The Unquiet

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he retreated a step from us.

“I mean what was done in Gilead,” I lied, “and those children who were killed.”

A peculiar range of emotions played themselves out in dumb show upon Caswell’s face. There was shock first of all, then fear, followed by a slow-dawning realization that I was talking about the distant, not the recent, past. I watched with satisfaction as he tried unsuccessfully to disguise his relief. He knew. He knew what had happened to Lucy Merrick.

“Yeah,” he said. “I reckon so. That’s why I try to keep folks away from here. Never know what kind of people it might attract.”

“Sure,” I said. “And what kind of people might they be?”

Caswell didn’t manage to answer the question. He had talked himself into a corner, and now he pla

“People, that’s all,” he said.

“Why did you buy this place, Mr. Caswell? It seems like an odd thing to have done, given all that happened here.”

“There’s no law against a man buying property. I’ve lived up here all my life. The land came cheap, on account of its history.”

“And its history didn’t trouble you?”

“No, it didn’t trouble me one bit. Now-”

I didn’t let him finish. “I’m just wondering, because something is clearly troubling you. You don’t look well. You look kind of stressed, to tell the truth. In fact, you seem downright frightened.”

I’d hit the bull’s-eye. The truth of what I had said manifested itself in Caswell’s reaction. The little cracks opened wider and deeper, and the gun tilted slightly toward the ground. I could sense Louis considering his options, his body tensing as he prepared to draw on Caswell.

“No,” I whispered, and Louis relaxed without question.

Caswell became aware of the impression he was creating. He drew himself up straight and raised the stock of the gun to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel, the slatted rib along the top of the Browning like the raised spine of an animal. I heard Louis give a low hiss, but I was no longer worried about Caswell. He was all front.

“I’m not scared of you,” he said. “Don’t make that mistake.”

“Then who are you scared of?”

Caswell shook his head to free some drops of moisture that clung to the ends of his hair. “I think you’d better be getting back to your car, you and your ‘colleagues.’ Keep your hands on your head too while you do it, and don’t come around here again. You got your first and last warning.”

He waited for us to begin walking, then started to retreat into the woods.

“You ever hear of a Lucy Merrick, Mr. Caswell?” I called to him. I paused and looked back over my shoulder, still keeping my hands on my head.

“No,” he said. There was a pause before he spoke again, as though he were trying to convince himself that the name had not been spoken aloud. “I never heard that name before.”

“How about Daniel Clay?”

He shook his head. “Just walk on out of here. I’m done talking to you.”

“We’ll be back, Mr. Caswell. I think you know that.”

Caswell didn’t answer. He kept retreating, moving deeper and deeper into the forest, no longer caring if we were moving or not, just trying to put as much distance between himself and us as he could. I wondered who Caswell would call, once he was back in the safety of his own house. It didn’t matter anymore. We were close. For whatever reason, Caswell was falling apart, and I had every intention of speeding up the process.

That afternoon, I got talking to the young guy behind the bar at the lodge, the one who had witnessed the altercation between Angel and the men from Jersey. His name was Skip, although I didn’t hold that against him, and he was twenty-four and taking his master’s degree in community pla

Skip told me that Caswell’s family had lived in these parts for three or four generations, but they’d always been dirt poor. Caswell sometimes worked as a guide during the season, and the rest of the year he picked up jobs as a general handyman, but as the years had gone by he had let the guide work slip, although he was still in demand when repairs needed to be done to local houses. When he had bought the Gilead tract, he’d paid for it without taking out a bank loan. The land hadn’t exactly been cheap, despite what Caswell had told us, even if its history hadn’t made it the most attractive of propositions, and it was more money than anyone expected Otis Caswell to come up with, but he hadn’t bitched about the price or even attempted to bargain with the Realtor, who was selling it on behalf of the descendants of the late Be

There were two possibilities, neither of which reflected well on Caswell. The first was that someone had given him the money to make the purchase in order to keep their interest in the land secret, after which Caswell turned a blind eye to the uses to which the restored house was being put. The other possibility was that he was an active participant in what occurred there. Either way, he knew enough to make him worth pursuing. I found his number in the local directory and called him from my room. He picked up on the second ring.

“Expecting a call, Mr. Caswell?” I asked.

“Who is this?”

“We met earlier. My name is Parker.”

He hung up. I dialed again. This time three or four rings went by before he picked up the phone.

“What do you want?” he said. “I told you: I got nothing to say to you.”

“I think you know what I want, Mr. Caswell. I want you to tell me about what went on in that empty house with the Plexiglas windows and the strong door. I want you to tell me about Andy Kellog and Lucy Merrick. If you do that, then maybe I can save you.”

“Save me? Save me from what? What are you talking about?”

“From Frank Merrick.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Don’t call here again,” said Caswell. “I don’t know a Frank Merrick, or any of them other names you said.”

“He’s coming, Otis. You’d better believe that. He wants to know what happened to his daughter. And he’s not going to be reasonable like my friends and me. I think your buddies are going to cut you loose, Otis, and leave you to him. Or maybe they’ll decide that you’re the weak link, and do to you what they did to Daniel Clay.”

“We didn’t-” began Caswell, then caught himself.

“Didn’t what, Otis? Didn’t do anything to Daniel Clay? Didn’t kill him? Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“Fuck you,” said Caswell. “Fuck you to hell and back.”

He hung up. When I called a third time nobody picked up. The phone just rang and rang at the other end, and I pictured Otis Caswell in his white-trash house, his hands over his ears to block out the sound, until at last the ringing changed to a busy signal as he removed the co

Night descended. Our encounter with Caswell marked the begi