To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  9:05 A.M.

  The duct tape wasn’t coming off. She had tried stretching it, rubbing it against the edge of the door lintel, working her hands back and forth until her wrists were raw. Nothing.

  Using the bucket had been a nightmare of complications. It had taken her five tries to stand upright, a feat she accomplished finally by rocking back and forth on her aching arms until, in a kind of reverse somersault, the velocity of her forward roll brought her to her feet. She hopped all the way to the wall to keep herself from falling forward. Standing, she discovered that the stretch of duct tape between her ankles served as a shackle, and she was able to shuffle slowly to the bucket. Getting her sweatpants down was a matter of plucking with her almost-numb fingers and hopping up and down, but when she lowered herself over the pail, she lost her balance and tumbled over. She had to go through the whole rigmarole again, this time with her sweats sliding around her thighs and the bucket rolling across the floor.

  Once she was erect, she shuffle-walked to the bucket and, with tiny kicks and nudges, shoved it against the wall. She couldn’t figure out how to get it upright with her hands behind her back and her feet only inches apart, so she thudded painfully to her knees and head-butted it into its final position. It was there she discovered she could get to her feet by leaning hard against the chilly stone wall and forcing her feet under her. She kept her arms and back to the wall this time when she squatted. When she was finally able to relieve herself, it felt like a victory on par with winning the Tour de France. Civilization one, barbarism zero.

  Scootching her sweatpants back up with the help of the wall, she considered what to do next. At least using the bucket had given her a goal. Now she was down to two choices: collapse into a motionless heap or find some way to get out of her cell. Since she had already done the motionless heap thing, an escape attempt seemed to be in order.

  That was when she discovered that duct tape, the handyman’s friend, was a lot more resistant than she had ever realized.

  All right, if she couldn’t saw, stretch, or slither herself free, maybe she could get out while still bound? The arrow slits were at an easy height; standing, she could look out any one of them and see sunshine and bare-branched trees and sky. They opened wide into the cell, maximizing light, but their external openings were narrow enough to repel invaders—or prevent determined children from killing themselves while playing King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Besides, even if she could wiggle her way between the constricting stones, where would she be? The view from the arrow slits showed the tops of the trees. And she knew from painful experience there was no handy fire escape.

  She dismissed the curving wall with its deceptively open windows and considered the door. She had read a book once where someone freed himself from a locked room by removing the door’s hinge pins. These hinges were large, faux-medieval things, stretching a quarter of the way across the face of the door. The pins holding them in place were topped by pointed iron finials, reminding her less of the Middle Ages than of the tops of flagstaffs. She shuffled to the oak slab, turned around, and slid down until her hands touched the triangular top of a pin. She pulled it. Nothing. She twisted it. It moved. She twisted the other way, then tugged and pulled, her thighs straining with the effort of squatting. The pin moved upward. She felt like Galileo—e pur se muove! It moves! Excited, she tried a mighty wrench. The pin slid another inch and stuck fast. Beneath her duct-tape gag, she groaned in frustration, then bit the sound back. She wouldn’t be discouraged. She would be . . . smart.

  She attacked the pin again, this time twisting and teasing and scraping it upward, bit by squeaky bit, her arms shaking, sweat slithering under her flannel shirt. More and more of the narrow metal dowel rose from the hinge until she could feel it wiggling loose, and with a final pivot and pull she had it. She bent forward and straightened, her long thigh muscles complaining the whole way. She stood upright, swaying slightly, letting her heart, which she hadn’t realized had been pounding, slow down to normal. Letting her legs stop shaking, letting her shoulders relax.

  The hinge pin was cold and heavy between her fingers. She let it go. It rang and rang again against the stone floor before coming to rest next to her boot.

  “One down, one to go,” she said, and that was when it hit her. She whirled, staggered to catch her balance, and stared at the door. Stared at the top hinge, the uppermost hinge, the curlicued, black-iron, hand-forged hinge whose pin sat at the same level as her head. Her hands, taped behind her back, twitched. The pin might just as well have been on the ceiling for all that she could reach it.

  The disappointment, the unfairness of it, pressed against the back of her eyes like knuckled fists. Tears of rage spilled down her cheeks, scalding her skin. She keened in her throat, a strapped-down, inexpressible sound that made her even more angry—she couldn’t even shriek and howl, goddammit!

  She kicked one hobbled leg in fury. The duct tape yanked against her ankles, and the lower hinge pin rolled across the floor with an old, hollow sound of iron on wide wooden planks. She blinked. Sniffed hard. Stopped crying. Looked at the pin, six or seven inches long, slender enough to conceal in her sleeve. But heavy. One end flat, circular. The other—pointed. She looked again at the door with its unreachable hinge. Okay. She didn’t have way out.

  She had a weapon.

  9:20 A.M.

  Clare was finally seeing a look of admiration on John Huggins’s face. Unfortunately, it was for her cooking.

  “This is great,” he said around a mouthful of French toast. “You have to do this for our annual firehouse breakfast fund-raiser.”

  Clare made a noncommittal noise that was swallowed up in the clink and clatter of forks hitting plates and spoons stirring coffee. She cleared away an empty jam jar and the denuded butter plate and headed back to the kitchen. Maybe if she rooted way in the back of the fridge, she could find another stick of butter. She was head-down, checking out the produce bin, when she heard the door open and close. Whoever it was simply stood there. Saying nothing.

  It struck her what she must look like, presenting rump-out like a primate in a National Geographic special. She jerked her head from the refrigerator and whirled around.

  Russ lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She gestured toward the Frigidaire humming behind her. “I was looking for more jam.”

  He grinned suddenly, wiping ten years off his face. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Huh.” She cocked her head. “What, exactly, did you come in for?”

  He stepped toward her, and she could swear that she felt the air moving, giving way. He stopped before he got too close. He was good about that. They both were. “I thought you might need some help.”

  She wiped her hands on her pants. “I think that’s my line.” She pointed toward the pantry. “Take a look in there, will you?”

  He nodded, ambling to the pantry and clicking on the light. “So what do you think of Haudenosaunee? I bet you love this kitchen.”

  Cooking was one of her passions. He knew that, of course. “It beats the pants off of mine, that’s for sure.” Hers had been installed in the rectory during the reign of the last rector of St. Alban’s, an elderly celibate who had, Clare suspected, lived on TV dinners and casseroles donated by the ladies of the parish. “I’m a little disappointed, though. I expected something grander from a great camp. You know, an Adirondack Victorian extravaganza.”

  “The style you’re thinking of’s called haut rustic,” Russ said, emerging from the pantry clutching a jar of blackberry jam. “The old Haudenosaunee had Victorian extravaganza in spades. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a firetrap.”

  She leaned on the granite-topped work island. “How do you know?”

  “Everybody in Millers Kill knows at least the bare bones of the story. The van der Hoevens were downstaters who made a bundle in the Civil War, and the head of the family liked to hunt. But he liked to do it in comfort. So he dragged his wife and
kids and the servants and the dog up here—in those days it was by private rail and boats and portage—pitched a dozen tents, and oversaw the building of Haudenosaunee.” Russ put the jam on the island top and hitched up onto a stool. “At first it was a big, plain log building, styled like the communal hunters’ lodges that were popping up throughout the mountains.”

  “Sort of like this building,” Clare said.

  “Sort of. Anyway, twenty years later, it was rebuilt in the grand Adirondack style by a van der Hoeven trying to please his pretty young wife. There are pictures in the historical society—I guess the best way to describe it was Swiss chalet meets twig Gothic.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Did what work?”

  “Did he please his young wife?”

  “She couldn’t have been that impressed, because she took off for Europe with their son and stayed there for the next few decades.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “Well, the son returned from Europe right before the First World War broke out.”

  “Good timing.”

  “This would have been Eugene’s . . . let me see . . . greatgrandfather. Can’t remember his name.”

  “You’re really good with all this local history.”

  He smiled like a shyly pleased schoolboy. “I did a report on it in high school. Even then, I was into old houses.” Russ had extensively rebuilt his Greek Revival farmhouse. The house where he and his wife live, she reminded herself.

  “That van der Hoeven thought what the place needed was Old World elegance, so he added on turrets and towers and battlements and the like, trying to turn a Swiss-Gothic chalet into a castle. Even in his day, when rich people were building privies shaped like Versailles and carriage houses that looked like the Tower of London, it was considered a great big ugly heap.”

  Clare looked around her at the clean lines of the current Haudenosaunee. “Is that when the family built this house?”

  “No, that came when Eugene’s grandfather tried to modernize the old building. Evidently the older van der Hoeven wasn’t content to merely build castles. He wanted to live in the Middle Ages.” Russ tapped his temple meaningfully.

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “No running water, no electricity, no central heating. He actually disconnected the bathrooms that had been state-of-the-art in 1880 and installed drop toilets.”

  Clare made a face.

  “Yeah. So when his son inherited the place, he decided making the fourteenth century fit for human habitation wasn’t worth the trouble, and he had this house built.”

  “What happened to the old camp?”

  Russ’s blue eyes clouded over. “It burned down.”

  Comprehension dawned. “Is that what happened to Eugene?”

  He nodded. “Whoever says money solves all your problems never met the van der Hoevens.”

  She was climbing onto the stool kitty-corner from Russ when the letter and pamphlet crinkled inside her pocket. Speaking of problems. She pulled them out. “Take a look at this.” She held them out to him. “Have you ever heard of this organization?”

  He scanned the letter and unfolded the brochure. “One of the radical environmentalist groups, right? Like Earth First? Volunteers living in trees, that sort of thing?”

  She shook her head. “More like spiking the trees and then blowing up the loggers’ equipment. The Planetary Liberation Army believes in direct action.”

  “That’d be pretty direct, yeah.” He read the back of the pamphlet. “I don’t see anything here about the Adirondacks. And I’ve never heard of them operating in our area.” He looked up at her. “Where’d you get these?”

  She had thought out her answer when she persuaded Lisa to let her keep the documents. “They were here in the kitchen.” She opened the drawer and tossed the remainder of the pamphlets on the stack of wine crates, just as Lisa had done. “I was opening up drawers, looking for utensils and stuff.” There. Absolute truth. “These are more in the same vein.”

  He ruffled through the brochures. “These could be anybody’s.”

  “The only people who live here are Eugene and Millie. One of whom is now missing.”

  “You think this may have something to do with her disappearance?”

  “She gave them money. It’s not like mailing in your annual donation to the Sierra Club. These folks aren’t sending her a preprinted thank-you letter and a calendar.”

  He glanced at the paper again. “If she’s the outdoorsy, save-the-earth type, she probably gets solicitations from every group under the sun. Lord knows, my mom does.” Russ’s mother was an environmental activist whose various causes and concerns came close to giving her son an ulcer. “Adirondack Conservancy, Stop the Dredging, Mothers Against Nuclear Waste Disposal—Mom supports ’em all. It doesn’t mean that she’s plotting to blow up Nine Mile Point.”

  Clare flipped her hand open. “But what if she were? Millie van der Hoeven, I mean, not your mom.”

  He looked at her skeptically. “And this is based on?” He flapped the brochure at her. “One letter inviting her to talk and a diatribe about the evils of development? That doesn’t make her a terrorist.”

  “I’m not saying she is. But we have this supposedly woods-wise young woman who goes out for a walk after a late dinner. She’s spent every summer of her life right here in these mountains. And she gets lost? On the same day that she’s supposed to sell her family’s land to a multinational wood products corporation?”

  “Which is then signing it over to the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. They’re not going to be clear-cutting the place. They’re going to put a stop to all development. And logging. The PLA people should be doing the happy dance over this. If they know about it.”

  She thought about what Lisa had said. About how being lost in the woods could make a convincing alibi. “It may not have anything to do with Haudenosaunee. Or maybe it does. Maybe she didn’t like the idea of selling off to—what’s the name of the company?”

  “GWP, Inc.”

  “To GWP. Maybe she didn’t trust them to give all the easements or whatever to the conservancy.”

  Russ rolled his eyes. “Maybe she’s being held prisoner by the president of GWP, who’s planning on selling her into white slavery after the signing ceremony tonight. Have you seen that picture of her in the hall? She’s quite a babe.”

  Clare made a face. “You’re impossible.”

  “That’s what Linda says.”

  There was a pause. When Clare spoke again, her voice was quiet. “It could be nothing. But someone ought to be aware of it.”

  He kept his eyes on the letter as he carefully folded it into thirds. “And now I am.” He held it up. “Mind if I keep it?”

  She shook her head. He unsnapped a pocket on the outside of his camo pants and stuffed the papers inside. She tossed open the door to the pantry and snapped the light on. Surprise, surprise, there was an unopened jar of marmalade sitting next to a tin of tea and a box of farina. She turned back to Russ and set the jar next to his blackberry jam, thinking, Why am I bothering with this? A loaded question.

  “I’m sure the team will appreciate your search efforts,” he said.

  She snorted. “This is the problem with letting people know you can cook. I’ll probably be relegated to chef and bottle washer for every rescue they call me in on, for ever and ever, amen.”

  He grinned. “C’mon, Julia Child. I promise I won’t stick you in a kitchen. Let’s ask Eugene if there’s anything else he can tell us about his sister’s disappearance.”

  9:30 A.M.

  Randy didn’t set out from his house intending to drive to the Reid-Gruyn mill. He had woken at nine fresh and clear and full of energy, despite his heavy drinking the night before. His dad had been the same way. He used to tell Randy the secret was to eat lots of protein all the time. He had lived on eggs, chicken, and venison, and if he hadn’t fallen to lung cancer after forty years of a two-pack-a-day habit, he’d probably be p
artying still.

  Randy rolled out of bed, scrubbed the stale smoke and alcohol smell off in the shower, and ate six eggs scrambled for breakfast, accompanied by the frenetic blare of a morning game show. He was going to take his bike into town and retrieve his truck from Mike Yablonski’s. That thought, combined with the noise from the television and the simple necessity of washing, dressing, and making breakfast, all kept the great dark heavy truth of being laid off at bay. It broke through in flashes—when he reached for his motorcycle boots and saw the steel-toed boots he wore lumbering, or when the bills piled on the corner of the kitchen counter caught his eye—but for the most part he moved in a state of deliberate unawareness.

  Oddly enough, it was on his bike, headed into town, that he started to come to grips with it. The wind was whipping around him, the sun shining through the bare branches, swirling trails of fallen leaves marking where he passed. He felt good, and when he felt good, he thought of Lisa, and when he thought of Lisa, he heard her sweet voice, so full of confidence in him. “He’ll find another job. He always does.”

  Shit. He couldn’t let her down.

  It was bad enough she was wasting herself, scrubbing other people’s toilets. He knew she was thinking about a baby. She was nuts about her niece, Maddy—always offering to have the kid over, spending money on cute little dresses for her. Lisa deserved a kid of her own, and she shouldn’t have to leave it at home to go out to work. He wanted to support her, to give her the freedom that his brother-in-law, with his polished shoes and his creases in his pants, couldn’t give his wife.

  God damn, but he had counted on that logging money. He supposed he could try for a team working farther up north, but that would mean moving out for the winter, getting home a few weekends every month if the roads were passable and he wasn’t too exhausted to drive. He couldn’t do that to her. She needed him. And as the new man on the team, he’d get the shit jobs and the shit hours. With no guarantee that he could come back the next year.

  No, what he needed was a real job again. Regular hours, benefits, something he and Lisa could rely on. And with this thought, his Indian Chief Springfield seemed to turn, of its own accord, onto Route 57, leading him along the river, toward the Reid-Gruyn Pulp and Paper mill.