The cloud of unknowing, p.22
The Cloud of Unknowing,
p.22
The tense laugh that broke from him was utterly false, a stage gesture. “And so you’re not going to get away with it, Mark,” I told him.
I saw a tiny fissure split his earlier assurance that with Diana dead it was over now, the twin distractions of his son’s imperfection and his wife’s search for evidence at last behind him.
“What witness did Diana find?” Mark asked.
His tone held a dismissive challenge, but it was not the dismissiveness of utter innocence in the face of groundless accusation. I didn’t know what Mark had done that day, but I knew he had done something. He might simply have sunk into his work and so let Jason wander from the house. Or he might have taken him to the fence, set his gaze on the pond, then left Jason there. Or he might have led him to the gate, or he might have opened the gate, or he might have opened the gate and badge in hand coaxed his son to the water’s edge. He might even have tugged him into the pond, beyond the shallow water, and set him adrift to drown.
“Who is this witness?” Mark demanded.
I let a beat go by, then another and another, watching as my silence intensified the strange sense of dire anticipation Mark was trying so hard to conceal.
Another beat, then I said, “The ear of earth.”
It was only the subtlest change in the eyes, like a tiny candle suddenly flickering from behind a vast wall of candles, but it was clear exactly what he’d felt at that moment, and that it was … relief. Relief because he knew, as I now did, that something really had happened that day, something that lay somewhere on the continuum between wishing Jason dead and murdering him.
“A stone?” Mark yelped. “That’s the witness Diana found?” He laughed. “A stone?” he repeated. Then the laughter broke off and he glared at me darkly. “You’d better watch yourself, Dave,” he warned, “or you’ll end up like your sister.”
He seemed grand and self-confident again, certain that in the end I would prove no more distracting than Jason or Diana, creatures that buzzed for a time, but could ultimately be brushed away. He might even have been right, had not the voice spoken again, a voice as clear and distinct as any that had spoken to Diana, and which was no less demanding to be heard and heeded.
The voice said, Hit him!
And so I did.
Mark staggered backward with the first blow and covered the lower two-thirds of his face with hands that were instantly bloody. The voice repeated its command, and I hit him again and he stumbled back farther, his eyes filled with horrified amazement that this crazy thing was actually happening, that in a neat little Protestant cemetery on a radiant New England day, he was being attacked, fiercely and repeatedly and without mercy by, of all things, an undistinguished, small-time lawyer.
Hit him.
I hit him again, and this time he fell onto his back, where he rolled left and right, like a confused child in the face of terrible violence from an unexpected source, whimpering and pleading. The voice said, Like Jason.
I leaped upon him with all my weight, yanked his hands from his face, pinned his arms beneath my legs, and reached for the fallen limb that lay beside me, and which seemed to have been placed there long ago. I grasped its heavy, rounded bulk and lifted it far, far above my head.
Then two voices split the cloud that covered me, piercing, female. Dave! Dad!
Stop!
And so I did.
“The rest,” you say, “is silence.” Petrie nods heavily.
“Yes,” he says.
There is a knock at the door. It opens. You see a plainclothes officer and wonder if it is the same one who came for Diana at the library, chased her, tumbled with her onto the hard, bare floor.
“We got word,” he says.
Petrie walks out of the room and closes the door behind him. When he returns, you see an odd surprise in his expression, an ending he did not expect, your twisting story with a final twist.
“Mark’s conscious,” Petrie tells you. “It looks like he’s going to recover.” You think, So only three deaths. Not four.
“We’re releasing you on your own recognizance,” Petrie adds. “Why?”
“Your lawyer and Stewart Grace have agreed to it.”
“Which means that Mark isn’t going to press charges.”
“That seems to be the case,” Petrie says.
Mark’s decision does not surprise you. Pressing charges would take time. It would mean a trial, and all a trial entails. He would have to confront your motive in attacking him, and address it. The word you painted on his car would swim again in the air around him. “Murderer.” He would not be well served by its repetition. Besides, he has his breakthrough to consider. He does not wish to be distracted.
You look at your hands and marvel that they are intact, that the force of bone on bone has not left your fingers mangled.
“What now?” you ask.
“You’re free to go,” Petrie tells you. “I’ll walk you out.”
There is paperwork, as there always is. You go through the routine, sign the various waivers, along with the inventory of what you’d had in your possession at the moment of arrest, your wallet along with everything that was in it, cash and credit cards, your driver’s license, the paltry evidence of your life.
“You’re lucky, you know,” Petrie says as you gather up your things. “You could have killed him. One swing of that limb, and you probably would have.”
You say nothing, but only move as Petrie directs you, down yet another corridor to the lobby of the police station, then through it to the front of the building.
Before he releases you, he stops, faces you. “Let this be the end of it,” he warns you.
You walk out of the station. Night has fallen. You look up into the cloudless sky, then draw your gaze downward, into the parking lot where, in the distance, Abby waits to take you home.
“Dad?”
Patty steps out from behind one of the building’s brick columns. She looks apprehensive, edgy, unsure of what to say or do. You see a dark brilliance sparkling in her eyes, a long-suppressed intelligence, all of it buried beneath the layers of mediocrity your fear imposed upon her. You cannot know where her freed mind will take her. You know only that wherever she goes, throughout all the tormented element, you will go there with her, remain steadfastly at her side.
You draw her protectively into your arms and declare the only truth you know. “I’ll always take care of you.”
She remains briefly in your embrace, then steps out of it. “Ready to go home?” she asks.
A voice says, Say you are.
And so you do.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas H. Cook was born in Fort Payne, Alabama. He has been nominated for Edgar Awards seven times in five different categories. He received the Best Novel Edgar, the Barry for Best Novel, and has been nominated for numerous other awards.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Thomas H. Cook
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-9390-3
This edition published in 2024 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THOMAS H. COOK
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