The White Road

Epstein’s hands had been clasped behind his back. Now they emerged, and the light caught the metal case in their grasp.

“We have questions for you,” said Epstein, removing the syringe and sending a jet of clear liquid into the air. The needle descended toward Kittim, as the thing that lived inside him began the fruitless struggle to escape its host.

I left Charleston late the following evening. I told the SLED agents in Columbia, Adams and Addams beside them in the interview room, almost everything that I knew, lying only to leave out the involvement of Louis and the part I had played in the deaths of the two men in Congaree. Tereus had disposed of their bodies while I was tied up in his shack, and the swamp had a long history of swallowing up the remains of the dead. They would not be found.

As for those who had been killed by the old sinkhole, I lied and said that they had died at the hands of Tereus and the woman, taken by surprise before they even had a chance to react. Tereus’s body had floated to the surface, but there was no sign as yet of the woman or Earl Jr. As I sat in the interrogation room, I saw them falling once again, disappearing into the dark pool, sinking, the woman dragging the man down with her into the streams that lay beneath the stone, holding him until he drowned, the two united unto death and beyond.

At the Charleston airport terminal, a limousine waited, the tinted windows up so that no one could see the occupants. As I walked to the doorway, my baggage in my hand, one window rolled slowly down and Earl Larousse looked at me, waiting for me to approach.

“My son,” he said.

“Dead, like I told the police.”

His lips trembled, and he blinked away tears. I felt nothing for him.

“You knew,” I said. “You must have known all along what your son did. When he came home that night, covered in her blood, didn’t he tell you everything that he had done? Didn’t he beg for your help? And you gave it to him, to save him and to save your family name, and you held on to that piece of worthless land in the hope that what had happened there would remain hidden. But then Bowen came along and got his hooks into you, and suddenly you weren’t in control anymore. His people were in your house, and my guess is he was bleeding you for money. How much did you give him, Mr. Larousse? Enough to bail Faulkner, and then some?”

He didn’t look at me. Instead, he retreated into the past, descending into the grief and madness that would finally consume him.

“We were like royalty in this city,” he whispered. “We’ve been here since its birth. We are part of its history, and our name has lived for centuries.”

“Your name is going to die with you now, and they can bury your history with you.”

I walked away. When I reached the doors the car was no longer reflected in the glass.

And in a shack on the outskirts of Caina, Georgia, Virgil Gossard awoke to a feeling of pressure on his lips. He opened his eyes as the gun forced itself into his mouth.

The figure before him was dressed entirely in black, its face concealed beneath a ski mask.

“Up,” it said, and Virgil recognized the voice from the night at Little Tom’s. His hair was gripped and he was dragged from his bed, the gun trailing spittle and blood as it was pulled from his mouth. Virgil, wearing only his tattered briefs, was pushed toward the kitchen of his pitiful home, and the back door leading to the fields beyond.

“Open it.”

Virgil began to cry.

“Open it!”

He opened the door and a hand at his back forced him out into the night. Barefoot, he walked through the yard, feeling the coldness of the ground beneath his feet, the long blades of overgrown grass slicing at his skin. He could hear the man breathing behind him as he walked toward the woods at the verge of his land. A low wall, barely three bricks high, came into view. A sheet of corrugated iron had been laid across it. It was the old well.

“Take the cover off.”

Virgil shook his head. “No, don’t,” he said. “Please.”

“Do it!”

Virgil squatted down and dragged the sheet away, exposing the hole beneath.

“Kneel down on the wall.”

Virgil’s face was contorted with fear and the force of his tears. He could taste snot and salt in his mouth as he eased himself down and stared into the darkness of the well.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

He felt the pressure of the gun in the hollow at the base of his skull.

“What did you see?” said the man.

“I saw a man,” said Virgil. He was beyond lying now. “I looked up, I saw a man, a black man. There was another man with him. He was white. I didn’t get a good look at him. I shouldn’t have looked. I shouldn’t have looked.”

“What did you see?”

“I told you. I saw-”

The gun cocked.

“What did you see?”

And Virgil at last understood.

“Nothing,” he said. “I saw nothing. I wouldn’t know the guys if I saw them again. Nothing. That’s all. Nothing.”

The gun moved away from his head.

“Don’t make me come back here, Virgil,” said the man.

Virgil’s whole body shook with the force of his sobs.

“I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

“Now you stay there, Virgil. You keep kneeling.”

“I will,” said Virgil. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said the man.

Virgil didn’t hear him moving away. He just stayed kneeling until at last the sun began to rise and then, shivering, he rose and walked back to his little house.

V

There is no hope of death for these souls, And their lost life is so low, That they are envious of any other kind.

– DANTE ALIGHIERI, THE INFERNO, CANTO III

27

THEY BEGAN TO drift into the state over the next two days, in groups and alone, always by road, never by plane. There was the couple that checked into the small motel outside Sangerville, who kissed and cooed like the young lovers they appeared to be yet slept in separate beds in their twin room. There were the four men who ate a hurried breakfast in the Miss Portland Diner on Marginal Way, their eyes always returning to the black van in which they had arrived, tensing whenever anyone approached it and relaxing only slightly when they had passed by.

And there was the man who drove a truck north from Boston, avoiding the interstate whenever possible, until at last he found himself among forests of pine, a lake gleaming in the distance before him. He checked his watch-too early-and headed back toward Dolby Pond and the La Casa Exotic Dancing Club. There were, he figured, worse ways to kill a few hours.

The worst-case scenario came to pass: Supreme Judicial Court Justice Wilton Cooper carried out the review of the decision to deny bail to Aaron Faulkner. In the hour preceding the decision, Bobby Andrus and his team had presented their arguments against bail to Wilton Cooper in his chambers, pointing out that they believed Faulkner to be a substantial flight risk and that potential witnesses could be open to intimidation. When he asked them if they had any new evidence to hand, they had to admit that they had not.

In his submission, Jim Grimes argued that the prosecution had not presented sufficient evidence to suggest that Faulkner might have committed formerly capital crimes. He also offered medical evidence from three separate authorities that Faulkner’s health was deteriorating seriously in prison (evidence that the state itself was unable to contest, since its own doctors had found that Faulkner appeared to be suffering from some illness, although they were unable to say from what, precisely, except that he was losing weight rapidly, his temperature was consistently higher than normal, and both blood pressure and heart rate were abnormally high); that the stresses of incarceration were endangering the life of his client, against whom the prosecution had not yet been able to establish a substantial case; and that it was both unjust and inhumane to keep his client in prison while the prosecution attempted to amass enough evidence to shore up said case. Since his client would require medical supervision of the highest order, there was no real risk of flight and bail should be set accordingly.