The Killing Kind

She stared straight ahead as I spoke. When I had finished, I lowered my hand and she walked quickly to the door. She left it open behind her, and I watched as she started the Mercedes and turned it quickly onto the road. I looked down at my hand and the four deep parallel lines she had left on it. Blood ran down my fingers and pooled at the nails and I thought, for a moment, that they looked a lot like Deborah Mercier's. I cleaned the cuts under the faucet, then put on my jacket and a pair of leather gloves to cover the wound, grabbed my keys, and headed out to my car.

I should have asked her for a ride, I thought, as I followed the lights of her car all the way to Prouts Neck. I kept far enough back so as not to arouse her suspicion, but I was still close enough to make the security barrier before it closed behind her.

There were five or six cars in the parking lot when I pulled up. Mrs. Mercier had already disappeared into the house and the porn star with the mustache was lumbering forward from the porch. He was wearing an earpiece and he had a radio mike attached to his lapel. I guessed that security had been stepped up somewhat after Epstein's death.

“This is a private party,” he said. “You'll have to leave.”

“I don't think so,” I replied.

“Then I'll have to make you leave,” he said. He looked happy at the prospect, and poked a finger into my chest to emphasize the point.

I grabbed the finger with my left hand, gripped his wrist tightly with my right, and pulled. There was a soft pop as the finger dislocated, and the porn star's mouth opened wide in pain. I turned him around, pulling his arm behind his back, and shoved him hard into the side of the Mercedes. His head banged emptily against it and he collapsed on the ground, holding his uninjured hand against his scalp.

“If you're a good boy, I'll fix your finger on my way out,” I said.

A couple of other security guards were moving toward me when Jack Mercier appeared on the steps and called them off. They stopped and formed a loose circle around me, like wolves waiting for the signal to fall upon their prey.

“It seems like you've invited yourself to my party, Mr. Parker,” said Mercier. “I guess you'd better come in.”

I walked up the steps and followed him through the house. It didn't look like much of a party. There was a lot of expensive booze floating around on trays and a handful of people stood about in nice clothes, but nobody seemed to be having a very good time. A man I recognized as Warren Ober put down his champagne flute and started to follow us.

Mercier led me into the same book-lined room in which we had sat the previous week, the rhombus of sun now replaced by a thin trickle of moonlight. The bug was gone, probably already devoured by something bigger and meaner than it could ever be. There were no coffee cups brought this time. Jack Mercier wasn't offering me his hospitality. His eyes were red rimmed and he had shaved himself badly, so that patches of bristle remained under his chin and below his nostrils. Even his white dress shirt looked wrinkled, and sweat patches showed beneath his armpits when he took off his jacket. His bow tie was slightly crooked, and despite his cologne I thought I detected a sour smell.

I walked straight to the photograph of Mercier and Ober with Beck and Epstein, and removed it from the wall. I threw it to him and he caught it awkwardly in his arms. “What haven't you told me?” I said, as the door opened and Ober entered. He closed it behind him and both of us looked at Mercier.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Mr. Mercier, what were the four of you doing that could have drawn these people down on you? How do you think Grace became involved?”

He recoiled visibly at the question.

“And why did you hire me, because you must have known who was responsible for her death?”

He didn't say anything at first, just sat down heavily in an armchair across from me and put his head in his hands. “Did you know that Curtis Peltier was dead?” he asked me, in tones so soft they were almost inaudible.

I felt an ache in my stomach and leaned back against the table to steady myself.

“Nobody told me.”

“He was only found this evening. He'd been dead for days. I was going to call you as soon as my guests left.”

“How did he die?”

“Somebody broke into his house, tortured him, then slit his arms in his bathtub.”

He looked up at me, his eyes demanding pity and understanding. In that instant, I almost struck Jack Mercier.

“He never knew, did he?” I said. “He didn't know anything about the Fellowship, about Beck or Epstein. The only thing that mattered to him was his daughter, and he gave her everything he could. I saw the way he lived. He had a big house that he couldn't keep clean, and he lived in his kitchen. Do you even know where your kitchen is, Mr. Mercier?”

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. There was no compassion in it, no kindness. I doubted if any voter had ever seen Jack Mercier smile like that. “My daughter, Mr. Parker,” he growled. “Grace was my child.”

“You're deluded, Mr. Mercier.” I couldn't keep the disgust from my voice.

“I stayed out of her life because that was what we all agreed, but I was always concerned for her. When she applied to the scholarship fund, I saw a chance to help her. Hell, I'd have given her the money even if she'd wanted to take surfing at Malibu Tech. She intended to study religious movements in the state during the last fifty years, and one in particular. I encouraged her to do that in order to have her near me while she studied the books in my collection. It was my fault, my mistake.

“Because we didn't know about the link, not then,” he said, and the weight of his guilt fell upon him like an executioner's blade.

“What link?”

Behind us, Warren Ober coughed. “I have to advise you, Jack, not to say anything more in Mr. Parker's presence.” He was using his best, five-hundred-dollar-per-hour voice. As far as Ober was concerned, Grace's death was immaterial. All that mattered was ensuring that Jack Mercier's guilt remained private, not public.

The gun was in my hand before I even knew it. Through a red haze I saw Ober backing away and then the muzzle of the gun was buried in the soft flesh beneath his chin. “You say one more word,” I whispered, “and I won't be held responsible for my actions.”

Despite the fear in his eyes, Ober spat the next six words. “You are a thug, Mr. Parker,” he said.

“So are you, Mr. Ober,” I replied. “The only difference is that you're better paid than I am.”

“Stop!”

It was the voice of an emperor, a voice used to being obeyed. I didn't disappoint it. I removed the gun from Ober's chin and put it away.

“Safety was on,” I told him. “Can't be too careful.”

Ober adjusted his bow tie and started calculating the man-hours required to ruin me in court.

Mercier poured himself a brandy and another for Ober. He waved the decanter at me, but I declined. He handed Ober a glass, took a long sip from his own, then resumed his seat and began talking as if nothing had happened.

“Did Curtis tell you about our respective familial co

I nodded. Behind me, a cloud passed over the moon and the light that had shone into the room was suddenly lost in its shadow.

“They were lost for thirty-seven years, until now,” he said softly. “I believe that the man responsible for their deaths is still alive.”

The first hint that Faulkner was alive had come in March, and it arrived from an unlikely source. A Faulkner Apocalypse was offered for auction, and Jack Mercier had acquired it, just as he had successfully acquired the twelve other extant examples of Faulkner's work. While he spoke, he removed one from his cabinet and handed it to me.