Page 55 of Go Now
Then there was another rain-shower: short and intense, more like someone in heaven wringing out a dish-cloth. She remembered the documentary film she’d seen about Woodstock in 1968, the pop festival, filmed nearby on the edge of the Catskill Mountains. The young, shirtless hippies so convinced in the collectivemanaof the mind and of the heart that they’d all chanted NO RAIN NO RAIN in their thousands. And the Director – a young Martin Scorsese, she believed – made no comment, just cut away to them all knee-deep in mud as the downpour continued, well into the next day.
That generation – her parents’ generation – they really believed they were capable of everything.
What did Brennan like about this place?The lack of people.The savagery, too, perhaps. Nature didn’t go in for tombstones, polite verses on the subject of ‘eternal rest’.Out here, the racoons and the lynxes, the squirrels and the water rats died a public death, a shared decomposition, at one with the rotting leaves and the dead layers of bark on the trees.There was a simplicity, echoed in his sculptures, that obviated the need for words. Some earnest Home Room teacher would have flagged up his speech problems very early, assuming that Brennan's grandmother would have been deeply concerned, eager to get to the bottom of it. Kate laughed at the thought. It would have been as futile as the chanting hippies.No rain, no rain.
She checked the map. Still on course. She’d passed the tree that looked rather like an old woman, in profile.Now, she was close.She could feel it.A particular tree, a gnarled maple with roots sprawling like twisted fingers, fingers tapping their way down to the water’s edge. She had to look out for foam of a thick consistency, thick like a cappuccino, as the sap and the sugar mixed with the alkalis and the minerals in the roots.
Another delicate clap of thunder – like the English watching a cricket match.No one is sure if it was allowed or not. It had been teasing Kate all afternoon, threatening to drown her search.The air was thick with the scent of wet earth, moss, the faint steely tang of electricity.
As she approached the tree, her pulse quickened.She knelt, brushing aside fallen leaves and tangled roots, careful to exclude any signs of disturbance—there was a large heelprint caught in the mud.Brennan had stood right here recently.She scanned the area. Over by the bushes, a plastic bucket with a screw-on lid. She reached into her backpack, tugging out a small flashlight, its beam piercing the gray gloom.
Suddenly, a faint rustling sounded from behind.Kate froze, heart pounding.Behind her, unseen but watching.Brennan.She could feel his presence like a shadow cast over her spine.
She didn’t turn immediately.Her eyes skittered over the nearby trees, listening, waiting.But then she saw the movement—an indistinct figure slipping behind a dense thicket, silent as a predator.Brennan was much better at stalking than she was at detection.She steadied her breath, felt for her gun in its holster, a comforting weight at her hip.Her fingers poised over her radio, just in case.
The clouds roiled above, darkening further as the first droplets of a new rain began to fall.Kate’s flashlight flickered, casting quick, unreliable glints over the ground.She moved closer to the tree, her hand reaching out to brush aside a layer of moss.That was when she saw it—an unnatural mound of earth, partially covered with leaves and broken twigs.Evidence.Brennan’s signature—he’d dug for clay right here, probably with his bare hands.She had a vision of those huge, cracked hands, the nails thick with mud.
The rain grew heavier.The sky opened up, pouring down in sheets.She cursed softly—time was running out.Brennan could slip away into the woods, vanish again, if she didn’t act fast.
She heard a faint snap of a twig behind her.Her instincts flared.Turning sharply, she saw him—a hulking figure emerging from the shadows, eyes cold and calculating—Thomas Brennan.
“This place is MINE,” he rasped, a low, slow, menacing tone.Fear and adrenaline surged through Kate as he lunged at her.
They collided, the muddy ground erupting beneath them as Brennan’s larger frame slammed into her.She fought fiercely, but he was stronger, pulling her into a flailing mess of limbs and mud, a river of water rushing past, dragging them into the creek.Brennan’s fists hammered into her, driven by rage, but Kate scrabbled at his throat, trying to find another way.
In a desperate move, she grasped a jagged stone from the muddy bank and swung—once, twice—aiming for the side of his head.But Brennan, braced for her, ducked and twisted away, soaking it all in the rain.Blood, mud, adrenaline.
It was then she saw his eyes flicker with fear—the flicker of human vulnerability.A split second that changed everything.Brennan stared at the object in her hand. She realised what it was.Notarock,therock.Shaped almost like a forest mushroom, or a mushroom in a cartoon, but many times heavier.The 'stalk', a perfect shape to be gripped in the hand. The 'cup' is a neat, rounded, almost bell-shaped weapon. For bringing down from on-high. For smashing into the vulnerable side of a human skull. It was Brennan's.It was the Stone Age instrument he'd used at every killing so far. And which he'd intended to use this time, upon her.
But as she raised the weapon high, she saw how he flinched, cowering just a little, knowing the next move, because he’d made it himself, many times over.She hesitated, her own hand tightening around the weapon.
Time was suspended.It hung there in the heavy, riverine air.In between her laboured breaths, as she grasped the gruesome truth that this wasn’t just about justice anymore, not entirely.This was about what kind of person she was.
Brennan could look into the eyes of someone cowering and pleading, gaze at them in all their pitiful neediness and hope, and then smash their brains in, or out. Kate couldn’t do that.She threw the rock onto the ground, pulled out her cuffs.
‘Stand up!’she ordered him.
Brennan, eyes wide with shock, saw her change—saw the hesitation and the glimpse of humanity she refused to ignore.Her voice cut through the rain, steady and firm.
‘Comply, Brennan.It’s over,’ she said, cuffing his trembling wrists.Her breath came like gusts, the storm still billowing around them and the forest.
‘Do what you want, kill me if you want,’ Brennan said, in a bland, monotonous voice, some syllables drawn out longer than they needed to be.It sounded like a child reading from a book it could not understand.But Kate knew that he did understand. Understood with his whole heart. ‘It doesn’t matter. Behind me, it’s all the rest of us. On and on.All the rest of us.Forever and ever.’
‘Shut up.’
As she pulled him to his feet, she saw the distant glow of flashing police lights emerging through the rain and trees.A fleet of law enforcement vehicles had arrived, sealing her victory in this brutal forest confrontation.
Brennan didn’t resist as she led him out—he seemed at peace, someone whose work was completed, the baton passed on. He sat in the back of the patrol car, his eyes shut, his expression unreadable.He might have felt relieved. Some killers slept their best, longest sleep after they were caught, or after the trial had freed them of any reason to keep on lying. Others were so used to lying, arguing, resisting, that they knew no other way of being. Kate wasn’t sure where a man like Brennan sat on that line.He was a victim, himself, in many ways.In others, a monster.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Chen.
Well done!Drinks @ Molly Malone’s 9pm?
There were other messages, too. Team-mates from the Maine office sending their congratulations on the bust. Something formal, but heartfelt from Ursula Blackstone that she couldn’t make sense of at all.
Kate wanted to share in all the gladness, really wanted to.But, like those dreams where you repeatedly dial the wrong number or fail to open a door, something kept getting in the way. Even the sight of Brennan, cuffs on, slouched in defeat in the back of the patrol car, failed to produce more than a fleeting sense of accomplishment. And it would have been the same, whether Brennan had spoken, or not.
Because she knew there’d be more.More disciples.Another commandment.Further blood.A fight without end. And how could she fight on, when she was already exhausted?
