CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
JAMES RECEIVED A MIRACLE IN March. As the rest of America wore green in mass parades, celebrating with shamrocks and four-leaf clovers that originated in nature worship, the pagan roots of the spring equinox holiday were embraced by Catholics as St. Patrick’s Day instead.
Saint Patrick drove paganism out of Ireland and therefore AEscwulf College didn’t acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day, but rather the nature rites of the vernal equinox.
Thus, Professor Ilaria kept her word on a densely fogged, rainy morning in the second week of March.
A beauteous gift of the equinox.
A body was found.
Lucien Montclair was declared a drowning victim by the local police.
The coastal fish had devoured the corpse’s features beyond recognition. The marina scavengers had rendered him nearly indistinguishable within the decomposed corpse skin.
Even still, James refused to thank her for any of it. He revolted against any ideas to plead to her in supplication, and he spurned her demands to make reparations with her.
After all, the entire ordeal was her fault.
She endangered Elliott. She imperiled Finch. She threatened James’s freedom.
He didn’t stay a minute longer after the spring trimester concluded in early May.
Instead, James flew to Mount Arcturus, Montana in the first week of May–where Congressman Pittman met with the cohort of political aides for his new campaign.
Pittman flew in the fresh, young talent from all over the country, and despite the murder allegations in Connecticut, James was given a personal driver, an all-inclusive 5-star hotel suite, and a first-class flight to Montana.
The eager, spitfire political aides flocked together, expecting James to mingle with them for ritzy dinners, cocktail hours, speech sessions, and high-end public events.
Between a slur of rooftop shots of caviar and top-shelf vodka, James rushed into the cold rain without even an umbrella or a jacket. He hailed a taxi to drive him past state lines to telephone at a rest stop.
Somewhere he could tell Elliott that the investigation was over. Five nights.
Five nights. Twenty hours. Eleven minutes.
Then he could be with him.
It was Elliott’s twenty-first birthday that week on May fifth, and James had spent an excessive amount on a gift without a covertly complicated delivery system for once. He could hand the present to him himself.
Five nights. Twenty hours. Eleven minutes.
As James bolted down the steps of the Walcott Hotel to approach the taxi, a woman slapped him.
Hard enough that a couple of staffers rose to their feet. Their eyes were blown wide. One of them stopped smoking outside, crushing the cigarette under their suede soles.
She screamed, “That is not his body! What did you do to him?” She clawed at James underneath the pelting rain. Her blonde hair was drenched and straggled over her wrinkled, angered face. She tore at his eyes and nose with her nails. “At least let me bury him! That’s not my son!”
A crowd began to form around the commotion.
She slapped him with her wedding hand again.
James’s cheek was reddening.
“Tell me what happened to him!” She spat at him, hurling phlegm into his eye. She followed after him as he fled down the rest of the hotel steps to avoid attention, her cashmere scarf tangled. “You killer! My son did not drown! That’s not his body!”
She trailed him down the street, battering him with her Chanel purse. She ran in front of him to block him with her fragile, furious frame. “Where did you dump his body?”
She was causing a scene.
“Everyone will know you have blood on your hands. Mark my words. You stabbed my son with a knife and his blood wasn’t enough for you.
I’ve told all my Manhattan society members.
You spill blood everywhere you are.” She visibly coiled towards him, seething at him.
“You don’t think we’ve been watching all of your friends?
Investigating everyone attached to you?”
Shaking uncontrollably, she pulled out a crinkly paper of listed names acquired from the private investigators. Knox Pearson. Finch Hudskin. Katherine Evers. Callum Han. Perseus Theseus Swann. James Vallen Wilde III. James Vallen Wilde IV.
Beneath it, she had a Newton newspaper dated from five years ago. He had to leave. He had to find Elliott.
“Knox Pearson’s own father informed police that Knox hadn’t stepped foot in Connecticut in five years, but after Lucien’s disappearance, he’s been here twice!”
Agitation rose in James. James had warned Knox not to visit Finch.
Even James stopped visiting Finch when he realized the hired retired detectives were always watching him. James kept himself from visiting Elliott, which almost killed him.
Except, Knox insisted on visiting Finch. Knox wanted to see him at least one time on his twenty-second birthday. Then, behind James’s back, Knox saw Finch again on Finch’s twenty-second birthday. He’d brought his son.
“Did you get your friend who murdered someone five years earlier to kill again?” She accused. “Is that it?”
James bottled his rage when she spewed Knox Pearson’s name at him. Over and over again. Raising her voice as high as she could in her shrill screech. She was attracting too much attention.
“The police will raid Knox Pearson’s house, every inch of his property, the warrant was signed by a judge this weekend. So this is your final chance. I won’t even press charges against you as a sorry excuse of a man if you tell me.” Her eyes shone with tears. “Tell me where my son is. Please.”
James’s heart froze. The police will raid. Every inch of his property.
The private investigators were undoubtedly surveilling him now, hoping James would make the mistake of calling Knox to warn him. Knox’s entire phone system could be compromised. If James drove over there, he might not reach the farm in time. Even if he flew there, he’d only be followed and tracked.
Elliott was going to be found on Knox Pearson’s property.
Terror stabbed his heart. He needed to act quickly before it was too late.
James raced to the campaign conference gorged with news correspondents, flooded with journalists.
For the special election debates, there would be hundreds of thousands of Pittman supporters in attendance in tiered rows of the indoor arena.
Millions would be watching at home when it aired on The American Patriot Report on Patriot News.
Pittman was a socialist garnering a rapid rise of attention and fame.
The special election was announced after the former governor of Montana resigned.
James bounded up the stage. He opened his mouth.
“I have a confession to make.” Primal panic surged through him.
The columnists swarmed over to him in masses, like scavengers plaguing carrion. “Are you a Pittman staffer, sir?”
“Congratulations. The ‘new-age liberation of the people’ slogan from college canvassers has helped Pittman take the lead!”
James ignored how it felt to be in front of professional newscasters and pressmen. Constituents. Citizens. Voters. Everything he wanted all his life. None of it mattered anymore.
Undeterred, James leaned into the horde of microphones. “On December 22nd of last year, I acted alone as I–”
A camera flashed in his eyes. “Is he the speech writer?”
A committee staffer hissed at him. “James, what are you doing! Step down from the stage!”
James started again, light bulbs exploding in his vision, his earth destabilized. “On the hibernal ceremony of December 22nd, there was a murder–”
“Isn’t there always a murder at the hibernal?” A broadcaster asked in a hush of confusion to someone else behind him. “That’s sort of the entire point in the pagan towns, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, those Connecticutioner pagan towns creep me out. I speed right past the mountains.”
“Right? The Connecticunt pagan towns make the Mormon cults appear normal in comparison.”
“No one is willingly a Crucian pagan these days anymore, that’s why.”
James shook his discomposed head clear. He grasped the esteemed, polished teak of the rostrum. “In the Eisenhower Woods of AEscwulf College–”
“Wilde, get down from there!” The deputy chief of staff ordered him quietly in a hiss. The congressman was due to make an entrance at any moment.
Overlapping voices strained through his ears. James couldn’t register their words. A journalist questioned him. “Are you going to enter into politics one day?”
“No, I’m not. I am a killer–”
“A killer at speeches, for sure. I can’t take credit.
” James felt large, burly hands land on his shoulders.
The hairs on the knuckles were latticed with scars.
There was a thick gold ring from his days in the Crucian League.
“Of course, he’ll need to run against me if he ever wants to be a federal congressional delegate from Montana. ”
Congressman Pittman practically suffocated James with his arm swung around him.
“Congressman Pittman, describe what you’re feeling right now for us at MTN 7.”
“Empowered. Montana has been republican for a long time, and I was honored to be one of the first socialists elected to congress from our great state in decades. Lionized by all of you, I am prepared to become the first socialist governor of Montana.”
He patted James’s sternum. Hard.
“The governor of Michigan wants to steal him from my staff. Not on my watch.”
James’s brain short-circuited as a man with a headset approached him with a firm handshake.
“Governor Hollins will take photographs with you shortly. He’d like a word with you as well; your slogan strategy was highly publicized.
Welcome to the political pit, son.” The Chief of Staff for Hollins smiled at him, however, the Chief of Staff for Pittman pulled James close.
His harsh, rancid breath landed on James’s nose as he seethed, “If you ever attempt a derailment again without the archon’s orders, I will execute you with my bare fucking hands behind the alcove. Do you understand?”