by M. K. Wren
Will said, “Maybe you should rest a while, Conan.”
“Maybe I will.”
The thought was appealing as he climbed the steps. He had been too absorbed in the last hour to be conscious of his aching hands and feet, of a pervading weariness. When he reached the second floor, he turned left and opened the first door on the corridor into the room that had been assigned to Will. It was smaller than Conan’s and had a wood stove instead of a fireplace, a single bed instead of a double, but it had its obligatory private bath, and the dormer window on the north would no doubt offer a fine view of Mount Hood, if the curtains weren’t drawn against the frigid, white chaos outside.
Conan put Will’s case in the closet, checked the light switches, then left the room, closing the door and wishing he could lock it to protect the contents of the case. But this hotel did not furnish locks on the doors.
He crossed to his room and went into the bathroom, where the light went out just as he entered. He frowned at that, not because he was surprised at the sudden quenching of the light—that simply meant Kim had turned the generator off—but because he didn’t remember leaving the light on when he left his room this morning. He uncapped the bottle of ibuprofen tablets, swearing at the adult-proof cap that made opening it a painful undertaking, downed four tablets with a glass of water, then looked around the bathroom carefully.
Someone had been here.
At first he couldn’t explain that conviction; the evidence was subtle: one drawer was not quite closed; his shaving kit was zipped shut, and he remembered that he hadn’t zipped it in deference to his tender fingers; a handkerchief lay on the floor, and it had been in the pocket of his robe, which hung on the hook behind the door.
He went into the bedroom and checked the drawer in the bedside table. His gun was still where he had left it, the magazine still full.
His cigarettes and lighter were also in the drawer, and he shook out a cigarette, accepting the flare of pain in his thumb when he lit it. He eyed the bed longingly, but allowed himself only a few puffs on the cigarette as a respite. Two could play the game of invasion of privacy, and he knew he wouldn’t soon have a better opportunity. With any luck, the family would stay near the only heat available—the living room fireplace—for a while. Besides, he had an excuse for being in other people’s rooms: he was supposed to be checking light switches.
He stubbed out the cigarette and went into the hall, paused to listen, hearing indistinct voices from below, then padded down the hall in his scuffs to Mark and Tiff’s room, next to his on the west.
The door was open, and he left it that way. This room was larger than his, with the fireplace on the left wall, the bed on the right, the bath in the far right corner, but the decor was essentially the same. He dutifully checked the switch by the door, found it in the ON position, and turned it off. For a moment he surveyed the room, knowing he couldn’t risk the time for a thorough search, trying to guess where he was most likely to find what he was looking for.
What he was looking for were three small items that could be hidden almost anywhere: a radio detonator, which might be no larger than a remote control for a television; a pill bottle labeled NITROSTAT; and a small-caliber gun. And all three could have been tossed out a window, where they would now be buried under a yard of snow. He had no illusions that he was likely to find them, but he had to try.
He began in the bathroom, noting that Tiff traveled with a small cosmetic boutique as well as a stock of vitamins and herbal medicines and a prescription for Valium, and that Mark took medication for hypertension and ulcers.
Next, he tried the closet. Most of the space was taken up with a colorful array of feminine apparel, with only a small space left for Mark’s conservative pants and jackets. Conan knelt to check the shoes, then felt through every pocket in every garment. In the breast pocket of the blazer that Mark had been wearing when he arrived Friday, Conan found a slip of paper from a memo pad. Printed at the top were the words ACE TIMBER AND WOOD PRODUCTS, INC. A telephone number was scrawled in blue ink below the heading: 503-1212.
Conan memorized the number and returned the memo to the pocket, then took time to go to the door to listen. Hearing nothing to indicate that anyone was approaching, he turned his attention to the chest of drawers by the windows. Mark’s billfold lay on top of the chest next to Tiff’s patched saddlebag of a purse. Conan went through both, but found nothing more unusual than the antique silver flask in the purse. It was half full of vodka.
The drawers were equally disappointing, as were the drawers in the desk and in the tables on either side of the bed. Four pieces of luggage were stacked near the closet, but they were all empty. Conan got down on the floor to look under every piece of furniture, then turned the pillows down, and finally moved around the bed lifting the mattress enough to feel under it.
Finally, his fingers pulsing with pain, he restored the bed and went to the door. He stood listening, facing the closed door across the hall: the master bedroom; A. C. and Kim’s room. He wondered why Kim had been so quick to assure him that she had turned off the lights in that bedroom. My room, she had said.
Then he hurriedly stepped back into Tiff and Mark’s room. Someone was coming up the steps.
But remembering that he had an excuse, however flimsy, to be in other people’s rooms, he emerged into the hall just as Loanh reached the top step. She turned to her left and walked away from him, apparently without seeing him, then made another left turn into the room beyond Will’s. He didn’t hear the door close. After a moment, he started down the hall, slowing as he passed her door. She was bending over a suitcase open on the window seat, her back to the door.
A pace or so farther down the hall on the right was another closed door: Lucas and Demara’s room. Conan went inside. The room was almost a mirror image of his own, but the bed was unmade, every chair and flat surface cluttered with apparel, both masculine and feminine. He checked the light switches, but didn’t attempt a search. Not with Loanh so near. He closed the door as he departed.
There were only two more doors, one opening off each side of the hall. These were tiny rooms that had in years past been reserved for children. He opened the door on the north side. Lise’s occupation of this room was evident in the drawing pads, the open box of pencils, and the penknife on the desk. Conan checked the switches, then crossed the hall to the other small room, the only unoccupied bedroom.
The air was so cold, his breath came out in clouds. There was one window on the south wall, and the curtain was open. He went to the window, shivering at the cold emanating from the glass—a chill intensified by the realization that the windowsill was damp. And there were damp spots on the floor under the window.
The window was locked, but Conan had no doubt that it had recently been opened. He couldn’t be sure when. The moisture would be slow to dry in this unheated room.
There was no ice on the panes. The temperature here was too low to cause condensation on the glass. Conan looked out into the white storm, and he could see shadows of sapling hemlocks only a few feet away. This was the highest point of the hill against which the lodge had been built. Around the corner, along the east side of the building, the ground sloped steeply toward the front of the lodge.
And he realized that the fact that he could see even the shadows of the trees meant the storm was abating. The wind had appreciably lessened. He took a long breath, fogging the glass as he let it out. There was hope, then: hope that they might all escape this white hole.
Hope that an inconvenient witness to murder might live to tell his story.
He left the curtain as he had found it and closed the door when he departed. He walked down the hall, noting as he passed Loanh’s room that she was still bending over the suitcase. Again, she didn’t seem to hear him.
When he reached the head of the stairs, he checked his watch, surprised to find it was only 11:15. He paused, debating whether to go downstairs or to attempt a search of the master bedroom. He heard no sounds from the living roo
m.
The quiet was abruptly annihilated by a thudding against the front door. In the vault of the atrium the sounds reverberated hollowly.
A muffled voice cried, “Help! Help me!”
Chapter 16
“What is happening out there? What is happening?”
Conan turned, found Loanh beside him at the top of the stairs, and in her eyes, as dark and unblinking as a startled deer’s, he saw the same fear he felt.
It was an irrational thing, this fear, and he knew the last time he had felt anything like it was when he was a child, when he could still believe in phenomena that defied the laws of nature.
Yet that was a human voice he heard pleading for help, and he knew on a rational level that the fists beating at the door were also human, even though he couldn’t begin to explain—rationally—how any being, human or otherwise, came to be knocking at that door in the midst of a blizzard.
Conan hurried down the stairs, with Loanh behind him, and the atrium was suddenly crowded as the family rushed out of the living room. Then they all stopped, breathlessly silent, facing the door.
The pounding and the cries ceased momentarily, and Will said, “Jesus, who could be out there in that storm?”
The pounding resumed, and Tiff loosed a thin shriek and reached for her husband, nearly knocking him off his crutches.
Conan moved toward the door. “We’d better ask him—or her, as the case may be.” Will nodded, stood with his feet planted, ready to do battle with whatever came through the door when Conan opened it.
In a white, frigid blast of wind, a man in camouflage-patterned pants and hooded parka, his beard and eyebrows encrusted with snow, staggered into the atrium. When Conan closed the door, the man sagged against it, gasped through chattering teeth, “Oh, shit, I was afraid nobody was home….”
Confronted with this tangibly human being, Conan’s fear gave way to reined exhilaration. He couldn’t explain it, but he was convinced that this stranger came bearing answers. Still, he only glanced at the man, then focused on the family.
What he saw were various degrees of shock and fear, which masked any sign of recognition. When the man pushed his hood back, Tiff gasped, but Conan couldn’t be sure whether that was anything more than typical theatrics. From the living room came Heather’s weak attempt at barking, and Lise hurried away to check on her. The others didn’t seem aware of her departure.
Will was first to speak: “What were you doing out in this storm? Where’d you come from? Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Jerry Tuttle,” the man said in a rasping voice, wiping the snow from his face with a gloved hand. “I’m from Salem. Came up for the weekend to do some hunting. Hey, I’m sorry to scare you folks, but I got caught in the storm. My Bronco’s on the highway by the bridge. I saw the sign on your gate, and I figured I could make it half a mile to the house. Damn, I could sure use something warm to drink.”
Will seemed to remember himself then. He took Tuttle’s arm and aimed him for the stairs. “You need more than that. Come on, let’s get you thawed out and let me check you over. I’m a doctor, by the way. Kim, you better turn on the generator again. I’ll put him in the little room at the end of the hall, okay?”
Kim’s eyes narrowed speculatively as she studied Tuttle, then she turned and headed for the garage door. “You’ll need a fire in that bedroom, Will. It’ll be freezing.”
Lise returned from the living room, offering, “I’ll take care of that.”
“I’ll help you,” Loanh put in, and the two of them headed upstairs.
Will and his new patient followed, with Conan a few paces behind. Tiff and Mark, he noted, hadn’t moved, Mark frowning in confusion, Tiff’s too-green eyes fixed apprehensively on the stranger. Demara had retreated to the arched entryway into the living room from which vantage point she also watched the stranger warily.
Jerry Tuttle, without the snow whitening his facial hair, was younger than he seemed at first. Perhaps in his early thirties. His hair was straight and blond, parted in the middle and hanging to his shoulders. His beard was nearly red. He had the face of a stereotypical Viking: long and narrow, the bones pressing against thin, fair skin darkened by exposure to the sun. His bluish eyes were set deep under prominent brow ridges, eyebrows and lashes thin and so much the color of his skin, they seemed nonexistent. It was obvious that he made his living at some sort of outdoor work; his hands were scarred and callused, embedded dirt dark under the fingernails, and his body was sun-browned from the waist up, pallid from the waist down. A lean and muscular body, with articulated pectorals and deltoids that suggested he spent time lifting weights on a regular basis.
Conan made these observations while ostensibly helping Will warm his patient in the bathroom off the unoccupied bedroom. Conan leaned against the door, savoring the warmth from the wall heater and the steam as hot water poured into the bathtub, while Tuttle lay half submersed, and Will knelt by the tub taking his blood pressure and temperature. Tuttle seemed to be enjoying the attention.
Will removed the cuff with a rip of Velcro, then checked the thermometer. “Normal as apple pie, and you can consider yourself damned lucky.”
“Oh, I do,” Tuttle responded. The rasp in his voice that Conan had noticed when Tuttle first arrived was apparently a permanent condition. “You’ll never know how lucky I feel.” The askew grin was apparently also a permanent condition.
Conan asked, “How did you get stuck out in this storm?”
“Oh, man, that’s a long story. Yesterday afternoon I parked down by the bridge over that little crick—”
“King’s Creek?” Will asked as he turned off the water.
Tuttle shrugged, then submerged himself, came up sputtering and rubbing water out of his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so. Anyhow, I headed upstream a ways, and I spotted this buck. Shit, he had the biggest rack of horns I ever saw. I followed him, hoping for a good shot. Pulled off a couple, but didn’t touch him. Well, I lost track of the time, and when I got back to the Bronco, it was dark. I was too damned tired to go look for a place to camp and too damned poor to stay in a motel, so I figured I’d sleep in my truck. Had some food with me, so I just stretched out on the seat and zonked out. You guys got any soap?”
Will was busy putting the sphygmomanometer in his medical case on the counter, so Conan took the small bar of soap by the sink and a washcloth from the towel rack and handed them to Tuttle, who asked idly, “What happened to your hands? You burn ’em or something?”
“No, just a touch of frostbite.”
“Oh. You guys part of the King family?”
Will closed the case with a snap, said, “No, we’re just friends of the family. I’m Will, and this is Conan.”
Tuttle was busy soaping one foot. He gave Will a knowing leer. “Hey, must be nice bein’ a friend of this family with all those sweet chicks. You guys can sorta take your pick, right?”
Will’s big hands curled into fists, but before he could say anything, Conan asked, “Don’t you have a radio in your truck?”
“Naw. Well, I had one, but it broke. I guess if I’d had a radio, I’d’ve known how bad this storm was going to be. Shit, I just figured it’d snow for a while and clear up this morning. Big mistake.”
Conan nodded. “I thought Broncos had four-wheel drive. I mean, I’m surprised you couldn’t drive out last night before it got really bad.”
“Sure, I got four-wheel drive,” Tuttle replied as he thrust out a hand to soap his arm pit, “and I probably could’ve drove out if I hadn’t been so zonked. Hell, I didn’t wake up till nine-thirty last night. Only reason I woke up then was I had to pee. Hooee, that was a damn cold pee! Must’ve froze before it hit the ground.” He gave that a laugh, then, “When I got back in my rig, I looked at my watch and saw it was nine-thirty. By then, I knew there was no way I could get outta there, four-wheel drive or not, so I sat it out. Ran the heater half an hour on and half an hour off all night.”
Will leaned back against the counter,
arms folded. “I hope you kept a window rolled down. But you must’ve, or you wouldn’t be here now.”
“Shit, I’d still be out there, probably, turning blue.”
Conan didn’t bother to point out that with carbon monoxide poisoning he was more likely to turn bright pink. “What made you leave the Bronco? Did you run out of gas?”
“Just about. This morning when the gauge hit a quarter, I figured I was either going to freeze to death in the rig or on my way to help, so I waited till the storm let up a little. I remembered the sign on the gate. And the fence. I felt my way along the fence all the way up here. Think somebody’d loan me a blow-dryer?”
With a hint of annoyance, Will replied, “I’ll ask around. I suppose some of the ladies—”
He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Conan opened it a few inches and found Lise waiting with a mug of coffee. She beckoned to him, and he came out into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“Here’s some coffee for Tuttle. We have a fire going in the stove, but it’ll take a while to warm this room. Kim found some more of Dad’s clothes for him”—Lise nodded toward the bed—“and she looked through his clothes. Conan…” She stared at the bathroom door with a piercing gaze that seemed to bore through it. “Who is he?”
“A lost hunter—so he says. Were you on hand when Kim searched his clothing?” Then at her nod, “Did she remove anything?”
“Only a rather efficient-looking jackknife. She said she’d just made a new house rule: guests had to check their weapons at the door.”
Conan laughed and took the mug. “Tuttle’s in no position to argue that, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate the coffee. Oh—and a blow-dryer, if anyone is willing to volunteer one.”
“Tiff must have one. I’ll ask her.”
He returned to the bathroom where Tuttle had emerged from the tub and was toweling himself. He accepted the mug with a grunt that might have indicated thanks, although Conan guessed he’d have preferred something stronger. Conan said, “We’re working on the blow-dryer, and there are dry clothes on the bed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, three’s a crowd in here. I’ll put your case away, Will.”