The Heavens Rise (10 page)

But now, in light of Arthelle Williams’s revelation that morning, the narrative had shifted, as his political clients like to say.

“How long were you working this nurse angle?” Stevens asked.

“It just seemed weird to me.”

“A bunch of nurses thinking an invalid is sending out . . . what?
Messages
? I mean, how does this mind control shit even work?”

“Look, if you want me to open up a file on the nurse who killed herself, I can, but I’m going to bill you for it. So let me just tell you now, for
free,
that everyone I talked to said Tammy Keene wasn’t remotely unstable or intoxicated that day. But for some reason, she used a box cutter to gut herself like a catfish when she went inside the kid’s room.”

“Let’s not get dramatic, Shire. Just curious how much of this you actually believe. That’s all.”

“I didn’t say I believed any of it. I said it was weird, is all. And the only part that matters is . . . well, now we know someone at that facility told Elizabeth Ferriot to get her brother out of town or he was going to be killed. Which means no income for Princess.”

“She won’t get any income if she stays out of contact, Shire. Six of one, half dozen of the other, as they say.”

“I know that.”

“I’m just saying. We got two questions here. And you haven’t answered ’em both. Not yet. So they’re running from the nurses, fine. But why’s she running from
us
?”

“Will it matter if I know where she went?”

•   •   •

The ferry landing was in a little town called Fernandina Beach, that sat just on the Florida side of the state’s border with Georgia. Apparently, there was a historic district, but all Shire could see was a few blocks of two-story brick buildings painted various pastel shades. The tallest thing in the skyline was the plume of white smoke coming from the refinery at the water’s edge.

Shire had expected at least a clutch of people at the harbor, but the blonde inside the ticket booth looked up from her copy of
Twilight
with a dazed expression that suggested he was the first person to ask something of her since she’d been hired. The harbor itself was tiny, just a few rows of slips around a pavilion-style restaurant that looked empty. Steel-colored clouds were knotted across the eastern horizon, draining the color from the expanse of tidal pools and rounded islands of marsh grass below.

Somewhere out there was Chamberland Island; he’d get there on the 3:00 ferry. He had Elizabeth Ferriot’s former best friend to thank for bringing him to this humble little coastal village. During the tongue-lashing
she’d been giving about her ex-roommate—hell hath no fury like a woman who discovered you borrowed her AmEx number without permission—Margery Blakely had made one of those invaluable offhand comments that doesn’t mean anything until you look back at your notes and plug it into a search engine.
End of the day, all that skank wanted was some rich sugar daddy to buy her a place out on Chamberland Island.
He’d never heard of the place before that moment. Now he was doing his best to commit a map of the twenty-mile-long coastal island to memory. Large salt marshes made up its western shore, but the ocean-facing side was one of the longest stretches of undeveloped beach in the continental United States. Most of the island was national park, but nestled at the northern tip were a few private parcels wealthy residents had managed to hold on to when the parks service took control of the island in the early seventies. When he located the deeds, Shire recognized the name of only one of the owners, but it was a hell of a hit. Perry Walters, chief financial officer for Ferriot Exports from 1992 to 1999. His name had even been on a list of extended family and business contacts Danny Stevens had given him in case his investigation in Atlanta hit a dead end. Walters was pushing ninety now; it was doubtful he was making many visits to his family’s old cottage. There was no bridge to the mainland, just ferry service that ended around dusk. Overnight camping was prohibited, which meant the only people allowed on the island after dark aside from residents were guests of the White Tail Inn, the historic bed-and-breakfast located at the island’s southern tip. It was, in other words, the perfect place to hide out from a bunch of crazy nurses who were convinced your cash cow brother was responsible for the death of one of their own.

•   •   •

The ferry was small, with a half-open wheelhouse in the bow, an open deck in the middle, and a small seating area in back covered by a wind-jostled blue tarp. They hit rain almost as soon as they left the harbor,
and the ten passengers who had boarded along with Shire found themselves fighting for space under the tarp alongside their own luggage and the boat’s fat smokestack, which was so overheated that even the insulation it had been wrapped in was hot to the touch. (More than one passenger made the mistake of leaning against the padding, only to recoil as if a snake had bitten them.) Only residents could use the car ferry that ran to the island’s northern end, otherwise Shire would have taken it in a heartbeat. Anything would have been better than this trembling, steaming junk heap.

The rain got so heavy you couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. A tense hush fell over the passengers. The two small children who had been excited by the downpour just moments earlier seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation and began pawing at their father’s pant legs. But Daddy Dearest was too busy staring at the spot where the northeastern horizon had been, with a tense set to his simian jaw. Then some protective urge roused him from his paralysis. He picked up his little girl in one arm, forcing his young son to cling to his right leg.

At least the seas are calm,
Shire thought. But you still couldn’t see a damn thing, and that seemed important, even if the island was probably to the east of them now, sheltering the surrounding waters from the open sea. And he’d love it if the boat rocked and rolled, just a little bit. Right now, the whole thing felt too heavy on the water, its determined course the product of that steely arrogance that comes with old age. At any minute, it felt like water would close over the bow and the whole thing would just start chugging straight for the sandy bottom as if nothing were amiss.

The engine cut out. A dock appeared a few yards ahead, and just beyond it, several SUVs waited to shuttle guests to the nearby bed-and-breakfast, which Shire saw only in a glimpse of soaring Greek columns through the mist. Everyone disembarked except for Shire, the father and his two munchkins. Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at an isolated dock in the center of the island where a National Parks Service
sign reminded them that the last ferry was at 6:00 p.m. They had reached the last stop, the island’s wild center.

Shire followed the father and his two kids up a dirt trail that led straight into a dense forest of gnarled live oak branches. Spiny palmetto leaves shot up out of the dense understory like claws. The island’s central trail ran north to south, wide enough to accommodate two vehicles side by side; tire tracks and hoofprints, presumably from the wild horses that inhabited the island, marched the patchwork of gravel, loose rock and sandy soil.

When it was clear he wasn’t going to follow them to the beach, the father appeared to recognize Shire for the first time; he offered a nod and a smile while his kids raced off into the expanse of low sand dunes, pursuing the sound of pounding surf. Then Shire was all alone, walking north under the constant canopy of interlocking oak branches, listening to the sounds of his own lonely footsteps, dodging the occasional palmetto leaf that reached out to snag his shirt.

After twenty minutes, he passed a sign that informed him he was leaving parks service property. Then he saw a large antebellum mansion sitting in the middle of an expansive clearing, shutters drawn, barn-style garage closed and locked. Yet to open for the summer season, he figured.

Ten minutes later, he spotted two brick columns marking the entrance to a gravel driveway. The Walters place; it had to be. The map had been right so far.

Without slowing his steps, Shire slid the right strap of his backpack off his shoulder so he could grip the whole thing in front of him like a papoose. Out came the hand-sized Sony digital camera, with the small telephoto lens attachment. He shifted the backpack to its previous position, and suddenly Shire was just a lone hiker, preparing to lift his camera at an interesting shot. Meanwhile, he held his finger down on the button, snapping a random, constant series of pictures of the Walters place while he held the camera against his thigh.

Once the house and driveway were out of sight, he stopped and examined his work.

The driveway was empty, but the gravel had fresh-looking tire tracks leading into the closed garage. The existing vegetation had been sculpted into a dense perimeter wall between the trail and the house, and the roof had two steeply sloped levels that intersected at a right angle; a trick to make the house look like it was two stories instead of one. It was a glorified cottage on a generous plot of land. And if the map continued to deliver, there was a narrower hiking trail that ran beside the property’s western edge. He trudged through the mud and tree branches in search of it, scanning the ground for snakes as he went.

A few minutes later, he had a pretty decent view of the house’s backside. He was crouching down in the brush, snapping photos of the house’s dark windows, when the smell hit him; too sour to be the septic tank, too full of rot to be household trash. His eyes were watering, his nostrils dilating, and then there was movement behind him. His first instinct was to jump to his feet, but he didn’t want to give away his location, crouched down in the dense brush, so he looked behind him over one shoulder.

The horse was nosing its way through the trail behind him. About seven feet tall from hooves to head, with a shiny coat the color of milk chocolate and a band of white hair around its neck, it didn’t seem to notice him at all. Shire couldn’t tell
what
the animal was doing, and he was less afraid of it than he was of having his cover blown.

Was the
horse
making that awful smell?

The damn things roamed wild on the island, didn’t they? Or maybe it had been drawn to the smell. Maybe there was something big and dead somewhere in the leaves nearby and the horse was trying to sniff it out. But that was ridiculous. He didn’t know much about any animals, but he knew horses weren’t carrion eaters, for Christ’s sake.

“Buzz off, pal,” Shire whispered. “I got work to do.”

The brush all around them erupted, and it took Allen Shire several minutes of clawing at branches and spitting leaves from his mouth to realize that he hadn’t been shot at, that the horse had just lost its fucking marbles on him. It was bearing down on him, hooves flying up, trailing mud clumps, piano key–teeth bared, lips sputtering, flaring nostrils washing Shire in damp heat.

If something had frightened the damn thing, it had responded by bearing down on Shire with sudden, wild fury. And in a terrible instant, he realized he’d tumbled backward through slick palmetto leaves and into the house’s backyard. The horse exploded through the brush after him. He tried to feign left and the monster mirrored him, still kicking and bucking like something from hell’s rodeo.

Knees bent, arms at his side, Shire found himself taking long backward steps across the yard. Then his feet slid out from under him and he landed ass-first in a patch of mud that smeared his hands. Even though it would have been the perfect moment to do so, the horse didn’t trample him. It closed the distance, then started pacing back and forth—
horses can pace?
Shire thought wildly—in case the man tried to run in either direction.

It’s corralling me. Son of a bitch, the damn
horse
is corralling me!

His right heel hit something hard, and then his ass landed on the house’s back steps with a hard thump, like a little boy who’d been cast into the nearest empty chair by the hand of an angry father.

The horse whined, an awful, piercing sound he didn’t know a horse was capable of making. Then the creature’s hind legs bent at the knees, and bile rose in Shire’s throat as he realized the monster was about to lunge at him.

Then the horse’s head exploded.

The animal’s skull seemed to give way down the center, as if an invisible sledgehammer had struck it in just the right spot. The jawbone slipped free from the collapsing skull in a single piece. After it came the brain matter, a slick, corded tumble the color of mud laced with
red wine. And even as it all hit the earth with wet smacking sounds, the horse remained standing, and Shire realized that explosion wasn’t the right word for what he was witnessing. It was as if some congenital weakness inside the animal’s skull had picked that exact moment to trigger a total collapse. And as the seconds passed, as the horse remained standing, it looked as if the animal had just offered up its brain matter to Shire as a welcome present.

Then the animal keeled over and landed on one side so hard its legs bounced, and Shire was left with his own desperate gasps, the same sounds his pal Bobby Hurwitz had made after they all hurled him into the shallow end of the Audubon Park pool when they were kids and he’d been hauled to the surface, goggle-eyed and wheezing, too stunned to gasp for a complete breath. That’s what Allen Shire sounded like right now; a little boy who had been slammed into a wall of unforgiving concrete.

Then he took in the sight of the rest of the yard. It was not a patch of mud he had fallen into a few seconds earlier. He had, in essence, separated the remains of a deer’s head even further from its lifeless body and the stains all over his pants and arms were too red to be pure mud. The yard was littered with them, animal carcasses; skunks, possums, a few bobcats and snakes, plenty of goddamn snakes, and all of them had suffered the same fate as the horse from hell; their heads had been reduced to molten-looking piles of snapped bones and dung-colored brain matter. He’d been too busy trying to get a peek through the house’s windows to realize he was shooting pictures over a grotesque, open-air slaughterhouse.