IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when he found it. He’d seen the spot clearly enough where it entered the water, marked it the best that he could, but it was a big ocean and things shifted as they sank. He went up and down the short stretch of shore where it had to have ended up, walking carefully, dragging his feet through the rough sand, waiting for the telltale feel of the wooden box. He didn’t like being out in the dark, with so many unseen creatures circling the waters around him. Sharks were like alligators, prehistoric beasts that had somehow managed to last through one world and into the next. At least you could see their fins in daylight. Out here in the dark, one of them could be at his side and he wouldn’t know.
He looked for more than an hour and didn’t find anything. Tired, he went back to the beach and sat in the sand. The air was warm, but the breeze chilled the moisture on his skin and soon had him ready to return to the water.
He was still searching but the expectation of success was dimming in his mind when the side of his right foot thumped against something solid. He paused and dragged his foot back and felt the impact again, dipped and let a wave slap over his head, drenching him, as he felt with his hands. As soon as his fingers made contact, he knew this had to be it. He pulled it from the sand and broke the surface again, then waded out of the surf.
There was a book of matches in his pants pocket, and he went back up and sat in the sand again and took them out. The twine was still there, and Rebecca had used it to secure a flat stone to the box, ensuring that it would sink. He untied it, lit a match, and opened the lid. He was kneeling in the sand now, and when the match light caught the inside of the box and revealed its contents, he stumbled upright and backward. The match dropped into the sand and snuffed out. He stood where he was for a moment, then took a deep breath, lit another match, and bent for a second look.
Inside the box was a pair of hands.
They’d been severed just above the wrists, cut with a clean chop from a cleaver or an ax, not sawed away. What blood had been in the hands had long since drained, maybe before they were put into the box, maybe once the seawater found its way inside; what was left was swollen gray flesh with strings of muscle and shards of bone exposed at the bottoms. They were a man’s hands, but the decomposing flesh hid any clue as to what kind of man; details like calluses or scars or carefully tended fingernails were now impossible to detect.
The match burned down and scorched his fingers, and then he dropped that one, too, closed the lid of the box, and sat down heavily in the sand. He found his flask and took a long drink and then fastened the cap and sat staring at the box as the wind drove hard across the water. He stared for a long time and then got to his feet and walked to the house and found the shovel.
Back at the beach, he gathered the box, feeling a prickle of horror as he heard the contents slide around inside, and then walked down the shore with the box in one hand and the shovel in the other. He walked until he found a tree that had been broken in half by the hurricane, and then he carefully marked five paces out from it and began to dig. When the hole was about three feet deep, he dropped the box into the center and filled it back in with sand. He smoothed the surface with the underside of the shovel’s blade, then spent some time walking back and forth over the top, until he was satisfied that the disturbed ground would be nearly impossible to spot.
When he was done, he walked back to the house and replaced the shovel. He paused on the porch and smoked a cigarette in the dark, and then he opened the door and went inside to find Rebecca Cady.
Her room was dark and the door was closed. There was no sound inside but the occasional creaking of the house in the wind. Paul’s room was directly next to hers, but it was silent as well. Arlen opened the door as softly as he could, looked inside and saw the outline of her body on the bed. Her chest rose and fell slowly. She was asleep.
He crossed the room until he was standing at the side of her bed. There was a chair next to the bed, and a pair of pistols rested on it. He stared at them for a few seconds, and then he reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder.
She came awake with a start, was about to let out a cry, but he moved his hand to her mouth in time to muffle it. She twisted to the side and reached for the chair where the pistols lay, but he blocked that with his hip and said, “Easy.”
She bit his hand.
It was a damn good bite, one that broke the flesh and made him grunt with pain. He jerked away and stepped back and she went for the guns again, but he kept in front of the chair.
“Get out. What are you-”
“You lost your box in the ocean,” he said in a low voice, conscious of Paul in the room next to them, wanting very much for the boy to sleep through this. “I went in and found it for you.”
She went still and silent. She was propped up on the heels of her hands now, pushed back against the headboard, lit by the moon glow.
“I think it’s time we talk,” Arlen said. “At least it’s time I talk to somebody. You got a chance for it to be you. Pass, and I’ll find someone else.”
She said, “All right. We’ll talk.”
“Downstairs,” he said. “We don’t need Paul waking up for this.”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
Arlen smiled in the dark and shook his head.
“We’ll go on down together,” he said. “I’d like to make sure those pistols don’t make the trip with you.”
23
THEY WENT DOWNSTAIRS and she motioned at one of the tables in the barroom, but he shook his head.
“Outside. Like I said, I don��t want to wake the boy.”
So they went out on the porch, and Arlen leaned against the railing and faced her, his hand oozing blood from the bite. She didn’t sit but stood with her arms folded under her breasts. The breeze had cooled, and her nipples budded against the thin fabric of the gown.
She cleaned a pool of blood off the floor and didn’t call anyone to report the crime, Arlen thought. She threw a pair of severed hands into the ocean and wouldn’t have said a word about that either. Don’t you look at her, Wagner. Don’t you dare let yourself keep looking at her like that. It’s only trouble.
“I was out on the beach,” he said. “I saw you go in the water and throw Wade’s box out there, and I figured I ought to see what was in it. Took a damn long time to find the thing, but I did.”
“You were watching me?” she said, squeezing herself tighter.
“That’s right,” he said. “But I’m a lot more interested in that box than I am in your body. It’s a fine-looking body, even in the dark, but I don’t give a damn. I want to hear what in the hell it is that Solomon Wade is doing out here, and why you’re letting it happen. And I want to hear the truth.”
She was quiet, looking past him at the moonlit sea.
“You got one chance to tell it,” he said. “Otherwise, I’ll be back with the law. It won’t be Tolliver either. There’s real law in places not far off.”
She dropped into a chair as if the strength had left her legs, leaned forward and clasped her hands together, like a woman in prayer.
“It’s my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“He’s in prison,” she said. “Raiford. He’s only twenty years old. It was working with Solomon Wade that got him into trouble.”
“That experience made you eager to work with him yourself?”
She looked up at him. “If I don’t, Solomon will have Owen killed. He’s done it before. I can show you newspaper articles if you’d like. There are at least three men who have been killed in prisons or work camps in this state because Solomon Wade ordered it to happen.”
“That shows up in the papers?”
“Of course not. But I can show you articles about the men who died, and then I can tell you the truth about why they died, and how.”