Chapter 5 - The Groundbreaking
The site of the new Burroughs Grand Hotel was three acres of black mud where an old iron foundry used to stand, right on the edge of the river where the current ran black and fast between concrete abutments.
By ten o’clock on Thursday morning, three hundred folding chairs had been set up under a white marquee tent that fluttered in the river wind like a dying gull. A brass quintet from the state university was playing something light and expensive by Mozart while men in gray suits handed out miniature silver shovels with BURROUGHS engraved on the handles in blue enamel.
Dylan Burroughs was standing near the center platform, his hair product-perfect, laughing at something the chief of police was saying about harbor dredging rights. Libby Kemp was five feet away, wearing a white wool coat that looked like it had been tailored from a cloud, holding a glass of sparkling cider and nodding at the society editor from the Herald.
Nobody noticed the flatbed truck pull up alongside the chain-link fence.
It wasn't one of Burroughs’ white delivery vans. It was an old Ford with three rusted doors and a tailgate that hung by a single hinge, its engine knocking with the heavy, uneven rhythm of a tractor with a cracked head.
The driver didn't use the gate. He drove the front bumper straight through the orange plastic snow-fencing, the wire snarling around the grille with a loud, tearing screech that made the university horn players miss a beat.
"Hey!" a site manager in a yellow hard hat yelled, jogging across the mud. "You can't—this is a private—"
The door on the passenger side swung open.
Molly Lane stepped down into the muck, her boots sinking two inches into the clay. She wasn't wearing her Blackwoods uniform anymore. She was wearing an old canvas work jacket that smelled of linseed oil and dog shampoo, her dark hair tied back with a piece of twine.
Behind her, the driver’s side door groaned open, and Nikolai Vane stepped out into the rain that had just begun to spit from the gray belly of the sky.
He wasn't carrying a silver shovel.
He was carrying an eight-foot iron post-hole digger with twin wooden handles scarred by forty years of gravel and sweat.
"Burroughs!"
Vane didn't use a microphone, but the name rolled across the three acres of mud like thunder off the ridge. The music stopped instantly. The horn players lowered their instruments, their cheeks still puffed out with unspent air.
Dylan Burroughs turned around, his smile freezing halfway across his teeth. "Vane. You must be out of your mind. There’s a restraining order—"
"The restraining order was for the south dock," Vane said, walking toward the platform with that slow, heavy stride that didn't give an inch to the mud. "This is the north bank. Different zip code."
Libby Kemp stepped back, her white wool coat brushing against the edge of the speaker’s podium. Her face had gone chalky under her makeup. "Dylan, get security. Look at him—he’s filthy."
"Security is currently tied up," Vane said. He reached the edge of the wooden platform and jammed the point of the post-hole digger straight down through the decorative green turf that had been rolled out over the mud for the ceremony. The steel bit through the artificial grass and hit the foundry slag below with a sharp clang that echoed off the river wall.
"What do you want, Nikolai?" Dylan’s voice was high now, thin around the edges like cheap tin. "You want to talk about the piers? We can talk on Monday. Not here. Not with the press—"
"I didn't come to talk about the piers," Vane said.
He reached into the back of the Ford.
Molly was already there, holding the tailgate down. Between them, they slid something heavy out onto the damp grass—not a dog, but a large wooden crate with wire mesh across the top, padded inside with three of Vane’s old woolen blankets.
The lid wasn't latched.
A heavy, fawn-colored snout pushed the mesh upward with a wet, familiar snort.
Barnaby didn't stand—his ribs were still taped and he was old enough to know the value of a warm blanket—but he lifted his massive head, his gray muzzle resting on his front paws, his pale eyes finding Dylan Burroughs through the mist.
The entire crowd under the white tent went dead silent. You could hear the river sucking at the pilings fifty yards away.
Libby Kemp let out a small, strangled sound and dropped her glass of cider. It hit the artificial turf without breaking, the amber liquid pooling around the toe of her white leather boot.
"That's..." Dylan started, his hand coming up to touch his tie as if he were being choked. "That's an animal control issue. That dog is diseased—"
"He’s twelve years old," Vane said. He placed both hands on the wooden handles of the post-hole digger, his shoulders hunching slightly as he leaned his weight into the steel. "He’s got arthritis in his left hip and he hates the rain. But he’s still got more teeth than you do, Burroughs."
"Nikolai, listen to me," Dylan whispered, taking a half-step backward until his heel hit the edge of the mahogany podium. "The boys from logistics... they didn't know whose dog it was. They thought it was a stray from the pound. It was a mistake."
"A mistake," Vane repeated. He twisted the digger half a turn, the steel jaws biting deeper into the foundry slag. "You kick an old dog in front of forty people, and you call it a mistake."
"What do you want?" Dylan’s voice broke on the last word, the high, ugly sound of a man realizing that his father’s money wasn't going to clear the room this time. "Name your price. The warehouse easements? You can have them. All of them. Just take the animal and get off the property."
Vane stopped turning the digger. He pulled the heavy iron tool out of the earth, a clod of dark, ancient mud clinging to the screw at the bottom before dropping back into the hole with a wet thud.
He looked past Dylan, past the chief of police, past the society editors with their expensive cameras, straight to Molly Lane, who was standing by the tailgate of the Ford with her hands tucked deep into the pockets of her canvas jacket.
"Molly," Vane called out.
"Yeah?"
"Is the hole deep enough?"
Molly looked at the ground between the folding chairs and the speaker’s platform where the silver shovels were still neatly stacked in their cedar crate.
"Needs another six inches," she said. "We wouldn't want the foundation to shift when the heavy equipment rolls in."
May you like
Vane nodded once. He set the post-hole digger back against his shoulder, turned his back on the mayor, the bankers, and the future owner of the Burroughs Grand Hotel, and walked back toward the truck.
Molly followed him, her boots making a clean, wet sound in the mud, leaving the forty most powerful people in Harrow Falls standing around a hole in the dirt that nobody knew how to fill.
