Kornwolf (46 page)

Rudolf floored his accelerator. Cresting the hill at 110, he continued. The road leveled out. Then, abruptly, it started to dip.

That's when the woman appeared.

Her crazed expression, her tattered dress, the slash marks running from shoulder to torso flashed in the headlights from nowhere, rising. A vision of madness, blocking the road.

Soon she was up on the hood. The windshield exploded. Beaumont's vehicle rolled.

Her body was tossed.

Through the slam and jumble, Rudolf could feel himself splattered in blood.

The next driver over the hill, the detective, plowed right into his overturned cruiser. It spun with the impact, tearing the pavement.

The Land Rover ended up jammed in a ditch.

Then came a Sprawl Mart wagon, dead-on. It went end over end.

The pileup commenced:

Officer Kreider collided with three different vehicles—Sergeant Billings's cruiser, the truck full of locals with deer spotting lamps, and Kutay's vehicle, with Beaumont inside of it—consecutively, all in attempting to steer clear of one: the upended Sprawl Mart wagon. Seven more vehicles—three patrol cars, two pickups, one Holtwoodmobile and a Rabbit—were added. Thirteen vehicles lay in states of ruin before it was over.

Bodies began to appear in the wreckage, crawling from windows, cursing Jesus.

The headless corpse of the woman lay sprawled on the road, hosing blood all over the pavement.

Inside of the overturned cruiser, Rudolf found her head.

The Minister's sister.

Yelling, he scurried out of the heap.

On his feet now, he couldn't determine where all of the blood was coming from. Given the pain, he assumed that his right arm was broken. And something was wrong with his neck. But he didn't feel cut. He was covered with blood, but it didn't appear to be his …

He had killed her.

To hell with it.

Dozens of people were mobbing the road. He hobbled across the pavement, managing, somehow, not to be singled out. Over the shoulder and down the embankment. He opened the Land Rover's passenger door. Inside of it, clutching his ribs, the detective scowled. “What kind of an asshole
are
you?”

A .45 auto was pressed to his skull. Beaumont demanded: “Where is he?”

Coughing, the detective shook his head. “I already told you.” He pointed across the field. “He's right over there. We were almost on top of him.”

Rudolf followed his gesture.

Back to and over the road he proceeded, down the bank to a field of weeds. Before he could blend into darkness entirely, somebody called his name. He'd been spotted.

No matter.

The field was awash in moonlight. He ran through the weeds. There was mud underfoot. It was marshy and black.

He fell on his face.

Plastered in oozing grit and sediment, he got back up. He shook off his pistol, groaning. He clutched his arm. It was broken.

No matter.

He pressed on.

After a break in the weeds, an incline lifted steadily out of the marsh—up, up—to a dry plateau. From the edge of which, Rudolf finally spotted it.

Moving away in the dark, maybe forty yards up: in a streak of white. It was stumbling.

Wounded.

It must have been shot.

It was breathing erratically, wheezing. Beaumont could hear it.

Ignoring a cry from behind, he went after it.

“Rudy!” somebody yelled for him. “Stop!”

They were chasing him …

No matter: this was the end.

He dropped to one knee and took careful aim. He squeezed the trigger.

The figure collapsed.

Slowly exhaling, Beaumont looked over the trembling sights of his smoking barrel. He squinted, then stood up. Ahead, the motionless figure lay sprawled in a clump of thickets.

Kreider ran by. Then Officer Hertz …

He followed them over to look at the body.

Facedown in the weeds, it was perfectly dead. The bullet had gone through the back of its chest.

The problem was: even in death, it was bigger than Beaumont expected. Bigger than Ephraim. And whiter. And older: with sagging buttocks.

Most notably, it was a human being.

And worse: its hands were bound with wire. As well, it was gagged with electrical tape. And something was literally pinned to its shoulder—pinned into place with a finishing staple.

He stooped to look closer. The object was plastic. It looked like an ankle bacelet. It
was
—a police-issued ankle bracelet: tagged to the bone with a staple.

Kreider whistled. “Whoa. Jesus Christ, Rudy …”

Officer Hertz shook his head, bending forward.

A couple of people ran up as the body was rolled over, onto its back.

Benedictus.

In spite of his noble intentions, along with his moral authority in court that evening, there wasn't much left to this whole affair that could have gone worse for Jarret Yoder. Assessing the damage, now, at the mill—and all it implied, indirectly or not so—he realized he hadn't made one right move the whole way through. His failure was total. Had he listened to Jack at the outset, weeks ago, the worst charge they might have been facing now would be (arguably justifiable) kidnapping. Had he left the floor to Stutz that evening—or better yet, turned the case over to Metzger, as intended, or even pled guilty as charged—he wouldn't be facing potential disbarment, he wouldn't have doomed his reputation, and he wouldn't have placed his trusted colleague, the judge, in the line of the coming shit storm.

More, had he kept his mouth shut, the kid would be holed up in Joseph's Hall right now—maybe strapped to a chair in the psych
ward, or locked in a padded cell, full of tranquilizers. Sixteen injuries, four of them critical, wouldn't have been sustained in the pile-up. An unidentified Amish youth wouldn't lie in paralysis, shot in the back. Dozens of Orderly juveniles probably wouldn't be roaming the fields either. The only decent cop in Blue Ball, Nelson Kutay, wouldn't be dead. Jane Doe from the Schlabach Farm wouldn't be on the floor with a gunshot wound. One of Yoder's targets, Beaumont, wouldn't have mowed down another, Bontrager—
after
he'd already killed the defense's witness, Grizelda Hostler—in public. And, last: the body of Jonas Tulk might not lie mauled to a gurgling pulp …

A heartbreaker, that one.

Yoder was watching them scoop his remains from the compound floor.

At least this answered a few of Jarret's oldest questions, however egregiously.

Since long before he had left The Basin, moved to the city and enrolled in law school, he had been suffering,
agonizing
over his role in what had become of Jacob.

In the end, he had always been forced to accept the fact that there'd been no choice.

When, finally (after not having been seen for a week), Jacob had stumbled out of the forest that early November morning, appearing to Yoder on his grandfather's property, he had been less than half alive. A rifle slug had been lodged in his chest. His tattered shirt had been soaked in blood. He'd been writhing in fitful, delirious starts.

Without medical attention, he wouldn't have made it. Jarret harbored no guilt on that matter. How to
get
that attention had been the dilemma—as it haunted him still, after all this time.

He couldn't have reported his friend to The Order, as District Seven had shunned him already. More alarmingly, rumors that Jonas Tulk had shot The Devil the night before had been drifting around the Intercourse Market. For Jacob to show up then, the next morning, with a bullet wound would've been suicidal.

In light of ongoing events in Blue Ball, he couldn't have turned to the cops either. The Basin had been much smaller back then—less populated by a factor of three. One look at Jacob and the local police might have dragged him out back, if given the chance.

Jarret could not have accepted that risk.

But what had that left him, then?

The army.

Initially, the mere idea had sickened him. That Yoder, of all people—first as a Mennonite (albeit a doomed, if still pacifistic one), and second, as a young man of worldly ambitions growing up in the dawn of the Age of Aquarius—would even
consider
contacting government “hippy catchers” felt tantamount to blasphemy.

Yet, for that matter, he hadn't been a doctor. And Jacob had been dying.

There had been
no choice
.

Jarret had driven his car to a filling station. From there, he had placed a call to the Stepford County recruiting office. An MD had been dispatched to accompany him back to the shack on his grandfather's property. There, an unconscious Jacob was placed on a stretcher, then loaded into an ambulance.

Jarret had watched them roll away.

And so had gone Jacob's life in The Basin.

On the good side, Jack would not only forgive him (though Yoder wouldn't know it for years), he would later commend him for acting sensibly. More, he would thank him for saving his life—and, far more still: the lives of others. On that point, Jack would remain insistent.

And now, at last, Yoder understood why.

On the bad end, Jacob would lose almost everything, beginning with his status as an Orderly CO. Having violated the terms of his service (“1–W” work), he was no longer eligible for road patrol. Normally, this would've relegated him overnight to basic training. But Jarret, through months of dogged persistence, would never be able to confirm as much. The closest he would get, via dozens of phone calls to army spokesmen all over the world, was
an indirect suggestion that Jacob, his friend, was “possibly”' overseas. Jarret would never have any specific knowledge of Jack's career in the service. Aside from a claim to have “spent some time in Asia,” Jack himself wouldn't speak of it. Only one thing was dependably certain: he had been gone for the next four years.

In its wake, his disappearance would fuel conjecture throughout the whole community. In spite of his exile, his name would come up (with solemn reserve) during talk of The Devil. His involvement in numerous livestock attacks would be rumored. Tulk would be said to have shot him.

Such hearsay would only inflate when a government agent appeared at market that winter. By asking around about Jacob, he (the agent) would manage to kindle a good deal of panic among the Intercourse vendors. Thus, he would be directed to District Seven's council, as expected. Bishop Holtz, who had lost three acres of corn at harvest, would turn him away, insisting the council could only pronounce the surname that Satan had given
that
creature—a title to ring in damnation forever, as forebears in infamy—the surname of Stumpf.

The agent would take note.

And that was how Jacob had lost his name.

From there on out, he would fade from Orderly recognition altogether.

His parents, who had always been staunch fundamentalists, would start by refusing to acknowledge his name. This would be followed with icy resolve by most of his friends and former associates. Probably his staunchest remaining defender, his sister, would die giving birth that spring. One by one, his fellow supper gang members, “The Rutles,” would join their churches. Thereafter, rising property taxes would lead to the relocation of many of his family members to the rural Midwest. Ephraim, the boy, would know less about Jacob, his uncle, than Jack of his nephew's existence. The boy would grow up at a time when The Basin would lose a third of its Amish residents. The whole community would be redefined. Diminishing congregations would
merge. The First and Eleventh Districts would join to form what became the Twenty-first. The Tenth would dissolve, pouring into the Fourth, as the lay of the land itself would be altered. Once reconfigured, the Seventh District would bear only shades of its former likeness. Less than half of its membership would have any tangible memory of Jacob. His image would have dimmed to a sketchy anomaly, just as The Devil would have faded.

Yoder alone, in the whole of the county, would recognize (and greet) him—albeit with speechless disbelief—upon his unexpected return to Stepford.

He often took solace in knowing that Jack had resurfaced “unblighted,” as he referred to it. That is: sound of mind and body.

By appearances, he had been in form. His bearing had been direct and clear. What's more, he had gained about seventy pounds of muscle. He'd come back as big as a house.

Beyond all of which, in a baffling twist, he had learned how to fight—and to fight like a pro: almost as though he'd gone down to the crossroads.

Even though Jarret could only imagine what Jack had lived through “overseas,” he felt certain of one thing: the truth would be sure to exceed his wildest flights of fancy.

He knew that whatever had happened out there, he himself was, to some extent, responsible.

That had been quite a load to bear, for many years.

It still made him cringe.

Tonight, however, the consequences of not keeping one of those …
things
… locked up were apparent—all too horribly apparent.