His name, or at least one of his names, was Marc Bruhn, and he'd come in on the redeye, nonstop, from Newark to Little Rock. Ticket paid in cash, round trip, no flags, whistles, or bells. These guys play everything close to the vest. Extrapolating arrival to service-desk time, despite false identification and despite Oxford, Mississippi, having been given as destination, J. T. was able to track a car rental.
"That's the ringer, what got me onto him. Who the hell, if he's heading for Oxford, would fly into Little Rock rather than Memphis?"
"Hey, he's from New Jersey, remember?"
We'd found the car under a copse of trees across the lake. There was a half-depleted six-pack of bottled water on the floorboard, an untouched carton of Little Debbie cakes on the passenger seat, and a self-improvement tape in the player.
June was able to pull out previous transactions in the name of Marc Bruhn, Mark Brown, Matt Browen, and other likely cognates. Newark International, JFK, and La Guardia; Gary, Indiana, and nearby Detroit; Oklahoma City, Dallas, Phoenix; Seattle, St. Louis, L.A.
"That's it, that's as far as my reach goes."
But good as J. T. and June proved to be, Isaiah Stillman was better.
"You told me you managed a conservatorship via the Internet," I said on a visit that evening. "And that's how you put all this together."
"Yes, sir." I'd asked him to stop the sir business, but it did no good. "I grew up limping, one leg snared forever in a modem. The Internet's the other place I live."
I told him about Bruhn, about the killings. We were dancing in place, I said, painting by numbers, since we were pretty sure who sent him. But we hadn't been able to get past a handful of basic facts and suspicions.
"We take the individual's right to privacy and autonomy very seriously, Mr. Turner."
"I know."
"On the other hand, we're in your debt. And however we insist upon holding ourselves apart from it, this community is one we've chosen to live in, which implies certain responsibilities."
Our eyes held, then his went to the trees about us: the rough ladder, the treehouse built for children to come.
"Excuse me."
Entering one of the lean-tos, he emerged with a laptop.
"Moira tells me Miss Emily left," he said.
"And Val."
"Val will be back. Miss Emily won't. Marc, right? With a c or a k? B-R-U-H-N?" Fingers rippling on keys. "Commercial history-which you have already. List of Bruhns by geographical distribution, including alternate spellings… Here it is, narrowed down to the New Jersey-New York area… You want copies of any of this, let me know."
"I don't see a printer."
"No problem, I can just zap it to your office, right?"
Could he? I had no idea.
"Now for the real fun. I'm putting in the name… commercial transactions we know about… the Jersey-New York list… and a bunch of question marks. Like fishhooks." His fingers stopped. "Let's see what we catch."
Lines of what I assumed to be code snaked steadily down the screen. Nothing I could make any sense of.
"Here we go." Stillman hit a few more keys. "Looks as though your man advertises in a number of niche publications. Gun magazines, adventure publications and the like. Not too smart of him."
"The smart criminals are all CEOs."
"No Internet presence that I can-" Stillman's hands flashed to the keyboard. "There's a watcher."
I shook my head.
"A sentinel, a special kind of firewall. The question marks I put in, the fishhooks-that was like opening up a gallery of doors. We were entering one when the alarm triggered. I hit the panic button pretty quickly, so chances are good the watcher never got a fix on me. Probably be best if I stayed offline a while, all the same." He shut the computer off and lowered the lid. "Sorry. Have a cup of tea before you go?"
We sat on the bench, everyone else gone to bed by this time. I held the mug up close, breathing in the rich aroma, loving the feel of the steam on my face. Stillman touched me on the shoulder and pointed to the sky as a shooting star arced above the trees. Big star fallin', mama ain't long fore day… Maybe the sunshine'll drive my blues away. My eyes dropped to the boards nailed up over the cabin and the legend thereon. Stillman's eyes followed.
"I've been meaning to ask you about that."
"It went up the moment we moved in." He sipped his tea with that strange intensity he gave most everything-as though this might be the last cup of tea he'd ever drink. "From my grandmother's life, like so much else."
Bending to lift the teapot off the ground (ceramic, thrown by Moira, lavender-glazed), he refilled our mugs.
"Hier ist kein Warum. A guard told her that on her first morning at the camp as he brought her a piece of stale bread. There is no why here. In his own way, she said, he was being kind."
Mind tumbling with thoughts of kindness and cruelty and the ravage of ideas, I struck out for my newly empty house, fully confident of finding the way without a guide now, though once I could have sworn I saw Nathan off in the trees watching to be sure I made it out all right. Imagined, of course. That same night I also thought I saw Miss Emily in the yard, which could have been only the shadow of a limb: wind and moonlight in uneasy alliance to take on substance.