THE ABANDONED HOUSE is a sanctuary for things that crawl and skitter and squirm, that produce a chrysalis in which to transform from something that creeps to something that flies, that find in wood both a home and a meal. Mold thrives and rot has its way and mushrooms sprout in the darker corners. There are the bones of dead rats, the feathers of birds that came in through broken windows and found their way out again, but no sign of Jane Hawk’s in-laws.
What was thought to have been a stable is in fact a chicken coop with ramps to elevated laying boxes for the hens, a crumbling structure where the muck-soil floor is thatched with wet and moldy feathers that stick in clumps to Egon Gottfrey’s shoes. Nothing lives here now but a fat and hideous pale-faced possum that hisses at him and sends him scurrying out of the building, to the barely suppressed amusement of Rupert Baldwin and Vince Penn.
The spavined barn, its rib studs cracked and termite riddled, its wall slats warped and its doors sagging, has lost two panels of the metal roof, perhaps to a high wind. On a bright day, rectangles of sunshine would slowly lengthen and then shrink across its floor, and shadows would relent. But on this occasion, with a pending storm curdling the sky, the light is gray and diffuse and in league with shadows to conceal the loft and every corner.
The poor light doesn’t matter. The loft ladder might once have had twenty rungs, but just four haven’t rotted away. Ancel and Clare can’t have climbed there to hide.
Anyway, Gottfrey has no need of more light to know that no one has taken refuge in the barn. From crumbling concrete footings to splintering walls to the metal roof rattling now in the stiffening wind, the structure is as devoid of human habitation as any crater on Mars.
Wandering in search of clues, Vince Penn studies the floor that Gottfrey has already studied. “Nope. No recent tire tracks. None at all. No oil or grease. Not a drop. Doesn’t seem like anyone kept a vehicle here recently or even back in the day.”
Worstead to Hawk Ranch, Hawk Ranch to Longrin Stables, Longrin to Killeen, Killeen to Houston, Houston to Beaumont, Beaumont to this ass-end of nowhere …
“Dust on the floor,” says Vince Penn. “Dust and like a million teeny-tiny pieces of straw. We’re leaving prints. Leaving prints and disturbing all the chaff. But no tire tracks. Zero, zip, nada.”
Judge Sheila Draper-Cruxton has given Gottfrey a disturbing ultimatum. And the Unknown Playwright is evidently displeased with how he has been intuiting the author’s intent.
While Rupert watches Vince much as he might watch, with pity and contempt, the hopeless progress of a crippled frog dragging itself laboriously toward its pond, the inimitable Agent Penn says, “Looks like Ancel and Clare never came here. Not to the barn or coop or house. They walked to the end of the lane and kept walking. Went off through the field. Went somewhere else. Hard to say where.”
None of this is real, nothing but Gottfrey’s mind, the rest illusion. Only radical philosophical nihilism makes sense of this otherwise chaotic world. None of it matters. Go with the flow.
“Yeah, it’s a dead end,” says Vince. “Blind alley. Blank wall. Dead end.” He looks at Gottfrey’s feet. “Hey, Egon, your shoes look funny. Rupert, don’t his shoes look funny?”
Gottfrey’s shoes are caked in muck-soil from the chicken coop.
Stuck in that gluey mass are hundreds of feathers. The feathers were initially wet; but they have been drying out since he acquired them. Now, in spite of being deteriorated, they are rather fluffy.
With sudden enlightenment, Vince says, “Hey, bunny slippers. Egon, looks like you’re wearing dirty bunny slippers. Don’t they look like bunny slippers, Rupert?”
“Bunny slippers from Hell,” says Rupert.
Gottfrey pulls his pistol, kills Vince with one round, and expends two on Rupert Baldwin, who was never a fast draw.
He does not intuit any disapproval on the part of the Unknown Playwright. Violence is wanted. The script requires bloodshed. A more aggressive Egon Gottfrey now comes onstage.
“The bolo tie is stupid,” he says to Rupert’s corpse.
After holstering his weapon, he wipes his shoes on the dead men’s clothes as best he can.
When he steps out of the barn, the lowering gray sky reminds him of the cerebral cortex of the human brain, fissured and softly folded. In the fissures, the clouds are blackening, as though the sky is the brain of the world and contemplating darker intentions.
He follows the hardpan lane between the fields of weeds that have had significant influence on the changes in his character, to the vehicles parked alongside the highway.
From the customized Jeep Wrangler, he removes Rupert Baldwin’s laptop and transfers it to the Rhino GX.
As he is getting behind the wheel of his luxury SUV, the first thunder rolls through the clotted sky, not a hard crash but instead a soft, protracted rumble that isn’t preceded by visible lightning. The storm hasn’t yet begun, but it is imminent.
Gottfrey starts the engine. He hangs a U-turn and heads back toward distant Beaumont.
There are still ways to find Jane Hawk’s in-laws. After all, they are not ghosts, though he would like to make them so.
A new understanding comes to him, a realization that he was never meant to plod through his scenes with an entourage consisting of the likes of Janis Dern and Chris Roberts and the Lobo brothers and Rupert Baldwin, and certainly not with a ludicrous specimen like Vince Penn. He is meant to be an iconic loner, which makes sense when he is the only real person in this story, and which therefore puts him at the center of it. He is expected to be a hero who stands tall and strong like Dirty Harry or Shane, a resolute champion of the revolution, who takes no shit and no prisoners. For the first time in a while, he feels in sync with the author of the play.
He suspects that in the frantic chase from Worstead to Beaumont and beyond, distracted more than assisted by his so-called team, he overlooked some clue. Now that he is a loner, he will be able to see events clearly, blow away the fog of war, so to speak, and convert Jane’s arrogant in-laws into either adjusted people or dead people.
13
EARLY TUESDAY MORNING, Minette Butterworth, an English teacher, called her principal to say that she was taking a sick day and that her husband, Robert, who taught history, was also under the weather. Neither Minette nor Bob had missed work due to illness in six years.
Neither of them was in the habit of lying to their employer, either. Minette felt guilty about this deception, but Bob insisted it was for a good cause. They had been asked to assist in the search for the kidnapped boy, and the right thing to do was cooperate with the desperate authorities.
As Bob reassured Minette, a still, small voice within her confirmed that this was the right thing to do.
The deputies in the sheriff’s department dared not go looking for the boy wearing their uniforms, in their police cars, because the kidnappers had said they would kill the poor child at the first sign of law enforcement closing in on them. Besides, there weren’t enough deputies to do the job. They needed to deputize trustworthy locals and send them out into Borrego Valley to conduct the search without alarming the people who had snatched the precious child.
The kidnappers were dangerous and surely armed. Minette was surprised that she didn’t fear joining the hunt and was excited by the task ahead. The nice African American, Deputy Kingman, had told her there was nothing to fear, because she and Bob didn’t have to confront the bad guys, only find them and then call in the deputies.