by Haylen Beck
It was only then that he noticed the blade had not in fact snapped. Rather, the handle had come apart, the halves separating so that the blade came away. He worked the halves with his thumbs, noted how they flexed. Then he sat down on the bottom step, stared at the handle some more. By now, Louise had fallen asleep, and she snored on the mattress. Proper sleep, not the fever-drowse of the last day or so.
He looked back up to the trapdoor, and the blade still lodged by the third screw. A blade and a handle was all he needed, wasn’t it? He simply needed a way to put them together again. At the top of the stairs, he examined the blade itself. He slipped off his T-shirt, wrapped it around his right hand, and reached for the metal. A push and a pull, and it came loose.
The blade’s thick root slotted into the handle easily, so the two halves simply needed to be tightened around it. Something to tie it with. He looked at his feet and saw the laces of his shoes. Less than a minute later he was ready to tie the knife back together. But he paused for a moment. There was a better way, wasn’t there?
Yes. Yes, there was.
He turned the handle sideways so that it formed an inverted T with the blade. The picture formed in his mind: the pieces bound together with his lace, maybe a little more material from his shirt to cushion his hand. It didn’t take long to put together, once he’d made up his mind.
Sean set back to work, the new tool held in his fist, the blade protruding from between his fingers, most of it wrapped in cotton, only an inch or so of the tip exposed. Now he could expend less effort and dig away more wood. Even so, it took hours, but he didn’t mind. Especially when he heard that glorious crack as he pushed up on the door.
At that moment he had known for certain everything was going to be all right.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
He stopped, turned in a circle, looking for a break in the trees. A clearing, a building, a road. Anything at all. There was nothing else to do but walk and hope.
‘Can we stop?’ Louise asked.
‘No,’ he said, his voice harder than he’d intended. ‘Keep up.’
He reminded himself that she was still sick. The worst of the fever had gone, but it had left her weak and tired. He would give her some more antibiotics when they stopped.
‘Is this the wilderness?’ Louise asked.
‘I guess so,’ Sean said.
‘Don’t people die in the wilderness?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Are we going to die?’
‘No,’ Sean said. ‘We’re not.’
They kept walking.
44
AUDRA AIMED THE Glock at Collins’ forehead. ‘Where are they?’
Collins stood in the clearing, her hands raised. ‘I left them here last night. I don’ t—’
‘Where are my children?’
Audra stepped off the porch, advanced toward her, the pistol steady.
‘I swear to God,’ Collins said, ‘I locked the door last night. They were here, I promise you, they—’
Audra’s left hand lashed out, slapped Collins hard. She staggered back at the force of the blow, a red bloom on her cheek.
‘What kind of animal are you?’ Audra said.
Collins put her hands up once more, and once more Audra struck her. And again, this time catching her nose, drawing blood. Danny stepped back, watched with an impassive expression.
‘Get on your knees,’ Audra said.
Collins’ eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘On your knees,’ Audra said, a calmness washing over her. ‘Right now.’
Collins lowered herself to her knees, her hands up, palms facing Audra. ‘Whatever you’re thinking about doing, please don’t.’
‘Shut up,’ Audra said. ‘Look away.’
‘Please,’ Collins said.
Audra curled her finger around the Glock’s trigger, put the muzzle against Collins’ temple.
‘Please don’t,’ Collins said.
Audra looked at Danny.
‘You do what you need to do,’ he said.
‘Oh Christ, oh Jesus,’ Collins whispered, her hands trembling. She brought them together. ‘Oh God, forgive me for my sins.’
A dark stain spread from the crotch of her jeans.
‘Please, Jesus, forgive me. Look after my boy, Lord, please, and my mother. Please, God, have mercy on me.’
Audra watched her pray, imagined the bullet tearing through this woman’s head, her existence spread over the forest floor.
‘Goddamn it,’ she said, and lifted the Glock’s muzzle away from Collins’ head. Then she brought it down again, slammed the butt into her skull. Audra felt the force of it up through her wrist, her arm, into her shoulder.
Collins collapsed forward, her eyelids flickering, a rivulet of dark red snaking past her ear to her jaw. She muttered something incomprehensible into the pine needles.
Danny looked at Audra from the other side of the clearing. ‘What now?’ he asked.
Audra turned in a circle, studying the faint currents of mist between the trees. ‘We look for my children.’
‘Out here?’ Danny came to her side. ‘They could be anywhere by now.’
‘Then how do we find them?’
Danny pointed at Collins, still half conscious on the ground. ‘We take her back to town. Hand her over to Mitchell. They can organize a search, now we know where to concentrate it.’
‘That’s two hours back the way we came,’ Audra said. ‘God knows how long to get Mitchell and the state cops to move.’
She turned in a circle once more, wondering which way they might have gone. If they knew where it was, surely they would have headed for the trail and followed it to the road? She strained her eyes, looking for something, anything.
Audra stopped. What was that? Something had snagged her eye. She turned back again, slowly, seeking it out, whatever it was. Look, look, look.
There.
A glimpse of pink against the brown carpet of needles. She lost it again as the breeze moved the lower branches of the trees, obscuring the pinpoint of color. Without a word, she set off at a run, into the trees, ducking the low branches, skipping over the roots.
Was it? Could it be?
‘Audra, wait,’ Danny called.
She ignored him, kept running until she came to the spot. And there he was: Gogo. Pine needles clinging to his worn fur, half burying him. Audra stopped, breathless and dizzy, got down on her knees, reached for the old stuffed rabbit. The raggedy old thing, she’d wanted to throw it in the garbage so many times, but Louise wouldn’t let her.
Audra brought Gogo to her nose and mouth, inhaled, let Louise’s scent fill her head.
‘Oh God,’ she said, feeling the heat in her eyes. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m coming for you.’
She turned her head, saw Danny picking his way through the trees toward her.
‘They went this way,’ she said. ‘We can follow them.’
A noise from back in the clearing, an animal groan. Danny spun on his heels, Audra peered past him. She saw Collins stumble for the trees on the other side, her arms out for balance, wavering from side to side.
‘Shit,’ Danny said, making after her, drawing a revolver from his waistband.
‘Leave her,’ Audra said.
Danny slowed, but didn’t stop. ‘The keys are in the car. She gets it, she’ll leave us stranded out here.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Audra said. ‘Let her go.’
Danny halted, looked back to Audra.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s Gogo. She dropped him. They went this way.’
He started to walk back to her. ‘But how long ago?’
‘Don’t you see?’ Audra asked, running her fingers over Gogo’s fur, feeling fresh tears on her cheeks. ‘He’s dry. Everything else is covered in dew. Gogo’s dry. It means it wasn’t long ago. If we follow them, we can find them.’
Danny came to her, hunkered down, brushed Gogo’s fur with his fingertips.
‘
Then I guess we’d better move,’ he said.
45
SEAN FELT LIKE his legs could carry him no further. His feet ached, and he could feel the moist heat of blisters inside his socks. It had become a constant struggle to keep Louise moving. It seemed every twenty yards she would demand to rest, sitting down on the pine needles, whether he told her to or not. Twice he had shouted at her, another time he had hauled her up by her arm, and each time she had cried hacking, bitter sobs.
‘I don’t want to be mean,’ he’d said, ‘but we have to keep walking.’
And so they had journeyed for at least another hour, maybe more, the ground sometimes rising, sometimes falling. Sean had no sense of which direction they were headed, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember if the sun travelled east-to-west or the other way around. All he could do was make a point of keeping the sun at his right shoulder, knowing at least it was one constant direction.
‘I’m not walking anymore,’ Louise called from behind.
Sean turned to see her flop down on the ground once more. He trudged back and sat down beside her.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Five minutes, that’s all. Then we need to go.’
He pulled a water bottle from the bag, unscrewed the cap, and offered it to her. She took it and swallowed, before handing it back. He took a mouthful, washed it around his teeth and tongue, then stowed the bottle away.
‘I’m not walking anymore today,’ Louise said. She ran her fingers through the browned pine needles, making small tracks.
‘We have to,’ Sean said.
‘No, we don’t. We can make a camp and walk some more tomorrow.’
‘How can we make a camp?’ he asked. ‘We don’t have a tent.’
‘You can make a shelter out of branches,’ she said. ‘I saw it on TV.’
‘I don’t know how to do that. It’ll get cold out here tonight.’
‘Then we can make a fire.’
‘I don’t know how to do that, either. You know, we’re way up high here, like in the mountains. There might be bears. And mountain lions. Maybe wolves, I don’t know.’
‘Shut up,’ Louise said, pouting.
‘It’s true,’ he said.
‘No, it’s not. How come I didn’t see any?’
‘Because they mostly come out at night. That’s why we have to keep moving till we find help. We don’t want to be out here when the bears and the wolves wake up.’
‘You’re telling lies, and I’m going to tell Mom when she comes to get us.’
Sean reached out, took her hand, even though it stung his raw palm. They’d held hands a lot over the last few days. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d held hands. Probably not since she was a toddler.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ he said. ‘You remember you asked me earlier, were we going to die out here in the wilderness? I said no, right?’
Louise nodded, sniffed, wiped her nose on her forearm.
‘I was lying then,’ Sean said. ‘Truth is, we might. If we don’t keep moving, if we don’t find help, then we might die out here. Maybe not tonight, but tomorrow, or the next day. We’ll die and we’ll never see Mom again.’
Louise began to cry, her face red, shoulders hitching.
‘I’m not saying it just to be mean,’ he said. ‘I just need you to understand why we have to keep walking. So we can find help, someone who can call Mom, or even take us to her. You want to see Mom again, don’t you?’
Louise sniffed and said, ‘Yeah.’
‘Then we need to keep walking. You ready?’
She wiped her hand across her eyes and said, ‘Yeah.’
‘All right, then. Let’s go.’
Sean got to his feet, helped Louise to hers. He went to move off, but she tugged at his hand. When he turned back to her, she wrapped her arms around his middle, pressed her face into his chest.
‘I love you,’ she said.
He embraced her and said, ‘I love you too.’
They set off, walked hand-in-hand through the trees, the sun still at Sean’s right shoulder. Somewhere along the way, they began to sing. Nursery rhymes, songs he hadn’t sung since kindergarten, and he belted them out now, hearing his own voice echoing through the forest. Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-aye-ee-aye-o, Bingo was his name-o, and more. Sean went light-headed, not enough air for singing this high up, but he didn’t care. He sang anyway, as loud as he could.
He lost track of time as they journeyed on, so he had no idea of the hour when the trees thinned and he saw clear air up ahead.
‘What’s that?’ Louise asked.
‘Dunno,’ he said, quickening his step, pulling his sister behind him. He would have run if he could. Moments later, they stepped out of the trees, Sean expecting to see another clearing. But this was something entirely different.
They stood at the top of a shallow slope, weeds and grass leading down to a flat surface that went on and on. Like a frying pan, sloping sides and a flat bottom, but it wasn’t round. It was more like a vague oval, and it stretched as far to his left and right as he could see. Directly in front he could see the other side of the basin, and yet more trees. Between here and there, an expanse of bald cracked earth, like some alien landscape from a space story.
‘What is it?’ Louise asked.
‘I think it used to be a lake,’ Sean said. ‘But it’s all dried up.’
‘Where did all the water go?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Evaporated, I guess.’
‘I know what that is,’ Louise said, sounding pleased with herself. ‘It’s when the sun sucks up all the water, then it turns to rain someplace else.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I guess that’s what happened.’
A movement caught Sean’s eye, off in the distance, above the trees. A great bird circling over the pines. He shielded his eyes with his hand, peered at the wide wings that barely moved as it glided in a wide arc. It seemed so far away, yet it was so big. Its body and wings a deep dark brown, its head pure white, along with its delta-shaped tail.
He pointed. ‘You know what that is?’
‘What?’
‘It’s a bald eagle,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure it is.’
‘It’s big,’ she said.
‘Yeah. You know how lucky we are? They’re rare. Most people never ever see one out in the wild. Look, it’s going to land.’
They both watched as it glided to the top of one of the tallest pines, Sean guessed at least a mile away, maybe more. The eagle slowed itself, its wings drawn up, its feet extended. The pine swayed under the weight of it, side to side.
Above the tree, high in the air, the faintest ribbon of gray, no more than a wisp.
Sean shielded his eyes, squinted, tried to focus.
Was it? Yes. Yes, it was.
‘Smoke,’ Sean said, and a giddy laugh escaped him.
‘What?’
‘There’s smoke. Somebody made a fire. Somebody’s there.’
He tightened his grip on Louise’s hand, started down the slope to the dry lakebed, the ghostly finger of smoke fixed in his sight.
46
THEY MARCHED ACROSS the street, Showalter leading, a uniformed patrolman by his side. He carried the warrant in his hand. Mitchell followed, Whiteside beside her, his brain feeling like it was about to burst out through his ears. His eyes felt gritty with fatigue, and he was conscious of the jitteriness of his movements.
‘Jesus, you look like shit,’ Showalter had said when Whiteside had arrived at the station twenty minutes before. He’d barely had time to change into his uniform and hadn’t shaved. A splash of cold water on his face did no good at all.
Whiteside had been tempted to say something, maybe slap the stupid cop, but he held it in check. He knew he wasn’t in his right mind and liable to make rash decisions. And he couldn’t afford mistakes right now.
It had taken hours to find the key to Collins’ motorcycle. He’d walked in circles, taking baby steps, shining his flashlight int
o the grit and the scrub, wary of finding a snake instead of the key. A rattler or a coral could make a bad situation a hell of a lot worse. It wasn’t until the sun came up above the mountains that he finally saw the glint of metal in a place he had checked at least a dozen times previously. He had giggled when he found it, and he had clamped his hand over his mouth, hearing the madness in his own laughter.
He had to hold it together. Just had to.
But he could feel himself coming undone. He knew it would only take someone to pull at the right thread and he would unravel.
Hold it together, he thought.
The money was surely gone now, there was no helping that. But he was still a free man, and he meant to keep it that way. He just had to take care of a few things. The first was the woman. Once Showalter served the warrant and got her back into custody, Whiteside simply needed to find a way to get her on her own. Then he would get a strip of bed sheet, a belt, maybe even the leg of her pants, and put it around her neck, string her up to something. People killed themselves in their cells all the time. She could do the same.
But they had to arrest her first.
Showalter knocked on the front door of the guesthouse. The pale shape of Mrs Gerber already waited on the other side of the glass, like a ghost haunting the hallway. She opened it a crack and peered out.
‘Ma’am,’ Showalter said, ‘I have a warrant here for the arrest of Audra Kinney. This warrant allows me to enter these premises and—’
‘She’s not here,’ Mrs Gerber said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I came down for my breakfast this morning and found the back door open, and the gate out of the yard. I went out there and found my keys lying in the alley. Then I went back in and checked that lady’s room, and she was gone. Just left everything and went.’
Mitchell turned to look at Whiteside, a look of suppressed rage on her face.