Page 60 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“She gonna hibernate up there with the bears?”

“Maybe she means to go through the mountains and come out somewhere we can’t guess. Maybe she has a plan.”

“What plan? Can’t be no plan. She’s wanted for murder.”

“She won’t be wanted for anything,” Vector disagrees. “We can’t take a chance of her in a courtroom. What the hell Bead and Deacon were doing here, what she might have learned about José Nochelobo’s death—none of that can come out in front of a jury.”

“So we got to go after her?”

“Find her, grill her, kill her,” Vector says.

“What about this here drive-in graveyard of hers?”

“We’ll bury her here. Baby makes three. Then the county takes the land for unpaid taxes. Boschvark buys the land from the county and donates it to Conserve to Survive.”

“To what?”

“It’s this nonprofit he set up. Conserve to Survive—CTS. He buys up land and donates it to CTS so no one can ever build on it and pollute the environment.”

“Why, he’s a genuine saint, ain’t he?”

“He gets a nice tax deduction and lots of good publicity. CTS will come in, tear down the buildings, post no trespassing signs, and let nature take it all back to herself.”

“Damn convenient. Got himself little cemeteries everywhere, people can be disappeared into them.”

Vector says, “Oh, I imagine there might be a few unmarked graves on other tracts of CTS land, but that’s not the great man’s primary purpose with the nonprofit. He’s got bigger things on his mind.”

“Such as.”

“History and his place in it.”

Shaking his head with admiration, Trott says, “When I was young, I thought myself pretty slick. I see now I exaggerated my potential. I ain’t never got what it takes to be as slick as him.”

“He sets a high standard for slickness,” Vector agrees.

“Now what?”

“I call Duroc-Jersey to get us geared up. Call Sam Crockett to bring his dogs. While we wait for them, we catch a couple hours of sleep if we can, then be on Vida’s trail at first light.”

50

THE RIGHT HAND OF EVIL HARD AT WORK

In his Lexus, speeding to the house shared by the half brothers Monger and Rackman, Regis Duroc-Jersey, New World Technology vice president and facilitator of the Kettleton project, is exhausted and irritable and worried that his nose is going to start bleeding. Ever since he was ten, for the past twenty years, whenever he is under extreme stress, which is too often, he is sometimes subjected to a nosebleed that can last for as little as fifteen minutes or as long as two hours. When a lengthier affliction passes, the room around him is littered with so many bloody paper napkins—which are softer than paper towels, more absorbent than Kleenex—it appears as if he’s a serial killer who, having fully cannibalized his victim, must now gather up the remaining evidence of his feast.

During the past eight months, the main cause of most of Regis’s nosebleeds has been Galen Vector. Periodically, he has a nightmare in which Vector—in plaid pants and a garish coral-pink polo shirt, the lenses of his sunglasses as black as collapsed stars—attends him during a nosebleed and tries to staunch the flow by pinching Regis’s nostrils in locking pliers, then in a monkey wrench, and finally between the fixed jaw and the movable jaw of an iron C-clamp. In this dream, Vector’s pencil mustache extends across his upper lip and down to hischin, and he insists on being called Ming the Merciless, which was a character in the Flash Gordon movies that starred Buster Crabbe in the 1930s.

Ming. Funny how the subconscious works. Regis’s older brother, Foster, is an information-technology entrepreneur with numerous patents related to cloud computing, their parents’ favorite child by a wide margin, and a fan of old science-fiction movies. Foster has a particular fondness for the character of Ming, perhaps because Ming was as much of a power-mad jerk as Foster. Regis would like to apply a pair of locking pliers to a part of his brother’s anatomy more intimate than his nose.

If the address that Vector provided is correct, Monger and Rackman live in a handsome two-story Victorian with two turrets and elaborate architectural moldings. In a fairy tale, someone’s magical godmother would occupy such a lovely house, and the hulking half brothers would dwell under a bridge, amidst a litter of children’s bones that have been picked clean.

Following Vector’s instructions, Regis is to meet with Wendy, whom he called “their wife.” Apparently, Monger and Rackman are experienced hikers who, when they are not beating up those whom Vector wishes to have beaten, enjoy venturing into the mountains to marvel at its beauty, no doubt singing “The Sound of Music” as they caper through fields and forests. Wendy will have prepared their fully stuffed backpacks, hiking boots, and desired clothing.

Their wife.

Regis doesn’t imagine that marital arrangements between the Bigfoot brothers and Wendy have been legitimized by a minister or a justice of the peace, but he isn’t one to judge others as regards such matters. However, heisquite curious about what kind ofwoman would cohabitate with them. He expects that, physically, Wendy will be the female equivalent of a longshoreman, as lusty as she is well muscled and boldly tattooed.

If he’s wrong and she’s a long-legged beauty of breathtaking proportions, he’ll consider hanging himself. Or maybe just quit his job. Enough is enough. The fourteen months he’s been in Kettleton have led him to question whether it makes sense to dedicate his life to the acquisition of hundreds of millions of dollars no matter what grueling effort is required, no matter what ignorant hicks and boors and vicious backwoods criminals he must associate with, no matter how often he is required to kiss the asses of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. That he could even ask that question is terrifying.Of course it’s worth it.Kettleton is such a tedious and depressing place that it has made him a little crazy, just unhinged enough to consider stumbling off the path to wealth and power, into the weeds where most people wander through life with such lack of purpose that they remain forever powerless. Not Regis Duroc-Jersey. Not ever.

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