Page 133 of The Instruments of Darkness

I gave nothing away. Beth Witham had come through, but I didn’t know her well enough to confirm it for her.

“What can you tell me about them?”

“I never had anything to do with them. I know the family was old Gretton—I mean centuries—and kept themselves to themselves. The guy who gave me the name still lives up in Piscataquis, not far from town. He said people tried to stay out of the Michauds’ way then, and still do, which was what made it so memorable that Stephen fucked one of them.”

“Are they bad news?”

“Not bad news so much as odd. You know, just not right. The guy said he heard locals used to approach Mother Michaud for help with work, or their love lives. Crossing her palm with silver, that kind of thing. She performed abortions, too, back before Roe v. Wade. I asked my dad about it, and he said it was true.”

I told her I was grateful for her help, then sat at the window of my room, moving between pictures of Eliza Michaud on my cell phone: one with Stephen Clark, her face slightly turned away from the camera, the other from her driver’s license, staring straight at me. I was now convinced that Eliza Michaud had been responsible for the abduction of Henry Clark, but she had not been unaided.

ANGEL, LOUIS, AND I walked from the inn to my car. Each of us wore a gun beneath our jackets, while I had a pistol-grip Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun stored in the trunk. It was a gift from Moxie, but so far I hadn’t had any call to use it. I kept it in the trunk because I wasn’t sure what else to do with it. I showed Angel and Louis the email from Southwood and pointed to Eliza Michaud’s picture.

“In the absence of a better candidate,” I said, “that’s Mara Teller.”

“They’re all the right height for modeling work,” said Louis, running through the licenses and faces, “but otherwise that’s one grim family.”

Angel was still focused on Eliza Michaud.

“Why would anyone have an affair with her?” asked Angel.

“Who knows the ways of the human heart?” I said.

“Yeah, but what about the ways of human eyes? Though compared to her sister, she’s a regular Aphrodite.”

“I don’t think this was ever about an affair,” I said. “It sounds like madness, but I’m starting to believe that Stephen Clark might have facilitated the abduction of his own child, and not in return for any sexual relationship with Eliza Michaud.”

Stephen Clark: a man who didn’t want to be a father, and had beaten a previous girlfriend for becoming pregnant, but later pressured his wife into having a child; a man with little interest in sex, but who seemingly had an affair with a woman he had once screwed years earlier in the parking lot of a bar.

“If not sex, then why?” asked Louis.

“I don’t know. Take away sex and what’s left? What could she give him that would justify handing over his son to her? What could she offer him that he didn’t already have?”

“Money?” suggested Louis.

“Money doesn’t feel right to me. That isn’t what drives him.”

“So what does?”

“How about ambition?” said Angel.

And I thought, Yes, that might be it. Professional success and recognition were what Clark desired more than anything else, yet his own limitations prevented him from obtaining them. But how could Eliza Michaud have guaranteed his professional advancement? She lived in the woods with two older siblings, close to a remote, unloved town.

“I suppose we’ll just have to ask the Michauds,” I said.

LYLE DRUMMOND GOT IN touch as we were passing Private Road 7 for the second time, trying to get some measure of the Michaud land. We couldn’t see any buildings or lights, but we knew from Google Earth that the main house was in there, along with a second structure that might have been a ruin.

“Are you still in Gretton?” asked Drummond.

“You lied,” I said.

“I did?”

“It makes Dexter look like Vegas, not Reno.”

An animal ran from one side of Private Road 7 to the other: a weasel, from the length of its tail, embarking on a nocturnal hunt.

“To each his own,” said Drummond. “You were asking about Maynard Vaughn. He was last seen getting into a blue Chrysler registered to an Ellar Michaud of Private Road Seven, Gretton, but the witness says it was a woman behind the wheel. The witness also says she saw Maynard in the same car at least once before, but that time with two women, including the same one who picked him up more recently.”

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