Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“What do you mean, you’ll deal with me?”

Surrette looked at me and Gretchen and Alafair. “Get on your knees,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I can put you there if you wish,” he said. “Have you ever seen someone shot through both kneecaps? Would Daddy like to see his daughter shot through her kneecaps? Tell me now.”

“Kiss my ass,” Alafair said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have something special in mind for you. I’m going to turn you into an artistic masterpiece. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the notoriety that my artwork draws, even though you’ll be the centerpiece.”

“Look at me, Surrette,” I said.

“Look at you? Why should I? Do you think you can condescend to me and give me commands at a moment like this? You’re truly a foolish man, Mr. Robicheaux.”

“You’re right about that,” I said, holding my eyes on his. “But at least I never wrote a short story that was so bad, the professor wouldn’t allow it to be read in front of the class.”

I saw his chest rising and falling and his eyes narrowing and the blood draining from around his mouth. He raised a finger in the middle of my face. “You listen—” he began.

That was as far as he got. Clete Purcel lumbered out of the darkness, holding the bear trap by a handle welded to the bottom of the frame, the jaws cocked. He swung it down on top of Asa Surrette’s head like an inverted skillet, the trigger impacting on Surrette’s skull. The jaws snapped shut on Surrette’s ears, mashing them into his scalp. Surrette dropped the Bushmaster and whirled in a circle, fighting to pull the trap from his head, his teeth grinding, blood running down his neck into his shirt collar, the tether chain hanging down his back like a Chinese pigtail.

I picked up the M-1 and shot Jack Boyd to death and then followed Asa Surrette down the slope toward the water. I suspect his pain was terrible. I also suspect that his suffering didn’t begin to approach what he had inflicted on his victims for over two decades. He was silhouetted against the starlight on the lake, trying to force the trap off his head with the heels of his hands. As he stumbled onto the dock, I aimed through the M-1’s peep sight and let off three rounds.

He showed no reaction. I was tempted to believe that Surrette was indeed demonic and not human and consequently impervious to bullets. Then I remembered the vest he was wearing, and I reloaded with a clip of armor-piercing ammunition and began shooting again.

He was on the dock when I hit him with the first round. I saw his shoulder jerk and his feet stumble. I fired again and heard a round clang off the steel trap. Another round tore into the side of the vest and caught him in the rib cage. But I have to hand it to him. He was still standing when I stepped onto the dock.

I would be dishonest if I said my actions at that point were driven simply by the passion and heat of the moment. I would also be inaccurate if I said I made a conscious decision about the immediate fate of Asa Surrette. I created a blank space in my mind where I thought of absolutely nothing except the faces of the innocent people whom this man had tortured and killed. In particular, I saw the faces of children. Inside that space, I pulled the trigger over and over until the bolt locked open and the clip pinged into the darkness. I’m convinced that not one round went wide or high and that he ate every one before he fell off the end of the dock.

Only one thing bothers me. I thought he would go straight down into the depths of the lake with the weight of the bear trap. Instead, I saw him roll on his back, his clothes—even the armored vest—ballooning with air. He looked up into my face and grinned, the jaws of the trap embedded an inch into his skull. Only then did the lake close over his head. I wondered if Asa Surrette didn’t get the last laugh.

I heard Clete behind me. “You’d better sit down,” I said, taking him by the arm.

“Where’s Surrette?” he said.

“Down there,” I said, motioning at the water. “He was grinning when he went under. I don’t understand it. I punched holes all over him.”

“Yeah?” he said. “Right there?”

“That’s the spot.”

Clete propped himself against a dock post and unzipped his fly. I saw a golden stream arch onto the water’s surface. “Wow, does that feel good,” he said, his face filled with release as he tilted it up at the sky. “Look at the stars. You ever see a more beautiful place? Lordy, Lordy, Streak, I think I’m about to pass out.”

I placed my arm around his waist, and together we limped up the slope, a couple of vintage low-riders left over from another era, in the season the Indians called the moon of popping cherries, in a magical land that charmed and beguiled the senses and made one wonder if divinity did not indeed hide just on the other side of the tangible world.

EVEN IN RETROSPECT, I cannot say with any exactitude what occurred on the lake that fateful summer night in 2012. I can tell you what I believe happened. I have never bought into the notion that time is linear, in the same way I feel that straight lines are a superimposition on the natural world and contr

avene the impetus that drives it. All matter aspires to roundness and symmetry, in the same way that the seasons are cyclical and that God in His way slays Himself with every leaf that flies. In other words, inside eternity, the alpha and the omega meet and end at the same place. I guess a simpler way of saying it is that things are often not as they appear.

Most people would conclude that the past cannot be changed. I’m not sure about that. Felicity Louviere changed her life by somehow taking on the historical role of a slave girl who died in the Carthaginian arena in the early third century. I guess that seems like an absurd premise until we consider the possibility that the dead are always with us, beckoning from the shade, reminding us that we’re actors in the same drama they have already lived and that they can help us with our lives if we will only let them.

Who were the other men on the grounds the morning Asa Surrette died? I don’t know. The only bodies the authorities found at sunrise were the ones we shot. I have two theories about the shadowy figures who came out of the darkness and then disappeared. They could have been part of a larger group, perhaps international mercenaries in the pay of a global corporation run by the business partners of Love Younger. But who would believe such a wild speculation? A second possibility might have more credibility. Men like Caspian Younger and his father are always among us. They do not take power; we give it to them. The armies of the night are faceless and mindless and the modern equivalent of Visigoths, but when they have a leader, their time in history rolls around again.

Surrette appropriated the name of Caracalla’s brother. Surrette was not a demon; he was a worm. The irony was that he appropriated the name of a worm and wasn’t aware of it.

Clete Purcel was amazingly resilient. His wounds healed during the summer and early fall, and by October we were able to go up to British Columbia and fish the Elk River, then continue up to Banff and Lake Louise, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Molly and Albert and Alafair and Gretchen came with us, and each morning we ate breakfast together on a terrace overlooking gardens filled with flowers against a backdrop of the biggest, bluest mountains I have ever seen. We didn’t talk about the events of the summer, or the blood we had shed, or the death of Asa Surrette and Love Younger and his son Caspian. It was autumn, a time when it’s better to let the wind winnow the chaff on a granary floor. To dwell upon the evil that men do gives second life to their deeds and lionizes poseurs and nonentities who will never be more than historical asterisks.

When Clete and I hiked above Lake Louise, he had to sit down and catch his breath because of the thin air and the steepness of the grade. As always, he gave no credence to the seriousness of his physical and psychological wounds; he treated the world as a giant playground where misfortune became a problem only if you allowed it to be one. But as we sat in the dappled shade of the pines and cedar trees, looking down at the milky green waters of Lake Louise and the gold poppies in full bloom, I saw in his shirt pocket the letter he had received that morning at the hotel, and I knew where his thoughts had gone.