Page 148 of The Instruments of Darkness

“I hope he’ll be gone before that happens.” She stared at her hands. “Do you think his mother would like to say goodbye to him?”

I felt my eyes grow hot.

“Yes, I think she’d like that very much.”

CHAPTER CII

As Angel, Louis, and I drove from Gretton, Sabine with us, we passed the constable, Poulin. He was parked on the edge of town, just across from the sign welcoming visitors or bidding them farewell, depending on one’s good fortune. I’d glimpsed him in the aftermath of the violence. He’d looked lost and ineffectual, which about covered it. Whatever happened from now on, his days in law enforcement were numbered.

I pulled up alongside his car. He peered in our direction, first casually, then with alarm.

“If it isn’t Constable Poulin,” I said, “the ever-vigilant.”

Behind me, Sabine wound down the window. She glared at him for so long that he was forced to look away. Finally, she spoke, but as though he were not present.

“He didn’t know,” she said, “but only because he chose not to. He was frightened of the Michauds. Many people around here were wary of them, and always have been, but he was truly scared.”

“Is that the case, Constable?” I asked. “Were you too afraid of them to even examine the reasons for your fear?”

Poulin found his voice.

“You’re blocking the road,” he said. “If you don’t move your vehicle, I’ll issue you a citation.”

“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” I replied, as I started to drive slowly away. “We ought to respect the law.”

Poulin resigned the following day. Subsequently, a rumor circulated that he’d shot himself down in Louisiana, but it turned out to be untrue. He just kept on living, if you could call it that. But I doubt he slept well, and I hope he woke every morning to the taste of dirt in his mouth.

CHAPTER CIII

I met frequently with Colleen Clark over the days and weeks that followed. I was with her when confirmation came that it was Henry’s body in the basement. I was with her when she went to claim the remains. I was with her when she buried her boy.

And I was with her one evening in the quiet of her kitchen as Sabine Drew held Colleen’s hands in hers, the two women’s eyes closed, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock. The refrigerator and counters overflowed with food from neighbors who had come to apologize in person, a number of them in tears. Colleen had accepted without rancor their expressions of sympathy and atonement. I wondered then if what I had mistaken for her lassitude was more properly a kind of grace.

As Colleen and Sabine sat in unspoken communion, new scents entered the kitchen, traces of grass, pine, and fresh earth, and from somewhere both unbearably close and immeasurably far away I heard a child laugh.

“He’s here,” said Sabine.

And Colleen called her son’s name.

CHAPTER CIV

Stephen Clark attended Henry’s funeral—of course he did—but he and his wife kept their distance from each other throughout the ceremony, and stood on opposite sides of the grave as their son was interred. Both wept, but Colleen’s grief had a different essence to it, I think for many reasons. One of them, at least, I understood: she now knew she would see her child again, and that this was only a temporary parting.

Some intimates of the couple had, I knew, raised the possibility of a reconciliation. Stephen, they argued, had been wrong to believe his wife guilty, but in the face of such evidence, who might not have doubted their spouse? They could start again, have another child, and mourn their lost boy together. But others demurred, because who could forgive a man who would countenance such things about his wife? Somewhere between the two views, I supposed, was a pale version of what passed for truth.

And then there were those of us who could not bring ourselves to even look at him, but we were fewer.

This is what I think, though I have no hard evidence for it, and there are gaps I cannot fill: Eliza Michaud offered to help Stephen Clark achieve success in his professional life in return for his child. The pact might have been made before Henry was even conceived, or it may have been that Stephen did change, if only for a time, and thought he could play the role of a father, only to discover he could not, which made him vulnerable to Eliza’s overtures. No, “vulnerable” is not the correct word. Receptive. Stephen provided Eliza with details of the layout of his home, drugged his wife’s wine so she would not wake when the Michauds came to take her son, and supplied them with the blanket in which to wrap him, a blanket to be returned to him when Henry was dead and which Stephen would use to frame his wife.

How the DavMatt-Hunter accident might have been arranged also remained uncertain. According to witnesses, the truck driver could have done nothing to avoid the collision, and while the chauffeur had traces of oxymorphone in his system, he had used the medication in the past without impairing his performance behind the wheel. It might have been that, on this occasion, he had suffered some form of reaction to the opioid, causing him to become drowsy.

Perhaps it was only what it appeared to be: a misfortune that benefited Stephen Clark; a coincidence, and nothing more. Still, I was prepared to believe that the Michauds might have found a way to drug the chauffeur, but only because the explanation was more palatable to me than Sabine’s: that the reach of whatever dwelt under Kit No. 174 exceeded the environs of Gretton.

SHORTLY AFTER HIS SON was buried, Stephen Clark moved into a new condo in Saco. One month later, his brother and sister-in-law called to check on him after he failed to turn up for dinner at their home, once they had established that he had also been out of contact with his office for two days. They discovered his body lying in the hallway and an open $400 bottle of Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon on the kitchen table, a half-full glass beside it.

According to a note found in the condo, the wine had been sent by a secretary at an oil conglomerate based in Taiwan, one with which Clark’s firm had recently signed a lucrative and well-publicized contract, although the conglomerate subsequently denied all knowledge of the gift. The note indicated that one of the company’s senior executives wished to speak privately with Clark to discuss a deal that might prove mutually beneficial, as they were impressed with his efforts on the contract and felt he was someone they could work with, perhaps on a discreet but lucrative consultancy basis. Clark was invited to participate in a scheduled online meeting, during which, it was suggested, it would be politic of him to display the opened bottle of wine. He was also advised not to commit anything to email. The secure link to the meeting, the note promised, would be sent thirty minutes before it was due to begin, at 8 p.m. EST. When his computer was examined, no such link could be located.

Both the wine and Clark himself were discovered to contain large quantities of tetrodotoxin, otherwise known as TTX. The poison had been injected through the foil and cork of the bottle using a very fine needle. Clark would have begun to feel its effects within minutes of ingestion, starting with pain in the lips and tongue, quickly followed by sweating, nausea, and full paralysis. He had been trying to get to his cell phone as the poison took effect, but failed after dialing the first digit of 9-1-1. Death, given the size of the dose, would have occurred within four hours, during which time Clark would have been conscious and lucid, if in agony and unable to move.

---