“Tess,” he whispered, raising his gun. “You clever girl.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Darryl saw the silver cross against Pastor Razz’s sweater, flickering like a blazing hearth. “I never knew you lost your father. You never talk about it.”
Razz’s eyes reflected a dipping candle wreathed in holly on the table between them. “He was loving one minute and savage the next. Pushed me down the cellar steps when I was seven. Didn’t mean to. I hid for hours in the garden shed. Wasn’t afraid of the shadows except when I thought of life without him. When I found him sobbing in the kitchen he put out his arms and of course I ran to him. I really thought if I held him tight the demon inside would never come out again. The next day he was dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” Darryl heard himself utter. He winced as he tried to swallow, hand covering his throat.
“Suicide isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He missed the first time and shot the bulb out of the hall chandelier. Second time he was lucky. Used a razor. Doctor said he bled out all over the bathroom floor,” Razz said with a shallow sigh. “Tess isn’t dead. She’s got too much spit and spirit.”
Darryl felt the rise and fall of his chest, felt like he was floating in a space without limits. He knew when to trust Razz and he nodded. “I’ve lost everything. I didn’t ask to be born. In fact―”
“Yes, we’ve already had the in fact. That’s why this place is crawling with cops. I was the one that cut you down, remember? Stupid thing to do. And with a neck tie. You just don’t get it, do you?”
Darryl rubbed his neck and began to sob. “I tried it twice just to see if it would hurt. Even looked it up on the Internet. Just give me a chance, will you?”
“I’ve given you many chances. Although not quite as many as the Almighty.” Razz nodded at Captain Fowler a few feet away in the kitchen. He seemed to give officer Jarvis a squinty stare as he dug into Darryl’s cookie jar.
“I wish the cops would leave.”
“They’re only doing their job.” Razz’s eyes seemed to run along the wires to the tape recorder and he pinched his lip with a finger. “She still might call you know.”
“She won’t call. He’s probably taken her phone. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
Darryl had to think about that for a moment. “I just wanted to disable the car. You know, keep him there for the cops.”
“You know that’s a lie. You just said you wanted to kill him.”
“I said I should have killed him.”
Darryl didn’t see Tess like a spirit far above the clouds, rising like a swallow into the firmament. She wasn’t dead. Couldn’t be. “It’s never really dark in the woods, is it? It’s never really quiet.”
Razz looked over the rim of his glasses. “I know what you’re thinking. He’s probably got a gun. Probably got a knife. No doubt he’s stacked. But she can run fast. Like a deer.”
Darryl smiled at that. He could almost see her feet pattering against the leaves and he could almost smell the musty odor of the burrow where he imagined she lay. “I told the girls what to do if they ever got lost. Told them to find a place.”
Razz nodded along, face shining as it always did. “A little more faith, son.”
Darryl gently bit his lip. He never liked to talk about God, never knew what to say. It was all fluff and stuff, something to make young people behave and old people happy. “He’s taken everything.”
Razz flicked a look at Jarvis as he walked to the front door. “He hasn’t taken your cookies.”
Darryl watched the two officers, heads down and deep in conversation. “Why didn’t God just let me die?”
“Because those heavenly mansions need a good cleaning. Probably haven’t made our beds yet.”
“I want to die.”
“So do I. Can’t wait. But it’s not my time yet. Not yours either. How would I know you were hanging like a pheasant in your garage? I was called, that’s why. And not on the phone in case you were wondering.”
Darryl looked at Razz long and hard. He had a point. How would he have known? It felt like a dream to him afterwards, the tie, the rafter, the drafty old garage.
“Had to have been a miracle,” Razz said, scratching food off a front tooth with a fingernail.
Darryl felt his hands tremble, felt his foot jitter under the table. Couldn’t sift through his thoughts fast enough to understand what Razz had just said. Couldn’t quite get over that miracle either.
“Family,” Razz said, tapping Darryl’s arm. “Like the Dad we never had.”
The trilling of the phone gave them a start. That’s when the officers came running in. The Captain checked the caller ID and nodded at the number. “It’s him.”
Jarvis tapped out a rhythm with his fingers. “Three, two, one,” he whispered, signaling for Darryl to pick up the phone.
“Tess… Tess!” Darryl said. A dull excitement coursed through his veins just as the flame of the candle danced in a sudden draft.
“Tell me something, Darryl,” said a voice between short breaths. “Did you really think I was in your house on Sunday?”
“Who is this?”
“We’ve never been formally introduced. I’m Ole Eriksen. And I have your daughter.”
“Where is she? What have you done with her?”
“I know the police are listening so I wanted to get something straight. Tell them to bring Morgan outside the front gates. Straight exchange. Morgan for Tess.”
Silence.
“Hello, hello!” Darryl squeezed the phone in his sweaty palm, felt his fingers being prized from the receiver. He heard one of the officers telling him the line was dead and he snatched his hand away, drawing it back to his body in a protective flinch. “He could have killed her―”
“Nah, he couldn’t have,” Razz said. “Can’t make a fair exchange with a dead body.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The wind slashed at Malin’s cheeks as they left the warmth of the car. She wound her scarf tighter, burying one hand into her pocket, the other gripping the strap of her backpack. The woods were bright with moon glow and she could see almost as far as sixty feet between the trees.
Temeke checked his radio and turned up his collar. “What did you put in these backpacks, Marl?”
“First aid, water, knives, spare batteries, energy bars. A few rounds. An extra sweater for Tess.” She knew he would be impressed even if he didn’t say so. She was prepared.
“A woolly hat might have come in handy. It’s bloody freezing out here.”
She looked up at a telegraph pole, cable running parallel to the river. “They must have electricity,” she said.
“They? No one lives out here. Not anymore.”
Temeke walked ahead, nose twitching as if he tracked a scent. She watched his long limbs gliding down the slope with catlike ease, turning occasionally as if there was some telepathic link between them. That was the African in him.
Then she saw the cloudy vapors curling between his lips and the trace of a smile as he waited for her, a dark shadow beneath the palisade cliffs and a glossy river.
“Thought there was supposed to be a ranger up here,” he whispered, hand reaching for hers as she stumbled over a tree root. Only it wasn’t a tree root. It was a wooden stake, sharpened to a point.
“Someone’s building a fence,” she said, pointing.
Temeke grunted and made no reply.
“Maybe the ranger’s here somewhere,” she said, feeling the warmth of his fingers as he steadied her. But only for a second. He kept his distance, polite to the point of honor. It was a side of him she had never seen.
“Hope he didn’t flatten the grass around our crime scene.”
“Crime scene, sir?”
“Every scene’s a crime scene. Even my desk at work. And quit making so much bloody noise.”
“Sorry, sir,” she said, flushing with blood and color. She crunched through another pile of dead t
wigs, wincing all the way down the slope. The moon shed enough light on the aspens that their hoary trunks seemed to stab upwards like knives out of the black earth. Tiny flakes drifted like a rain of pollen and it wasn’t as cold as it was before.
Temeke stopped again and lifted his chin. He blew out another swirl of steam which the wind caught and split into shreds. “What’s that smell?”
“What smell?”
“That,” he whispered, lifting a finger and pointing toward the dense blackness of the trees. His eyes skirted the fringes for a moment and then narrowed at a flicker of light so distant it could have been a spark from a cigarette. “Methane.”
Malin smelled the faint odor of charcoal and what reminded her of burnt hair. It was both nauseating and sweet.
“Must be close to the first cabin,” Temeke murmured, neck craning back for a moment.
She felt the cold sweat oozing between her shirt and the bulletproof vest, felt the weight of her pack as she ducked beneath the branches. The path twisted and turned, and it was nearly twenty minutes before they saw another flicker of light through the trees.
Situated in front of the river and dwarfed by the cliffs, the cabin nestled in a large clearing. Tendrils of smoke danced above the chimney, and light seeped through a dilapidated door. It would have been idyllic in the summer, a shallow cove to tie up a raft and a wide ledge far out at the base of the cliffs to jump from.
Temeke waved a hand in a downward motion and crouched beside a gnarled juniper bush. “Make sure your phone’s off. It’s been vibrating in your pocket like a sex toy.”
Malin hunkered beside him and took out her phone. She half covered it with her scarf and nodded. “It is off, sir.”
“And don’t go waving it around like a flashlight.”
She was about to open her mouth when he placed a finger against her lips.
“If he’s a good hunter, he already knows we’re here. I’ll take the front. You go round the back. And don’t go inside, OK? If you see anything move give me the signal.”
“What signal, sir?”
“The signal, you know. Middle finger. In the air. Like this.”
She felt the rising giggle and suppressed it with a snort. Temeke always made light of things, always positive in a dangerous situation. She smelled the fragrance of his polished black skin that plunged her briefly into an erotic yearning. There was no time to play it out in her mind, so she stood when he did, barely hearing him slip between tall tufts of buffalo grass on those silent feet of his.
She chose a downhill slope parallel to the back of the cabin and where a faint beam of light illuminated a track cut between dense patches of snake grass and cattails. She felt sleek and nameless in the shadows, a reedy speck that could suddenly take to the air like one of the many migratory birds that came to roost each year.
A loud snap caused her to stop and her leg felt as if it had been gripped in a vice. Bending down, she untangled the trailing vine that had somehow caught around her calf, and she ripped it away with a single tug.
It wasn’t a vine. Too cold for that. Too thin. A rabbit trap strung across the path.
Steadying herself against a young aspen about fifteen feet from the house, she saw the perfect example of a Scandinavian male, solidly built, roaming gracefully about the room until he came to a stop by the window. It was his profile she saw, skin a yellowish tan in the candlelight and chin turned upwards as if he was studying the ceiling.
Ole Eriksen, the man in the drawing.
A cable knit sweater hung from a chair and all he wore was a dark t-shirt and pale jeans. She wasn’t expecting to see him at such close range, neck longer than she imagined, face angular and maddeningly striking. Sliding the gun from her waistband, she took a deep breath and aimed.
It was then he turned and stared right at her, finger wagging as if scolding an unruly child. It threw her off guard and her mind went blank. She saw the smile, head cocked sideways as if sizing her up, measuring her mood.
He couldn’t possibly see her. She had been too careful for that. So what could he see? A shadow, a shape against the pale bark of the aspen.
She dared to look behind, seeing only a mangled thicket in the darkness. When she looked back at the house he was gone.
“No, no, no!” Breath caught in her throat, grip tightening on the gun.
She didn’t know whether to throw up or be ashamed. He could only have left through the front door, striding out toward a pointed muzzle. Temeke was waiting for him. Hell, he’d probably already cuffed him.
It was the silence that told her otherwise and she knew better than to stand like a sitting duck in the beam of a guttering candle.
Idiot! she said to herself, feeling her legs jerk as she leapt along the back of the cabin, crouching beneath a second window. The odds said run a mile, only she felt like she was going nowhere fast. Gun muzzle pointing down, she stood slowly and pressed her cheek against the window frame. All she could see was a wooden table and a chair and the remains of a round braided rug on the floor. A candle flickering on the mantelshelf, flame bobbing in a downward breeze.
She slipped past the window and flattened herself against the stone wall. Gripping the gun even tighter, she heard the rustle of the crisp dead leaves in a gentle breeze. Stepping forward, her foot caught beneath a thick gray limb. She squatted and patted the snow, feeling the silky fabric of a ski jacket before she gripped a man’s arm.
She gasped, felt the backpack slip from her shoulder, felt a scream rise in her throat.
Temeke…
A surge of anger brought her to her senses. Fumbling for the zipper, she no longer cared if the flashlight shot upwards through the trees like a strobe. Directing the light toward the ground, she saw the wide staring eyes all puffy and red. His nose was a swollen mess, clotted blood streaking from both nostrils into a blackened mouth. His neck was covered in livid bruises and the wreckage of his chest revealed a crater where his heart had once been.
She placed the gun on the ground beside her and felt for a pulse in his neck. There wasn’t the slightest whisper of life in that body. Only the word Ranger on his sleeve that indicated who he was.
She radioed Temeke. Heard no response.
A snapping twig urged her to turn off the flashlight and she slipped it into her coat pocket. It seemed to come from the shadows about fifteen feet in front of her. Again, she was plunged into darkness, eyes adjusting slowly to the shadows and ears pricked to the surrounding sounds. A stream trickled nearby and the yipping chime of a coyote tore through her thoughts.
She fumbled for the gun, heart racing in her chest. It wasn’t behind her. It wasn’t in front.
Snap… snap!
Backing up against the wall, she tasted a fresh tumble of snow on her lips and she turned back toward the window to see if he was there. Couldn’t see much, couldn’t hear much. But she could smell a scent that reminded her of freshly mown grass. Somewhere inside she knew it was wrong and it took several minutes to assemble her thoughts.
Go back to the car, radio Hackett, Fowler, Sarge, anyone.
No, she’d never make it.
Climb a tree…
She looked up at the trees and almost choked. A warm hand reached around from behind and tucked itself beneath her chin. She felt a sturdy body pressing against her spine and towering over her as she cowered.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “Not unless you scream.”
She could hear the upward inflection, the w to v transition. It was musical and disgustingly warm against her ear. She would have lifted her knee and kicked back, but her legs were anchored by one of his.
“You should never leave a gun on the ground. Didn’t they teach you that at the academy?”
She knew he didn’t expect a response, knew the snapping sound was a lobbed rock in the bushes to divert her attention. She was ashamed all the same.
“I don’t mind trespassers. No, not at all. It’s a new way of hunting. That’s what I love to do.”
She did the only thing she could think of and that was to settle against him, letting him take the whole weight of her body. He sensed the shift, sensed her dependence. Whether he believed it was another matter.
“The wind is cruel tonight. So is the snow. It’s warmer inside.”
Malin didn’t dare move. She didn’t dare think he might not be human behind that seductive voice. It was the only thing that kept her focused.
“I’ll keep you warm if you tell me where your partner is.”
So he didn’t know where Temeke was. That was worth something. Malin almost let out an audible sigh but she caught it just in time. He would have sensed her intake of breath, sensed the sudden flinch.
“I don’t know,” she stammered.
“Storm’s coming. Better get inside.”
Malin felt the gun muzzle against the small of her back. Her gun. She only wished she could stop panting out large clouds of breath, only wished she could scream at the top of her lungs without being shot.
The cabin stank of rotting wood and years of dust, and several candles flickered on a wooden table, some dripping wax on the surface and oozing into a ball of nylon rope. It was the fire in the grate that gave out that bold flicker of light through the windows, the light that shone in her face when he first saw her.
She saw a large dog, a wolf perhaps, lying on a circular mat, nose resting between its paws. Its fur was not just gray in the moonlight, but brown and black and beige. Golden eyes, rimmed in black, seemed to follow Ole as he pushed her inside and there was the hint of a snarl when she resisted.
“Loki,” Ole scolded, flicking his fingers at the wolf before closing the door with his foot.
“You’re cold,” he said as if he truly cared, hands resting on her shoulders now.
She felt him watching her, felt his eyes looking almost lovingly as if she needed that assurance. He pressed her down onto the seat of an old wooden chair. Taking her hands, he gently tied them to the back rails. She felt him behind her, felt his breath on the back of her neck, felt her toes curl inside her boots.
The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) Page 23