Cold Heart

by Chandler McGrew

  He was a tough old bastard but not nearly as tough as he pretended.

  Through the thin gray wisps over the embers, she noticed an area where the dead grass had been crushed flat, as though something heavy had been dragged across it.

  She had barely reached the ominous track when she saw crimson spatters on the grass.

  Drying in the wind.

  Blood.

  The track veered sharply and vanished into the grass. But if she looked carefully across the top of the field, she could just make out the thin zigzag line that broke the rippling brown blanket. She cut across to the point at which the flattened grass met the far slope.

  “Aaron!” She was running now.

  Panting.

  Covered in sweat.

  What the hell am I going to do when I find him?

  The vastness of the land below seemed hostile now.

  Empty.

  A cold, savage wilderness.

  There were no ambulances.

  No 911.

  Aaron kept a big first-aid kit, beside his front door.

  Gone.

  Remember your training.

  She slowed to a trot. Searching the rocks and trees.

  The stunted spruce that grew at this higher elevation looked even shorter under the gray light of the overcast sky.

  Aaron leaned against a boulder. His feet were splayed. Head lowered on his chest.

  His hands lay in his lap and he was staring toward the ravine.

  He looked as though he was searching for something up there and couldn't quite make it out.

  But there was a small hole in the center of his left breast pocket.

  Blood soaked his pants and the belly of his flannel shirt.

  “Oh, Aaron,” Micky gasped, dropping down beside him.

  She lifted his arm and it was cool and slightly stiff in her hands. Rigor mortis occurs from four to six hours after death. But exertion speeded up rigor and cold slowed it. There was no way of telling how long he'd been dead. She eyed the fire again.

  Two, maybe four hours to burn to the ground like that?

  But that was only a guess.

  She sniffled, breathing loudly through tight lips. Aaron would be ashamed of her if she broke down like a sobbing child.

  She set his hand back down gently, and fingered the hole in his shirt, peeking inside at the neat round wound in his chest. There were burns on the flannel and tiny black specks of powder tattooing around the wound.

  The gun had been close.

  She let the shirt fall back into place and glanced over her shoulder again at the remains of the cabin. She followed Aaron's bloody trail with her eyes.

  The bullet must have just missed his heart. He'd been strong enough to drag himself out of the burning house, but of course he was in shock, disoriented. He couldn't find the path that would take him down the valley to help. Or maybe he wasn't looking for the trail. Maybe he was just trying to get away from his killer.

  It was amazing that he'd made it as far as he had.

  “Who did this, Aaron?” she said. “Why?”

  Suicide was not an option. For one thing the typical suicide chose the head as a target. But, even if Aaron had shot himself in the chest, the wound itself would have exhibited a burn ring. If he had pressed the gun against his body, the entry hole would have been a star-shaped tear, from the burst of hot gases beneath the skin.

  The shot had been close.

  But not that close.

  And besides, why shoot yourself and then crawl outside to die?

  An image entered her head.

  El.

  El and that damned huge pistol.

  She bit her lip and fought a sob.

  Aaron didn't like El. Nobody liked El.

  But, of course, Aaron couldn't keep his mouth shut.

  There been an angry scene between El and him the summer before.

  Micky had been inside the store that day, talking to Rita.

  “You wouldn't know what to do with that fucking hogleg if you needed it, boy.” Aaron was sitting in the rocker, drinking a soda and resting his feet on the cold stove.

  Rita's eyes slitted and Micky turned toward the door.

  El had his hand on the pistol butt as usual, and he was glaring down at Aaron.

  Everything stopped.

  Everything but Aaron's mouth.

  “Why don't you skeedaddle your Cheechako ass on out of town and play Marshal Dillon somewhere else?”

  “I'm not bothering you,” said El. He looked wound real tight but his voice was flat.

  “Tell Aaron to shut up.” Rita leaned close to Micky's ear but Micky could barely hear her.

  “You bother me by being here,” said Aaron, rising. “You bother my sense of propriety, my sense of common decency. You just fucking bother me, period.”

  “Aaron,” said Micky, sliding over beside the old man, grabbing his arm. “Cool it.”

  He shook off her hand, never taking his eyes away from El.

  “What do you say to that, Hot Shot?”

  “I never did anything to you.” There was finally something almost human in El's speech. A whine. The sound of a spoiled child. El had already said more than Micky had heard him say since she'd known him. But always before he had spoken in that lifeless singsong.

  “No. You never did. And I, for one, don't intend to give you the chance. Pack up and get out.”

  “Aaron!” said Micky.

  “I'm not going anywhere,” said El.

  “Get!” shouted Aaron, flapping his hands.

  To Micky's surprise, El did just that. He backed out the door and disappeared.

  “That was rude,” she said.

  He'd laughed. “I'm way too old not to be rude to people.”

  “Sometimes you aren't funny.”

  His smile faded. “Sometimes I don't mean to be.”

  He threw his pack over his shoulder and left. Micky didn't offer to walk with him that day. She didn't like El, either. But she had no excuse to be abusive to him and neither did Aaron.

  “Do you believe that?” she'd said, catching Rita's eye.

  “Believe what?” asked Rita. “That Aaron was crude? Or that El was getting about ready to shoot all of us?”

  Micky winced. “Are you serious?”

  “You telling me you didn't see what I saw?”

  “El was tense.”

  “Tense? Honey, tense is when you need a damn good bowel movement and your old man wants to use the shower. El Hoskins isn't tense. He's cranked up like an overcharged battery. He scares the shit out of me. Always has. To tell you the truth, seeing what I just saw, it was like déjà vu. Aaron had his back up just the way Scooter did the first time El came in here. You telling me, with your background, you don't think anything's wrong with El?”

  “Yes,” Micky admitted. “There's something wrong with him. He's a loner. An introvert. Doesn't talk to anyone or socialize. And he makes up for feelings of inadequacy with that big pistol and that bowie knife he wears on his boot.”

  “And?” Rita demanded.

  “And he scares me.”

  “Bingo.”

  “But he hasn't done anything wrong.”

  “Maybe he hasn't. Maybe he has.”

  “You mean Scooter? You have no proof.”

  “Proof, shmoof. El did it.”

  Micky said nothing.

  She too believed that El had killed Clive's dog.

  Who else would have done it?

  But that was no reason for Aaron intentionally to try to set El off.

  When Micky left the store that day, Rita had stopped her at the front door.

  “You be careful going home,” said Rita.

  “Are you serious?” said Micky. The fear in Rita's voice chilled her. Micky had never realized that El affected Rita the same way he did her.

  “I'm serious. One of these days El is going to explode. You mark my words.”

  “Proof, shmoof,” said Micky, trying to make light of the mom
ent.

  “You just take care,” said Rita, turning back into the store.

  Micky gently closed Aaron's eyes with her fingertips. Proof. Shmoof.

  She backed away from Aaron, careful not to disturb the scene anymore than she already had. When she stepped out of the grass near the cabin once more, she noticed small, overturned stones and scratches in the dirt near the stoop, leading toward her.

  Aaron had been in the house or near it when he was shot.

  But what had caused the fire?

  Maybe Aaron accidentally set the blaze himself, getting out. Or maybe the killer torched the cabin trying to cover up the murder, not realizing Aaron was still alive.

  That was for the State Troopers to figure out.

  But before she ran the three miles to the store to call them, Micky intended to break protocol. Procedure was to leave a body just as it was found until the CSU had a chance to go over it. But Micky couldn't stand the thought of Aaron out in the open like that, unprotected.

  Snow clouds scudded overhead, obscuring the tops of the tallest trees. It was getting colder.

  She trotted around the smoldering cabin to Aaron's storage shed. There had to be something in there, a tarp, an old dropcloth, even a sheet of plywood, with which to cover him.

  Aaron had built the shed tight against the rock wall so he only had to construct three sides. But a heavy padlock hung from the hasp. She rattled the lock in frustration.

  She hurried back to Aaron and, removing her gloves from her pockets, covered his face and chest with her jacket. She had on long johns beneath her flannel shirt. She'd be all right until she got back down to the valley.

  She could hear Aaron's voice in her head telling her not to be a damned fool.

  “I'm sorry I wasn't here for you, Aaron,” she said.

  “Not your fault,” said the voice.

  But she knew that it was her fault.

  It had always been her fault.

  One of the old man's hands remained exposed and she thought of Wade.

  I couldn't do anything for him either.

  I have to get to Cabels’ and call the troopers.

  “I'll be back, Aaron,” she said, tucking his hand beneath the jacket.

  She turned and ran.

  1:50

  DAWN MADE IT UP the stoop, wheezing, holding her sides. She glanced back over her shoulder but El hadn't broken out of the trees near the bridge yet.

  She burst in as Rita balanced precariously on a stepladder, putting boxes on a shelf. Rita rushed to Dawn, who leaned against the comforting solidity of the thick double doors, gasping for breath, trying to talk through a throat as raw as torn flesh.

  “Honey! What the devil's wrong? Talk to me, now!”

  Dawn couldn't think what to say first. It all came out in a jumble.

  “El! Came and… my mother… Howard… dead!”

  “Shit,” whispered Rita.

  She hurried to a hook on the wall, grabbed an oil spattered, fleece-lined jacket and returned to wrap it around Dawn's shoulders.

  “Put this on,” said Rita. “You're trembling.”

  Dawn shoved Rita away. “El! He's coming. He's killing everybody.”

  Rita nodded.

  She hurried around the counter again and grabbed an ancient-looking bolt-action shotgun that looked two sizes too big for her. But she checked the chamber as though she had done so a hundred times before and clicked off the safety without looking.

  “Clive will be back real soon,” she said. “He'll know what to do.”

  “Shouldn't we call somebody?” Dawn whispered.

  “I don't think we have time,” said Rita, looking through the front window.

  1:52

  EL SAUNTERED ACROSS THE clearing as though he didn't have a care in the world. “The son of a bitch looks like he owns the place,” muttered Rita. There was anger and fear in her voice.

  “He'll kill us,” whispered Dawn.

  “The hell he will,” said Rita.

  She strode out onto the porch. Dawn stayed inside. Through the light filling the window, she could see El, walking up the trail, twenty yards away. His right hand rested on the butt of his pistol. Dawn could see Rita's back through the crack between the door and the jamb. Rita's head was up, the shotgun held across her body.

  Dawn stayed behind the door. She wanted to scream at Rita to shoot El. But fear had robbed her of speech.

  “That's far enough, El!” shouted Rita. No fear in her voice now.

  El stopped mid-stride.

  Dawn peeked around the window jamb. She could just make out El's face. The mirror shades looked like the eyes of a praying mantis and suddenly that was how Dawn saw him. He was some kind of deadly carnivorous insect. He stood in the worn track that led up to the stoop, silent, waiting, staring at his prey.

  Rita raised the shotgun once and lowered it again on her elbow.

  Shoot him!

  “What have you been doing, El?” Rita asked. “You got blood all over you.”

  He cocked his head, giving her a who me? look.

  “Just need a few things, Rita,” he said.

  “Not today. Been a lot of shooting today.” She eased the gun around to point it at his feet.

  “Don't aim that thing at me,” said El.

  “Then don't you be coming up here,” said Rita.

  El shook his head. There was something wrong with the movement. As though El weren't flesh and blood inside but some kind of robot that didn't quite fit beneath his skin.

  “You don't belong here, Rita,” he said.

  You can't stay here anymore.

  El wanted McRay to himself and he was going to kill everybody in order to get it.

  Dawn knew at that instant that El had reached the exploding point again. She opened her mouth to scream at Rita to get back inside before it was too late.

  But it was already too late.

  El sidestepped, pulling the big pistol from its holster. Rita jerked the shotgun in disbelief and Dawn lunged into the doorway as the two explosions shattered the stillness. Rita's shotgun clattered away over the railing and El's.44 caliber bullet drove her back into the doorframe and then into Dawn.

  Wet, warm blood gushed onto Dawn's chest from the gaping wound in Rita's back. Rita dropped like a sack of concrete, sliding away from Dawn onto the floor.

  He's coming.

  He's coming up the steps, I know it.

  Dawn didn't wait to see if Rita was dead.

  She didn't think that El had seen her yet. Rita had fallen back through the door so fast that El was still off to one side and below the level of the porch. Staying low, Dawn raced around the counter. She half ran, half crawled through the open door to the storage shed.

  One tiny four-paned window threw a dirty golden light into the room. A gas-powered generator sat alongside a rough workbench, beneath which were a row of batteries. Wires were stapled along the round log walls, leading outside. Oil stained the floorboards and tools hung on pegs on the wall.

  But there were no guns. All of those were safely locked in glass cases or stored away where Dawn had no time to search for them.

  She had to get out and away before El discovered she was inside.

  “Where's Clive?” said El, in that dead singsong.

  Dawn froze in the middle of the storage room, knowing that there was no possible place here for her to hide. Terror crackled along her skin like electrical bolts.

  “Where's Clive?”

  Dawn suddenly realized that El wasn't talking to her.

  He's talking to Rita.

  Does he really think Rita's going to answer?

  But the bullet that blew the huge hole in the back of Rita's body had to have killed her.

  She tiptoed ever so slowly, ever so silently over to the big sliding door that was the only exit from the workshop.

  A large hook-and-eye latch secured the door.

  The latch looked well oiled and shiny with use. But opening the door would be noisy. El was
certain to hear and come around the counter before she could escape. It was thirty yards to the nearest brush, on the airstrip side of the store.

  She'd never make it.

  She left her hand on the latch, praying that El would go away.

  Outside, Clive's four-wheeler sounded and Dawn jerked, clenching her teeth.

  Clive was coming back.

  And El was waiting.

  She considered yanking the door open and racing out into the clearing to warn Clive.

  As the engine noise increased, Dawn eased the latch upward, catching her finger painfully between it and the door, but biting down her gasp of pain. She wedged her hand inside the frame, surprised at how silently the heavy door slid on the runners overhead.

  Even the scattered sunlight outside blinded her and she hurried into its welcome warmth. She was shielded from the front of the store by ten feet of log wall with no window. Around the corner, the four-wheeler crossed the clearing.

  She stepped away from the building.

  Clive was climbing off of the Honda. Surprise filled his friendly face as he spotted her. He raised his hand in her direction just as she opened her mouth to scream at him to run.

  She wondered in that instant if Clive felt the shotgun, centered on his chest.

  Dawn could almost see the thick lead pellets as they flew through the air like metal wasps. The bullets struck Clive so hard in the breast that his feet lifted off the ground and he fell back across the seat of the Honda in a heap.

  1:54

  MARTY REACHED UP OVER his head and gave the nail another whack. The sharp echo rapped down the ravine, reminding him of the gunshots he'd heard earlier. He wondered if that was what his construction sounded like to people down below.

  But anyone with half a brain could tell the difference between a gunshot and the sound of a hammer.

  He gave the support posts for the sluice another good shake to see if his makeshift bracing was going to work. Seemed sturdy enough, but the force of the water bouncing off the sides and down over the rough bottom vibrated the sluices so that they constantly required new braces. Along its thirty-foot length Marty had installed ropes and wires and trimmed saplings to shore the contraption up.

  But his mind remained on the shots.

  Someone potting a rabbit.