Page 124 of The Instruments of Darkness

“Was it an accident?”

Now it was Beth Witham who waited for a reply. It turned out she was good at waiting too.

“His wife told me that he wanted the baby,” I said. “They had the child at his instigation.”

“So it wasn’t an accident?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s your final question,” she said. “Why would a man who dislikes children, and finds pregnant women repulsive, elect to have a child? You run down the answer to that and you’ll be closer to the truth about what happened to Henry Clark.”

Beth Witham, I concluded, was wasted at Target.

I WALKED HER OUT. Angel and Louis were waiting by the car, each of them holding a Renys bag. They just couldn’t resist temptation.

“Are they with you?” Beth asked.

“They’re my associates.”

“They don’t look like private detectives. Don’t take this the wrong way, but they look like criminals. If they came into the store, I’d lie down on the floor with my hands behind my head.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “that’s precisely the effect we seek.”

“What do you figure they bought at Renys?”

“I shudder to think.”

She faced me so she could look me in the eye as she spoke.

“You have an idea where that boy might be, don’t you?” she said. “That’s why you’re not traveling alone. You’re going to look for Henry Clark, and you know that whoever took him won’t like it.”

I nodded.

“Do you think they might be in Gretton?”

“It’s a place to start.”

“I’ll get that name for you,” she said, “but she was just a girl, one of many those boys fucked and forgot. I doubt she bore a grudge. Stephen did worse to me, and even I wouldn’t have wanted to see his life collapse the way it has. No one would.”

“Yet someone did.”

“Or so it seems.”

It struck me, not for the first time, that in my line of work, I met more clever women than men. Perhaps it reflected a greater societal imbalance.

“When you find them, hurt them,” said Beth Witham. “Then ask them about Stephen Clark.”

CHAPTER LXXVIII

Ellar Michaud and his two sisters sat in the kitchen of their home, the slow descent of the afternoon sun visible through the window behind them. Ellar had broken out a bottle of the gin distilled by Eliza from a brand of cheap vodka that otherwise threatened to induce blindness in the frail or unwary, enhanced with almond, juniper, and coriander. Aline didn’t generally hold with drinking, and certainly not while it was still daylight, but these were exceptional circumstances.

There was no question but that the interlopers currently residing on Hickman land would attempt to investigate more closely Kit No. 174. Even had Ellar not been tracking the two men and guessed the direction of their thoughts, Lars Ungar had already revealed that his people were curious about the old house. If they succeeded in entering, they might well be curious about the dirt floor of the basement, even though Ellar had raked and smoothed it after the interment of Mattia Reggio. The house smelled of death, and not just recent death either. Generations of Michauds had been putting bodies in that ground since long before Kit No. 174 was raised. Decay, by osmosis, now infused its walls and boards; or that, Ellar thought, was one explanation, even as he suspected there was more to it, just as the permanent cold inside could be attributed neither to climate nor to the disposition of the dwelling itself. The wendigo made it that way.

Of course, the women disliked hearing that name used for it. Words like “wendigo,” “chenoo,” and “giwakwas” were not for civilized white people like themselves. Anyway, whatever inhabited Kit No. 174 was not beholden to the superstitions of the Mi’kmaq or the Abenaki. The tribes might have been aware of its existence, but they had not called it into being, and it was no god of theirs. Instead, it had long ago allied itself to the Michauds, blessing their existences and those to whom they elected to extend the boon of its presence. The first Michauds had heard it calling and heeded the summons, the spirit having chosen them. In return for good fortune, it demanded only small offerings: a body upon waking, preferably a child, so that it might have company in the dark.

And it was true that the Michauds had always been fortunate. They traditionally enjoyed long lives and good health. Prosperity came their way—not so much as to draw suspicion, but sufficient for them to be able to dwell in comfort. Yes, there were occasional setbacks, though they seemed to coincide with moments of doubt in the Michaud clan: a questioning of their duty to the spirit, even its actuality. So it was better, it had been decided, not to interrogate, only accept.

Yet still Ellar vacillated, if silently, for he had learned to guard his speech around his sisters. Was it not in the nature of men to attribute patterns to coincidence, and in this way bring gods into being? Once they became trapped in that mode of reasoning, any departure was rendered fraught, and thus action, or inaction, reinforced belief. Might not the Michauds have created the entity, or the idea of it, because logic dictated that men originated gods rather than the opposite? If so, could they not also bring it to an end by withholding that same belief?

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