Did he ever see anyone? Did he ever speak to anyone? I hadn’t noticed a telephone in the living room, and there isn’t one here in the kitchen either. Such isolation would be enough to drive anyone mad. What had it done to Douglas Menders? Would he have craved company of some kind, and if so, what would he have done about it?
Standing there in the dark kitchen, his dead body lying in the very next room, it is an unsettling thought.
What am I looking for here, anyway? What am I hoping to find that the police or the ABI would miss?
Maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I know why I’m looking, at least. It’s because Lynette Hyams died in my arms, it’s because I’m being hurled through time and space on some quest I don’t even fully understand, it’s because of that damned red moon that only I can see, it’s because – if only I can manage to solve this crime – maybe I can prove to myself that I’m not crazy.
I push the thoughts away and push through another door that opens out onto a tiny hallway, two more doors leading off – the bedroom and the bathroom, I suppose.
As I hear Ben’s muffled voice on the radio back in the living room, I open the nearest door and enter the bathroom.
Like the rest of the cabin, the room is small. There is a sink, a toilet and a three-quarter-size iron bathtub. No mirror. No cupboards. A crucifix and a couple of pictures in their place. On closer inspection, the pictures are two of the fourteen Stations of the Cross – the first showing Jesus carrying his cross on the procession to Calvary, the second an image of Jesus crucified on that same cross. This particular artist seems to have drawn inspiration from the most gruesome parts of the tale – there are streams of blood coursing down Christ’s face from the crown of thorns, and a river pours from the spear wound in his side. I wonder what Menders would have been thinking as he studied those pictures from his iron bathtub, and I shiver involuntarily.
With no cupboard, there are just a few assorted toiletries arranged neatly around the sink. And now I notice that there is no shower pipe that he could have hung any victim from, although I suppose he could have kept someone tied up in that bathtub. But, as Ben said, there is no sign of blood or anything else that might indicate that someone had been kept there, and it was unlikely that if someone had killed Menders and escaped that they would have taken the time to clean up the place before they left.
In the dim illumination afforded by the bare lightbulb, I once again note how clean this room is. Maybe that was how he spent his days? Scrubbing the bath and the floorboards? Maybe trying to wash away the sins of his past.
The crucifix and the pictures on the wall support the religious angle, although I still don’t know if is all for show. But if so, who was he showing? He clearly had very few visitors, and he could have stopped trying to convince the police long ago.
So perhaps Menders was a reformed man?
I see cleaning products stored between the legs of the bathtub and examine them. Nothing special, mainly bleach.
Of course, such ruthless attention to cleanliness might not be the result of a tortured soul; it could also be the signs of a man trying to hide something.
I back out of the room, still searching. Not for evidence so much as a . . . feeling.
I was scared in that bathroom – the religious paraphernalia, the thought of the dead body, my knowledge of the kind of man he was, all combined to bring the fear out in me – but it’s not the feeling I’m looking for.
I move down the tiny hall and open the bedroom door with my gloved hand. The curtains are drawn in there and my other hand feels along the wall until it hits a light switch.
Another single, bare lightbulb flickers on above me and I take in the single bed, made up with hospital corners, sheets starched; the side table, stacked with books, a small reading lamp next to them; a pine wardrobe, closed tight; and by the window, a table and a chair . . .
I see a pair of binoculars lying carelessly on the tabletop, a large telescope set up right next to it. I look more closely, see that they are high-grade items, semi-professional stuff. There are a few astronomy journals open on the table, pinned down underneath the binoculars, and another look at the bedside table shows that most of the books there – except for a dog-eared copy of the King James Bible – are about astronomy and star-gazing.
I know the night skies around my own home are incredible; I’d literally forgotten that the heavens contained that many stars, I’d been in New York so long. What you could see at night from up here, I can only guess, but it was no wonder that Menders had taken it up as a pastime. It answers my question of what he did out here on his own, at least.
I bend toward the eyepiece of the telescope and aim it upwards with my gloved hands, but I am met only with a cloud of snow-swirling grey-and-white. I leave it, pick up the binoculars and aim them out of the window.
I don’t even aim them skyward; instead, I point them out to the small garden, adjusting the focus. They’re good, and I calculate that – between the binoculars and the telescope – Menders’ interest in astronomy cost more than everything else in his cabin put together.
It is then that the snow clears slightly and I see something, out beyond the trees. I adjust the focus again and my heart starts to beat a little faster.
I put the binoculars down and go back to the telescope, not aiming it upwards now, but outwards, away from the house, through the trees that border the cabin’s garden . . .
And that’s when the feeling hits me, and I know I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.
9
“De Nares is on his way,” Ben calls from the hallway as he approaches the bedroom, summoned by my shouts. He arrives at the doorway with a furrowed brow. “So, what have you found?”
I point at the table by the window, and his eyes follow my finger. “The binoculars?” he asks for confirmation as he enters the room, and I nod my head.
“And the telescope,” I add.
“So Menders was a star-nut,” Ben says. “So what? He had to do something up here, right?”
“Look through the scope,” I tell him, and – although he has one eyebrow raised in question – he does as I tell him. “Tell me what you see.”
“I can’t see anything,” he complains, “the thing’s not focused, there’s too much snow –”
“Look further out,” I insist, “the focus is fine if you’re looking at the right distance. Just wait for a break in the snow.”
Ben sighs, but continues looking as I wait. And, after a few more seconds, realization dawns. “Son of a bitch!” he exclaims. “I can see your house from here! And Artie’s place, and Larraine’s . . . hell, I can see the whole lot of you through this thing.” I wait for the next step in his thinking. “And so could Doug,” Ben says eventually, head coming away from the scope. “Son of a bitch.” Ben looks at me closely. “You think he knew who did it, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?” I ask, everything clear in my mind. “He doesn’t get visitors, he craves human contact, so what he does is watches us. You said yourself, he hates – hated – leaving this place, so he watches from a distance. And then he sees something. At the very least, he might have seen the girl running across those fields, they’re right in his field of vision. He might have known where she came from, at least.”
“Did he record it?” Ben asks, thinking with me now. “Did he make notes? Keep a journal?” He is already rooting around, searching through the man’s books and papers.
“Do you think he knew the killer?” I ask.
Ben stops searching, looks at me, shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says sadly. “I just don’t know. It’s possible . . .”
“Maybe he was working with someone,” I suggest, the idea forming unbidden in my mind. “He couldn’t do it anymore, so he hooks up with someone who can?”
“It’s possible,” Ben says again, “but I don’t think so. More likely that he was engaging in a bit of voyeuristic viewing and saw something he shouldn’t. Maybe he contacted
the killer after the fact though?” he says thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “Either for blackmail, or to work his way into the killer’s operation somehow?”
I nod, going with it. “And the killer didn’t like it, came up here and dealt with the threat.” I look back at the table, notice a gap in the mess for the first time. I point at it. “Is that from you moving things around?” I ask Ben.
He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I put everything back where it came from. But you’re right, it looks like something’s missing.”
“Yeah,” I agree, “something about the size of a book – or a journal – placed about right for a guy looking through the scope to write notes in.”
“But it’s not here now,” Ben says, and I know we have jumped to the same conclusion. No firm evidence perhaps, but we both have the feeling.
“So we have a dead body, a surveillance set-up that would have allowed him to see the girl, and – possibly – one missing journal.”
Ben nodded. “A journal that could maybe help ID the killer.”
“But it’s gone now, if it ever existed in the first place.”
“It might still be here. Maybe Menders hid it.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I say. “Let’s get started.”
But Ben shakes his head. “No,” he says firmly. “De Nares and the ABI will be here soon, and you’ve got to get out of here. We think Lynette’s killer did this, right? And you were one of the prime suspects in that case. Can you imagine what De Nares is gonna do if he catches you here, or if he suspects – for even a moment – that you were here?”
I can imagine, and the thought isn’t pretty; even my father might not be able to get me released so easily, if I was to be found here.
“Okay,” I agree uneasily. “I’ll go. But you promise you’ll look for that journal, okay?”
“You bet,” Ben says with conviction, before looking at me with concern. “Hell,” he says, “I forgot – I drove you up here, didn’t I? How the hell are you going to get back down by yourself?”
Damn. It was a good point, too. But you could see my house from here. It would be a hike, but I could get there.
“I’ll walk,” I tell him.
“You’ll what?” Ben says in surprise.
“I’ll walk down,” I tell him. “The snow’s not so bad now, and there must be some trails leading down.”
Ben shakes his head gravely. “No,” he says, “no, I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all. These are bad conditions to start with, and you’re not dressed for hiking. Added to which, there’s still a killer out there somewhere, and we know he was here recently.” Ben points outside. “What if he’s out there?”
“But I can’t let De Nares see me here,” I respond, “and I can’t really take your car, otherwise how would you explain how you got here?”
Ben thinks for a moment, trying to figure things out, but I stop him short. “Look,” I say, “I’m going. I’m walking. I’m a grown woman, okay? I can make my own decisions. I’ve got boots, gloves, a jacket, a hat, what else do I need?”
Ben’s gaze is leveled at me, and he knows this is an argument he won’t win. I know he’s torn between the logical and emotional centers of his mind, one telling him that it’s the sensible thing to do, the other questioning how he can let me go out there on my own.
Eventually, he bends a knee and pulls up the right leg of his pants, withdrawing a small snub-nosed .38 revolver from a brown-leather ankle holster.
“This,” he says in answer to my question, holding the weapon out to me in one giant hand. “Take this, at least.”
I extend my own hand and take it, putting it into my coat pocket, the weight unfamiliar yet oddly comforting.
“You know how to use it?” he asks, and I nod my head. I’d learned to shoot at the family ranch back in Westford, and I’d been back on the range a few times since my “accident” . . . just in case.
Our heads both turn at the sound of sirens in the distance, then Ben turns back to me. “Okay then,” he says. “Go.” He leans forward, kisses me once on the cheek, and looks away.
Immediately, the sounds of the sirens growing louder, I do what he says.
And a moment later, I am gone.
10
An hour passes, maybe more, and I am regretting my decision.
What the hell had I been thinking? Ben was right – I am freezing to death out here in the woods, and my hat and gloves aren’t doing a whole lot to help.
But that’s not even the main problem. Back in the house, with the smell of death in the air, surrounded by crucifixes and sinister artwork, I had held no fear of the snow-crisp beauty of the great outdoors beyond. And with De Nares and his troops about to descend on the scene, I had absolutely no wish to get into a confrontation with him that might get me sent back to jail.
That much is still true, at least; I have no wish to return to jail. I am, however, rather less enthusiastic about my surroundings than I had hoped to be.
In fact, I am terrified.
An hour away from Menders’ cabin, on the steep, heavily wooded slope that will eventually wind its way down to my own farmstead, the isolation is devastating. I know that Ben, alongside De Nares and an ABI crime scene team, are only a relatively short distance away, and yet I can see nothing except for the trees and the snow, and can hear nothing except for the whistle of the wind and the sigh of the branches.
I pause and look about me. Do I even know where I am? With the wind and the snow blocking out sight and sound, it is hard to be sure. I’ve been heading downhill steadily since I began, in what I hope is a straight line, but what had seemed like an easy task back in the cabin now seems much harder.
Impossible?
No; not impossible. Nothing is ever impossible. My father, for all his other faults, taught me that, at least.
I know I can’t let the conditions get to me, can’t let the isolation confuse me; if I continue just making my way steadily downhill, I will come out near the small hamlet of farms that holds my own home.
I will.
But it’s not just the fear of getting lost that affects me. Out here, all alone, I am suddenly all too aware of the danger I am in. The killer of Douglas Menders, the killer of Lynette Hyams, might still be out here somewhere.
Is he somewhere in the trees, watching me right now?
The thought brings a chill to my spine stronger than the snow or the wind ever could, and my hand reflexively moves to my jacket pocket, feeling the reassuring heft of the .38 through its lining.
My eyes dart about the place, settling for just a moment on each gap between the huge trees, searching wildly for anything out of the ordinary. On a conscious level, I know that – under the circumstances – it is entirely possible that my mind will start making things up, seeing shapes or movements that simply aren’t there. On a subconscious level though, I’m already doing it, and seem unable to stop.
I can feel my heart rate rising as I look around me, eyes scanning, gun held tight in my pocket.
I know I’m being paranoid, but what if Ben is right? What if someone is out there? I remember the body of Lynette Hyams in my arms, I remember what the killer did to her, the damage he inflicted to that poor girl, the pain she must have felt, I remember the light of life blinking out of her eyes, leaving nothing but an empty shell. I remember the dead, bloody body of Douglas Menders, back up the mountain. I remember that we still don’t know if it’s a single killer, or multiple killers, and my heart races faster as I imagine people all around me, watching me, waiting for the time to move in on me, to attack me, rape me, torture me, kill me . . .
In a flash, the .38 is out of my pocket, aimed out at the trees in a two-handed grip as I turn wildly this way and that.
“Come on, you sons of bitches!” I yell, without conscious control, unable to stop myself, but knowing somewhere deep inside that it is the attack on the courthouse steps, being shot by Zebunac’s hired assassins, that is driving me to this; the fear eating aw
ay at my insides, day in and day out as I wait for them to return and finish the job. This is it, dammit; I’ve had enough, out here in the snowy woods, surrounded by potential enemies, I’ve had enough!
The fear has eaten away so much of me that I don’t know what’s left, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it continue any further.
“Come on!” I scream into the wind once more. “Fucking come on! Show yourselves, you cowardly bastards, I know you’re out there!”
I turn and turn, the cold-steel barrel of the .38 swinging with me, trained on the gaps between the trees, the places where the men are hiding, watching, lying in wait.
Well, I’ll fucking show them.
“What are you waiting for?” I shout, still not knowing where the words are coming from. “I’m right here! Come on out here!” My voice starts to weaken, and I choke on my own tears. “Come on,” I sob, falling to my knees in the thick, deep snow. “Come on . . .”
I see movement ahead of me then – I’m sure of it – and the revolver comes up of its own accord, my body stiff, tense, the tears freezing on my face.
Then I see what it is and almost smile as the shape glides out of the trees, imperious and regal, unperturbed by the wind and driving snow.
It is a gigantic elk, its huge, sweeping antlers not yet shed for the winter, and I watch in awe as it parades before me.
I drop the gun to my knee, comforted by this natural beauty, the elk’s strength seeming to radiate from its beating heart to mine, filling me with warmth and a feeling of security that moments ago had seemed forever unattainable.
The beast moves closer toward me, and all thoughts of watchers in the woods are gone as I stare at its graceful head, at the way its antlers sweep back over its shoulders, spikes pointing forward near the tip, its immense, powerful body wrapped up in a cloak of warm greyish-brown.
Then I see its eyes, huge within its furred skull, black pinpricks in a sea of curved, shining brown, and I rise from my knees, our faces just inches apart now, our frozen breath meeting in the middle.
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