Iron House

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The helicopter came in low and fast. It started as a rumble down-valley, then swelled to thunder as it roared across small, painted houses and circled the high school at a thirty-degree bank. The sun was twenty minutes down, purple sky turning black. Michael and Abigail stood beside the heavy Mercedes. Its headlights spilled out onto the football field, and in the bright cone of light they saw brown grass and white hatch marks worn through to nothing. Across the street, people stepped onto porches to watch the helicopter and point at the bright light that stabbed down as it circled. It came in over the east bleachers, swung onto the length of the field and flared at the twenty-yard line. For an instant, it hovered-dead grass flat beneath it-and then it settled as gentle as a kiss.

The rotors slowed, but did not stop.

A door opened.

“This is a surprise.”

Michael looked at Abigail. “What?”

She tilted her head at the chopper. Two men climbed down, and walked, bent, beneath the blades. “The senator came, too.”

Michael recognized Jessup Falls: tall and rangy, his face unforgiving. Beside him, the senator looked broader, more solid and more sure. His hair was white, his suit impeccable. He moved as if the world owed him a living.

Abigail stepped out to meet them. Michael followed.

“Hello, darling.” She raised her voice to be heard. The senator kissed her lightly, then held out a hand to Michael.

“I’m sorry we have to meet like this,” he said. “Abigail has told me much, of course, but I would have preferred to do this in a more civilized manner. I’m Randall Vane.”

“Senator.”

They shook. Jessup Falls did not offer a hand. He held back and looked unhappy as the senator took Abigail’s hand and cupped it in the two of his. “When Jessup said you’d left the house, I didn’t think you’d gone quite so far.”

“It’s a long story.”

“And a long flight home. You can tell me all about it.”

“Any word on Julian?”

“No. Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“Do the police know he’s gone?”

“Of course not. God. It would be a disaster.”

“How did this happen, Randall?”

“He’s a grown man, Abigail. He’ll be fine.”

“I wish you would not be so blasé.”

“And I wish you would keep the boy under control.” He kept the smile, but his voice cut. “This is not doing me an ounce of good. Christ, the headlines alone…”

“You don’t think Julian has something to do with those bodies?”

“I don’t know what to think, and neither do you. That’s the problem with Julian-after all these years, we still don’t know what goes through that head of his.”

“God, I hate that politician’s smile.” Abigail stepped past, angry. “It’s a miracle anyone buys it. Jessup…” She took Jessup’s hand. “How did it happen?”

“We took men off to cover the perimeter. A few reporters came over the wall earlier in the day. The crowd was building. Apparently, the doctor left for a few minutes, and Julian simply walked off. He wasn’t under lock and key, as you know. I suspect he’s on the grounds, still. Too much commotion beyond the wall. It’s his pattern. We’ll find him.”

“Does he know about the bodies? Is he aware of what’s happening?”

“Unknown, but possible.”

The senator interrupted. “The locals are getting restless.” He gestured at a small crowd forming on the roadside. Cars angled on the verge. People had come down off their porches. “If there’s nothing that can’t wait, we should go. Jessup can drive the car back.”

“I’ll drive it back,” Michael said.

The group pulled up short, and Michael saw Jessup press his hand against the small of Abigail’s back. “You’re not coming?” She stepped away from the other men, closer to Michael.

“I need to finish this.”

He lifted his chin toward the far, black mountain, and she knew he meant the orphanage beneath.

“Andrew Flint?” she asked.

“I still need to find him. It’s connected. It has to be.”

“It’s been decades, Michael. You saw how the orphanage is. Flint could be anywhere.”

“It’s a starting place. It’s something.”

Abigail glanced over her shoulder; she looked at the chopper, the men waiting for her. “Come with me,” she said. “There are no answers here. Julian needs us.”

“Do you remember what you said at the gate? How it’s hard going back to the place you’re from?”

“Yes.”

“I need to see it again. The halls. The rooms. Maybe I’ll get lucky with Flint.”

“What about Elena? Women get angry. They settle down. What do I tell her if she comes back?”

Michael glanced at the helicopter and felt an unexpected weight of emotion. He wanted on that chopper, and for an instant regretted every decision that had brought him to this place. They could be in Spain, by now, or on a beach in Australia. He felt Elena’s hand in his, imagined the small, bright spark she carried. “I’ll be back by tomorrow night. If she shows up, tell her that. Tell her I love her and to please wait.”

“Are you sure?”

“You should go.”

“Michael…”

“Go.”

“Okay.” She nodded in a small way, eyes unsure as the senator took her arm and led her to the helicopter. Falls gave them five seconds, then leaned in close to Michael, his anger unmistakable. “I can’t keep her safe if I don’t know where she is.”

Michael felt armor drop across his eyes. “She’s a big girl.”

“In a dangerous world, you arrogant, insensitive prick. She’s my responsibility, and has been for twenty-five years. Do you get that?”

“I was looking out for her.”

“Did it occur to you that there might be risks you don’t understand? Skills you don’t actually possess?”

“You’re going to miss your flight.”

Falls glanced back, saw that everyone was in the helicopter. He raised one finger. “Don’t take her away from me again.”

Michael watched him climb in beside the pilot and strap himself down. Abigail’s face was a pale, round blur as she lifted a hand in his direction. Michael waved back, conflicted. He knew what to do, but didn’t want to do it; needed Elena, yet was here. Michael told himself to get a grip, to chill out. He could still fix everything: Julian, Elena, the life they’d yet to make. But the comfort was illusory. Everything he loved was far away.

He dropped his hand as the helicopter lifted and turned. Its nose dipped, and it accelerated past the car, red paint flashing once and then gone in the dark.

Michael was alone with the mountain.

He drove back to Main Street and found a parking place between a diner and one of the open bars. Standing on the sidewalk, he checked his phone and willed it to ring. He glanced once at the mountain, a black hulk that blotted out the stars, then turned his back and called information. When the call was answered, he asked if there was an Andrew Flint in or around the town of Iron Mountain. Was told no. Unsurprised, he hung up the phone. Then, knowing that she would not answer, he dialed Elena’s cell and left a message.

I can fix this.

I can change.

And he thought that he could. If the circumstances were right. If the world changed, too.

Turning for the diner, Michael walked along the broken sidewalk, then swung in through the glass door. A small bell chimed, and the smell of buttered greens came like a memory. He took in the row of booths along the window, the aged bar with small, round stools, the pies under glass and the thick, pretty woman who offered up a smile from behind the register. “Sit anywhere, sugar.”

A few people looked up, but nobody looked twice. Michael said hello to the woman as he passed, then sat in the farthest booth, a redbrick wall behind him, thirty feet of plate glass stretching halfway to his car. He caught a glimpse of a white-shirted man moving in the kitchen.

Suddenly, he was starving.

He studied the menu, a laminated sheet greasy with fingerprints and ketchup smears, then ordered a cheeseburger and a beer. “Want fries with that, sugar?”

She was in her thirties, and happy enough, a genuine twinkle in her eyes as she held her pen ready.

“That’d be great.”

“Glass with your beer?”

“Sure.”

She wrote that down, and before she could leave, Michael asked, “Do you have a phone book, by any chance?”

“Who you looking for? I know most everybody.”

“Do you know Andrew Flint?”

“Sure. ’Course. He lives out at the orphanage.”

“I was out there earlier.” Michael shook his head. “Nobody lives there.”

The waitress smiled and stuck the pen behind a tuft of soft, brown hair. “Have you been out there after dark?” Michael admitted that he had not, and she smiled more broadly. “Then you should trust old Ginger.”

She winked and walked off to the kitchen, a slow, proud swing in her hips.

The beer was good. The burger was better. At the register, he asked Ginger, “Is there a hotel in town?”

“Two miles that way.” She pointed to the south end of town. “It’s not much, but I’ve caught my ex-husband there enough to know it gets the job done. We close at nine if you’d like me to show you the way.”

Michael handed her a five-dollar tip. “Maybe some other time.”

“You sure?”

Her fingers brushed his, and they were soft.

“Only that I will curse myself in the morning for missing an opportunity such as this.”

He winked, pushed outside; and through the glass he saw her smiling.

The road out to the orphanage was nearly empty. Michael passed a few cars going the opposite way. No headlights behind him. When the tall gates drew near, he slowed and turned, the big car smooth and nearly silent. The dome light engaged when he opened the door, then went off as he stood and waited for his eyes to adjust.

The night was dark this far out, a warm blackness that collected between the mountains. There was no moon. No streetlamps. The stars seemed too high and colorless to offer much light, and even the town, four miles off, seemed to keep its glow dim and low to the ground.

Michael walked to the gate and listened to the night sounds, to crickets and wind and the slide of the river. It took a full two minutes to understand what Ginger had meant when she spoke of coming here after dark. The moment came as Michael took his gaze off the giant black ruin and let it wander the grounds. He saw buildings and dark, a hint of fallen stars where the river went smooth enough to shine. There was nothing, he thought. The place was as black and barren as the far side of the moon. Then his eyes snapped back to one of the small buildings at the rear of the grounds. Thin light shone from a ground-floor window. It was only a sliver, a blue glow through half-drawn curtains, but it was enough.

Michael went over the fence.

He landed lightly, gun in his hand. Under his feet, the drive felt cracked and loose. Small weeds scraped his shoes, and as he walked he felt the past rise up again. He pictured Andrew Flint and contemplated if he were, indeed, an evil man. He was a weak man, yes, incompetent and uncaring. In the end, it didn’t matter. Michael knew it like he knew his bones. Evil or weak, Flint had left the prison to be run by the prisoners. He’d turned his back on the smallest, failed in the most basic manner, and Michael felt an anger stir down deep, a tight fist that thumped harder as familiar shapes gathered in the dark, as old hurts rose and memory crowded close.

Ten years of hell.

Of pain and fear and want.

Michael sucked night air deep and let the emotions run as he moved light and fast over ground that he remembered with shocking clarity. He passed trees he knew, leapt a drainage ditch without seeing it. The building piled up beside him, put a taste in his mouth as he pictured Julian weeping in his narrow bed. He slid along the east wall, reached out to touch brick and found it unchanged. There was ruin here, and strength; that should mean something, but did not. He gave himself the time it took to pass the main stairs, then tightened down the valve of resentment, so that when he reached the window with the television glow, he was himself again, cold and keen and eager.

He put his back against the wall, scanned the open ground and saw nothing out of place. The building was two stories tall, redbrick with shutters that had been green when he was a boy. It had been housing then, a collection of rooms for the few staff that chose to make Iron House their home. It had always been off-limits to the boys. One more rule. One more place to avoid.

Not anymore.

Michael looked through the window and saw a small room with poor furniture. A television flickered in the corner. The TV was old and small, sitting on a trunk. There was no one in the room, but through a door Michael saw yellow light from another room. He made a slow circuit of the building. In the back, he found an old car and empty windows. The light came from a room near the front door. Michael found more curtains partly drawn, bare hints of the interior. He saw a coal-burning fireplace and a tattered wingback chair beside it, two books on the mantelpiece, wooden floors and an area rug worn threadbare on one side. He thought about the gun in his hand, then tucked it away.

He knocked on the door, knocked again and then rattled the knob as something scraped inside. He put his ear close to the wood, fingers spread. There was stillness at first, then he heard the ratchet of metal-an unmistakable sound-and jerked back as the door blew apart at chest height.

Light spilled through the hole.

Gun smoke.

Michael heard another round racked into the chamber. He saw fingers of shadow as someone moved toward the door, then rose himself, his back against the brick, forty-five heavy in his palm. He removed the safety, finger inside the trigger guard. He slipped closer to the door: two feet and then one. Breathing sounds came from beyond the hole in the door. Erratic. Forced. Footsteps dragged as the muzzle appeared in the hole. Black metal with a red bead sight, it trembled as it broke the plane of the door. Michael didn’t screw around. Moving fast, he grabbed the barrel, pushed it away and yanked hard. The weapon discharged a tongue of fire. Michael heard a small cry, and then it was his: hot metal and a walnut stock. Large bore shotgun. He pulled it through the hole and tossed it down, bringing up his own weapon and sighting on an old man inside who was loose-skinned and white. His hands were up and in front of him as if still holding the shotgun, mouth open. A bathrobe hung to his knees, bare legs beneath and worn, red slippers on his feet.

“Open the door.” Michael kept the gun steady. The old man-Andrew Flint-stared, but seemed unable to move. Patchy hair covered the dome of his skull. His cheeks were sunken, his hands liver-spotted and veined. He peered through the hole as if he had no idea what it was. “Please,” Michael said, and his voice came cool and calm as Sunday morning. It seemed to have an effect, because Flint put his hand on the dull, brass knob. The door swung open, and Michael stepped inside. When light landed fully on his face, Flint squinted, his lips pulling up.

“Julian Vane?” Something like hope moved his features. A knobby finger rose, and then the recognition died. He shook his head. “No. Not Julian.”

“Step backward, please.” Michael used the same Sunday morning voice. He knew from experience that it kept people calm, even when they understood, deep down, that Michael had come for a reason. The voice lulled them because it sounded nothing at all like the end of the world. It was too reasoned and too calm; it gave people hope.

Flint backed up until his knees struck a small coffee table. Michael checked the room, saw the cold fireplace, the wingback chair. A bookshelf dominated a wall that had been invisible from outside. On the right, a wide hall ran off into shadow. The television glow came from a room halfway down. “Is there anyone else in the house?” Michael asked.

A head shake. “No.”

Michael kept the gun on Flint. “What made you think I was Julian Vane?”

Flint’s hands moved, fingers spread, toward the bookshelf. “I have his books. All of them.” He took a step toward the shelves. “Here.”

“That’s enough.” Michael stopped him two feet from the books. He could see a row of books, spine out, which bore the name Julian Vane.

“His picture is on the back…”

Flint moved another foot, reached out and Michael cocked the forty-five. Flint froze and Michael said, “A dangerous man might have a weapon behind those books.”

“No…”

“Nevertheless.” Michael wagged the muzzle at the chair.

Flint looked at the wingback.

“Sit.”

“Please, don’t kill me.”

Flint collapsed when his knees hit the back of the chair. In the sad, brown robe he looked like nothing more than a bag of old bones. Michael dragged the coffee table so that he could sit across from Flint, three feet between them. He kept the gun on Flint, one eye on the dark, empty hall. “Do you know who I am?”

“The hand of God come for vengeance…”

He sounded insane when he said it, the words a bare whisper, his eyes shocked wide and yellow-white. Michael smelled liquor on the man’s clothes, his breath. He saw a worn, leather Bible on the floor beside Flint’s chair, noticed that the man’s nails were chewed to the quick, his hands as horny as alligator skin.

Michael leaned closer into the light. “Do you know me?”

“I… don’t.” He turned his head but kept his eyes on Michael. “No.”

“But you can guess.”

Flint nodded, and light caught in pale, pink crescents at the bottoms of his eyes. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Kill me.”

“All I want at this moment is for you to say my name.”

Flint stared at the muzzle of the gun.

“Say it.”

“Michael…”

“Why do you think I’m here to kill you?”

“Because everyone else is dead. Because I knew it would come back to me. Because taking that money was a sin. Selling those boys out…” His voice broke. Michael released the hammer and shifted the barrel until it was pointed five degrees left of Flint’s gut. Flint followed the movement, then said, “I never blamed you for killing that Hennessey boy. He was a rotten child.”

“Is that right?”

“So many rotten boys back then.” Flint’s eyes darted to the open door. “So few like your brother. But this, now…” His eyes were pinned to the floor, head shaking sideways. “This now.” His gaze came back up, and his soul was tortured. “It’s been twenty-three years. Why would you kill those boys now? After all this time…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael said.

But Flint’s head was still shaking, eyes distant and damp. “Evil and vengeance and God’s chary eye…”

Michael edged the muzzle back three degrees, and it got Flint’s attention. “Why did you blow a hole in your door, Mr. Flint?”

“I put a motion sensor at the gate.”

“So, you knew someone was coming. That doesn’t tell me why you put a round through your door.” Michael waited for Flint to focus. “Did you even look to see who it was?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Just figured I was next. Been waiting. I was scared.”

“Of what?”

“Don’t pretend.” Flint’s voice thickened, his face suddenly hard. “I may be an old man and afraid, but I’m smart enough to know what’s what: you, here, with your calm voice and shark eyes, those other boys, gone and so silent they got no choice but to be dead. All that money with no price to pay…” He rolled his eyes, sucked in a sudden breath. “I know now what I’ve done. And I know what you are.”

“You don’t, actually.”

“Well, I don’t have the money, if you came to get it back.” He dragged an arm across his mouth, looking sly and angry. “It’s gone with the rest of it. Damn Indians. Damn Cherokee with their cheap booze and rigged casinos.” Flint’s eyes flicked left, and Michael saw a bottle of whiskey and a glass down to half a finger. Flint scraped a palm over white whiskers, then tore his eyes away. “It makes sense, now I think on it. You being the one.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re the only killer come through this place. Killing as a boy, killing as a man.” He nodded. “Like rain in springtime.”

Michael stood. “You know nothing about me, Mr. Flint.” He walked across the room, picked up the liquor bottle and the glass. “And I know less about you. Not your needs or weakness, not those other boys you say are gone and silent.” He sat back down and sloshed three inches of brown liquid into the glass. “But you’re going to tell me.”

“Why should I?”

The pistol barrel tracked right and settled squarely on Andrew Flint’s forehead. “There’s nothing I won’t do for my brother, Mr. Flint. If nothing else, you should remember that.”

Flint watched the glass, licked sandpaper lips. “And you won’t kill me if I tell?”

Michael kept the gun steady, and handed the glass to Flint. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have questions.” Flint drained the glass. “And I expect you to have answers.”