Page 35 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“Read the autopsy.”

“Herbert Lagare falsified the cause of death.”

Bead regards her with a credible approximation of amazement. “Good old Herb Lagare? Chamber-of-Commerce Bible-study United-Way Herb?”

With his steady stare, mouth agape in what seems to be genuine incomprehension, jewel-ringed hands relaxed on the large envelope, he’s a convincing picture of disbelief.

She says, “You really don’t know about the air rifle?”

“Air rifle? What air rifle?”

Deception can’t change the color of a deceiver’s eyes. However, as her uncle told her twelve years earlier, she sees with something other than ordinary vision. With the same nameless sense by which she knows where gemstones are and aren’t to be found in the placer mine, she knows that Belden Bead is lying and is oh-so-quietly alarmed.

She says, “It fired a hypodermic dart loaded with what must have been a potent neurotoxin. That’s what killed José. There had to’ve been a highly skilled shooter at a courthouse window. The dart staggered José, and the rest was choreographed so he wastumbled down the steps, making the report of a broken neck credible.”

“Wait, wait, wait—get real. That’s tinfoil-hat stuff. Who would think up a crazy trick like that, take such a risk?”

“You just told me Boschvark is messianic, capable of anything.”

“But he’s subtle, cold, not hotheaded. He wouldn’t sanction such a public hit in front of so many potential witnesses. Someone has lied to you, sold you coal and called it gold.”

“Ithadto be in public. José was so charismatic that he was turning the voters against the plan. If he had an accident in a lonely place, everyone would have been suspicious.”

“Look, I understand you loved the guy, and I don’t mean to diminish him in any way, but Nochelobo wasn’tthatcharismatic. Boschvark wasn’t concerned about him.”

“I know what happened,” she insists.

He shakes his head and sighs. “You can’t comprehend how a man like Terrence Boschvark operates. He’d never risk ordering someone to harm you physically. He can easily deal with his enemies without violence. Here’s what I mean, his style, how he works. Listen and learn. You inherited this land from your uncle. You think he owned it. Maybe he did. But Boschvark is able to work through bureaucrats in half a dozen agencies to build a case that your land has been poisoned by something you’ve been doing here. Or the Native American nation that once owned it was never paid properly. Or an endangered species lives here and nowhere else.”

“I’ll fight for my land.”

“If you can get an attorney, in the end you’ll discover he was paid by Boschvark to betray you, but you won’t be able to prove it. And forget about poisoned soil and all that. The assault on youwill be more profound. You’ll be evicted within thirty days, without compensation. Then where will you go? Your heart is here.”

“Evicted? There’s no mortgage. No overdue taxes.”

“In here I have your fate.” Bead pats the manila envelope, and the gesture conveys the same vanity with which he smoothed his hair earlier. He gets erotic pleasure from being in league with those who can crush anyone they choose. He is aroused and his desire sated by violence, whether it is the kind that leaves his target physically broken and bloodied or with a mortally wounded spirit. “Boschvark doesn’t even know about this. I’ve learned a thing or two from him, and I’ve put this together myself. He doesn’t know you’ve been running your little investigation. I don’t want him to know because whatever you got from Morgan Slyke, one of my boys, will reflect badly on me. I don’t want Boschvark distrusting me. In this envelope are copies of documents that were recently printed on paper milled seven decades ago, bearing the correct signatures and seals of that time. The originals, superb forgeries, prove your uncle never bought this property from a previous owner, that it was county-owned land when he moved onto it, that he illegally homesteaded these eighty acres by paying a bribe to the Kettleton County assessor, who was then also the tax collector, a man named Gregory Gattigan.”

Vida conceals her anger. She senses that everything now depends on Bead believing that she’s beginning to realize he and Boschvark comprise a force as irresistible as an avalanche. In a voice bled of all conviction, she says, “No one’s going to buy what you’re selling.”

“I also have here a copy of a notarized statement from Bethany Gattigan Dirks, daughter of Gregory Gattigan. Bethany swears under penalty of perjury that her father, with only one month tolive, confessed to her that he altered the historic county land maps to remove eighty acres from public holdings and place them on the tax rolls under the ownership of your uncle Ogden.”

Bead takes such sadistic delight in Vida’s torment that the decadence previously suggested only by the softness of his mouth is evident in his lacerating stare, in his cruel smile. The tip of his tongue licks the curve of his mouth, revealing a satyromania that alerts her to a danger greater than the forged documents present.

“Now,” he continues, “don’t think poorly of Mrs. Dirks. She’s seventy-six, a pitiful widow. For too long, she’s lived on a skimpy Social Security check and the little she makes from seamstress work. She regrets that all she had to sell was her integrity, but it was worth a pretty penny to me.”

Vida says nothing. She wants him to think that her silence is the silence of one who knows she is defeated but can’t bear to admit as much. He must not think she might in any way strike out at him.

“All the documents, plus a letter requesting an interview with you, are in this envelope from the current assessor.”

She can see that the envelope bears her address and a postage-meter tape dated three days earlier.

He offers the envelope to her, but she doesn’t accept it, so he places it on the small table between the rocking chairs.

“If you assure me that you’ll stop playing Nancy Drew,” Bead continues, “and if you, at my direction, produce a short handwritten letter signed by you, no one will evict you.”

“A letter saying what?”

“It’ll be dated the day before the tragedy. To José Nochelobo. A very angry letter. While he was at work, you let yourself in his place with your key. You’d baked his favorite cake to leave as asurprise. You saw a few things that needed to be tidied up, and while you were attending to that, you stumbled upon his collection of child pornography.”

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