The Killing Kind

“A new arrival,” I said, when at last I had finished unburdening myself to her. I felt light-headed, a simultaneous sense of elation and loss.

“You were like that once,” said Amy.

“An alcoholic?”

“You were never an alcoholic.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of the way you stopped,” she replied. “Because of why you stopped. Do you think about drinking?”

“Sometimes.”

“But not every day, not every hour of every day?”

“No.”

“Then you've answered your own question. It was just a way to fill a hole in your being, and it could have been anything: sex, drugs, marathon ru

Amy was not one to sugarcoat pills. She and her husband had built a community based on the importance of absolute honesty: with oneself and, from that, with others. “Do you believe that you have the right to take lives, to judge others and find them wanting?”

I heard echoes of Al Z in her words. I didn't like it.

“I had no choice,” I replied.

“There's always a choice.”

“It didn't seem that way at the time. If they'd lived, then I'd have died. Other people would have died as well, i

“The necessity defense?”

The necessity defense was an old English common-law concept that held that an individual who breaks a minor law to achieve a greater good should be declared i

“There are only two consequences to taking a life,” Amy continued. “Either the victim achieves salvation, in which case you have killed a good man; or you damn him to hell, in which case you have deprived him of any hope of redemption. Afterward, the responsibility lies with you, and you bear the weight.”

“They weren't interested in redemption,” I answered her evenly. “And they didn't want salvation.”

“And you do?”

I didn't answer.

“You won't achieve salvation with a gun in your hand,” she persisted.

I leaned forward. “Amy,” I said softly, “I've thought about these things. I've considered them. I thought I could walk away, but I can't. People have to be protected from the urges of violent men. I can do that. Sometimes I'm too late to protect them, but maybe I can help to achieve some measure of justice for them.”

“Is that why you're here, Charlie?”

A noise came from behind me and Doug, Amy's husband, came into the room. I wondered for a moment how long he had been there. He held a large bottle of water in his hand. Some of it had dripped from his chin and soaked the front of his clean white shirt. He was a tall man with pale skin and hair that was almost entirely white. His eyes were remarkably green. When I stood to greet him, he held my shoulder for a time and perused me in much the same way that his wife had examined me earlier. Then he took a seat beside Amy and they both waited in silence for me to answer Amy's question.

“In a sense,” I said at last. “I'm investigating the death of a woman. Her name was Grace Peltier. Once, a long time ago, she was a friend of mine.”

I took a breath and looked out once again at the sunlight. In this place whose only purpose was to try to make the lives of those who passed its way a little better, the deaths of Grace and her father and the figure of a child out of time, his wound hidden behind cheap black tape, seemed somehow distant. It was as if this little community was invulnerable to the encroachments of violent men and the consequences of acts committed long ago and far away. But the apparent simplicity of the life here, and the clarity of the aims it espoused, masked a strength and a profound depth of knowledge. That was why I was here; it was, in its way, almost the antithesis of the group I was hunting.

“This investigation has brought me into contact with the Fellowship, and with a man who appears to be acting on its behalf. He calls himself Mr. Pudd.”

They didn't respond for a time. Doug looked to the ground and moved his right foot back and forth over the boards. Amy turned away from me and stared out over the trees, as if the answers I sought might somehow be found deep in their reaches. Then, at last, they exchanged a look, and Amy spoke.

“We know about them,” she said softly, as I knew she would. “You make interesting enemies, Charlie.”

She sipped her tea before continuing. “There are two Fellowships. There is the one that appears in the public form of Carter Paragon, the one that sells prayer pamphlets for ten dollars and promises to cure the ailments of those who touch their television screens. That Fellowship is mendacious and shallow and preys on the gullible. It's no different from any of a hundred other similar movements; no better than them, but certainly no worse.

“The second Fellowship is something entirely different. It is a force, an entity, not an organization. It supports vicious men. It funds killers and fanatics. It is powered by rage and hate and fear. Its targets are anything and everything that is not of, or like, itself. Some are obvious: gays, Jews, blacks, Catholics, those who assist in the provision of abortion or family pla

Beside her, her husband nodded in agreement. “It moves against anything that it perceives to be a threat to itself or its mission. It starts with polite advances, then progresses to intimidation, property damage, physical injury, and then, if it deems such action necessary, murder.”

Around us, the air seemed to change, for a wind had blown up from across the lake. It brought with it the scent of still water and decay.

“Who's behind it?” I asked.

Doug shrugged, but it was Amy who answered. “We don't know. We know what you know; its public face is Carter Paragon. Its private face remains hidden. It is not a large organization. It is said that the best conspiracy is a conspiracy of one; the fewer who know about something, the better. Our understanding is that there are no more than a handful of people involved.”

“Policemen?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps. Yes, almost certainly one or two policemen. It sometimes uses them to cover its tracks, or to stay in touch with any legal moves against it. But its primary instrument is a man, a thin man with red hair and a fondness for predation. Sometimes he has a woman with him, a mute.”

“That's him,” I said. “That's Pudd.”

For the first time since we had begun to talk of the Fellowship, Amy reached out to her husband. Her hand found his and gripped it tightly, as if even the mention of Pudd's name might invoke his presence and force them to face him together.

“He goes by different names,” she continued, after a pause. “I've heard him referred to as Ed Monker, as Walter Zaren, as Eric Dumah. I think he was Ted Bune once, and Alex Tchort for a time. I'm sure there were others.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

“We're religious, but we're not naive. These are dangerous people. It pays to know about them. Do those names mean anything to you at all?”

“I don't think so.”

“Do you know anything about demonology?”

“Sorry, I canceled my subscription to Amateur Demonologist. It was scaring the mailman.”

Doug permitted himself the ghost of a smile. “Tchort is the Russian Satan, also known as the Black God,” he said. “Bune is a three-headed demon who moves bodies from one grave to another. Dumah is the angel of the silence of death, and Zaren is the demon of the sixth hour, the avenging genius. Monker is the name he uses most frequently. It seems to have a particular resonance for him.”