"¶" "Them flies are gettin' thick." "Somebody ought to give you a good hosing'." "Hmm." "Heat ain't helping'." "Eh, reckon you'll keep another day." "Be good, I'll bring you some more water round noon." "Bye, Daddy." "Hey!" "Come on." "Come on." "Come on." "What the devil is all this about?" "Why was I brought here?" "Games, must we?" "Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then, but I have tickets for the theater this evening, to a show I was looking forward to, and I get, well, kind of unreasonable about things like that." "With such expert play-acting, you make this very room a theater..." "You have a good walk?" "Yes, my dear." "Top-notch walk this morning." "Top-notch constitutional." "It's been weeks since I left my mark." "Would that they had eyes to see." "Hey!" "Don't you get Miss Billie in here with them dirty feet!" "Sorry, old chap." "You want to make flowers today?" "Now, Betty," "I have very important work to do." "My... ascension removes me from the disc and the loop." "I'm near final stage." "Some mornings," "I can see the infernal plane." "You haven't made flowers on me for maybe 3 weeks." "Makes me sad is all." "Ah, come up in me lap, lass." "Here, and let me comfort ye in your distress." "You're make fun of me again." "Heh heh!" "Now, why'd I do a thing like that, huh?" "Is it because you're ne so bright?" "Because of your head bein' so slow and like?" "Ha ha ha!" "Oh, you better let me go 'cause I'm-a burn your eggs." "Hmm?" "Mmm." "Couldn't you tell me about Grampa?" "Mmm." "Ah!" "Mmm." "I was in the cane fields, and he caught me when I was alone." "And the dirt was warm." "I felt the dirt warm on my back." "¶" "You're gonna lose a kneecap if I got to ask you again." "Take it out of the bag and put it in the machine." "Don't look at me." "Look at the TV." "Oh, Jesus Christ." "Why are you showing me this?" "!" "That little girl is the one you said went to see her daddy." "Marie Fontenot, circa 1990." "I took a m-missing juvenile report." "And when I went back to follow up on it, the file said, "Report made in error."" "I never wrote that." "So I marched it right in to the sheriff, Ted Childress." "He's dead now." "He did it." "What'd the sheriff say?" "He said he'd changed it, that he knew the mother and the father, the aunt and the uncle." "It was a niece once removed from him or somethin'." "It was the chain of command." "No reason to change it." "I just... follow what the big man says." "It's... how this all works." "I..." "I tried to get back with the mother." "I tried to get back with her." "She was gone!" "She split!" "The file was gone!" "Nobody said a word!" "Later that year, I was in State CID, on Ted's recommendation!" "Nobody ever gave me a reason to second-guess it!" "It's chain of command!" "Right?" "What do you think?" "I don't think he's lying... as far as he knows." "As far as I know?" "What the fuck is with you, man?" "!" "Might be a whole lot safer if we staged something, Marty... sent the Maserati over the guardrail." "Whoa!" "Boys, slow down." "Be careful out there." "I can get you a cafeteria lunch if you're hungry." "That's all right, Miss." "I've got to get on with my work." "Lots to do today." "Oh, all right." "We're gonna hang onto your phone and your gun till we get safe and mail them to you once we know we are." "That work for you, Steve?" "You can bet your ass it doesn't." "And it's Sheriff Geraci to you, shitheel." "Now, look, Steve, you're gonna want to swing some dick on this thing." "I'm gonna give you a couple reasons why you won't." "First off, we found this tape in your possession." "It's a video of the little girl that you said was not missing." "Second off, all findings are with lawyers, ready to be forwarded to media outlets, feds," "CID, U.S. Attorneys, should either one of us get sworn a warrant or if either one of us just fall off the face of the fuckin' earth, as people are wont to do in your neck of the woods." "So you just think about that little girl, Steve." "What about your boat?" "That ain't my boat." "You know whose boat that is?" "I never seen it before." "It's gonna come back on you, you assholes, one way or another." "You just think about that little girl, Steve." "For quite some time, I'm gonna be thinking about you, Rust." "Hey, one other thing, Steve." "Got an old sniper pal, all right?" "Contract's already been paid." "Me or Marty, we see cuffs or coffins, you're gonna end up in the dirt." "Then we're gonna smear your name." "I got something coming for you, baby." "Your psycho bit don't cur me, boy!" "You hear me?" "!" "What the fuck?" "!" "Hey!" "I strike you as more of a talker or a doer, Steve?" "That's my fuckin' car!" "God damn it!" "L'chaim, fatass." "You motherfuckers!" "Fuck you!" "¶" "This old Sheriff Childress." "He's got no kids, no location on any of his relatives." "You think they could have wiped out birth records?" "I don't see why not." "I mean, half those hospitals along the coast are gone now." "You know, we got a dead end on the relations and, uh, what else is there?" "Case files." "You want pre-'98 or after?" "After." "We're gonna have to be looking at these records with fresh eyes, Marty." "All right?" "Like we're totally green." "Why green ears?" "I mean, assuming that's our guy." "I don't know, exactly." "My thinking was it was probably leaves of some kind, you know, 'cause we do know that he came at her through the woods." "Why?" "What you thinking?" "Looking for '95 Dora Lange canvassing photos from Erath." "Why?" "Well..." "Rust." "Come over here." "Now, you think, back then, does that..." "Does that look like a fresh... paint job to you?" "The green ears." "Yeah." "Maybe they were sticking out of his hat." "Maybe he painted that house." "I'm going to look up old addressees." "Fuck you, man." "¶" "Something's been bugging me the last 10 years." "Not every day, just now and then." "We went at it, day you quit." "Were you holding back?" "No, I don't see how I could've." "Oh, yeah, you do." "You... you've always had such an inflated idea of yourself." "Meaning what?" "Meaning it seems pretty damn arrogant to hold back in a fight with me." "You think you could have put me down?" "Ah, I don't know." "Hell, I'd have had to kill you." "You were so goddamn mad." "Yeah, um... ahem." "You know, when she told me, she said not to blame you, that it wasn't your choice." "You, uh, were drunk and... she made it happen." "Everybody's got a choice, Marty." "Shit, I sure blamed you." "Blamed me?" "For what?" "For pushing a good woman to the point where she had to use me, use our partnership to get rid of you." "For just being a lying sack of shit." "You know, she couldn't have used you, you didn't want some." "There you go." "Everybody's got a choice." "And yet, she still cares about you." "You went to see her, I take it." "She came out to the bar." "What?" "When?" "Yeah, she was just checking on you, wanted to make sure I wasn't getting you in any trouble." "You should have fuckin' told me." "Yeah, maybe." "I guess." "I reckoned it was best to just avoid her name." "Didn't want to invite judgments." "You never liked being judged." "No, you're right, I don't." "Not by you." "Well, I didn't say a word." "Well, I could read it all over your face." "Well, then the problem's with your face, not mine." "It's hard to find something in a man who rejects people as much as you do, you know that?" "I never told you how to live your life, Marty." "No, no, no, you just sat in judgment." "Look, as sentient meat, however illusory our identities are, we craft those identities by making value judgments." "Everybody judges, all the time." "Now, you got a problem with that, you're living wrong." "What's "scented meat"?" "¶" "Can I help you?" "Did you happen to live here back in '95?" "No, we didn't live here back then." "This is my grandma's place." "Mm-hmm." "Grandma, she still with us?" "Alive, you mean?" "Yeah." "Yeah, she's in an old folks' place." "Abbeville." "Mrs. Hill, now, this is a very strange question, but, um, do you remember back in the winter of '94 or '95, did you get your house painted?" "I did." "Yes, I did." "A nice green." "Don't remember what they call it anymore." "Do you happen to remember who it was that painted your house?" "Well, yes." "I don't remember the name, but they were nice men." "They worked for our parish." "Yard work, house-painting." "My church, they got a discount." "Good work for fair pay back then." "Mmm." "Do you remember, by any chance, names or just any other details?" "Um..." "I remember they charged $250 for the whole house exterior." "Hmm." "And one of the men..." "The younger one... he had scarring all along the bottom of his face." "Mm-hmm." "Miss Lilly, back then, did you or your husband work?" "My husband, Butch, he's always worked." "He was offshore for City Services." "Did he pay his taxes?" "Always." "Heh!" "A lot of good it did him." "Thank you so much." "You've been really helpful." "Thank you." "There you go." "Husband took the write-off." "December '94." "$265 paid by Butch Hill to Childress and Son Maintenance." "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." "Yes, yes." "Here we go." "Business license first issued to Billy Childress, 1978." "Same name as that..." "Sheriff." "Yeah." "Uh..." "OK." "Business license not renewed since 2004." "OK." "Name comes up a lot in public records." "Looks like they had a lot of parish contracts." "Public, state property, landscape, yeah." "That's what I want." "I want to know where he was." "OK." "All over the coast, OK?" "It looks like they did maintenance for a lot of schools, playgrounds, cemeteries..." "Run a background on Billy Childress." "Find his son." "OK." "Here we go." "William Lee Childress, born to Lizbeth Childress, 1944, Erath." "No son showing." "Address..." "DMV, old license..." "Highway 27 South." "Get out of here!" "Go on!" "Oh!" "Oh!" "Can you smell the flowers, Miss Billie?" "One to the feds, one to State CID, one to State Attorney, one to U.S. Attorney." "Two to national papers, two to local papers, two to national channels." "It's the whole story, near as we got it." "There's a copy of the tape in each one, the case files, our depositions..." "Everything we got." "Now, 24 hours passes and I don't stop you, mail 'em all out." "Then lay low a while." "Ah." "So how's that case going, uh, Lake Charles?" "None of your fucking business." "Your old partner give you anything yet?" "None of your fucking business." "Why'd you call me?" "Why not my partner?" "You, I can read." "Him, I can't." "And why would you need to do that?" "What have you two been doing?" "All those late nights." "Your offices the last month." "Christ, and that's it?" "That's all you got?" "Ain't for you to know, but I know you been pulling case files all over south Louisiana." "It's about Cohle's theory, way back?" "He's fucking with you." "He's a manipulator, sociopath." "You know this." "Do you know about Sam Tuttle, all the branches of the family?" "The, uh, marsh cult, devil worship, child sacrifices?" "You sound like Cohle." "It points in every direction but him, huh?" "Man, I knew you were gonna say that." "You know something, you're obstructing." "We don't know, but we're following up an idea." "May be nothing, but..." "Ahem... time comes, we... we know we got something, you get a call, you gonna do the right thing?" "You speak in riddles to me, white man." "You sound like Cohle, again." "We get something, do you want the call or you want it to go to someone else?" "Give it to me." "Just make sure you come runnin'." "¶" "That taste." "What?" "Aluminum, ash." "I've tasted it before." "You still see things, ever?" "It never stops, not really." "What happened to my head, it's not something that gets better." "Uh, this is it." "¶" "Call Papania." "Shit." "Can't get a signal." "I'm gonna ask to use the phone." "You know what?" "I'll go ask." "Marty." "This is the place." "Hello." "Aw, damn it!" "Oh, pardon me, ma'am." "Uh, we're professional surveyors and got lost on these back roads like a couple of greenhorns." "Uh, cell phone is getting no service." "Is there any way that I could, uh, use your phone?" "We don't have no phone, Mister." "Oh." "That's too bad." "Yeah." "No, I said!" "Stop it over there or I kick you!" "Could I trouble you for a glass of water?" "The water around here is not real good." "Sit, I said!" "Stop it!" "I'm gonna kick you!" "Where's Billy Childress?" "Old Bill?" "Yeah." "He's in this house, Mister." "Oh, th-this isn't his?" "Well, who... who do you, uh, who do you live here with?" "I think you should go now." "Mm-hmm, uh, hey, where is he?" "All around us, before you were born... and after you die." "No!" "No!" "Get out of my house, Mister!" "Marty, clear the house!" "Don't move!" "On your knees, now!" "On your knees!" "Now!" "No." "Fuck." "¶" "Ohh." "Everybody has a phone." "Where's yours?" "He's gonna come for you." "He's worse than anybody." "No, you..." "Where's your fuckin' phone?" "!" "No!" "¶" "Come with me, little man." "Come in here with me." "Rust?" "Yeah!" "Rust!" "Here!" "Come on inside, little priest." "To your right, little priest." "Take the bride's path." "This is Carcosa." "You know what they did to me?" "Hmm?" "What I will do to all the sons and daughters of man." "You blessed Reggie..." "Dewall." "Acolytes." "Witnesses to my journey." "Lovers." "I am not ashamed." "Come die with me, little priest." "Rust?" "Rust!" "Now, take off your mask." "Rust." "Aah!" "Oh, fuck." "Ah, he cut me pretty good, Marty." "No, Rust." "It ain't bad." "It ain't bad." "Oh." "Get me a forward team in the house." "Yes, sir." "Get me a second team on that back house." "Going around back." "Deputy, light up those woods." "Here!" "Here!" "We're here!" "Hey!" "That's the last thing I remember." "I was on the ground." "Sirens." "Saying my friend's name." "The girl's a nut." "She talked some, but..." "This group of guys, pedophiles in Sulphur." "Voodoo worship." "Man Cohle shot dead was the old man's son." "No records." "Girl was at least a half-sister." " DNA comparison..." " Stop." "Really, man." "Stop." "I don't want to hear it." "Well, we're still cataloguing everything, but knife casts came back from that shed." "One of them matched our Lake Charles case, another matched Dora Lange's wounds." "Had his prints." "Hmm." "Look, man, we owe you on this collar." "How's Rust?" "Hasn't woke up." "Been in a coma since surgery." "They came by, you first got here." "Thank you, Ted." "No." "Ma'am." "Hi." "It's so good to see y'all." "I..." "I didn't expect you." "How are you?" "Oh, good." "I'm fine." "Yeah, I..." "I'll be fine." "I mean..." "I..." "I am... fine." "And now the latest news update in the case of alleged Louisiana serial murderer" "Errol William Childress." "It's a story that first broke nationwide two weeks ago, when two former police officers, now private detectives, released information to a number of news and law enforcement agencies." "Our last update confirmed physical evidence at the suspect's home proved connections to dozens of missing persons." "In the meantime, the State Attorney General and the FBI have discredited rumors that the accused was in some way related to the family of Louisiana Senator Edwin Tuttle." "¶" "What are you doing here?" "Nothin'." "Nurse said I could come in." "Are you watching me sleep?" "Well, you know what?" "I just got here." "I was gonna leave, but then you woke up." "Jesus, what's your fuckin' problem?" "Nothing." "What's your problem?" "Not a care in the world." "I saw him, Marty." "He was mowing that schoolyard on Pelican Island in '95." "I couldn't tell how tall he was 'cause he was sittin' and his face was..." "It was dirty, but I..." "I saw him." "That's what's bugging you?" "Tuttles, fucking men in the video." "We didn't get 'em all." "Yeah, and we ain't gonna get 'em all." "That ain't what kind of world it is, but we got ours." "I'm not supposed to be here." "Yeah." "Well..." "I'll come back by tomorrow, buddy." "Why?" "Don't ever change, man." "¶" "Ahem." "Doc said, uh, probably get out in a few days." "I'll make sure you got a ride, place to stay." "Yeah, I'll figure it out." "Well, it's already been figured out." "Oh, hey." "I brought you something." "Are we getting engaged?" "If we were getting engaged, I'd have got a nicer ribbon." "Heh!" "You remembered." "Yeah." "Ah, let's get out from under this roof, huh?" "Good idea." "Hey, I can push two goddamn wheels on my own." "Yeah, I ought to let you and rip out your fuckin' stitches." "Stop it." "Feeling better?" "Your head, I mean." "Ah, I shouldn't even fuckin' be here, Marty." "I believe "no shit" is the proper response to that observation." "Nah, I don't mean like that." "It's something else." "Well, so..." "talk to me, Rust." "There was a moment..." "I know when I was under in the dark that something... whatever I'd been reduced to, you know, not even consciousness." "It was a vague awareness in the dark, and I could..." "I could feel my definitions fading." "And beneath that..." "darkness, there was another kind." "It was... it was deeper, warm, you know, like a substance." "I could feel, man, and I knew, I knew my daughter waited for me there." "So clear." "I could feel her." "I could feel..." "I could feel a piece of my... my pop, too." "It was like I was a part of everything that I ever loved, and we were all... the 3 of us, just..." "Just fading' out." "And all I had to do was let go... and I did." "I said, "Darkness, yeah, yeah."" "And I disappeared." "But I could..." "I could still feel her love there, even more than before." "Nothing..." "There was nothing but that love." "Then I woke up." "Hey, uh..." "Didn't, uh... didn't you tell me one time at dinner once, maybe, about you used to... you used to make up stories about the stars?" "Yeah, that was..." "That was, um, in A-Alaska, under the... under the night skies." "Yeah, you used to lay there and look up, yeah, at the stars?" "Yeah, and you remember I..." "I never watched a TV till I was 17, so there wasn't much to fuckin' do out there besides walk around and explore and..." "And... and look up at the stars and make up stories." "Like what?" "I tell you, Marty, I've been up in that room looking out those windows every night here and just thinking..." "It's just one story." "The oldest." "What's that?" "Light versus dark." "Well," "I know we ain't in Alaska, but... appears to me that the dark has a lot more territory." "Yeah." "You're right about that." "Hey, listen, hey." "Yeah, what?" "Why don't you point me in the direction of the car, man?" "I've spent enough of my fuckin' life in hospitals." "Jesus." "Oh." "You know what?" "I'd protest, but it occurs to me that you're unkillable." "You want to go back, get clothes or anything?" "No, anything I left back there, I don't need." "You know, you're looking at it wrong, the... sky thing." "How is that?" "Well, once, there was only dark." "If you ask me, the light's winning." "¶"