‘That’s true.’ Hunter couldn’t counter-argue her point. ‘And certain drugs do exit your system in a matter of hours, but you’ve seen junkies before, right? They just can’t stay away from drugs for too long, and they all show typical psychological and physical signs of dependency – skin, eyes, hair, lips . . . paranoia, anxiety . . . you know what to look for. Lucien showed none of it.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘He isn’t hooked anymore.’
This time it was Taylor who couldn’t debate Hunter’s argument. Lucien really showed no physical or psychological signs of dependency anymore. But she wasn’t ready to let it rest quite yet.
‘OK, I agree, he does appear to be clean, but he still gets no sympathy. According to what he told you, nobody forced him to take any drugs. He decided to do so of his own free will. He could’ve just as easily walked away from it. People all over, and of all ages, are offered drugs every day. You know this better than most, Robert. Some go for it, some don’t. It’s a
choice
. In his case, it was
his
choice, no one else’s. No one but Lucien should feel guilty about him becoming a junkie.’
Hunter said nothing for a long instant. The plane hit a spot of turbulence and he waited until it was all clear before speaking again.
‘It’s not quite that simple, Courtney.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No.’ Hunter sat back in his seat.
‘I was offered drugs many times,’ Taylor said. ‘In school, in college, on the streets, around the neighborhood, at parties, on vacation, everywhere really, and I still managed to stay away from them.’
‘And that’s great, but I bet that you also know people who weren’t as strong as you, right? People who didn’t manage to stay away from them. People who got hooked?’
Something seemed to change inside Taylor’s eyes. ‘I do, yes.’ Hunter could tell that she was struggling to keep her voice calm. ‘But I don’t feel guilty because of it.’
For some reason that sounded like a lie.
‘We’re all different, Courtney, and that’s why we all react differently to any given event,’ Hunter said. ‘Our reactions directly depend on the circumstances surrounding that event, and on our psychological mood at that particular time.’
Taylor
did
know that. She’d seen it before – someone who’s feeling happy – things are going great at home and at the workplace – gets offered a highly addictive drug at a party or somewhere else. That person says ‘no’ because he/she sees no need for it. At that particular time, that person’s feeling naturally happy, naturally high. That same person, just a day later, gets laid off, or has a bad argument at home, or something that bumps his/her mood down a notch – gets offered the same highly addictive drug. This time the person says ‘yes’ because his/her mood has changed, the circumstances have changed, and right at that particular moment that person is psychologically, and maybe even physically, very vulnerable. Drug pushers have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to picking those people out of a crowd, and they really know how to sweet-talk a person into believing that if he/she takes whatever drug they are being offered, all their problems will be gone in a flash. Paradise awaits.
Taylor began chewing on her bottom lip.
‘You know that there are many drugs out there that all it takes is a single hit, don’t you?’ Hunter continued. ‘Like Lucien said: “instant hook stuff”. Even very strong people can’t be very strong all the time, Courtney. It’s a fact of life. All you need is to be approached when, for one reason or another, you’re not so mentally strong, you’re feeling lonely, or depressed, or neglected or something, and they’ve got you. We don’t know all the facts. And we also don’t know how many times Lucien walked away from it before he finally failed.’
‘I’ll admit,’ Taylor said. ‘You fight a good argument on behalf of junkies.’
‘I’m not trying to defend junkies, Courtney,’ Hunter said calmly. ‘I’m just saying that a very large number of addicts out there know that they’ve made a mistake, and all they want is to find the strength to kick the habit. Most of them can’t seem to find that strength on their own, they need help . . . help that most of the time isn’t very forthcoming. Probably because so many out there share the same thoughts as you do.’
Taylor’s blue eyes honed in on Hunter intensely before darting away.
‘So how do you think you could’ve helped him?’ she asked. ‘What would you have done?’
‘Everything I could,’ Hunter replied without missing a beat. ‘I would’ve done
everything
I could. He was my friend.’
Twenty-Three
An hour and eight minutes after taking off, the Phenom 100 jet touched down at Western Carolina Regional Airport. The weather outside had started to change. Several large clouds were now lurking around in the sky, keeping the sun from properly shining through, and bringing the temperature down a few degrees. In spite of the lack of sunshine, Taylor put on her sunglasses as soon as they stepped out of the plane. It was basic FBI training – once in public, always hide your eyes.
Outside the airport, Hunter and Taylor met a representative from a local car-rental company she had spoken to on the phone. He delivered them a top-of-the-range, black Lincoln MKZ sedan.
‘OK,’ Taylor said, flipping open her laptop as she and Hunter got into the car. She took the driver’s seat. The car looked and smelled brand new, as if it had been purchased that morning just to accommodate them. ‘Let’s figure out where we need to go from here.’
Taylor used the laptop’s touchpad and quickly called up a satellite-view application. In a fraction of a second, she had a photographic bird’s-eye-view map of the city of Murphy on her screen.
‘Lucien said that the house was at the end of a wood’s edge,’ she continued, angling the laptop Hunter’s way.
They both studied the screen for a long moment and, as Taylor used the touch pad to drag the map from left to right and top to bottom, her demeanor changed.
‘Was he kidding?’ she finally said. Her voice was still calm, but it now had a sliver of annoyance to it. She lifted her sunglasses and placed them on her head before pinning Hunter down with a concerned stare. ‘This place is surrounded by woodland. It’s everywhere, inside and outside the city. Just look at this.’
Her gaze returned to her screen as she used the touchpad again to zoom out on the map. She wasn’t joking. The city of Murphy looked like it had been built slap-bang in the middle of a large, hilly forest. There seemed to be more woodland around than buildings.
‘What are we supposed to do? Find a house at the edge of every woodland we come across and go see if any of his keys fit?’
Hunter said nothing. He was still staring at the screen, trying to figure it all out.
‘He was fucking with us, wasn’t he?’ Taylor chuckled those words. ‘Even if this house does exist, which I now doubt, it could take us a couple of days to find it, maybe more. He sent us on a wild goose chase, Robert. He’s playing games.’ She took a moment to think about it. ‘I’m sure he’s been here before. Maybe even lived here for a while. He knows Murphy is surrounded by woodland. That’s why he sent us here with that crazy riddle. We could spend days here, and never come across this . . . fantasy house.’
Hunter spent a few more seconds analyzing the map before shaking his head. ‘No, this is wrong. This isn’t what he meant.’
Taylor’s eyebrows arched. ‘What do you mean? That’s exactly what he said: “
The house is at the end of a wood’s edge.
” Unless you’ve got this riddle wrong, and we came to the wrong place.’
‘I didn’t,’ Hunter assured her. ‘We came to the right place.’
‘OK then, so Lucien
is
playing games. Just look at that map, Robert.’ She nodded at her laptop. ‘“
The house is at the end of a wood’s edge
,”’ she repeated. ‘Those were his words. I’ve got the recording here with me if you want to listen to it again.’
‘I don’t have to,’ Hunter replied, turning the laptop to face him. ‘Because that’s not exactly what he said.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He said that the house was at the end of
the
wood’s edge, not
a
wood’s edge. And there’s a big difference. Can you get us a searchable map of Murphy? Locations, street names, things like that?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
A few keystrokes later and the bird’s-eye-view map on the screen was substituted by an up-to-date satellite street map of the city of Murphy.
‘Here we go,’ she said, passing the laptop over to Hunter, who quickly typed something into the search feature. The map panned out, rotated left, and then zoomed in on a narrow dirt road located between two woodland hills on the south side of the city. The road’s name was – Woods Edge.
Even Hunter was a little surprised. He was expecting that perhaps one of the woodlands, or maybe even a park, carried the name “Woods Edge”, but not a road.
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ he said.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Taylor breathed out.
The road seemed to carry on for about half a mile. There was nothing on either side of it, except woodland, until the very end, where a single house stood – the house at the end of the Woods Edge.
Twenty-Four
Taylor took the wheel, and the drive from the airport to the south side of Murphy took her just under twenty-five minutes. The entire journey was punctuated by hills, fields and woodlands. As they approached the city of Murphy, a few small ranches sprang up by the side of the road, with horses and cattle moving lazily around the yard. The typical smell of farm manure coated the air, but neither Hunter nor Taylor complained. Hunter, for one, couldn’t remember ever being in a place where everywhere he looked was painted by trees and green fields. It was striking scenery, they both had to admit.
As Taylor exited Creek Road and veered right into Woods Edge, the road got bumpier by the yard, forcing Taylor to slow down to almost a snail’s crawl.
‘Jesus, there’s absolutely nothing here,’ she said, looking around. ‘Did you notice that we haven’t seen a lamppost for way over a mile?’
Hunter nodded.
‘I’m glad we still have daylight to guide us,’ Taylor commented. ‘There’s no doubt Lucien was hiding from something, or someone. Who in their sane mind would want to live down here?’
She tried her best to avoid the larger potholes and bumps, but no matter how carefully she swerved, or how slowly she drove, it still felt as if they were driving through a warzone.
‘This is like a minefield,’ she said. ‘Car companies should bring their vehicles down here for a suspension test.’
A couple of slow and very bouncy minutes later, they finally reached the house at the end of the Woods Edge.
The place looked like a single-story ranch house, but on a much smaller scale. A low wooden fence, in desperate need of repair and a new paint job, surrounded the front of the property. The grass beyond the fence looked like it hadn’t been cropped in months. Most of the cement slabs that made up the crooked pathway that led from the gates to the house were cracked, with weed growing through the cracks and all around the slabs. An old and full-of-holes Stars and Stripes fluttered from a rusty flagpole on the right. The house was once white fronted, with pale blue windows and doors, but the colors had faded drastically, and the paint was peeling off from just about everywhere. The hipped roof also looked like it could do with a few new tiles.
Hunter and Taylor stepped out of the car. A cool breeze started blowing from the west, bringing with it the smell of damp soil. Hunter looked up and saw a couple of darker clouds starting to close in.
‘He certainly didn’t take very good care of this place,’ Taylor said, closing the car door behind her. ‘Not really the best of tenants.’
Hunter checked the dirt road around him and all the way up to the wooden fence. Except for their own, there were no other tire tracks. The house had no car garage, so Hunter looked for a place where a car could park by the house. In places like this, people tend to always park in the same spot. That would’ve undoubtedly left some sort of lasting impression on the ground, maybe even some oil marks or residues. He saw none. If Lucien Folter really lived here, it didn’t look like he owned a car.
Hunter also checked the postbox by the fence. Empty.
As they both moved toward the house, Hunter paused a second, allowing Taylor to take the lead. As it had been pointed out to him more than once, this wasn’t his investigation.
The single wooden step that led up to the porch creaked liked a warning signal under Taylor’s weight. Hunter, who was right behind her, decided to skip it, stepping straight up onto the porch instead.
They checked the windows on both sides of the front door. They were all locked, with their curtains drawn shut. The heavy door on the right of the house that led to its backyard was also locked. The wall above it was high enough to dissuade anyone who might’ve been thinking about climbing over.
‘OK, let’s try these,’ Taylor said.
Lucien’s keychain could’ve belonged to a building supervisor – a single, thick metal loop, packed with similar-looking keys. There were seventeen in total.
Taylor pulled open the mesh-screen door and tried the first key. It didn’t even go into the lock. The second, third, fourth and fifth keys all slid in easily, but none of them turned. Taylor just kept on calmly going through them.
The smell of damp soil became stronger and the air cooler as the first drops of rain came down. Taylor paused a second and looked up, wondering how many holes would reveal themselves on the porch’s roof once the rain got stronger.
Keys number six and seven were a repeat of the first one – wrong fit. Key number eight, on the other hand, slid into the lock with tremendous ease, and as Taylor turned it, the lock came undone with a muffled clunk.
‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘I wonder what all these other keys are for.’
Hunter said nothing.
Taylor turned the handle and pushed the door open. Surprisingly, there was no creaking or squeaking noise, as if the hinges had been well oiled recently.
Even before stepping into the house, they were both hit by a disinfectant, mothball sort of smell that came from inside. Instinctively, Taylor brought a hand to her nose.