Rise the Dark Page 10

  He glanced away then and Sabrina followed his eyes and saw, for the first time, a small cage near the fence. There were soft sounds coming from inside.

  “Last night you were reckless, thankless, and dangerous. Two people were injured. I blame myself.”

  He walked to the cage.

  “This man who is celebrated in every schoolroom in the nation once electrocuted animals in the interest of his own commerce. We have neglected to teach the children that lesson. His team made movies of these atrocities, designed to prove one thing and one thing only: that his baby, direct current, was safer than the alternating current of Tesla. But guess what, Sabrina. It was not safer. It was not better. It was in all ways inferior, and Edison, if we are to believe anything of his genius, should have understood this. I suspect he did, down in his bones, where whatever remained of his engineering instincts hid, concealed by the instincts of the business tycoon. I suspect that he had slipped past the point of being concerned with what was right and wandered into the territory of what was righteous. It was all about fury then, about ego. Do you understand the difference in this?”

  It was clear he wanted an answer, so she said, “Yes.”

  He regarded her with disdain, shook his head, and then leaned down and fumbled with a latch on the cage. Three chickens emerged. A rooster and two hens, clucking and pecking; they approached Eli with immediate trust. He smiled at them and reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew some feed, which he shook out at his feet. The birds ate happily.

  “Alternating current,” he said, “is indeed a dangerous thing.”

  Sabrina said, “You don’t need to do this.”

  “I’d hoped not. But you proved me wrong. I’m afraid you’ll have to watch the effects of your choices, Sabrina.”

  He walked backward down the hill and toward the humming fence, spreading more feed. The birds scurried after him, using their wings for balance in their awkward runs. They swarmed over his boots and against his legs, and when he reached down and stroked one large hen, she showed no fear. Only trust. Sabrina tasted bile in the back of her throat and turned away.

  “Sabrina? I’ll need your attention. If you turn away, I’ll have to find new methods of teaching. And I assure you that I will.”

  Reluctantly, she looked back at him. Satisfied, he sidestepped and tossed a final handful of food at the base of the fence, near the lowest of the humming copper wires.

  The first bird, a bantam rooster, made contact almost immediately, and there was a blink-fast bang and a small cloud of feathers blew into the air and the smell of charred flesh followed behind it. The rooster, blown five feet back, lay motionless and steaming.

  The remaining hens, spooked by the bang, made frantic attempts to flee. Eli kicked the first one, catching her sideways and driving her into the fence, where a squawk of fear died abruptly in a shower of sparks. The final bird, the large hen who had let Eli stroke her just seconds earlier, was faster. She escaped the kick, ducking her tail as she scurried off, peeling her head back and uttering a high, warbling sound of terror. She sensed Eli’s pursuit and angled away with uncanny instincts and surprising speed, eluding him in a wobbling run up the hill and toward Sabrina. She was only a few feet from her when Pate finally caught her. He grabbed the hen by the neck and lifted it as she squawked and flapped, twisting in midair. One of her claws caught his forearm and opened a bright red gash, but he didn’t react, just marched down the hill, turned, and slung the hen at the fence. She had time to flap her wings twice in a desperate attempt to regain control before she made contact.

  It wasn’t enough.

  The once-fastest of the birds slid down the fence, sparking and smoking, to join her dead companions. He kicked the dead bird away from the fence, one blackened wing flapping against the white body, and then turned back.

  “Violet, take Sabrina inside and secure her, please. Leave her enough mobility to pluck feathers, though. Sometimes sensory cues are necessary for a lesson to take hold.”

  Violet hurried down to collect the birds. She shoved the fastest hen, the last one to die, into Sabrina’s hands. The body was still warm, and Sabrina could see that one eye had ruptured. Blood ran from the eye and over the beak. The smell of burned flesh and feathers was heavy.

  Eli watched with a smile.

  “Good news,” he said. “You’ll have a break from the oatmeal now.”

  17

  Jeff dropped Mark off at his car, which was still in the park, unbothered.

  “You should be driving west with me,” Jeff said. “Go home, get some sleep, and we’ll talk through this.”

  Mark nodded, but they both knew he had no intention of doing anything close to that. Jeff sighed and said, “You want help finding the kid?”

  “No. I don’t want you any more involved than you already are. I’m sorry.”

  “Just be careful. You’ll make the right decisions at the right times. I still believe that, like I said. But on your way there…watch your ass, Markus.”

  “I will.”

  Jeff drove away and then Mark was alone in the park. Everything about the place felt right except for the smell. The flower-and-orange-tinged air had an undertone of smoke this morning.

  He didn’t know the boy’s name or where he lived. It was just past dawn and if he began knocking on doors he was sure to cause a stir and have his friends from the DeLand police called back out. It seemed like a problem, and yet somehow he wasn’t troubled by the task of finding the boy. He thought the boy would find him.

  He was right.

  It was no more than twenty minutes after Jeff left, and Mark had spent the time walking the streets of the camp, passing twice by the burned-out remains of 49B, glancing at it only briefly before moving on but feeling a bone-deep chill each time, remembering the blond woman’s smile and the glitter of the knives in the flashlight glow. He was on his third pass when a voice came from behind him.

  “They put you in handcuffs. Why was that?”

  When he turned, the boy was standing beside the hedge Mark had just passed, looking as if he’d been there all the while.

  Mark said, “They were afraid I was one of the bad people. Then they figured out I wasn’t.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Did you sleep at all?” Mark said.

  “No. I was waiting. Did you sleep?”

  “No.” Mark looked from him to the houses nearby and said, “Son, who are your parents?”

  The boy didn’t answer. Instead, he reached in his pocket and withdrew Mark’s cell phone. There was a bloodstain on the case.

  “I kept it. Didn’t tell anybody either.”

  “Thank you. That was brave, but it was the right thing.”

  The boy regarded him with flat eyes. “You fit in here. Not in the house where you went last night, but here. In the camp.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  The boy looked disappointed in Mark. He handed the phone over, though, and then stepped back.

  “You think I’ll see Dixie again?” he asked.

  “No,” Mark said. “I’m very sorry. She was—”

  “I know what happened. I watched them take her body away. But sometimes I see them again. Like with Walter. I wonder if she’ll be like that.”

  “I hope not,” Mark said.

  “Then you don’t understand what it’s like. That’s okay. Dixie always told me everyone had different learning speeds. You know what that means? We all figure it out, just at different times. I’m early, she said.”

  Mark pocketed the cell phone and took a step back, as if the child posed a threat.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “All I can say is thank you. You helped me last night. Saved me.”

  “Not yet. You might still die. Maybe soon.” He said it calmly and thoughtfully.

  “I hope not.”

  “Me too. But it will be close, I think. If you go to the mountains, it will be close.”

  “Who said anything about mou
ntains?” Mark asked. “Son, which one of them said anything about mountains?”

  But the boy didn’t answer. He just lifted his hand in a wave and ducked back through the hedge in a soft rustle of leaves, and then Mark was alone again on the strange street with the smell of smoke in the air.

  18

  Mark used Jeff London’s username and password to run a reverse match of the license-plate number from the red truck with the registration through the BMV.

  He knew by now that it wasn’t going to produce anyone named Myron Pate, but he was still expecting to find a male name. Instead, the BMV records returned a corporation: Wardenclyffe Ventures, LLC.

  It was a smart choice. Registering the car under a corporation prevented the immediate attachment of a human, and unless pains had been taken to associate the license plate with an arrest warrant, it would keep any officer who ran the plate from seeing a driver’s record or conviction history. There was an address for the LLC, though, in Daytona, Florida, not far away, and every LLC needed a registered agent. The smoke screen was effective enough to deter cursory police attention but not much more. Mark went to the Florida secretary of state’s page and found the registered agent of Wardenclyffe Ventures: a Janell Cole.

  Armed with this, he returned to the BMV and found her driver’s license. The image of her face was small on the phone’s screen, but Mark didn’t need a larger shot to recognize her: he’d seen her just hours before, smiling as she told him that his wife was inconsequential.

  “Janell.” He said the name aloud, thinking that it didn’t match the person. He ran a few preliminary criminal-records searches but found nothing. Under the identity of Janell Cole, she was a model citizen. The only place he had to start was the address from the truck registration, and he didn’t think it would take long for the police to get there through their own means.

  He drove fast on his way to Daytona Beach.

  Janell Cole had lived above a garage in the sort of place people referred to as an in-law apartment. Between the garage and the main house was a courtyard with a bubbling fountain, a koi pond, and a brightly colored flower garden shaded by tall palms. The garage and apartment were painted in vivid colors and had flower planters under the windows, and the place didn’t fit with anything he understood about her. The polar opposite of the house in Cassadaga.

  He climbed up the stairs and knocked. Nobody answered, but the blinds were angled to let some sunlight in. When he shaded his eyes and put his face to the glass, he could see that the place was empty, the carpets freshly cleaned and the walls gleaming with white paint, waiting on a new tenant.

  “She moved.”

  Mark stepped back from the window and looked down into the courtyard. A too-tan woman in shorts and a sports bra stood below him, dripping sweat and breathing hard, fresh off a run.

  “Janell moved?” he asked, to test which name his girl had been using during her stay here.

  “Yes. What kind of detective are you?”

  Mark didn’t think he wore his profession like a fragrance, so either this woman belonged in Cassadaga herself, giving readings, or there had been other detectives looking for Janell Cole.

  “The best kind,” he said, walking down the steps. She smiled at that, which was good, suggesting she wanted to cooperate rather than protect her former tenant. “You don’t seem surprised that a detective would be looking through the window of that apartment. Mind telling me why?”

  “Because they’ve been here before.” She took a deep breath, her torso filling with air, then released it in a long, slow hiss like a leaking balloon, bent at the waist, and began to stretch her hamstrings.

  “Which ones have you spoken with?” he said.

  “The woman, mostly.” She straightened. “You don’t work with her?”

  “No. But I’m sure as hell interested in talking to her. Do you know her name?”

  “I don’t remember it, but I still have her card. Would you like that?”

  He told her that he’d like that very much, then waited in the garden while the woman jogged around to the front of the main house and disappeared. When she returned she had a business card, and Mark took it and almost laughed.

  “No shit,” he said. “The Pinkertons?”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “You know them?”

  “They never sleep.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” It was sad that she had no knowledge of the most famous private detective agency in history. Mark had grown up on stories of the Pinkertons. His uncle Ronny had traveled with a stack of paperback novels, romanticized old pulp stories, mostly Westerns by George Ranger Johnson but also many featuring the daring Pinkerton detectives. Mark had read them countless times, although as a PI, he’d never encountered anyone who actually worked with them. He knew that the company had been bought out long ago by a security conglomerate, but it still retained the brand and, according to the business card, that distinctive watching-eye logo. The investigator was named Lynn Deschaine, and she was based out of Boca Raton, just north of Miami. He snapped a photo of the card and handed it back to his new acquaintance, who was now standing in a midair stretch as if she were about to take flight. She accepted the card and tucked it in her sports bra, resumed her pose, and inhaled so deeply Mark thought she was going to uproot the palm tree. Then she closed her eyes.

  “So,” he said, “what can you tell me about Janell?”

  For a few seconds it seemed like she wasn’t going to respond, but finally, eyes still shut, she said, “I didn’t know her well. I will say I found her unusual. She didn’t like the sun. Her skin was so pale you could see the veins. That’s not healthy, you know.”

  Her own skin was cured enough to be ready for belts and boots.

  “You talk to her much?” Mark asked.

  She shook her head without affecting her balance. “No. I really can’t say much else about her. Just like I told your partner. Or your predecessor. Whoever. She paid rent on time, she was quiet, and she left. When she left, she broke the lease, and I told her she couldn’t have the deposit back. She was fine with that. I had the impression that her new job was rather urgent.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “She’s an engineer.”

  “An engineer?”

  His shock was enough to finally disrupt her stretching routine. She blinked and looked at him. “Yes. That’s what she told me, at least. What do you think she is?”

  A murderer, Mark thought, but he said, “That’s what I need to figure out.”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t help beyond telling you that she paid rent in cash, which was her preference, not mine, that she paid promptly, and that she needed to spend some more time in the sun. That’s really all I know, Mr. Pinkerton.”

  He liked that mistake so much he didn’t correct it.

  Lynn Deschaine didn’t answer her office line, but he caught her on the cell. He identified himself as a fellow PI and told her he was working a case that had taken him to Daytona Beach and seemed to overlap with her work.

  “Really sorry, Mr. Novak, but we don’t share information on our cases. It’s a confidential business. Good luck.”

  “Hang on,” Mark said. “I’m not asking for you to fax over a dossier with Social Security numbers, Ms. Deschaine. If anything, I thought I could help you. I was told that you were—”

  “I’m quite certain I don’t need outside assistance on my cases.”

  These modern-day Pinkertons were real charmers.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Mark said. “So I won’t bother to tip you off about some problems with President Lincoln’s planned trip to the theater tonight.”

  There was a slight pause, and then she said, “That’s both a silly remark and a historically inaccurate one. The Pinkertons were not providing security to President Lincoln on the night of his assassination.”

  Her curt tone hadn’t changed, but Mark had the feeling that Lynn Deschaine, wherever she was, had smiled. He was almost certain.r />
  “Fair enough,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Really just meant to offer some information in case you still had any interest in locating Janell Cole, but it sounds like you’ve got everything in hand, so I apologize for interrupting your day.”

  He hung up on her. It wasn’t something he would have done in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but Lynn Deschaine felt like number one hundred. If she was half the PI that her bravado suggested, she’d be too curious not to call back. If she was even a fraction as combative as she seemed, she’d be too pissed off not to.

  The phone rang in about thirty seconds. He answered.

  “Markus Novak. I never sleep.”

  “Hilarious,” she said, but there was neither humor nor anger in her voice. Just interest. “Tell me about Janell Cole.”

  “I thought you didn’t need the—”

  “I know what I said and I apologize. What do you know about Janell Cole?”

  “I know where she’s been staying for the past few months, I know some people she’s associated with, including a man who just walked out of prison, and I know that the police aren’t going to be far behind me, as she recently cut someone’s throat and set a house on fire. Is that enough to interest you?”

  He listened to her breathing. It took several seconds before she spoke.

  “Where did this happen? And who did she kill?”

  “No, no,” Mark said. “It’s going to be an exchange of information, Ms. Deschaine. Not a gift.”

  He expected her to balk. Instead, she said, “Are you in Daytona now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can make it in four hours. Maybe less, depending on traffic.”

  It was a long haul from Boca Raton to Daytona Beach, and her willingness to make the drive rather than continue to haggle with him on the phone told him just how intense her interest in Janell Cole was.

  “I’ll be here,” Mark said. “But be prepared to trade intel, Ms. Deschaine. I’m not giving any away.”