"No," Pemberton said, and poured himself a fifth glass of red wine, staring at the crystal and its contents for a few moments before lifting the glass to his lips and drinking deeply. He set it back down, half emptied.
"You didn't used to drink this much."
The words were not spoken in a harsh or chiding way or even in a tone of disappointment. Pemberton looked up, and saw only concern on Serena's face.
"You haven't asked about the other night," Serena said, "when I went to Colt Ridge."
Pemberton reached for the glass but Serena lunged across the table, grabbing Pemberton's wrist so violently that the wine splashed onto his shirt sleeve. She leaned her face near as she could, not letting go her hold.
"We've both killed now," Serena said urgently. "What you felt at the depot, I've felt too. We're closer, Pemberton, closer than we've ever been before."
Madness, Pemberton thought, and remembered the first evening back in Boston, the walk down the cobbled streets to Serena's lodging, the hollow sound of their footsteps. He remembered the moment he'd stood on the icy top step as Serena unlocked the door and went inside, pressed the front room light on. Even when Serena had turned and smiled, Pemberton had lingered. Some dim troubling, almost visceral, keeping him there on the step, in the cold, outside the door. He remembered how he'd pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his overcoat pocket, brushed some snow flurries off his shoulders as he delayed his entrance a few more moments. Then he'd stepped inside, stepping toward this room as well, into this moment.
Serena withdrew her hand and sat back. She said nothing more as Pemberton poured himself more wine.
The day had been warm so the window was open. Someone on the commissary steps strummed a guitar and sang about a big rock candy mountain. Pemberton listened to the words intently. It was the same tune he'd heard the porter whistling on the train the day Pemberton had brought Serena from Boston. Just twenty-six months ago, but it felt so much longer than that. The servers came and brought dessert and coffee. Pemberton finally felt the alcohol spread its calming glow inside his head. He let the wine have its way with him, glide him past where he didn't want to dwell.
Pemberton and Serena were finishing their coffee when Galloway came in. He acknowledged only Serena.
"I got something to tell you."
"About what?" Serena said.
"Vaughn," Galloway said. "Had me a little chat with the switchboard operator. I figured that old biddy would of been listening in. It was Vaughn tipped off McDowell, which explains why the little piss ant's skedaddled." Galloway paused. "And that ain't the only thing. A sawyer seen McDowell driving toward Asheville Monday evening with that Harmon girl and her young one. The dumb son-of-a-bitch didn't think it worth telling anybody till today."
"That explains a lot," Serena said.
After Galloway left, Serena and Pemberton finished their meal in silence, then walked to the house. The porch light had not been turned on, and Pemberton stumbled on the steps, would have fallen if Serena had not caught his arm.
"Careful, Pemberton," she said, then ever so softly. "I don't want to lose you."
EDMUND Wagner Bowden the Third arrived at the camp office the following morning. He was a recent Duke graduate and, according to the senator who'd sent him, fancied the job might do for him what being police commissioner in New York had done for Teddy Roosevelt. Though, the senator had hastened to add, Bowden was no follower of Roosevelt in other ways. Bowden was exactly what Pemberton expected-soft and florid, a reflexive smirk behind a few tentative hairs attempting to pass as a moustache. The smirk disappeared when Serena quickly exhausted the young man's conversational Latin.
Bowden departed mid-morning for his first full day as the new Haywood County sheriff. He'd been gone less than an hour when he called Pemberton's office.
"Mr. Luckadoo from the savings and loan just came by to tell me that McDowell and a police detective from Nashville are at Higgabothom's Café. They've been there all morning with Ezra Campbell's brother. Mr. Luckadoo said you'd want to know."
"Did the detective come and see you first?"
"No."
"Go tell him he's collaborating with a man indicted for malfeasance," Pemberton said. "Tell him that if he's got questions you are the law in town, not McDowell."
Seconds passed and all Pemberton heard was static.
"Speak, damn it."
"This Campbell fellow is telling the detective and anyone else who'll listen not to trust me. He's claiming his brother said you and Mrs. Pemberton would try to kill him."
"What's the detective's name?"
"Coldfield."
"Let me make a few phone calls. Then I'll come over there. If they look like they're going to leave, tell Coldfield I'm on my way to talk to him."
Pemberton hesitated a moment.
"Tell McDowell I want to talk to him as well."
Pemberton hung up the receiver and went to the Mosler safe behind the desk. He stood before it and turned the black dial slowly left and right and then left, listening as if he might hear the tick of the tumblers as they found their grooves. He pulled the handle, and the immense metal door yawned open. For almost a minute, he simply stared at the stacks of bills, then gathered up enough twenties to fill an envelope. He closed the metal door slowly, the safe's contents sinking back into darkness, a crisp snap as the door locked into place.
Pemberton took the photograph album from the desk drawer. He'd tried to dismiss the idea of Serena using his photograph to identify the child, but the thought had seized his mind like a snare he couldn't pull free from. Pemberton hadn't opened the bottom drawer, although several times in the last few days he'd allowed his hand to settle on its handle. Now he did. He opened the album and found the photograph of himself still there, as was the one of Jacob. But what did that prove or disprove, Pemberton thought. Like the hunting knife, it could have been taken and returned. He carried the photograph album to the house, shuffling papers and ledgers aside to place it at the bottom of the steamer trunk.
As Pemberton drove out of the camp, he saw Serena on Half Acre Ridge, Galloway close behind. The eagle was aloft, making a slow widening circle over the valley. Their prey believes if it stays still long enough, it won't be noticed, Serena had told him, but the prey eventually flinches, and when it does the eagle always sees it.
When Pemberton arrived at the sheriff's office, Bowden told him that Campbell's brother had left but that the Nashville detective and McDowell remained at the café.
"Do you want me to go with you?"