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“They’re not far off, pal. For both of us. I promise you; this is not altruistic. I need your help.”
“I’m fine, Mac.”
“For chrissake, Gus—” The exchange became heated for a while, but Mac persisted, wearing down Gus’s denial, and eventually, because he had no other choice, Gus accepted the job Mac Etheridge offered him.
It proved over time to be a profitable marriage of skills. Gus issued the necessary writs, actions, and challenges to break the government’s stranglehold on Mac Etheridge’s assets and dealings; he anticipated new legal obstacles and devised ways around them. His role hybridized beyond legal matters. And when they were not “on a case,” as Gus insisted on calling it, and sometimes when they were, he and Mac looked for Theo.
Mac systematically interviewed every person who might have known Dan Murdoch in Lawrence, showing them a photograph of Mary Cowell and the postmortem photograph of Burt Winslow in the hope of finding some connection between the victims that they had missed. Finally, one of Dan Murdoch’s neighbors tentatively identified Burt Winslow as the man who clipped the writer’s hedges, but from there the trail went dead. It was as if Burt Winslow had existed only to tend Murdoch’s garden. He had no discernible address, no family, no history.
Gus trawled through the posts by and about Primus, whom Caleb insisted was Dan Murdoch. He wasn’t entirely convinced that was true, although it did give him an insight into why so many people had descended upon Lawrence in December. But even if Dan Murdoch had been some crazy conspiracy theorist, even if he was behind this nonsense about minotaurs and monsters, it was nothing to do with Theo. Primus’s promise that there would be a manifesto published caught his attention.
“I reckon Murdoch was just running a teaser campaign of sorts for his new book,” he told Mac. “It’s actually quite clever. He’s directing his paranoid nutcase followers to make his book a bestseller.”
“That only works if they knew who he was,” Mac observed.
“That’s true,” Gus conceded. “Perhaps he intended to reveal himself before the book was released.”
“Theo said Murdoch’s manuscript was missing,” Mac recalled. “Assuming he had one in the first place, of course. For all we know he was still blocked and just telling his agent what she wanted to hear.”
Gus frowned. “If we assume your brother is right, and Murdoch was this bloke Primus, and that the manuscript did exist, then perhaps it had something to do with the reason he was killed. And maybe whoever killed him couldn’t find the manuscript either, and maybe they think Theo has it.”
Mac opened his phone and found the pictures he’d taken of the envelope Winslow had delivered. He showed Gus. “Maybe Murdoch did send it to Theo, Winslow intercepted it and wanted to sell it to Theo. That’s why he gave her the letter…some sort of proof of life. He may have assumed she’d know the manuscript had been in the package and be willing to pay for its return.”
“But why?” Gus shook his head. “Surely, it would be more sensible to try to sell it to Murdoch’s agents. They’d be able to do something with it…and they’re more likely to have money.”
Mac shrugged. “Day Delos was trying to sign Theo too, remember. Perhaps Winslow was trying to approach them through Theo…but someone killed him first.”
“So where’s the manuscript?”
“We need to find it,” Mac decided. “It could lead us to Theo.”
That, of course, was easier said than done. Burt Winslow was dead and his existence elusive. And they were not the only ones looking for the missing manuscript, the manifesto promised by Primus to thousands of people determined to defend themselves against a project to raise the dead. Dan Murdoch’s agents maintained security at his house to keep treasure hunters at bay.
The police had had no better luck, and with no further murders taking place, deprioritized the search for Theodosia Benton.
The popular wisdom was that Theo had died by her own hand…somewhere remote and lonely, where her body would not be found until the Lawrence murders were all very cold cases. A woman from Topeka and a bunch of teenagers from Wichita with a Ouija board had claimed to have been in touch with her spirit. Tourists sighted her walking about the Stull Cemetery. But the urban myths as well as a very real police manhunt came to nothing.
When Gus was fit enough to survive the flight, he and Mac flew to Tasmania, in case Theo had fled home. As soon as they got to Hobart, Gus called every person he could think of who she might have gone to for help, who might have given her refuge. The list was not extensive, truncated by the fact that he had left the island so many years before.
The following day they rented a Nissan X-Trail and drove up the east coast in search of the property near St Helens, where the Bentons had once lived. Phones were forbidden in the community that remained, and so there was no other way to speak with them. Gus didn’t say a great deal in the hours it took to get there. His eyes remained fixed on the passing landscape, the mountains that met beaches strewn with red algae, the startling beauty of Wineglass Bay, the towns nestled into the hillscape, forests, the occasional sighting of a wallaby. Mac let him be. This, going back, was a lot to ask, but they had to check.
Mac stopped at a pub in St Helens to ask directions—an old establishment unburdened by modernization.
The publican pulled two beers and set the glasses before them. “You’re lookin’ for the ferals? That Harmony mob?”
“Yes,” Gus replied.
“Whadaya want with them? It’s a cult, you know. All sorts of strange goings-on.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not planning on joinin’, are you?” He laughed. “You look a little clean to be ferals—but you wouldn’t be the first—what they call you now…millennials—you wouldn’t be the first millennials to join that Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“We’re not joining,” Mac replied.
“Well if you’re hoping to get someone out, I’d prepare for disappointment. We’ve seen scores of fathers and mothers, husbands and wives go out to Harmony to rescue their loved ones.” The publican shook his head sadly. “Once they got you…”
“We have to try,” Mac said ambiguously.
The publican gave them directions. They were basic and scrawled on the back of a napkin but probably more precise than Gus’s vague memories of how to get there. Mac didn’t want to take the chance that they’d get lost this close to dark.
The property was located well off the tarred road, via a country lane that was barely more than a bush track. The afternoon was mellowing into sunset when they came upon it. A hand-painted sign on the gate read “Harmony.” The track led from it to a cluster of yurts surrounded by vegetable gardens, pens of goats, and free-ranging chickens on what might once have been a conventional farm. Barefooted, wild-haired children played in the dirt.
