The White Road

A

To his credit, Andrus had foreseen the possibility that Cooper would set bail and, reluctantly, had approached the FBI and requested that they serve a warrant for Faulkner’s arrest on federal charges should he be released. It was not Andrus’s fault that the warrant had been improperly presented: a secretary had misspelled Faulkner’s name, rendering it null and void. When Faulkner left the courthouse, there was no warrant waiting.

Outside Courtroom Number One, a man in a brown Timber-land jacket sat on an empty bench and made a call. Ten miles away, the cell phone in Cyrus Nairn’s hand buzzed.

“You’re good to go,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Cyrus killed the phone and tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road, then started his car and drove toward Scarborough.

Flashbulbs opened fire as soon as Grimes appeared on the courthouse steps, but Faulkner was not with him. Instead, a Nissan Terrano, with Faulkner hidden beneath a blanket in the rear, turned right from the courthouse and headed toward the Public Market parking garage on Elm. Above it, a helicopter buzzed. Behind it, two cars shadowed. The AG’s office was not about to let Faulkner disappear into the depths of the honeycomb world.

A battered yellow Buick pulled in behind the Terrano as it reached the entrance to the garage, causing the following traffic to brake suddenly. There was no need for the big jeep to pause for a ticket because its arrival had been prepared for well in advance: the ticket dispenser had been disabled by the simple application of industrial adhesive while the security guard was distracted by a fire in a garbage can and the garage had been forced to leave both the entrance and exit barriers permanently raised while the damage was being repaired.

The Terrano passed through quickly, but the Buick following itground to a halt, blocking the entrance. Crucial seconds passed before the police in the tracking cars realized what was happening. The first car reversed, then headed up the exit ramp, speeding, while two detectives from a second car rushed to the Buick, pulled the driver from his seat, and cleared the entrance.

By the time the agents got to the abandoned Terrano, Faulkner was long gone.

At 7 P.M. Mary Mason left her house at the end of Seavey Landing for her date with Sergeant MacArthur. Beyond her house, she could see the marsh and the waters of the Scarborough River as they wended their way around the pointed finger of Nonesuch Point and into the sea at Saco Bay. MacArthur was her first real date since her divorce had come through three months earlier, and she was hopeful about a relationship with him. She had known the policeman by sight and, despite his rumpled appearance, thought him kind of cute in a hangdog way. Nothing in their first date had caused her to revise her estimate downward. In fact, he had been quite charming and when he had called her the night before to confirm that a second date was still on, they had talked for almost an hour, surprising him, she suspected, as much as she had surprised herself.

She was almost at the car door when the man approached her. He came from the trees that hid her property from the view of her neighbors. He was small and hunched, with long dark hair that trailed his shoulders and eyes that were almost black, like those of some underground, nocturnal creature. She was already reaching for the Mace in her bag when he struck her backhanded across the face and she fell. He knelt on her legs before she could react again and she felt the pain in her side, an immense burning as the blade entered below her ribs and began to tear its way across her stomach. She tried to scream but his hand was over her mouth and all she could do was wriggle impotently as the blade continued its progress.

And then, just as she felt that she could take no more, that she must surely die from the pain, she heard a voice and saw, over the man’s shoulder, a huge hulking figure approach, a beaten-up Chevy idling behind him. He had a beard and wore a leather vest over his T-shirt. She could see the tattoo of a woman on his forearm.

“Hey!” said Bear. “The fuck you doing, man?”

Cyrus had not wanted to use the gun. He had wanted this done as quietly as possible, but the big and strangely familiar man now racing up the driveway left him with no choice. He rose from the woman before he could finish his cut, took the gun from his belt, and fired.

Two white vans took the Medway exit off I-95 and followed 11 through East Millinocket toward Dolby Pond. In the first van were three men and one woman, all armed. In the second sat another man and woman, also armed, and the Reverend Aaron Faulkner, who was silently reading his Bible on a bench in the back of the van. Had one of the state’s medical experts been on hand to check on the preacher, he would have found that the old man’s temperature was virtually normal and that all signs of his apparent ill health had already begun to fade.

A cell phone disturbed the silence of the second van. One of the men answered, spoke briefly, then turned back to Faulkner.

“He’s coming in to land now,” he told the old man. “He’ll be waiting for us when we get there. We’re right on schedule.”

Faulkner nodded, but did not respond. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on his Bible and the account of the trials of Job.

Cyrus Nairn sat behind the wheel of the Nissan at the Black Point Market and sipped a Coke. It was a warm evening and he desperately needed to cool down. The car’s a/c was busted. It didn’t matter much to Cyrus anyway: once the woman was dead he would ditch the car and head south, and that would be the end of it. He could suffer a little discomfort; after all, it was nothing compared to what the woman was about to endure.

He finished the Coke, then drove toward the bridge and dumped the can from the window into the waters below. Things had not gone according to plan over at Pine Point. First, the woman was already leaving the house when he arrived, and had gone for the spray in her bag, causing him to take her outside. Then the big man had come along and Cyrus had no choice but to use his gun. He had been afraid, for a moment, that people would hear but there had been no immediate fuss, no clamor. Still, Cyrus had been forced to leave hurriedly, and he did not like rushing his work.

He checked his watch and, his lips moving silently, counted down from ten. When he reached one, he thought he heard the muffled explosion from Pine Point. When he looked out of his window, smoke was already rising from Mary Mason’s burning car. The police would arrive soon, maybe the fire department, and they would find the woman and the dead man. He had preferred to leave the woman dying, not dead. He wanted the noise of the ambulance, the distraction to the policeman MacArthur and his colleagues, even at the risk of her being able to provide a description of him. He suspected that he might not have cut her enough, that she might even survive her injuries. He wondered if he had left her too close to the car, if she might not already be burning. He didn’t want there to be any doubt about her identity. They were minor issues, but they troubled Cyrus. He wanted to be able to work on the redhead without interruption. The prospect of capture, though, did not concern him: Cyrus would die before he would go back to prison. Cyrus had been promised salvation, and the saved fear nothing.