Iron House

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The front room of Flint’s house was pitch dark and silent, yet Michael tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He stared up for long hours, worrying first for Elena, then agonizing over Julian. Had Abigail found him? Was he alone and frightened, or still lost somewhere in the dark halls of his schizophrenia? It killed Michael that the people most important to him were not only gone, but beyond his reach. He wanted to find them, gather them up; several times he rose to leave. But Iron House waited beyond the glass, and questions still demanded answers. Somebody was tracking down boys from his childhood, somebody with money and a grudge, with the means to lure them east, kill them and sink them in the senator’s lake. Ronnie Saints was dead, as was George Nichols. Billy Walker was accounted for, but Chase Johnson was missing. Where was he, and how did he fit? Why were they back in Julian’s life at all?

Michael shifted on the rough couch. He pictured them as the boys he’d known, then saw them older and stronger, still as predatory. What would they want from his brother? Money? Payback? Something else? Possibilities raced through Michael’s head, so that when sleep finally took him down they were waiting in his dreams, tall slat-eyed men that chased a figure down long halls under high ceilings. They moved like wolves, fast and sure, then laughed cruelly as they dragged Julian down and went to work with metal pipes and steel shank boots. Michael tried to stop them, but his feet were nailed to the floor; he opened his mouth, but it was full of sand. They laughed in chorus as Julian begged; then Julian was Elena, pregnant and curled on the same brittle floor. Her belly was swollen, one hand out as she met Michael’s eyes, then screamed his name as they kicked her bloody.

Michael bolted up in darkness, the pistol grip rough and warm as he swept the empty room. It was unfamiliar, hot; sweat stung his eyes as he choked on Elena’s name. He checked the corners, the empty doors, then remembered where he was. The gun came down. He leaned back on the sofa, and palmed sweat from his face. This was Iron Mountain, Flint’s house. The cushions were damp with sweat and deep beneath him. It was a dream.

“Damn.”

The gun clattered against a bottle when he put it back on the table. Michael rolled his back, ran his hands through his hair and then checked his phone. Nothing. He dialed Elena and got voice mail. “Where are you, baby? I really need you. Call me.”

He hung up reluctantly, then stood. The house was airless and overly warm, the dream still thick enough to linger. He got off the sofa, did some quick push-ups to clear his head and then pulled on his shoes. His body felt loose and ready, his mind sharp as he checked the yard and the drive. He felt an urgency to move, yet at dawn stood on the broad, flat steps of Iron House where he watched the sun rise like a red crown burning. It inched high enough to make shoulders of the mountains, and in that instant, eyes narrowed against the light, Michael realized that Elena was right to be angry. He should have never touched that body. He should have taken her hand, led her from the boathouse and never looked back.

Yet, what choice did he have? He and Julian were brothers, forged in the same cold winters of this place. But she was family, too, the mother of his child, the woman he loved. And wasn’t it right that she know the truth about him? That she, too, be allowed a choice? Damn, he could go crazy thinking about this; but there, on the steps of Iron House, what he really felt was his own flush of anger. Michael had never begrudged his life, never complained about the hand God dealt him. He did the job and moved on, but that was no longer good enough. He wanted more. He wanted Elena home and his brother whole. He wanted payment for injustice done, wanted his childhood back, and Julian’s, too, wanted to lash out, but would not. Flint would live, and Billy Walker, too. That was Michael’s decision, a bittersweet choice. But it was right that a red sun rose, that he should see the color of blood, and remember the things that made him.

He took a last look at the yard, the mountain and the climbing sun, then opened the door, stepped inside and was home. The ceiling soared above a broken floor, and he saw wooden furniture sheeted in dust, jigsaw puzzles of broken glass. His skin tingled, and he told himself again:

Just a place.

A long hall took him to a switchback staircase that led to the third floor. Light was brighter there, wire mesh in the windows lighting up like the edge of a razor. The room he’d shared with Julian was at the far corner. He pushed the door with two fingers and stepped into a space that seemed smaller than it should have been. The bunk bed was still there: one on top, Julian’s on the bottom. His finger left a line in the dust on the side of the bed, then he stood at the window and looked at the face of Iron Mountain, weathered and cracked and unchanged. He searched for emotion, but found his anger gone. Inside, he was a stone, and thought that maybe he’d buried this, after all.

But that felt like a lie. His hollowness was too hollow, the echo too persistent. He took a deep breath and sat on the edge of Julian’s bed. It felt the same, a thin mattress with rough ticking. Even the pillow remained, and when he lifted it he saw words scratched into the wood behind it.

Make me like Michael

Make me strong

Michael stood abruptly. This was not just a place. It was the hard, jagged mouth of the world that vomited them out. Julian ruined, and Michael…

What?

He knew the face of every man he’d ever killed, not as they’d been when dead, but in the last moment of life, their features twisted in fear or disbelief or anger, and he knew a few like Otto Kaitlin, tired men ready to die. They ordered themselves in his mind, a line of faces stretching back, yet he felt no guilt or doubt. Was he so certain of his rightness? Or had this place scored a crease in the rough, dark diamond of his soul? He knew only a few things to be absolute truth. He loved Elena and their unborn child. He loved Julian. It seemed a small collection, but felt like the world, like the kind of gift he would kill to protect. Maybe that’s what Iron House had given him, that clarity. Maybe that was its purpose.

He walked down the stairs and decided that it was.

But there was no peace in him for having come back to this place, no warmth or understanding. Yet, acceptance might be a decent word. The building was in ruins. Flint was a drunk and a gambler, Billy reduced to innocence. None of this was a good thing of itself, but it reinforced what Michael had believed since childhood, that life is hard, and it pays to be strong. But as he got in his car and left that place, as the gate came up ahead, he wondered for the first time what his life might have been had he let Julian take the fall for Hennessey’s death. What kind of man would Michael have become had he been the one to go home with Abigail Vane?

Probably the same, he decided. But with less killing.

He followed a strip of road back into town, and stopped at the first gas station he found. It was small, with two weathered pumps under a plastic shelter that made the same V shape as a bird in flight. The day was fresh on him and there were decisions to make. Elena was still beyond his reach, but Julian was not. He could return to Chatham County and help Abigail look for him, or he could try to figure out what was going on.

He pulled the Mercedes next to a pump, got out of the car and thought about names as he filled the tank. Where was Chase Johnson? Who was Salina Slaughter, and why was Abigail Vane’s name on the list?

There had to be a connection.

The pump clicked off as the tank filled. Michael replaced the gas cap and concentrated on Chase Johnson. He and Ronnie were still friends; they spoke from time to time. Maybe Chase was dead in the lake. Maybe he was in hiding, and knew what was going on. Whatever the case, Ronnie’s girlfriend said he lived in Charlotte, and Charlotte was not far away.

Michael debated as he walked inside to pay, wondering if it would be possible to track Chase down. He could go back to Ronnie’s house, squeeze the girlfriend a little bit. She had to know something more.

The door dragged as he opened it, the sound like shoes on pavement. He noticed little things as he entered, a doll-shaped woman buying candy, a curve of mirror high in the corner. A weathered man stood behind the register, and nodded as Michael walked up to pay for the gas. “Morning.”

Michael took in the stained, creased cap, the worn shirt and the hearing aid in the man’s right ear. “Good morning.”

“Pump number four.” He lifted black-rimmed glasses, squinted at something behind the counter. “Thirty-seven dollars.”

Michael put two twenties on the glass, saw postcards slipped beneath it. Grand Canyon. San Diego. The Flatiron building in New York City. That one made him smile.

“Here you go, son. Three dollars.”

Michael took the change and came to a decision. “Do you sell maps?”

“Of?”

“Charlotte. The state in general.”

“Right there behind you.” He pointed past a shelf of oilcans and antifreeze to a wire rack feathered with neatly folded maps. “North Carolina’s near the top, Tennessee and Georgia and a few others down by the bottom.”

“Thanks.” Michael walked over, noticing as he did a topographical map pinned to the wall above the rack. It was large and pale green, with wavy lines that showed folds in the earth.

Michael stopped two feet away, an odd tug in his chest when he saw how small Iron Mountain looked in the middle of all that green. The map covered the very western part of North Carolina, bits of Tennessee and Georgia. Mountain country with small towns and narrow valleys, lakes and rivers and large tracts of national forest. Iron Mountain showed an elevation of 5,165 feet, the town at its base a small splotch of yellow. He found the river, which in his mind was broad and black. It fed the valley from the north, and Michael saw how it stretched and branched, how smaller streams fed it as it bent west, toward Tennessee. He put his finger on it, traced it to the state line, where it ran along the base of another mountain. There was small writing there, and Michael stared, a kinetic charge building. He did not believe in coincidence.

Not big ones like this.

The mountain had a name, Slaughter Mountain, and it was thirty miles from Iron House.

Iron Mountain.

Slaughter Mountain.

Heat gathered in Michael’s skin.

Slaughter Mountain.

Salina Slaughter.

It had to mean something, but what? He heard the door scrape and glanced in time to see the petite woman leave with a bag of candy. There were no other customers. The old man came around the counter, feet shuffling. “What are you looking at so fixedly?”

“Fixedly?”

He smelled of cut grass and tobacco. “You’re staring holes in my wall.”

“Do you know anything about Slaughter Mountain?”

He shrugged. “Hill people.”

“Meaning?”

He pulled out a pipe and started packing it. “Meaning they sleep with their mommas and eat their dead.” He lit the pipe, sucked hard and blew a sweet cloud. “’Course, the Slaughters were a thing back in the day. Timber. Coal. Gold, maybe. There was a grand old lady back when I was a young man. I think she’s dead, now. That seems right.”

“Does the name Salina Slaughter mean anything to you?”

“Can’t say it does.”

Michael deflated, but the man continued, unaware.

“I think her name was Serena.”

That got his attention. “Serena Slaughter?”

“Money. Politicians. Parties. Word is they raped that mountain bare.”

“You have a map of that area?” Michael asked. “It looks pretty isolated.”

“You going up there?”

“Maybe.”

“I’d carry a gun,” he said, and slapped a map on Michael’s palm.