The Reapers

“We won’t know until that day comes.”

“No, we won’t.”

Angel closed his eyes and sighed. There was enough testosterone in the room to make a wig bald. They were one step away from arm wrestling. At that moment, Hoyle entered. He was wearing a white robe and slippers, and was drying his hair with a towel, although he did so while wearing the ubiquitous white gloves.

“I’m glad that you came back,” he said. “I just wish it could have been under better circumstances. How is your-” He searched for the right word to describe Gabriel, then fixed on “‘friend’?”

“Shot,” said Louis simply.

“So I gathered,” said Hoyle. “I appreciate the confirmation, though.”

He took a seat across from them and handed the damp towel to Simeon, who did his best not to bristle at being reduced to the status of pool boy in front of Louis. “I presume that the attack on Gabriel is the reason you’ve returned. Leehagen is taunting you, as well as attempting to punish another of those whom he blames for his son’s death.”

“You seem sure that it was Leehagen who targeted him,” said Louis.

“Who else could it be? No one else would be foolish enough to attack a man of Gabriel’s standing. I’m aware of his co

Louis was forced to agree. In the circles in which Gabriel moved, there was a tacit understanding that the provider of the manpower was not responsible for what occurred once that manpower was put to use. Louis was reminded of Gabriel’s description of Leehagen: a dying man, desperate for revenge before the life left him entirely.

“So,” said Hoyle. “Let us be clear. Perhaps you’re wondering if this apartment is wired, or if anything that you say here might find its way to some branch of the law enforcement community. I can assure you that the apartment is clean, and that I have no interest in involving the law in this matter. I want you to kill Arthur Leehagen. I will provide you with whatever information I can to facilitate his demise, and I will pay you handsomely for the job.”

Hoyle nodded to Simeon. A file was produced from a drawer and passed to Hoyle. He placed it on the table before them.

“This is everything that I have on Leehagen,” said Hoyle, “or everything that I believe might prove useful to you.”

Louis opened the file. As he flipped through its contents, he saw that some of the material replicated what he had uncovered himself, but much was new. There were sheafs of closely typed pages detailing the Leehagen family history, business interests, and other enterprises, some of them, judging by photocopies of police reports and letters from the attorney general’s office, criminal in nature. They were followed by photographs of an impressive house, satellite images of forests and roads, local maps, and, last of all, a picture of a balding, corpulent man with a series of flabby chins folding into a barrel chest. He was wearing a black suit and a collarless shirt. What was left of his hair was long and unkempt. Dark pig eyes were lost in the flesh of his face.

“That’s Leehagen,” said Hoyle. “The photograph was taken five years ago. I understand that his cancer has taken its toll upon him since then.”

Hoyle reached for one of the satellite images, and pointed to a white block at its center. “This is the main house. Leehagen lives there with his son. He has a nurse who lives in her own small apartment adjoining it. About a quarter of a mile to the west, perhaps a little farther”-he grabbed another photograph, and placed it beside the first-“are cattle pens. Leehagen used to keep a herd of Ayrshire cattle.”

“That’s not cattle land,” said Louis.

“It didn’t matter to Leehagen. He liked them. Fancied himself as a breeder. He felled forest so they could graze, and utilized areas that had been cleared by storm damage. I think they made him feel like a gentleman farmer.”

“What happened to them?” asked Angel.

“He sent them for slaughter a month ago. They were his cattle. They weren’t going to outlive him.”

“What’s this?” asked Louis. He pointed to a series of photographs of a small industrial structure with what appeared to be a town nearby. A thin straight line ran along the bottom of a number of the photographs: a railway line.

“That’s Winslow,” said Hoyle. He placed two standard maps side by side in front of Louis and Angel. “Look at them. See any difference between them?”

Angel looked. In one, the town of Winslow was clearly marked. In another, there was no sign of the town at all.

“The first map is from the 1970s. The second is only a year or two old. Winslow doesn’t exist anymore. Nobody lives there. There used to be a talc mine near the town-that’s what you can see to the east in some of the pictures-owned by the Leehagen family, but it gave out in the 1980s. People started to leave, and Leehagen began buying up the vacant properties. Those who didn’t want to go were forced out. Oh, he paid them, so it was all aboveboard, but it was made clear what would happen if they didn’t leave. It’s all private land now, lying to the northeast of Leehagen’s house. You know anything about talc mining, sir?”

“No,” said Louis.

“It’s a nasty business. The miners were exposed to tremolite asbestos dust in the mines. A lot of the companies involved knew that the talc contained asbestos, the Leehagens included, but chose not to inform their workers about either its presence or the prevalence of asbestos-related diseases in their mines. We’re talking mainly about scarring of the lungs, silicosis, and incidents of mesothelioma, which is a rare asbestos-related cancer. Even those who weren’t directly involved in mining began developing lung problems. The Leehagens defended themselves by denying that industrial talc contains asbestos or poses a cancer risk, which I believe is a lie. This stuff ended up in kids’ crayons, and you know what kids do with crayons, right? They put them in their mouths.”

“With due respect, what does this have to do with the matter in hand?” asked Louis.

“Well, it was how Leehagen managed to empty Winslow. He offered financial settlements to the families, most of whom had relatives who had worked in the mines. The settlements indemnified Leehagen and his descendants against any future action. He screwed those people to the wall. The amounts they received were far less than they might have been awarded had they been prepared to take their cases to court, but then this was the 1980s. I don’t think they even knew what was making them sick, and most of them were already dead when the first cases from elsewhere began coming before the courts a decade or more later. That’s the kind of man Leehagen is. It is ironic, though, that his own cancers may well have been caused by the mines that made him wealthy. They killed his wife”-when Hoyle said the word “wife,” he winced slightly-“and now they’re killing him.”

Hoyle found another map, this one depicting the course of a river. “After he’d emptied the town, he got permission to redirect a local stream, the Roubaud, on some spurious environmental grounds. Effectively, the redirection allowed him to cut himself off. It functions as a moat. There are only two roads that cross it into his land. Behind Leehagen’s house is Fallen Elk Lake, so he has water at his back as well. He’s sown the lake bed with rocks and wire to prevent anyone from gaining access to the house from that direction, so the only way onto his land is over one of the two bridges spa

Hoyle pointed them out on the map, then traced the roads that led from them with his finger. They formed the shape of an inverted fu

“Are they watched?” asked Angel.

“Not consistently, but there are still homes nearby. Some of them are rented by Leehagen to the families of the men who used to tend his cattle, or who work his property. There are a couple of others that belong to people who’ve reached an arrangement with him. They stay out of his affairs, and he lets them live where they’ve always lived. They’re mainly on the northern road. The southern road is quieter. It would be possible for a vehicle going down either of those roads to get pretty close to Leehagen’s house, although the southern road would be the safer bet, but if the alarm was raised then both those bridges could be closed before any trespassers had a chance to escape.”