Chapter Ten: Tread
Buffalo, Wyoming
September 19, 1976, 5:00 a.m.
Susanne
Susanne’s eyes were fixed on the shotgun beside the bed. The man snoring in the living room had left it there, along with the phone on the bedside table, after lashing her to the chair Patrick sat in to put on and pull off his boots. She tried for what seemed like the millionth time to escape. She twisted her wrists, trying to slip them out of the rough rope. When that didn’t work, she rocked the chair. Its feet were rooted in the deep shag carpeting, and it wouldn’t tump over.
Dammit. She was stuck here in this bedroom that she hadn’t gotten around to redecorating from Old West rusty barbed wire, cowboy prints, and browns to something softer and more colorful. Her heart was pounding in her ears, sweat dripping down her back, stomach acid-filled and burning. She glanced at the phone and shotgun again.
They were useless. Like her.
At least he hadn’t hurt her. In fact, he barely said a word to her, other than to tell her to hold Ferdinand—which she did, although it wasn’t easy with the dog going nuts and the man’s arm locked around her neck—and ask her where her husband was. She’d been dumb with fear and told the truth. A hunting trip. And when would he be back? She hesitated, then said, “Soon.” His eyes bored into hers, then he grunted.
He frog-marched them into the house without turning on any lights. Ferdinand, he made her lock in the laundry room. Her, he tied up in the bedroom. She’d barely gotten a look at him, although she’d smelled him. As her daddy would say, rather crudely, he stunk enough to gag a boar hog and drop it at twenty paces. He wasn’t tall, but he was menacing, wiry but strong. Wearing some kind of coveralls. In the dark, she saw only that his eyes and hair were not blond or light, and nothing of his face. He seemed altogether unfamiliar, and she knew for sure she’d never heard his voice before.
Unfortunately, he found a letter on the kitchen table that she’d started writing to her mother earlier. So he’d figured out she was lying. That Patrick and the kids were gone for days. It was lying on the floor beside her now, where he’d dropped it without a word, right before he shut the door to the bedroom, then settled in the living room for his siesta.
Her guess? He was the fugitive they’d been talking about on the radio. Billy Kemecke. The one who’d murdered the local game warden and a Big Horn County deputy.
A ruthless killer.
Downstairs, Ferdinand was keeping up an incessant howling and barking. How he had any voice left, she didn’t know. Nor could she figure out how the man slept through it. She wished Ferdinand would save his energy for later, for daytime, when there was a chance someone might come to the door. Although probably no one would. Their mail was delivered to a box a mile away out on Airport Road. She wasn’t expecting any friends or deliveries.
She was alone with a killer, and no one was coming to help her.
From the living room, she heard boots hit the floor. The snoring had stopped. She’d thought she was as scared as she could be before, but when, after a moment’s silence, his footsteps started down the hallway toward her, she realized she was wrong. She could be a lot more scared. A sound rose from her chest, but her throat closed and choked it off before it became a scream. Her face stretched, trying to get it out. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, and as the footfalls approached the door, she started to shake.
The doorknob turned in slow motion. Her brain whirred, unable to form any thoughts except one: escape, escape, escape. She clenched and unclenched her fingers helplessly.
Escape was impossible.
The door swung inward, and a presence followed it. It was nearly time for dawn, so it had to be lighter outside. But heavy curtains blocked out all the sun, a necessity so Patrick could sneak naps during daylight hours after working nights. The form that walked toward her was a silhouette. If he didn’t kill her, she knew that this faceless man would be at the center of every nightmare she had for the rest of her life.
He spoke in a sleep-graveled voice, deep and atonal. “Where did your husband go?”
“Uh . . .”
He leaned down in front of her, so close his breath blew stink in puffs that closed her eyes. “Do you really want me to make you tell the truth?” A finger brushed her cheek, and she shuddered. “I’ve got no beef with you. You’ve been real neighborly. I’d like to just grab a few essentials and be on my way, after you answer my questions. But things could go different. It’s up to you.”
Susanne bit her lip until she tasted blood, then relented. “He told me Hunter Corral. But I went up there last night to take him dinner, and he wasn’t there.”
The man stood. “How unfortunate.”
He walked to the closet, and she heard hangers screech across the clothes rod. Fabric rustled, and something settled on the carpet. The man raised his arms. He was putting on a shirt, she realized. One of Patrick’s long-sleeved plaid flannel shirts. Then he opened dresser drawers, shutting them one by one, until he reached into one and pulled something back out. His silhouette stepped into pant legs, then she heard a zipper. He returned to the closet and put on boots and a cowboy hat.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why?”
The man grinned. It wasn’t jovial. “Live free or die.”
Susanne stewed on that, then asked, “What do you want with my husband?”
“Do you keep any cash in the house?” he said. “Besides your purse. If I have to look and find out you didn’t tell me about some—well, that’s not answering my questions, is it?”
She closed her eyes. “Coffee can in the kitchen, up high, farthest from the sink.”
He disappeared out the door. She exhaled. She heard cabinets opening and closing and the faucet running in the kitchen. A minute later he was back, standing at her side.
“Take a swallow.” He held a glass to her lips. “You’ll thank me for this later.”
Water ran down her lips, and she shook her head. Some went down her throat anyway, and she choked.
“Come on, now. It’s just water. I’m trying to help you out.” He tilted it again.
By reflex, she swallowed this time, and kept swallowing until it was empty.
He stepped back and picked up the shotgun. “I’ll just grab that money, your keys, and a few supplies and be on my way then, ma’am.”
“Let me go.” She pulled against her restraints. The rope dug into her abraded wrists, and the pain made her frantic. “Please! Untie me.”
But he shut the door behind him without answering her. For half an hour, she listened helplessly to banging and thumping from the kitchen and the utility closet. Finally, she heard Ferdinand’s growling erupt into enraged barks as the front door opened and closed. Then the car—her station wagon, not the Porsche, she could tell from the engine noise—started, and its sound receded as it drove away.
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
He was gone. At least for now.
Chapter Eleven: Doubleback
Southwest of Walker Prairie, Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming
September 19, 1976, 6:00 a.m.
Trish
Why did her dad have to get them up at the butt crack of dawn on vacation, especially after they’d been up half the night with a coyote pack outside their tent? He was always like this. “Hard work never killed anybody,” he’d say as he marshalled them for an outdoor work project at dawn. Pulling weeds. Planting a garden. Mending a fence. He never stopped.
This morning he already had a fire going. The smell was nice. She could hear it crackling outside the tent, along with the clatter of pots and utensils.
“Last one up is a rotten egg,” he said now, his voice chipper, as if he’d slept like a baby.
Perry lunged for the tent door. He was such a brownnoser, but she wasn’t going to let him beat her. She grabbed his ankles and crawled over him, avoiding his swinging fists as she exited the tent first.
“Not fair,” he said.
She reached back in the tent for her boots and jacket. She’d slept in her jeans and T-shirt, but it was cold out, and wet from the rain the evening before. Perry pushed past her, barefoot. One of his elbows connected with her temple as he stood up.
“Stop it, turd breath.” She shoved him from behind.
He stumbled forward but kept going without answering.
If Patrick heard them, he didn’t give any sign of it. “I need you two to go get firewood.”
Trish said, “Can I feed the horses instead?”
Patrick pointed at the grazing horses, their tails swishing and legs hobbled. “You’re going to have to get up earlier if you want to do that. They were hungry. So am I, and this fire’s going to go out. Get moving.”
Trish groaned, but she walked around the edge of the campsite, gathering twigs and small branches. Nothing more than kindling. “There’s not enough. Other people have already gathered it.” She dumped her stack beside her dad.
“It’s a forest, Trish. There are trees everywhere. You just have to go a little farther.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll get it,” Perry said. In his suck-up voice, he added, “After this rain, the risk of fire is less, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Smokey Bear. But we still have to be careful.”
Trish rolled her eyes.
“Your sister will help you. Don’t forget the carriers.” Patrick was referring to their canvas containers for carrying firewood.
“Let’s take the horses,” Trish said.
“You won’t be going that far.” But her dad grinned.
She shrugged. “We might. And they can carry more than us.”
“Whatever. Just hurry so we can get going.”
Perry ran to the horses. They shied away from him.
“Don’t scare them.” Under her breath she added, “You’re such a putz.”
“Takes one to know one.” He grabbed Duke’s lead rope and unfastened his hobbles.
She did the same for Goldie, crooning sweet nothings in the mare’s ear.
Side by side the siblings saddled their horses and tied the log carriers behind their saddles. Trish, with ease. Perry, with a monumental struggle. Trish finished first. She brushed Goldie’s mane and watched Perry out the corner of her eye. Trish watched Duke’s belly expand as he sucked in air. Perry fed the cinch through the D ring, then tried to tighten it.
“Did you get the cinch tight enough?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to check?” She stepped toward his saddle.
Perry blocked her with his butt, knocking her sideways. “I’ve got it.”
“Ouch. Okay. Your funeral, shrimp.”
He mocked her voice. “Your funeral, Trish.”
They mounted and headed into the forest.
“Stay together,” Patrick shouted after them. “And don’t go far.”
She wasn’t going far. She didn’t know why he wanted all the wood, anyway. They had enough MREs to last the whole trip. Campfire cooking was a major pain. She knew the drill. After gathering firewood, her dad would make them haul water from the stream. Then they’d have to boil it before they could cook, wash dishes, or fill the canteens with it. Her dad claimed the stream water could make them sick, and that the boiling purified it. Whatever. Last time they’d gone camping, boiling was her job. She had filled their canteens with unboiled stream water every day, and no one died. He was such a worrywart. So fat chance she was going to boil the canteen water this time. He’d never know, and it would save her one last haul.
But water wasn’t the only problem with cooking out. Everything always had dirt and ash in it, if it even cooked right at all. Half the stuff was burnt or raw or both. The only things good on a campfire were hot dogs and marshmallows, on stick skewers that didn’t have to be washed. That was fun.
If Brandon and his friends showed up today, they should do hot dogs and s’mores. She knew the chances of Mrs. Lewis passing on the message she’d left about Walker Prairie were slim, and even if she did, Brandon might not be able to find their camp. Or might not come at all. What if he’d started liking someone else since she left? She hoped that skank Charla Newby hadn’t sunk her claws into him.
Goldie snorted. Trish looked around, expecting to see Perry and Duke, but her brother had disappeared. Great.
“Good girl,” Trish said to her horse.
The forest was eerily quiet. Even Goldie’s hoofbeats were muffled—except for the occasional crackling of a pinecone underfoot—by the carpet of browning pine needles and fat tufts of moss over the rocks. What had gotten the mare’s attention? She didn’t see anything strange, and the horse wasn’t acting skittish, so she decided it was probably nothing. Horses acted like total paranoid freaks most of the time.
“Perry, where are you?” she said.
He didn’t answer, so she raised her voice.
The only sound in return was the song of a magpie. Goose bumps raised on her arms. It was spooky out here alone. The pine trees blocked what little sun was out, between the stormy clouds and early hour. The tree trunks and boulders provided endless hiding places. It felt like the witch from “Hansel and Gretel” would be jumping out from behind one any second. Every tiny sound made her jumpy. The creak of a branch, the snap of a twig, the chittering of a squirrel. They all sounded ominous.
She’d just get her firewood and return to camp. Perry would probably beat her there.
She hopped off Goldie, who dropped her head to nibble, even though the grass was almost nonexistent back in the trees. Trish picked her way around rocks so splotched with lichen they looked almost like someone had decorated them. Lime green and crackly, forest green and plush, and milky gray with black sporous dots. Threads of green moss wafted in the low fingerling branches of the pines. A juvenile squirrel sprinted up a tree trunk with a pinecone prized in its jaws. Trish noticed it all, but she was too spooked to stop and marvel. Instead, she focused on finding the driest pieces of wood. Big enough to burn, but small enough to put in the bags. It took her five minutes to fill them both. She had grabbed Goldie’s mane and put one foot in her stirrup to mount when she heard a CRACK behind her.
She jerked hard, hauling herself into the saddle at the same time that the horse leaped forward. Trish pulled back on the reins, then turned Goldie to face the noise. The horse snorted and took several steps backward.
Trish didn’t want to surprise a wild animal. She didn’t even want to see one, unless it was Bambi-sized. She needed a noise, so she made one. “Shoo. Yah. Go away.”
Nothing moved. Long seconds passed. No more twigs cracked.
Trish exhaled as she patted Goldie’s neck. “We’re okay, girl. It’s nothing.”
But she remembered the pack of coyotes. The creepy guys yesterday, on Red Grade and at their campsite. And all that talk on the radio about the murderer loose. If she didn’t have the big log loads on either side of the horse’s flanks, she would have trotted Goldie all the way back to camp.
Instead, she looked around them. Disorientation reached out and gripped her with icy fingers. She hadn’t been paying attention to landmarks on the ride out. But then she saw a trail of hoofprints in the damp pine needles, moss, and dirt. Goldie had left breadcrumbs for them to find their way back to camp. She clucked the mare forward.
Together, girl and horse walked alone through the woods. Trish was still nervous, but she was trying to be brave. If she was scared, Goldie would be, too. The whole way back, Trish called out for Perry, with no response. Goldie’s pace picked up the closer they got to the camp. When they reached it, Trish felt weak with relief. There was her dad getting the other horses ready for hunting. But no Duke, no Perry.
She walked Goldie past the fire ring.
“Where’s your brother?” her dad called.
“He rode off and left me right when we started. I’ve been calling for him but he isn’t answering. I thought maybe he came back here.”
She could see her dad’s anger rise
. His fists balled, and his lips moved.
Uh-oh. Trish knew she was in big trouble. She hurried to speak before her dad’s fury reached the boiling point. “I’m sorry. I can go look for him again.”
Just then, Duke galloped into camp, from not too far off the path she and Goldie had taken. Her dad turned toward the horse as Duke clattered to a stop. The saddle was hanging underneath his heaving belly. His neck was lathered, a sure sign he’d been startled and bolted. Without a word, Patrick jerked the saddle from Duke’s back, took off his bridle, and fastened him to the lead on the highline. Then he tightened Reno’s cinch and vaulted onto his back with only his halter and, on one side, his lead rope.
Trish untied one log carrier and tossed it to the ground. Goldie jumped away from it. “Shh, girl.” She repeated the process on the other side, as did Goldie, then mounted quickly.
Patrick was circling the clearing to find the trail of Duke’s flight back into the camp. He was off by about ten yards.
“Over there.” Trish pointed and kicked Goldie into a high trot.
Goldie had small hooves compared to Duke. Trish thought it should be easy to tell their tracks apart if their trails had crossed or merged. But it didn’t look like that would be necessary, because Duke had left a clear trail of deep, sloppy, panicked prints. Patrick urged Reno forward, smacking his sides with the single line. Trish followed, ducking branches as Goldie wove through the trees. Several still whacked Trish’s head and body, but she didn’t care. Only Perry mattered. But why couldn’t he ever do what he was told? She’d reminded him to tighten that cinch. Her dad had told him to stay with Trish. He always rebelled. Always.
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