Page 82 of The Children of Eve

“I have to make a FaceTime call to him,” said Harriet. “Vaughn wantsto watch it happen. If we don’t do it, he’ll be angry. He’ll send his people, and they won’t just set fire to the boy’s remains. They’ll burn our house down around our ears to teach us a lesson in obedience.”

“I won’t let them do that.”

“How? What will you do? You’re an old man who has never fired a shot in anger in his life. Vaughn has stone-cold killers working for him. If we force them to come here because we refuse to do what we’re told, they’ll hurt us. Jesus, Hul, we should never have agreed to involve ourselves in this, never!”

She returned her gaze to the boy. She hated him. She wanted him gone, him and his sister both.

“It’s too late for that.” He started descending. “We’re part of it. We have obligations.”

“Yes, to Devin Vaughn.”

“No, to the children. We can’t let injury befall them.”

Hul was already halfway down the stairs. Harriet backed away.

“These aren’t children,” she said. “They’re exhibits. Let Vaughn have his pyre.”

“The boy is more than an exhibit,” said Hul. “They all are. But even if they weren’t, I still couldn’t stand by and let you burn one of them, so put down the can and move away. You’re distressing him, Harriet. He senses what you intend. They both do, but it was he who woke me. I hadn’t heard his voice before, but I knew it was him. He cried out because he needed me, and that’s as good as love.”

“Listen to yourself!” she said. “Listen to what you’re saying. This has to stop. It’s affecting your mind. We’re talking about mummified children that have been dead for hundreds of years. They don’t know anything. Theycan’tknow anything.”

“Yet they do,” said Hul. “They’re blind, but they can hear voices and have a rudimentary perception of what goes on around them. The reasonable conclusion would be that they pick up on emotions.”

“Reason doesn’t enter into this,” said Harriet. “There’s nothing ‘reasonable’ about it.” She was standing by the case now. “This has to end, honey. It’s for the best.”

She hefted the crowbar, ready to strike its rounded heel against the glass.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Hul.

He drew a Colt pistol from behind his back and shot his wife through the heart.

CHAPTERLVII

With Blue Tweed departed, Little Lyman became the new owner of an 1854 copy of the New Testament. Only when he picked it up from behind the bar the following morning, still uncertain of what to do with it, would he find his $80 folded inside the back cover. Alongside it would be a card from a casino in Reno, Nevada, that readTHANK YOU FOR PLAYING. Out of curiosity, Little Lyman would google the name and learn that it had burned to the ground in 1975.

But that was for another day. For now, from somewhere outside the bar, Little Lyman heard the sound of music playing on a radio. He went to the front window of the Old Hatch and glimpsed an interior light shining in a black Mercury Marauder. It was now one of just two vehicles parked in the lot, the other being Little Lyman’s Accord. Little Lyman could see a newspaper spread across the steering wheel of the Marauder. Blue Tweed was working on a crossword. Even though the interior of the Old Hatch was now almost entirely dark, and the blinds on the window should have concealed him from view, Little Lyman saw Blue Tweed turn in his direction and thought the man might have tilted his head in acknowledgment.

Little Lyman came from a long line of men who weren’t dumb.

He wants to be seen. He wants to be remembered.

And Little Lyman was convinced that somewhere not too far from the Old Hatch, bad business was going down, business in which Mr. Blue Tweed had a vested interest.

CHAPTERLVIII

Hul Swisher sat on the basement floor, cradling his wife’s body in his arms. His life as it was had come to an end. Friends would quickly begin to wonder where Harriet might have gotten to. He supposed he could lie and claim she’d gone to visit her sister in Manhattan Beach, California, but that story would hold for only so long; or, he could report her missing once he’d disposed of the body, but he knew that would cause the police to search the house. Even if he managed to clean up the blood enough to fool their forensics people, the fate of the children had to be considered.

The silence in the basement was unnerving. Hul could no longer hear the boy or the girl. It could be they were waiting to see what he’d do next. First things first: He might have been torn up over Harriet, but he had to quit crying and let Donnie Ray Dolfe know that the children needed to be moved. Hul doubted Donnie Ray would approve of Devin Vaughn’s order to obliterate one of them. Like Hul, Donnie Ray believed in preserving the old, not destroying it. Donnie Ray might help Hul get rid of Harriet’s remains, the Dolfes having some experience in that regard, or he could decide to get rid of Hul as well as Harriet, leaving Donnie Ray with two children instead of one.

Upstairs, Hul’s cell phone began to ring. It was soon joined by the sound of his wife’s phone next to it, the pair of devices calling outin unison. Both phones were set to ring for the maximum of thirty seconds—being older folk, the Swishers required extra time to get to them—but Hul’s suddenly stopped mid-ring after about ten seconds and his wife’s ceased immediately after. They did not ring again. Either the callers had decided not to bother, or the phones had been silenced.

“Hello?” Hul called out, before realizing that if someone else was in his home, they had no right to be there. Hul did have a gun, so he wasn’t helpless. Then again, he was sitting with his wife’s body in his lap, and his hands and clothing were red with her blood. If it was the police up there, he was done for. But wouldn’t the police have identified themselves?

Hul calmed himself. He and Harriet always charged their phones in the morning, gradually letting them run down. Sometimes, they even got the best part of two days out of a charge, so little use did the phones receive. Hul tried to remember if they’d charged the phones that day. If they hadn’t, both could have lost their juice at more or less the same time.

He eased Harriet’s corpse to the floor and moved to the stairs. One thing about the house, Hul had put serious work into it. He didn’t hold with stuck doors or boards that creaked, and those basement steps were solid and soundless, especially in his stocking feet. Using the rail for support, he made his way upstairs with the barest whisper of cotton against wood.

The hallway was quiet when he reached the door. He held the Colt close to his side in a two-handed grip, the former so that nobody could knock it from his hands and the latter for stability: he wanted to be sure he hit whatever he was aiming at. The 1911 had a pretty gentle recoil, but Hul wasn’t as strong as he used to be and had developed a pronounced tremor in his hands in recent years.

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