The Killing Kind

In the bottom right-hand corner of each page, like marginalia, were written names. The pages constructed of a single sheet of skin bore only one name, while those made up of a number of sections contained two, three, or sometimes four names. James Jessop's name was on the third fragment of skin, his mother's on the fourth, and his father's on the fifth. The rest of the Aroostook Baptists took up the majority of the book's entries, but there were other names too, names that I did not recognize, some of them comparatively recent, judging by the color of the ink on the skin. Alison Beck's name was not among them. Neither was Al Z's, or Epstein's, or Mickey Shine's. They would all have been added later, once the book had been retrieved, just as Grace Peltier's name would also have been written, and perhaps my own as well.

I thought back to Jack Mercier and the volume I had been shown in his study, its three double spine markings here transformed from gold to bone. A craftsman like Faulkner would not simply have ceased to make the books he loved so much. The copy presented to Carter Paragon was proof of that. Now it was clear that Faulkner had a wider vision: the creation of a text whose form perfectly mirrored its subject; a book about damnation made up of the bodies of the damned; a record of judgment composed of the remains of those who had been judged.

And Grace had found him. Deborah Mercier, jealous of her husband's first daughter, had told her of the existence of the new Apocalypse and its source. By then, Jack Mercier had already commenced his moves against the Fellowship, recruiting Ober, Beck, and Epstein to his cause, but Grace couldn't have known that, because it was more than Deborah Mercier would have been willing to tell her. She would put Grace at risk, but not her husband.

Grace had confronted Paragon with her knowledge of the sale of the Apocalypse, but Paragon was simply a dupe and Grace, clever woman, must have guessed it. He would have been afraid to tell Pudd and Faulkner that he had sold the book, but he would also have been too frightened to tell them nothing of Grace's visit. And so Grace had watched him and waited for him to panic. Did she follow him north, or wait for them to come to him? I suspected the latter if Paragon had died because he could not tell the Golem of their hiding place. Whatever had occurred, Grace had somehow found her way to the very gates of Faulkner's own, private hell. And then, when the opportunity arose, she made her way in and managed to escape with this book, a book that contained the truth about the fate of the Aroostook Baptists and, in particular, Elizabeth Jessop. Its theft had forced the Fellowship to respond quickly; while Pudd and the others searched for it, they set about eliminating all those who were moving against them and for whom the work stolen by Grace Peltier would have been a powerful weapon, a task that assumed a new urgency with the discovery of the bodies at St. Froid Lake.

I closed the volume, laid it carefully in its packaging, then ran my hands under the kitchen faucet. When I had cleaned them thoroughly I picked up a towel and turned to face Rachel and Louis.

“Looks like we got a whole new definition of the word ‘crazy,’ ” muttered Louis. “You know what that thing is supposed to be?”

“It's a record,” I replied. “A journal of deaths, and maybe more than that. It's an account of the damned, the opposite of the book of life. The Aroostook Baptists are in there, and at least a dozen other names, male and female, all used to create a new Apocalypse.

“And Faulkner made it. His remains weren't among those found at the grave site; neither were his son's or those of his daughter. They killed those people, all of them, then used parts of them to create his book. I think the other names are those of people who've had the misfortune to cross the Fellowship at some time, or who posed a threat and had to be eliminated. Eventually, parts of Grace and Curtis Peltier, Yossi Epstein, and maybe a piece of Jack Mercier and the others on the boat would have been added, once the book had been retrieved. It would have to be as complete a record as possible, otherwise it would have no meaning.”

“I take it you're using ‘meaning’ in the loosest possible sense,” said Rachel. Her disgust was obvious.

I was rubbing my hands red on the towel yet still feeling the taint of the book upon me. “Its meaning doesn't matter,” I said. “This thing is a confession to murder, once it can be traced back to Faulkner.”

“If we can find him,” added Louis. “What's going to happen when Lutz don't report back?”

“Then he'll send someone else, probably Pudd, to find out what happened. He can't let this book remain out in the world. That's assuming that our friend with the bald head doesn't get to him first.”

I thought of what I knew, or suspected, of Faulkner's hiding place; I knew now that it was to the north, beyond Bangor, close to the coast, and near a lighthouse. There were maybe sixty lighthouses on the Maine coast, most of them automated or unma

I knelt down and took the wrapped book in my hands.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked Rachel.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Not yet.”

She moved closer to me and held my gaze. “You want to find him, don't you? You're not prepared to let the police do it.”

“He had Lutz and Voisine working for him,” I explained, “and Voisine is still out there somewhere. There could be others as well. If we hand this over to the police and even one of them shares Lutz's loyalties, then Faulkner will be alerted and he'll be gone forever. My guess is that he's already preparing to disappear. He's probably been pla

She picked up her bag and stood expectantly.

“We're going to put you somewhere safe. You can call your parents and let them know you're okay first.”

She nodded. I went outside and called the Colony on the cell phone. Amy answered.

“It's Charlie Parker,” I said. “I need your help. I have a woman here. I need to stow her out of sight.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

But I think she knew.

“I'm close to him, Amy. I can bring this to an end.”

When she answered, I could hear the resignation in her voice. “She can stay in the house.” Women, with the obvious exception of Amy herself, were not usually admitted to the Colony, but there were spare bedrooms in the main house that were sometimes used under exceptional circumstances.

“Thank you. There will be a man with her. He'll be armed.”

“You know how we feel about guns here, Charlie.”

“I know, but this is Pudd we're dealing with. I want you to let my friend stay with Marcy until this is over. It'll be a day or two at most.”

I asked her to take Rachel in as well. She agreed, and I hung up. Marcy made a short call to her mother and then we drove away from the house and into Boothbay. There, we parted. Louis and Rachel would drive south to Scarborough, where Angel would take Marcy Becker and a reluctant Rachel to the Colony. Louis would rejoin me once Marcy and Rachel were in Angel's care. I kept the book, concealing it carefully beneath the passenger seat of the Mustang.

I drove north as far as Bangor, where I picked up a copy of Thompson's Maine Lighthouses at Book Marcs bookstore. There were seven lighthouses in the Bold Coast area around Machias, the town in which Marcy Becker had been left while Grace went about her business: Whitlock's Mill in Calais; East Quoddy at Campobello Island; and farther south, Mulholland Light, West Quoddy, Lubec Cha