At the End of the Road (26 page)

The cow pasture is gone, replaced with a subdivision. The subdivision is recently built; many of the houses sit there unsold. Still, Kyle has to do what the note says. He has to go to the green pond. He carries a shovel with him. He explores the new subdivision, the asphalt streets and poured concrete curbs. He thinks of the old Joni Mitchell song about how they paved paradise and put up a parking lot, but this was never paradise. Maybe for a while it was. And that makes him think of another Joni Mitchell song. The one that starts off with the child of God walking along the road.

He carries the shovel with him through the subdivision. Off to one side, behind an unsold brick colonial, he sees a stand of young pine. Green and tender, no more than ten feet tall. A slat privacy fence has been built around the pines to obscure the view of what would have otherwise been an eyesore. The weeping willows have been bulldozed (their roots are bad to clog drainage and sewer systems) but he’s certain this is the spot. The fence is at least two feet taller than he is, and Kyle is a big man. There is no way he can climb it. He kicks at the slats along the bottom until he finds a loose one and wedges in the shovel head. He pries two boards loose and creates an opening that he can slide through. He remembers how they used to slide under the barbed wire fence, holding the wire out of the way for one another, and he wishes Grace were here to hold the boards apart for him.

The pond is just a hollow depression now. The crackled remains of green algae cover the surface like a potter’s glaze, with cattail springing up from the center of it. It remains a natural drainage spot, not fit to build on, so the developers have fenced it off. But the development of the land has altered the normal movement of rainwater, so it no longer receives enough runoff to remain a pond. It is a marshy depression in the earth, clotted with weeds.

He digs carefully, not wanting to damage whatever it is that lies beneath. He sifts through each shovelful, checking it, before scooping out more. It’s nearly dark before he finds what Grace has sent him here to retrieve for her.

There is no note sending him ever onward to grander and grander adventures. What he sees is a tiny plastic hand reaching out from the dark earth—as if reaching out for help that arrives thirty years too late.

He immediately knows what it is. He’s careful, like an archaeologist, as he unearths it and brushes it off. Although its features are faded and deeply soiled, he notes the costume that was once red, white, and blue, the large bust; and he can just make out the Amazonium bracelets on its wrists that can deflect bullets.

I would like to thank my generous editor, Natalee Rosenstein, as well as Kaitlyn Kennedy, Robin Barletta, Jamie Snider, Tricia Callahan, Luann Reed-Siegel, and Michelle Vega at Berkley Books. I am lucky to work with these talented folks, and proud to have a home at Berkley Prime Crime.

 

Robert Guinsler, literary agent nonpareil, put the universe in motion and made it deliver. Thank you, Robert.

 

Officer Scott Luther of the Kennesaw Police Department guided me through some of the law enforcement aspects of this story. Any mistakes in that regard are mine.

 

Victor Daniel and Jeff Jerkins advised me on points of local geography and history, but in many instances I took liberties—particularly with the course of Sweetwater Creek as it winds its way through Cobb and Douglas Counties.

Don Scarbrough and Aly Lecznar at Sweetwater Creek State Park were very helpful to me.

 

I am indebted to the staff and tireless volunteers of the Walken Creek Farm Literary Retreat. And my thanks to Ed Schneider and Robert Leland Taylor, whose input made this book better.

 

My son, Zachary, at age five, told me about The Paralyzed Man. Thanks, big guy.

 

And my wife, Andria, never stopped believing. Not even for a second. Her encouragement and input during the writing of this novel sustained me.