When she came to the clearing, she saw the bulldozer standing smack in the middle, silent and bulky.
The moon gave a little light. A little more would be friendly, she thought, but of course it would give her away, too. A few feet inside the woods, she skirted the clearing and made her way toward the oak tree. No point in making her silhouette an easy target.
So where was this shooter? She wished she could ask Andrew whether he was still hearing anything up there, but she didn’t need Ketcham to tell her not to call now.
The man who had shot Sylvia hadn’t been in the clearing that day, she knew. If he had, she and Andrew couldn’t have missed him. But now—could someone be taking shots at Andrew from the other side of the bulldozer? She edged her way around the clearing toward it.
She’d put the knitted hat on, but when she pulled it down to hide her face, it obstructed her vision so badly that she slid it back up. Just as well. It would have muffled her hearing, too. She strained for any faint sound that might have been a stone hitting a tree or landing on dried leaves, even while she tried to keep her own careful steps as quiet as possible.
Just ahead, an owl hooted. Then a far-off owl answered. Finally, when she thought she was within the range of a Wrist-Rocket from Andrew’s tree, she eased herself into a sitting position under a tree. Whatever happened, she’d be here for him.
At first, she sat coiled to jump up, as if she could somehow interfere. Gradually, though, suspense turned to peace. She leaned back against the tree trunk and tried to identify constellations. Even broken up by branches, the Big Dipper was easy, and she was reasonably sure she spotted Orion’s Belt, but after that, her pitiful command of the night sky let her down. She wished she knew more.
Then she heard a thwack into the trunk of the tree beside hers. A few moments later, a sharp pain in her head on the side closer to Andrew made her yelp.
“Hey!” she yelled into the darkness. No point in staying silent if he’d already spotted her. She pulled the knitted cap down over her ears and face to give her a little protection, if nothing else, and scooted around to the other side of the tree—farther away, if the shooter was off to her left, and safer. Dark-adapted or not, her eyes gave her no clue. She wished the tree trunk were thicker.
In her pocket, her cell phone startled her by ringing. She tapped it to stop the sound and then held it to her ear.
“Mom? Was that you? Where are you?” Andrew asked.
“Down here,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, but he got me with a stone.” She lay flat and patted the ground around her with her free hand, feeling for that stone or the one she’d heard first.
“I can’t see you.”
“Good.”
“Where are the cops?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“I’ll call them again.”
“Good.” She pulled off a glove, closed the connection, and slid the phone back into her pocket. Flat on the ground felt good. And if the shooter was aiming at a silhouette, as he must be, it would show him almost none.
Sudden light blinded her. Involuntarily, her eyes squinched shut. “Turn that light off!”
“You again! What the hell are you doing out here at this hour?”
She still couldn’t see him, but the voice was unmistakable. “Mr. Walcher?” He was the one? The bulldozer should have prepared her, but in spite of having made the case to Fred, she found it hard to believe.
“You better believe it, lady. And you better get your butt out of here before something happens to you.”
But the light moved away from her eyes. Gradually, she was able to focus on the man standing above her.
“You’ve got two minutes to get off this property!”
He was all bluster, she thought. He couldn’t have been shooting at them. Nothing in his hand but a flashlight, for one thing, and no bulges in his pockets. Still, she wasn’t sure. Should she take a chance?
“I—I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? You hurt, or what?”
While she hesitated, he jerked and swatted at his arm. “What the—!”
Now she knew. “You know that guy up there in the tree?” she said.
“Not to speak to. More like to yell at.”
Not to shoot at, either. “He’s my son. The one you met. And someone’s trying to shoot him down.”
“Look, lady, I been out here most of an hour. Nobody’s shooting anybody.”
“Not with a gun. With a slingshot and a stone, the way he shot down Sylvia Purcell. That’s what hit your arm.”
He clapped his hand to it. “How’d you—?”
“And my head.” She turned her head to show him, though there was no way he could see anything through the knitted cap. “See? He must not have been close enough to hurt us badly. But that doesn’t mean he can’t. One man from the DNR said he brought down a young deer.”
“Omigod. But who—?”
“I’m pretty sure I know. And if we can find the stones that hit us, they’ll prove it’s the same guy. Shine your light down here and help me hunt. But be careful not to touch them.”
“Right, like they’re gonna find fingerprints on rocks.” But he aimed the light at the ground.
Almost immediately, she spotted two smooth stones on top of the leaf litter. One was shiny white, a lake pebble. The other was unmistakably a Petoskey. “There!” she told him.
“Those little things?” Keeping his hands to himself, he bent down.
The phone in her pocket rang again. She dug it out.
“Mom, they’re on their way. What’s going on down there? What’s that light?”
“It’s Mr. Walcher.”
“He’s the one?”
“No, he just got hit, too. And we’ve found some of the stones. Have you reached Fred?”
“No, but I think Sergeant Ketcham did.”
“I hope so.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t be there.”
“Neither should you, but we can’t leave now.”
When she pocketed the phone, Walcher said, “Your kid?”
“Yes. Please turn off that light! Or aim it away from us. Maybe you can spot him—the shooter, not Andrew. And mess with his night vision.”
He moved away from her and aimed the light in the direction from which they’d both been shot. Joan flattened herself again and crawled a few feet in the opposite direction, leaving her stick to mark the location of the two stones.
Then the light went out, and she couldn’t see him anymore. But she no longer believed keeping still would protect her, and she no longer cared about the stars. Come on, Fred, she thought, and kept crawling. When she reached a tree big enough to hide behind, she risked slowly sitting up.
The quiet settled on her again, but without the peace she’d felt before. Even so, her breathing gradually slowed, and her heart stopped the loud pounding she felt anyone could hear. She no longer was sure of her directions, though the clearing was visible through the tree trunks. The bulldozer seemed to have turned, but of course it hadn’t. Using it as a landmark, she reoriented herself. She could hear the wind in the trees and occasional rustling in the leaves. Raccoons, maybe? Or Walcher, moving around.
Suddenly a strong arm grabbed her around her chest, pinning her arms and jerking her to her feet. Strong fingers digging into her face kept her from opening her mouth to scream.
“Don’t move, and don’t make a sound,” an urgent whisper said into her ear. He was squeezing so hard she could barely breathe.
She shook her head and tried to twist around to see him, but the man’s hands stopped her. Instead, he pulled her ski cap off her face and hair. “You!” he said.
This time, enough of his voice came through the whisper that she knew him. In pulling off her cap, he’d released her face enough to let her suck in a little air.
“Can’t … breathe,” she managed to get out. The pressure on her chest eased, but only a little. “Th
anks,” she got out, trying to sound humble.
“You won’t scream?”
She shook her head, but she was encouraged. He knew they weren’t alone, or he wouldn’t be worried about being heard.
When her cell phone sounded softly in her pocket, the arm tightened around her. Knowing it was impossible, she made no attempt to reach it. Let it be Andrew, she prayed. He knows I’m down here. Not answering is almost as good as screaming. And he can tell Ketcham.
Now what? Whatever else he had in mind, he couldn’t shoot at anyone while his arms were holding on to her. And he wasn’t harming her. If she didn’t call him by name, he might think she didn’t recognize him and would be safe to release.
“Can I go now?” she asked softly, as if this sort of thing happened to her all the time.
The pressure increased again. Mistake.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
Rather than answer in words, he began dragging her deeper into the woods. Giving him very little help, she stumbled along in his wake.
Was he going to take her all the way to his cabin? Even though Andrew had been able to see that far through the woods, it would be a long way to drag someone, especially up and down the hills she had seen in the daylight. She couldn’t let him carry her off in silence. She’d have to risk angering him by screaming if it came to that.
Not yet, though. Now they were circling the clearing, faster than she would have thought possible. When she could, she kept her eyes on the bulldozer, her one clear landmark. She wondered where Walcher had gone. No sign of that unlikely ally. Couldn’t he hear them?
They had to be almost opposite Andrew. Now that the arm across her chest was reaching under her left arm to drag her, she could move her right arm a little. Could she do it without being noticed? She inched her bare right hand over to the pocket and slid it in. He didn’t react. Inside the pocket, her fingers found the cell phone. She couldn’t look, but it was already turned on. Andrew was first in the alphabetical list of numbers in her phone’s memory. She felt for the flat screen and touched the button underneath it to select Andrew and then the one beside it to place the call. After giving him time to pick up, she dragged her toe until she felt something it could catch on.
“Oh!” she cried, and fell to the ground as convincingly as she could. She hoped Andrew could hear her through the fabric of her pants.
Jim Chandler jerked her to her feet. “I said shut up!” In the heat of the moment, it was almost his natural voice.
“I’m sorry. I can’t go so fast.” She said it as loudly as she dared. Come on, Andrew, she thought. We’re down here, and moving. You might be able to see us, even if it is dark. Tell them!
She couldn’t hear his response, if there was one, in her pocket. Good. Neither could Jim. But Andrew couldn’t call the police unless she broke the connection, or could he with cell phones? In case he couldn’t, she touched the button to break it and hoped he’d know what to do.
Now she let her whole body sag. Let Jim haul her deadweight. He’d find out she wasn’t as skinny as he thought.
“Shut up and move it!” he whispered.
Staying as limp as she dared, she worked to snag dry twigs with her feet, make noise any way she could that wouldn’t tempt him to stop her breathing permanently. Here we are! she cried out silently.
He managed her without apparent strain until they came to a steep hill. That slowed him down, and he began breathing harder.
Suddenly he yelped and dropped her. This time her fall wasn’t faked.
“Run, Mom, run!”
Andrew? Down here? She scrambled to her feet and ran, stumbling down the hill in the dark, toward his voice.
Behind her, Jim was swearing and crashing through the underbrush. She’d never outrun him, she knew. But then she heard shouts.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
“James Chandler, you’re under arrest!”
She turned. Powerful flashlights lit the scene. Men with OPD on the backs of their jackets were forcing a squirming figure facedown on the ground. Tom Walcher stood off to one side, watching.
And, from opposite directions, Fred and Andrew were running toward her.
31
Fred sent her home while he supervised Jim Chandler’s transportation and booking. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said. He sounded tough, but the strength and warmth of his embrace left no doubt about his intentions.
While she drove the now-familiar road, Andrew told her that he had indeed heard her cry out when she faked a fall and that he’d heard Chandler shutting her up. “That really worked, Mom.”
“But how did you get down so fast?”
“I slid down the rope.” He inspected his hands. “Couple of rope burns, looks like, but they’re not bad.”
“How did you know he dropped me?”
“I made him do it. I had my Wrist-Rocket up in the tree. And I took along a few smooth rocks in case I ever needed to defend myself. When I knew you were in trouble, I slid down and shot one of my rocks at him.”
“How could you aim in the dark?”
“Moonlight. I’ve been out there awhile, Mom. You get used to seeing with a lot less light than at home.”
It was true. She’d seen much more than she’d expected.
“And I was close to him by the time I let fly. Hit him pretty hard. That’s why he dropped you. I was ready to shoot again, but I didn’t need to. Fred and the rest of them reached him before he could get you.”
“You knew they were coming?”
“Sure. Ketcham made sure someone gave Fred a fresh battery, so he and I were talking. But I already knew they were coming through the woods from Chandler’s cabin.”
“I wish you’d told me. I kept expecting them to come this way.” She gestured out the window.
“Fred didn’t want him to escape into the woods. And he didn’t want to spook him. They had this road blocked, just in case, and they found his car parked halfway down his own road. So they followed him in.”
When they arrived home and Andrew shed his clothes for a hot shower, Joan had time alone to think. Jim Chandler wouldn’t have expected to find her in the woods. In fact, when he peeled the ski cap off her face, he sounded surprised to find her under it. He wasn’t interested in her body; she already knew that. She’d only been a nuisance to get out of his way.
So why had he been over there to begin with, much less at night?
He was shooting at Andrew, not me, she thought. I told him I went out there to visit my son, and he figured it out. He knew if Sylvia could see his house, Andrew could, too. I would have been next. He wasn’t worried about Birdie—he was sure he could control her. But if he could terrorize Andrew into giving up, he could do what he wanted out there. Maybe that’s all he was trying to do with Sylvia. Only he killed her, instead.
And Vint could have been the same kind of freaky accident. Vint got in his way while he was out there shooting animals. Or saw too much—probably the slingshot. So he shot at him, too. It was Vint’s dumb luck to hit that tree when he tried to leave.
No, Jim had to know Sylvia would fall, standing on the edge of the platform the way she was. And he had to know Vint would crash. By then, the mayor had told the world they thought she’d been murdered, and Jim had to know that meant they had some idea how. He couldn’t let anybody tell about seeing him use the Wrist-Rocket. He would have gone back after Andrew.
And he would have come after me if he hadn’t found me in the woods. As it was, he would have squeezed the breath out of me and left me for dead near Andrew’s tree, not his cabin, before he melted back home.
Shivering through the warm black sweater, she remembered how his eyes had frightened her, how shaken she’d felt even after he’d rejected her and pushed her away. She hadn’t been wrong to feel that way, she knew now. From one moment to another, the man switched from charming, to nasty, to dangerous, if he felt crossed in any way. He’d sneered at Birdie before turning his nastiness on the vi
olas. And he’d made Birdie believe he thought Sylvia was a joke—when he really felt threatened enough to knock her out of a tree.
Even knowing he was under arrest, Joan checked the doors. Then she shed the clothes that reminded her of him by their very touch on her skin, pulled on her softest, warmest nightgown and a fleecy robe, reheated a cup of the coffee Fred hadn’t drunk, and curled up on the sofa to wait.
Andrew wandered through the living room in nothing but a bath towel knotted around his hips. Water sparkled on his dark curls, which smelled of shampoo.
“Okay if I eat some more of that chicken?”
“Sure, if you leave enough for Fred.” They’d probably sent out for something at the station, but she hated for him to come home to an empty kitchen.
Andrew stuck it in the microwave and went upstairs. Life was back to normal, she thought.
By the time Fred rolled in, they were sitting together, Andrew in jeans and shirt, eating chicken out of a bowl on his lap, and Joan drinking the last of the coffee.
“Got any more of that?” He bent and kissed her.
“I’ll make it.” Andrew bounded into the kitchen. “You have no idea how good it feels just to get up and walk around.”
They laughed.
“You still like Starry Night?” Andrew stuck his head into the living room and held up a small bag of the coffee beans. “There’s more supper, too, if you want it.”
Fred nodded, and Andrew ground the beans and zapped a bowl of teriyaki chicken and rice. While the coffee was brewing, he brought the bowl and chopsticks into the living room. “So tell us all about it.”
Fred untangled himself from Joan and took the food. “There’s not a lot to tell.” He lit into the chicken. “Mmm! This is good.”
“Fred!” Joan said.
“We had him red-handed, of course, but he still tried to talk us out of it. Said we had the wrong man. All sweet reason—didn’t sound anything like the foulmouthed guy we arrested.”
Uh-huh, Joan thought. He turns it off and on. “Did you find my stick?”
“Sure, and the two stones. He had no idea where they came from, of course, and he’d managed to toss the slingshot away, but one of our men found it, and they all had his prints on them.”
Death Climbs a Tree Page 23