by Sam Best
Ben awoke and immediately knew he overslept. The nightmare of losing Marissa slowly faded away as he rolled over in his sleeping bag and looked up at the ceiling.
He had been too tired to worry about plugging in and setting an alarm the night before, deciding instead to rely on the morning sun to wake him. It usually worked when he was on a normal sleep schedule, but driving for days on end drained him to the point of exhaustion. He rolled over and reached out to check on his daughter, but she wasn’t there. Her sleeping bag was unzipped and lay half off the bed.
Ben yawned and crawled out of his bag. The floor was cold so he pulled on his dirty socks and shoes, then left the room to find his adventurous daughter. Whenever Annabelle went missing from her bed in their old house, she was usually to be found in Ben’s office nook, curled up by the window with one of her stories. He was sure that with their new, huge house to explore, she had awoken early and set off to familiarize herself with all the secret hiding spots within.
He felt lucky that his daughter was one of the few children who adapted to change quickly and easily. Ben worried that she was masking her true feelings and simply putting on a show for him by pretending to understand what was really going on; in fact he had gone so far as to talk to a child psychiatrist about his concerns. The doctor assured Ben that, while rare, some children possessed the ability to cope with major change far more quickly than adults would think.
Ben didn’t want Annabelle to forget her mother, but he did want her to be a normal, happy little girl.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he walked down the wooden stairs to the first floor. When he reached the second step near the bottom, he instinctively skipped the first and hopped straight down to the floor, just as he had done in his youth. Ben smiled and tried to remember if there was a reason for that childhood game. He could think of none.
“Annabelle?” he called, searching the sitting room for his daughter.
All of the dusty white bed-sheets still covered the furniture, untouched. Surely she wouldn’t have gone down to the basement. It had been Ben’s least favorite part of the house as a child and gave him the creeps to think about it. Still, Annabelle was less fearful than he was at her age.
He walked around to the side of the staircase and checked the basement door. The rusty padlock his father had installed years ago was still clasped firmly to the latch on the door; Ben would have to break it off later when the time came to clear out the cellar.
“Anna?” he called again.
He moved into the kitchen and began checking the cabinets under the counter along the back wall, not forgetting how much his daughter liked to hide in small, cramped spaces. She had been known to engage in games of hide-and-seek without actually informing anyone she was playing.
He knelt down near the island in the kitchen. All of the cabinets were empty.
“Anna?”
The back door opened and Annabelle ran into the house.
“Daddy! You’re awake!”
She leapt into his arms and allowed him to spin her around like he always did when they greeted each other.
“I’m awake! Where have you been, squirt?” He flicked her nose lightly with the tip of his finger and she scrunched her face playfully.
“I was looking for snow but there wasn’t any.” Ben set her down on the island countertop. She dangled her legs over the side and bumped her heels into the cabinets below. “But I saw a wolf! Two wolfs!” She held up her hand and extended her first two fingers.
“Two of them?!” Ben asked, playing along with her excitement. Annabelle had an overactive imagination, one that her mother had mildly discouraged but one that Ben found difficult to squelch. Besides reading voraciously, she also liked to spin her own imaginary tales. Each one of her drawings had behind it a long story which she was only too happy to share with anyone that asked. Ben felt safe indulging her particular fantasy that morning because he knew there were no wolves in the valley that time of year. All of the usual prey had migrated away for the coming winter and the predators had followed. “What kind of wolves?” he asked her.
“Big white ones!”
“Whoa! Weren’t you scared?”
She shook her head firmly, her blonde curls brushing her face with each turn. “They were nice doggies. They wanted to be friends.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be friends with a beautiful little girl like you?” He reached forward and pinched her sides, eliciting a happy, high-pitched squeal.
“They smiled at me!” she said.
Something about the way she said it unnerved Ben and his smile disappeared. “Well,” he said, “they sound really nice.”
“Yeah, they’re good doggies.”
Ben slapped his forehead and pretended to be angry with himself.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Annabelle asked with genuine concern.
“You know what? I’m such a dum-dum.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re not a dum-dum.”
“But I forgot about the big surprise!”
She immediately started bouncing up and down on the island. “What surprise?! What surprise?!”
“Well, I really shouldn’t tell you ‘cause I don’t want to ruin it.”
“Tell meeeeeeeeeeee!”
“Well,” Ben said, pretending to think it over, “I guess. But only if you promise to help keep the secret, okay?”
“O-kay!” She put her hands over her mouth like she always did when presented with exciting news she was asked to keep to herself.
Ben knelt down next to her ear and whispered, “Aunt Heidi and Uncle John are coming for a visit.”
She gasped. “They are?!”
“You bet they are. Tonight!”
Ben had kept that small bit of information from his daughter only because he wanted to have some good news if Annabelle was having a hard time adjusting to their new home.
His father’s brother, John, lived in Colorado Springs, south of Denver. He and his wife, Heidi, had been eager to take one of their many retirement vacations by coming out to the old Howard home to help get things cleaned up for Ben and Annabelle. They hadn’t seen their grandniece in almost two years and would take any possible excuse to spoil her rotten. Ben knew the attention would be good for her, and the hard truth was that he was lonely himself. John and Heidi could stay for as long as they wanted before moving on to the next part of their vacation; given their love of travel, they would probably embark on a multi-state escapade to numerous national parks and historical sites.
Annabelle hopped off the island and jumped up and down. “Yay, yay, yay, yay!”
“But,” said Ben, holding up a stern finger he in no way endorsed, “we have to get this place cleaned up before they get here, capisce?” He held out his hand for her to shake.
“Ka-peesh,” she said, and rested her tiny hand within Ben’s larger palm. They shook once before she spun around and ran for the staircase.
“Get those sleeping bags rolled up!” he called after her. She bounded up the stairs loudly without answering. A moment later he heard the rustling of cloth coming from the bedroom.
After they cleaned up a little around the house he would have to drive them into town to get some supplies. He knew they would need paint and light bulbs, as well as whatever wood he could find to temporarily patch the porch until John could help him with a more permanent solution. He would also have to see about getting the Cherokee’s windshield repaired; the crack from the impact with the owl was right in front of the driver’s seat and made it difficult to see the road clearly.
Ben walked out of the kitchen and stepped onto the back porch. The morning was quiet and the tall grass lining the edge of their backyard stood unwavering. He looked to the woods in the distance and thought he saw movement in the shadows past the treeline. After a few moments of stillness, he turned around and walked back inside, locking the door behind him.
8
Karen Raines considered any day that she was awoken by a phone
call from the Department to be a bad day. Good news was never delivered in a hurry, but the bad stuff was always sent out as fast as humanly possible.
She picked up the phone and put the speaker to her ear.
“Roy’s in trouble.”
Janet’s gravelly voice was more strained than usual. Karen rubbed her eyes and tried to shake off the remnants of her deep sleep. She pressed the phone closer to her ear and clicked on the small lamp on the nightstand next to the phone cradle.
“What do you mean?” she asked. The conversation finally registered in her groggy mind and Karen pulled off the bed sheets and looked around for her uniform.
“He never called me after his shift. Something’s wrong, Karen, I just know it!”
Karen glanced at the clock. It was three in the damn morning.
The lump laying under the covers next to her groaned as she stood up and allowed a big whoosh of cold air to flow under the blankets. Karen peeled back a little more of the covers to reveal Blake Halsey lying in her bed. She rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes and tried to blink him away.
He didn’t disappear.
Karen sighed. “He probably fell asleep, Janet. He works hard, you know?”
“But he always calls. His rounds have been taking him longer since those kids started acting up so I figured it would be a few hours. But he always calls. Something must have happened to him, something must have—”
“Janet, calm down.” Karen pulled on her shirt and quickly started buttoning the front. “Did you call Foster?”
“No answer.”
“Okay. Sit tight. I’ll be right there.”
Karen hung up the phone and slipped on her beige pants. She fastened her belt buckle and used her thumb to trace the edge of the leather strap to make sure her mace and night stick were in place. She reached under her pillow and withdrew her .38 special.
Blake opened his eyes.
“You had that under your pillow the whole time?” he said.
She smiled as she holstered the gun. “Can’t be too careful these days.” She grabbed her jacket and opened the bedroom door to leave.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Make yourself some breakfast before you leave,” she called over her shoulder. Karen was out the front door and inside her police cruiser before she saw the bedroom light click off. As she twisted the keys in the ignition, she remembered that her cabinets had been empty for days; she’d been eating on the go ever since the beginning of the festival. Between the meat, baked-goods, and sweets vendors at the festival there was no reason to spend her hard-earned cash on cold-cuts and frozen vegetables from the local grocery store.
Doubtless it would only take Blake a few minutes to realize that his only breakfast choices were a dozen expired eggs and a variety of condiments in the fridge.
She turned from her driveway onto Cedar Street and flipped on the cruiser’s headlights. The street was empty and the moon had already set. Oppressed street lamps fought the staunch shadows valiantly, but lost out after only a few feet. Karen sped up and raced down the mountain.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like the guy—liking Blake was, at the bare minimum, a requirement for their activities the night previous—it was that she had a hard time contending with the feeling of guilt from leading him on that cropped up every time they spent a night together. Blake was a sweet guy; a little slow on the uptake at times—not anything close to stupid—but sweet. Not bad looking, either, even if she compared him to men outside of Falling Rock. He worked in construction and had the strong arms and back—and the rough hands—to prove it. There was something else about him that kept her interested and she did her best to ignore it: Blake was a genuinely good guy.
The first time they became intimate was after a long night of drinking back when Karen had only been in town for a couple of months. She was out with the guys from work celebrating her first real arrest: a local repeat offender named Bobby Hobbs that was caught red-handed while trying to break into the post office late at night. He claimed he just wanted a roll of stamps since they were getting so damned expensive and with Christmas coming up—at that time it was nine months away—his poor Ma in Sacramento “wasn’t gonna get no letters from her only son”. It was his fourth infraction in as many months so Karen hauled him down to the Sheriff’s Office and let him sweat it out for a couple of nights.
She insisted it was nothing, but the guys wouldn’t let it rest. They said she’d “popped her cherry” and that celebration was mandatory. Drinking with Walt Foster and even Sheriff Mills got exhausting after a very short time. Both were closet misogynists and hard liquor only made that quality more apparent. The comments they spouted about a woman’s rightful place in society—in the kitchen, in the nursery—crawled under her skin and stabbed at her like tiny needles.
It only took a couple hours before Karen found herself looking for someone on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Enter Blake Halsey, a quiet loner who was inclined to enjoy a nice pint or two of amber ale at The Salty Dog after a long day of hard work. Karen had seen him around town once or twice and decided the time was right for him to ask a gal what she was about. She took a stool next to him at the bar and ordered the same thing he was drinking. He looked at her, she smiled, and then they let their hormones finish the rest.
Recently, Blake was starting to push for a little bit more, and Karen wasn’t quite ready for it yet. She was having fun with him—and she knew for a fact he wasn’t bored with her—but that next step into relationship territory was a doozy. She’d tried it—and failed—two times in the past and that was enough for her; twice burned and all that. Karen had no real plans to take anything with Blake further than they had already been taken.
She didn’t tap the brakes as she reached the intersection at the bottom of Cedar and instead let the tail of her car sweep wide as she spun onto Main Street. Her car was the only one on the road, parked or moving, so she gave herself a little creative freedom when it came to driving. The one positive thing about being woken up for work at such an ungodly hour was that she didn’t have to adhere to a single traffic law; it was a professional privilege as far as she was concerned.
Karen pulled up to the Sheriff’s Office and left her car running while she hurried inside. Janet was pacing back and forth behind the counter, smoking a cigarette faster than anyone would recommend and shaking her head side to side.
“Still no call?” asked Karen.
Janet blew a cloud of grey smoke into the air and shook her head fiercely. She tried to lift a mug of coffee to her lips but her hand was trembling so badly she gave up halfway from the table. “Oh,” she said softly, and sat down in her chair.
“Hey,” said Karen with concern in her voice. She walked around the end of the counter and crouched down next to the shaking older woman. She plucked Janet’s cigarette from her mouth and stubbed it out in the crowded ashtray on her desk. “You know Roy. He’s not exactly the best at checking in, right? Remember when he went on his one-week fishing trip and was gone for twelve days? We all thought he drowned but he showed up with a cooler full of trout and wondered why the hell everyone was so worried.”
Janet smiled at the memory and rubbed her eyes. “He’s a sonuva bitch,” she said and patted Karen’s hand. “Thank you, sweetie.”
Karen stood. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? I’ll call you when he wanders in.”
Janet shook her head again. “I’d rather stay. I wanna be able to slap that man before I sleep and lose all my anger.” She looked at Karen. “He went down to the church, to see about them kids. That troublemaker Mike Laubin’s been down there starting fires with his buddies. You talk to him first.”
Karen had seen the smoke and heard that the sheriff went down to check it out. He never reported back so she assumed he took care of it on his own.
“Alright, then.” Karen walked over to the weapons rack bolted to the wall and unlocked the cross-beam that secured the guns i
n place. She pulled one of three Remington twelve-gauges off the rack next to a couple of small-caliber rifles and grabbed a box of shells before re-locking the cabinet. It was more for show; to make Janet feel a little better about someone going off to search for the sheriff. Karen had no doubt in her mind he was either sleeping off a massive bender or simply out on his boat in the middle of Bright Lake with the sun on his shoulders and fish flopping around his feet. She turned back to Janet before she walked out of the building. “I’ll find him and drag him here myself, don’t you worry.”
As Karen stepped out of the station and as the cool predawn air hit her face, she hoped she was right about the sheriff. She wanted, more than anything, to drive out to the old bastard’s house and find him sleeping one off. As hard as she tried to push the feeling away, something tugged at her mind; something that threatened to make itself clear but that she could not identify in the end.
Karen tossed the shotgun into the back seat of her cruiser. The sky over the valley was brightening, and the thin line of black smoke rising from the woods next to the church appeared to be growing thicker by the minute.
Her first stop would be Roy’s place. If he wasn’t there she would have to track down Mike Laubin and see what the punk knew, if anything. Arson was one of the only crimes not on Laubin’s growing list of offenses, and Karen saw no reason for him to start with the woods next to the church. The town delinquent had been avoiding attention the past several months and something as obvious as a forest fire ran counter to his more recent, low-key offenses.
Maybe the pastor had seen Roy when he drove down to check out the fire. She dreaded the thought of engaging Moses St. Croix in actual conversation and was worried that he would swing the dialogue away from the matter at hand and toward her “much-needed” salvation. She would have to be quick about it and keep the upper hand in the discussion at all times.
That would be her last visit, she decided, short of driving all the way out to Bright Lake and asking random townsfolk if they had seen a drunk man matching the sheriff’s description wandering around the city.