The lawyer Eldritch steered the Collector in the direction of those who had, in his eyes, forfeited the right to life – perhaps even the right to their immortal souls. He presented the case for the prosecution, and the Collector took care of the punishment. But Eldritch was injured in the same incident that had killed the woman and brought the Collector down on Jackie, and the Collector had spirited the old lawyer away. Who knew, Eldritch might even be dead. If that were the case, then the Collector would be off the leash entirely. If nothing else, Eldritch held his hunting dog in some form of check.
‘We going to keep looking for this refuge?’ asked Louis.
‘He killed Jackie.’
‘Maybe Jackie brought it on himself.’
‘If you believe that, then we all bring it on ourselves.’
‘That might just be true.’
Angel joined us.
‘Why hasn’t he hit back? Why hasn’t he tried to take us out?’
I thought that I had the answer.
‘Because he believes that he violated his own code when he killed Jackie. Jackie’s life wasn’t his to take, whatever mistakes he might have made. Somewhere in what passes for his conscience, the Collector suspects that we may have earned the right to come after him. It’s like Louis said: maybe we all bring it on ourselves.
‘And then, like us, the Collector is just a pawn in a greater game. He might know more about the rules of it than we do, but he has no idea of the state of play, or how close anyone is to winning or losing. He’s afraid to kill us in case it tips the balance against him, although who knows how long that situation will continue.’
‘What about us?’ said Angel. ‘If we kill him, will there be blowback?’
‘The difference is that we don’t care,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ said Angel. ‘I must have missed that memo.’
‘Basically it said “Fuck ‘em if they ain’t on our side”,’ Louis explained.
‘Yeah, I would have remembered seeing that one,’ said Angel. ‘So we keep hunting him until we corner him, or until he just rolls over and dies?’
‘We hunt him until he tires, or we tire,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll see how it plays out. You got anything better to do?’
‘Not lately. Not ever, to be honest. So what now?’
I looked again into the darkness beyond the house.
‘If he’s out there, let’s give him something to watch.’
*
While Angel went to retrieve our car, Louis and I broke into the Chevy and pushed it against the door of the house. I could already smell the gas from the stove in the kitchen as Louis doused the interior of the Chevy with the Collector’s cognac, saving about one third of it. He stuck a kitchen rag in the neck of the bottle, and shook it to soak the material. When he was sure that the road was clear, Angel signaled Louis with his headlights, and Louis lit the rag, tossed the bottle into the car and ran.
The Chevy was already burning as we drove away, but the two explosions – the first from the car, the second from the house itself – came sooner than anticipated and occurred almost simultaneously, catching us by surprise. We didn’t stop to watch the fireball rise above the trees. We just kept driving, taking Telegraph Road into Maryland as far as the intersection with Route 213, then headed north into Pennsylvania. We handed the car over to a woman in Landenberg, took possession of our own vehicles and separated without another word, Louis and Angel heading for Philly while I drove north to the Turnpike.
On the outskirts of Newark, a man in a dark coat watched fire trucks pass. The sleeve of his coat was torn, and he limped slightly as he walked, favoring his right leg. The lights of the trucks briefly illuminated his thin face, his dark, slickedback hair and the thin trickle of blood that ran from his scalp. They had come close to catching him this time, so very close …
The Collector lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as his house burned.