The enduring isn’t silence, and it isn’t really quiet, either. It’s filled by the shuddering of his truck’s containers in strong winds and the occasional impatient rush of passing vehicles. Fundamentally, it’s wordlessness, and that’s a more urgent and truthful thing. Only a fool would think silence the true nature of the universe. The stillness of an open field, the predawn hush—these are transitory moments soon disrupted by the first crack of thunder or the branch-tossing intrusions of strong winds. The wordlessness that connects him to the underlying fabric of the universe is actually a collection of low sounds, some man-made, but all of them indicating a constant forward motion. It’s the inventions of man and God in perfect unison, without the yakking intrusion of human chatter and all its petty, fleeting concerns.
Wordlessness . . .
This is also the gift he gives his seedlings.
In the beginning, he saw it as their punishment. And that’s how Mother described it. The voices of his cargo needed to be removed from them because they’d used them for disruption and abuse. One of the world’s greatest lies, she’d taught him, was that volume was strength. Volume was only strength when it emanated from volcanoes and thunderstorms. For humans to try to assert strength through volume alone was to try to arrogantly steal the language of gods. Like Prometheus stealing the fire from Olympus, it was an effort that doomed one to ruin. Women, Mother had taught him, fell into this trap more often than men, because they lacked the physical strength of men and were therefore more prone to desperation and error when they betrayed their true nature by trying to frighten others into submission. Women could achieve dominance, but not by turning shouts and screams into cudgels, as so many of them tried to do.
But now that he’s been paying special visits to Mother for years, Cyrus realizes he’s not just meting out a punishment on his women; he’s giving them a gift. In the dazed, glassy-eyed expressions of his seedlings after their long journey with him is through, he sees more than just a human doll. He sees the liberation of their tortured souls, a return to a state of innocence, and the place of a woman’s true power—to enchant with silence and a use of other softer arts.
Whether she knew it or not, this desire to be set free was positively emanating from that bitch back in the movie theater. In her quaking self-righteous anger as she told him to darken his phone, he could feel a desperate need to be released from her ego and the prison of her constant demands. Demands she no doubt placed on everyone in her life, especially the men—if there were any, and he doubted there were. No doubt she’s driven them away by constantly pelting them with a dozen different buzzwords the self-help frauds of the age try to sell as mental health cures—needs, boundaries, communication, listening. Between his lessons from Mother and the years of work he’s been doing on various seedlings, he’s become convinced of one thing.
The women of the world were terribly unhappy. The ones who’d freed themselves from essential male attachments were miserable wanderers, congratulating themselves on their so-called independence while stewing in a constant pool of anxiety and dissatisfaction.
They weren’t free of anything.
To be truly free, they had to go on the kind of journey he offered them.
Charlotte has Hailey do everything a woman traveling alone at night shouldn’t do. But no other woman in the world right now has been dosed with the drug currently sitting dormant inside her veins.
She deliberately parks in shadow.
As she approaches her front door, she watches her phone so intently it probably looks like she’s streaming something on Amazon Prime. Then, at the door, she lingers, right under the porch light she removed the bulb from the night before.
There’s mail in the mailbox, all of it addressed to RESIDENT or the former tenant, a guy named Tim Johnson. Good thing she caught it. If Mattingly decides to go through her mailbox, the sight of a man’s name might scare him off. She tucks the envelopes under one armpit and unlocks the front door as if the keys are covered in syrup.
The whole time she wants to look over her shoulder, but she knows she shouldn’t. Same rule as the mall. Maybe Mattingly’s not skittish; maybe he’s just particular. Either way, he, like many a serial killer, prefers to travel the path of least resistance.
Inside, cardboard boxes are pushed against the walls. They’re filled with clothes about her size, but they’ve all been through a washing machine several times and given other little handmade marks of wear and tear, even though she’s willing to bet they were bought just for this operation.
It’s the framed photographs Cole’s team has filled the house with that really impress her. They line the mantel and the open shelves separating the kitchen and breakfast nook. They give her a completely fake life that she appears to have thoroughly enjoyed in the company of stock photo models she’s never met. The Photoshop work is so good she’s even embracing some of the models.
She’s come up with a piece of backstory to go with each one.
Here’s Hailey’s ex-boyfriend Josh, who dumped her right before she met Fred. Josh was a former college football player felled by a shoulder injury his sophomore year who never quite found his way in life after. Fred, on the other hand, is two pictures over; he’s the redhead in the Hawaiian shirt, the guy she’s hugging in front of a tropical background. Fred’s family owns a Cadillac dealership where Fred will probably work until he dies. That’s where he got her a job in reception so she could save money for veterinary school. But then he broke off their engagement and there went her job, so here she is, pursuing a fresh start in East Texas with the money she saved up.
After weeks of inspection by a skeptical stranger, these stories, along with the photos, might reveal inconsistencies she can’t see in this moment. But they’re a great cover for now. The prep team was wise enough not to use any pictures from when she was young enough to be recognizable to most of the country as Burning Girl, the captive child of serial killers who tried to raise her as their own.
She left all the curtains open before she left for the theater. Now she goes from room to room, turning on the lights and pausing now and then to stretch and yawn in a manner that makes her appear relaxed, confident. Oblivious.
Then she does what women in horror movies have always done to the consternation of audiences the world over, the difference being that she actually wants to draw a monster in from the shadows.
She takes a shower.
6
Lebanon, Kansas
“What do we think he’s waiting for?” Luke Prescott asks in Cole’s ear.
“Not sure,” Cole answers.
It’s been an hour and thirty since Charlotte stepped from the shower.
Mattingly’s Econoline is still parked in the nearest bed of shadow to the little one-story rental house. The cameras planted inside reveal an almost motionless figure, watching Charlotte’s rental house like a faceless hawk in a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. Any cop on a stakeout would aspire to this man’s level of meditative calm, Cole thinks.
Off to Cole’s left, the digital map of Dallas still shows Charley’s, Mattingly’s, and Luke’s locations in gently pulsing red dots. Just above the map’s top border is the local time, same as theirs in Kansas: 11:45 p.m.