The woman seemed not to recognize the name. "Well, come in," she said in a thin, dry voice, indicating they should go into the adjoining room. "I"ll get Mr. Davies."

They stepped into a tiny room whose drawn curtains cast everything in a murky light. The walls were bare except for a scattering of photographs. All were of Edward Davies, but only in his later years, none of his youth or early adulthood. It was a time in his life, it seemed to Graves, that Edward had either failed to record or wished to forget.

"No pictures of Riverwood," he murmured as he moved along the wall, glancing at the photographs. "None of Allison or his parents."

"Or of Mona Flagg," Eleanor said.

"Mona was nothing to him," Graves said a.s.suredly. "A summer fling. Someone he used, then threw away."

Eleanor looked at him oddly. "Why do you say that? You don"t know what he felt for Mona Flagg. So why do you a.s.sume she was just someone he "used and threw away"? Why is the woman always the victim in your mind, Paul?" She raised her hand to stop him from replying. "What if Edward were the victim? Led on by Mona. Forced to do things he wouldn"t have done if she hadn"t made him do them."

Her version of the story was no less likely than his own, but still, he could hardly imagine it that way. Mona as the diabolical one, Edward her simpering tool. He knew where this distortion came from, the fact that it had been seared into his brain during the longest night of his life. Kessler and Sykes at their horrid work. Gwen the thing they worked upon.

"You always think of women as abused," Eleanor said. "Mistreated. Led to their destruction by a man. It"s the same in your books. Kessler"s victims are always women. Like Maura in The Lost Child. The Lost Child. The little boy"s sister." The little boy"s sister."

Graves saw Gwen"s hands drop from the rope, raw and bleeding, heard her final, desperate breath. Dead now. Dead at last. The man Graves had knowingly led to her standing beside the dangling body, bored now with the long night"s savagery, but searching still for one last outrage for Sykes to carry out, seizing it in a fiendish instant, barking his command, Gut her! Gut her!

He felt it surge up, the vast, b.l.o.o.d.y gorge of his hidden past rise so powerfully, he felt sure he would release it. "Eleanor ... I ..."

She lifted her hand, again silencing him. "He"s coming."

He glanced toward the corridor and saw a man emerge from its shadows, tall but bowed, his l.u.s.trous black hair now white and unruly. Edward Davies was large and unkempt, dressed in baggy brown pants and a white shirt that bore a faint yellow stain beneath the pocket. He eyed them suspiciously as he neared them.

"You wanted to see me," he said gruffly, walking to a chair and easing himself into it. "Something about Riverwood. I don"t have anything to do with Riverwood."

"It"s about Faye Harrison," Graves began cautiously.

"The girl who was murdered? Allison"s friend?" Davies" eyes shifted over to Eleanor. "What about her?"

"We"re trying to find out what happened to Faye," Eleanor answered.

"You mean, who killed her?" Davies asked. "My G.o.d, that must be over fifty years ago."

"We"ve been asked to look into it again," Graves told him. "By your sister."

"Allison." Davies spit the name like something putrid from his mouth. "My G.o.d, she gets more like Miss Havisham every year." He glanced about the room as if to point out the shabbiness of his surroundings. "I"d rather be here than live like she does. Locked up in the past. Her whole life. Lived in a prison. She"s been living that way for years now. The guardian of the gate. Mistress of Riverwood. What a joke." He shifted in his chair, wincing as he did so. "So you"re here about Faye"s murder. Well, I can"t help you. I didn"t even know she was missing until her mother showed up. My father spoke to her. Evidently Faye had left her house that morning and not come home since. Mrs. Harrison had been combing the woods, my father said, but hadn"t located her. None of us knew where she was, of course."

"Did you know that Faye came into the house the morning she disappeared?" Eleanor asked. "One of the servants saw her there. Greta Klein. She said that Faye was standing at the entrance to the corridor that led to the boathouse." She slowed her pace slightly, like someone carefully laying a trap. "Faye was looking toward the boat-house, Greta said. Toward you ... and Mona Flagg."

If Davies heard the accusing tone, he did not visibly react.

"Did you see Faye in the bas.e.m.e.nt that morning?" Eleanor asked.

"I saw Greta there," Davies answered evenly. "No one else."

Eleanor started to ask another question, but Davies shook his head. "I have a question for you," he said. "Is Allison after me? Is that what this is all about? Trying to pin a murder on me? She"s never forgiven me, and she never will."

"Forgive you for what?" Eleanor asked immediately.

Davies looked at her closely, as if trying to determine how much she already knew. "I took a little money. A little money out of one of my father"s accounts. For Mona. She was my girlfriend at the time. I needed the money because she was-You"re too young to know what it was like back then. It was different. A h.e.l.l of a lot different. You couldn"t just go to the local clinic and get rid of it."

"It?" Eleanor asked. "Mona was pregnant?"

"I went to my father," Davies said. "I wanted to marry Mona. I told him so. But he said no. He said I was an idiot for getting involved with someone like Mona. A girl from the "lower orders," as he called them." He smiled coldly. "I"m sure my sister has probably given you a very different idea of what my father was like. Kind. Generous. Good to the help. Always funding his pet charities. The amateur scientist, teaching pretty little Faye about ... breeding, or whatever it was they were doing with those flowers in his d.a.m.n garden. That"s how my father seemed to Allison. She adored him. Why shouldn"t she? All her life he"d given her anything she wanted. Faye too. Buying her clothes. Toys. Trinkets. Always a piece of candy waiting for her when she came to his office. She loved him as much as Allison did. They both thought he was a peach of a guy. But when I came to him ... when I needed his help, he told me to take my little tramp and go to h.e.l.l." A glacial bitterness guttered in his eyes. "He could spend all kinds of time with the daughter of a servant. But when it came to the girl I loved, she wasn"t good enough for Riverwood." He took a quick, hard breath, then let it out raggedly, struggling to calm himself. "So, I went back to Mona. We talked. Decided to ... Well, that cost money. I didn"t have any. So-" He stopped a moment, stared at the slight tremor in his hands, then continued, his tone less angry now, though his manner seemed no less troubled. "Anyway, I went to New York. To see Mr. Freeman, my father"s bookkeeper. He controlled one of my father"s accounts. I"d gone there before, so Mr. Freeman was used to giving me a little cash. I"d never seen him make a record of what he gave me. So I figured the account was my father"s version of petty cash, something he hardly noticed. Of course, this time I needed a little more than usual, but it didn"t seem to bother Mr. Freeman. Two thousand dollars was pocket change to my father. Freeman took it out of a safe in the office. Anyway, when I got back to Riverwood I hid the money behind some of the boxes my father kept in a storage room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. A few days later I found Greta snooping around in the room. I threw her out and checked to see if the money was still there. It was. But I was afraid to keep it there any longer. So I gave it to Mona when we went sailing that same afternoon. She tucked it inside an umbrella. Two weeks later she used it to ... solve the problem. But things didn"t go the way the doctor said they would. She-" His lower hp trembled. His voice hardened. "Mona died. I never went back to Riverwood. A few weeks later a guy showed up at my door at college. My father had sent him. He"d come to tell me that my father had found out about the money. It seems that he kept a closer eye on that account than he did on any other. Used it to fund special projects. Freeman hadn"t made a record of my withdrawal because he"d been instructed never to make a written record of anything that had to do with the account. Every transaction was to be reported to my father in person. Which is exactly what Freeman did when my father came by his office in New York. So this man had come to tell me that I"d been caught red-handed. And to give me what he termed "official notification" that I had been disowned." He smiled almost wistfully, as if Riverwood were only a memory now, not the legacy he"d been denied. "I never saw my father again. It was like the Old Testament p.r.o.nouncement: "I cast you out." It wasn"t until years later that Allison and I met again. At our mother"s funeral. I was having a few health problems by then. She agreed to put me on the Riverwood dole. The check comes every month." He took in a long, weary breath. "But I don"t miss Riverwood. What I miss-every day, almost every hour-is ..." He rose heavily, trudged to the window and looked for a time out on the barren lawn of his cramped, plain home. Then he turned, his hands clasped behind his back. "Mona might have been able to tell you a few things about Faye, you know. When I wasn"t at Riverwood, they"d go rowing together. Out on the pond. Faye had stopped going out on the river. She told Mona it made her feel queasy. She was sick a lot, Mona said. Couldn"t keep her food down. Particularly in the morning. That"s what made Mona think that the two of them had the same ... problem."

"Mona thought Faye might be pregnant?" Graves asked.

"That"s right," Davies replied. "Mona told me that she asked Faye flat out. She said, "Faye, could it be you"re in a family way?" Faye said, "No, I"m not pregnant. I couldn"t be pregnant." She was real firm about it. That it was impossible. So Mona figured Faye was a virgin. I mean, how else could she have been so sure that she wasn"t pregnant?"

"What about Faye"s sickness?" Eleanor asked. "Did Mona ever find out what had caused it?"

"No," Davies answered. "I don"t think she talked much to Faye after that. She did see her, though. A few days before the ... disappearance. She told me about it after we"d left Riverwood. She said she"d seen Faye. Washing clothes in a tub. Washing that same blue dress she wore the day she went into the woods, Mona said." The peculiar nature of what he was about to describe swam into Davies" eyes. "She was washing everything very ... hard. That"s what Mona said. Scrubbing very hard. Then squeezing out the water and scrubbing again. Like she was trying to get out a stain or an odor." The next words came from him slowly, sadly, like the last words of a mournful song. "And she was crying."

"Crying?"

"Yes. Mona started to go over to her, but when Faye saw her, she turned away, like she was embarra.s.sed to be seen like that. Broken up. So Mona left her alone. That"s the way Mona was. She always knew the right thing to do." The love he"d felt for Mona Flagg sprang into his eyes. Enriched by loss, as it seemed to Graves, but also edged in anger. "Mona was the best person I ever knew. That"s why it so enraged me. What my father did." An old trouble rose in him, flooding the banks of his long reserve. He needed no further coaxing in order to reveal it. "The morning Faye disappeared, my father came up to me. He had some papers in his hand. He shoved them at me. "Read this," he told me. It was a report. On Mona. Her whole family. A general rundown of what they"d done. It wasn"t pretty, I can tell you that."

In his mind Graves saw Edward Davies as he must have appeared at that moment, young and very rich and hopelessly in love with Mona Flagg, but now convinced that his father would never permit him to marry a girl from the "lower orders."

""They"re nothing but criminals," my father told me. "Every one of them. The whole family. Low-life. Do you think I"d ever let such people get near Riverwood?" He jerked the papers out of my hand. "You have a week, Edward." That"s what he told me. A week to decide between Mona and Riverwood." The burden of his dilemma seemed to fall upon him once again. "I told Mona all about it. She said she wasn"t like her family. She told me she"d broken off with them several years before. We were both pretty upset. I nearly tipped the boat a couple of times. When we got back, I couldn"t find the rope to tie the boat. Mona had trouble getting out. It was a terrible day." He waited for a question, continued when none came. "But I"d made my decision. I was going to stay with Mona. If she hadn"t ... Mona would have lived her whole life and never hurt a soul. That"s why it was so unfair. What my father did. Hiring that cop to check up on Mona and her family. Put what he found out in those papers my father shoved at me." Again, his anger flared. "But even worse, the way that same cop showed up at Riverwood after Faye"s death. Asking Mona questions like he"d never heard of her before. Had never sneaked around gathering filth on her family." His mouth jerked into a sneer. "That fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Are you talking about Dennis Portman?" Graves asked.

"That fat cop, yes." Davies" eyes flashed with rage. "He was nothing but a flunky who did my father"s dirty work. I"d seen his name on the report he"d done about Mona and her family. So when he came to Riverwood after Faye died, I knew why he was there. It made me sick, the way he acted. Pretending to be so dedicated. Like he was just trying to find out what happened to Faye. Looking for the truth." He gave a dry, derisive laugh. "Whatever Dennis Portman was doing he was doing for my father. So he could protect Riverwood. Bury anything that needed burying. Portman was no more than a servant. He was big and fat. But he was little. A little man. One of my father"s little men."

"What if he"s right?" Eleanor asked as they headed back to Riverwood. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. "What if Portman"s whole investigation were a sham? What if he never intended to find out who killed Faye? What if his real job was to make sure no one ever did?" She glanced toward Graves, then returned her eyes to the road. "Is that what we"ve left out, Paul? The fact that Portman was Warren Davies" private henchman?"

"We don"t have any reason to believe that. All we know is that he did some work for Mr. Davies."

"We know more than that."

"What?"

"Remember all the follow-up interviews Portman did? The way he checked out everyone"s story? Always trying to find out exactly where everyone was at the time of Faye"s murder. Everyone except Warren Davies, remember? As far as we can tell from his notes, Portman never even bothered to find out if Davies actually went to Britanny Falls that morning, actually met with that man, Brinker, the new mayor."

Graves remembered the single reference Portman had made to Warren Davies" having left Riverwood at noon on the day of Faye"s disappearance. Eleanor was right: there had been no follow-up.

"We"ve always a.s.sumed that Portman was trying to find the truth," she continued. "But suppose he wasn"t doing that at all? Suppose he was afraid of Riverwood? Of its power to destroy him?"

Portman rose into Graves" imagination, fat and stinking in the summer heat, venal, corrupt, the putrid and repellent creature his cowardice had made him.

"We"ve imagined him as Slovak," Eleanor added, softly now, in a tone of dark concentration. "Suppose he was like Sykes instead?"

PART FIVE

Out of oblivion. Into the fear of oblivion. Back to oblivion.-Paul Graves, The Circle of Life

CHAPTER 26.

The sound came without warning, a hard rap. Graves twisted in bed, his imagination now hooked into the echo, altering it, so that it became a hammer, driving nails into wood, a lid slamming over him. He sat up, tangled in the sheets. The sound became a soft, insistent tapping.

He rose and glanced outside. Eleanor was standing on the porch.

He threw on his clothes and went to the door.

"Brinker is alive," Eleanor said without preamble. "The man Mr. Davies went to meet in Britanny Falls the day Faye disappeared. I"ve talked to him." A genuine excitement bubbled in her voice, like Slovak"s when he felt that he was closing in, Kessler just within his reach. "I found Brinker on the Internet," she explained. "You can access something called the National Directory. I just typed in Brinker"s name. And there it was. Matt Brinker. There were several, of course, but only one of them had a phone number with the same area code as Britanny Falls. When I called it, an old man answered. I asked him if he was the Matt Brinker who"d once been mayor of Britanny Falls. He said he was. So I mentioned Faye Harrison. The murder. I asked him if he recalled meeting with Warren Davies the day Faye disappeared. He said he did."

"Did he tell you anything about the meeting?"

"I didn"t ask. I didn"t want him to go into it over the phone. I wanted you to hear whatever he had to say. That"s why I"m here, Paul. Brinker agreed to talk to us at eight-thirty this morning."

Minutes later they were on their way, Eleanor at the wheel of her black Mazda. She"d opened the sunroof, and Graves felt an unaccustomed pleasure in the play of light upon her face, the way the wind tossed her hair. Then an invisible hand yanked him from this brief delight, and he saw Gwen before him, her eyes open but cold and colorless. Her lips moved mechanically, in a surreal whisper, repeating the words Eleanor had heard years before in the Maine woods, Come here, sweetie. Come here, sweetie.

Graves felt the bite of the rope that bound him to the chair, heard his voice cry out, Leave her alone. Leave her alone. He saw Kessler let go of Gwen"s blood-soaked hair, turn to face him. He saw Kessler let go of Gwen"s blood-soaked hair, turn to face him. You want me to leave her alone, boy? You want me to leave her alone, boy? Kessler was coming toward him now, a knife in his hand. The old certainty swept over Graves again, that he was going to die. Then astonishment when he didn"t. He heard the knife slice the rope, felt Kessler"s lips at his ear, whispering softly, Kessler was coming toward him now, a knife in his hand. The old certainty swept over Graves again, that he was going to die. Then astonishment when he didn"t. He heard the knife slice the rope, felt Kessler"s lips at his ear, whispering softly, What"s your name, boy? What"s your name, boy?

When he returned to himself, the landscape had changed. Hills had become valleys, the broad estates that bordered Riverwood now broken into small, neat farms.

"Where do you go, Paul?" Eleanor asked. She was watching him intently. "In your mind?"

"Into the past," Graves said. Which was true. "Old New York," he added quickly. Which was a lie.

It was exactly 8:30 when they arrived at a rambling, badly run-down farmhouse that rested at the end of an unpaved road. A circular fish pond swept out from behind it. A teenage boy drifted idly in a small boat at its far end. There was a dilapidated barn to the right, along with a corral. Two horses stood just behind the fence. Their heads bobbed slowly in the warm morning air as they munched hay from a long wooden trough.

A screen door snapped loudly as Graves got out of the Mazda. He flinched, then glanced toward the farmhouse. A man had emerged and was now ambling toward them, one hand tightly gripping an aluminum cane.

"Mr. Brinker?" Eleanor called. She began to walk toward him.

"That"s me," the old man said. He wore baggy pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Despite the cane, he seemed quite agile. "You must be Miss Stern," he said.

"Yes, I am. And this is Paul Graves, the writer I told you about."

"It"s good to have a little company," Brinker told them cheerfully. "I don"t get many visitors anymore. Not living way out here in the sticks." He lifted his cane and pointed to the pond. "Just my grandson, and he doesn"t know enough about anything to keep a conversation going." He shook his head despairingly. "I don"t know what they teach kids in school anymore. That kid knows nothing. Absolutely nothing. Couldn"t tell you who Alexander Hamilton was. Doesn"t know a thing about the Civil War. The past is just some vague idea in his mind. There once were other people. They did stuff. That"s all that boy knows." He scowled, then seemed to grasp that he"d gotten off track. "We"ll sit outside," he decided. "The house gets a little musty."

They took their seats on the front porch. Graves and Eleanor sat in ragged wicker chairs, Brinker in an unpainted wooden swing whose rusty chain creaked as he propelled himself backward, pushing against the floor with the heels of a pair of worn brown shoes.

"I"m surprised anybody"s going back over that old murder case," Brinker began. He was nearly bald, with only wisps of white hair. They trembled delicately with each breeze, then settled down again. But it was his eyes Graves noticed. They were warm and trustworthy, yet unmistakably penetrating as well, the sort that burned through lies with a steady heat.

"I"d just been elected mayor of Britanny Falls when I met with Mr. Davies," the old man went on. "Inexperienced in politics, that"s for sure."

"Was Warren Davies one of your supporters?" Eleanor asked, wasting no time, Graves noticed, in getting to the matter at hand.

Brinker waved his hand. "I didn"t need Warren Davies" support. I was already elected. It was Mr. Davies who needed a favor from me. That"s what the meeting was about." He sat back and folded his arms over his chest. "There was some town land that bordered Riverwood, you see. And Mr. Davies wanted to buy it." He smiled. "It was one of those moments, you know, when you take one route or another, and that makes all the difference."

"What do you mean?" Eleanor asked.

"I mean you stay honest, or you don"t," Brinker replied. "Mr. Davies wanted me to take this little piece of town property and auction it off. To private bidders, I mean. Of course, there"s no doubt who would have bid the highest. n.o.body around here could compete with Warren Davies on that score." Brinker chuckled. "Of course, Mr. Davies didn"t get to the point right away. He primed the pump a little first. Started with a few compliments about how lucky Britanny Falls was to have me. Stuff like that. Flattery. Then we talked about the war a little. Where I"d been. What I"d done." He grabbed the swing"s rusty chain. "But none of that really interested him. He wanted that land. That"s what he"d come to talk to me about. People had been using it as a kind of parking area because it was near the river. Mr. Davies said it ruined Riverwood. Made it too accessible. He didn"t like the public getting that near his property. So he wanted the town to put it up for sale."

"Are you talking about the parking area at the base of Mohonk Ridge?" Graves asked.

"That"s right." Brinker nodded. "If he could get hold of that land, he could close it to the public. That"s what he intended to do. He said people parked there and wandered around in the woods. His woods, that is. Riverwood. He wanted to put a stop to that. He said he"d make it worth my while if I arranged for the land to go up for sale. A bribe, flat out. Of course, no particular amount came up, but we both knew what was being discussed." Brinker"s eyes grew steely, as if he were once again facing the man he"d refused that day. "Well, let me tell you, Warren Davies had a way of looking at a person. Intimidating. I"m sure he could scare most people into doing whatever he wanted." He lifted his head proudly. "But me, I"d just gotten back from four years fighting the j.a.ps. Mr. Davies didn"t scare me. So I just stood up and said, "Good day, sir," and I left."

To Graves" surprise, Eleanor asked nothing about the bribe, but went on to another issue entirely. "What time did you leave Mr. Davies?"

"It couldn"t have been more than half an hour after we got to the restaurant."

"Did Mr. Davies leave the restaurant at the same time?"

Brinker shook his head. "As a matter of fact, I think he"d already planned to have another meeting that afternoon. Because the minute I left, he motioned to this other fellow. A guy who"d been sitting at the bar."

"Did you recognize this other man?"

"Sure, I did," Brinker answered. "I hadn"t been mayor very long, but I knew enough to recognize the local law."

"Local law?" Graves asked. "You mean Sheriff Gerard?"

Brinker looked as if such a possibility struck him as mildly comical. "No, not Gerard. He was sheriff, all right, but when push came to shove, he didn"t really have a lot of say about what went on in Britanny Falls. It was the State Police you went to if you needed something done. They had the right connections. All the way to Albany. And this other guy, the one who was sitting in the bar and who went over to Davies when I left, he was with the State Police. The head honcho for this area. In charge of all the big cases. The Cla.s.s A felonies, I mean. Rape. Murder."

"Dennis Portman?"

"That"s right," Brinker said. "Portman. Big as life. Sitting at the bar. Sort of hunched over it. Wearing that ratty old rainslick. Hat too. Pulled way down, the way he wore it."

Graves instantly envisioned the scene, Portman curled ma.s.sively over the wooden bar, neon lights reflected blearily on the rumpled surface of his rainslick.

"He was waiting for me to leave, I guess," Brinker continued, remembering. "Anyway, the minute I got to the door, Portman walked over to where Mr. Davies was sitting. He took off his hat and shook Mr. Davies" hand. Mr. Davies was still there when I left my office later that afternoon. So was Portman. Sitting right where he"d been before, in that same booth at the front of the restaurant. It surprised me. A meeting that long. That"s before I found out that Portman worked for Mr. Davies."

Eleanor gave no hint of what Edward Davies had told her about his father"s relationship with Portman. "What kind of work did he do for Mr. Davies?" she asked.

"Background checks," Brinker answered. "Mr. Davies was always concerned about security. Before he hired somebody to work for him, he liked to find out as much as he could about them. That"s what Portman did. He had access to all the records of the New York State Police. He could find out what a person had been up to. He reported stuff like that to Mr. Davies. It was just a way of making a few extra bucks. You see, Portman"s wife was sick for a long time before she died. The bills must have been pretty high. I figure doing a few jobs for Mr. Davies was just Portman"s way of making ends meet." He sighed, then shrugged. "In those days n.o.body would have thought that much about it. It was just a little police moonlighting. The way cops hire out to direct traffic at a church or a private party nowadays. Nothing wrong with it. It didn"t mean the guy was on the take."

"But is that all Portman did for Davies?" Eleanor pressed. "Just background checks?"

Brinker looked at her quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Well, could he have done other jobs for Davies? Jobs that were less ... innocent."

Impatient, Brinker frowned. "Look, why don"t you just come right out with it. So I know what you"re talking about here."