WE WALKED BACK to Louis’s car, but could find no trace of Kittim along the way.
“You understand now?” asked Louis. “You understand why we can’t let them go, can’t let none of them go?”
I nodded.
“The bail hearing is in three day’s time,” he said. “The preacher’s gonna walk, and then none of us will be safe again.”
“I’m in,” I said.
“You sure?”
I barely paused.
“I’m sure. What about Kittim?”
“What about him?”
“He got away.”
Louis almost smiled.
“Did he?”
• • •
Kittim drove at speed into the mountains, arriving at his destination in the early hours. There would be other chances for him, other opportunities. For the present, it was time to rest up and wait for the preacher to be brought to safety. After that, there would be a new momentum achieved.
He pulled into the clearing before his cabin, then walked to the door and unlocked it. The moonlight streamed through the windows, illuminating the cheap furniture, the unadorned walls. It shone too on the man who sat facing the door, and on the silenced pistol in his hand. He wore sneakers and faded jeans, and a loud silk shirt that he’d bought at final markdown in Filene’s Basement. His face was unshaven and very pale. He didn’t even blink as the shot hit Kittim in the belly. Kittim fell and tried to wrench his gun from his belt, but the man was already upon him. His gun dug into Kittim’s right temple as Kittim eased his hand away from his belt and his weapon was taken from him.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m an angel,” said the man. “What the fuck are you?”
Now there were other figures around him. Kittim’s hands were pulled behind his back and cuffed before he was turned onto his back to face his captors: the small man in the mismatched shirt, two younger men armed with pistols who came in from the yard, and an older man who emerged from the shadows at the back of Kittim’s cabin.
“Kittim,” said Epstein, as he examined the man on the ground. “An unusual name, a scholarly name.”
Kittim did not move. There was a watchfulness about him now, despite the agony of his wound. He kept his eyes fixed on the older man.
“I recall that the Kittim were the tribe destined to lead the final assault against the sons of light, the earthly agents of the powers of darkness,” continued Epstein. He leaned forward, so close that he could smell the breath of the injured man. “You should have read your scrolls more closely, my friend: they tell us that the dominion of the Kittim is short-lived, and for the sons of darkness there shall be no escape.”
Epstein’s hands had been clasped behind his back. Now they emerged, and the light caught the metal case in their grasp.
“We have questions for you,” said Epstein, removing the syringe and sending a jet of clear liquid into the air. The needle descended toward Kittim, as the thing that lived inside him began the fruitless struggle to escape its host.
• • •
I left Charleston late the following evening. I told the SLED agents in Columbia, Adams and Addams beside them in the interview room, almost everything that I knew, lying only to leave out the involvement of Louis and the part I had played in the deaths of the two men in Congaree. Tereus had disposed of their bodies while I was tied up in his shack, and the swamp had a long history of swallowing up the remains of the dead. They would not be found.
As for those who had been killed by the old sinkhole, I lied and said that they had died at the hands of Tereus and the woman, taken by surprise before they even had a chance to react. Tereus’s body had floated to the surface, but there was no sign as yet of the woman or Earl Jr. As I sat in the interrogation room, I saw them falling once again, disappearing into the dark pool, sinking, the woman dragging the man down with her into the streams that lay beneath the stone, holding him until he drowned, the two united unto death and beyond.
At the Charleston airport terminal, a limousine waited, the tinted windows up so that no one could see the occupants. As I walked to the doorway, my baggage in my hand, one window rolled slowly down and Earl Larousse looked at me, waiting for me to approach.
“My son,” he said.
“Dead, like I told the police.”
His lips trembled, and he blinked away tears. I felt nothing for him.
“You knew,” I said. “You must have known all along what your son did. When he came home that night, covered in her blood, didn’t he tell you everything that he had done? Didn’t he beg for your help? And you gave it to him, to save him and to save your family name, and you held on to that piece of worthless land in the hope that what had happened there would remain hidden. But then Bowen came along and got his hooks into you, and suddenly you weren’t in control anymore. His people were in your house, and my guess is he was bleeding you for money. How much did you give him, Mr. Larousse? Enough to bail Faulkner, and then some?”
He didn’t look at me. Instead, he retreated into the past, descending into the grief and madness that would finally consume him.
“We were like royalty in this city,” he whispered. “We’ve been here since its birth. We are part of its history, and our name has lived for centuries.”
“Your name is going to die with you now, and they can bury your history with you.”
I walked away. When I reached the doors the car was no longer reflected in the glass.
• • •
And in a shack on the outskirts of Caina, Georgia, Virgil Gossard awoke to a feeling of pressure on his lips. He opened his eyes as the gun forced itself into his mouth.
The figure before him was dressed entirely in black, its face concealed beneath a ski mask.
“Up,” it said, and Virgil recognized the voice from the night at Little Tom’s. His hair was gripped and he was dragged from his bed, the gun trailing spittle and blood as it was pulled from his mouth. Virgil, wearing only his tattered briefs, was pushed toward the kitchen of his pitiful home, and the back door leading to the fields beyond.
“Open it.”
Virgil began to cry.
“Open it!”
He opened the door and a hand at his back forced him out into the night. Barefoot, he walked through the yard, feeling the coldness of the ground beneath his feet, the long blades of overgrown grass slicing at his skin. He could hear the man breathing behind him as he walked toward the woods at the verge of his land. A low wall, barely three bricks high, came into view. A sheet of corrugated iron had been laid across it. It was the old well.
“Take the cover off.”
Virgil shook his head. “No, don’t,” he said. “Please.”
“Do it!”
Virgil squatted down and dragged the sheet away, exposing the hole beneath.
“Kneel down on the wall.”
Virgil’s face was contorted with fear and the force of his tears. He could taste snot and salt in his mouth as he eased himself down and stared into the darkness of the well.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”
He felt the pressure of the gun in the hollow at the base of his skull.
“What did you see?” said the man.
“I saw a man,” said Virgil. He was beyond lying now. “I looked up, I saw a man, a black man. There was another man with him. He was white. I didn’t get a good look at him. I shouldn’t have looked. I shouldn’t have looked.”
“What did you see?”
“I told you. I saw—”
The gun cocked.
“What did you see?”
And Virgil at last understood.
“Nothing,” he said. “I saw nothing. I wouldn’t know the guys if I saw them again. Nothing. That’s all. Nothing.”
The gun moved away from his head.
“Don’t make me come back here, Virgil,” said the man.
Virgil’s whole body shook with the force of his sobs.
“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”
“Now you stay there, Virgil. You keep kneeling.”
“I will,” said Virgil. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said the man.
Virgil didn’t hear him moving away. He just stayed kneeling until at last the sun began to rise and then, shivering, he rose and walked back to his little house.