“You fuckin’ whore,” he hissed. “We was just gonna scare you, but now you’re gonna get it good.”
It may have been the tears of pain blurring her vision, or maybe it was simply the animal’s speed, but Hedde had only a millisecond’s awareness of a moving, liquid shadow before snarling fury swept over the fighting teenagers and she felt Dickie’s weight leave her.
“Hel—”
Dickie’s plea was cut off by the simple expedience of Etienne planting wide paws on his chest and leaning a dripping muzzle down over the boy’s terrified face. The Shepherd’s lips had drawn back to reveal a great expanse of dark gums and yellowing teeth, and a sound so low as to be almost inaudible rumbled from deep in his chest, more like the base coming from a neighbor’s apartment than a growl.
It was the single most terrifying sound Hedde had ever heard and she reveled in it, even as Ray left his friend without a second thought and fled.
Hedde sat up and rubbed the back of her head as the cobwebs drifted from her mind. Dickie tried once more to say, “Please,” but the rumbling machinery in Etienne’s chest grew louder. Hedde saw an expanding darkness at the crotch of Dickie’s jeans.
She stood, brushing the snow away, struggling with the awareness of power. She touched blood gathering beneath her nostrils and looked at the red beads on her pale fingertips, darker than she would have imagined.
“I should let him kill you,” she whispered, and Etienne’s ear twitched. “Etienne, come here, boy. Good boy.”
Etienne stepped almost daintily from the teenager and trotted over to Hedde’s side where he leaned his heavy warmth against her. Dickie made as if to sit up and the dog let loose a ripping snarl that froze the boy in place.
“Come on, boy,” she said as the trees around her flashed red and blue and she saw a police cruiser grinding towards her through the snow.
- 5 -
The cop in the forest green uniform had introduced himself as Officer Wannamaker, and he had a large nose on a crinkly, brown face and kind eyes beneath a cap of curly, salt-and-pepper hair. In his uniform and Smokey hat he looked more like a park ranger than a cop, but Hedde had decided to withhold that opinion. This was fortunate, if only for his pride, because Officer Wannamaker’s first name happened to be Richard, and the Ranger Rick jokes had long since worn thin.
“Show me your tits or walk on that bridge that killed those high school kids,” Hedde told him. “I barely have any tits, so I should be happy they want to see them.”
Officer Wannamaker looked back at the idling cruiser with smoke curling from the tailpipe. Dickie and Ray waited in the back seat, and the cop’s expression was hard to read as he studied them.
Unlike Uncle Gerard’s.
His face didn’t so much as twitch, but his eyes never left the teenagers in the back seat as he waited, one hand on Etienne’s collar.
After going over the events at the bridge a few more times, Officer Wannamaker took off his gloves and gently probed her face and the back of her skull. He asked her if she had a headache or hurt anywhere else, and when she said no, he straightened up and patted her shoulder.
“Gerry?”
“Rick,” Gerard said, his eyes never leaving the boys. Hedde saw the same animal focus in her uncle that she had seen in Etienne. “That LaChaise’s kid?”
“Now, Gerry,” Officer Wannamaker said and turned down his belt radio when it began squawking.
“They said they knew you, Uncle Gerard,” Hedde said.
It was the eyes, Hedde decided. Her uncle’s eyes were so cold they burned, and when she said what she said it was if a glacier had calved an immense hunk of ice.
“Okay now,” Officer Wannamaker said, patting the air. “I’m going to take these boys in and process them, and I’ll want a formal statement from both of you. But I think it’s best if you and Hedde come down to the station tomorrow. Best for everyone, you included, if you do that tomorrow. You understand?”
Gerard nodded.
“Now the boys are saying that they were attacked by the dog.”
“Don’t even start,” Gerard warned.
“Hey now, you know how much I like Etienne, but that’s what they’re saying and he wasn’t on a leash, so I have to sort this all out and listen to them too.”
“Listen to Buddy LaChaise’s kid,” Gerard said.
“I listened to Dickie,” Hedde said. “He called me a whore and said I would get it good.”
Officer Wannamaker’s mouth opened as if to speak, then he shut it and shook his head. “What a Christing mess. Tomorrow at four, okay? Be there at four.”
The officer stomped to his cruiser and shot a quick look back at Gerard, as if afraid the other man would make a sudden rush for the vehicle.
The cruiser backed down the trail it had cut into the snow, not turning off the flashers until it was out of sight. Then it was just the three of them in the cold woods as the shadows lengthened and the river gurgled behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Hedde said in a small voice, afraid to look up until she felt her uncle’s big hand on her shoulder.
“For what?”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It ain’t on you. That shit between LaChaise and me goes back. Looks like his boy is as much of an asshole as his dad.”
“I shouldn’t have gone off with them,” she said.
A shrug. “Probably not.”
For a while only the wind spoke.
“I’m really scared, Uncle Gerard. Not about this thing, I mean, it was scary, but I can’t…I’m more scared…”
He stepped around in front of her and waited until she met his eyes. “I know you are.” He looked around as if he scented something. “This thing has a messy feel to it. You keep Etienne with you from now on.”
“I will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
- 1 -
The house whispered to itself in the smallest hours of the night as Hedde slipped away from the warm bulk of the German Shepherd and rose from her mattress.
She shivered, wrapping a blanket around herself as she crept quietly downstairs, pausing at every creaking step to listen for her uncle. She wasn’t exactly sure what the rules were regarding the attic room, but thought prudence wise.
Quiet in her wool socks, she pulled a pencil from a coffee mug near the phone as she skated in a kind of sliding walk past the iron bulk of the woodstove and into the dimness of the living room, with its scalloped drapes and soft furniture. This had been her room, as much as the attic had been hers, Hedde decided.
She knelt in front of the shelves and reached above the stack of game boxes to pull a notebook down onto the thick rug. She lit a match, holding the tiny light close as she flipped through marked up pages until she reached a blank sheet and tore it free.
She hissed as the flame burned down to her fingers, and she flicked the match into the cold fireplace.
Paper and pencil in hand, she leaned closer to study the titles on the boxes, nodding as she saw what she thought she had seen on her earlier exploration.
Etienne was a black shape waiting for her in the upstairs hall, and Hedde slapped her free hand to her chest in fright. The big dog chuffed at her and she waved him away. “Go back to bed,” she whispered. She crept quietly past her uncle’s closed door and paused at the red portal to the attic, juggling the candle and paper until she was able to pull the door out towards her, wincing at the squeal of hinges.
A glance back showed Etienne still watching her from the hallway, and she shushed him before ascending the steep staircase.
- 2 -
Gerard lay atop his blankets in the gloom, unable to sleep while his niece crept around the house. He thought about rousing himself to put a kettle of tea on the woodstove but knew from experience that these long, lonely hours often needed to be spent alone, when thoughts pushed aside during daylight made themselves known.
The kid certainly had enough on that front.
He felt a mix of disc
omfort and pleasure when he heard her creaking ascent into the attic. It was a room he himself had trouble with to this day, still so alive with Lucy. If it brought Hedde comfort, that was a good thing. A space for the girls to hang out would have made Lucy smile.
Her quiet words were clear enough through the heat vent overhead, but he forced himself to roll over and tune them out.
He was a man who understood privacy.
- 3 -
Hedde unfolded a blouse from the dresser and draped it over her shoulders like a shawl, wrapping herself in the musty comfort of the dead woman’s clothes as she lay on the bed, placing the flickering candle on a nightstand. It was as if she rested in a small tent of warm light that shielded her from the dark.
She held her palm over the dancing candle flame and lowered it slowly until she felt the heat on her skin, breathing through her nose and biting her lip as the pain grew and drove thoughts of the day from her mind. She lowered her hand further until she smelled something burning, and a sound escaped her as she mashed the wick flat and plunged the attic into darkness.
“Is there anyone here?”
The pungent stab of sulfur invaded her nostrils as she struck another match and relit the candle with her throbbing hand.
She picked up the pencil and began tracing the tip across the paper beside her.
“Hello. I know you’re here,” she whispered. “Will you speak to me?”
Hedde cocked her head at a faint tick-tick-tick. It reminded her of the noise the electric heat made in their house in Westchester, a sound Hedde had been convinced was approaching footsteps when she was a little girl.
Motion from the corner of her eye made her twist in place as the curtains overhead riffled in a non-existent breeze. She glanced down at a crackling sound and saw the candle flame leaning over as if pushed.
“Is someone here?”
The candle hissed once and went out, but Hedde forced herself to remain in place, slowly scratching the pencil tip across the paper.
She awoke sometime later, sneezing from the dust that covered one side of her face. She didn’t look at the piece of paper until she was back in her room, a sleepy Etienne rumbling at her to put out the light.
Written in jagged strokes that tore the paper across her scribbling, Hedde could make out what she thought were two words.
HERR WEISS.
Her sluggish mind struggled to process the meaningless words, but her eyelids felt weighted with stones, and she was soon curled up next to the dog and snoring gently.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
- 1 -
GRANGER. Cat had been so certain she would never again drive past the black mailbox on its carved stone post. A sense memory of alcohol and his musky stink struck her as she rolled her Jeep slowly up his long driveway. It conformed to some inner logic for her, that she should roll the dice in a foolhardy attempt to save Lewis, in a place that would hurt him deeply.
His house was on a remote acre with miles of conservation land behind it, his neighbors too far away to be seen through the trees on either side.
Jim was a dark silhouette standing in the doorway as she emerged from the Jeep and slammed the door closed. He was a big man who worked with his hands, who had carved the stone of his mailbox post and laid the brick on his own front walk. A swaggering man who went out every deer season and bragged about bear hunting in Canada.
“Hey baby, this is a surprise,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. So outwardly different from Lew in every regard.
Fuck him.
“Let me in, Jim. It’s cold and we need to talk.”
- 2 -
Evening had turned to night outside the living room windows and she sat in a reading chair near the woodstove, which had, naturally, been installed by Jim. He was careful to always look right for his role, tonight in jeans and a checked lumberjack shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His beard was thick and curling, adding to his costume, but she knew he had it trimmed twice a month at the barbershop downtown.
“Wait a fuckin’ minute,” he was saying. “You told this guy to meet you here? Your husband’s boss?”
“I needed a safe place, and you’re always bragging about hunting, so I know you have guns.”
“Wait a minute—”
“Unless I’m just a cheap piece of ass to you,” she said, sipping her beer without taking her eyes off his.
“Of course not,” he said, but his expression read more like, you used to be a piece of ass, now I don’t know what the hell you are.
“It will be fast. I just need to talk to him and look him in the eye, in a place where someone has my back, someone who can kick his lily white tail.”
She leaned forward in the rocking chair he’d made, a twin to the one in his bedroom, extending her hands towards the woodstove to ward off a chill that was settling over her. He had once wanted to screw her in the chair, but the armrests had turned the effort into a farce instead of a fuck. Now is not the time, she chided herself.
“I need one of these at home,” she said with a nod to the stove. “Maybe you’ll give me a rate to put one in?”
It was hard to keep the contempt for him from her voice, her eyes, when her heart seethed with so much contempt for herself.
“Shit, Cat, I’ve been thinking for a while that it’s time we got a few things straight, and maybe that time is—” He cocked his head and a quizzical expression moved across his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I…” He paused again, listening. “Sounded like someone was up in the bedroom.”
She rose and crossed to the window, peering out but unable to see much. Abruptly aware of how visible she would be from the outside, she stepped back behind the curtain.
“Who is this guy you’re meeting? You got another boyfriend? This asshole sneak into my house?”
“No, it’s Lew’s boss. Lew did something at work and I need to talk to him,” Cat said, voice suddenly tight with fear. “He’s a suit. He wouldn’t break into—”
They both heard a wooden creak from upstairs and their startled eyes met.
“Hallway,” Jim said.
“I think—”
He cut her off with a slash of his hand.
“Screw this,” he said, and lifted a couch cushion, pulling a squared-off automatic pistol out from beneath it. Her eyes flashed to the needlepoint on the wall in red, white and blue threads, a homey piece that read WE DON’T CALL 911, and sported the outline of an old cowboy-type gun beneath it.
“Don’t…” she said.
Jim racked the slide and shot her a heavy browed look. “You stay right here. If that’s your pal upstairs, there’s gonna be hell to pay for him and then you. Got it, babe?”
He turned away before she could respond, rolling his shoulders. Cat picked up her purse from the table and took out the .38, head tilted back as if she could see through the ceiling above. She didn’t know if she should run or wait to see what Jim found until the urgency of Lew’s note came back to her.
“Shit,” she said, stepping lightly as she hurried onto the Spanish tiles of the kitchen floor towards the back door.
She heard a muffled voice from above but caught only pieces of what was said, like listening to an AM radio station as it goes out of range. She heard, “All right, if there’s—” and “anybody” and “gun,” and then the faint rumble of words without meaning.
And then nothing.
After half a minute had passed she opened her mouth to call out, but the words tangled in her throat.
Shit shit shit.
Cat started for the back door again, ears still straining to catch any sound from above, so attuned to sound that when the lights went out she stumbled and had to bite back a cry. She caught the countertop with her free hand and realized that the entire house had gone dark.
She saw the faint outline of starlight in the panes of glass set into the door and tip-toed towards it, feeling nervous and ridiculous. The knob was winter cold to the touch but
she paused, ignoring the discomfort as caution and a sense of responsibility warred within her.
Ultimately, the reality of decades won over the experiences of the past forty-eight hours and she walked back into the living room, eyes picking out shapes in the darkness as they adjusted.
“This is so stupid,” she murmured, but whether it was directed at herself or her erstwhile lover, even she didn’t know. The idea that he was playing a trick to punish her crossed her mind more than once, and she clung to it as both comforting and annoying. Well, Mr. Tough Guy would be surprised as hell to see that he wasn’t the only one who had a gun.
The second floor hall was dark as pitch, and she held the .38 before her in both hands like she was a cop on a TV show.
She lifted her foot onto the first step and left the warmth of the crackling woodstove behind her.
- 3 -
The white phantom flutters of curtains at the end of the upstairs hall caught her eye, and she felt goosebumps crawl across her skin. A quick glance into the bathroom revealed movement and she saw that window was open too. An exceedingly rational inner voice wondered why the hell two windows were open in November. She glanced through an open doorway into the moonlit guest room and saw the curtains dancing there as well. She paused to push the door all the way open, ensuring there was no one behind it.
“Jim?” she whispered, ears straining until she rounded the bed in two long steps and saw nothing but sliding dust bunnies.
She stepped back into the hall, increasingly convinced that Jim was doing this to frighten her. She had met Mr. Bierce on more than one occasion, and he was a humorless type, not one to play games. This wasn’t his work.
Jim on the other hand…
“Jim,” she hissed, waiting for a response.
The next open door led into the room where he had his workout gear—a weight bench and treadmill. Without the moonlight, it was darker on the backside of the house, but unoccupied.
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