Page 64 of The Forest of Lost Souls

Pale-gray light shoals against the dragon spine of the eastern mountains as he turns right off the county road and heads uphill. The trees shouldering the unpaved driveway recede to the left andright, encircling a large meadow, toward the back of which stands a single-story building with lights in its windows.

For some reason, though there is neither a steeple nor stained glass, the house reminds him of a church. He takes that impression seriously. He thinks it possible that ceremonies of innocence, the humble routines and kind sharing of daily existence that give life meaning, when performed often and for long enough, can confer on a house a hallowed quality. He’s known such homes; he has known their opposite, where human depravity has so soiled a structure that an aura of evil shadows every room even when all the lights are lit.

Kitted for the mountains, four dark figures wait on the porch and steps. The house door is wide open behind them, as if they are fresh from some obscene violation of the home’s most sacred spaces. The tableau they present chills Sam. He intuits that this search is different from all others to which Galen Vector has summoned him.

Two SUVs are parked in the front yard. He angles his Lincoln Navigator to a stop beside them.

By the time he steps to the back of the vehicle, carrying the master leash, the four men have descended from the porch and joined him. Sam knows Vector well enough to despise him, Trott well enough to be disgusted by him, and the stone-faced brothers only enough to wonder what creature birthed and raised them.

Vector seldom goes on these searches, but he is fully outfitted for this one. He has a cocked-gun quality about him, as though some offense has enraged him and he is hell-bent on retribution. As Sam opens the liftgate and calls forth Sherlock and Whimsey and Marple, Vector says, “These your best dogs? I said to bring your best.”

“You know them, what they can do,” says Sam. “There aren’t any better. What’s the hunt about?”

The dogs leap from the SUV and stand at attention. Panting with excitement, they look at the gathered men, the meadow, the house.

The master leash ends in a stainless-steel ring to which three subsidiary leashes are linked by rings of their own. As Sam crouches to attach the first of the three to the harness that Sherlock wears, Vector says, “The woman who lives here alone—she’s gone missing.”

“A missing person case? That’s for the sheriff.”

“Not this time.”

“Why not?”

“Better you don’t know.”

Having finished the third of three connections, Sam rises to his full height. “Better for who?”

“Better for you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m not paying you to think.”

Although the sun has not yet appeared, a tide of morning light breaks over the eastern mountains, transforming the scattered clouds from white to coral pink.

Sam looks at each of the four men, color coming into their dark faces and borrowed light into their eyes. He’s not in their club. To them, he’s a tool, nothing more. He’s always known that. Previously, he has thought he’s such a valuable tool—he and the dogs—that there’s no risk they will, for whatever reason, dispose of him.

Each has an AR-15 slung over one shoulder, but that’s nothing new. Every time they go in search of a rumored meth lab or aweed farm, though they intend only to spot it for the sheriff, there is always a chance that the competitors they mean to have evicted will see them and respond. And the deeper they go into these mountains, the more likely they are to encounter cougars, not to mention bears so large and fierce that a can of spray repellant, which provides a sense of safety in a public campground, seems woefully inadequate out there.

Frank Trott takes it upon himself to explain the stakes. “Who the bitch is and what all she done don’t make no difference to you. But she maybe knows somethin’ makes a damn big difference to Mr. Terrence Boschvark. Even a freakin’ recluse like you gotta know that name.”

The dogs are whining softly, eager to begin.

Sam says, “She ‘maybe knows something.’ What if she does? What happens then?”

“Ain’t nobody can’t be bought,” Trott says. “No matter how righteous Vida thinks she is, there’s a price she’ll take, most ’specially if the cost fornottakin’ it scares the piss outta her.”

“And if this Vida says she doesn’t know anything? Will you believe her? How can you be sure she’s telling the truth?”

Taking off his sunglasses, revealing eyes the color of brandy, Galen Vector says, “Sam, I like to think of you as a friend of the family. In a time of trouble, a friend of the family wants to help any way he can. He doesn’t want to engage in a damn debate. Those dogs know how it is. Those fine dogs are ready to run. You need to be no less ready than they are. There’s no other way you can be. The war that chewed you up and spit you out and the war here and now—they’re the same, just this one’s not conducted with as much noise. We find her, there’ll be a fat reward on top of your hourly charge, say fifty thousand.”

Sam’s been told he’s expendable if he isn’t buyable. Because he isn’t done with life yet and he has an obligation to his dogs, he buckles. “Well now, that makes all the difference.” Although he has no choice, he feels as if a small light inside of him has gone out. It’s not the first to have been extinguished, but maybe there aren’t a lot more of them still glowing.

Trott produces a pair of women’s panties. “Found these pretties in her launder basket. I suspect them hounds of yours gonna take her scent. For damn sure, I ain’t smelled nothin’ so good in years.”

Monger and Rackman make a chortling noise like a sound they heard in a zoo and imitate as though it’s a natural human reaction.

The dogs are not affronted by being offered the woman’s panties instead of a blouse or a scarf, and though Sam is offended on their behalf, he doesn’t give voice to his irritation. The dogs possess more dignity than these four men. Sam knows that to be true, even though Vector and his companions don’t, and knowing it is enough for him to accept the insult in silence. The dogs know it, too.

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