Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money

by Linda L. Richards

  “Anne Rand,” I said aloud as I drove. And then I laughed. Hired to watch one person, inadvertently getting information on another. Sometimes it’s just such a funny old world.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Camp Arrowheart turned out to be tougher to find than even the Hestman School had been. It had looked pretty simple, but that was only because my map hadn’t reflected unpaved mountain roads. In real life, things twisted when they’d merely looked curved, they were rocky when I’d expected them to be paved. And the camp itself was nowhere near where I’d thought it would be. Sure: fifty miles from Lake Arrowhead, but as the crow flies. As the Chevy bounces, it was an hour and a half. Tycho and I fell out of the car with joy when we found the overgrown entrance to Camp Arrowheart. And both of us found private places in the undergrowth to relieve our driving buildup. I think we both felt lighter when we reunited.

  I’d planned to leave the car at the road and sort of skulk, sort of wander towards camp even before I’d gotten a peek at the drive, but that peek clinched things. The track that led to the camp wasn’t precisely grown over, but my car was less than a month old and my experience as a driver wasn’t much richer than that, I didn’t want to risk getting stuck or scraping some important bits. Plus, even though part of me was certain that this whole exercise was a wild goose chase, the other part was sure this particular driveway would lead to an outraged Ernie asking me what the hell I was doing there. Not giving too much warning of my approach seemed like a good idea.

  Tycho, of course, refused to respect the top secret nature of our mission. He thought this was heaven. The way he was acting, our trip to the wilderness was a doggy fantasy come to life. He ran around like crazy, snuffling at new and wonderful smells and peeing on everything growing like he was shouting “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

  As we trudged up the track that I assumed led to the camp, I tried to think like a Girl Guide in order to tell if the road had been recently used or not. Trouble is, I never was a Girl Guide and the road held no hints for me: just a couple of twin depressions with grass growing on either side and between them, trees ranging into the forest at either side.

  It was beautiful country that would have done Ed/Ted/Ned’s soul good. There was no way you could trudge and trudge and trudge along here in the deepening wilderness — evergreens towering and forest scents freshening — without feeling your heart lighten. I imagined him falling on his knees and shouting, “I believe.” The dense quiet — filled with bird and bug calls, the occasional animal noises and the sounds various collected vegetation make when in their natural habitat (creaks, groans, rustles) — reassured you if required: there was no way anyone could think they’d come over the next rise and find a Seven-Eleven.

  After what seemed like quite a long trudge — perhaps a half mile — I began to make out the shapes of the buildings ahead of us in the distance. I took them to be various lodges and cabins. The closer I got, the less occupied everything appeared. At a distance the camp looked like a rustic beacon of humanity. As I approached, I could begin to see hints of things as they were: a shutter missing here, a window boarded over there, a chimney at a funny angle, an overgrown tennis court, the fence surrounding it sagging sadly: all of these things collectively sent a message of loss. I could almost sense the spirits of children running by me in Y Tshirts, little voices raised in the mindless hilarity of childhood. I felt sad and, to be honest, a little frightened.

  If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear? This was like that, with a twist. The camp was being reclaimed by the forest and it didn’t feel right to listen. There were no cars — abandoned or otherwise — to be seen and I had a very strong suspicion that no one was here, but that didn’t make me feel any easier.

  I called Tycho to me quietly. His softly-padding presence beside me was reassuring if not particularly threatening. Another living soul, he kept me company. Companion dog. The classic canine occupation since time out of mind. I understood better now and stopped to scratch his head appreciatively, noticing how he watched me carefully with his liquid amber eyes.

  “Good boy,” I said softly. And we walked on, exploring the perimeter of Camp Arrowheart while I worked up my courage to have a peek inside the buildings.

  We skirted around a deep swimming pool, empty but for a thick covering of green sludge at the bottom, and entered what might have once been a counselor’s meeting house, or maybe even a lifeguard’s office or storage for sporting equipment. It was hard now to tell: everything that gives a room context had been stripped from it, leaving the mildewing walls bare, the room devoid of any clues about what sort of human goings on might have gone on here. But it was a good starting point. Finding the small hut completely empty gave me the courage to try some of the bigger buildings. A few other cabins and what might have once been a small lodge — a big fieldstone fireplace at one end was my clue here — didn’t show signs of recent human occupation. As we entered the largest of the lodges I was starting to breathe easier. I hadn’t seen anything thus far that indicated recent signs of either human or ghostly life.

  The big lodge looked as though it had also been the cookhouse. We passed through a pantry and into what had clearly been the kitchen: I guessed that the best of the cooking equipment had been salvaged, but the remnants of a big industrial kitchen could still be seen. The place would have been capable of serving hundreds of meals at every sitting.

  It was as we moved from the kitchen into the main lodge area — a big empty room with a large center hearth and doors to what I took to be smaller rooms to my left and right — that I noticed that Tycho was behaving oddly. He was moving very carefully, his ears at full attention and his nose snuffling anxiously.

  “What is it, boy?” I said softly.

  As if in answer, he padded cautiously towards the exit. I felt like the doomed heroine in one of those stupid horror movies: Where the girl is in her bedroom or maybe the bath and she hears a funny noise — or her dog starts acting funny — and she’s scared but she goes to see what it is anyway. And all the time you’re sitting at home watching it on the Late, Late, Late Show simply because there’s nothing else on, and you’re screaming at the television: Don’t do it! Go back to bed! Get the hell out of there while you still can! But she never listens, just keeps right on tripping into the mouth of danger while you can do nothing but sit there and say: If that were me…

  And now it was me. As strong as any gut feeling that ever told me to sell or buy a stock, every part of my sharply-honed instincts were now screaming: Never mind what’s out there. Don’t go through that door. You don’t need to know. It doesn’t matter. Just get back to your car.

  If my car had been right outside, maybe I would have gone for it. But if danger truly was lurking on the other side of the door, there was no way I’d make it back to my car anyway. And if what was out there was so scary it made me scream, no one would ever hear.

  I told myself to get a grip. There was nothing out there besides a rodent or maybe a coyote. And then I heard something that I couldn’t write off as sounds created by Mother Nature. It was a human voice. Not right outside the door, but not far away, either. Definitely within the camp’s immediate vicinity. And then I heard another, different, voice. This one softer — pleading? — but no closer to where I was.

  “Tycho, heel,” I said softly, pointing to that part of my anatomy. The last thing I wanted was the occasionally boisterous canine to go romping up to whatever humans were out there. I told myself that there was nothing odd about people being here. This was beautiful country. Hikers probably came this way all the time.

  But it hadn’t sounded like hikers. And my instincts told me that it wasn’t hikers, either. I thought about my car — my safe little automotive haven — too far down the road for me to get there quickly. Still, I thought, if we went back the way we had come, and made a big circle around where I felt whatever human activity was coming from, there seemed a good chance we’d get back to the car undetected. And suddenly the undetecte
d part seemed important.

  We retraced our steps — Tycho seeming to understand that he needed to stay close and quiet — back through the main lodge, past the smaller lodge, the cabins we’d walked through not long before, past the pool and the tennis court. Relief flooded through me like a live thing when we made the cover of the trees that followed the track into camp, but we weren’t clear quite yet. I hadn’t heard the voices again, so maybe it had been hikers, after all. And then I saw a flash of white, and focusing even as I ducked behind a little stand of trees and made sure all of Tycho was out of sight, I could make out a human male, in business dress heading in my direction. Could he see me? I didn’t think so. But then another man — this one in garb suitable to the terrain — and I understood: the first man, the well-dressed one, was in flight. He was heading, naturally enough, for the road out of camp which, unfortunately, was exactly where I was standing.

  I pulled Tycho deeper into the trees, feeling my panic rise when he tried to resist me. Putting a hand on his chest and one on his back thinking to quiet him, I was almost surprised when he responded as I wished. Though I’d never be sure if it was that physical restraint or the bushel of quieting energy I sent his way. Whatever the case, on some canine level, he seemed to understand the urgency of the situation, perhaps not so surprising when you think about how dogs in the wild spend their time.

  By now the men were closer than they had been and I could hear their words.

  “Jesus, asshole. Stop. You don’t really think I’d kill you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” This was the running man. The one in the suit. His voice was ragged from his exertions but I recognized it instantly. “Why would I think you wouldn’t?”

  “Come on, we’re way past games. If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have done it back there.”

  And now I realized I recognized the second voice, as well. Incredulity forced my head up, carefully, to see if I could get a glimpse of him. And I could, but barely and with the sun against me I couldn’t quite be sure. It could be him. But then again, it had been a long time since I’d seen Paul Westbrook and, at this distance, it might just be someone who looked and sounded like him.

  And who also has a connection to Ernie?

  That little voice again, but I didn’t stop to think about it. Ernie — if it was Ernie, and I was pretty sure it was — was moving directly towards me. And he hadn’t seen me… yet. But I was also fairly sure that if I moved very far in either direction, one of the two would spot me. And then I caught a break.

  “OK, man. Look, you win,” it was the chasing guy — Paul? “You’re right, OK? Let’s talk about it. Maybe things have gotten a little out of hand.”

  The first man hesitated, then stopped and turned towards his pursuer. “You mean it?”

  “Sure. I’d been thinking that myself. C’mon, let’s go back inside and talk this through.” As if to illustrate his sincerity, he turned around and headed towards the camp without a backwards glance. Ernie hesitated. For a second he seemed to look directly at me. Though I knew he couldn’t possibly see me, I pulled myself still further back behind the tree. Finally he sighed as though resigning himself to something, turned around and followed the first man.

  I held my position, flattened against the back of a tree and, cursing the whim that had made me don a white shirt this morning, I watched their progress while I waited for both men to get themselves out of sight, which would — of course — mean I was out of their sight, which would leave the coast clear for me and Tycho to scurry back to the road.

  It didn’t happen. I watched while Ernie trotted across the camp towards the man I was pretty sure was Paul. They were out of earshot again, but I could see them clearly: they were less than a hundred feet from where I crouched. I couldn’t see their expressions or make out their words, but I could see the shapes that made them. So I saw when Paul turned and held something in front of him and though I was too far away to make out the details, his stance and the way he held the object instructed me. I flashed quickly on Jack — What can I do you for? — the gun in the shooter’s hand, Jack on the floor.

  Now, in the San Bernardino forest, I could see Ernie take a few steps back, as though he’d run again if he had the chance. He didn’t get it. The distance between us warped the sound, so I heard the shot at the same time Ernie’s legs just seemed to give out beneath him and he fell. The undergrowth between us prevented me from seeing the spot where he’d gone down, but he did go down: I saw it as clearly as I could see the tips of Tycho’s ears.

  Time is a funny thing. When you’re a kid, a month can seem like a year: especially if the month is September and it means you have to go back to school after a summer that has been endless. When you’re an adult with a regular job, that same month can whizz by in a moment, regardless of season. Intellectually I know I only hesitated behind my tree for a minute — maybe two — my hand resting on the reassuring dome of Tycho’s head. But in that relatively small speck of time I tried hard to process what I had just seen and, more importantly, just what I should do about it.

  My feet moved me forward before I’d even fully considered my actions. Someone was hurt, needed my help: I didn’t think much beyond that. I wasn’t aware of doing anything either noisy or visibly louder than I’d been doing previously and had only moved a few feet away from my cover — though maybe it was just the funny sixth sense people get when they’re being watched — but I saw Paul’s head jerk up, scan the area, light on me — or the speck of something that, from the distance and with the partial cover the trees must have afforded me — light on the partial non-treelike thing that was, in fact, me.

  I saw him hesitate — perhaps processing what might be represented by this visual aberration — then raise his weapon in my direction. I heard a shot, and then another, but I had no way of gauging if they were landing close to me or not because, by that time, I was in full flight, not worrying too much about direction, only that I put distance between myself and the man pointing a firearm at me.

  Tycho and I stopped in the protection of a little copse of trees and strewn boulders so I could catch my breath. I crouched behind a rock, my hand on the smooth surface grounding me, and listened as well as I could over my ragged breathing and Tycho’s panting. Had we lost him? And then the crunch of feet on dry wood forced us into motion again. It might have been a deer, I knew, but it might just as easily have been a man and taking chances at this point didn’t seem like a good idea.

  It took me a while to understand how completely in the wilderness we were. It’s not like you could loop around and run into a goat farm or, as Ned/Ted/Fred had anticipated, a Seven-Eleven: though I would have loved that right now. The camp was situated in the San Bernardino National Forest. Sure there were bound to be roads and highways and probably even farms or ranches out there someplace, but in the deep silence of the forest, with the mountains all around me and what was very probably a crazy man somewhere behind me, it was easy to believe in the total wilderness I saw in every direction. Getting back to my car was the only type of safety I dared think about.

  And so I ran. I ran as though my life depended on it, for by this point and after what I’d just seen, it seemed very likely that it did.

  I was on unfamiliar terrain. Without the guide of the old camp road to follow there were no markers. I just hoped I was running in the right direction and that, before very long, I’d come across the road and could, from there, find the way back to my car.

  Every now and then, when I’d encounter a particularly large boulder or well-positioned stand of trees to hide behind, I’d scrunch down to catch my breath and listen carefully again. Was that the crunch of a branch? A shout? A shot? No? Maybe? Then off we’d go again.

  I wasn’t sure how long or how far we ran, but after a while with our shadows lengthening, the trees thinning and the road still not in sight, I realized that I had fled in the wrong direction. This realization didn’t concern me as much as I would have thought. I was alive. Al
ive and running towards all of the possibilities represented by that fact. What was behind me was a less attractive option. Lost and moving was preferable to the fate to which I’d seen Ernie fall.

  Hoping we were no longer being pursued, but knowing I had to figure out where we were, I stood on a boulder and tried to get my bearings. Once I was perched up there it made me regret again that I’d passed on the whole Girl Guide thing: none of what I saw made any sense to me. All the more because this wasn’t wilderness as I’d come to know it in the Pacific Northwest where trees are trees and mountains are formidable.

  Where we were now was arid in a mountainous sort of way. The thick trees that had hugged the camp had given way to scraggly, low lying scrub, tree-sized rocks and — to make matters worse — we’d been running hard for most of the last hour and hadn’t passed anything that resembled potable water. Harder on the canine than me, sure: but I was starting to think about it, too. Poor Tycho’s tongue was practically dragging on the ground and I hated to see bits of dirt and plant material clinging to it. We were OK for the moment, but we wouldn’t be able to go on like this indefinitely. I had no feeling for where we were and though I had a hunch that we’d come across a town before we hit Las Vegas, the very thought of the possibility of running until we hit the desert filled me with dread.

  There was no choice. I just kept leading us on and hoping like hell that we weren’t going around in circles like the poor saps in movies always tend to do. As we moved, I kept peeking over my shoulder, partly to see that the scenery behind us was staying the same but growing more distant and partly to check if anyone was following.

  Another hour and the terrain became even more rugged and the ground began to slope upwards more sharply. We were climbing. Gently, but we were definitely heading to higher altitudes. I didn’t dare stop to wonder if up was a good idea. I knew what was behind us: a whole lot of nothing with a gun-toting killer at the end. And going up at least meant that we hadn’t passed this way before. We were bound to come upon something or someone sooner or later. I hoped.