?” asked Jim, picking up one of the books and considering it.
“I have no idea,” said Thomas. “There wasn’t much to steal except for papers, and if some of those are gone, I’d never know.”
He stooped, righted an overturned box, and saw the wedding picture lying there, bent slightly now.
“Wait,” he said. “Something is missing. A little silver fish. You know the one I mean?”
Jim shook his head.
“The police are sending someone over,” said the lawyer. “They said we should touch nothing.”
“He asked me where Ed died,” said Thomas, half to himself. “I told him I didn’t know. I felt bad about it . . . that I didn’t know, I mean. I think he really wanted to know. I’m not sure why, but . . .”
“I don’t know where he was,” said Jim. “Far East somewhere. He had been in Italy, then went to Japan, but I don’t think he died there.”
“Japan?” said Thomas, all the old mixed feelings flooding back as they did when anyone mentioned Japan. It was a bit like being hit again, though it turned into a cold numbness edged with apprehension. It was like waking up and knowing that something terrible had happened the day before but being unable to remember what it was. “What was he doing in Japan?”
“No idea,” said Jim. “We could call the order. The Jesuits, I mean.”
Thomas looked at him, and then nodded, which made his head ring again with pain.