Looks of shock, dismay, and anger came over the three men. Once more, they huddled together, whispering among themselves.
“But Jeremy Logan, here,” Albright said, interrupting their confabulation, “he’s got experience in these matters. He’s seen a lot of unusual things in his time. He’s a well-known, influential man — and it may be that he can stop this cop Krenshaw.”
“How?” asked Nahum.
“I don’t know that yet. Not exactly. But it might be he could stall him from acting. Or maybe — just maybe — point him toward the real killer.”
All three men swiveled their eyes toward Logan.
“But you have to be honest with us. You have to answer a couple of questions.”
Another huddled murmuring. Then Nahum looked back at them. “What you want to know?”
“Tell us about the doctor. The old man.”
For a moment, the three men went still. “The… scientist fellow?” Nahum said. “The one with the white hair?”
“Yes. He came here, didn’t he?”
It took Nahum a moment to answer. “Yes.”
“How many times did he come?”
This time, it took Nahum even longer. “Twice.”
“And he asked a lot of questions. About your history. And about your clan. No doubt he’d been to Pike Hollow, heard the rumors.” He paused. “Why did you let him in? Agree to talk with him?”
“We needed money,” Aaron interjected. “For medicine. Penicillin. Rebekah had the chest fever awful bad. No poultice would help.”
“And Feverbridge — the scientist — offered you money.”
More nods.
“But he wanted something in return for the money — didn’t he? More than just history.”
The three remained silent.
“Didn’t he?” Albright pressed.
Finally, Nahum nodded reluctantly.
“What was it?”
For a moment, nobody moved. Then Nahum pantomimed the act of swabbing the inside of his mouth with a Q-tip.
“A DNA sample,” Logan murmured. Then, aloud: “Who among you did he swab?”
“Me,” said Nahum. “Esau. Ruth.”
“But those weren’t all, were they?” Albright asked. “Because by this time, you’d told him of the other. Right? After all, you needed the money — and Dr. Feverbridge, who no doubt had heard the rumors coming out of Pike Hollow, knew how to get information out of you.”
“No,” Nahum said, shaking his head.
“Oh, yes,” Albright pressed. “He wanted a swab from Zephraim, as well.”
The three elders exchanged glances. Watching, Logan sensed a sharp increase in both their fear and their reluctance to speak further.
“And you let him have it. You needed the money too badly to refuse. And he promised not to tell anyone.”
Nahum hung his head. After a moment, he nodded. “Didn’t hurt nobody. He said it was just for a test, like.”
“Who is Zephraim?” Logan whispered to Albright.
Albright leaned in toward him. “He’s the reason the Blakeneys are so afraid of the Pike Hollow locals — and why they won’t let any strangers inside their compound.”
Now Logan spoke up. “I need to meet Zephraim.”
Real alarm flashed between the three men across the fire pit. “No,” Nahum said. “You cain’t.”
“Why not?”
“You just cain’t,” came the evasive answer.
“Tell him why,” Albright said in a quiet voice. “Tell him the real reason.”
Nahum began to speak; hesitated. Then he pointed to the sky, which was just beginning to darken.
“ ’Cause it’s the changing time,” he said.
Albright sat forward on the log. “Listen to me,” he addressed the three. “I told you: Jeremy here has seen a lot of strange things. He’s not going to judge you — and he’s not going to judge Zephraim. Understand, we can’t make any guarantees. But if he is to have any chance at all of helping you, he has to see everything. And that means Zephraim.”
The three elders conversed nervously among themselves.
“It’s either that or the state police,” Albright said.
The whispered conversation went on for another moment. Then, with a kind of weariness that had nothing physical about it, Nahum pushed himself up from the log. The other two Blakeneys followed suit.
“This way,” Nahum said.
Logan and Albright swung in behind the three elders as they began following a muddy path between dairies, a candlery, and, farther along, what looked like some kind of shed for repairing machinery. There was apparently no electricity in the compound, and candles and kerosene torches began to appear in the passing windows. Logan glanced at his watch: it was five thirty.
“Nahum told me about Zephraim, once or twice, back when we were kids,” Albright said to Logan in a low voice. “He was still a young child — I only got glimpses of him now and then. I haven’t heard a word about him since I returned from downstate. But look how twitchy the whole clan is — they’re not usually the nervous type; they’ve been estranged from the local populace far too long for that. No: Zephraim’s at the bottom of this, you can bet that much. God only knows what Feverbridge got up to, exactly, before he fell off that cliff.”
As they continued to climb the path, it became increasingly clear that their destination was the huge structure that towered over the entire compound. On closer inspection it was an even more bizarre building than it first appeared. It seemed to have been originally made of mud brick, but its exterior walls were covered over with so many layers of clapboard, homemade stucco, and scavenged concrete chunks of assorted sizes and shapes that it was impossible to be sure. Logan judged it to be five or maybe six stories in height, but the mismatched gables and dormers that sprouted from the main structure and its various dependencies had so little in common with their brethren, and the numerous windows — some made of ancient glass of circular pattern, others with rude blinds covering them, others simply oiled paper hammered into place — were at so many different levels that they presented only confusion to the eye.
Nahum led the way inside. Logan had expected to find a parlor, or living room, or greeting area of some sort, but saw nothing more than a narrow, low-ceilinged hallway burrowing back into untold distances. The walls were made of wide, rough-hewn beams. While it had been growing increasingly dark outside, once the elders shut the front door behind them Logan found himself in almost total blackness. A match flared; guttering tapers suddenly flickered in wall sconces; a kerosene torch was lit; and Nahum gestured them to follow him along a circuitous path that led up creaking stairs, along passages, down short flights, and up still longer ones, passing innumerable doors, most closed, a few open onto scenes of almost indescribable rustication. Logan soon lost all sense of his bearings, or just how many stories they had climbed. An audible gust of wind shook the structure, causing it to shudder unnervingly. And still they climbed.
And then, quite suddenly, the stairs ended at a small landing before a single wooden door. It was bound by two stout bands of iron, and instead of a doorknob it was secured by a padlock. The group gathered together on the landing, huddled close together in the confined space. Nahum set the torch on a table, then rapped on the door.
There was no response. Logan imagined he could hear a low, scuttling noise beyond.
Nahum knocked again. When there was still no reply, he bent over, lips near the padlock.
“Zephraim?” he said in a calm, soothing voice, the way one might talk to an animal. “Zephraim, it’s Nahum. I’m coming in now.”
31
Nahum undid the padlock, opened the door slightly — gingerly — then pushed it wide. Ahead lay a darkened space. He stepped inside, followed by the others.
Logan found himself in a small garret room. There was no furniture save for a simple, crudely constructed table, holding a clay pitcher of water and a wooden bowl containing what looked like gruel, and a three-legged stool perched in the center of the floor. A single window, barred on the inside with several pieces of wood, admitted just the faintest traces of afterglow from the dying sun. He realized that he must be in the top room of the structure: the one he’d seen from outside the wall, the first time he had tried to visit the compound. The only real light came from the lantern, sitting on the table outside the door.