Detective Beth Lajoie put up a hand and waggled it. She had three new rings with chunks of green and yellow glass, though maybe they were plastic. She was in her benign mode and smiled sweetly. “I’d like to say a few words, if I may.”
If people hadn’t been looking at her it was probably because of the green pantsuit. They had been pretending she wasn’t in the room.
“Peggy Summers opened up to me,” said Detective Lajoie, “though I had to bribe her, but I’ll get to that later.” She described learning about Maggie Kelly and getting the girl’s name and address from South Kingstown High School. She described talking to the girl’s father and the birth of a baby boy named Connor. She said the girl had left home and sent her father money from New York and Philadelphia.
“I don’t think the baby’s fine,” said Lajoie, “and I don’t think she took him out of state. I think she sold him. I also think, and her dad thinks this, too, that she’s working as a hooker in either New York or Philly. I’ve sent her picture and vitals to both places marked ASAP. As for Peggy Summers, she’s shacked up in a suite at the Hotel Viking at two hundred bucks a night, so we better solve this cluster-fuck before our pip-squeak state goes broke.”
Detective Lajoie leaned back and held her new rings up to the light to watch them sparkle. Each person in the room understood that she was the only cop who had learned anything worth a hill of beans, and Detective Lajoie was glad they knew it.
Half an hour later, when Woody and Bobby left the meeting, they both felt that they had gone through a recycling compactor and had been spit out in little cubes.
“I need a vacation,” said Bobby.
That’s as far as he got before Woody’s cell phone rang. Bobby watched his face. It didn’t get angry; it got sadder.
“Barton Wilcox is in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He was shot and may not live. A trooper dropped by the farm to check on Barton and found the gate smashed to pieces and the sheep wandering around. The dog was beaten, the kids are nowhere to be found, and Barton’s car was stolen—a Volvo 240 wagon. We’ve got to figure it’s Carl and now he’s armed. The canine unit’s on its way, and maybe they can pick up a trail. But if the kids are with Carl, they’re fucked.”
• • •
When Carl Krause clubbed Barton, he had been knocked to the floor, unconscious and bleeding. Carl had every intention of hitting him again, but then he’d seen Harriet’s miniature dachshund peering at him from farther down the hallway. Carl sprang up and hurled the club at the dog. It missed and banged off the wall. The dog fled to another room.
The farmhouse had a central stairway, so the downstairs rooms formed a square around it. As Carl rushed after the dog, it ran from room to room, sometimes hiding under a couch till Carl had passed, sometimes running out ahead of him. Carl had picked up his club and smashed whatever lay in his path—vases, small tables, glassware, windows, whatever was breakable. Within five minutes the dog had disappeared. The sound of breaking formed a cacophonous torrent, an uninterrupted clamor, as Carl stormed from one room to the next.
But it was Hercel he wanted, Hercel and the girl; he wanted to twist them, until at last he listened to his own desires and fetched the rifle. Barton lay on the floor where he had fallen, his forehead bloody. Carl never gave him a glance. He grabbed the rifle and ran to the stairs, certain he would find Hercel in an upstairs room.
Carl kept smashing furniture and breaking glass, but he couldn’t find Hercel or the girl. He knew nothing about Tig. Then, looking out the window, Carl saw the barn in the fading light. That’s where Hercel was. He was sure of it.
When Barton had opened his eyes, he didn’t know what had happened or where he was, didn’t know if he was dead or alive. All he knew was the pain in his head. Then he tasted the blood trickling down his cheek into his mouth. He grew aware of Carl shouting, growling, and smashing things downstairs as he ran from room to room. Barton tried to move but couldn’t manage it. His Colt revolver was locked in the hall table, but the key was in the belly drawer of his desk in the study. Then he saw the Winchester on the hall rug. He didn’t do anything about it. He only thought about it.
Carl ran into the hall, glanced at Barton, and then grabbed the Winchester and clumped upstairs.
Barton tried to put himself together, piece by little piece. He could move a hand; he could move an arm. He raised himself up and fell back to the floor. He raised himself once more and fell back again. He kept trying.
Shortly, Carl ran back downstairs. “Little fucks, little fucks!” he repeated; then he growled. He ran to the front door and stumbled over the walker. He kicked at it, and then kicked at the little table, knocking it over.
The moment Carl was out the door, Barton crawled to the table. The drawer was still locked; Barton hit the underside of the drawer with his fist. The wood was thin, nothing like the thick oak of the surface. The Colt bumped around inside. He kept hitting the drawer. First it cracked; then it broke. Barton hit it again.
Looking out over the field, Carl saw the red lights on Lucy’s sneakers. “I see you little fucks!” he shouted. He raised the Winchester to his shoulder and fired. But he was too hasty; he knew he was too hasty. The bullet ricocheted off the wall. He pulled back the bolt and ejected the shell.
This time Carl aimed the Winchester until he was certain Hercel was in his sights. That’s when Barton Wilcox shot him. The bullet ripped through Carl’s left shoulder and out the other side. At first he didn’t know he’d been shot. He didn’t even feel pain. All he knew was his arm didn’t work. Carl turned and saw Barton cocking the revolver. Lifting the Winchester with his right arm, Carl fired at the old man. Barton jerked and rolled over.
Now Carl began to hurt. He felt warm blood running down his skin under his coveralls. He walked toward the field; his legs felt rubbery. There was no sign of the kids, and he knew he couldn’t catch them. He turned toward Barton’s station wagon parked by the side of the house. Carl wasn’t done yet. He opened the door and fell onto the seat. The key was in the ignition. As Barton Wilcox liked to say: “Who’s going to stroll in here to steal an old car? It’s better to leave the key where I can find it.”
Carl backed around and headed toward the gate. He had neither the strength nor inclination to open it. He tromped on the gas and shifted to second. The engine screamed. He was probably doing forty when the station wagon smashed through the gate. His shoulder hurt bad now. There was a kid’s pink sweater on the passenger’s seat. Carl shoved it under the coveralls against the hole in his shoulder. He waited to feel good again. “I’m not done yet,” he repeated.
SEVENTEEN
AT FIRST THE COYOTES didn’t seem to be getting closer; then they did. Hercel, Tig, and Lucy had fled into the woods, and now Hercel knew they were lost. He didn’t know which was north or south; he didn’t know where the road was or where the farm was. It was nearly dark. Lucy didn’t want to run anymore; she wanted to lie down. In his frustration, Hercel wanted to say awful things to her: “Carl wants to eat you.” It shocked him, and he said nothing. He looked in every direction, but they all looked the same. At first, above him, he could see the trees’ leafless branches, but as the darkness increased, the branches blurred together. They kept stumbling; branches whipped their faces. They had to stop running; even walking was difficult.
Tig wept, but she didn’t let go of Lucy’s hand. She pictured Gray lying in the field and knew something awful had happened to Barton. She’d never been threatened before. Her fear was an awful creature in her head. It was like she was living another person’s life.
“They’re coming,” said Hercel.
It wasn’t necessary to explain what he meant; Tig heard them, too. They tried to run again, and then Tig slipped into the water. She held Lucy’s right hand and Hercel held her left. Tig fiercely gripped Lucy without even knowing it, and the child screamed. Hercel pulled from the other side; briefly, Lucy was yanked between them. Then Tig fell. She breathed hard for a moment and got to her feet
. Hercel had knelt down next to his sister and was patting her back, shushing her. He imagined the coyotes listening to her weeping. They would chuckle and point in their direction with their paws. At last Lucy grew still. Now Hercel also heard coyotes in front of them; he said nothing about it.
They moved off again in a little chain, staying away from the water, trying not to be caught by the vines and brambles. As it grew darker, the blinking red lights on the heels of Lucy’s sneakers grew brighter.
“They’re getting closer, aren’t they?” asked Tig. It was hardly a question.
“I guess so.” Hercel knew the coyotes could have caught them already, and he wondered why they hadn’t. Maybe they were playing some awful game.
He kept looking for a tree to climb, but he couldn’t see any until they were right in front of him. All had branches too high. Hercel knew he could shimmy up a tree by himself, but that would leave Tig and Lucy by themselves. He took the screwdriver from his belt. It looked silly but felt comfortable.
But soon they could go no farther. The coyotes were all around them, even though Hercel couldn’t see them yet. Their yapping sounded eager and boastful.
“What about those rocks?” said Tig.
To their left in the last of the light, in a clearing away from the water, Hercel saw a pile of rocks, not part of a crumbling wall but a dozen or so boulders on a rise. Hercel followed Tig and Lucy toward them, but he knew it was hopeless. Even if they could wedge themselves between the boulders, the coyotes would dig them out like a seagull plucking a clam from its shell. In the clearing, he could see the first stars. Soon it would be pitch-dark. He picked up a small rock, then another. Maybe if they scrunched down by the boulders, the coyotes wouldn’t see them. What a dumb idea, Hercel thought. But what else could he do?
By the time they squatted down with their backs to the boulders, the coyotes were very close, but Hercel still couldn’t see them. Then, when he saw a shadow, he threw a rock. It bumped harmlessly along the ground. He threw the next one even harder, and it knocked against a tree. No, he had to concentrate. He had to make his fear be quiet. The yapping got louder; it sounded like laughing.
Sitting on the ground, Hercel found a stone and then two more. He cleared a small place in the dirt and put them together. He heard Lucy whimpering, but he tried to ignore it. He heard Tig make a noise and then throw a rock like girls threw rocks—not very well. Hercel took the screwdriver and drew a circle around the three little stones. He traced the tip of the screwdriver around the circle; he did it again and again. He did it faster as if he were stirring eggs in a bowl like he did when he helped his mother make a cake. The very thought of his mother made him lose his concentration. He wrenched it back.
“Hercel, I see them!” cried Tig. “Do something!”
Hercel traced the tip of the screwdriver around the circle and concentrated. He did it again; he did it faster; he kept doing it. The tip of the screwdriver dug into the dirt. All the bad things in his head—the fears, grief, the awful pictures conjured up by his imagination—one by one, he set them aside. He heard a noise, not a coyote, not a stone bumping on the ground. It wasn’t the wind. It was a whooshing noise. The tip of the screwdriver traced the circle. Hercel stared at it; as he did it faster, the noise got louder. It included clickings and scrapings. He didn’t look up.
“Hercel, the leaves are blowing around us! And sticks!”
It might have been caused by the wind, but there was no wind, only the wind caused by the rushing leaves as they circled faster, circled the boulder against which the three children pressed themselves. A stick was snatched up to join the leaves, now another and a third, until dozens of sticks dived and darted among the leaves circling the boulders. Now a small stone was picked up, now another, and the circling mass of leaves and dirt, twigs, and stones thickened and wheeled, whirring and clicking, and through it all Hercel stared at the ground and traced the tip of the screwdriver around the circle gouged in the dirt; and just as his hand sometimes slipped an inch or so away from the circle, so a bulge would briefly appear in the whirling mass; and the noise grew louder with snapping and ticking, a chatter of pebbles and little bits, which enclosed Hercel and the girls like a vertical tube, a tubular cyclone, so that someone standing outside would see only a spinning wall.
But then darkness rushed into Hercel’s head like water into a bowl, and he collapsed. All the million bits and pieces flew outward into the trees in a final crashing and rattling, and the noise stopped.
The next thing he knew Tig was shaking him and calling his name, “Hercel, Hercel!” Hercel jumped up and tried to peer around him through the dark. The coyotes were gone.
“Everything flew,” said Tig. “It scared them. What was it? Did you do it, Hercel? What happened?”
Hercel leaned back against the boulders and put his arm around Lucy, who had stopped whimpering. “I don’t know what it was,” he said. “I fainted. We’re just lucky, that’s all.” But Hercel knew very well what it was.
They huddled together to stay warm. There was no point in wandering off. It was now pitch-dark, and they’d only fall into the water. They would have to stay where they were until morning and hope the coyotes didn’t come back.
Hercel was just dozing off when he heard a barking. He felt a rush of fear, before he realized it was a dog, not a coyote. It was a dog from the canine team, following their trail. It was getting closer.
• • •
Seymour Hodges and Jimmy Mooney had parked the ambulance behind Dunkin’ Donuts and were indulging in a box of mixed doughnuts and two large coffees with cream and extra sugar. Although it was only nine o’clock, they had been on the run all night, picking up, hauling, and off-loading. Most recently, they’d picked up Barton Wilcox and code-threed him to Morgan Memorial, with Seymour working on him in the back and yelling at Jimmy to go faster. No way Jimmy wanted to cash in his chips broadsiding a truck. He had hurried but hadn’t rushed; that was how he saw it.
“You think that old guy’s going to make it?” Jimmy’s mouth was full of maple cream.
Seymour didn’t answer.
“I said, d’you think . . .”
“I heard you all right. How the fuck should I know?”
“You seen guys gut-shot before.”
“Not old guys. Least the round went straight through him, so that’s a good thing. Sometimes you can make a mess digging it out, like digging a beetle outta oatmeal. Very sloppy.” Seymour was concentrating on rolling a joint.
“Least it’s the icing on the cake for working with Digger. Carl’s out of a job.”
“I already been hired.”
“Yeah, but this’s the icing on the cake. Fuckin’ Carl’s brains must’ve been like the fuckin’ Fourth of July—a Catherine wheel with spider rockets and flaming peonies tossed in like salt and pepper.”
Seymour inhaled half his joint. After a moment, he croaked, “What’d you do to him?”
“This and that.” Jimmy decided not to tell Seymour about the little joke he had played with Ronnie McBride’s head bumping against Carl’s window.
“Like what?”
“Cranked ’im up, that’s all. Put a scare into him. You read about that Burn Palace in Sweden where the guy’s using stiffs to heat the place? Recycles the heat to make the place toasty. Doesn’t pay a dime on heating oil. Now he’s working on heating houses in the town. The more stiffs you cook, the more heat you make. Stands to reason. That’s what they mean by ecology, right? If I end up running Digger’s Burn Palace, we could heat half of Hope Valley. Some guy could cook his aunt Betty and use the heat for his own house. What d’ you think? It could be a real moneymaker. Right now all that heat’s just floating away in the sky for nothing. Hey, Seymour, you awake?”
Seymour was holding the last of the roach and trying not to burn his fingers. Then, when the flame had gone out, he’d eat it. “Yeah, yeah.”
“You gonna be all right workin’ for Digger?”
“Sure, why not?”
He popped the roach in his mouth.
“It can get, you know, kinda creepy.”
Seymour readjusted himself, getting himself comfortable for a little nap. “It’s nothin’ worse than I seen in Iraq. Been there, done that.”
• • •
Larry Rodman had filled the small graphite crucible that he’d set on his stove with twelve-carat wedding rings. Then he turned on his acetylene torch and pulled down his mask. He meant to make a little gold porridge that he would pour into an ingot mold. It was nothing he hadn’t done before, but now he was doing the whole lot. He had even picked the diamonds out of the engagement rings and packed them in a matchbox. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell him his time in Brewster was about up—maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after, but it was coming. He would melt his gold, pack his bags, and get ready to fly.
Larry had heard about Carl killing some woman on the police radio. He could have told Digger that Carl was a mistake. Some guys weren’t good with the stress. They’d pop like balloons. Larry had seen it happen and he didn’t plan to get hit with the shrapnel.
The whole risk factor had gotten cranked sky-high. People got greedy; they never had enough. That’s why Larry contented himself with a little gold, a handful of diamonds. He wasn’t a big-car kind of guy. He didn’t drink; he didn’t gamble. His needs were modest.
All that remained was a little work at the Burn Palace, a few odds and ends. Then he would pack up his tools. He had to leave town before Halloween and get out before the fireworks started.
• • •
Woody had been with the canine team that had found Hercel and the girls. He had been one hundred percent positive they were dead, that either the coyotes had got them or they’d been dragged off by Carl. When he heard Hercel call out to them tears came to his eyes. This had shocked him almost as much as learning the kids were safe. He hadn’t wept since he was Lucy’s age. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.
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