The Demonologist (31 page)

I look into the backseat and find my overnight bag wide open, underwear and cotton T-shirts and an uncapped tube of toothpaste oozing blue gel over a bundle of socks. I grab one of the shirts and loop it tight around the stump. Watch the blood seep through. A map of enlarging islands.

I reach for the iPhone and dial 9-1-1 with the other hand. It replies with the little beeping song that signals failure.
No connection
.

Something has me opening a different window on the phone’s screen. Entering the dictaphone feature, where there is a table of recordings. Find a selection. Hit play.

A roar of air. Driving fast with the windows down. And then a voice. Cutting through the background noise as though in command of it.

Do you believe in God?

The voice is young, female, but it doesn’t belong to a girl. A voice made up of absences—no inflection, no hesitations. That there is nothing telling about it is what makes it inhuman.

I don’t know if there’s a God or not. I’ve never seen him if there is.

Me talking. The familiarly sharp edge that is the corrosion of grief. Along with something new. The dry catch of fear.

But I’ve seen the Devil. And I promise you, he is most definitely real.

The keys dangle from the ignition and I give them a twist, but the engine doesn’t turn over. The spark plugs. He wasn’t bluffing about that.

I knee the driver’s-side door open and test my feet on the ground. There is something here I can’t leave behind. Something I need to learn.

It goes well for the first three strides. Then my knees slip forward and I’m down, my cheek digging a trough into the gravel. But I’m on my feet again before I’m aware of trying. Around the corner to find the body at the back door.

My friend.

Her face so composed it suggests a communication of what she felt at the end. Something like bliss. Though this may be only
another misreading. For isn’t there something potentially mocking in her wide-open eyes, staring into the sun? Couldn’t her smile be what’s left of a cruel laughter? Amusement at the thought of what awaits me at the river’s edge?

Because that’s where my feet are taking me now. Thrashing through the grass to the gray current. The water slurping and curling around the rocks that poke through the surface like bleached skulls.

 . . . yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

The dead man lies only a few yards downstream. Legs lolling right to left and back again in the passing water as though cooling themselves from the heat.

I kneel close to the body. Take the keys from his pocket, then put my hand to the unmoving chest. Feel for a heartbeat I know won’t be there. Though I know just as certainly that he will speak to me.

The dead man’s eyes open.

A slow slide of the wet lids that I refuse to accept is happening even as it happens. His lips, too. Parting with the sound of stuck-together book pages.

I bend and put my ear close. Hear the wet rattle that draws breath with the sound of sand dropped down a well.

He speaks to me. Not the man’s voice anymore. A liar’s voice I have no choice but to believe.

Pandemonium . . .

I’
M HEADING BACK SOUTH IN THE
P
URSUER
’
S VAN.
T
HINKING ONLY
about staying on the road. Not letting the white take me again.

The closest hospital sign directs me off at Parry Sound and I stagger into Emergency with a horror show of a hand and a tale of an amateur home reno gone wrong. There are some demands for details, and I offer a vague reply about a lost grip on a rotary saw. The doctor notes the wound looks too “chewy” for that but I just beg
for morphine, get a laugh for my remark about how you don’t know chewy until you see how the wife is going to react when she hears about this.

They ask about the thumb’s whereabouts and I catch myself before saying
It’s probably floated downstream into the lake by now
. Admit to not remembering. No good to anyone at this point, is it? What’s gone is gone. It’s just a thumb. Wasn’t one much for texting anyway.

I’m stitched and patched up when the doctor suggests I should be admitted, just for the night, as I’ve lost a fair amount of blood. I invent a brother who lives near town. He’s on his way to pick me up as we speak. Okay if I stay with him instead?

Twenty minutes later and I’m walking out to the parking lot to the Pursuer’s van, hoping none of the eyes from inside watch me hop into the cab and drive off.

For the time it takes me to find the highway ramp I’m expecting to hear the whoop of a police cruiser pulling me over, but the streets are empty. Then I’m roaring down toward the city again and, beyond it, the border. If I make it that far.

Because there will be more people after me soon. Not because somebody will come upon O’Brien’s or the Pursuer’s body overnight (or even in the morning, and possibly not until hunting season in the fall), but because the Pursuer’s employers will be expecting a call saying the job is done. When they don’t hear from him, they’ll send somebody to check. And when they find what they find, they’ll turn to Plan B and look for me with whatever means lie at their disposal. Which will include the police. And worse.

They will know, by the discoveries at the cabin, that I am close to doing what the demon has asked of me. I’ve likely gotten further than anyone has before. And though they wanted me followed at first to find out what my quest was for, now it’s a matter of taking me down.

I could hide. Try to wait it out. But that has a few rather obvious drawbacks. One, they’ll find me. Two, the people the Pursuer worked for want the document now with a desperation that will redouble their efforts for every hour I remain at large.

And three, if I have any chance of getting Tess back, it has to be now. Because at 6:51:48
PM
this evening, she’ll be gone.

Which means getting to New York as fast as I can.

Pandemonium.

I might be able to make the airport in Toronto and slip out on the next flight to LaGuardia. But airports are tougher border crossings than bridges. Cameras, passport checks, customs. When you’re on the run—no matter from whom—airports are a bad idea.

Which leaves me to stay on the road. Though right now I’m riding in a dead man’s vehicle. A man I killed.

I skirt around central Toronto and leave the bank towers and toothpick condos in the rearview when I smooth onto the QEW. Twice I pass O.P.P. cruisers on the shoulder, clocking speeders, but they don’t come after me. It’s good luck far less likely to hold if I try to cross the Rainbow Bridge into the States driving a rental van under George Barone’s name, or whatever alias he registered it under. And I don’t think they let you just walk over. Particularly not a guy in a bloodstained jacket and with a recently severed thumb.

At Grimsby, I stop at a 7-Eleven and buy Tylenol, a six-pack of Red Bull, sunglasses, a pre-made egg salad sandwich and, in the clothing section that is a single rack next to the tiers of gum, a Red Sox ball cap, a
GO! LEAFS! GO!
T-shirt, and a Goodyear Racing Team windbreaker. All useful. But there’s still the van to be replaced.

Past St. Catherines I exit at a rural crossroads and take a few random turns. Drive off the road and into the middle of a cherry orchard, ditching the van next to an irrigation creek. Cover the roof as best I can with fallen branches. Then I’m creeping out of the rows at a farmhouse with a beat-up Toyota sedan out front. Tip-toeing to the side door while sending up a silent prayer (addressed to O’Brien, I find halfway through).

It works. The door squeaks open and I’m in a mud room of dropped coats and boots, kids’ mittens, hockey sticks leaning against the wall.

Farmers like to own dogs, don’t they? If this one does, it’s only a matter of seconds before I set it off. I’ll have no choice but to
attempt to run the two miles to the highway and then—what? Hitchhike over the border?

Another prayer goes up to O’Brien.

There’s no key in any of the pockets. Which forces me up the half flight of stairs to the kitchen. Looking in the fruit bowl, the candy dish littered with change next to the phone, feeling around the dark corners of the countertop.

Upstairs, a large body rolls over in bed. An equally large body shifts to be spooned by the first. Or perhaps wriggles close enough to whisper
Did you hear that?

The fridge.

This comes to me sudden and sure. But who keeps valuables in the fridge?

Nobody. Sometimes, though, they’ve stuck a plastic line of hooks to the door where they hang their keys.

Outside again, the car starts and I ease it away.

By the time I reach the road at the end of the property’s lane I hear no woofs or shotgun blasts when I lower the window. Not wanting to give another breaking-and-entering a try, I tell myself I have to assume this one has been successful, at least for the next couple hours, when Mr. and Mrs. Cherry Orchard will awaken to find their 2002 Camry has slipped away.

Usually, there’s a lineup at the bridge before it’s your turn to approach the customs official in the booth, hand over your passport, endure the scrutinizing stare that makes you feel like you’ve sewed bags of heroin into the car seats instead of trying to get away with stashing a bottle or two in the trunk. I’m counting on the delay to get my story straight, prepare some replies to the most likely questions.

“This isn’t your car, sir.”

I work at the cherry orchard. They sent me to run an errand before we started work.

“An errand to the United States?”

Yes.

“For what?”

Ladders. For picking the cherries.

“You don’t have ladders in Canada?”

Of course we do! They’re just not as good as American ladders.

I don’t even bother praying this time.

When I drive up there’s no line at all. I’m lowering the window to look up at a fifty-something guy with the newspapery skin of a chain smoker. In addition to suspicious, he appears deeply unhappy.

“Citizenship?”

“American. And Canadian. I’m dual.”

“Yeah?” He blinks. “What happened to your thumb?”

He leans over the edge of the door to his booth with interest in my bandaged hand.

“Cut the bugger off,” I say.

“How’d you manage that?”

“Cherry picking.”

He nods, instantly bored again. As though this very conversation is exactly the same conversation he has a dozen times a night.

“Take care now,” he says sadly, and closes his window against the chill.

I
OPT AGAINST
I-90
AND TAKE THE UPSTATE BACKROADS TOWARD
Gotham instead. Abandon the Toyota behind a Pizza Hut in Batavia. A used-car lot up the street is just opening when I walk in wearing my disguise—sunglassed and ball-capped, Goodyear racing striped collar standing straight up—and put my credit card down to take the red Charger they’re showing off on the grass. Ten minutes later I’m throwing a state map into the backseat and accelerating onto I-90, figuring I’m more likely to become lost somewhere in the thatch of meandering secondary roads of upstate New York than pulled over on the most direct route to Manhattan.

The bad news comes at a service center outside Schenectady, where I stop to google my own name on my phone.

The first result triggers a howl from my guts: “Columbia Professor Person of Interest in Grisly Killings.” I consider clicking the story open but realize I already know it better than anyone.

I get out of the Charger and walk away.

Used-car lots are out of the question now, as my Visa will light up the moment it comes close to an authorization terminal. It leaves me to walk into the closest residential neighborhood and open the front door of the first house I come to without bothering to even peep in the window to see if anyone’s up and around. Keys right there on the dining room table. A toilet flush in the basement tells me I have a second, maybe two.

It’s all I need.

Less than an hour and a half later I’m close enough to New York to ditch this car, too, and board a Hudson Line commuter train into the city. Joining the other midday trenchcoats and business suits finding their seats and hiding behind their
Times
or smart phones, rattling toward their work cubicles and windowed boxes.

I keep my collar up and cap brim low. Stare out the window so my face is something only those few pedestrians the train speeds past might see.

With every mile I am closer to you, Tess.

And, with a shaking cold that takes hold like a virus, closer to the one who keeps you, too.

G
RAND
C
ENTRAL AT FIVE O
’
CLOCK RUSH HOUR AND
I’
M SQUEEZING
up the hot tunnels in a solid congestion of humanity, half of us looking for cabs that, when we make it to the sun-dazzled street, are nowhere to be found. A pair of cops by the station’s doors keep to the shade of the metal awning, scrutinizing passersby in a ritual performance of vigilance. This afternoon, do their priorities include keeping an eye out for a David Ullman, last seen wearing a ridiculous 7-Eleven wardrobe and missing the primary digit of his right hand? If so, these guys are lousy at their jobs. They catch me looking at them and return a brief New York cop
keep-it-movin’-buddy
stare, then continue murmuring a dirty joke between themselves, their eyes alert for terrorists and miniskirts.

Even so, I doubt I have much time to continue undetected. Every minute now that I shuffle along the baked concrete toward the Chase Bank on 48th without someone shouting “I saw that guy on the news!” or being tackled by men spilling out of black Suburbans wearing fluorescent FBI vests is a minute I can’t count on. And instead of keeping
to the shade of the buildings’ walls, I’m leaping off the curb every half block, waving for a cab, exposing myself to every police cruiser that passes. Eventually I decide the dangers of trying to hail a taxi are greater than just walking straight to the bank, camouflaging myself among moving packs of similarly attired tourists as best I can. The day’s heat cooking me inside the nylon jacket, but I keep it on, fearing exposure if the raised collar stops shielding my jawline from view.