‘Sounds good.’
She left him alone again. He went to the fireplace and examined the framed photographs on the mantel. A younger Leila featured in many of them, often alongside a heavyset man who had started going bald early, tried to disguise it, and finally surrendered to the inevitable before he vanished entirely from the gallery, as though fate, not content with taking his hair, had decided to appropriate the rest of him as well; and a short, dark-haired woman who started out thin and kept getting thinner until there were no more pictures of her at all, freezing her at a stage before her illness became her most pronounced feature. Judging by how old her daughter looked in the most recent photo, Parker guessed that the final pictures of Patton’s mother might have been taken four or five years earlier, perhaps about the time Karis passed through Cadillac on her way to a death in the Maine woods.
‘She doesn’t like to look at them.’
Patton had entered the room behind him, carrying a tray with a pot of Chinese design, two small matching cups, and a plate of cookies that were clearly home-baked. She put the tray down on a low table before joining him at the fireplace.
‘My mom, I mean. She doesn’t like to be reminded of how she used to be, but I do.’
Parker didn’t say that he was sorry. After so many years of looking after her mother, Leila Patton had probably heard every platitude in existence.
‘How long can you keep caring for her at home?’ he asked.
‘A few more months.’ She spoke matter-of-factly, but wouldn’t look directly at him. ‘After that she’ll need full-time attention, until the end.’
‘Is there somewhere nearby?’
‘Not really, or nowhere I’d want her to be. We’ll have to sell the house to cover the expenses, but I wasn’t planning on staying here anyway.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Eventually? Somewhere with a view. But first, Bloomington: the Jacobs School of Music, if they’ll still have me. I was offered a scholarship a while back, but I couldn’t accept it because of how sick my mom was. It’s being held for me. Or it was. I’m almost afraid to ask now.’
‘Is Jacobs good?’
She laughed.
‘Good? Jacobs is the best in the country, even better than Berklee or Juilliard, although the Curtis in Philadelphia runs pretty close.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Parker. ‘Piano.’
‘I can see why you’re a detective. What gave it away, I wonder?’
‘The flattening to your fingertips,’ said Parker.
Patton instinctively looked at her hands.
‘But mainly that big piano in the corner.’
‘Witty,’ said Patton. ‘Just like the detectives in books.’
She poured the tea, and they ate a cookie each. Patton sat on the couch, and Parker took an armchair while he tried to explain to her why she should trust him. She listened, and when she asked questions he did his best to answer them honestly. When he didn’t want to answer, he let her know. He had no desire to lie to her.
To all this he consented because he believed the young woman before him had something she wished to share, and perhaps of which she needed to unburden herself. And even if what he learned did not aid him in his investigation, and he succeeded only in relieving her of its weight, this would be sufficient, because sometimes the service asked of us is just to listen. Only later did Parker understand that in this room colored by dying, he had laid himself bare before a stranger, and by doing so had decreased the measure of his own pain.
Parker finished talking. Leila – for she was Leila to him now, and Leila she would always remain – touched Parker’s hand, and in establishing that connection, she spoke.
‘Lamb,’ she said. ‘That was Karis’s second name, but she told me to keep it secret.’
Leila got up and left the room again. When she returned, she was holding a shoebox, which she placed on the coffee table.
‘Karis,’ she said, ‘told me to keep lots of things secret.’
95
Quayle was waiting for Mors when she returned, the killings of recent hours lending a temporary warmth to her pallor, as though in depriving others of life she had absorbed a little of their vigor to compensate for the paucity of her own.
Quayle knew her requirements by now. He had laid out a sheet of plastic just inside the door on which Mors stood to shed her clothing, until she was naked before him. Only then did she step from the plastic and carefully gather up the ends of the sheet, knotting them together to form a neat package. Later she would soak the contents in bleach before dumping. Burning them would have been preferable, but they were concerned about the smoke drawing attention to the cabin.
Mors showered before dressing in fresh clothes. Quayle, lost in thought, had still not moved from his chair by the time she was finished. Mors did not disturb him, but curled up on a couch and fell instantly asleep.
Quayle was very close to what he had been seeking for so long, but the temptation to bring it to an end with alacrity had to be tempered with caution. He did not wish to be the quarry in a manhunt when all this was done, or not before he had safely left this place to return to England.
How soon before the bodies of Mullis, White, and the rest were found? Not long, he supposed. He had no fear that Mors might have been seen in the immediate vicinity of either the house or the trailer – she was too good for that – but one could not account for every possibility, and there was always the small chance that someone might recall an unfamiliar vehicle glimpsed on the road. It would be best if Mors abandoned her car. Giller had sourced two for them, guaranteed clean, and one would suffice for what remained to be done.
Since Holly Weaver worked long hours, and the boy was at school, their home stood empty for most of the day. Owen Weaver was a problem, since his own property was so close to his daughter’s, but he had to go out sometime. If he didn’t, they would deal with him; nevertheless, it would be better if they could find what they wanted, take it, and vanish without leaving any more bodies behind. The greater the carnage, the greater the likelihood of being caught, and they had already ended enough lives. There had been no choice when it came to the others, but Quayle could see no reason to inflict harm on the Weavers, or none beyond a vague desire for retribution, and that would be assuaged as soon as he had what he wanted.
And then there was Parker to consider, because he was also searching for Karis Lamb’s son. With Giller gone, there was no way of finding out how close Parker might be, but Quayle had made provisions for his distraction. They might require one more body, although thankfully Mors’s enthusiasm for killing appeared quite inexhaustible.
She really was, Quayle thought, the most remarkable woman.
IV
We all know that books burn – yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. … In this war, we know, books are weapons.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945)
96
The shoebox remained on the coffee table, but Leila made no move to display its contents. In Parker’s opinion, she possessed an admirable sense of theater.
‘I liked Karis,’ said Leila. ‘In another life, we might have been friends. But we didn’t have time for that. She was here, and then she was gone.’
‘Weren’t you concerned when she left and you received no further communication from her?’ Parker asked.
‘No. She warned me that it was how it would be – how it had to be. Because of the man she was running from, and what she’d done to him.’
‘Who was he, this man?’
‘Karis called him Vernay. I don’t know his first name, and Karis told me not to go searching for more information about him, not even on the Internet. Dobey knew more, but not much, and what he had, he didn’t share with me.’
‘And did you go looking into Vernay?’
‘Of course, but not until later: months, maybe a year, after Karis left. Inquisitiveness, you know?’