08-A Thousand Bones, page 34
She pushed past Augie and went out into the hall. She paused to take a deep breath and continued out into the main office. She started for the doughnut bag on Augie’s desk, but the sound of the door opening made her look up.
The cold air swirled in, sending the hem of the man’s coat flapping. He let the door close softly behind him and turned.
“Hey, Frye,” he said.
Her eyes focused on the bandaged right arm beneath the overcoat. She felt something hard knotting in her stomach, felt the memories of the night in the woods coming back. She fought them, pushing them down in the lockbox of her mind, slamming down the lid.
When she looked up to meet his eyes, she managed a smile.
“Hey, Rafsky,” she said.
49
They sat in the cruiser, neither saying anything. Joe had suggested they take a ride, anything to get out of the station and away from the eyes of the others. The heater was on, the windows clouded, and in the cocoon of the car, she was suddenly too conscious of him, of the wet-wool smell of his coat, of the even rhythm of his breathing.
“What are you doing here, Rafsky?” she asked.
He shifted in the passenger seat to face her. “Mike called me.”
Joe kept her eyes trained out the windshield. “Mike called you,” she repeated softly.
“He’s worried about you.”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to, afraid he would see something, a vulnerability or hurt that she wasn’t willing to let anyone see. It had been okay so far; she had been able to hold things together. Even after saying goodbye to Brad, even after telling Mike and the others that she didn’t need their protection, even then she had been all right. She had been able to convince herself that if she had other things to think about like the job, if she didn’t think too long or too hard about what had happened, it wouldn’t be there in the front of her memory.
But now he was here. Rafsky was here. And it was all there again, in the furrows of his cheeks, the set of his mouth, the broken-wing way he held himself in his sling, and the blue flame of his eyes. He was here—the other survivor—and every memory about the ambush was suddenly back, banging in her head to get out.
“Did Mike tell you what happened to my dog?” she asked finally.
“Yeah. How is Chips doing?”
It touched her that he remembered her dog’s name, and for a moment she couldn’t trust herself to answer. “He’s going to be okay,” she said.
“So you think Trader did it?”
“Yes, but I have no proof. Just a feeling.”
Through the windshield, she saw Mike emerge from the station. He paused on the sidewalk, looking their way.
“I can’t take this,” she said softly. “Let’s get out of here for a while.”
She steered the cruiser out onto Main Street, and soon they were heading south on M-22. Rafsky didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t know, really, but the driving gave her something to concentrate on instead of him.
They were entering the village of Lake Leelanau, and Joe eased off the gas as they cruised through.
“So you think Trader has come back to force you into some sort of final ritualistic confrontation?” Rafsky asked.
She glanced at him. “Mike told you that, too?”
Rafsky nodded. “He told me everything, about your talk with Ahanu, about Mary Trader. He told me that as much as he wants you back, he thinks it’s too soon.”
“Damn it,” Joe said softly. Mike hadn’t mentioned that.
“Mike’s worried about you,” Rafsky said. “I’m worried about you.”
“Look, you didn’t need to come all the way up here just to check on me,” she said. “I’m okay, all right?”
“Joe—”
“I’m okay, damn it,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
Rafsky was silent, but she could feel his eyes on her.
They didn’t say anything for the next fifteen minutes. When Joe pulled the cruiser to a slow stop on the snowy road, Rafsky looked out the window at the tall pines and turned to Joe.
“What are we doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. Her hands gripped the wheel. Her eyes stayed on the distant trees.
“Sometimes they come back to the place where they murdered,” Rafsky said.
“I don’t think he’s here,” she said.
“Then why are we?” he asked.
There was a murmur from the radio, one of the deputies reporting in from a late lunch break. Joe realized she was clutching the steering wheel so tightly her fingers hurt. She let go, closing her eyes.
“Do you want to see it?” Rafsky asked gently.
Joe hesitated, then nodded.
They got out of the cruiser. The doors closed with dull thuds in the snow-muted woods. Without a word, they started up the hill through the trees, Joe slowing her step in deference to Rafsky’s pace.
“Do you have a gun?” she asked as they walked.
“No.”
She stopped and pulled out her mother’s holstered .22 from her parka pocket. She handed it to Rafsky. He slipped it into his coat pocket, and they walked on.
The sound of trickling water told them they were near. They slowed as they approached the waterfall. Joe drew to a stop. The trees stood tall and unmoving, laden with capes of snow. The cold had frozen most of the waterfall’s flow, but a stream still fell, making its slow way through the snowcapped rocks. The air was still and cold. It was hard to breathe.
She stared straight ahead, unable to look up at the tree she knew was only a few yards away. She kept her eyes on the water, trying not to see anything but instead seeing in her imagination the stream running red. She closed her eyes.
A sob burst from her chest. She fell to her knees.
He was there, quickly, pulling her close with his good arm, pressing her head to his chest, letting her cry.
Back in the cruiser, she sat spent and numb, eyes closed. Rafsky’s handkerchief was wadded in her hands. She was thankful he didn’t say anything, because she knew one word from him, one more kindness, would cut her in two. She was too fragile right now, and the realization of that was hard to accept. With one violent act, Roland Trader had stripped something away from her—her belief in her own strength. And she had to find a way to get it back.
“Joe?”
She didn’t open her eyes.
“Are you okay?”
She felt his hand, rough and cold, cover hers.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
She nodded, her eyes still closed.
“What do you want to do?”
The softness of his voice was piercing. It struck her in that moment, like a small but sharp stab to her heart. She wanted him, still. And in his question, she felt the same want from him. But she knew the intimacy they felt wasn’t love. It was a bond born the night of the ambush and now living as two survivors’ need to forget.
She slowly opened her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and faced Rafsky. “I want to find him,” she said.
Rafsky pulled in a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Then I want to help you. If he has come back, I want to help you. I don’t want you facing him alone.”
She felt a small catch in her throat and kept her eyes trained out the windshield.
“If you want me to go home, just say so,” Rafsky said quietly.
She shut her eyes.
“Joe?”
“No, stay,” she whispered. “I want you to stay.”
For the next hour, they sat in the cruiser and talked. About Leach, about the ambush, about how her memories of it were so fragmented she sometimes wondered if she were going crazy. They talked about his boss’s loss of confidence in him. They talked about his wife, Gina, and about how his son, Ryan, couldn’t bear to be away from him anymore. They talked about Brad, and when she told him she and Brad had decided to stay apart, he just nodded. By the time Rafsky gently steered her back to Roland Trader, she felt spent but oddly calm.
She put the cruiser in gear, and they drove out of the forest, away from the waterfall.
“Where are we going?” Rafsky asked when they were back on the highway.
“If he’s really come back, there aren’t many places he can hide,” she said.
“But if he’s trying to provoke a confrontation, maybe he doesn’t want to hide,” Rafsky said. “At least, not from you.”
She nodded, thinking.
“So where would he go?” Rafsky asked.
“Maybe to visit the grave,” Joe said.
“His brother’s?”
Joe nodded. “And his mother’s.”
Rafsky hesitated. “You’re sure you’re up for this?”
“I told you. I want to catch the bastard,” she said.
The county cemetery was just south of Echo Bay. Joe pulled the cruiser into the gates and eased along the narrow, snowy road that wound between the headstones. She remembered reading in one of Theo’s stories that Ken Snider had been buried in a part of the cemetery for indigents. They found the section in a far corner devoid of trees and headstones.
They trudged through the snow, brushing off the plain metal markers, looking for anything that resembled a recent burial. Finally, they spotted a snowy mound near a backhoe. The grave didn’t even have a metal marker yet, just a paper sign on a post, hand-printed: k. snider.
The snow looked undisturbed. Joe looked around at the other plots. No footprints around any other graves, nothing to indicate the grave had been visited by anyone. But still she felt a tightening in her gut, and her hand went automatically to her holster as her eyes traveled over the far trees.
Rafsky was also looking at the trees. “He hasn’t been here, Joe. So where do we go from here?”
“His mother,” Joe said.
A half-hour later, Joe pulled the cruiser to a stop on the road leading to the bluff where she had met Thomas Ahanu. Dressed in a full coat of snow, the place looked even lonelier than it had the first time she saw it. She led Rafsky up the hill and toward the huge dead oak. The old headstones were almost covered in the snow, but she was able to find Mary Trader’s.
The only prints visible were the ones she and Ahanu had left several days ago, partially filled now with a dusting of fresh snow. She stared at the ground, her mind starting to itch with doubt about her theory. Maybe Roland Trader wasn’t back at all. Maybe Chips had just been the victim of a panicked prowler.
She turned in a circle, scanning the trees, her ears pricked for any sounds.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Rafsky said softly. “Or anywhere near here.”
She nodded. “Maybe we should get back to the station.”
They walked to the cruiser in silence. She headed the car back to the main road, slowing as they came up behind a salt truck. When she saw a sign, she hit the left blinker.
“Where we going now?” Rafsky asked.
“We’re near the Collier cabin,” she said. “I don’t think he’d be that stupid, but let’s check it out.”
Rafsky was quiet for a moment, then he looked at her. His face was drawn with uncertainty. Maybe a flicker of fear, too. “I don’t think it’s a matter of stupidity,” he said. “It’s need. It may be exactly where he’d go.”
Joe thought about that for a moment, then hailed Mike on the radio. He and Holt were checking out a fender-bender south of town. She asked them to meet her at the Collier cabin. Mike said he was ten or so minutes behind her and clicked off.
They headed into the thick trees.
50
The cabin was waiting for him, empty and dark, as it always was in the winter time. Pillows of snow on the roof and icicles on the eaves, shimmering in the sun like thousands of tiny knives.
He stepped from behind the tree and looked down the long, unplowed road. There were fresh tire tracks, and his gaze followed them up into the driveway. He knew they must be from a four-wheel drive. Nothing else could make it through the snow.
The cops had been here, probably after the woman reported her dog dead. He wondered if anyone was inside now. He hadn’t been in there yet. Instinct had told him to wait, and that was what he had been doing since returning to Echo Bay—waiting, spending the last few nights in empty hunting shanties.
This morning, he had dumped the truck, worried that the Canadian plates would attract attention. He had pushed it into a ravine and covered it with branches. Then he had hiked back here, because this was where he needed to be.
He looked down at his hand. The dog bite was swollen, pus oozing from the puncture wounds. He wondered what would happen if the pus got into his veins. Would it kill him or make him stronger?
When he looked back at the cabin, the glare of the sun off the snow made his eyes water. The hot tears felt good on his cold face. Felt human. Unlike the rest of him. The rest of him felt numb and sore, his bones so hard and cold he was sure they would crack if he moved too quickly.
Why couldn’t he think? Why couldn’t he just sense if there was someone inside?
Talk to me, Mommie. Help me. Be with me now, and tell me what to do.
He shut his eyes, the voice a whisper in his head.
Just go inside, son.
He moved forward, carrying his shotgun and the small bundle of newspapers. His heart kicked into a furious beat as he neared the front door. The snow was trampled with footprints.
Cops. Lots of them had been here.
The door was locked, and he followed the prints around the cabin to a back window, to the bedroom that had been his. The window was locked, and he started to pick up a log from the wood pile to break it, then remembered the kitchen. He had broken that window the night he had come here and killed the people.
He went back. The glass in the window pane was still missing. They hadn’t even bothered to cover it up. He peered inside.
Snow had drifted into the kitchen, covering the floor and dusting the counters and the dinette set. It looked like one of those places in a movie where someone had gone away and draped white sheets over the furniture to keep things clean.
He carefully reached in through the pane, unlocked the door, and went in. Footprints on the snowy floor. He would step in those and stay invisible.
No one had bothered to clean anything up. Plates of half-eaten food still sat on the table. He needed to stop the gnawing hunger in his belly. He leaned the shotgun against the counter and searched the cupboards. He found a package of oatmeal cookies and ripped it apart, scattering them across the counter.
He shoved the dry cookies into his mouth. He found a Faygo cream soda in the fridge and was guzzling it down when his eyes caught movement outside the kitchen window.
A deer.
Standing by a white birch. Tawny fur shimmering in the sunlight. Its eyes round, black, and guileless.
Shoot it!
The animal seemed to hold Roland’s stare.
Shoot it! What’s the matter with you? Shoot it, you little pansy!
Roland set the can down, eyes still fixed on the deer but his mind shifting with different images.
Girls. All of the faces coming at once.
The first one. Ronnie, that bitch Kenny fucked in their dad’s bedroom. That hadn’t been his fault, and it hadn’t happened the way he told Kenny. Ronnie had never come on to him. He had sat there on the basement steps, watching her fingers as they plucked panties off the line. Then she had looked at him over the clothesline, her eyes wide and dark as that deer’s.
She didn’t see him pick up the hammer. She didn’t fight after he hit her. She didn’t move when he took her.
He brought her body up here only because he needed somewhere safe to hide it. He dumped her in the woods and ran back to the cabin. And then he saw the carving under his bedroom window, the one he did the day Kenny shot Dad. He saw it, and all the memories came back.
The explosion of buckshot as his father’s face was blown away. The sticky, warm feel of brains and skin on his face. The taste of those few small shreds of bloody skin that ended up in his mouth as he screamed.
And he knew then what was happening to him. And he knew what he needed to do to satisfy it.
He got his father’s hoist out of the basement and hid it in his car. And then he found other girls. He tied their feet to the hoist and took their bodies the way Kenny used to do to Ronnie. He sliced them and pulled them up into the trees, because that’s how women died, up in trees. Then he hid and waited, watching the blood trickle down their naked bodies onto the white snow below.
It was with the third girl that he discovered that if he waited long enough, if he was patient—if he was invisible—sometimes the animals would come. Bears, wolves, once even a cougar. And if he was careful, he could work the pulley from his hiding place and lower the body without frightening the animal away. And he would watch the animal eat.
Then, after a day or two, he cut them down, always leaving a piece of them for the animals but taking away the rest.
The girl with the red hair…
The one he had done last February. She had been the only one he tasted. He had waited a long time for the animals to come for her, listening to the wind from the lake crying like wolves. And when the real wolves finally came, he watched as they ripped her apart, their chewing and growling giving him an erection so hard and a climax so explosive, he screamed out like one of them.
The deer suddenly bolted away, vanishing into the trees.
Roland turned away from the kitchen window. He picked up the newspapers and the shotgun and went to the living room. No snow here, just smears of dried blood on the wood floor, the walls, and the sofa from where he had killed that couple and their daughter. The cops had left fingerprint powder, a plastic glove, and little yellow evidence markers.
He stared at the bloodstains. This is where Annabelle Chapel had died, too. Right here in this room. The story he had told Kenny about her had been true, about how he took her from the ski lodge and brought her here. How he cut off her head and threw it in the woods. It was all true, except the part Kenny had told the cops about helping him get rid of the body. Kenny had never done anything.
