The Sign of the Book

by John Dunning

  I had almost reached the ridge when I saw the roof of the cabin peeking above the hill. I stuck my gun hand inside my coat and started on a perpendicular path across the face of the mountain. Ten minutes later I eased up the ridge and saw the cabin just below. Parked behind it was Lennie’s truck, and beside that, two freshly cut stacks of firewood.

  I sat on the ground and thought about everything, starting long before the murder of Laura Marshall’s husband and going right up through this morning. And I looked over the ridge and watched for any sign of life.

  There was no life.

  The truck sat cold and untouched.

  There was no smoke coming from the chimney.

  Nothing.

  I stood and surveyed the cabin from the top of the ridge. I watched every window for a glimmer of the rifle and there was nothing.

  I faced my fear and sucked it up. Started across the open ground. My feet went noiselessly in the fresh, uncrusted snow, which gathered in the wind and whipped across the rocky mountaintop like tiny white dervishes. Once I had decided to go, I went: didn’t stop or slow down; just walked straight to the edge of the cabin and stood there getting my breath.

  Maybe he’s sleeping, I thought. But slowly the truth dawned.

  The cabin had a cold, empty feeling to it. No cheery windows steamed warm from his fire.

  No fire. Not a sound from inside; only the wind out here.

  He wasn’t there.

  Could be a trap.

  I eased around the corner. The door facing the range was open, billowing gently in the wind. From there I could hear the rhythmic squeaking of the hinges. I went to the door and peered inside.

  Nothing.

  It was a simple hunter’s cabin; crude, one big room with a smaller room off to the right and a bathroom on the left; both doors open, light shining in from windows beyond.

  I moved quickly now, sensing the worst. Went into the bedroom and rifled through his closet, rummaged through his dresser, such as it was, looked in the desk/table that had been pushed aside in some kind of haste.

  A few papers; nothing current, nothing valuable. Lennie wasn’t much of a writer, letters or otherwise.

  On a whim I tossed his bed; I slapped down the pillows and then turned the mattress. Under it was a sealed yellow business envelope.

  I sensed its importance; I could feel it burning through the paper. I tucked it under my arm and moved back out into the big room, went to the doorway, looked out over the distant mountain range.

  The door to Lennie’s truck was open, like the cabin. Not a good sign.

  I moved across what yard there was. Came around the edge of the truck, and there was Lennie, sprawled grotesquely across a seat drenched black with his blood. He stared up in disbelief. One shot had ripped his throat out. The other had got him between his wide-open eyes.

  Suddenly I knew what had happened, should’ve known all along. I tore open the envelope and looked inside and felt a sudden deep chill. It went from my gut up my backbone to my numbing brain. I had made a horrible misjudgment at the start of this case. I thought of Erin and I trembled, and I felt my knees buckle in fear as I slipped quickly down the ridge to the Jeep. I dropped the keys in the snow and roared my anguish at the dark sky as I scrambled frantically to find them.

  43

  The fear doubled as I rolled dangerously down from the mountain. It doubled again before I reached the edge of town.

  I fishtailed into Parley’s street thinking, Oh, God, please, pleeeeease let them be here. But Parley came out on the porch, looking anxious.

  “You seen the ladies?”

  “They left here almost four hours ago. I thought they were just goin’ for a drive.”

  He came down from the porch and looked in through my open window. “This is a bad storm coming. All the stores downtown are closing early. This town’s gonna be socked in good tonight.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “I got ’em inside.”

  “Good. I’ll go out and see what I can find.”

  “Laura knows this country. She knows what can happen when it turns ugly.”

  “It’s probably fine, Parley.”

  I watched him in my rearview mirror till the swirling snow blotted him out.

  The sky over the town was already black; only a few people were on the streets, shopkeepers hurrying home. The snow had just begun, but in the time it took me to sit at a stoplight, it welled up and crusted on my windshield.

  I stopped at the house Laura had rented. One quick look around the empty building and I headed out of town.

  I started uphill to the Marshall house. If they weren’t there, then what? Sit down in the snow and go slowly crazy. Run around in circles chasing my tail.

  There was nowhere else to look.

  Of course she would know that. She knew everything.

  I sensed her cool mind. I felt her tongue, heard her laugh.

  Mistletoe.

  And there was my own smug voice in the afternoon darkness. Laura, you are the worst liar I’ve ever seen. With those words, barely knowing her, I had pronounced her innocent. You are the worst liar. But what if she had been the best?

  What if she had coldly decided to kill Bobby and blame Jerry? What if she had killed Bobby in a sudden rage, then confessed and manufactured evidence of her own cover-up; what if she had played that dangerous game, putting herself in the crosshairs of a murder probe and rolling the dice on her ability to lie her way out?

  Jerry did it, she whispered at last to that dumb klutz Janeway. Jerry shot Bobby.

  I had dragged it out of her and so I was ready to believe her.

  The land went white and the sky turned black. An almost garish look had come over the earth, like nothing I had ever seen. Not quite day, not yet night. My worried mind had begun to drift and I found myself thinking of that line about Cathy in East of Eden. I think of it in troubled moments like this one. I revisit all the crimson-streaked crime scenes in my head, the bloody walls, the throats slashed open, the brains blasted into a door; and all I see is carnage done for nothing more than the hell of it. It took a writer, not a cop, to bring the answer into its clearest focus. Steinbeck said, I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents, and that line has stayed with me all these years. Now it seems to define my old life. I was the guy who tracked down the monsters. Experts, pundits, social scientists—whatever they call themselves today, those boys don’t ever want to admit there’s such a thing as pure mean-as-hell evil, but I know better, I’ve seen its grim handiwork. There are in fact monsters. Sometimes they can snooker and charm us and that makes them even more monstrous. As a cop I was supposed to counter them in court with nothing more than the facts of a case. No ivory-tower textbook opinions, no attitude, no mumbo-jumbo psychobabble; I wasn’t the one with the $800 suit and the PhD in Everything: I couldn’t coolly analyze from afar and then fly in, a hired gun on expense account, and snipe at the truth. My own testimony must be limited to the physical evidence—what I had seen, what I had found, what I knew and had meticulously recorded; what I could prove. I’m probably hopeless, stuck in my cop mode till the day I die, but I will never understand how we can pardon an animal who rapes, then cuts off his victim’s hand and sits calmly smoking, watching her bleed to death. How can we say he was crazy then but now he’s well, what kind of doctorate covers wisdom like that, and who cares if he is? Who cares if his mother beat him every day with an ironing cord when he was five? I’ll grieve for the child he was and lock up forever the monster he has become. All I know is I will never trust his sorry ass on the street again.

  These were the cheery thoughts that chased me up the hill.

  The hill was a nightmare of blowing snow…

  So easy to get disoriented and go off the road, especially hurrying with fear in my heart. I passed the turnoff where Lennie had gone that day to watch me from the far slope, and my Jeep sloshed and skidded uphill into the last half mile.

  No tread in the
snow, no tracks. There wouldn’t be, of course, if they had come up hours ago. It didn’t mean a thing, it didn’t mean anything, it meant nothing, nada, nothing, zip…

  I turned in to the road leading back through the trees to the house. I could see a hint of it now: the house, materializing through the trees and the blowing snow.

  Looks deserted.

  My heart sank.

  But this means nothing.

  Means nothing how it looks.

  Lying to myself, maybe just warning myself to be careful. As if I need it.

  I got as close as I dared in the Jeep. Stopped, got out, snuggled the gun inside my coat. Began to move, just off the road: through the trees, up the hill into the teeth of the storm. The house became clearer, more sharply defined.

  Looks dead.

  Lousy choice of words.

  How it actually looked was abandoned. Except for the wildly blowing snow, it would have looked like a still painting.

  Then I saw the faint light…half a breath later, a wisp of smoke from some room on the far side of the house. Somebody’s here, all right…somebody…

  I know everything that happened…don’t know why but that doesn’t matter now…

  I felt a chill in my heart. Doesn’t matter why. Doesn’t matter…

  Now there was no thought of stop, be careful, wait awhile. I crouched low and zigzagged like a foot soldier in enemy territory, up the slope to the road. I hurried along it to the yard.

  Around the porch I went…

  …quickly, carefully…

  Around another corner to the lighted window.

  Laura stood in the kitchen, not five feet away. She was alone, humming some melody to herself. I couldn’t hear it through the thick winterized walls; I got just a sense that she was humming and that was enough. She had a soft, idyllic, almost dreamy look on her face. She looked peaceful and contented…happy…almost frighteningly calm.

  No sign of Erin.

  No time to plan or worry about it. Just go.

  I went quietly up the back-porch steps, crossed the porch to the back door, looked inside through the door glass.

  Nothing.

  The room was just as I’d seen it through the window. Everything shipshape, everything cool, except there was no Erin and now there was no Laura.

  Fresh coffee dripped from the percolator.

  The coffee dripped and the clock ticked. I could see the pendulum hacking away at the pieces of life and the black liquid dripping like blood into the pot.

  I tried the door. It eased open with a slight creak.

  Quickly I crossed the room, heels down first to minimize noise. I left pools of water on the floor from my shoes.

  The hell with it; nothing’s perfect.

  I flattened myself against the wall. Listened.

  Nothing. Not a sound anywhere in that big house.

  I had an urge to call out their names.

  Stupid…stupid…

  …no noise…

  …not a sound…

  But I was already vulnerable. She knew I was there.

  She had seen me or heard me; one way or another she knew. Why else would she do such a quick disappearing act?

  She had stood in her kitchen singing softly, knowing I was there as if she had eyes in the side of her head. I relived that moment and saw her eyes shift slightly my way and a small smile tremble upward at the corners of her mouth.

  Christ, I was demonizing her.

  What if I kill her and none of this is true? She walks into the room and before she can say, “Hi, Cliff, what’re you doing up here?” I blow her away. She’s innocent, it’s all in my mind, she’s done nothing and I kill her. She reaches for something in her apron and I kill her where she stands. Then it turns out to be nothing, her hands were wet and she’s drying them and I killed her. How could I live with that? I’ve killed men but she’s a woman and that makes it worse. So I’m a flaming sexist idiot asshole; it damn well is worse that she’s a woman, just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. Inever shot a woman but of course I won’t just blaze away like some stupid Rambo clone, my training and instincts are strong and I know better. But what if I hesitate and she kills me instead? Remember Lennie. Remember Bobby Marshall. And where oh where is Erin?

  I eased around the door and into the hall. Almost pitch-dark from here on: a faint gray light at the doorway to the death room. I flattened myself against the wall and inched my way along it, feeling in the dark for unseen things.

  My leg touched something and it fell in the hallway. A clatter went up and I froze there. I scrunched down and felt for whatever it was.

  A poker.

  Damned strange place for it. No fireplace within two rooms of here.

  She had left it for me to knock over.

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  Waited.

  Nothing.

  I moved across the hallway in the dim gray light and sank into the darkness on the other side. Felt my way toward the light, carefully now…carefully.

  I heard a bump. One…dull…bump…somewhere ahead.

  I tensed against the wall. My gun had come up instinctively, the barrel cold against my cheek. I watched the light for a full minute but there was no movement, no break in the solid gray square, no more noise…until, suddenly, I saw her.

  She had darted noiselessly across the hall: I saw her silhouette against the window for just that instant, but it was a moment quickly frozen and then gone. A moment when she stopped and turned and I swear she was looking straight at me.

  She scurried back into the dark places like a cockroach.

  Should’ve gone after her; now the moment was lost.

  Can’t hurry, can’t get careless. She knows this house far better than I do; she knows every part of it and can pop up anywhere—behind me in a doorway I didn’t know existed and can’t see in the dark; or ahead, where I expect her but not where she really is. I try to remember but it’s spotty…didn’t know about this alcove I’m passing, didn’t see it till I was almost abreast of it: she could easily have slipped in there, might be hiding there even now in the darkest part of it.

  Got to assume she’s armed. No room for mistakes.

  I moved slowly down the hall.

  Slowly, carefully, easy…the best thing I can do for Erin is not get myself killed looking for her.

  I eased past the crossing hall to the door of the library, now stripped and empty of books. I stood almost flush with the doorway, looking into the death room with peripheral vision, unwilling to risk my head in a full frontal view. I could see on through from there, the same scene I had come upon that first night with Parley but now so enormously changed. Everything beyond the house was going from deep purple to coal black with fierce flecks of white snow swirling across it. I turned my head and glanced back into the library. Nothing there but the black. I eased around the corner into the death room, keeping my back flat against the wall and the gun ready. Somewhere I could see a light, like a candle or a lantern a room away. It was on the side porch, I saw as I came closer, a flickering candle on the glassed-in porch. I knew I was in the greatest danger here: one false step, getting lured by the light, stepping away from the shadows, any mistake would be fatal. How could I not go? But the only way was straight ahead.

  It’s a trap.

  It’s a trap.

  But I’ve got to take the chance.

  Go fast!…Be a moving target.

  I lurched onto the porch, crouching against the wall.

  Erin lay on a cot a few feet away. Between us was a small table with two candles lighting the room. I scrambled across to her, blew out the candles, and threw my arm across her body.

  She was strapped down and covered with heavy blankets.

  I felt her face. It was hot, sweaty. I felt the pulse beating in her neck. I put my face against hers and softly said her name. I fumbled with the ropes and got them loose.

  Then I felt another, and another…

  Half a dozen knots o
n top, more underneath. I picked at them and slowly worked them free.

  Erin moaned softly as if she’d been drugged. I thought of the coffee, dripping in the pot. We were sitting in the kitchen having coffee, she said in my mind. That’s the last thing I remember. This wasn’t rocket science. Now I had to get her out of there.

  “Laura.” At last she had said her old friend’s name. I felt her take a deep breath and I heard her say it again. “Laura…”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “Cliff…”

  “Shhh.”

  I had to get her off the cot. She was a sitting duck.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Try to sit up.”

  The cot squeaked. I squeezed her arm. “No noise now. Quiet…quiet…”

  Slowly I got to my feet. I stood in a crouch. At some point I thought I could see beyond the porch. On three sides the swirling snow; on the other the interior of the house, a black place made only slightly less black by the indirect light trickling through from the kitchen. I could make out where the doorway was, I could almost see the room and the hall beyond it wrapped in pitch-blackness; I could see the black hall, which must mean I was seeing the light, as faint as it was. I could see across the porch and somewhat into the house. I knew I could see a little better, I was sure I could, as my eyes adjusted more to the dark.

  I could see the hall, definitely a lighter shade of black, I thought. But what was definite; what was real?

  The corners of the room seemed to emerge murkily. I crouched absolutely still till my muscles began to ache. Then I moved, slightly; I stood up straighter and convinced myself that, wherever Laura was, she wasn’t in this room.