Then she exploded. Sucked in air like a big machine sputtering to life. And when she could hear again, she heard the sound of the man who called himself Charon running far up the trail near the top of the ridge.
She should wait, she knew. Give him time to move farther on. To be lost for good among the trees above her. But the panic she’d kept at bay finally was on her. She sprang up and leaped the blackberry vines and ran as fast as she could for the rock wall that dammed the stream. She slipped twice scrambling down but felt no alarm at the near plunges. What did she have to lose? She reached the bottom and didn’t look back as she raced for the cover of the woods. When she reached the big lake, she shoved her canoe into the water and paused only long enough to pull the knife from her pocket, whip out the blade, cut free the yellow duckie, and put two long slashes in its side. She hopped into the stern of her canoe, grabbed the paddle, and dug hard at the water.
She imagined him on the shore, aiming his gun. She felt the place between her shoulder blades where the bullet would rip through. But she didn’t risk a glance back until she was more than two hundred yards out. Then all she saw was the empty shoreline, the flat yellow at the water’s edge where the deflated kayak floated like a pat of melted butter, and, among the pines where the stream ran, a gray shape that moved low to the ground and vanished the moment her eyes found it.
She’d paddled ceaselessly, with a strength that came from a place inside her she’d never known existed. Two hours, three, she didn’t know. Somewhere along the way, the rain turned completely to snow and the gray light to a deep charcoal that was early night. She bumped into an island and realized she could go no further. With what suddenly seemed the last of her strength, she dragged the canoe from the water. With her knife, she cut evergreen boughs and hid the craft. The rain had wetted everything, but she found a fallen birch, broke off some branches, stripped the wet outer bark, and shaved some dry kindling.
She was beyond tired. She entered a place where her thoughts and actions seemed to bubble up of their own accord from some well of primordial knowledge. She realized she was humming to herself and thought probably her music had always come from the same kind of place. The best of it anyway.
Feeding the flames sparingly, keeping the fire small, she thought about the stranger, the man who called himself Charon. Why had he come for her? What purpose would her dying serve? Who wanted her dead? And what did it have to do with the work she’d hidden at the cabin? Whoever was behind it, they’d learned about the work from the letters she’d written poor Libbie. What was it she’d put in those letters that would drive someone to murder? Was it the past? She’d been so vague in what she told Libbie about the secrets of her therapy, both with Dr. Sutpen and on her own in the deep woods. The future? She’d been more explicit about that, full of an excitement she could barely contain. No drugs, no running from the past, no longer being nothing but a piece of dandelion fluff borne on the strongest wind. She was going to shape her future, change her life. Oh, she had such visions And The People-Wendell’s people, her people now-would be a part of everything.
But there could be no future until she freed herself completely from the menace she’d only just escaped, the man called Charon. It was as if the Dark Angel had stepped from her dreaming and had become flesh and blood. Well, if this was the Dark Angel, if this was the horror of the past rising, then she would be ready. This time she would fight back.
She realized she was beginning to nod, the exhaustion finally overtaking her. But there was one chore left before she slept.
She unfolded the blade of her knife. Grasping a handful of her long black hair, she severed it near her scalp. She took another handful and cut. Again and again and again. The knife moving over her whole head. Long swathes of her beautiful hair lying about her as if she were in the midst of slaughter. Hacking away. Cutting shorter and shorter. Until she could grasp her hair no more. Until there was so little left, no one could.
37
Jo was startled awake by the ringing of the phone in her bedroom.
“Jo. Wally Schanno.”
“Yes.” She rose up in bed, struggling to shake off her sleep. “What is it, Wally?”
“I’m sorry to bother you so early.”
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand: fivethirty A.M. “That’s all right.”
“They found a body. One of the search parties did. Last night. Out in the Boundary Waters. A helicopter’s airlifting it to the morgue at the community hospital right now.”
“Have they identified it?”
“No. Only a brief description.”
It was like seeing the flash from a muzzle and waiting for the bullet to strike.
“Go on.”
She heard him take a deep breath. “Male. Caucasian. Red-brown hair. Brown eyes. Medium height and build. Age probably mid- to late forties. It’s vague, Jo.”
“No, it isn’t, Wally.” The bullet had struck. Dead center in her heart.
“You don’t have to come down. I-just thought-”
“I’ll be right there.”
Her blood was racing when she hung up. Her breath came rapidly and with effort. Her throat was taut and dry. Dear God, let it be someone else.
The hall light went on. Rose stood in the doorway.
“I heard the phone ring,” she said.
“They found someone. In the Boundary Waters. A body.”
“Oh, dear.” Rose put her arms around herself as if she were suddenly cold. “Do they know who?”
“No.”
“Do they-?” It sounded as if Rose’s throat had gone tight, too, and she’d choked a moment on the words. “Do they know how?”
“I don’t know. They’re bringing the body in by helicopter.” Jo was up and looking for clothes, anything. “I’m going down to the hospital. I need to be there when it comes in.” She pulled on jeans, thick socks, a sweater, no bra. She stopped dead and looked at Rose. “The description fits Cork.”
“Oh, my God, Jo.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s him.”
“No,” Rose agreed.
Jo lurched toward the closet, grabbed a pair of boots. She sat on the floor and jammed them on. The laces wouldn’t cooperate. “Fuck.”
“Jo, it’ll be okay.” Rose knelt beside her and took her in her arms.
Jo buried her head in her sister’s chenille robe. “Oh, Rose. I think of all the things I never said, the good things. And I want to take back all the hurt.”
“I know. I know.”
Jo gathered herself, wiped her eyes. “Not a word to the kids.”
“Of course.”
She pushed herself up. “When I know something, I’ll call.”
“All right.”
Jo was out the door, down the stairs. She pulled her coat from the closet and headed through the dark kitchen to the back door. As she opened it, she felt Rose come up quickly to her side and put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll be praying.”
Jo closed her eyes a moment. “Me, too.”
A light snow had fallen in the night, covering Aurora in a thin layer of white. Like the sheet over a corpse, Jo thought as she drove to the Aurora Community Hospital. Morning was crawling up the eastern horizon. The snow clouds had moved on. The sky was a pale blue-white, the color of deep, hard ice on a lake.
Because the hospital served a large, rural area, a heliport had been constructed on the eastern side of the building. In summer, especially, the heliport got a great deal of use-accidents with axes or chainsaws, drownings, cardiac arrests in city men who eagerly shed their suit-and-tie identities and, envisioning themselves as latter-day voyagers, embarked on canoe expeditions far more demanding than their flabby, cholesterol-ridden bodies could endure.
Wally Schanno was in the parking lot near the heliport, hunched up in his leather sheriff’s jacket, hands sunk deep in the pockets. Booker T. Harris and Nathan Jackson were there as well, sitting in a blue Lumina, engine running to keep them warm. Schanno
walked over to Jo’s Toyota when she parked it.
“I’m real sorry about this,” he told her as she got out. “I probably should have waited until I knew some thing for sure.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said.
She scanned the sky. Lots of stars were still visible, particularly in the north, the direction from which the helicopter would come.
Schanno looked at his watch. “ETA about ten minutes.”
“How’d they find the body?”
“One of the search parties set up camp at nightfall at a landing on the north side of Embarrass Lake. Guy gets up in the middle of the night to relieve himself and stumbles over a pile of rocks. He pulls off a few and sees that there’s a newly dug hole underneath. Digs down a little and finds the body.”
Dear God, Jo found herself praying, please don’t let it be Cork.
“You okay?” Schanno asked.
“No.”
“Yeah.” He nodded sympathetically.
“Wally” She wanted to know, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “It wasn’t an accident, Jo.” He studied the sky with undue interest and the muscles at the back of his long jaw twitched. “An ax blow. To the neck.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus.”
Lights around the heliport came on. The double doors of the hospital opened and two orderlies in parkas appeared, pushing a gurney. They moved into the glare of the lights, men Jo didn’t know, looking tired, as if they’d been on duty all night. There was no doctor with them. What the helicopter was bringing was far beyond healing.
“Here it comes.” Schanno motioned toward the north.
Jo heard it, too. Then she saw it, coming in low over the trees, its lights tracking across the sky like shooting stars. Harris and Jackson got out of their car and waited. Harris cast a glance in Jo’s direction. The helicopter came down in a swirl of blowing snow. Jo could see the body bag on a sled secured to one of the runners. A couple of men jumped from the helicopter. They wore jackets that had TAMARACK SEARCH AND RESCUE printed across the back.
“Wait here,” Wally Schanno said.
Jo nodded, barely able to breathe and unable to talk at all. Schanno went to the helicopter, joined by Harris and Jackson along the way. They gathered around the sled. Jo saw them zip open the body bag and confer. Schanno turned, remained hunched under the blades of the chopper that hadn’t stopped spinning, and started back toward Jo. She turned away. She didn’t want to try to read his face.
Schanno put his hand lightly on her shoulder. “It’s not Cork.”
Jo almost collapsed. Tears of relief blinded her momentarily. She put her hands over her eyes a minute, then she faced the sheriff. “Who is it?”
“The man named Grimes.”
The orderlies wheeled the gurney with the body of Grimes across the parking lot and into the hospital Harris and Jackson approached Jo and Schanno.
“I want a meeting with Benedetti,” Harris said “And I want it now.”
“You don’t think Vincent Benedetti is responsible for this?” Jo asked.
“What I think is that there are six more people out there and I’m scrambling for answers before any of them show up dead. Get Benedetti. We’ll be at the Quetico.”
38
The world felt new to Cork. Like Easter morning. Like hope had been born again.
The sun was up, bright as a vision of God. The lake was blue as heaven. Snow lay thick on the evergreens and made them white as angels’ wings.
The patches on the canoes were holding.
Cork and the others had hit the lake at first light-Raye in the bow of Cork’s canoe, Sloane, Stormy, and Louis in the other. They spoke little, putting all their effort into their strokes, into making distance. They’d set Louis, whose eyes were young and hawk sharp, to the duty of watching for any sign of Shiloh or the man who pursued her. The morning was so clear that had it not been for all the islands that obscured the horizon, Louis could have seen for miles.
The contrast struck Cork powerfully. In the midst of a beauty so pervasive and dramatic it made his soul quiver, they were racing against a faceless, depthless evil. If Shiloh’s life hadn’t been the stake, he would have allowed himself to exalt in the thrill of the chase. It was a day for doing battle, and he couldn’t help but feel that God and Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, were on the lake with them. When he heard the blaring of a line of Canada geese coming over the treetops, it was as if Gabriel had sounded his horn. He believed-believed absolutely and for no other reason than the day was glorious and their luck was holding-that they were meant to beat the evil. It could easily have been a false euphoria, he admitted to himself, born of exhaustion and the strain of the last two days. But it felt like a gift, a sign, a revelation, and he bent his will to what seemed a greater will that guided them.
He knew the feeling was not just with him. The others were on fire, too. Their faces may have been hollow, sunken with fatigue, but in their eyes burned a light as illuminating as that morning sun. They’d reached deep inside themselves, deep into a place where warriors reached for extraordinary courage. Cork was glad-immensely proud-to be in the company of such men. In a grim way, he was pleased for Louis. The boy had seen terrible things, it was true. But he’d also been given a chance to experience this rare companionship, to feel this rare emotion that lifted them all up and carried them forward together.
They moved swiftly through the morning hours. The lake remained calm and the canoes flew across the water like swallows through air. He’d worried about Arkansas Willie at first, but the illness of the previous night seemed to have passed and Willie made no complaint.
Midmorning, as they approached the Deertail River, Louis cried out, “Over there!”
He pointed toward a jut of land ahead of them and a little to the north dominated by a tall lightning-scarred pine tree. Cork ceased paddling, shielded his eyes against the glare, and squinted where Louis had indicated.
“What is it?” he asked, for he saw nothing.
“A camp,” Louis said. “A tent and a canoe.”
Once Louis had defined the images, Cork could see them, too. The tent was covered with snow and blended almost invisibly into the snow-covered evergreens behind it. The canoe was a long white finger pointing out from the whitened shore.
“Do you see anybody?” Cork asked.
Louis shook his head. “Looks deserted.”
“Let’s check it out,” Sloane said.
“Why don’t Willie and I go first. That way you can cover us with the rifle.”
Sloane chambered a round. “You’re covered.”
They moved in cautiously. As the bow nudged shore. Raye and Cork stepped out. Everything was lightly layered with snow, and the snow was crisscrossed with animal tracks, mostly those of birds and rabbits. Cork went to the tent and pulled back the flap. Two sleeping bags were laid out inside, both empty. He headed to the lightning-struck pine and studied the tracks around the shredded remains of a pack.
“Food,” he said over his shoulder to Raye. “Looks like bears got to it.”
But bear tracks were not the only tracks he saw there. He examined the rope that had at one time held the pack suspended from a high branch of the pine. The end had been cleanly cut with a knife.
“Was this bears, too?” Arkansas Willie asked behind him. He was staring down at a lump of snow sparkling at his feet.
Cork stepped up next to Raye, knelt, and brushed the snow away, revealing eyes as lifeless as agates. He carefully cleared the snow from the rest of the body. Over the dead man’s heart, his blue flannel shirt was hard and black with frozen blood.
“Not a bear,” Cork said grimly. “Unless someone taught it how to fire a gun.”
He moved to a second lumping of snow next to the circle of stones that formed a fire ring. The snowfall hadn’t covered the body entirely, and one arm lay exposed like a severed limb on a white sheet.
“Another one,” he
said, wiping the snow from a face dull and white as lard.
“How long have they been dead?” Arkansas Willie asked.
“Hard to tell. A while.”
Cork waved the others to shore.
“Louis, you stay in the canoe,” he called.
Sloane entered the camp and stood beside Cork.
“Two bodies,” Cork told him. “Caucasian males. Multiple gunshot wounds to the chest on both. Dead… a while.”
“Today, you think?”
Cork shook his head. “Snow’s completely covered them. Maybe yesterday.”
“Think they have anything to do with Shiloh?”
“All the death we’ve seen up here has to do with Shiloh. Let me show you something else.” He led Sloane to the shredded pack. “She’s been here. Look, same small boot tracks as at the cabin.”
The tracks led from the shore to the pack, where they were mixed with the tracks of the bear. Boot tracks also led back to the shore, in the same unerring line that had been followed in.
“Food,” Cork said. “She was after food. Cut down the pack from the tree and either took what she wanted and left the rest or she was surprised by the bear and had to leave it.”
Sloane looked at the evidence. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, knelt, and picked up some snow. The warmth of his light brown palm turned the snow quickly to water that trickled through his fingers.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“The sun’s had time to melt the edges of the prints, so I’d say a few hours.”
“Shit!” Arkansas Willie doubled over a moment. “Good Lord, here it comes again.” He hurried to the canoe, grabbed his pack, and raced to the cover of the trees.
After Willie had gone, Stormy called quietly, “Cork.” He stood near the shoreline, beckoning.
When Cork reached him, he saw what Stormy saw. At the edge of the water, near Shiloh’s tracks, were the tracks of the other.
“He’s been here, too,” Cork said.
“Prints are clear,” Stormy pointed out. “Edges clean. The sun hasn’t had time to melt them. He was here after her. And not that long ago.”
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