The van sat crossways in the center of the intersection. Headlights blinked on as it reversed, then rolled forward and parked, angled in my direction. Lionel, dressed in coveralls and a ski mask, emerged and waved. He carried an automatic rifle in his other hand.

“Going to verify casualties,” he said over the radio. “Rendezvous at Farmer Brown’s in a bit?”

I double-clicked, put the Monte Carlo into gear, and proceeded with the itinerary.

CHAPTER FORTY

The farmhouse Lenny Herzog had told me about lay well up in the hills. I parked beside a blank mailbox. I didn’t know who owned the place, only who I hoped to find in the lair. Fallow pastures and thick copses of trees. Private, although not far from a heavily traveled road. The house was a homely panel-and-timber construction enslaved to rural agrarian traditions of the last century. Empty pens, empty barn; every structure collapsing. On this ground, generations of men had slaughtered sheep and cows. Chopped chickens in the neck. Gelded horses. A place of feeding and dying. Its vibe rivaled that of the infamous Kingston Murder House. Human bones rested beneath the potato patch. Always room for one more.

My woozy brain gradually sobered. I busted into the first aid kit and did what I could as quickly as I could. Alcohol, gauze bandages, and twenty yards of tape stabilized the bleeding. I bound my arm like a mummy, downed a few aspirin, and declared it a fix. Should I wait for Lionel? Yes. I didn’t.

It was a beautiful night to be on dire business. North and east, a bulwark of raw, primeval darkness held sway, and it enforced a zone of scarcely fathomable stillness that, for several moments, reeled my listening soul back to an epoch when a single mighty forest blanketed the mountains and the plains. Birds of prey glided silent as death; wolf packs yipped warnings to their rivals; a breeze rustled the canopy. During that misty stretch of prehistory, men wisely hid themselves after sunset. My soul strained to decipher the message of this beckoning quiet. The jawbone knife on my hip knew it well, had persisted through eons along an axis of immutable blood. Wild animals were yet animals in this digital age. Only we tool-making primates had radically evolved, and, for our pains, edged an inch or two nearer annihilation every day.

Significant blood loss and the presence of death elicits my maudlin tendencies.

Light shone from a porch window, revealing a station wagon. I walked along the driveway, sticking to the shadows. Once I got close, I saw a woman in a sweater moving around inside. Her hair was long and blond. No dogs. She was alone. The doorknob turned, so I walked in.

Linda Flanagan froze. Very surprised and very afraid. Hey, if I saw me coming into the room unannounced, blood spattered, at night, in the woods, I wouldn’t have liked it either.

She sat on a couch near the fireplace when I asked her to. The interior lived down to my expectations: a main room sparsely decorated with dusty furniture, tube TV, and no phone. The kitchen was several feet of counter and stove space against the wall. A narrow staircase led to the second floor. Grimy windows. Lamps in the front and rear corners provided illumination. The air was strong with the odor of unwashed bodies and spoiled meat.