William the Tell, it read. My time has run out, & thus so has yours. We must meet at once if your secret is to remain safe with me. You know that figure of speech, A murder of crows? Ours will be, if you’ll indulge me in a little joke, A crow of murderers.
Slader’s sense of humor was never his strong point, I reflected, then read further to find the general date and place of his proposed meeting. Fully within character, if character it could be called, he demanded I come with money, an advance on his projected take, though of course none of us possibly knew what that might amount to until the hammer fell. And that presumed the lot wouldn’t be withdrawn at the behest of a controversy of critics. However much I might want to debate the panic-stricken logic behind Slader’s demands—a crow of murderers, really?—I wasn’t feeling a shred of confidence. The reason was simple. If he had managed to convince Nicole of my guilt in Adam’s death—to prevail upon my daughter who believed in me, iniquities and all, more than anyone outside of Meghan and Maisie—then little more than a snap of the fingers and a couple of photographs would be required to bring my world down.
That night at the dinner table, I told Meg that I needed to run upstate in the morning for the day, maybe even a quick overnight.
“Can’t it wait until the weekend, when we’re all going up?”
“It can’t, actually,” and went on to explain that a man was coming to do refurbishment and repair work on the proof press. “He’s hard to schedule, so I have to be there.”
“I’m free tomorrow,” Nicole said, no doubt seeing through my story as if it were a clear sheet of acetate. “In case you want company.”
“No need,” I responded. “You have better things to do.”
After so many years of silence, speaking with Atticus again for the second time in as many days felt both curious and comforting. Did he have any notion what amount of money Slader was looking for as a down payment on his percentage? How dangerous would the man be if I refused to front him a red cent? Knowing I was out of my mind to meet with him, I saw no way around it.
I got up next morning not with the early doves and chickadees but with the garbage trucks and street sweepers. At the deli downstairs I grabbed an everything bagel with a schmear and a coffee to go, then walked the few blocks to where our car was garaged. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find Nicole waiting for me, and, a thousand small cuts of worry aside, I didn’t bother to argue against her decision to come along. Truth was, her company was calming. The eight thousand in cash that I’d removed from my personal safe-deposit box the afternoon before would, Atticus and I had agreed, have to suffice. We reasoned it could give Slader enough to survive comfortably in hiding for the next week and a half before the auction. Because successful bidders are required to pay promptly after a sale ends, part of the Poe balance to be dispersed would end up in Slader’s pocket via Atticus. Meghan, although she didn’t yet know it, was to wire half the proceeds, after commission, to Providence. All of this might have been much simpler if Slader were possessed of a modicum of the restraint and coolness he so revered in others. He wasn’t going to like my eight in cash, but many thousands more awaited, Atticus had advised me to assure him, if he kept himself out of further trouble. After that, the list of countries without an extradition agreement with ours was long and promising. Montenegro, Tunisia, Vietnam, Bhutan, perchance Mongolia—he was free to purchase a one-way ticket to wherever he chose, and good riddance.
“Beautiful day,” said Nicole, as we got onto the Saw Mill River Parkway.
“Let’s hope it stays beautiful,” I said, thinking, such are the clichés of the apprehensive.
We arrived hours before I was to meet with him. A quick search around the rooms of the house, as well as nearby outside, suggested he hadn’t intruded in our absence. Nothing was out of place, nothing seemed to be missing. To kill time, we gravitated into the printing studio and set up the press to run off samples of the new Stone Circle logo on different test stocks, see how it looked. Ripley rewarded us for having filled her bowls by putting in a purring appearance at the back door, which was open to let in the rich autumn air redolent of fading hydrangea flowers, Russian sage, and asters drying on their stalks. No music played, just the gentlest breeze soughing in the upper branches of white pines. On any other late September day, here with my much-loved daughter in our studio, I would have felt as free as the birds out back that swooped over the field and garden finally fallen into desuetude, playing under the warm sun in the last days before their migration south.
Oddly—though when were his methods anything but?—Slader had chosen not to stipulate exactly where I was to meet him, but rather wrote that when the time came, it would be self-evident. Annoying as ever, I thought. Hide-and-seek was a children’s game rather than the deadly serious one we were engaged in.
Half past three, blue-green afternoon shadows on the grass lengthening, and still no sign of Henry Slader. By five, I began to fret that he might be playing a trick on me, so I phoned Meg to make sure she and Maisie were all right, which they were. Just after six o’clock, I called Atticus to see if maybe the man had been taken into custody again, but my colleague, for that’s what Atticus was now, had heard nothing of the kind.
“My advice is to hang tight,” he said. “He’s the one who wants something, not you.”
How I wished that were comprehensively true.
“Did you ever open that bottle of Meursault?” Atticus continued.
“Not yet.”
“Well, it’s meant for a celebratory moment, which this decidedly isn’t. But maybe crack it open anyway, especially if Nicole’s there with you. Calm the nerves.”
“Maybe so, thanks,” and signed off.
When I filled my daughter in on our conversation, we agreed the Meursault would remain corked for a happier occasion. Moreover, if Slader had graduated from maiming people to murdering them, I needed to be sharp. It even occurred to me that by forcing me to wait around, his intention could be to dull my edges and drain my focus.
In the end, the sign of his presence nearby came not from sighting or hearing him, but through an inexplicable smell, of all things. Smoke, not thick or pungent, cut into the scent of ink. We searched around the studio, but nothing was on fire. Checked the kitchen next, but neither the oven nor stove was lit. Then I glanced down the long hillside to the woods and saw it. A thin curl of gunmetal-bluish smoke was wafting out from the woods, wending its way vaguely toward the house. Back in the printing studio, I grabbed my letterpress composing stick just as I had the night Maisie was accosted, slipped it under my waistband back along my spine, and told Nicole to remain in the house.
The smoke had grown a little denser, not billowing but like a skein or drawn-out ghost, as I strode down the long field, knee- to midthigh-deep in grasses and waning wildflowers. Halfway to where I was headed, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Nicole wasn’t following. The look on her face, even from this distance, was unusual, a melding of terror and anger, and I raised my arm in her direction to reiterate that I wanted her to stay put. As I neared the curtain of trees, I slowed down, then stopped. Shading my eyes, I squinted into the dappling shadowed woodland from the relative brightness of the bottom of the field.