A Murder of Crows (31 page)

THE MANHUNT FOR WALTER JONES WAS THE LARGEST EVER
staged in the United States. Every television station showed his photo at the beginning of every newscast. Every newspaper had his face on the front page.

Distant relatives, some of whom had never met Walter, were rousted from their beds. The entire town of Stoney River was brought in to be interrogated—but nothing. Walter was an outsider to them, too. No one seemed to know anything substantial about him.

Finally a headwaiter from a fish restaurant three towns over called the police and said he remembered this Walter Jones person—and he had had a girl with him.

It took a day to figure out who the girl was and then two hours to track her down to her mother's house in Shaker Heights outside of Cleveland.

When they knocked on the door her mother was shocked, but Marcia Lavin was not. She calmly sat on the expensive chaise in the well-appointed living room. She wore a tank top that left her bra straps exposed and sweatpants that had the college's name stamped across her athletically trim butt.

“Do you know why we're here?” Yslan asked.

“The guy in the paper. The bomb guy.”

“Right. Walter Jones.”

Marcia giggled.

“Did I say something funny?” Yslan demanded.

“No,” Marcia answered, “it's that it just occurred to me that when I went out with him I didn't even know his name.”

“Tell us about going out with him.”

“Sure.” And she did. Meeting him outside the gym. Thinking he was working his way through school. Going to “that goofy restaurant.” Pink champagne. Discovering he wasn't a student. The silent ride back to her dorm. “Finding the creep in my room and complaining to the college. Which did nothing.”

“Who did you complain to?”

“My RA, who sent me to the student Complaints committee.”

Yslan checked her notes and shook her head slowly.

“What?” Marcia asked.

“Professor Neil Frost chaired that committee, didn't he?”

“Another creep.”

Marcia then began a rambling exegesis about male creeps, but Yslan wasn't listening.
So that's how Frost and Jones met,
she thought
. At least that question's answered. And if that's how they met, it's unlikely there's a third or fourth or fifth conspirator—let alone a cadre, whatever the fuck that is
.

* * *

Interpol chimed in. France claimed they'd captured him, but didn't have the right guy. Al-Qaeda websites claimed him as a sleeper operative, but this was quickly dismissed. Iran named a street in Tehran after him. But the weeks passed, and Walter Jones finally fell from the centre of public concern.

WALTER HAD GIVEN UP KICKING AT THE GRATING A LONG TIME
ago. Maybe days ago—he couldn't remember. A long time after his pants had dried, anyways—and now even the smell of his pee was gone. And he hadn't taken a dump since that day near the beginning—way far from where he was now, looking down on the church like a god. And besides, now he was too tired to do much moving. It'd taken a lot of energy to get himself back up to the highest point of the tight ductwork. And now his face had been pressed against the grille work for—well, for he couldn't guess how long.

He only vaguely remembered seeing the president and all those people coming to praise his fine work. He'd hoped Marcia would be in the church, to tell her he was sorry about the pink champagne—really sorry.

But somehow, recently, Marcia Lavin had gotten into the ductwork. Funny how she could get in but he couldn't kick his way out. Funny that.

But he guessed it was just one of those things—things he knew other people understood but that he'd never be able to figure out.

But that was okay—yes it was. It didn't matter anymore that other people got things that he didn't.

He brought the perfume bottle to his nose and breathed deeply.

Cause now Marcia was with him all the time. Right here at his side, telling him that he was her guy and would always be her guy.

And he was surrounded by her—and even as he took his last rasping breath—he was the happiest he'd been in his whole life.

* * *

For several days after the president's eulogy, parishioners claimed they could smell perfume in the church. One went so far as to identify it as a very expensive brand.

But no one could figure out where the perfume smell came from, and after a few days it was gone.

And so the church proceeded in its business. The pastor gave sermons and the parishioners did their best not to look at their watches as he droned on, until one day months later in the depth of the summer heat, when the church's powerful air-conditioning system failed.

For three days a sour smell pervaded the space—and then, of course, there were all those flies.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of fat black flies that seemed to come out of the grating of the ductwork high up in the north ceiling of the sanctuary.

AS SHE SAT IN THE DARKNESS OF THE WINDOWLESS ROOM IN
which she had kept Viola Tripping on the Ancaster College campus, Yslan kept thinking of the video of the speaker for the dead talking to Decker Roberts.

“Are you of the clearing or not?” she heard Viola ask Decker. “Or are you of the enemy?”

An enemy of the clearing?

She clicked her BlackBerry on —it was the only light in the darkened room. On it she watched Decker Roberts' profile come into view. He was on a plane watching something on the monitor on the seat back in front of him.

Four computer commands later and she saw what he was watching—the Rayna YouTube video of her playing with Paul Simon. She watched closely, trying to understand why Decker was watching it over and over again.

She heard Viola Tripping ask, “Are you of the clearing?” then wondered if this Rayna was of the clearing. Was the Rothko Chapel in Houston of the clearing?

She sat back against the wall and clicked off her BlackBerry. The room was in absolute blackness as Viola Tripping had requested. For a moment she felt the weight of the girl/woman curling up on her lap, then she sensed herself slipping—to an interrogation room in Leavenworth Penitentiary where another one of her gifted synaesthetes sat scratching his arm, acting as if he'd just stuck his tongue in her mouth.

Evil fuck,
she thought.

Then she thought back to Decker's comment about that Swedish film
Fanny and Alexander
. She grabbed her BlackBerry and called Mr. T's number.

“Boss?”

“Get me a Bergman film called
Fanny and Alexander
.”

“That's a bit chichi for you, isn't it?”

“Just get me the damned film!”

She heard Mr. T chuckle.

“What?” she demanded.

“It's downloading even as we speak. Should be on your BlackBerry in . . . two and a half minutes.”

* * *

It wasn't until the end of the film that Yslan understood what Decker was talking about—that art doesn't come when there's just understanding and kindness, art demands the cruelty and stricture of the pastor in the film.

She immediately switched to the YouTube video of Rayna singing with Paul Simon and watched it again. There it was—Rayna's wildness only made art by the strict demands of the mathematics of the music. Black smashed up against white; cold attacking heat; salt and sugar together. Without the salt you can't taste the sugar. Cold is only the opposite of heat. White only exists as the diametric opposition of black. Without the opposite there is no there, there.

But was art, the profound mixing of good and evil, what Decker Roberts was about? Was that what being in the clearing meant?

No.

But it was the dangerous path through the woods to the clearing. Of that she was somehow sure. A perilous path that she was pretty sure she had to follow.

She flicked off her BlackBerry and sat in the darkness for a long time. Then she began to shiver. There was a way not to take the path. Sure there was. There was no turning back, but there was a way off the path. Or was it just another path—the anchorite's path.

Stories of anchorites had terrified her as a little girl, and she hadn't
thought of them for years. But here in the darkness it occurred to her that perhaps an anchorite's willingness to utterly retreat from the world—to allow herself to be walled into a windowless, doorless room in the side of a church—was her path to safety. A way that they didn't have to take the path in the woods. To leave being bewildered behind. To sidestep the world.

She held up her BlackBerry and turned it on. The screen cast a dim tent of light on the cement floor. She slid her other hand into the light—pale skin, slender tapering fingers, a hand alone.

Alone. Like she was as a little girl. A girl who called herself Solitaire.

She leaned back against the cold wall and heard the buzz of the locusts from so long ago.

She felt like crying. So, for the first time in a very long time—Solitaire did.

MARTIN ARMISTAAD WOKE WITH A START. HE'D SENSED THE SHIFT
for several days, but now it was pronounced. Things were in motion. Alignments were being switched and worlds were attempting to refind their balance.

He smiled. Oh yes, this was worth smiling about.

He had no idea what the time was, but it had to be late—only coarse snores broke the unusual silence.

Prisons are noisy places—all metal and cement, all anger and fear.

He walked to the bars of his cell and wrapped his fingers around them, then slowly moved his hands up and down—up and down—and with the worlds trying to realign he was able to feel the molecular structure of the metal, atoms attached to atoms, linked electrons intertwined and keeping steel, steel.

He bent his head back and allowed his mind to touch dreaming as his fingers continued to move—and feel.

And there it was. He gave a quick jerk and the bonds that held the atoms together sundered, and Martin Armistaad, convicted felon, one of Special Agent Yslan Hick's gifted synaesthetes, was at large—and heading toward the clearing.

VIOLA SENSED IT TOO.

As she stared out the window of her small room in the heart of Iowa farm country, she shivered. The moon was just beginning its growth, but there was something wrong—maybe not wrong, but different, and she felt it.

She pulled a shawl around her shoulders and stepped outside. The corn was already growing and the wind made the tassels sing to her—like her mother had done so very long ago.

She moved her right hand, the one she'd held Decker's hand with, and brought it to her nose. She smelled him on her skin—her father, on her skin.

A star shot across the cloudless sky, and she wondered if it was . . . well, if it was a message from her to Decker to be careful. That there are dangers in the clearing—so many dangers. But only if you are in the clearing can you find the crystal house.

The wind suddenly stopped.

A dense quiet fell upon the land, and Viola shivered.

Was it coming?

Was it?

And could she defeat it this time, or would it take her from the clearing, through the portal, to the scaffold—like those young boys.

LEONARD HARRISON SAT IN HIS OFFICE IN WASHINGTON AND
twirled an expensive fountain pen back and forth through his fingers as he watched the world outside his window, knowing that the world he saw was not the only world there was.

He'd known it for years. It was why he'd insisted on the gifted synaesthetes program and arranged for Yslan Hicks to run it.

But now things were moving too quickly.

Decker in flight, Viola in hiding, Martin Armistaad on the loose—and Special Agent Yslan Hicks suspecting that there are more things in this world than are dreamt of in any philosophy.

He lit a filterless Camel, breathed deeply and pondered his next move.

HE WAS DEEP IN HIS DREAM—DEEPER THAN HE'D EVER BEEN.

Hours ago he'd “awakened” in his dream and did his usual test. He willed his hand up into his line of dream vision—and there it was. He waggled his fingers at himself and felt himself smiling. Then, he willed his hand upward and his vision rose. And he'd traveled—traveled farther than he'd ever traveled. Through a great wood. Through a clearing broad and sun filled.

Then he saw it—and moved toward it.

This was new, very new.

Then he jumped in his dream and was in a Renaissance building of some sort, a circular building leading to a high dome. He willed his hand to circle and his vision circled with it—a perfectly cylindrical building.

Then he saw the slash of light across the floor and followed it to a small open door.

He turned his hand, and he moved toward it.

Emerging from the door, he momentarily couldn't see—the sun was so bright and bouncing off something, something large.

He averted his eyes—and saw it.

A huge glass building. A diamond of a building shimmering in the sun, like a huge Victorian greenhouse—a house of glass. A simple thought popped into his head:
A diamond
.

He willed his hand forward and he followed, through the glass door into the heart of the diamond. And as he stepped there he heard music, single notes that cascaded down from the ceiling in full chords.

He turned and realised the single notes were coming from his mouth and the chords coming back down from the ceiling were enwrapping him, lifting him, and he was almost weightless.