FrostLine

by Justin Scott

  “Hello, Miss Abbott.”

  Connie’s “Good afternoon, Ira,” would have caused an Eskimo to button up her sealskins.

  “Hello, Vicky. Hello, Scooter. Hello, Redman, how are you getting on here? Little girl, you got yourself a crackerjack. He was a heck of a race horse.”

  “Ira,” said Connie. “He looks high strung. Is she all right on him?”

  “Perfectly safe as long as Redman’s got his pet.”

  “Pet?” I asked. “What do you mean, his pet?”

  “Race stallions generally have a monkey or rabbit that lives with them to keep ’em on an even keel.”

  “Are you telling me this horse comes with a monkey?”

  “No,” Ira laughed. “You’re such a kidder, Ben. No monkey. Just Tom.”

  “Tom?”

  “Here. My groom forgot this when you picked him up.” He pressed the liquor box into my hands and backed away.

  “What’s in the box, Ben?” asked Alison, her hands suddenly full of excited horse.

  “He smells him,” called Ira. “You can let Tom out now. Don’t worry. He won’t run away.”

  “I’m not worried.” I put the box down. Scooter opened the flaps. A grim eye peered up. Redman gave a delirious snort. The occupant of the box climbed out, stalked to the corral, and let the horse stroke his back with his huge nose.

  “Wow!” yelled Alison.

  “Looks like a cat,” said Scooter.

  He was “Tom” as in “conspicuously unaltered tom,” with a long lanky body and a hunter’s head that surveyed his surroundings as mercilessly as a praying mantis.

  “At least he’ll live in the barn.”

  Ira Roth, still backing, called, “Most of the time.”

  “If he’s the horse’s pet, it stands to reason he’s going live with the horse.”

  “Except, they’re like a couple of old bachelors. Good friends, until they get bent out of shape over some darned thing and Tom stalks off to the house for a couple of weeks.”

  “Whose house?”

  “Not mine,” said Scooter. “We got our hands full with Naomi.”

  “Mom’s allergic,” Alison called down from Redman.

  “Mine’s too far,” said Vicky. “Besides, I’m sure Tom would prefer the company of someone who sits around the house all day waiting for the phone to ring.”

  I turned to Aunt Connie. Her house was right across the street. With any luck, while crossing one night, Tom might hop a truck to Massachusetts and Redman would make friends with a squirrel.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Connie. “But, as you couldn’t resist reminding me the other night, I already have a cat.”

  And damned if the very next day I didn’t come home to find the animal chowing down at DaNang’s dish in the kitchen. Alison was hunched over the table and didn’t look up when I asked, as restrainedly as I could, “Don’t tell me those two had an argument already.” Then I noticed Tom’s back was wet, as if somebody had sprinkled his fur with a watering can.

  “How’d he get wet? It’s not raining.”

  Alison finally looked up. Her face was red. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “What’s the matter, sweetie? Redman okay?”

  “Mr. Butler took DaNang.”

  “He’s out?”

  “DaNang just jumped in the truck. Like he never said goodbye or even looked back. Mr. Butler whistled and it was like he was never here.”

  “We’ll visit him.”

  I dialed Tim. “Hey, congratulations.”

  “For what?”

  “For springing Mr. Butler.”

  “I didn’t spring Mr. Butler.”

  “He was just here. He got the dog.”

  “You’re kidding. Ira must have—I’ll call you back.”

  Typical Ira, I thought, grandstand Mr. Butler’s bail approval and neglect to inform Tim, who had done all the work.

  Alison said, “I want a belly ring.”

  “No, you can’t have a belly ring. You’re not even old enough to have a belly.”

  I had to figure some way to lean on Henry King.

  “I really, really want a belly ring.”

  “It would get tangled in Redman’s mane.”

  The phone rang. Tim, sounding a lot more hysterical than I liked my lawyers.

  “Butler escaped!”

  “No way.”

  “Blew the door right off his cell!”

  “With what?”

  “They think his vet buddy slipped him C-4. I don’t believe it. I’m now representing an escaped prisoner old enough to be my father. He blinded the guards with a flash bomb, hotwired a truck, and took off.”

  “I don’t believe it either. Where’d his buddy get plastic explosive?”

  “You don’t need much—they could have smuggled it in a cupcake.”

  “Who was this buddy?”

  “That old homeless guy who kept visiting? The guards said he always calmed him down—I can’t understand how that crazy old farmer got past the roadblocks. The troopers sealed off Plainfield. He still got away.”

  Tim didn’t understand that his client had been a warrior.

  “He took the guards’ guns.”

  “Jail guards don’t carry guns.”

  “Blew open their weapons locker.”

  I ran for the door.

  The troopers hunted armed quarry by stricter rules—hardly news to the kindly soul who had slipped Mr. Butler his C-4.

  “Alison! Where’s your mom?”

  “Cleaning.”

  “Go over to Connie’s. Tell her I told you to stay with her.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Butler escaped from prison. Cops’ll be here any minute.”

  “He did?”

  “Go. Now.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “Wait. Did you talk to him?”

  “No. He just whistled. If I hadn’t opened the door DaNang would have jumped right through the screen—Ben, will the cops hurt DaNang?”

  “What was he driving?”

  “His truck.”

  “His own truck?”

  “Old Blue. The Ford 1500.”

  “You sure? You actually saw the truck?”

  “Yeah, it was all loaded up with wood.”

  “Wood? Firewood?”

  “Boards. It was really full. DaNang had to ride inside.”

  Last I’d seen it had been parked empty in the barn.

  “Okay. Tell Connie Mr. Butler escaped from prison and I don’t want you in this house if the cops come looking for him here.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To find him first.”

  Chapter 29

  Josh Wiggens was probably hoisting a celebratory Scotch.

  Tim might not understand warriors, but the CIA man did, and I was willing to bet blood that he had arranged the “homeless vet buddy.” Set up to seize weapons, the old farmer would fight until the troopers gunned him down and ended, forever, the investigation that would expose Dicky Butler’s murderer.

  But Josh was in for a big surprise.

  He hadn’t heard Mr. Butler promise to blow Fox Trot off Morris Mountain.

  And the old farmer could do it, or die trying. Thirty years since Special Forces didn’t matter. More dangerous than creaky fighting skills was attitude.

  Obstacles were opportunities.

  To win was to survive.

  Win by any means.

  Thank God he had told me. It gave me a brief leg up over the troopers. Which made me the only person in Newbury with a hope in hell of saving the poor lunatic.

  I threw gloves and a wire cutter into the car. Ollie Moody’s gray cruiser screeched into the driveway, blocking me.

  “You seen Butler?”

  “I just got here.”

  A rusty pickup roared in behind him, decanting a grizzled old woody, Frank LaFrance—father of Steve of failed-first
-selectman-challenger fame—and Frank’s eager bloodhound, Ike, who, hired out to the troopers, would follow DaNang’s scent like an interstate highway.

  “You don’t mind if we search the house,” said Ollie, clearly intending to search it and give Ike a sniff whether I minded or not.

  “Move your vehicles first, I’m going to work.”

  “You sit tight.”

  Ollie ran in the kitchen door, trailed by the tracker and his dog. My father used to call Frank “Guns and Dogs” for proclaiming at town meetings, “What this country needs is more guns and dogs.” Frank was in his glory today, Ike slathering on the trail, gun rack loaded for bear.

  I drove across my lawn and through a perennial border.

  ***

  Shortcuts up Morris Mountain didn’t help. The troopers had beat me to the Butler place anyway. A blue and yellow Crown Victoria straddled the driveway. The uniformed road cop sheltered behind it with a shotgun looked young and nervous. I didn’t even slow down enough to make him wave me off, but kept going up the mountain, glimpsing, as I passed, another car and cop stationed at the house. But if they thought they had him covered, they were wrong.

  Resident troopers like Ollie never would have made the mistake. But Plainfield Barracks, stretched thin, had been reinforced by suburban-bred road cops who couldn’t know that farmers with winter time on their hands built roads. Three generations of Butlers had riddled their sprawling property with farm and lumber tracks, which were hidden in late summer by sumac and goldenrod.

  They were ready for me when I raced back. The trooper had maneuvered his car broadside across the road, he and his partner behind it, sidearms drawn.

  “Out of the car! Hands on the roof.”

  One stayed under cover, the other patted me down after checking inside the car. “Open the trunk, sir.”

  “Mind telling me what’s the problem?”

  “Escaped prisoner, sir. He’s armed.” They leveled their weapons at the trunk, according me the honor of standing in the line of fire with the key.

  When neither DaNang nor Mr. Butler jumped out, they sent me on my way. I drove all the way down to Fox Trot’s gatehouse. The heavy, ornate iron gate was locked.

  Albert Chevalley lumbered out of the gatehouse, yawning. “Hey Ben. You seen all the cops?”

  I turned the car around and headed back up the mountain.

  Mr. Butler had had long nights in the Plainfield jail to hatch his plan. There was no way he could breach Fox Trot’s main gate. Even if he did somehow manage to blow it off its posts, the driveway spikes would shred his tires. Whereas, their adjoining woodlots formed a natural base for an attack on King’s house. If he had any sense left at all, he would wait until dark.

  After several false trails, I turned onto dirt ruts that veered between a couple of Mr. Butler’s fields, then snaked around to parallel Fox Trot’s deer fence.

  I found a cow bar overgrown in blackberry, and backed the Olds into the briars. Then I put on my gloves, squeezed out of the car, and draped more briars around it. I climbed the stone wall which was topped with the deer fence and clipped the lower strands. The tension in the wire whipped them left and right, crackling where electricity pulsed in the grass. I slipped under, crossed the dirt perimeter road that paralleled the inside of the fence, and started jogging across a hayfield.

  I was high above King’s house. The distant woodlots blocked sight of all but the farthest corner of the lake, which the heavy rains had partially refilled muddy brown. I crossed another stone wall and another hayfield. The rain had settled dust and pollen, or I’d have been kicking up clouds and sneezing my head off.

  Across a third field, steeper than the first, a final stone wall, and I was inside King’s woodlot. I stopped to get my bearings. I was still high on the property, near the Butler boundary. The stream should be less than a quarter mile ahead. I headed for it, navigating by the sun glimpsed through the tree canopy and the slope of the land.

  I thought I heard voices.

  I stopped, listened intently. Wind sighed overhead. A cardinal was whistling. Woodpeckers drilled. Squirrels chattered. A flock of jays swooped by, screaming.

  I glided forward again, slowly and quietly, eyes in the distance, looking for the flicker of movement through the trees.

  I smelled the water.

  Voices again.

  I veered upland, to come at them down the stream. I reached the deer fence first, lifted a strand with my gloves, and slipped through, with only one stinging shock on my back. On Butler land now, I climbed a ways inside the fence, then continued toward the stream, certain I’d heard voices. Then, suddenly, my own voice—in a loud, startled yelp—as the ground collapsed under me and I pitched face forward into a hole deep enough to bury a coffin.

  Chapter 30

  I fell with King and Butler jungle-warfare bamboo spikes in mind. I crashed, instead, on plywood, crunching my kneecaps and skinning the heel of my hand.

  The sides of the hole were plywood, too, forming a three-by-three-by-six-foot underground box, which was empty, except for me. I remembered I had yelled out loud when I lost my footing. I raised my head to see who’d heard me.

  Thick brush had grown on three sides, thicker than the surrounding vegetation, which was stunted by tree shade. Whoever had dug the pit had transplanted wild mountain laurel onto the mounded diggings—not the easiest landscaping project, as the mountain laurel resists mightily attempts to separate it from the rocks and roots with which it has entwined.

  How many lies had Mr. Butler told me in order to protect his secret dynamite stash? The fourth side, which faced up the slope, away from the King property, opened onto a long-unused lumber track. Long unused, that was, until a few hours ago when he had backed his truck right up to the rim of the hole. The tracks of bald tires were fresh in the mud, but there were no puddles in the ruts. They’d been laid after the rain had stopped.

  Peering in the opposite direction, through the laurel, I could see the deer fence, thirty feet downslope. Beyond the fence, down on King’s property, I sensed motion in the trees.

  I climbed out onto the lumber track and crawled.

  Somewhere to my left was my old friend the stream that emptied onto the King property and eventually fed Lake Vixen. I jinked left into the woods and headed for it.

  I heard it roaring before I saw it. The rains had gorged the bed. Where I had crawled puddle to puddle last time, now several feet of water rampaged over the rocky bottom. Excellent. If Butler was down there he wouldn’t hear me until I swarmed him. If it was King’s guard, the brook would roar in Big Ears like Seventh Avenue expresses passing Columbus Circle.

  The water was so cold it almost froze my heart. I had expected to sort of wade hunkered down chest deep. But it was deeper and moving a lot faster than I had estimated. I was plummeted from rock to rock like a woodchip, wishing I had a life vest and a motorcycle helmet.

  In seconds, it sluiced me into Dicky’s swimming hole. The dammed-up pool was brimful, the water lapping over the banks. Anyone looking my way would spot my head above the banks. I scrambled over Dicky’s dam as fast as I could, scraping down the waterfall like a crippled otter, and crunched onto the rocks below.

  King’s deer fence loomed, plastered with threats of electrical shock and penalties for trespassing. Swept on the current, I saw the fence’s logic: come late winter, when hunger made the deer more aggressive, the brook ran higher; the lowest strand over the stream wasn’t low at all. It skimmed the rain-swollen surface at a point between my nose and neck.

  I ducked my face in the water, but not fast or deep enough. My wet hair brushed the strand, I felt a sharp kick in the back of my head and a startling pain that snapped my mouth open with an involuntary gasp into which icy water poured. Coughing—drowning—I slammed rock to rock as the current accelerated down the steepening descent. A root I grabbed tore loose in my hand.

  I seized another and clung for my life.

 
“What the hell are you doing on my land?”

  And there was Henry King, shoving through the brush like a Cape Buffalo in a territorial mood.

  The master of Fox Trot wore Eddie Bauer gardening trousers, a Ralph Lauren “British county flannel” shirt, and a jaunty Navy VIP visitor cap, which was embroidered USS IOWA in shiny gold and heaped with more scrambled eggs than the Church Hill diner served all weekend. His face was red.

  “You’re on my land!”

  “I’m in your brook. You want to give me a hand out of here?”

  “You’re on my land!”

  I climbed out on my own, gasping and shivering. “Get out of my face! This is not eighteenth-century Poland.”

  King’s trousers were soaked and mudstained to the knees.

  I took a not-so-long-shot in the not-very-dark.

  ***

  “Did you find the glove?”

  “What?”

  It had rained continuously since I had claimed to drop it. This afternoon was his first opportunity to conduct a thorough hunt.

  “The glove I told you I dropped. The glove your security zealot shot holes in.”

  “I’ve had the man fired. And I’ve already apologized to you for that incident.”

  “The glove you asked for when I returned his helmet. Dicky Butler’s glove—What are you doing in the woods?”

  “They’re my woods.”

  “You’re looking for the glove. It links someone in your woods to Dicky Butler.”

  “It does not! It proves that Dicky Butler was trespassing on my land when he dropped his glove.”

  “How badly do you want the glove?”

  “What?”

  “Assume I lied the other day. Assume I have it. Hidden, stashed away safely. What’s it worth to you?”

  Sheer hell across a poker table. Not a flicker, not a twitch of bushy brows, not even a change of light in his eye. And this time, he didn’t bother fencing.

  “Shop your blackmail elsewhere, Abbott. You surprise me. I read you wrong. I didn’t think you were that sleazy.”

  “I read you wrong, too,” I replied. “Maybe that’s why I still can’t figure out why you killed him.”