“That hardly seems fair,” I said. “Me, I got a nice four-day vacation in the hospital.”
“I’m not saying we’re even, McKnight. But you did get your shots in the other day. I’m still feeling it.”
I let that one go. I picked up the cell phone and gave Natalie one more try. The line was still busy.
A few miles later, we came to our first accident. One car was right in the middle of the road, pointed sideways, another car pushed into the ditch. I rolled my window down to see if anyone needed some help, but there was nobody around. A hundred yards later, I saw a house, with smoke blowing sideways from the top of the chimney. I figured everybody was inside that house, instant neighbors, waiting for the tow truck to come. I kept driving.
The next accident was just outside Thessalon, another car off the road, this time all the way down a steep embankment. A tow truck was on the scene, the man holding his hand in front of his face to ward off the blowing snow as he hooked a chain to the car’s trailer hitch.
“Getting bad out here,” Grant said.
“I’m not turning around now.”
“The man said the bridge was closing anyway. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to.”
We came to Iron Bridge, saw a few more cars abandoned on the side of the road, already covered with six inches of new snow. We passed McKnight Road, but I didn’t smile at it this time. We passed the Mississauga Reserve. There was one more stretch of empty road until we finally reached Blind River. As we got closer to the town hall, we could see the trucks parked right on the road itself, next to a telephone pole that had fallen down across the entrance. A half-dozen men were hard at work, all of them wearing orange ski masks. With the lines down and the snow blowing harder than ever, the whole scene looked like the end of the world.
“Looks like the phones are out here,” Grant said. “You think that’s why her line’s been busy?”
“Could be,” I said. “Depending on when this pole went down.”
“Is her house coming up soon?”
“Couple more miles.”
“Okay, good.”
He was sitting up in his seat now, nervously turning the hat in his hands again. I was a little uptight myself, with no idea what we’d find at the house. When I got to the driveway, I put the plow down and pushed the snow off, all the way to the barn.
“I don’t see Marty’s truck here,” he said.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t come out here.”
He opened his door and got out of the truck. I did the same, the driving snow stinging my face.
“God, this is painful,” he said. “What the hell are we doing? Is anybody even home?”
“Let’s go see.”
I went up the unshoveled walk to the front door, stepping carefully through the snow. It felt strange to be here now, with officially no relationship with the owner of this house, no good reason to be here beyond a general sense of dread. I wanted to know that Natalie was safe. That was all. After that, I never wanted to see this place again.
I tried the door. It was locked. I rang the bell and heard the faraway chiming in the empty house.
“What do we do now?” he said.
I looked around the place. The windows. If one of them is unlocked
…
Or wait. The back door. I led him around the house, working hard to get through the deep snow. There at the back, leading into the kitchen, was an old-fashioned Dutch door. The top section had a large window with nine separate panes. The lower-left pane, the one closest to the doorknob, was broken.
I turned the knob, wishing at that moment like all hell that I had a gun. A real one. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Grant followed. My stomach was starting to burn. What the hell was going on here?
When we were both inside, I closed the door behind us, shutting out most of the noise of the wind. I could feel a draft cutting in through the broken pane. The room was cold. The power must have been out.
I saw broken glass all over the kitchen floor. The phone hung from its cord.
“Oh man,” Grant said as he saw the scene. “What happened?”
I went through the kitchen, crunching through the broken glass. There was more glass in the dining room, with several liquor bottles on the table, one turned over. I did a quick run-through of the rest of the house. In the dim light I didn’t see any more signs of violence, but when I was upstairs I noticed that both the bed in the guest room and the bed in Natalie’s old room were unmade. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Natalie had told me that she had brought her mother back here, but out of nowhere the line from Goldilocks and the Three Bears flashed through my mind. Somebody has been sleeping in my bed. What a strange thing to think of at a time like this. The burning in my stomach was getting worse.
“God damn it,” I said softly. “God damn it to hell. Where are you, Natalie?”
I went back downstairs to see Grant hanging up the phone.
“It’s dead,” he said. “Now what do we do?”
“I’m checking the basement,” I said. I opened the door and hit the light switch like an idiot. I went back and started opening the kitchen drawers. Somewhere she had to have a flashlight. I opened the silverware drawer, the napkins and candles drawer, the junk drawer. I pushed the pens and pencils around, looking for a flashlight. Come on, I thought. Everyone has a goddamned flashlight.
The next drawer was full of tools. A hammer, screwdrivers, pliers
…
There. A flashlight.
I picked it up and turned it on. The beam was weak, but it would have to do.
I went back to the basement steps, shone the light down the wooden steps to the concrete floor at the bottom. I could barely see anything. Grant followed me.
I started going down, step by step. The boards creaked.
I’m going to buy her a flashlight, I thought. A good one.
Another step. The air got colder.
As soon as I see her again, I thought, we’re going flashlight shopping. And I’m glad I’ve got this to think about right now because otherwise I’d be scared to death of what I’m going to find down here.
“Natalie,” I said out loud, “please don’t be down here.”
I did a quick scan with the flashlight, through each room filled with the decades of old household items, magazines, newspapers, boxes, and tin cans. Grant followed me from one room to the next, until we finally came to the little closet where Natalie had found all the pictures. But this time there was something strange going on. All the clutter on the shelves had been thrown onto the floor, and the shelves themselves were all slanting away from the wall, like someone had tried to pull them all off at once.
No. That wasn’t it. I grabbed one of the shelves and pulled. The whole unit moved in one piece. It was like a door. You couldn’t see it before because of all the stuff on the shelves, and the fact that the surface of the door was painted gray, just like the walls.
I pulled it all the way open and looked inside.
“What is that?” Grant said as he came closer. “What’s in there?”
I saw something that looked like wax paper. I reached down and touched it. There was something hard underneath. I pulled it out and unwrapped it in the thin beam of the flashlight. The first thing I saw was a long black rifle barrel. I pulled off more of the paper, slick with gun oil.
“What kind of gun is that?” he said.
“It looks like an old Thompson submachine gun.”
I shone the light down the barrel. Someone had plugged it with Cosmoline to keep the moisture out.
“Somebody knew what they were doing,” I said.
“Is that all that’s in there? Just guns?”
“Some shells, too,” I said, unwrapping an old cardboard box. I lifted another heavy bundle. “This one feels like a shotgun.”
“How old are they?”
“Hard to say, but one of the guns is gone.” I picked up a wad of loose paper, then d
ropped it back on the floor.
“Did I tell you how much I hate guns?” he said. “God, this makes no sense at all. What’s going on here, McKnight? Where is everybody?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
I went back upstairs. Something else was wrong here. Something I couldn’t quite place. Besides the broken window and the empty bottles…
I went through the ground floor rooms again. Nothing seemed out of place until I got to the living room. The sitting room, Natalie had called it. The couch was one of those awful gold things you saw years ago, covered with plastic. The two Queen Anne chairs made you feel like you had to sit up straight with your pinkies extended. There on the floor next to them was a television set, along with a VCR. Beside those was the empty box they had been packed in.
Her mother was here, I thought. She pulled out the TV so her mother could watch a movie or something. It was probably that or drive each other crazy.
And that smell, I thought. That was the thing that was bothering me. Her mother must have smoked, because the faint, stale smell of cigarettes was still lingering in the air. I saw one of Natalie’s salad plates on the floor. It was filled with ashes.
I reached down and picked up an open pack. Virginia Slims, with three cigarettes left.
“Did you find something?” Grant said. He came into the room and looked at the television on the floor.
“Nah, it’s nothing,” I said. But as I put the cigarettes on the plate, I noticed another pack of cigarettes, this one empty and crumpled up, partially tucked underneath the rim of the plate. I picked it up and tried to smooth it out.
“What is it?”
“It’s an empty pack of Camels,” I said. “Unfiltered.”
The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. I stepped up to him and looked him in the eye. It was all I could do not to grab him by the throat.
“These are Marty’s cigarettes, aren’t they,” I said.
“They could be anybody’s,” he said. He took one step backward.
“Anybody’s including Marty, right? These are his brand.”
“Look, McKnight…”
“I’ve seen enough,” I said. “It’s time to call the police.”
I left him standing there. I knew the kitchen phone was dead, but I could still use my cell phone. I went out into the snowstorm, fighting my way back to the truck. I got in, closed the door behind me, and picked up the cell phone. I waited as the stupid thing tried to find a signal-always a problem when the weather was bad, and especially when the phone lines were down and everyone else with a cell phone was using theirs.
I waited. I looked back at the house. Grant was still in there somewhere. I looked out in front of me.
The barn. The door was wide open. The last time I was here, that door was closed.
I got out of the truck and made my way to the barn. As I got closer, I saw that a great drift of snow had formed in the doorway, extending deep inside.
It was slow going, with the snow nearly up to my waist. I worked my way closer and closer.
I got to the doorway. Today there was no sunlight to come streaming through the gaps in the walls. The barn was dark.
I took a few steps in, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Somewhere, far away, a voice was calling me. “McKnight! Where are you?”
I was about to answer. Then I stopped.
I saw it for one single second without any idea what it was, and then everything else caught up. There was a body on the floor of the barn.
Blood.
A body.
A woman.
Blood all over the hair. Blood everywhere.
Something else. Sticking up out of the floor. No, out of the body. A long wooden stick. No, some sort of tool. A farm tool, sticking out of the body.
The damage. The blood. She was butchered with this thing, this old farm thing made of wood and rusted metal.
This body… This woman…
“McKnight!” The voice again, close behind me now.
I turned and saw him. He stood in the doorway, looking past me at the horror on the ground.
“No,” he said. “God, no. Marty, what did you do? My God, Marty…”
He turned and started to run away, falling into the snow. He left me there alone with her.
I didn’t want to go any closer. But I had to.
I took one step.
Then another.
The hair, spread out around her head. The blade, the long wooden stick, the obscenity of it. I wanted to grab the handle and pull it from her back.
Please, no. Anything but this. Anything.
But wait. I reached down and touched the hair. In the dim light, it looked… red. This wasn’t Natalie. God, it wasn’t her.
I moved around to get a better look at her face. I knew her. I had seen her picture.
It was Natalie’s mother. The Irish looks, the red hair. This was her.
This was Grace, the woman I had never gotten the chance to meet, the woman with all of the lies, each one more fabulous than the last. Until now. She would never tell another lie.
I stood there for a long time, looking at her.
Then there was a sound. I looked up to see Michael Grant standing in the doorway again. This time he had the shotgun in his hands, the double-barreled shotgun from the basement.
He hated guns. I had heard him say that more than once today. He hated guns, but not enough to stop him from doing this right now, leveling it right at my head. Twenty feet away. He moved closer to me.
“No,” I said. “No.”
“I can’t let you leave now.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, McKnight. I’m sorry.”
It came to this, all these years later, since the last time I had looked down the barrel of a gun. Another day, another season, a hot day in Detroit. The feeling was the same.
But this one will be loud. An old shotgun. God in heaven, this will be loud.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He pulled the trigger, and it was all the noise in the world ringing at once, all around me and below me until I reached out to hold it as tight as I could.
Then I let go.
Chapter Fifteen
Natalie. I am saying her name. A song with three notes.
Natalie.
She is above me, looking down at me with that smile, that expression both sad and happy at the same time, like it’s all a puzzle she hasn’t figured out yet.
Natalie.
I can smell her hair. I can feel her fingers touching my face, as light as snowflakes.
I open my eyes.
A wooden roof, high above me in the dim light, a fine powdery snow hanging in the air, melting on my cheeks.
I’m alive.
I sat up quickly, looking around me. My neck hurt. My ears were ringing. God, my ears. I could feel warm blood on my shirt. Was I shot? What the hell happened? He hadn’t been more than twenty feet away. There’s no way he could have missed.
I touched my neck, where it joined my shoulder. I was bleeding, but… What was that? Something hard and jagged, a sudden riot of pain as I felt it. I grabbed on to it, a cry coming out of my mouth before I knew what was happening. It was hot, and slippery with blood, but I held it tight between my fingers and pulled.
God, that hurt. I looked down at the thing as the blood ran warm down my neck. It was a fragment of metal, about a half inch long. What the hell?
Then the rest of it came back to me, all at once. The body on the floor. The long farm tool of wood and metal, like a spear. I looked behind me. I didn’t want to move any closer to her. I knew she was dead.
So what had happened? I tried to put it all together in my mind, Grant and me coming up here, the guns in the basement, coming out to the barn, Grant behind me with the gun.
I looked toward the door. There was something on the ground. I tried to get up on my knees, feeling the pain shoot through my neck every time I moved it. I crawled over throu
gh the ancient hay and dusty snow. I saw the gun, or what was left of it. It was like something out of a cartoon now, both barrels curled back like banana peels.
It blew up on him. The barrels must have been plugged with the Cosmoline, like the other gun I had seen down there. Thank God for fools who don’t know any better than to fire a gun that’s been wrapped up in a basement for who knows how many years.
Some of the shrapnel had hit me. It was better than getting my head blown off, but it still hurt like hell and it kept bleeding. I tried to get to my feet. I got about halfway, felt like I would pass out, then finally I was standing.
As I looked at the wreckage of the gun again, a sudden thought hit me. Grant was standing right here when it blew up. What happened to him?
The door to the barn was still open, the snow still drifting in. I went to it, moving slowly. I saw blood on the floor, a thin trail of it leading right outside. I followed the trail out into the snow and the wind. It was the last thing I felt like facing, but I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t stay in the barn, adding my own blood to the floor, or for God’s sake looking at what had been done to this woman.
I started back toward the house, the long fight through the snow. I could see that my truck was gone, and with it my cell phone. I had been in such a rush to get inside, I had left the keys dangling in the ignition. Now Grant was gone. I saw more blood in the snow, leading all the way to where the truck had been. He was hurt, but apparently he could still drive a truck.
I slipped in the snow. The pain ran like a white hot iron spike through my neck. I had to stop for a full minute just to catch my breath.
“Son of a bitch,” I said into the wind. “Goddamned son of a bitch.”
I started moving again. The snow was collecting on my shoulders. I worked my way to the back door of the house. It was cold inside, but at least I was out of the wind. I went upstairs to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Very carefully I slid out of my coat, gritting my teeth the whole time. When I was done, I saw that the front of my shirt was soaked with blood. I needed bandages, or at least something to tape myself up with.
I rummaged through more cabinets, found the first aid supplies. Thank God she had a lot of them. I put some gauze squares on my neck, then did my best to tape them in place.
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