Renders opened his eyes to see Mallory standing above him.She took a step back, raised her right foot, and kicked him as hard as she could in his shattered face.There came an explosion of pain, then no pain at all.
Chapter 108
Istopped Mallory Norton from kicking Renders a second time.One kick I took as a positive sign of engagement, but two or more would be worrying, even potentially fatal.I told Tony to stay with Renders while I brought her upstairs, lending her my jacket to keep warm.I called 911 and gave them directions to where we were, before going through my contacts until I found T.K.Norton’s number.I handed the phone to his daughter.
“Call your dad,” I said.“Tell him to come get you.”
Chapter 109
It was a couple of days before Mallory Norton could be interviewed by police.She collapsed in her father’s arms shortly after he arrived, and was taken to Redington-Fairview General in Skowhegan.Physically, she was as well as could be expected, but her considerable reserves of psychological and emotional strength were drained.
She’d been waiting for Scott Theriault when Renders found her.Later Santopietro came, they brought her to his cottage, and that was how it began.When they were done with her, Renders assured Santopietro he would get rid of her, but instead Renders kept her for himself.It was bad, she said, always bad, but the worst was when he told her what he’d done to Scott.It seemed that Leonard Levesque began dropping hints in the dormitories, after Mallory’s disappearance.
“Renders took Scott from the school,” Mallory told Detective McKibben.“He used a rock to break his leg, then held him under the water until he drowned.He said it was my fault.He told me that if I’d stayed away from Scott, none of it would have happened.”She glared at McKibben, as if it was he who had said it.“But that’s a lie.”
Renders maintained that he had buried Scott in a shallow grave.He could not explain how the body subsequently washed ashore miles downriver.
“Nature rebels,” said Sabine Drew when I told her.
Meanwhile, Renders, as part of a plea deal to avoid a sentence of life without parole, was sharing all he knew of the Game, though he was forced to do it in writing because of the wiring in his jaw.Sections of the media speculated on the four men’s involvement in the troubled-teen industry, two of them as formerstudents, and whether that might have had some impact on their actions, but no conclusions were ever likely to be forthcoming.Had I been asked, I might have shared another thing Sabine Drew once told me: Evil finds its own.It forms clusters.
Sometimes, matters don’t end well, but they end.
At 26 Federal Plaza, the New York Field Office of the FBI, Special Agent Edgar Ross finished reading the file from the Homicide Investigation Unit of the Boston PD on the murder of D.Francis Sturgis of Wellesley, Massachusetts, until recently a member in good standing of the Colonial Club, if not the human race.The paperwork didn’t tell Ross much that he didn’t already know, and what was worth knowing wasn’t in it, because he was keeping that detail to himself.
As far as the BPD was concerned, what they had here was a clean, well-planned kill, possibly carried out by individuals who shared Sturgis’s sexual tastes and feared he might rat them out as part of a plea bargain.No one paid much attention to reports of a Black man who, earlier on the day of the murder, had apparently paused within sight of the Sturgis residence to take the Wellesley air.Only Ross had discreetly followed up the reports, which took some time because the man was both careful and skilled, with a sixth sense for surveillance.What Ross discovered wouldn’t have been enough to justify further investigation—it wouldn’t even have been enough to merit sending an email—but it was sufficient to satisfy himself.
The man was Louis.
And Ross said nothing.
VI
They shall cause lamentation.No food shall they eat; and they shall be thirsty; they shall be concealed, and shall not rise up against the sons of men, and against women; for they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction.
—The Book of Enoch, 15:10
Chapter 110
Iasked a favor of Sabine Drew, one to which she was reluctant to agree because she was frightened.I told her she was right to be, and I was frightened too, but we would not be alone.Angel and Louis would be there, and Tim Sadlier said he would come with us.
Finally, Sabine agreed to help us locate Brightwell.We had to do it now, before winter set in.Once the snows came, we would not be able to enter the woods so easily, and all the time his reach would grow.
We drove north, to where the wreckage of a small plane had long lain lost in the woods, by the site of an old fort.As we drew nearer, Sabine became noticeably more anxious.She was sitting in the back of my car with Sadlier.In the rearview mirror, I could see her holding his hand tightly.Louis and Angel were in a car behind us, staying close all the way.
At last we came to the point on the road from which we could hike the shortest distance to where last I’d seen the child: Brightwell, in his new incarnation.Louis and Sadlier had brought axes and knives, while Angel and I carried pistols.Each of us had a small pack with water and snacks, but Sadlier had also put together a larger backpack, with an emergency medical kit and more, should we end up spending longer in the woods than we’d intended.
“Well?”I said to Sabine, as we stood by the tree line.
“Yes, he’s in there, but he’s not alone.”
“Who’s with him?”
“A little girl, or what was once a girl.She’s the one holding him captive.It’s odd.”
“What is?”
“I can hear him calling.I think he wants to be found.”
