Harvestman Lodge (81 page)

Cavness shook his head. “None of us ever know what might have been, for either the good or the bad, Don. We can only deal with what is, not with what might have been. Would-have-been is a door that cannot be opened.”

“He’s right, Don,” Feely said.

Don New pulled himself together a bit. “I can never stop regretting that I left my own daughter in a position that brought disaster to her, and to her own child. But I am not the man I was then, and I’m willing to own up to my mistakes and sins. We can only learn from sins and failures by facing them in the light. That is true for this county and this town as well as for me. Let’s move forward with this.”

“Monday morning, then,” said Feely.

“We’ll be there, preacher.”

Eli said, “I should mention that Mr. Carl should be involved in this discussion, and he often isn’t there early on Mondays.”

“He’ll be there,” Sadler said. “He and Deb will be getting a visit from me tomorrow, just to let him know how his Monday morning is going to shape up. When Deb knows I want Carl to be at his office bright and early Monday morning, believe me, his ass will be there.”

“Mr. Sadler,” Melinda said, “I do want to tell you that I hope it won’t be a political liability to you, having your name associated with this story. Harvestman Lodge and all that.”

Sadler smiled and shook his head. “Right is right, and this is the right thing to do. If there is political liability, then I’ll face it and deal with it. I’d rather be associated with helping bring something like this to light than with covering it up.”

Melinda smiled and shook his hand.

Chapter Fifty-Three

THE REGULAR NEWS STAFF WAS HAPPY to find the regular Monday morning meeting had been called off, until they were disturbed by an unexplained gathering of solemn men who entered Mr. Carl’s office, along with Melinda Buckingham the newscaster and a stranger a couple of staffers recognized as the news director for Melinda’s TV station. Eli was in there, too, and Keith Brecht was called in, and the whole situation seemed so strange that the staff could not see how it could be anything good.

The negative vibe heightened ten minutes later when Mr. Carl, clearly very upset, bellowed loudly and so furiously his words were unrecognizable, and came storming out his office door. He strode down the hall toward Ruby Wheeler’s reception area, going out of view of the newsroom, as Benton Sadler came out of the office after him, calling for him to wait and also going out of sight.

The news staffers looked at one another, confused and concerned, and two minutes later, Mr. Carl and Sadler came back together toward the publisher’s office, Sadler’s arm across Mr. Carl’s shoulder. They walked back into the office and closed the door behind them.

“What the hell is going on in there?” asked Barney Cole, assistant sports editor.

“Only God above knows,” somebody else muttered.

Whatever discussion was going on in Mr. Carl’s office was at least quieter after the dramatic exit and return by Mr. Carl and Sadler. Voices could still be heard, though, muffled and impossible to understand, but sounding at times heated.

Things got more confusing when Miz Deb appeared at her husband’s office door, escorted by Ruby. A soft knock and a few words through the door, and Miz Deb joined the group in the office.

“Whatever’s going on, folks, I have a feeling we may all be looking for new jobs,” said Jake Lundy.

“You think Sadler is buying the newspaper, maybe?”

“I doubt it. I never heard any talk of him being interested in this business,” Lundy said.

“I CAN’T LIE ... THERE’S SOMETHING THAT doesn’t feel right to me about making a deal like this between the newspaper and a competitor medium,” Mr. Carl said to his visiting delegation. “Especially on a story that maybe should be left alone anyway. Is it really good for this county and city to trumpet this kind of thing? For years now we’ve been agreed that, whatever happened at Harvestman Lodge, it was best kept buried.”

“Things have changed, sir,” Feely said. “No one knew before that piece of film was found that a child whose sad face, and fate, would become known the nation over, was taken right here in Kincheloe County. It puts a new light onto the situation.”

Mr. Carl was resistant. “What Kincheloe County needs more than anything else, Rev. Feely, is to draw new industry. Economic development! All we can get of it! And now we’re going to stand up and say, ‘Hey, you industrial developers! Come join us in Kincheloe County! Bring the wives and families to the place where your kids can be abducted by perverts and hauled off to become movie stars of the kind you’d never want them to be!’ Is that what we’re doing here, people?”

Eli wanted to throw up his hands in frustration. He was almost ready to sacrifice his job and speak his mind, but to his pleasant surprise, Davy Carl spoke up first, in the kind of calm tone that speaks louder than the most passionate shouting.

“No, Dad, that’s not what we’re doing here. What we’re doing is, we’re finally acting like newspapermen ... like what we should have been all along. Like journalists. The same for our television friends here. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do: preparing to report a story that has to be told. Now, I realize there is still ground to cover that we’ve not covered yet, such as all of us, plus the proper authorities, having the chance to decide for ourselves if the little girl on the film, apparently the daughter of Rev. New here, is definitely the same little girl whose image has become so famous as an icon. We need to redouble our efforts to find our missing bound newspaper volumes from the period when Harvestman Lodge was active but declining. Whether there is a link between the Harvestmen and the disappearance of the bound volumes, we don’t know. If there is, then there is probably relevant information in those lost newspapers.”

While David was talking, revealing a welcome point of view Eli would not have expected from him based on earlier conversations, Miz Deb was being filled in by Keith and Kyle Feely about the earlier discussion that preceded her being called in by Ruby. Mr. Carl had brought his wife in, Eli was sure, because he could see where things were heading and knew how controversial the matter would be in his wife’s eyes. Best to let her see for herself that her much-admired Benton Sadler was in favor of revealing even the darkest secret of Harvestman Lodge, after years of self-protective secrecy. It was to instruct Ruby to call in Miz Deb that Mr. Carl had abruptly bolted from the room earlier.

David surprised Eli yet again by turning to him and saying: “Eli, given that it was your interest, as a novelist, in Harvestman Lodge that led to the situation we find ourselves in here, would you summarize for us the best case you can make for moving forward with this story, and doing so in partnership with the television team?”

Eli nodded and quickly gathered his thoughts.

“There’s not much I can add to the case that has already been made so well. The reason this must come to light is that it is news, plain and simple. And we are news organizations.

“As for doing this in partnership with our broadcast media counterparts, the reason for that is simply that both Melinda and I have been involved in gathering these facts. We have already been working in cooperation, in other words, so we may as well continue along that line.

“Further, breaking this story allows our community to put behind it a long history of rumors and lurid speculations about the Harvestman business. Those things are always more injurious to a community than simply telling the truth, whatever it may be. Ultimately we are simply called to be truth-tellers, as best we can, whether we tell it on the pages of a newspaper, from behind an anchor desk, or from a church pulpit.”

“Well said, young man,” said Mr. Carl, Sadler nodding agreement, and at that moment Eli knew the final corner had been turned.

“There’s another, more pressing, reason, too,” Eli said. “Those here who have seen the clip of film have seen the Asian man who carried the little girl out of Harvestman Lodge. With my own eyes, in the last few days, I’ve seen a person who appears to be the same person, currently in town. His image is there in some of the parade crowd photos. And Melinda’s little sister saw a similar man watching her. It scared her badly.”

“Dear God,” murmured Benton Sadler. And Miz Deb, Eli happened to notice, had just gone very pallid.

Mr. Carl rose and walked over to WVKT News Director Paul Bolton and put out his hand. “I’ll leave the details to you and David, but from this point on, concerning this story, I consider us partners. What we learn we will share with you, and we expect the same in return. When we break this story, we will do it cooperatively and at the same moment, and give credit to one another as investigative partners. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” They shook hands.

“It could get complicated, you know,” Bolton said. “Two very different media with different schedules and modes and manners of producing our products. Making it all fit together may be tricky.”

“We’ll make it work.”

“We will.” Another handshake.

Miz Deb rose and came over to Melinda. “Miss, I hate to be alarming, but on the way over here in the taxi, I saw an Asian man driving through town. There was a little girl on the passenger side of his front seat. She was leaned against the door, like she was sound asleep. Dark-haired child, maybe twelve or so.”

Melinda turned to Eli. “Eli ... he’s got her. He’s got Meggy!”

Eli literally staggered as comprehension hit him. “Call the police station, get Jimmy Beaver, if you can. Miz Deb, which way were they going?”

Melinda made the call from Mr. Carl’s phone. Though there would yet be much to talk about and far more to do, the meeting broke up.

Neither Eli nor Melinda would work this day, though. They had to find Meggy at once.

DOT BUCKINGHAM HAD NOT EVEN FELT the sting of the needle when Jang had slipped it into the soft flesh on the back of her upper arm. She’d not realized it when she slumped to the floor, senseless, nor seen Jang step across her and move through the house until he found young Megan, concentrating on tying her shoes as she sat on the edge of her bed, her back toward the intruder. In moments she had been injected with a smaller dose of his drug, and was as unconscious as her mother.

Ben Buckingham was not in the house, having gone on to the video shop earlier. Jang had slipped in through the house’s mudroom door. Jang stepped over Dot a second time as he carried Megan out and used years of experience in stealthy movement to get her into his car, unnoticed, he hoped. He backed out of the driveway and began to drive out of town. His luggage was already in the trunk and he’d abandoned his motel room. He had done away with Lukey Parvin, and now he had harvested the young flower he needed. Time to go.

The only other things in the car with him, besides the unconscious girl, was the odd, rust-colored stone he’d picked up at the sinkhole where he’d sent Lukey Parvin into the bowels of the earth, and the small vinyl case of preloaded, needled syringes that held the drug he used both to incapacitate, as with the girl beside him, or to kill, as with Lukey Parvin. He didn’t know the makeup of the drug; it was a concoction developed in a Russian laboratory operated by the Flower Garden. Whatever it was made of, it worked perfectly for his purposes, and by merely looking at his intended targets, their size, sex, approximate age, he knew exactly which preloaded dosage to administer to achieve whatever end he was seeking.

The little girl would remain out for less than an hour, having received a particularly light dose, but it would be time enough to allow him to get well out of this town and on his way to Atlanta. And if she began to come around, all he need do was give another quick injection, and she would remain senseless all the way to their Georgia destination. There he would turn her over to one of the Flower Garden’s “receivers.” The receivers were the ones who took the abducted ones from the procurers and shuttled them further along the way. There were receivers in most cities of any reasonable size, but Jang trusted best the receiver in Atlanta, his own brother. It was to him that this particular flower would go. She was too excellent to take even the slightest chance with. That was one reason for the very light dose of the drug he had given her. On rare occasions, some of his blossoms reacted poorly to the drug.

One New Orleans procurer accidentally had killed a prize abductee by administering too heavy a dose. Jang himself had been assigned to deliver the inevitable punishment to that careless one for his egregious mistake, and he’d done it, as always, without hesitation or hitch. The reckless procurer rested somewhere deep in Lake Ponchertrain now, never to be seen again.

The farther he drove into the countryside, the more relaxed Jang felt. The closest call he’d had was the approach of that young policeman on the street in Tylerville, but he’d evaded him. Now, it seemed, he was home free. He’d get the girl to Atlanta, be rid of her, and ditch this car. The next one he could rent with any of several stolen and altered credit cards he carried, or he could simply steal one or buy a cheapo from a thief or at a discount lot. He’d gone through the process so many times that he had scores of survival strategies.

Some miles past Tylerville, he was surprised when a county cruiser pulled out from behind a deserted old service station building and got behind him. For half a moment, Jang was panicked, and that worried him. For years he’d operated free of panic – a key to his ability to find a way out of any precarious situation. He couldn’t let himself change that pattern now.