To Darkness and to Death

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  At that moment, a woman with dark blond hair and reddened eyes appeared in the waiting room entrance. “Mom? Dad?” She hurried toward her parents, her arms open.

  “How is she? Have you seen the doctor yet?”

  “Just for a moment,” Suzanne said. “She’s in surgery now. She was bleeding internally.” Her soft features crumpled. She leaned her head on her daughter’s shoulder and began to cry.

  The woman—Bonnie, Clare guessed—looked over her mother’s head to her father. “What happened?”

  “Internal injuries consistent with assault,” Ed said, his voice low and hard. “You know what that means? Some bastard beat the crap out of her. Broke her ribs and busted her up inside and left her on one of my logging roads up to Haudenosaunee. One of my roads.” Ed Castle bowed his head again, exposing his shiny skull and thread-fine silver hair. A penitent, hopelessly seeking forgiveness. “It was my fault.” His voice broke. “I should never have sent her up to Haudenosaunee alone. I knew that other girl was missing. But I was too damn full of myself to give her the lousy damn insurance papers.”

  His wife, still weeping, broke free of her daughter and laid her hands over his shoulders. “It wasn’t your fault, Ed. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was!” Ed Castle stood abruptly, walking around them in short, jerky steps, propelled by the galvanic force of his pain. “Who told her she had to see Eugene van der Hoeven? Me!”

  Okay. At least this thorn she could pull. “Becky wasn’t hurt when she went to see Eugene van der Hoeven,” Clare said, projecting her voice just enough to arrest Ed Castle’s attention.

  “What?” He turned to her.

  “I was there. I saw the confrontation. Things got very tense, yes, but Becky walked away unhurt. In fact,” Clare smiled crookedly, “she was full of what my grandmother would have called ‘spit and vinegar.’ Yelling at Eugene that she would be coming back and he couldn’t stop her.”

  Bonnie and Suzanne bumped together and wrapped their arms around each other. Ed Castle squinted at Clare. “What do you mean, things got tense?”

  Clare hesitated, uneasy. She hadn’t even had a chance to tell Russ about Eugene’s behavior that morning. “You know. Some conflict. Some shouting. Eugene wouldn’t let her into the house.”

  “Did he . . . did he lay hands on her?”

  “Good Lord, no. He did . . . okay, he did point a rifle at her. Ordered her off his land. But I swear, nothing happened. He was overwrought, she was overwrought. She left, he put the gun back in its case, that was the end of it.”

  “When was this?”

  “Midmorning. About an hour after you left, I guess.”

  Ed’s bald head flushed red. Bright spots appeared high on his cheekbones. “I sent her to get insurance papers from Eugene this afternoon. At lunchtime.”

  A ghastly silence filled the waiting room. No one moved. Ed stared sightlessly into nothing. “Eugene van der Hoeven,” he whispered. He blinked. A tear spilled over his cheek. Clare thought, It’ll be all right, it’s grief, it’s just grief, but then Ed’s face crumpled into a tinfoil ball of rage.

  “Eugene van der Hoeven!” he snarled. “I’ll kill the bastard! I’ll kill him!” Then he was gone, pounding down the hallway.

  Suzanne Castle screamed. Clare turned toward her. She was crumpled in Bonnie’s arms, wailing. Her daughter looked at Clare through a swamp of disbelief. “I’ll get him,” Clare said.

  She sprinted toward the elevator, but it had closed and was already descending by the time she skidded to a stop in front of it. “Stairs?” she shouted to an unnerved technician. He pointed toward the end of the hall. She thundered past him, dodged an elderly lady in a walker, and whipped the heavy door open. Down the stairs she thunked, two at a time, until she reached the first floor. She flung the door open, spotted Ed crossing the lobby, charged toward him, and slipped and fell on a sopping-wet piece of tile flooring. She hit with enough force to knock the breath from her body. The first thing she saw, when she levered herself up on one elbow, was a bright yellow plastic floor sign. piso mojado, it warned her.

  “Holy cow, I’m sorry!” A young man in janitorial green sloshed his mop into a bucket and reached to help her to her feet. He had the wide-spaced eyes and curving cheeks of Down’s syndrome, knit into a look of fierce remorse. “I shoulda put the sign closer to the elevator before I started cleaning the mess. Are you okay?”

  Clare squeezed his hand. “It’s my fault. I was running not looking where I was going.” Her backside was damp and smelled—she sniffed—bad.

  “A little kid threw up,” he confided. “It’s still pretty stinky.”

  She squeezed his hand again. “Gotta go.” She took off, his warning trailing after her: “Don’t run!”

  She dodged past visitors and patients being discharged, shoving against the automatic-opening doors in a hurry to get outside, but once she had stumbled out of the lobby foyer and into the cool sunlight, she couldn’t catch a glimpse of Ed Castle.

  She mentally reeled off a string of curses. She abandoned the idea of racing to the visitor parking lot in the hopes of spotting his SUV. It wasn’t as if she could stop him once he was behind the wheel. Call the police. That was the best thing she could do.

  She slapped her pockets. She had left her cell phone in the car. She loped to the admissions desk, leaving a trail of wrinkled noses behind her. Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, looked at her with unconcealed dismay.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “Pay phones are over there.” Murray pointed across the lobby.

  “I don’t have any change on me. It’s an emergency.”

  Murray opened her mouth, then paused. Her lip curled. “What is that smell?”

  “The phone?”

  “The admissions phone is not for the use of hospital visitors or patients.”

  “Look.” Clare leaned over the desk. “Here’s the deal. You let me use the phone, and I won’t hang around you smelling like baby barf for the rest of your shift.”

  Murray hooked the phone in her fingers and slid it across the desk.

  Clare dialed Russ’s cell number. It rang once.

  “Hello.”

  She closed her eyes at the sound of his voice. “It’s me,” she said.

  She could hear him smile. “Hey, you.”

  “Are you anywhere near Haudenosaunee?”

  “No, I’m at the Washington County Hospital.”

  She stared at the phone. “Are you here to talk to the Castles?”

  “How do you know about the Castles? Where are you?” he asked.

  “In the lobby of the Washington County Hospital.”

  He made a noise that might have been a snort. “I’m headed that way from the ER. I’ll be there in thirty seconds. I take it I’ll recognize you by your all-black outfit accessorized by a classic white collar?”

  “No, but don’t worry. Unless you have a head cold, you won’t be able to miss me. Bye.” She hung up.

  Murray pounced on the phone. “That didn’t sound like any emergency to me.”

  Only the sight of Russ emerging from the hallway stopped Clare from telling Holli Murray, LPN, CMA, what she thought of her little admissions Nazi routine. She left the woman wiping down the receiver and crossed the lobby to his side.

  “Cell phones. You gotta love ’em.” He grinned at her. “You look like you came straight from the search party. How did you know about—” He paused. Sniffed. “What in God’s name is that smell?”

  “Don’t ask.” She sketched in her involvement with the young woman she had thought was Millie van der Hoeven and with the Castles. When she got to the part where she spilled the beans about Eugene and Becky’s confrontation, Russ frowned.

  “How come I haven’t heard this before?”

  “I was going to call you. It’s been kind of a crazy day.”

  “Jesus, you can say that again.” He winced. “Sorry.”

  She flipped the blasphemy away. “This is why I was calling you. Wh
en Ed heard about what happened, he just about bust his gut. He ran out looking like the wrath of God, swearing he was going to kill Eugene van der Hoeven. Eugene might not even be at Haudenosaunee—I told him the injured girl was his sister, and I doubt anyone called him from the hospital to tell him otherwise. Did you?”

  Russ shook his head.

  “I was worried Ed might be a threat to Eugene. Was I overreacting?”

  Russ looked down at her. “No. Ed Castle’s been known to have a temper. You don’t run a successful logging business for forty years by always being Mr. Nice Guy.” He glanced at his watch. “Tell Suzanne there’ll be an officer in to speak with her and to gather as much information as possible about Becky.”

  She nodded. “I’ll stay with them until Becky’s out of surgery.”

  “Okay. I better head out and stop Ed before he does something stupid.”

  “I’m going to get my phone from my car. Will you call me? Let me know what’s happening?”

  His weight already shifting away from her, ready to go, he paused. He looked at her, looked into her, his blue eyes full of words he wouldn’t say. He nodded.

  Then he was gone, leaving her with the work she had to do.

  1:35 P.M.

  Shaun Reid crouched, frozen, next to the garden cart, as the footsteps crunched closer and closer.

  “Is anybody home?” a man called. Shaun ducked his head, as if averting his eyes could keep him invisible. The footsteps paused. Shaun held his breath. Then he heard the man walking away. He listened as the sound of stones scattering beneath his shoes grew fainter and fainter. There was another noise, he thought—a door opening? He pushed the cart silently forward, one foot, two feet, four. Then he heard the footsteps again, not moving toward him, but heavier somehow, as if the walking man were carrying a load. Shaun waited, unmoving, until he heard the distant noise of a car engine firing up.

  He stood and stretched, and when he was limber again, he trundled the cart swiftly through the forest, its hard rubber wheels rolling over root and stone effortlessly. By the time he reached the old camp, he was overheated, sweating, and anxious to be done with the job.

  He left the cart at the tower door, stripping off his jacket and tossing it inside before climbing up the stairs. They seemed even narrower and darker than they had the first time. If he had to spend much more time here, his touch of claustrophobia would flare into a full-blown panic. But not yet. He still had to get the girl out of the tower.

  He was smiling grimly at that turn of phrase when he reached the wooden door to her cell. He dug the oversized key from his pocket and, mindful of how she had knocked her brother ass-end over teakettle, he turned the key, kicked the door open, and stepped back into the gallery landing.

  Nothing. He walked into the room. Millie van der Hoeven sat Japanese style against the far wall. She had somehow moved the contents of the backpack, the empty sandwich wrappers and apple core testifying to her ability to eat while her hands were tied behind her back.

  She stared at him. He could see a resemblance to the unscarred half of her older brother—the pale skin, the fair hair. Her eyes, swollen and rimmed with red, were the same cool blue-gray. She said nothing. She stared at him.

  “I’m taking you out of here,” he said, his voice loud in the silence. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She didn’t react. “I’m going to move you to someplace where you’ll be safe.”

  Her face shifted minutely, from blankly hostile to scornful. Shaun spoke more loudly, as if volume could convince her of his sincerity. “I’m going to keep you overnight. That’s all. I don’t know what your brother was up to or what he thought he was protecting you from, but I promise you, no harm will come to you. You’ll be free to go in the morning.”

  He wasn’t sure if this was a lie or not.

  He crossed the floor cautiously. He had already seen she could move, despite being bound. There was a lavender blanket crumpled beneath one of the arrow-slit windows, and he picked it up. He shook it out so it trailed across the floor.

  “I’m going to roll you in this so it’s easier to get you down the stairs. I don’t want to hurt you, so let’s make this easy on both of us.”

  She sat. Stared.

  He approached her in a defensive posture, low, arms out, blanket clutched between his hands. Her head turned to follow him as he enclosed her in the blanket, but she remained as she had been, silent. Motionless. He wrapped both ends around her in a gesture that reminded him uncomfortably of a lover helping his beloved into her coat, or a father wrapping his child in a towel.

  She sank her teeth into his arm.

  “Jesus Christ!” he screamed. She wouldn’t let go. The pain was blinding. He smacked her head almost by accident, trying something, anything, to make the hurt go away. He jarred her, but she bit deeper, so he balled his free hand into a fist and slammed it into her temple, once, twice, three times.

  She pitched to the floor. Blood poured from his upper bicep, staining his expensive shirt and dropping on his made-in-Bermuda pants. He staggered to his feet, pressing his other hand against the wound, blood smearing his fingers. “God Damn!” he spat out. He had never hit a woman in his life, but right now he could cheerfully kick the shit out of the blonde crumpled over the blanket. Instead, he took advantage of her temporary acquiescence and, grabbing her shoulder, hauled her onto the blanket.

  She moaned and stirred feebly. He let go of his arm and tossed the edge of the blanket over her, wedging it under her body before rolling her up tight. In a moment, she was trussed like Cleopatra in the fabled rug.

  “Let me go,” she said, her voice raspy.

  “So you can snack on my other limbs? Fat chance.” He bent to her and heaved her over his shoulder in a firefighter’s carry. The exertion caused a fresh gout of blood to swell out of his arm. Balancing her with both hands, he could feel drops running into his armpit. He walked, stiff-legged, to the door.

  She grunted and writhed inside the blanket, thrashing her legs in an attempt to hit some part of him. He slapped her butt through the layers of fabric. “I’m going to tell you this once,” he said, “so listen up. We’re going down the stairs. They’re steep and twisty, and some of them are in none too good condition. If you try to escape or hurt me, I’m dropping you. I want you alive and whole, but I’m not going to risk my neck to keep you that way.”

  She stilled. “I’ll get you, you bastard,” she hissed. Carefully, slowly, he began his descent. The treads creaked and complained beneath the double weight. Millie’s body remained still, but her mouth ran at full speed, growling out a series of threats and warnings and accusations. His arm throbbed and his legs shook and he had shooting pains from his lower back.

  Trembling, he emerged from the tower. He stumbled to the garden cart and dumped the woman in, ignoring her shriek and the thump as her head hit the wooden side. He shoved her into a rough fetal position.

  “Stay there,” he ordered.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Christ,” he muttered, picking up the handle and setting off toward the woods. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Stockholm syndrome? Don’t you know enough to ingratiate yourself with someone who has the power of life and death over you?” The weird thing was, when he said it, he realized he meant it. Not that he would kill her, of course—he wasn’t a monster—but that really, truly, he had the power. “I could do anything to you,” he said, trying out the idea. “And nobody would know.”

  She shut up after that.

  He bumped her along the now-familiar trail. When he got near the house, he paused and listened for any signs that they weren’t alone. He was too tired and wrung out to remain at the peak of alertness, though, and after a few seconds of silence, he rolled the cart onto the gravel drive, heading for his Mercedes.

  His Mercedes. Crap. Whoever had been up here earlier must have seen his car. He shut his eyes, his temples pounding. Okay. Some variables were out of his control. He would have to accept that and move on.

 
; He retrieved his car keys—smearing more blood on his pants—and popped the trunk. “I’m putting you into the trunk of my car,” he said to the girl. “I’m going to drive you to a secure location. I expect it will be uncomfortable, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “You can let me go,” she said, her voice bitter.

  Shaun ignored her. He slid her tightly wrapped form forward until he could hoist her over his shoulder. As he heaved her into place, he heard her whimper, an admission of fear too great to be contained. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, angry that she kept misinterpreting his actions, that she had put him in this position by refusing to believe that her brother had been the villain here, not him.

  He dumped her into the trunk. He had time to notice her eyes, wide with terror, before he slammed the lid down. He pushed the cart into the garage, retrieved his jacket—the only item of clothing he had not fouled with his own blood—and made his way back to the car. His legs were shaking as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He started the ignition, and k.d. lang began singing, “Black coffee . . .” He glanced at the clock. He had arrived at Haudenosaunee an hour ago. An hour. For a moment, he could almost believe he had gone back in time. There was his water bottle in the cup holder. There was his phone plugged into the recharger, and his CD case on the passenger seat. As if nothing had ever happened.

  Then he heard a thump from the trunk, and his arm throbbed in response. He pulled on his jacket, covering most of the bloody marks, and started down the long dirt road. The wine bottles in the backseat clunked against each other, k.d. lang kept on singing about walking the floor at 3:00 A.M., and he nearly wept with relief when he pulled out onto the highway blacktop.

  Glancing into his rearview mirror as he drove down the highway, he glimpsed a brutish SUV with a bike rack muzzling its grill turning into the entrance to Haudenosaunee. He lifted his foot off the gas, staring into the mirror. No mistake. Someone else was headed for Haudenosaunee. He caught his breath. That was the margin that separated success from failure. A minute. Maybe less.