We wait outside as the children say their goodbyes to the dog. While they do that, I pull the pellet from my pocket for a discreet closer look.
It’s a buckshot pellet—the same kind that killed Ellen.
THIRTY-TWO
Tomas takes us to a place where we can camp for the night. As expected, there’s no invitation to stay in the settlement, but we wouldn’t have accepted one anyway. We do take the food they offer, along with Tomas’s help locating a well-situated campsite.
The site has obviously been used before and recently, with only the lightest layer of snow over a campfire circle, log seats, and a spot cleared for tents. Tomas says it’s for the teens and unmarried adults who need an escape from the close quarters of the longhouses.
As I watch Tomas leave, Dalton says, “You want to go after him,” before I can ask.
“Something’s up,” I say, “and it’s not just that shotgun pellet. I think Tomas had an affair with Ellen.”
Dalton’s brows shoot up. Then his face falls with, “The bracelet. Fuck.” He mutters a few more curses, and I understand his disappointment. Nancy and Tomas seem like a deeply committed, loving couple, and no one wants to think a guy who has that at home will betray his wife. But I suspected it from the moment his eyes lit on that bracelet, the flash of grief as he realized who’d died. Asking us not to mention the bracelet cemented my suspicions—this isn’t a polyamorous relationship, where Nancy knows what he’s doing and approves.
“I’d just like to follow him,” I say. “See if he takes a moment to find his game face before he heads back to his wife. You and Storm can come along, but I’d appreciate it if you hang back.”
He nods, and we set out. I leave the snowshoes. The forest here is dense enough that I can jog through the light snow.
Soon I see Tomas trudging along ahead. I slow to keep out of sight and follow him for about a hundred feet. After a glance, he makes a left off the trodden path. I slip after him, tracking his jacket in the fast-falling twilight. Finally, he comes to a clearing, where he sits on a fallen tree.
Tomas pulls the bracelet from his pocket and runs his fingers over the leather. Then he clears the snow, digs a shallow hole, and lays the bracelet in it. His hand touches the discarded dirt, ready to refill the hole. After a pause he takes the bracelet out and runs his thumb over it. His head drops and his shoulders shake, racked with silent sobs.
I glance over my shoulder but see no sign of Dalton and Storm. They’re there—just giving me room. I look at Tomas again. As a person, I want to leave him to his grief. As a detective, I cannot. I have a murdered woman, and now I’m looking at her secret lover … whose wife tried to hide a shotgun pellet that may have come from the murder weapon.
I step from the trees and say, “I’m going to need that bracelet back.”
Tomas jumps. I have my gun lowered, but his gaze still goes to it and his eyes widen.
“We’re alone in the forest,” I say. “I’m not about to demand murder evidence without a gun in my hand.” I put my hand out. “How about you give me that instead of burying it?”
“Burying?” Another widening of the eyes. Then he winces. “Burying the evidence. No, that wasn’t what I was doing. It’s just…”
“Maybe not evidence of a crime, but evidence of a secret. A lover’s gift.”
He nods, his gaze still down, shoulders hunched as he sits with the bracelet in his hand. “I wanted to bury it. Pretend it never happened. But that isn’t fair. It isn’t right. This was…” His hand closes around it. “Important.”
“So what were you going to do with it?”
He exhales. “I don’t know. I should talk to Nancy. That’s the right thing to do, and maybe I’m a coward, but I just…” He opens his hand again. “I shouldn’t pretend it didn’t happen. Nancy and I need to discuss why it happened. I just … I want to protect my family. Down south, I had girlfriends and lovers, and that’s all I thought there was, for a guy like me. Then I met Nancy, and she’s so much more. A friend, a partner, a lover. And now…” He takes a deep breath. “I just don’t want Nancy to think I blame her.”
“Blame your wife for you screwing around? I should hope not.”
He looks up in genuine confusion. “Screwing…?” A short laugh. “Of course that’s what you thought. That’s how these things normally go, isn’t it? I wasn’t having an affair with Ellen.”
“But you wanted to,” I say. “You gave her that.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not the one who gave it to her.”
There’s a moment where I don’t understand. As soon as I do, I feel stupid. I also feel very close-minded. My brain drew what seemed like the obvious conclusion, because it’s the one that fit the norms I was raised with, and even if I’m long past that, my mind still follows that long-carved path.
I remember Tomas’s pain on seeing the bracelet. I remember how he’d hesitated, coming into the tent with Nancy, how he’d hung back and made sure of his welcome before comforting her. It was behavior consistent with a man who’d cheated on his wife. It wasn’t, however, what I’d expect from a man who’d just discovered his wife had been cheating on him.
“You knew,” I say. “About Nancy and Ellen.”
He forces a wry smile. “I might have barely gotten my high school diploma, but I can figure some things out just fine. I knew they were more than friends. I just…” He takes a deep breath. “I thought it was a fling. That bracelet means it was more. Nancy loved her and … I didn’t expect that.”
“Finding out your wife was having a fling with a woman must have come as a shock.”
That twist of a smile again. “Such a shock that I went crazy and shot Ellen? The redneck trucker so horrified by the thought that his wife prefers women that he destroys the evidence? No. I knew what Nancy was when I married her and…”
His face screws up in pain as he rubs his hands over it. “Growing up, my friends called gay people fags and homos. Did I stop them? Hell, no. I chimed in, because that’s what we were taught—that homosexuality was wrong. When I was twenty, a bunch of us were at a bar, and my friends went after a gay guy. We beat the shit out of him, just because we were drunk and spoiling for a fight and he seemed a perfectly fine target. After I sobered up, I realized what I’d done, and I was sick. I didn’t exactly start joining gay-pride parades, though. I just stopped caring about other people’s sexual orientation. Then along came Nancy, and I still didn’t care, but in the wrong way, you know?”
“You married her knowing she preferred women.”
He nods. “That’s not acceptable here. We might be all about nature and kindness and love thy neighbor, but we must procreate, and for Nancy to say ‘Sure, I’ll have babies, but I’d rather be married to a woman’ was not an acceptable work-around. Her parents caught her with a settler girl, and they offered her in marriage to this other guy. Nancy said she’d rather marry me. I was…”
He flails his hand. “I was a twenty-five-year-old man who figured he wasn’t ever getting a wife because he wasn’t born here. Then this eighteen-year-old girl is in trouble, and she wants to marry me, and I like her, and I know this other guy’s a jerk, so I say sure. Look at me. A damn hero stepping up like that. A hero, though, would have taken her out of here. Taken her back to Rockton and let her go down south to be with someone she wanted.”
The tears start again, and he looks away, bracelet still in his hands. I remember their obvious love and affection for one another, and I know they’ve made the best of a difficult situation. Nancy just needed more, and she’d tried to get it without hurting her husband. I don’t see wrongdoing on either side. I see tragedy. The question I must ask, though, is whether one tragedy led to another. Led to murder.
* * *
I don’t question Tomas further. There’s no point. He knows he’s a suspect. He may even realize Nancy is, and something tells me he’ll protect her even more than he’ll protect himself.
I tell Dalton about Nancy and Ellen. He says,
“Fuck, that’s a mess all around.”
He’s right. Everyone loses here. And for what? As Tomas said, marrying a woman wouldn’t have stopped Nancy from procreating, if that was so important to the settlement. They never gave her that option, though, which means that, like most of those objections, the justifications are just excuses to backfill a decision rising from ignorance rather than rational thought.
However “enlightened” the Second Settlement is, they’d still brought their prejudices with them, because those who made this law had grown up in the same world as Tomas, where it was fine to insult and beat homosexuals because they needed to be “scared” onto the right track.
The settlement elders had given Nancy an ultimatum, and she made the best of it, choosing her own husband. Tomas knew he wasn’t her actual “choice,” but he went along with it, driven by those old prejudices, too, the ones that doubtless whispered that if he was a good enough husband, Nancy wouldn’t miss anything. Only she did. Ellen comes along, they become friends, and then more than friends … and Ellen winds up dead.
Tomas might have said he understood—maybe wanted to understand—but when he first found out, had he seen red, grabbed his forbidden shotgun, and hunted down his rival? Or did Nancy do it in a lover’s quarrel? Perhaps she expected to go south with Ellen in the spring, and Ellen told her no. Or Nancy didn’t want to go south, so Ellen threatened to tell Tomas about them.
Where does Abby fit into this? Nowhere, I realize. Nor does she need to. Ellen was helping Abby’s parents. She might have been looking after the baby when she’d been shot, and with Abby hidden under Ellen’s coat, her killer never realized they’d almost claimed a second life. Solving Ellen’s murder may not find Abby’s parents, but it is still justice for one victim I found in the snow.
The big clue here is the shotgun. I suspect that someone in the Second Settlement is cheating on the “no firearms” rule. They’ve gotten hold of a shotgun and been shooting their prey and then jabbing in an arrow making it look as if the beast was brought down with a bow.
Does the entire settlement know someone’s breaking the law? Are they turning a blind eye because it’s winter and meat equals survival?
Nancy knows what’s going on, though. I’m certain of that. She knows who has a shotgun, and that’s why she tucked away the pellet.
Is it Tomas’s shotgun, and she’s covering for him? Or has she only figured out that someone in the village is using a gun, and she’s protecting whoever it is?
I need to find out who has that gun.
THIRTY-THREE
Dalton and I are talking around the fire when we hear running footfalls. We shine our flashlight and a voice huffs, “It’s Tomas,” sounding out of breath, before he appears. He bursts in and stops, panting, “Nancy’s gone. I got back to the village, and went to speak to her. When I couldn’t find her, I thought she was avoiding me. Miles said she’d told the kids to stay with the other women, that she needed to find Lane.”
“Lane?” I say, and it takes a moment for me to remember that’s his nephew. “Where is he?”
“Hunting. Lane … struggles with village life. His mother died when he was a boy, his father passed five years ago, and he lost his best friend the summer before last. Lane’s had a rough go of it lately. He spends most of his time hunting. Nancy and I worry about him, but the elders tell us not to interfere. He’s the best hunter we have.”
“Because he’s not using a fucking bow,” Dalton mutters.
“What?” Tomas says, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Someone has been hunting with a shotgun,” I say, “while pretending to use a bow. That’s why you’ve found so many pellets in the meat. Nancy figured out it was Lane, and now that Ellen has been killed with a firearm…”
Tomas’s eyes widen. “You think Nancy’s gone after Lane. I thought…” He swallows. “I thought that was just an excuse to get away, that she was distraught over Ellen. Lane would never hurt Nancy, but we still need to find her. It hasn’t snowed in three days, and there are too many prints for me to track. You’d mentioned your dog can do that.”
“She can,” I say. “But she’ll need—”
He’s already pulling a shirt from his pack. He manages an anxious smile. “I used to watch a lot of cop shows.”
“All right then. Let’s go.”
* * *
Storm picks up the trail easily. According to Tomas, Nancy rarely leaves the settlement in winter. The rest of the year, she loves to walk and gather berries and nuts and greens, but in winter, she hunkers down with her needlework. It’s been days since she’s been beyond the perimeter, so her trail is easily followed.
It’s only 10 P.M., but it’s been dark for hours. All around us, the forest slumbers, and every step we take seems to echo. It also means that every noise Nancy or Lane makes will do the same, and we’ve been out less than twenty minutes before we hear their voices on the night breeze.
“You made a mistake,” Nancy is saying, her voice low and urgent. “I understand that. This is why we don’t use guns, Lane, and when we do, we make mistakes even more easily because we’re unaccustomed to handling them.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lane replies.
“The gun. The one you got in a trade from those … those people. You’ve been using it to hunt. I told you that you needed to be more careful. If you wanted to do that, then you couldn’t hunt on our territory, where someone could get hurt.”
“And I told you I don’t have a gun.”
“I found pellets in the hares you brought us last week. I showed them to you.”
“And I said they weren’t mine. It’s like the elders say—sometimes they get into our game from other hunters.”
Nancy’s voice rises in frustration. “I’m trying to help you, Lane. You tell me you don’t have a gun? All right. Then take that gun that I’m clearly imagining and get rid of it, please. Hide it somewhere.”
“I don’t have—”
“Stop, Lane. Just listen to me and protect yourself. This woman from Rockton, her entire job is finding people who kill others. Your uncle told me all about it. She’s trained to find murderers by studying blood and bullets and dead bodies. If your gun killed Ellen, she won’t understand that it was a hunting accident. She’ll find the gun and know it’s the one that killed Ellen. Then she’ll read your fingerprints on it. But if there’s no gun, you’re safe.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“Then who does?” I say as I step into the clearing, gun in hand. “Besides me.”
Nancy staggers back, Tomas rushing in to catch her. His arms go around her, and he tugs her out of the way. Storm growls beside me. Through the woods, I see Dalton soundlessly slipping behind Lane.
“If this was a hunting accident, then I will understand that,” I say. “Like your aunt said, you lack experience with firearms. But, like she also said, I can indeed connect your shotgun to you and to the pellet that killed Ellen. There’s no point in arguing it wasn’t you. Just explain what happened. If you made a mistake, then it was only a tragic accident.”
It wasn’t. I’m certain of that. I might not be a forensics expert, but I know Ellen died at night. The only thing Lane had been hunting at that time was Ellen herself. Step one, though, is getting a confession to the killing.
“I don’t have a gun,” he says.
“Then who does? Has someone you know been giving you their game? Trading it?”
This makes no sense, but I’m giving him an out here. Dalton’s behind Lane, still tucked into the dark forest, his gun drawn. I have mine out, too. Lane’s face says he’s two seconds from bolting, and I need to give him an explanation that will allow him to relax. Then I can get the truth.
Still, he shakes his head and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Nancy breaks from Tomas’s arms and steps toward her nephew.
“Lane, please,” she says. “I know you’re scared—”
“I’m not scared,” he says, jaw setting. “I don’t like being accused of things I didn’t do.”
“Nobody is accusing you,” I say. “We just want to know what happened. Give us that, and this will be over.”
“Listen to her,” Nancy says, taking another step toward him.
“Nancy?” I say. “Move back, please.”
She shakes her head, her gaze still on her nephew. “I know you’d never hurt me, Lane. You are a son to me, and I trust you completely.”
I don’t like her tone or her words. They’re too much, her gaze fixed on him, her voice low and soothing, and it’s exactly what I’ve done with dangerous suspects.
I know you don’t want to hurt me. You don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re not that kind of person.
Words I’d said when I knew my suspect was that kind of person, but I was trying to defuse the situation, while my colleagues kept their guns trained on the suspect.
Half the time, the suspect called me on my bullshit. Yet I continued doing it for those where my words did nudge something deep in them, did convince them to surrender.
That is what Nancy is doing here. Except she’s not a trained officer. And the fact that she’s doing it tells me Lane isn’t a sweet, harmless young man. I sneak a glance at Tomas. His face is taut, gaze fixed on his wife as he rocks forward, torn between pulling her back and not wanting to set his nephew off. His gaze cuts my way, communicating exactly what I expect—a warning and a plea.
“Nancy?” I say. “I know you’re trying to help, and I know Lane would never hurt you, but I have a gun, and my dog is trained to attack. Any wrong move, however unintentional, could get both of you hurt. Just step back, and let us handle this. Lane isn’t armed. He’s not going to hurt himself. He’s listening to us. I just need you to—”
Alone in the Wild Page 23