by Harvey Click
Amy sat with her back to them and drank, wishing that she had a pack of cigarettes, then relieved that she didn’t, then wishing again that she did. As she did at least once every day, she called Billy’s number and let it ring until it went to voice mail. She didn’t bother leaving a message; she had left dozens of them already.
She refilled her glass. Though it was too sweet, the cheap Chablis was cold and refreshing. She told herself she should be trying to make sense out of all that had happened to her in Blackwood, but she didn’t want to think about it. Right now she wanted peace and quiet, a respite from the nightmares back there.
She thought about Mark, the ex-fiancé whom she had dumped a month ago when she found out that he had knocked up one of his college students. As she always did when she thought of him, she hoped that his pregnant mistress would turn into an intolerable shrew the moment he married her, and she hoped that their child had two heads. On the other hand, if by some miracle he showed up right now she thought she’d be tempted to ask him to spend the night with her. Partly because she would feel safer with some company and partly because she was lonely and horny.
Or maybe she just missed his dog. She refilled her glass and slapped a mosquito that had made it through her thick shield of repellent. The sun was mostly down now, leaving just a deep lavender glow above the hills. The family at the other end had finally carried their things inside, quarrelling the whole time, so Amy, who had kept her back to them, turned around on her bench.
And gasped. A man was sitting at the table behind the middle cabin, staring at her. He was bald, broad shouldered, and dressed all in gray with a gray suit jacket over a gray shirt, despite the heat. In the twilight even his eyes looked gray.
When she saw him, he just kept staring. After a minute or two he lifted a bottle of beer from the table and sipped from it, but his eyes didn’t leave her for a moment.
Amy’s first impulse was to go inside, but then she realized she would feel even more uncomfortable in the cabin because she wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing. She was tempted to bring the shotgun out and set it on her table as a warning, but of course that would be silly—he was probably just some rude yokel staring at a pretty young woman so he’d have something to think about later when he whacked off. Still, it gave her comfort to know that the Mossberg was lying there on the table in the kitchenette, and if he suddenly came after her she’d be able to get to it before he got to her.
Unless he moved really fast.
So she sat there and let him stare. She tried to ignore him, but even when she was looking away she could tell that he never stopped staring, and whenever she looked back his eyes were aimed straight at her. Once in a while he would pick up his beer bottle and sip, but aside from that he didn’t move a muscle. His broad shoulders didn’t move, his bald head didn’t move, his gray eyes didn’t move. Many times she considered saying, “Would you please stop staring at me,” but he seemed like a panther ready to strike, and she was afraid that a single word from her might set him in motion.
The twilight had completely faded by the time her wine bottle was empty, and now the man in gray was barely visible in the faint moonlight, but she knew he was still staring. Clutching the bottle by its neck so she could use it as a weapon if necessary, she stood up carefully, as if any sudden move might set him off. It was difficult not to run to the door, but she moved slowly and deliberately until she was inside.
She propped one kitchen chair against the knob of the back door and the other against the knob of the front door. No doubt he could kick them open, but not quietly. Though the cabin was still hot, she shut and locked all the windows except the two in the bedroom; they were small enough that she didn’t believe the big man would be able to fit through them, and she needed some air. Luckily all the windows had opaque drapes that seemed to be cut from old brown sheets.
There was one rear window in the kitchenette and one more in the bedroom, but when she lifted their drapes she couldn’t see the picnic table where he sat. She brought the Mossberg into the bathroom with her, and when she was done there she brought it to the bedroom and laid it on the bed. She shut the door, scooted the small bureau against it, shut off the bedroom lamp, and lifted each drape to make sure he wasn’t prowling around.
He didn’t seem to be. It was too hot even for the T-shirt that she usually wore while sleeping, so she undressed completely and lay down nude with her shotgun and cellphone beside her.
The wine had made her sleepy. She was starting to drift when the phone rang. She grabbed it, hoping by some miracle it was Billy, but the screen showed a local number she didn’t recognize. She pushed the button to answer it but said nothing.
“Amy?” asked a quiet male voice.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Shane Malone. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I’m awake,” she said, though she was aware her voice sounded thick with wine and sleep.
“Are you home or still on the road?” he asked.
She hesitated, half awake, half drunk, and confused. “Home,” she said.
“Home meaning Columbus or home meaning Billy’s house?” he asked.
“How do you know where I live?”
“Google. It tells me all sorts of things about you. I see you got a bachelor’s degree from OSU. I know your address and I know where you work. I apologize for snooping, but once it’s online it’s public information for anyone to see, friend or foe.”
“Which are you?”
“If I said friend, why should you believe me?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “You shouldn’t trust anyone around here, so there’s no reason why you should trust me. But I hope you’ll trust me when I say that I sincerely hope you’re back in Columbus.”
“Yes, I’m there,” she said. “Here, I mean.”
He hesitated and then said, “I hope so. I couldn’t talk earlier with people around, but I wanted to make you an offer. I was afraid you’d hang around here to hunt for Billy’s cooking shed, since everybody’s saying he blew himself up in it.”
“What do you know about his shed?”
“Nothing really. I don’t even know if he even had one. But I’m a bartender, and bartenders hear whatever people are talking about.”
“What else have you heard?”
“Nothing useful. But here’s my offer. Since you were smart enough to go home instead of hanging around to see if there’s a shed with his body in it, then with your permission I’ll go back there and have a look for you.”
“I think we’ve already established that I shouldn’t trust you.”
“True, but you can trust my camera. If I find a shed I’ll send you pictures. And if there’s a body in the shed, I’ll send you pictures of that too.”
“Maybe you’ll get arrested for trespassing,” she said.
“Maybe so,” he said. “Laws don’t matter much around here, but if you text me permission to prowl around on your property, that should at least make it legal.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”
She suddenly sat up in the bed. There had been a noise outside her rear window like fingernails scratching on wood or maybe on the window screen. She put the phone down, grabbed the shotgun, crept toward the window, and used the muzzle to pull the drape aside.
Two raccoons were on top of the picnic table, scrabbling for bread crumbs. The moonlight was stronger now, and she saw a third raccoon on the ground beside the table. She peered carefully into the weedy yard and saw nothing else moving.
She went to the other window and looked out. The forest was close on this side, and it looked vast and hostile, trees, brush and thick shadows crowding up almost against her cabin, countless hiding places for countless predators, countless ways to die.
She went back to bed and picked up her phone, but Shane had hung up. She shut her eyes and felt painfully alone.
Chapter 6<
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When she awoke she had already made up her mind what she was going to do. Maybe she had made the decision while she slept or maybe she had made it somewhere in the back of her mind long before she went to sleep, and now that she had made it she didn’t want to second-guess it or examine it. Some things simply need to be done, regardless of safety or logic.
It was past 9:00. She set up the coffee maker to brew while she showered, her Mossberg leaning against the bathroom wall within easy reach. She made another sandwich and sliced the other tomato and went outside with her food and coffee. Thankfully no one else was out there now. It was already hot, and the sky was slate gray with humidity.
She thought about Shane Malone, wondering if he was friend or foe. Since she didn’t know the answer to that, she couldn’t trust him to do what she needed to do herself.
Morning coffee was when she missed cigarettes most of all, and she wondered if there would ever come a morning when she wouldn’t miss them. Was this how Marci would feel without her meth? Was it how the krokodil woman would feel without her deadly fix? Animals didn’t smoke cigarettes or shoot up; why was the human brain so in need of being in need?
She packed up her things and loaded her car, laying the shotgun in her back seat where she could reach it and covering it with Mark’s old dog blanket so no one could see it. There were no cars in front of the other cabins. Probably the noisy family was already on the lake fishing, though she doubted they would fit in one boat, and probably the man in gray had returned to his asylum.
When she was returning the key, Slim asked her how she had liked the cabin. “It’s okay I guess, but I didn’t like that man in cabin three,” she said. “He kept staring at me when I was sitting out back.”
“There wasn’t no man in cabin three,” Slim said. “Only one other cabin was rented out, and that was to a nice family that wouldn’t stare at nobody. They’re my cousins, and they got real good manners,” he added rather stiffly.
She went across the street and bought the binoculars that she had looked at yesterday. Her nerves began to act up again as she drew closer to Ebbing Road. She had already decided that she would stop at Sam Ebbing’s place and ask for his help. His property line abutted Billy’s, so there was a chance that Sam might have seen Billy’s cooking shed, if one existed. Besides, any time that Billy drove to or from his house he had to drive past Sam’s house, so Sam would know something of his comings and goings and would know when Billy had stopped coming and going.
When Amy was growing up, Mr. and Mrs. Ebbing’s children were already grown and gone, but sometimes a grand-daughter had come to stay with them, and whenever that happened they had invited Amy to their house to play with her. Mrs. Ebbing, who was now dead, had always been warm and friendly to young Amy and nicely generous with her oatmeal cookies. Though Sam had always seemed taciturn and rather stern, Amy believed him to be an honest, decent man who was probably deeply disturbed by the drug makers and dealers who had sprouted up around him, and she thought he’d probably be willing to help her hunt for the shed.
At the very least, she had more reason to trust him than Shane Malone.
She was about a quarter mile from Ebbing Road when she noticed a car in the distance coming toward her, and a moment later was surprised to see it turn onto Ebbing Road. It was a big gray SUV, and immediately behind it another gray SUV turned, then another, and then another.
Amy stopped and waited half a minute, and then eased a little closer to the road. Police Chief Dilkens had said he was going to search Billy’s property; were these SUVs full of his deputies and cronies? But as she neared the road she saw one of them turning into Sam Ebbing’s driveway.
She stopped again and pulled the lens caps from her binoculars. Two of the SUVs were already in his driveway and the other two were following. She waited until they disappeared behind his barn, and then she turned onto the road and stopped again. From here she could see them moving slowly down Sam Ebbing’s lane toward the fields in the back of his property.
She didn’t see Sam or his dog as she drove past his house. Her nerves were on fire now, but so was her curiosity, and she had no intention of turning back. Even if the cars were full of Dilkens and his cronies, she had a right to be on her own property and, maybe even more importantly, she had a shotgun.
She turned into Billy’s driveway and continued straight to the lane, barely glancing at the house. The ruts were deep and the weeds were high, so she drove without using the accelerator and even then often had to tap the brakes. Her father had augmented his income from the Howard Phillips plant by growing soybeans and corn in the fields on either side of her, but now they were given over to weeds.
A little way down the lane she noticed a place where tractor tire marks led into the field on her right. She stopped and looked, wondering why Billy would drive his tractor into a field of weeds. It didn’t look like a good place to build a shed because it wouldn’t be hidden in the winter when the weeds were gone.
She hesitated for a minute or two, then slung the binoculars around her neck, grabbed the shotgun and got out, leaving the car running. She followed the tractor marks for maybe twenty yards and then stared at many acres of marijuana plants.
If the marijuana was any good, and it looked good to her untrained eye, the street value would be tremendous, and even the pre-street value should be enough to let Billy retire as a wealthy man at an early age. In a way she felt relieved; growing marijuana seemed fairly innocent compared to cooking crank, and with the income this one field would yield, it seemed unlikely that he’d feel any need to augment it with meth.
She returned to her car and continued down the lane. The weed fields on either side soon vanished when the terrain became too hilly to farm. Her ascent was steep now, and the rain ruts were running down the lane now instead of across, but Billy’s truck marks were still visible through the thistles and burdock.
There were pine trees and dense shrubs growing on either side of her, and when she finally reached the top of the hill she was in a thick woods, but Billy’s tire marks still threaded a winding path through the trees. It seemed to her he must have cleared the path with a tractor and harrow at some point, and now it was bare except for a carpet of leaves and pine needles.
She stopped when she noticed something glinting through the trees. She put the car in park, switched off her dome light so it wouldn’t shine when she opened her door, got out quietly, and peered through her binoculars.
There was a vehicle parked on the path maybe 40 yards ahead. Billy’s truck? Her heart sank as she realized that if it was, then his body was probably lying somewhere nearby. But no, it looked like a Jeep instead of a pickup. Billy had told her his new truck was white, and this was gun-metal gray.
She quietly got back in her car, backed it up a little ways around a curve in the path where it couldn’t be visible to whoever owned the Jeep, and shut it off. With her binoculars around her neck and her Mossberg grasped in her right hand, she moved carefully from tree trunk to tree trunk, edging closer to the vehicle. When she was fairly close she crouched behind a thick tree and used her binoculars again.
Yes, it was a newish gray Jeep Wrangler with its top up, and there was no one inside it, which meant that whoever owned it was prowling around somewhere and maybe watching her.
She aimed her binoculars in every direction, searching as much of the ground as she could see, but nobody came into view. She had no idea what to do next; if she moved back toward her car, the motion might give her away, but she didn’t want to continue crouching here and let somebody sneak up on her.
A cawing crow caused her to glance up and there, not twenty feet away, a man was sitting in a deer stand partway up a tree. Apparently he hadn’t noticed her, because he was staring in the opposite direction through binoculars. He was dressed in camouflage, and even his head was covered with a camouflage mask. He had a shotgun or rifle strapped across his back, and it too wore a camouflage coating.
She watched him for
several minutes, and the whole time he barely moved a muscle. He was intently gazing east, toward Sam Ebbing’s property, and she wondered what he was looking at. Suddenly from that direction there came the sound of a gas engine, maybe a lawn mower or a garden tiller.
A little distance to the right of the deer stand there was a knoll with a fallen tree lying across it, and she began to inch her way toward it, watching the ground so she wouldn’t snap a twig and also watching the man in the deer stand so she could duck into cover if he turned his head. When she reached the knoll she climbed up the side opposite from the man, where she was well hidden behind the fallen tree.
This was where Billy’s property ended. A few feet in front of her the high hilltop began to slope down into the flat valley that belonged to Sam Ebbing. From her knoll, she had a clear view of his pasture field down there. The four gray SUVs were parked in it, as well as a green pickup that apparently belonged to Ebbing because she saw him sitting in it, smoking his pipe.
A large area in the center of the field had been cleanly mowed, and a number of men dressed in gray were walking around in the short grass, though one of them, an ancient-looking man with thin white hair, was sitting in a wheelchair.
There was a stake driven into the ground with a rope looped around it, and the other end of the rope was attached to a gas-powered lawn edger that one of the men was using to dig a trench, making a circle about thirty feet in diameter around the stake. A man followed him filling the shallow trench with chalk or salt or some other white powder, using the kind of line marker used to mark sports fields. Another man followed him with a broom, carefully sweeping any stray powder into the trench.
When the man with the edger was finished digging his first circle, he let out the rope a few feet and began digging a larger circle around it, and the other man began filling it as well. While they did this, Amy examined the faces of all the men in gray through her binoculars and gasped when she recognized one of them.