Seven Days Dead Read Online Free Page A

his intended insult.
    He finishes with a last full swipe, flushes, and shows Orrock no glimmer of distress.
    The man grunts. Lescavage waits to be told what to do next.
    “Don’t just stand there, you gutless jellyfish,” the old man gripes, by way of thanks, but his voice reflects his defeat. “Haul me up.”
    They manage the slow shuffle across the floor, although pain accompanies Orrock’s repositioning upon the bed. Sweat breaks out across his brow and he succumbs to a dry wheeze and hacking.
    “That drink,” he commands. “You know where I keep my liquor. You’ve raided the shelf often enough, with and without my permission.”
    That’s something townsfolk never think to exaggerate. They’d be impressed with the extravagance of his bar. Enough to make the entire island tipsy.
    “I don’t mind if I do help myself,” Lescavage remarks.
    “Make mine a double. Then you’ll hear my bloody confession.”
    Lescavage looks at him. At the skin pulled across the old man’s cheekbones and jaw, at the slack mouth. The dull pallor of impending death. He supposes that his reluctance to hear this man’s confession derives less from his pastoral tradition than from his interest in what the vile man might have to say. He actually wants to know what’s on Orrock’s mind at the hour of his death, if this is that hour, after a lifetime of subterfuge and villainy. What really counts, now that nothing is left in this world to be gained? For the clergyman, the prurient impulse is not something he welcomes in himself. Clearly unprofessional, not in the least ministerial. He feels himself a helpless gossip about to hang on to each syllable of a red-hot rumor. He’s hopelessly and, he concludes, morbidly curious. For that reason alone, he feels ashamed. He does not want to hear this man’s confession precisely because he so very much desires to absorb every detail.
    “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Orrock says, as if reading his mind. “I know you’re a fraud. That’s not news to me. Just remember, we’re not hearing your confession tonight, simple Simon. Only mine.”
    Lescavage lowers his head, then shakes it slowly. He whispers, “You’re the devil himself, Alfred. Incarnate. I’m about to hear the devil’s own confession.”
    “Whatever,” murmurs Orrock. His eyelids flutter. He licks his chapped lips. “Something like that anyway. If you’re lucky. Fetch the whiskey, you wormy slime bucket. You shit wiper, you. Loosen my tongue.”
    As always, Lescavage yields ground. “Sure. I’ll make mine a double as well.”

 
    TWO
    Falling off the shoulder of the road, the sleek gray Porsche skims across a rapid series of shallow potholes, causing the undercarriage—the shocks in need of repair—to sound like an old-fashioned Gatling gun. Then the car bucks out of a deeper puddle sending a whole other cascade of water up and over the vehicle. Barely hanging on, the driver steers back onto the road, or what she thinks is the road, and taps the brakes gently. Wipers fight against the wet but the windshield takes its own sweet time to clear. When she can peer through the opaque smudges again, she sees lights. She’s arriving in a town, the only one left before the land drops into the Bay of Fundy and the sea.
    The town’s name is Blacks Harbour, commonly referred to as Blacks. Any apostrophe has been lost to time or never existed.
    Crossing the border from Maine into New Brunswick, she stopped for a pee, but otherwise it’s been straight through from Portland, where she gassed up and grabbed a coffee and doughnut, and before that, Boston, where she took the call from her father’s maid. Or whatever she is. Whore, perhaps. With him, you never knew. In a bout of honesty one time (who could tell if that’s what it was or if he was ever close to speaking the truth), or if not honesty, then at a moment when he appeared to have no particular agenda and no special grudge, her father mentioned in passing that