‘A girl who works in a coffee shop down in Covington, Kentucky,’ said Karis. ‘Her name is Doreen: Doreen Peach Pie. She said that’s how you’d remember her.’
Dobey did. As far as he could tell, Doreen had subsisted solely on coffee and slices of peach pie while she stayed with him. She ought to have come in at two hundred pounds, all the sugar and fat she was absorbing, but she hardly weighed anything. Dobey could only figure that the energy generated by the vast quantities of caffeine somehow served to cancel out the rest.
‘You say you’re pregnant?’
‘Eight months gone. Mr Dobey, I need to put more distance between Covington and me. I’ve got this far on the kindness of strangers, but it’s not far enough. He’s probably already coming after me, and he’ll find me if I don’t get help. It could be he’ll find me anyway, but I can’t stop now. If I do, he’ll take me back, and he’ll kill me. He’ll wait until I’ve had his baby, but he will kill me.’
‘Who is “he”?’
‘I don’t even want to tell you his name. He’s bad, but some of the men he associates with are worse. I don’t want to share with you more than I have to. Honest, it’s better this way.’
And Dobey believed her. Sometimes, you just knew. He told Karis Lamb to stay in the Starbucks and he’d come get her, which he did. She was a slim, dark-haired girl, with eyes too big for her face, but there was a resilience to her as well; a streak of hardness. Dobey put her in his truck, and drove her to the diner. Over the days and nights that she stayed, she told Dobey and Esther a story: about a man who had at first seemed kind and different, a cultured, slightly older figure who taught literature at a private college; who was independently wealthy and collected books; who, when she finally moved in with him, made her a prisoner in his home; who, she realized, had groomed her for precisely that purpose, because he thrived on rape; who warned her that if she tried to run, he’d murder her mother and sister before cutting her open with garden shears; who claimed to consort with spirits; who—
Quayle interrupted Dobey.
‘My own Scheherazade,’ he said, ‘spinning tales, in your case speckled with truth, to buy the moments till morning.’
‘You asked me about Karis Lamb,’ said Dobey. ‘I’m telling you.’
‘And you’re spouting lies: not many, but enough. Karis did tell you the name of the man she was fleeing: Vernay. The girl in Covington was not called Doreen but Ava, although I can’t attest to her dietary peculiarities. It was Ava who contacted you out of concern for Karis, who did indeed frequent her place of business, although it was a health food store, not a coffee shop. Vernay believed he had worn Karis down and broken her will, which was why she was permitted some limited latitude, albeit with Vernay close by. And Ava, who had suffered abuse of her own, sensed something similar in Karis, and slowly, and very carefully, began to tease information from her, communicating with her through notes written on the backs of receipts, enough to confirm Ava’s own suspicions, if not to involve the law. But Karis remained unwilling, or afraid, to run.
‘And then Karis’s mother and sister were killed in an automobile accident, and suddenly part of the hold that Vernay had over her ceased to exist. It was probably the spur for what was to come; that and the pregnancy. Karis remained concerned that the police would not believe her claims of rape and incarceration. It would be her word against Vernay’s, and if she were unsuccessful, it would be the end of her. Even if she did manage to get away, she was afraid that Vernay or his friends would track her down. That was when Ava suggested she turn to you.
‘Karis couldn’t contact you directly because Vernay gave her no access to a phone, but you, Mr Dobey, could contact Vernay. You made the first approach, using a shared passion for rare books as a point of entry into his life. Like many collectors, Vernay both bought and sold. You purchased from him, began a correspondence, and eventually you and he met. Vernay had very particular interests, mostly erotica and the occult. And you, from your trailer library, have contrived to become quite the expert in esoteric volumes, quite the bibliophile.
‘It took a lot of patience and effort for all of you to achieve what you did: to get a cell phone to Karis; to track Vernay’s routines for the most likely opportunity to get Karis away from him; to be available to move at a moment’s notice, but Vernay was always alert. His home was secured, and he worked not five minutes’ drive from it. It was Ava who came up with the idea of a medical emergency, an unexpected pain during the pregnancy, and a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic where, thanks to Ms Bachmeier’s contacts, a rear door escape was facilitated, with Ava waiting to drive Karis north to Seymour, from where you did indeed collect her.
‘And all this you performed so successfully that it has taken me years to find the correct thread and begin to pull. I had never thought to look at Vernay’s book habit, which was foolish of me, but then your friend Ava moved north and helped a woman in Terre Haute, a housewife named Petra Flinn. You may recall her husband, Derrick. He certainly remembers you. So I now had Ava, and I had you. Ava, incidentally, filled in a lot of the gaps. Regrettably, there is now a vacancy at the health food store.’
Dobey couldn’t help himself. He lunged at Quayle and managed to get his hands on his throat, but Mors, both faster and stronger than she looked, was on him in an instant. Dobey took a blow to the head that sent him sprawling on the bed, and then Quayle was behind him, holding him down, while the woman squatted on Dobey’s belly like some pale sister to the demon in Fuseli’s Nightmare. She looked to Quayle for guidance, and through blurred vision Dobey saw Quayle nod.
The gun was set aside. From her jacket Mors removed a leather pouch, which opened to reveal a small set of sharp surgical instruments. She took a thin scalpel between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, and held it over Dobey’s face.
‘I did warn you,’ said Quayle.
And Pallida Mors used the scalpel to puncture Dobey’s right eye.
14
The rain revealed twisted roots.
The rain revealed stone and dark fresh soil.
The rain revealed a skull.
15
The pain had dulled, but only compared to the intensity of the initial agony.
Dobey was once again seated on his bed, his back to the wall, a towel filled with ice pressed to what remained of his right eye, the material stained with blood and ocular fluids. In his free hand Dobey held a glass of bourbon, poured for him by Quayle. Mors resumed her vigil by the window, while Quayle returned to his chair.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Quayle, ‘but you brought that on yourself. In a way, you brought all this on yourself. Consider it a punishment for good deeds, or for one good deed. I don’t care about the others, only Karis.’
Quayle ran a finger along the spines of the nearest volumes.
‘I never imagined that the interior of a trailer could be so elegant,’ he said, taking in the oak shelves that Dobey had made and fitted himself; the items of antique furniture sourced from dealers over the years, according to the fluctuating state of Dobey’s finances: the Persian rugs, the ornate lamps.
And the books: all of the books.
‘We’ll leave you here among your volumes,’ said Quayle. ‘I promise you. We’re almost done.’