Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (38 page)

When I stepped out of the library it was midday and the snowfall had frosted
Kluane
Boulevard, parked cars, the woods, and rooftops in a delicate inch of powder. I buttoned my vest, pulled a black toboggan down over my ears, and strolled back up the sidewalk toward my Jeep.

The village was so quiet.

I could almost hear the snow collecting like a subconscious whisper.

I anticipated being home and the fire I would build and the peaceful hours I’d spend in its warmth, writing while the forest filled with snow.

God, I loved my life.

6

KAREN Prescott woke, the darkness unchanged.

She sat up, banged her head into a panel of soundproofing foam.

Consciousness recoiled in full.

She felt around in the dark for those familiar invisible objects of her small black universe: the two empty water bottles at her bare feet, the huge coil of rope, the
gascan
, the blanket.

Her head throbbed with thirst, her jaw was broken, her fingertips shredded from picking glass shards out of her hair. The car was motionless, its engine silent for the first time in hours. Karen wondered if it were night or day and for how long she’d lain in her bathrobe on this abrasive stinking carpet, still damp with her urine.

How far was she from her Manhattan apartment?

Where had the man with long black hair gone?

Perhaps the car was parked in front of a convenience store and he was inside using the restroom or filling a cup at the soda fountain or signing a credit card receipt. Maybe the car sat in the parking lot of a Quality Inn. He could be lying in bed in a motel room watching porn.

What if he had a heart attack?

What if he never came back?

Was the trunk airtight?

Was she whittling away with each breath at a finite supply of air?
   

He’ll let me out eventually. He promised. I’ll keep calm until—

She heard something.

Children’s laughter.

Their high voices reached her, muffled but audible.
  

Karen wanted to rip away the soundproofing and scream her brains out for help.

But her captor had warned that if she yelled or beat on the trunk even once, he would kill her slowly.

And she believed him.

The driver side door opened and slammed.

He’d been in the car the whole time. Was he testing her? Seeing if she would scream?

As his footsteps trailed away, she thought,
Spending a Friday night by myself in my apartment isn’t lonely. This is lonely.

7

ME and Josh and
Mikey
were playing with a slug and a magnifying glass I took from my big brother’s room. My brother’s name is Hank and he’s eleven. I’m only seven and I hate it.

Mikey
found the slug on his driveway before he left for church. He isn’t afraid of slugs so he picked it up and put it in a glass jar in his garage. I’m not afraid of them either. I just don’t like the way they feel when you touch them.

We were playing at the end of my street where no houses are. Mom says if I want to play in the road this is where I have to do it since no cars ever come down here. She doesn’t want me to get run over.

Mikey
had pulled the slug out of the jar and put it on the road. It was crawling very slowly. It left a silver slime trail behind it. Josh made me give him the magnifying glass. He’s very bossy sometimes but he’s bigger than me so I have to do what he says.

"Get out of the light, shrimp," Josh said to
Mikey
.

Mikey
moved. He’s more afraid of Josh than I am. Josh is nine. He has his own BB gun. When Josh held the magnifying glass over the slug the sun went through it and made a bright dot on the slug’s back.

"What are you doing?"
Mikey
asked.

"Just watch."

"What are you doing?"
Mikey
asked again.

"Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate! Billy showed me how to do this."

I wanted to know what he was doing too. It was sort of boring just watching Josh hold the glass. After a long time the slug started smoking. Josh laughed and got real excited.

"Do you see that?" he yelled.

"What are you doing?"
Mikey
asked.

"I’m burning him,
Mikey
."
Mikey
got up and went home crying. He’s only six years old and my mom says he has a very tender heart. Josh asked if I wanted to do it but I told him no. The slug wasn’t crawling anymore. Or maybe it was and I just couldn’t tell.

I heard a loud whistle. Josh looked up. "Oh no, my mom," he said. Josh dropped the magnifying glass and took off running down the street. I watched him go. He could run very fast. He was scared of his mom. She turned mean after his dad went away.

I stood up and stomped on the slug in case it was hurting. It stuck to the bottom of my shoe like nasty gum. I was getting ready to go home when a man got out of a gray car that was parked at the end of the street near the woods. He was very tall and had long black girl hair. He came toward me. I was afraid but he didn’t even look at me. He just walked right past me up the street.

Something fell out of his pocket onto the road but he didn’t notice. I went over and picked it up. It was shiny and expensive-looking.

"Mister!" I yelled. The man turned around. "You dropped this."

The long-haired man came back. He looked down at me. He didn’t smile. Most grownups smile at little kids. "You dropped this," I said. He opened his hand and I put the shiny thing in it. "What is it?" I asked. It looked very neat.

"A laser pointer. It makes a laser beam."

His teeth were scary—brown and jagged like he didn’t brush them ever.

"How?" I asked.

"Open your hand. I’ll show you. Come on, it doesn’t hurt." I opened my hand and a red dot appeared. It was the neatest thing I ever saw. "You should see it at night," he said. "If it were dark I could shoot this beam across Lake Norman and it would light up an entire house. But you have to be very careful. If you shine it in your eye it’ll blind you. You want to try it?"

"
Yessir
." He handed me the laser pointer.

"Push the gray button," he said. "Shine it on my hand."

I pushed the button and shined it on his hand.

The long-haired man sat down in the road and took his laser pointer back. Then he took a piece of yellow candy from his pocket and ate it. I wanted one too but I didn’t ask.

"What’s your name?" he said. He was smiling now.
  

"Ben Worthington."

"Ben, that was awfully nice of you to tell me I dropped this. You could’ve kept it. You’re an honest boy. If I give this to you will you be careful not to shine it in your eye?"

"I would be very careful."

"I can’t give it to you right now. I have to use it this afternoon but—"

"Why?"

"I lost something in a tunnel and I have to find it with this."

It made me sad that I couldn’t have it right now.

"But maybe…
 
No, I shouldn’t. Your parents probably wouldn’t let you have—"

"Yes they would."

"No I don’t think—"

"They would too."

"Ben, if I give this to you
you
can’t show it to your parents. Or your brother. He would steal it and play with it. Your parents would take it and throw it away."

"I won’t tell them."

"You promise?"

"
Yessir
, I promise."

"You can’t tell them about me either."

"I won’t." He got up and looked down at me.

"Later tonight I’m going to come knock on your window. You have to go to your backdoor and open it so I can give this to you. Can you do that, Ben?"

"
Yessir
."

"You have to do it very quietly. If anyone wakes up and sees me I’ll have to leave and you won’t be able to have the laser pointer. Do you want to have it?"

"
Yessir
."

"Say that you want to have it."

"I want to have it."

"Say it again."

"I want to have it."

"You’re obedient. That’s a good boy. I have to go now. I’ll see you tonight."

"Can I do the laser again?" The long-haired man sighed.

I didn’t think he was going to let me but then he said, "All right, once more."

8

LUTHER Kite straddles the thickest limb of the pine fifteen feet off the ground. It is suppertime on Shortleaf Drive, quiet now that the children have been called home, each house warm with lamplight and lively with the domestic happenings of a Sunday night.

His stomach rumbles. He has not eaten. He will eat afterward because this is North Carolina, land of Waffle Houses that never close. He’ll consume a stack of pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage links and torched bacon and grits and he’ll drown it all in maple syrup. Especially the bacon.

A breeze stirs the branches and the vivid dying leaves sweep down in
slowmotion
upon the street. The sky has darkened so that he can no longer see the silhouette of the water tower that moments ago loomed above the rampart of loblollies across the lake. Only the red light atop the bowl signals its presence.

The October night cools quickly.

It will be warm inside the house he has chosen.

He smiles, closes his eyes, rests his head against the bark.

Just four hours.

The moon will have advanced high above the horizon of calligraphic pines, burnishing the empty street into blue silver. He sleeps perfectly still upon the limb, the smell of sap engulfing him, sweet and pungent like bourbon.

9

HORACE Boone had used credit card information to track Andrew Thomas to a postal outlet in Haines Junction, Yukon.

But he didn’t leave right away.

He continued working in Anchorage from April to August, saving everything he earned. In September he quit his job at Murder One Books, put what few possessions he owned into storage, and embarked in his stalwart Land Cruiser for the Yukon with four thousand dollars, a suitcase of clothing, and blind faith that he would find Andrew Thomas.

Upon arriving in Haines Junction, Horace staked out the downtown, studying the village’s sparse foot traffic for his man.

On the fifth morning, while wondering if he’d made a giant mistake, he watched the same long-haired man who’d graced Murder One Books several months back, enter
Madley’s
Store to retrieve his mail.

Horace was elated.

The next day, his twenty-fourth birthday, Horace rented a rundown trailer on the outskirts of the village and began taking copious notes for the book he wholeheartedly believed was going to make him a rich and famous and oft-laid writer.

His second week in the Yukon he ventured onto Andrew Thomas’s property late one night and spied on the cabin from a distance with binoculars.

The following week he’d crept all the way up to a side window, watched the man wash his supper dishes and write in his loft late into the night.
    

Now, more than halfway through October, his fourth week in Haines Junction, Horace had decided to take his first real chance.

It was Monday morning and the snow from two days ago still dallied in the shadows of the forest. A full but feeble moon remained visible in the iris-blue morning—a clouded
cataractous
eye.