Death in the Pines

by Thom Hartmann

  I approached the cabin from a blind quarter and leaned against the back wall, just listening. No sounds from inside. I followed the wall back to the south corner. And then my cell phone trilled.

  I grabbed it and whispered, “Yeah?”

  It was Wanda. “Oakley, Darryl’s on his way. What’d you do to him?”

  “Nothing. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Who called him?”

  “Not me.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said. She paused and added, “He has his rifle.”

  I thumbed the phone off and switched off its ringer. Beside the window, I shouted, “Benson? Caleb Benson?”

  No response.

  I crossed the porch and unlatched the door. I pulled the door open, flattening myself beside it, not standing in the obvious place. “Benson!”

  No sound. Not even the quarrelsome chipmunk. But from the open door drifted the sharp scent of cordite and the reek of the spilled contents of bladder and bowels.

  In the far corner, crumpled into the space next to my washstand, lay the man who had wielded the stun gun. Blood congealed around a dark half-inch diameter hole in his shirt just left-center of his chest. The wall and floor were splattered with blood and bits where the bullet had exited. On the floor between us lay my shotgun, pointing toward him like a death-seeking compass needle. A pair of my gloves, black leather, lay palm to palm beside the weapon.

  I guessed from the state of the body that Dr. Lauser had been killed within the past hour. There was nowhere in the room anyone could hide. I turned my back on the dead man and went toward the door. As I opened it I heard the report of a rifle from outside, and a chunk of the door jamb flew loose. Not too far away I heard someone ratchet a fresh round into a bolt-action rifle.

  I left the door ajar and dropped to a crouch, then crawled over to the bed and to the rear wall behind it. I unhitched the panel beside the wood stack, raised it enough to look out, and scanned the forest that began ten feet behind the cabin. Clouds were coming in, like an early twilight. Nothing moved. I wormed through the opening and dropped onto the ice-crust of snow that had lain in shadow twenty-four hours a day. I edged around, keeping to the cover of the forest fringe.

  I couldn’t spot anyone. I couldn’t clearly see the trail. Retreating back into the forest, I skirted down toward the drive. The shadows had been blurred by the overcast, and the sun had slipped behind the mountain. I froze as I heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. I couldn’t make out the words, and so I crept forward again.

  Then, so close that it spooked me, I heard Bill Grinder’s voice: “I ain’t heard nothing. Better go check it out.”

  The woman sounded like Eva Benson: “I don’t think he’s hit. He’ll come out.”

  “He may have called the cops.”

  “Not him. I know the type. He’ll want to know what’s going on before he calls for help.”

  “Look, I thought this was like before, we were gonna catch him in the open, make it look like a hunting accident.”

  “I told you, it has to look like he and Frank shot each other.”

  I was no more than thirty feet away from them, fifteen feet above them on the hillside. Between us stood a scatter of bare hardwood, a tangle of brush, and an outcrop of granite. I guessed they had been there in ambush and had missed me because I’d come in from the far side of the drive. I edged onto the granite, keeping low.

  “If he was still alive, he would’ve come out by now,” Grinder said.

  I was able to peep over the top of the outcropping of stone. They stood beneath an enormous old oak left over from the ancient times when Vermont was all hardwood forest. Grinder wore hunting clothes and carried a rifle with a scope. Eva had on black stretch pants and a black ski jacket.

  Aiming my pistol at Grinder, I called out, “Put down the rifle, Bill, and—”

  I’d never seen a man that big move so fast. He spun and fired from the hip, exploding a chunk of rock two feet from my head. I felt bites of stone chips in my cheek, and I dropped down. I gave a gargling, dying groan.

  “You got him,” I heard Eva yell.

  Grinder came tearing around the base of the escarpment, saw me lying on my side, and fired again. I heard the flat thap of a slug passing inches from my ear. I shot downhill at close range. Grinder staggered, hit, but he jerked off one more shot, and my left shoulder flared with pain. I tumbled down the granite slope and lost my gun.

  Something smacked the side of my head, stopping my tumble and making the world go loose and wavery. I explored the damage to my shoulder with my good hand. My jacket was soaked with hot blood. My Police Special lay down the slope, almost within reach. Grinder lay on his side, clutching his belly and groaning.

  I crawled toward the gun, but before I reached it, Eva stepped over Grinder. She had an automatic, a small one, but it looked at me from a round and deadly eye. “Stop,” she said.

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” I told her.

  “Why not? You kidnapped and killed my business associate. Then when Mr. Grinder and I tracked you down, you shot at us.”

  She raised the weapon. And then Sylvia’s voice cut the wilderness apart: “No! I will not allow it!”

  Eva spun. Sylvia stood in the center of the logging road. The gun in Eva’s hand fired, and Sylvia pitched over backward, as though hit in the center of her chest. I made the last lurch, grabbed my weapon, and fired downhill until the gun was empty.

  Everything had gone hazy. I staggered up, but I couldn’t see Sylvia or Eva. I took a step and fell, then pushed up again. Grinder was on his knees, trying to use his rifle as a prop, as a crutch, to get to his feet. He was drooling blood, keening. I went past him, looking for Sylvia.

  Then I saw Eva. She had backed down the slope. She raised her small pistol, shaking. I lurched toward her, determined to take her down.

  A rifle fired. I saw Eva jerk, half turn, and fall. Darryl, I thought. I didn’t wait. I staggered across the hill, to the place where Sylvia had stood. No sign of her. I called, “Sylvia,” my voice tearing my throat. I caught sight of something crumpled and brown that looked like her buckskin clothes, and half-stumbled, half-crawled, to it.

  It was a doe. She lay on her side on bloodstained snow, staring at me with great, frightened eyes. She moaned, then with a mighty heave, she rolled to her belly and stood on shaking legs. I saw the bullet wound just behind her right shoulder, in the ribs. She limped away, broke into a clumsy halting run, and vanished in the dim twilight.

  23

  A sharp pain in my shoulder roused me. I woke disoriented, wondering where I was: a room splashed in early daylight. Cheap paneled walls, yellow painted ceiling. Darryl Garret’s living room. I sat up, dizzy, and swayed there a moment. I heard voices: Darryl, Wanda. I vaguely remembered a jolting ride in the bed of Darryl’s truck to the emergency room.

  I peeled back a four-inch pad of dressing and looked at the damage. My shoulder had the Frankenstein look of blood-black stitches. I remembered police asking me questions, then a lawyer showing up, one on retainer from Benson Forestry Products. They let me go.

  I got into my jeans. Wanda came in and looked at me. “You gonna live?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You could use a shower.”

  “Among a lot of other things.”

  “Don’t get your stitches wet.”

  Breakfast made me feel moderately human again, eggs scrambled with onions and Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar. Homemade bread with raisins and cinnamon. “What happened to Benson?” I asked.

  Darryl said stone-faced, “He wasn’t there.”

  “He had to be there.”

  “That’s not what we heard from the cops,” Wanda said. “They told us he wasn’t there. He tried to get you on the phone to cancel out on your lunch appointment. Something came up. His lawyer has witnesses who place him twenty miles away at the time of the shooting.”

  “I see.”

  “You OK?” Darryl asked. “You were out of
it last night, man. Talking about a woman and a deer.”

  “One of you drive me back to my cabin?” I asked.

  Wanda shook her head. “It’s a crime scene.” She paused, then added softly, “They didn’t find another woman, Oakley. If she’d been there they would have spotted her. Just three bodies.”

  “Damn lucky you weren’t the fourth,” Darryl added.

  “You took out Eva?”

  He didn’t react.

  “Thanks.”

  Darryl stared down at his plate. “I came to help Bill, not you.”

  “You were too late. Is he dead?”

  “Died about two this morning, they say.”

  Wanda said, “Darryl told me you convinced the police that Eva had killed Jeremiah.”

  “I told them to check out her car for evidence.”

  “Because she had temporary tags?” Wanda asked.

  “And she had a motive,” I said. “Her husband was testing a genetically-engineered fungus to make pines grow faster. It turned out to be a monster. Instead of encouraging growth, it killed the trees off. Jeremiah found out about it and was about to blow the whistle on them. So Caleb hired Grinder to kill Jeremiah, but his bullet just missed. Then Eva ran Jeremiah down with her car. Once Jeremiah was gone, Grinder hired Darryl to clean up the trees.”

  Darryl nodded silently.

  I said, “I think Eva got Frank Lauser to question Jerry Smith because he was pretty savvy about genetics and they thought he might have tipped his grandfather off or the other way around. Lauser was the man with the stun gun. Was that you with the rifle, Darryl?”

  “I wasn’t gonna shoot anybody,” he muttered.

  “So Eva got in touch with Lauser, who was probably supposed to help her overpower me. But she killed him and intended to kill me, too, making it look like a shootout between us. I think Eva was more nervous than her husband was about having the story of the fungus and the pines come out. The company was struggling, and Caleb wasn’t the best of husbands. She wanted to come out of it with some money. She didn’t like my snooping around, so she decided to eliminate me.” I paused. “Or maybe she and Caleb together decided that. Or maybe Caleb saw a quick death for his wife as cheaper than a divorce action.”

  Darryl said, “But he was twenty miles away.”

  “Says his lawyer,” I said. “What did you take from Jeremiah’s place?”

  “He’d dug up one of the pine trees, roots and all. I burned it.”

  “Why?”

  “Grinder gave me five hundred dollars and told me to keep my mouth shut. There were some from the forest, too.”

  Wanda asked, “What are you going to do about Benson?”

  “We’ll see,” I told her. “His business is collapsing.” I thought of the conversation I’d had earlier in the day with Sam and said, “When this gets out—and it will—the whole thing will come down, and he’ll go to prison. I doubt he’ll get far before the feds find him, and they probably don’t need help from me.”

  The police turned me away from my own property. The uniformed officer at the bottom of the drive guessed they’d be finished by that evening. It was OK to take my Jeep.

  I drove one-handed to Montpelier and spent some time talking to Gina Berkof. When I finished, I said, “So is it a story?”

  “Benson isn’t going to like it.”

  “Benson isn’t going to have the power he once had. Anyway, it’s important. Someone’s going to have to dig up that whole area, take care of that fungus. It’s bigger than Love Canal.”

  “I’ll run the story in some shape or form. But I’ve got bad news for you. Eva Benson didn’t kill Jeremiah. The night that happened she was in Brattleboro hosting a fundraiser for a gubernatorial candidate who’s friendly to timber interests.”

  “Not possible.”

  “No, she was there.” She tilted her head. “Maybe someone else was driving her car. Darryl?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe Grinder. He knew which way Jeremiah was walking that night.”

  She nodded with her lips pressed thin.

  “Have you heard from Jerry?” I asked.

  “He called in. He’s working on some kind of memorial service for his grandfather next week. He asked for time off.”

  “Thanks,” I said and stood up, to the accompaniment of a pleasant little assortment of shooting pains. “Are you free for dinner by any chance?”

  “No. I’m in a relationship and very happy,” she said.

  “I’m not making a pass. I just like talking to you. Why don’t both of you come? I feel the need for company tonight.”

  She held the smile. “Let me see what Elaine says. If it works out, Dutch treat?”

  “Sounds good.” I checked that she still had my cell phone number and left.

  The police had left my place when I got back to North-field. I didn’t want to go into the cabin. I walked to the granite outcrop where I’d sat imagining a changed world with Sylvia. I sat there for a while in the afternoon sun. Then, like mist condensing from the air, a figure appeared in the shadow of the forest: a yearling deer, his head cocked to one side. When I moved to look at him he bolted into the brush.

  “Sylvia,” I said aloud, “I hope you’re all right. Take care of her, Grandfather. She had a reason to interfere.”

  There are uncanny moments in life when the whole world seems a living, listening thing.

  They always pass.

  24

  On the way back to Montpelier for dinner with Gina and Elaine, I stopped at the Backwoods Bookstore. Bernie sat behind his desk, with a mound of cigarette butts smoldering in the ashtray and another one between the middle and ring fingers of his left hand. He was reading an old John D. MacDonald novel in dog-eared paperback, but he dropped a bookmark into it when I came in.

  “Butch Cassidy himself,” he said.

  I stared at him blankly.

  “You haven’t seen today’s paper.”

  “I usually avoid them.”

  He picked up the front page of the Montpelier Times Argus and displayed it like a banner. FOREST SHOOTOUT, the headline screamed. FORMER PRIVATE DETECTIVE WOUNDED.

  “You’re famous. So if you’re wounded, why are you walking around?”

  “I was lucky,” I said. “The bullet missed bone, just tore up skin and muscle.”

  “Hence the unsightly shoulder bulge,” he said. “Says here three people were shot and killed on your property yesterday, and you claim another was wounded and disappeared. That the Indian woman you asked me about, the one who wears buckskins?”

  “She’s the one.”

  “I’ve asked around. Most people think you’ve been drinking too much. But there’s a woman in town, claims to be an Abenaki, who says you saw a—” he closed his eyes. “Let me get this right, a Nolka Alnôbak.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Miss Sarah—she’s my informant—tells me that in old stories told by the old folks of her tribe, there are tales about beings who are deer-people. They look like deer, but can take human shape. Usually a Nolka Alnôbak is a woman. The forest people send one to the tribe when they need help. They appear as women because that way the young men will listen.” He dragged on the cigarette. “Nolka Alnôbak. Deer-people.”

  “Deer-people,” I said.

  “They can’t hold human shape for more than a few hours. There are tales of young men who would fall in love with one, and they’d lie down together, but next morning she’d be gone, with just deer tracks. There are tragic stories—warrior sleeps with a beautiful maiden, wakes in the morning, kills a deer, and it’s the woman he slept with.”

  “My woman was human,” I said firmly.

  “All right,” Bernie said. “And nobody else in town ever saw her or heard of her.”

  “I guess so.”

  He shook his head. “Life is strange, Oakley. The VC always believed the spirits of their departed ancestors were helping them. There were times when I’d swear they were right”


  “Thanks anyway, Bernie.”

  “Wait,” he said, leaning forward. “Miss Sarah wanted me to ask you a question. She said it’s important. When these deer-people come to humans, it’s to impart some great secret, to teach wisdom, to give a prophecy. Miss Sarah wanted to know what message the deer-people have for us.”

  “Don’t interfere.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the message,” I said, and left him looking bewildered.

  I went back to Jerry’s apartment building. His door was locked, as I expected. I pulled from my pocket the one thing I’d retrieved from my cabin: a leather case containing a compact but useful array of lock picks.

  The door opened into the living room of Jerry’s obsessively neat apartment. I did a quick walk-through: empty. I looked out the living room window and saw the river. My shoulder was pounding, but I didn’t want to take any painkillers. I stood at Jerry’s bookcase and looked at his reading material: forestry management manuals, microbiology texts, a college-textbook-looking book titled The Psychopathic Personality, and paperback novels. He liked thrillers and stories about serial killers.

  In the kitchen I found a small stack of papers on the table. Receipts from a funeral home for Jeremiah’s cremation. An oversized brown manila envelope, fat with something. And I found the files that had been taken from my cabin. That put Jerry with Eva. Curiouser and curiouser.

  In the bedroom I found that Jerry slept on a raised futon. A side table, a dresser with mirror, and a locked four-drawer file cabinet completed the furnishings. A framed diploma on the wall averred that Jerry had graduated from the University of Vermont with a Bachelor of Science degree, cum laude. The labels on the file drawers read WRITING, RECORDS, LAB, MISC.

  Before I could attempt to pick the cabinet lock, Jerry Smith said behind me, “This is a quiet apartment. Lath-and-plaster walls just soak up sound like a sponge.” He was leaning casually in the doorway. “What are you looking for?” he asked.