Presumed Dead

by Mason Cross

  “I gave you a lot of leeway, Blake. Maybe it didn’t seem like it to you, but I did. Do you mind telling me why I shouldn’t be throwing your ass in a cell for breaking and entering?”

  McGregor stepped across the threshold of Feldman’s house, keeping the gun pointed at me.

  “The fact that you’re asking the question is why. You didn’t come here for me, did you? You came to talk to Feldman. You know it’s him.”

  He said nothing, but gave me a look that said he was waiting for more.

  “Check out the room back there. He’s obsessed with the Devil Mountain case.”

  “Doesn’t prove anything. A hobby case, we all have them.”

  “This isn’t that. He has .38 caliber ammunition in his drawer. The gun isn’t there, but you know why that is. He planted it at Connor’s house after killing Roussel. That’s how he beat us to the Marion place, he was in the area already.”

  McGregor kept his face straight, but I saw something in his eyes that told me he wanted me to continue.

  “There’s a file on one of the hunters. He checked them out before he killed them. He has Wheeler’s notebook – he had to have taken it from his car the night he was killed.”

  The sheriff closed his eyes, and I knew this didn’t come as a surprise. I was only confirming the worst.

  “It had to be you or him who planted the gun at David Connor’s house. He realized Green knew that, so he tried to make her suspect you instead. Only he slipped up. He told her why Roussel was killed; because we talked to him. The only problem was, Green never told any of you that.”

  McGregor sighed and lowered his gun at last. “Isabella called in a request to the phone company to confirm the cell records of the hunters. They only called us back this lunchtime. They were confused at first, because they had a duplicate request on the system. Only it wasn’t a duplicate request. It was called in on Sunday afternoon, before Friedrickson and Leonard were killed. Somebody was tracking them. Whoever it was gave Haycox’s name, but it can’t have been him because he was already dead. Green had an alibi because she was your alibi. It had to be him, but I just didn’t know why, until now. I told him I wanted to meet him at the Connor house. I was going to confront him, but he never showed. And if he isn’t here …”

  He took out his cell phone, dialing Green’s number. As it rang out, he started to look concerned.

  “Come on,” he said, turning and running out to the car, leaving Feldman’s door wide open.

  71

  Isabella Green

  I don’t want to get up. I’m underneath the big oak tree and I’m looking up at the sun and the blue sky through the branches and it’s so peaceful and so beautiful. Why do you want me to get up, Momma?

  There’s a ringing in my ears and I want whoever it is to turn off that darn noise, but then I realize it’s my head that’s making the ringing. It hurts, there’s a kind of throbbing on the right side of my head. I want to touch it but I’m so tired and I don’t think I can summon the effort to move my hand. Momma’s shaking me, telling me to get up. When she leans over me I can see she’s wearing that blue check dress, the one that makes her look so pretty. She says I can have one just like it for my birthday if I like. Something’s wrong with her eyes, though. She looks scared, and I wonder what she could be afraid of. Why would I make her scared?

  There’s something wrong with her voice too. It’s all deep, almost like a man’s voice. And then I realize it is a man’s voice.

  “Green, can you hear me?”

  Isabella’s mother’s face and the sun and the sky and the tree branches faded away as her eyelids blinked open, and then she was looking up at a ceiling and a familiar face. It took a moment for it to come back to her.

  “Blake, what …?”

  And then she saw McGregor and the kitchen and she remembered everything.

  “Shit, is Adeline …?”

  Blake shook his head. “Gone.”

  McGregor was looking down at her with a concerned expression. “We think he followed you out here, and saw Blake arrive with Adeline. I closed the roads. Carl Bianchi saw Feldman’s car headed toward him on the north road, but he never made it as far as the block. He’s trapped, if he’s still in the car. Or he’s on foot.”

  “Okay,” Blake said. “We know two good things. The first one is that Adeline is probably alive.”

  “Why so?” McGregor asked.

  “Because if he was going to kill her right away, we would have found her body here.”

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “I think I know where he’s going.”

  Isabella thought she knew what he meant: the shelter on the mountain. She touched a finger to the throbbing pain on the side of her head and felt wetness. Blood on her hands. What had the son of a bitch hit her with?

  In answer to her unspoken question, Blake reached out of her field of view and held up an old telephone. Feldman had hit her hard enough that the plastic base was cracked.

  “Are you okay?” Blake asked, studying her eyes. Isabella knew it wasn’t a romantic gesture; he was looking for evidence of head trauma.

  She didn’t answer immediately. Instead she allowed Blake and McGregor to help her to her feet and tried standing on two feet. No dizziness, no nausea, no vision problems. Just the devil’s own headache. She spotted her gun on the floor beneath the hall table. She took three steps forward in a straight line, bent, picked it up, straightened up, and slid it back into the holster on her belt. A good enough diagnostic test of her motor functions.

  “I’m fine. Let’s go find them.”

  72

  Carter Blake

  McGregor took us back to the station and unlocked the door to the storeroom that served as the armory. Before he opened the door, he paused with his hand on the handle and turned around.

  “This isn’t exactly standard operating procedure. I could get in a lot of trouble involving you. I should be calling in the feds and sitting tight.”

  “But you’re going to do it anyway,” I said. “Because by the time they get here it’ll be too late. This is the only way we have a chance to get Adeline back alive.”

  McGregor shook his head. “Idiot. I should have called them before now.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He couldn’t meet my eyes, only now allowing himself to admit how badly he’d gotten it wrong. “Part of me suspected all along it could be one of us. I wanted to keep this …” He shifted his gaze to Green. “Are you okay?”

  I turned around to look at her. I could see why he was concerned. She seemed paler than she had been, a distant look in her eye.

  “I’m fine, Sheriff. Just can’t believe it.” Her tone was flat, like she was only saying what she was expected to say.

  McGregor looked like he was making an effort to think of something reassuring to say, and then gave up trying. I guessed he had been in this line of work long enough to know what people are capable of. Even people you think you know well.

  McGregor opened the door to a small storeroom about ten feet by fifteen, lined on either side by metal racks. They held rifles and sidearms and boxes marked with evidence tags. There were cardboard boxes and stacks of flares and a pile of gloves. McGregor picked out three Kevlar vests and tossed them to us. Then he picked out three Winchester rifles with scopes.

  “Not the first time we’ve had to go after a runner out there. Feldman calls these hunting trips,” McGregor said. “It’s been a while. Never thought he would be the guy we were hunting.”

  McGregor went down to the far end of the storeroom to get ammunition for the Winchesters. Green was studying the straps on my vest, checking they were in place. She looked up at me. “You think we can find him?”

  “No doubt in my mind,” I said. “And none in his. That might be the only reason he has a hostage. He knows we’ll find him.” />
  “You ready for this?”

  “Sure.”

  “Something told me you’d say that.” The corner of her mouth curved into a smile, and then immediately straightened as she heard the noise of the door opening in the front office. She reached for her gun and held it up, two hands on the grip as she approached the storeroom door. I heard footsteps inside the room on the other side.

  “Who’s there?” Green called out.

  I heard the footsteps stop, but no one said anything. Green nudged the door open and stepped out into the main reception area.

  I heard a gasp, followed by, “Shit! It’s me, put that down.”

  I followed Green out to see Deputy Dentz, reaching for the sky.

  “What are you doing here?” McGregor had joined me at the door, a box of ammo in each hand.

  “Jerry called me to tell me what happened. I figured you would be going after Kurt. Wanted to be there when you brought him in.”

  McGregor looked at him for a while, taking his time to make his mind up. Then he exchanged a glance with Green, and a quicker, more perfunctory glance with me.

  “More the merrier.” He tossed Dentz one of the Winchesters. Dentz reached for it with both hands, fumbled a little, and recovered, looking back up at us with a pleased expression on his face once he had both hands gripping the gun.

  When the four of us had finished gathering the equipment for the hunting trip, McGregor indicated the rifle I was carrying. “Blake, that’s for self-defense, understood?”

  “Always is,” I said.

  “Green, Dentz, I don’t need to tell you I want to take Feldman alive if we can do it. Not just because he’s one of us, either. Right now he’s the only man on God’s green Earth who can tell us what the hell’s been going on in this town. He might make it difficult. Desperate men, up against the wall … they often do. Don’t let him.”

  “Yes, Sheriff,” Dentz said quickly.

  The sheriff looked at me. I nodded agreement.

  Finally, he turned to Isabella.

  “Got it?”

  She nodded after a moment. “It needs to be me,” she said. “I might be able to talk him down.” Then she turned away, leading the way out to the car.

  None of us spoke much. We rode in the same vehicle, McGregor’s jeep. McGregor cracked the driver’s side window open to let in the air, and though it would still be daylight for another hour, the air was colder than it had been.

  I was in the back seat with Dentz, who had a fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip despite the coolness of the air. He gripped his rifle and kept his eyes on the trees passing by outside, as though he were entering Viet Cong territory, expecting an ambush anytime now. I knew he had never been in a war, but I had, and it did feel a little similar. Going into hostile territory, tooled up and braced for the unexpected. Green was in the passenger seat, one arm on the sill, watching the road ahead.

  McGregor reached for his radio as we approached the fork in the road, raising his man on the north roadblock.

  “Carl, any sign of him?”

  “Negative on that, Sheriff.”

  “Keep ’em peeled.”

  We took the fork off the north road. A minute later we passed the spot where Eric Salter’s car had gone off the road, and started to climb. Suddenly, we hit a layer of mist, as though the mountain had snagged a cloud and the trees had drawn it down to earth. Visibility dropped as we climbed, fifty yards, thirty. I knew Roland Roussel’s house wasn’t far from the road, but I saw no sign of it. McGregor hit the lights, which didn’t do much good.

  McGregor started muttering under his breath, and I knew he was losing his bearings. All we could see now was twenty feet of road ahead and the dark perpendiculars of the nearest trees through the mist. Dentz had started breathing quickly through his nose, like a nervous air passenger trying to ride out turbulence. I knew we would reach the end of the road soon: the gravel plateau at the foot of the Devil Mountain trail. Green had rolled down her window and was trying to discern what she could from the shapes moving by at a slower and slower pace at the side of the road.

  “Wait,” she called out.

  McGregor leaned on the brakes. We were only doing twenty, so it was an immediate stop.

  “Back up.”

  He shifted into reverse without saying anything and guided the jeep ten yards back down the track, watching Green for instruction.

  She held up a palm. “Here.”

  McGregor pulled the handbrake on and we sat in place, on a forty-five degree slope, staring out of Green’s side, looking for what she had seen. The mist had turned to fog now, visibility dropping by the minute.

  Dentz’s eyes shifted from his window, to the side of Green’s face he could see, to me.

  “What the fuck?”

  Green reached down into her footwell and fumbled with the pack, not taking her eyes off whatever she had seen. Her hand came out with a flashlight. She flicked it on and a powerful beam shone into the gray and was lost. She played it over the trunks of the trees until she found the position she wanted and held it.

  “There.”

  I saw something red glint beyond the shapes of the first trees. Some sort of reflective material, like on a car’s lights.

  I got out, McGregor and Green following suit. I cradled the Winchester, slipping the safety off. I stepped off the road and between the trees, taking my little bubble of visibility with me. I kept the spot where I had seen the reflector in sight until it got clearer, and then formed into a more distinct shape. A car. A black Ford Explorer, covered with branches. Even without the fog, it would have been tough to spot if Green hadn’t seen it.

  Thinking about Afghanistan again. The Sulaiman Mountains. There had been fog then too. The Taliban had been out there, like ghosts. That made me think about one word: ambush.

  “Eyes open,” I called out to the three behind me, not bothering to keep the tone out of my voice that made it an order, and not caring if McGregor got bent out of shape about it.

  I kept my focus on the car, not neglecting the shapes in my peripheral vision. The black, irregular shapes of the trees loomed in and out of focus, hiding who knew what. I listened for the sounds that would give away a waiting predator committing to making his move.

  I reached the car and used the barrel of the rifle to clear some of the branches from the windows. I glanced behind me to reassure me that McGregor and Green were watching my back, and then risked bending down to look inside.

  Empty. No bodies, no blood.

  I looked up, seeing Green and McGregor’s expectant eyes. Dentz had his back to us, looking back toward the dull black shape of McGregor’s jeep. I shook my head.

  Sheriff McGregor looked like he was letting out a breath he’d been holding for a while.

  “Least we know we’re on the right track. Unless this is a bluff.”

  “I don’t think it can be,” I said. Nowhere to go from here. Nowhere except up.

  We turned to look at the ground rising up until it was lost in the fog. The rest of Devil Mountain was up there, holding its secrets tightly.

  73

  Isabella Green

  The climb got steeper as the four of them advanced, the Devil Mountain trail winding east and then west in wide, lazy ribbons, now that the gradient was too steep to go straight ahead. How often had Isabella climbed the mountain? A half dozen times, maybe? First time had been with her dad, a couple of years after the family moved here. She must have been eight or nine. He had teased her about needing so many breaks, but she could tell he was proud of her. She made it all the way to the top that time. It was July, last week of summer vacation. She remembered the sky was beautiful when they made the summit. Late afternoon, just turning into evening. The long wispy lines of the clouds starting to turn from white to orange and red. A day that couldn’t be more different from this one, in e
very way.

  Half a dozen ascents. Not many, considering the mountain had hung over her all these years. But enough to know the trail. They were about a third of the way to the top. Forty minutes’ climb on a clear day. The old shelter she and Blake had found two days before was halfway between them and the summit. But knowing the trail wasn’t enough, in circumstances like these. The fog made it tough to orient yourself, concealed hidden dangers. It would conceal them from Feldman, if he was up there, but that worked both ways. She knew the path, but that didn’t mean she knew what lay ahead of them.

  Blake walked alongside Isabella, his eyes always moving, scanning the ground and the trees ahead. McGregor and Dentz were four paces behind them. Dentz would occasionally mutter a curse as his ankle turned on a loose stone. These men were like the path: knowable, but not predictable when the circumstances changed. Blake seemed different on the ascent. He had been capable, confident ever since she had met him. It had been the quality that had most attracted her to him, if she was being honest. He had been deferential with it, careful not to step on any toes he didn’t have to step on. But that sense of him holding back had vanished. The tone of his voice, the way his suggestions sounded like orders, even his posture said one thing: he was in charge, no matter what it said on McGregor’s badge.

  McGregor was another one. He was a good cop, but this trip was uncharted territory. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Feldman was one of the sheriff’s own. She knew the betrayal would be breaking him up inside under that taciturn exterior. A wolf in the fold. You never really know anyone. Maybe not even yourself. Maybe especially not yourself.

  They came to the place where the older path branched off; the one that led to the shelter. She knew Feldman had been up there, since he had used it to lure Haycox to his death. But thanks to Blake, he didn’t know that they knew. The landscape was unrecognizable from the other day, and this was a part of the trail she didn’t know well. The ground to their right began to get steeper and the trees became denser around them. Isabella was trying to work out how far they were from the cliff face below the shelter when she felt Blake’s hand on her arm. She turned to look at him, hearing the footsteps of the other two stop behind them.