EQMM, May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I am telling you I can't—"

  "You don't have a choice. This night's been coming ever since that October morning. You started this six years ago. Now go finish it."

  * * * *

  He left Sue lying in the tall grass several hundred feet down the mountainside and headed back up toward the meadows of Beech Spring Gap carrying a flashlight he didn't need under the blazing wattage of the moon.

  He reached the gap, moved past their tent and along the trail that led to Shining Rock Mountain, the base of which stood cloaked in thickets of rhododendron that bloomed pink in the month of June.

  On a walk that morning, a thousand years ago, he'd noticed a piece of red tucked back among the glossy green leaves, and wondered now if that had been Donald's tent.

  He walked off the trail and crouched down in the grass. Five yards ahead lay the edge of the rhododendron thicket. Roger thought he recalled that piece of red being a hundred feet or so up the gentle slope, though he couldn't be sure.

  For a while, he lay on the ground, just listening.

  The grass swayed, blades banging dryly against one another.

  Rhododendron leaves scraped together.

  Something scampered through the thicket.

  This was his thirteenth summer coming to Shining Rock, and he found that most of their time here had vanished completely from memory—more impression than detail. But a few of their trips remained clear, intact.

  The first time they'd come and accidentally discovered this place, the twins were only six years old, and Michelle had lost her front teeth to this gap while she and Jennifer wrestled and rolled in a meadow one sunny afternoon, and cried her heart out, afraid the tooth fairy wouldn't pay for lost teeth.

  There had been the trip seven years ago, when he and Sue had to fake happy faces for the girls, crying at night in their tent, while fifteen hundred miles away, in a laboratory in Minneapolis, a tumor cut from the underside of Sue's left breast was screened for a cancer that wasn't there.

  Three years back, he'd been anxiously awaiting news on an advertising campaign he'd pitched, which, if chosen, might have netted him half a million dollars. He remembered trying not to dwell on the phone call he'd make once they left these mountains, knowing if he got a yes, what that would mean for his family. He'd pulled over once they reentered cell-phone coverage at an overlook outside of Asheville. Walked back toward the car a moment later, eyes locked with Sue's, shaking his head.

  But looking at the time they'd spent here as a whole, forest instead of tree, it felt a lot like his life—so many good times, some pain, and it had all raced by faster than he could've imagined.

  Roger crawled to the thicket's edge and started up the hill, the flashlight and the Glock shoved down the back of his fleece pants.

  After five minutes, he stopped to catch his breath.

  He thought he'd been making a horrible racket, dead leaves crunching under his elbows as he wriggled himself under the low branches of the rhododendron shrubs. But he assured himself it wasn't as much noise as he thought. To anyone else, to Donald, it probably sounded like nothing more than the after-hour scavenging of a raccoon.

  Roger was breathing normally again and had rolled over on his stomach to continue crawling when he spotted the outline of a tent twenty yards uphill. The moon shone upon the rain fly, and in the lunar light he could only tell that it was dark in color.

  He pulled the gun out of his waistband.

  His chest felt tight, and he had to take several deep breaths to make the lightheadedness dissolve.

  Then he was crawling again, though much slower now, taking care to avoid patches of dead leaves and low-clearance branches that might drag across his jacket.

  The tent stood just ahead, a one-man A-frame. He was still hidden in shadow, but another few feet and he'd emerge from the cover of darkness into the moonlit glade.

  * * * *

  Roger lay beside the tent and held his breath, listening for deep breathing indicative of Donald sleeping, if in fact this was even the man's tent. He didn't know how long he lay there. Two minutes. A quarter of an hour. Whichever it was, it felt like ages elapsed, and he still hadn't heard a sound from inside.

  Maybe Donald wasn't in there. Maybe he'd already found a spot to hide and watch their tent. Maybe he was a silent sleeper. Maybe he'd heard Roger crawling toward him through the rhododendron and was sitting up right—

  "That you out there, Roger?"

  Roger jumped up and scrambled back toward the thicket.

  He stopped at the edge of the glade, his gun trained on the tent, trembling in his hand.

  "Would you tell me something?” Donald asked. “Was she alive right after you hit her? She was dead when the paramedics arrived."

  Roger had to wet the roof of his mouth with his tongue so he could speak.

  "She was gone instantly,” he lied.

  "You didn't tell your wife, did you?"

  "No."

  "She seemed surprised. Does she know you came over here? Did you discuss it with her after I left? Tell her what you'd done?"

  "What were you going to do to us?"

  "Not a thing."

  "I don't believe that. How'd you find me?"

  "When the police gave up, I spent thousands of dollars on a P.I. who located and investigated everyone who owned a silver Lexus in the St. Paul area. I've had conversations like I had with you and Sue tonight with a half-dozen other people I suspected, feeling them out, gauging their reactions."

  "You didn't know for sure it was me?"

  "Not until this moment, Roger. Not until you crept up to my tent at one in the morning with what I imagine is that Glock, registered to Sue. That pretty much convinces me."

  "Do you have a gun in there?"

  "No."

  Roger glanced over his shoulder into the thicket, then back toward the tent. There was a part of him dying to just slink away.

  "What do you want, Donald?"

  "I already got it."

  "What?” Roger could hear Donald moving around in the tent.

  "The truth."

  "So that's it? We just go our separate ways, pretend this night never happened."

  "No, it happened. But it doesn't have to end like I suspect it will."

  "How does this end, Donald?"

  "Are you asking if I'm going to turn you in?"

  "Are you?"

  "What would you do? If I'd hit Jennifer or Michelle, spread their brains all over the pavement?"

  "Are you threat—"

  "No, I'm asking you, father to father, if you knew who the man was who'd killed your daughter, what would you do?"

  "I'd want to kill—"

  "Not want. What would you do?"

  "I don't know. What do you want to do?"

  "Beat you to death with my bare hands. That's what I want to do. Not what I will do."

  Roger stood up, took six steps toward the tent.

  Donald said, “Roger? Where are you?"

  "Right here, Donald."

  "You're closer."

  "Listen to me,” Roger said. “I want you to know that I am so sorry. And I know it doesn't do a goddamn thing to bring Tabitha back, but it's the truth. I was just so scared. You understand?"

  "Thank you, Roger."

  "For what?"

  "Saying her name."

  Roger fired six times into the tent.

  His ears ringing, gunshots still reverberating off the mountains, he said, “Donald?"

  There was no answer, only wet breathing.

  He went to the tent door and unzipped it and took out his flashlight and shined it inside.

  Donald lay on his back, the only visible wound a hole under his left eye, and the blood looked like oil running out of it.

  Roger moved the flashlight around, searching for a gun in Donald's hand, something to mitigate what he'd done, but the only thing Donald clutched was a framed photograph of an auburn-haired teenager with a braces smile.

  * * * *

&
nbsp; Three days later, seated at the same table they'd occupied a week before at the Grove Park Inn's Sunset Terrace, they watched the waiter place their entrees before them and top off their wineglasses from a bottle of pinot noir.

  The August night was cool, even here in the city, like maybe summer would end after all.

  Near the bar, a tuxedoed man was at a Steinway playing Mozart, one of his beautiful concertos.

  "How's your filet?” Sue asked.

  "It's perfect. Yours?"

  "I could eat this every day."

  Roger forced a smile and took a big sip of wine.

  They ate in silence.

  After a while, Sue said, “Roger?"

  "Yes, honey?"

  "We did it right, yeah?"

  It annoyed him that she would bring it up over dinner, but he was well on his way toward inebriation, a nice buffer swelling between himself and all that had come before.

  "I don't know how we could've been more thorough,” he said.

  "I keep thinking we should've moved his car."

  "That would've been just another opportunity for us to leave evidence. Skin cells, sweat, hair, fibers of our clothing, prints. I thought it through, Sue."

  She reached across the table and took his hand, the karat diamond he'd given her twenty-four years ago sending out a thousand slivered facets of candlelight.

  "Above all, it was for the girls. Their safety,” she said.

  "Yeah. For the girls."

  The scent of a good cigar swept past.

  "You'll be able to go on all right?” Sue asked. “With what ... what you had to do?"

  Roger was cutting into his steak, and he kept cutting, didn't meet her eyes as he answered, “I've had practice, right?"

  It was early October when it occurred to one of the forest rangers of the Pisgah district that the black Buick Regal with a Minnesota license plate, parked near the restrooms of the Big East Fork trailhead, had been there for a long damn time, which was particularly strange considering no one had been reported missing in the area.

  Over several days, the sheriff of Haywood County spoke briefly with two estranged, living relatives and an ex-wife in Duluth, none of whom had been in contact with Donald Kennington in over a year, all of whom said he'd been on a downward spiral since his daughter's death, that it had ruined him in every way imaginable, that he'd probably gone up into the mountains to die.

  A deputy found it in the glove box—a handwritten note folded between the vehicle's owner's manual and a laminated map of Minnesota.

  He read it aloud to the sheriff, the two of them sitting in the front seat as raindrops splattered on a windshield nearly pasted over with the violent red leaves of an oak tree that overhung the parking lot.

  My name is Donald Kennington. Please forward this message to Arthur Holland, detective with the St. Paul Police Department.

  The death of my daughter, Tabitha Kennington, brings me to these mountains. I am writing this in my car on August 5th, having followed Roger and Susan Cockrell, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, to Beech Spring Gap. I have taken their photographs with a digital camera, along with pictures of their green Range Rover and license plate. You will find my camera containing these pictures in the trunk of my car.

  At this moment, I do not know if Mr. Cockrell was responsible for killing my daughter in a hit-and-run six years ago. I plan to meet the Cockrells tonight and find out. To be clear, I intend no physical harm to Mr. Cockrell or his wife. If Mr. Cockrell is responsible, however, we will see if I'm so lucky. Does a man who runs down a young woman and leaves the scene contain it within him to murder in cold blood in order to hide his crime and his shame?

  I suspect he does.

  The Cockrells will be thorough in disposing of my body, tent, backpack, etc., which makes this last bit of business a little tricky.

  My camp is in a small glade in the rhododendron thicket on the east slope of Shining Rock Mountain, approximately a hundred vertical feet above the meadows of Beech Spring Gap. The glade is twenty yards across, with a large boulder in the middle. Look for a flat, shiny rock in the grass. My tent now stands over it, and I've made a tiny rip in the tent floor and dug a small, shallow hole in the ground under the rock.

  Tonight, if Mr. Cockrell admits his guilt, into this hole, sealed and safe in plastic, I will drop a tape recorder, and hopefully rebury it before he murders me.

  ©2009 by Blake Crouch

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: 667, EVIL AND THEN SOME by Marilyn Todd

  A Shamus Award nominee for her 2007 EQMM story “Room for Improvement,” about a female P.I. in 1950s London, Marilyn Todd returns, in this issue, in a much more fanciful mood. Fans of her series of novels set in Ancient Greece won't want to miss Blood Moon, the follow-up to 2007's Blind Eye, which is scheduled for April 2009 release from Severn House. In it, High Priestess Iliona is called on by the Spartan secret police to find out why three people were killed during a diplomatic visit.

  The devil went down to Georgia. Everybody knows this, because Charlie Daniels wrote a song about how he was looking for a soul to steal and was in a bind, ‘cause he was way behind, and was willin’ to make a deal. Obviously, there's poetic licence here. Hell, as you'd expect, is not exactly short of applicants, all of whom are processed with commendable speed and efficiency. Nor do we make deals.

  What was true, though, was that when the devil came upon that boy playing on a fiddle and playin’ it hot, he did jump up on a hickory stump and say, “Boy let me tell you what: I bet you didn't know it but I'm a fiddle player too, and if you care to take a dare, I'll make a bet with you. I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, ‘cause I think I'm better than you."

  Or words to that effect, the devil not really being one for poetry, whereas Mr. Daniels probably needed it to rhyme. But the point I'm making is that the president does like to get out of the office every once in a while, see how the world of sin is shaping up. Which is pretty nicely, as it happens, but when he's gone, Hell doesn't run itself. So while he and this Johnny character were taking bets, souls versus fiddles and all that, it was noses to the grindstone for the rest of us.

  Leastways, it should have been.

  Was it Georgia, specifically, which always gets as hot as Hell in August? Or pure bad luck that the minute the competition started, the pitchfork sharpeners went on strike? In no time, the brimstone workers had walked out in support, with the stokers of the hellfires downing pokers in sympathy. I felt beads of sweat trickle down my horns. As the president's right-hand demon, it was my job to relay status via his personal hotline and I wasn't looking forward to that, I really wasn't. He tended to have what I suppose you'd call mood swings when it came to bad news. Messengers rarely volunteered for the job. In the end, of course, it was immaterial. The weather forecast showed that it was a rainy night in Georgia. I couldn't make a connection.

  "Don't worry about the strikers.” The head of Inhuman Resources patted my shoulder reassuringly. “I used to teach kindergarten, so I'm well used to tantrums,” he breezed. “I'm off to start negotiations straightaway."

  "Good, because it would have put the Old Man right off his playing,” I said, remembering how very attached he was to that golden fiddle of his. And quite honestly, I had enough problems to contend with without my boss venting his spleen.

  The thing is, you see, before he left, he'd tasked me with conducting a feasibility study into the future of Hell.

  "After all, if the universe is expanding,” he'd argued, “we need to know what's going to happen to us."

  He was big on economic forecasts, was the president, and like any major corporation, tended to invest heavily in research, development, and marketing. Once, he set me writing slogans in his absence and I thought that was a pretty tough assignment.

  The devil's in the details, that was one of mine.

  Hell to pay, another.

  Damned if I know, probably the best.

  But slogans, I quickly discovered, w
ere a piece of cake compared to feasibility studies. I mean, where do you start? After kicking at the edges for a while, I eventually pressed the button in the elevator for three thousand floors down to the Finance Department, where every thumbscrew, prod, and drop of boiling oil has to be accounted for. Exactly. If taxation is hell, then Hell itself is truly taxing. But thankfully, between Accounts and the Admissions Office, I managed to gather enough statistics to fill a football stadium. And having waded through them, began to see a problem.

  "Dr. Faust.” The nasal voice of the tannoy echoed through the sulphur. “Dr. Faust to ER immediately. Dr. Faust to ER."

  Another emergency in Eternal Retribution, then? Any other time I'd have been curious to see what was so urgent that it needed to drag the good doctor away from the golf course. Someone else selling their soul to the devil, and starting a fight because they couldn't get a discount? Or was the Irritating Ringtone Punishment Squad failing to get a signal again? Whatever the crisis, though, I decided it wasn't my problem. What I'd discovered, on the other hand, was. And it was big...

  "Dr. Lecter,” boomed the disembodied tannoy. “Dr. Lecter to the canteen, please."

  Poor old Hannibal. Ever since he'd been appointed Director of Pain and Misery, he kept forgetting lunch, and another time I'd have made some wisecrack as he hopped into the elevator about taking his work home with him. That day, though, I had weightier issues on my mind, and even when I got the spiky bit of my tail caught in the doors, I barely noticed the bruise.

  "Good news, good news!” The head of Inhuman Resources was grinning as he rounded the corner. “Arbitration's going swimmingly. With luck, the strikes will be over before the president returns."

  I wished I could have returned his smile, or even confided my suspicions, but for the moment, I held back. I had to be sure—I mean really sure—of my findings.

  Meanwhile, up in the foothills of the Appalachians, the devil opened up his case and he said, “I'll start this show.” And fire flew from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow.

  Soon, though, it would be Johnny's turn to play.

  I was running out of time.