Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(60)
She refused to look at him, and good for her. He didn’t deserve her regard, not in any meaning of the word, and she knew it—that’s what she was doing up there, telling the world that the murdered priest was a thousand times better in every way than the man who’d raised her. Her old father was broken, so she’d gone out and found herself a new one, even though he was a Catholic, God forbid, and a virtual pariah to everyone she’d ever known.
Still, she held her own, and answered their questions, lobbed at her like cannonballs.
When they finally let her go, she climbed down the two short steps and faltered, holding the rail. Her father barked something—I couldn’t hear it, but she finally glanced his way.
I thought for a moment that his eyes were like Medusa’s, and the dear young thing had been turned to stone; but no, she was stronger than that, stronger than him by far. Whatever he’d said, she didn’t answer it. She only stood up taller, straightened her shoulders, and tossed her hair before exiting down that aisle.
When she passed us, we all rose together in order to see her out.
George Ward opened the door for her, and let her onto the courthouse steps—where she sat down and put her face in her hands, and cried like a child.
I crouched beside her and took her by the arm. As gently as I could, I said, “Not yet, dear. Soon, but not here. Don’t let them see it—if they see it, they’ll think they’ve broken you. And you and I both know they haven’t.”
Leonard Kincaid, American Institute of Accountants (Former Member)
OCTOBER 1, 1921
It was only a small delay, only a small problem with the numbers. The woman’s face, if I squint at the slate board sideways, is long gone—replaced with the usual digits I’ve come to expect, upon awaking from sleep or from a daze (whichever is most convenient).
I used to work the math myself, and it was a laborious undertaking, if not unpleasant. Now the math does its own work while I’m not paying attention, and I wait for it to announce its results. It’s faster this way. It’s cleaner this way, though I wake up with chalk dust on my hands—or ink smudges, if I’ve run out of slate and resorted to paper notations. I wake up with an ache in my skull, and a sense of confusion that I can’t seem to shake—almost a motion sickness, except that it seems prompted by my very dreams.
Coffee helps, except when it doesn’t. Cigarettes help, too, though I’ve never cared for the taste of those. Whiskey doesn’t help at all, which is fine; it’s no longer as easy to acquire as it once was, and since it’s technically illegal, there’s no sense in drawing attention to myself by breaking the law—however minor and common the infraction.
So I stick to coffee and the occasional puff of tobacco, even if it’s not my favorite combination of stimulants. It looks ordinary enough, anyway. No one watches me sip or smoke and thinks it’s cause to alert the police.
I worry about that a great deal, these days; I worry about what will happen when the numbers outpace my ability to intercept them. What will happen if I am caught or captured? There’s no one standing by to take up this mantle of mine, and no one I’m likely to convince of its virtue. Any friends I once had have been gently ushered out of my life. What family I have left has scarcely noticed the irregularity of my contact—but then, I’ve never stayed close with any of the cousins or uncles who remained loosely in touch after the death of my parents, over a decade ago.
I could use a protégé. An assistant. I’d settle for a confidant, but my wishes amount to nothing.
I am a sentinel, standing between the fiends of Chapelwood and the world at large. Or does that lend me too much credit?
More likely I’m a minor inconvenience to them. Nuisance and vermin, idly tolerated (instead of exterminated) because their plans and methods are slow, and I do little to interfere with the long-term goal of their proceedings.
I hope that’s not the case. I hope these men and women I’ve killed have served some larger purpose in the baffling scheme . . . but in the end, do any of us? I’m sure I cannot say, and it’s a thought that keeps me awake more consistently than the coffee ever does.
? ? ?
And so the numbers come, and the numbers go. They don’t always send me out on the town with my axe, but that failing might be my own. I don’t always understand what’s being asked of me. I don’t always detect whatever the math of the universe attempts to convey. But I sleep and wake, I read the papers and watch for patterns. And the numbers come, and the numbers go.
? ? ?
It might be my imagination, but in the last few days I’ve wondered if I wasn’t losing some thread . . . if my grasp on the messages wasn’t slipping in some specific and concrete way. It’s possible, I know. I am only one man, an ordinary and mortal one at that; what mere human brain can possibly be expected to process these mysteries? But regardless of my lack of suitability, I’m the one who’s been assigned the task.
So yes, it might be that my faculties are failing me. It must be my faculties, for the numbers wouldn’t fail me, would they?
No, I don’t think they could. Sums and figures do not deteriorate with time; they remain as true as they ever were, when they were first inscribed on clay tablets, poked into that willing substance by deliberately shaped sticks, however many millennia ago.