Luke knew the woods, she told herself-knew how to survive. Owen had made sure of that. Even if he was hurt he could make a fire and be okay till morning. Still, she felt guilty. Should’ve done something earlier and now there was nothing she could do.
Kate stoked the fire and thought about being pregnant with Luke. He was ten days late when her water broke, and then labor-eighteen hours of contractions before he popped out and the pain was gone, and then complete elation, Owen by her side to help, but it was all Kate and Luke.
She thought about chasing him after his bath when he was four or five, running through the upstairs of their first house, saying, “I’m going to get your fanny,” and Luke laughing and saying, “No, Mommy.”
She thought about telling him the facts of life when he was eleven. He was going to have a sex education class at school the next day and she wanted to prepare him. They were in his bedroom. He was at his desk doing homework. Kate sat on the bed. She said, “Do you know how babies are born?”
He turned and looked at her and said, “They grow in your stomach.”
Kate said, “Dads are part of it, too. God gives moms and dads the power to make babies.”
Luke said, “You mean like a robot?”
He got up and came over and stood in front of her.
“The dad’s penis goes into the mom,” Kate said, “and that’s how babies are conceived.”
He gave her a puzzled, innocent look.
“Does he take it off and give it to you?”
Kate had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. “No, he lies down next to me.”
“Why haven’t I ever seen this?” His voice and expression full of surprise.
Kate said, “It’s a private thing between a mom and a dad.”
She could see Luke trying to grasp the concept, and when he did, fell on the floor and said, “I’m never growing up and I’m not going to school tomorrow.”
She remembered telling Owen when he got home that night and laughed about it for weeks.
She thought about the time Luke climbed the maple tree in their backyard, spying on the dinner party she and Owen were having. Luke fell out of the tree and landed on the brick patio. He cracked his head open and Kate took him to Beaumont emergency, head wrapped in blue and white dish towels that were blotted with blood. She dozed off, thinking about spending the night in his hospital room, sleeping in a chair next to his bed, and woke up for real to the sound of someone knocking on the door.
Bill Wink’s shift ended at midnight. He checked his messages and-he couldn’t believe it-there was one from Kate McCall, but it sounded like she was in trouble. Bill decided not to call, just drive out there and see her. His heart was thumping he was so excited. He’d been thinking about her his entire shift. Bill saw himself with her, pictures in his head like snapshots: sitting at a table having a romantic dinner at Windows; cruising the bay in his Boston Whaler, snuggling on the couch in the big room at her place, watching a movie. Bill’d show her what a fun guy he was. He wished he could change, get out of the uniform, put on some Levi’s and a comfortable shirt, but it would take too long. His place was in the opposite direction and it was already late.
There was no one on the road so he pressed it, doing seventy most of the way, and pulled up in front of the McCalls’ fifteen minutes later. He got out and left his hat on the seat. He was off duty. He knocked on the door, waited, and Kate opened it, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She invited him in and offered him a beer. They sat at the kitchen table and she told him Luke had taken off that morning. He walked in the woods and never came back. To Bill it sounded strange any way he looked at it. How’s a kid who knows the woods disappear? Bill thought the likely explanation was the kid ran away. Isn’t that what Luke did when he came up north? Of course, Bill could be wrong. He’d try to get a couple experienced trackers and come back before sunup. He finished his beer and Kate walked him to the door. There was no point hanging around. He could see she wasn’t in any mood to have a conversation.
EIGHTEEN
She’d been awake since Bill left, pacing around in the dark, worried about Luke. She heard the police car drive in at five thirty and went out to greet them in a parka and jeans, no makeup, nerves frazzled, eyes heavy, breath smoking in the cold air of morning. It was still dark but she could see light breaking over the horizon on Lake Michigan.
Bill and two other men got out of his sheriff ’s deputy cruiser: Del Keane, unmistakable with his heavy gray beard and long hair and buckskins, and an Indian Bill introduced as Johnny Crow, a tribal cop from Peshawbestown. He was lean and dark with black hair that had a shine to it and a blues patch under his lower lip. Kate thought he looked like a roadie for a rock band, dressed as he was in Levi’s and a dark green barn jacket with a dark blue collar. Johnny was quiet, low-key, which made him seem almost shy. He was in charge of security at the Leelanau Sands Casino, Bill said, and owed him a favor, Bill saying he’d helped a friend of Johnny’s out of a DUI. Bill said Johnny knew the woods and was the best tracker in the county and probably the state. Del was no slouch either, Bill said, but Johnny was part critter. “If Luke’s out there, these boys will find him.”
Bill was dressed in camo with an orange vest and a Red Wings cap. It was the first time she’d seen him out of uniform. He looked like an ordinary guy.
Kate thanked Del and Johnny for coming to help and offered them coffee and breakfast. They declined and said they were ready to get to it.
Kate said she wanted to go with them.
Bill said, “You better stay here, case he comes home.”
Kate said, “If Luke’s not home by now, he isn’t coming home.” She knew he could’ve been in a motel in Suttons Bay or on a bus back to Detroit, but her gut told her he was still out there somewhere.
They entered the woods, four of them, where Kate had watched Luke go the morning before, moving through heavy ground cover, breath condensing in the cold air. They’d gone maybe thirty yards when Johnny stopped. He saw something on the ground and hunkered down to take a closer look. Del hunkered next to him, turned to Bill, and said, “Found a boot print.”
Kate and Bill went over for a closer look. Johnny pushed some leaves aside and she could see the pattern of the boot tread in the dirt.
Fifteen feet upslope, Johnny found another one, made by a different boot.
“There’s two of them,” Johnny said.
“They together?” Bill said.
Johnny said, “Could be, but I doubt it. Prints are too far apart.”
Kate looked back where they’d entered the woods; she could see the lodge, a small section of roofline and a trail of smoke rising out of the fieldstone chimney. She scanned the trees and saw something that caught her attention, something that seemed out of place: a platform, it looked like-attached to a giant maple that had a full plume of green leaves. She moved toward it for a closer look.
Bill said, “Hey, where you going?”
Kate said, “Come here, will you?”
They walked over to the tree. It looked like a chair strapped to the trunk about forty feet up. “What’s that?” she said to Bill.
“A tree stand,” Bill said. “Hey, Del, what do you make of this?”
Del and Johnny came over now, Del squinting, looking into the rising sun, fixing his gaze on the upper part of the tree. “It’s a tree stand,” he said.
“I know that,” Bill said. “Odd place to hunt, don’t you think?”
Johnny said, “If that was their purpose.”
Bill glanced at Kate. “You’re sure it’s not yours?”
“We don’t own one,” Kate said. “Owen was a bow hunter.”
“Somebody setting up there watching the lodge,” Del said. He spit a gob of tobacco juice, brown-colored spray landing in the heavy curls of his beard. “I sold one just like it to a feller the other day. That and climbing spurs and a pair of binoculars.”
Kate said, “What did he look like?”
“Sturdy build,” Del sa
id, “dark hair, mid-thirties. He wasn’t a tourist, I can tell you that.”
That sounded like the guy in the bar. “Did he have a mullet?” Kate said.
“I believe he did,” Del said.
Johnny took a long leather strap out of his backpack and wrapped it around the trunk of the maple and started to walk up the tree like a squirrel, and in no time at all he was sitting in the chair looking down at them.
He said, “Know anyone with the initials TMH? Fresh-carved in the bark.”
“Like whoever it was had time on their hands,” Del said. He launched another gob of tobacco juice, hit a leaf and it flipped over.
Bill said, “Why does that sound familiar?” He stared off like he was thinking.
Del said, “I give up.”
Bill said, “I stopped a guy the other night, had those initials. Theodore Monroe Hicks.”
Del said, “What the hell kind of a name is that?”
“A hick name,” Bill said.
Del grinned. “That’s pretty good.” And spit.
The name sounded familiar. Sure, Kate remembered Teddy Hicks. He was the driver who broke Owen’s collarbone and ended his racing career. Could it be the same guy?
Johnny came back down with a backpack. He opened it and took out a thermos, two empty beer cans, and a half-full bag of Kars salted peanuts.
“Whoever it is, I’ve got to believe he’s coming back,” Del said. “You don’t just walk off, leave a $250 tree lounge.”
Bill said to Johnny, “What’d you see?”
“Clear view of the lodge and the yard,” Johnny said. “Could look right in the bedroom window, see the alarm clock on the table next to the bed.”
Kate felt weird, uneasy, hearing that someone had been watching them, picturing the face of the sleazy guy from the other night and wondering if he was watching them right now. “I didn’t think anyone even knew we were here,” she said.
“Somebody did,” Del said.
“Or somebody didn’t,” Johnny said. “Maybe they were checking the place out to rob it.”
Bill glanced at Kate. “Where’s your friend?”
“He went back to Detroit,” Kate said.
“I saw him in Omena yesterday morning and I’d swear I saw him in Suttons Bay last night,” Bill said. “Driving the green Lexus with the broken taillight.”
He had the right car, but it didn’t make sense, Kate was thinking. Jack had called about one o’clock, saying he’d driven straight back and was staying with his sister. Bill must’ve been mistaken.
Johnny was hunkered down again, studying tracks at the base of the tree. He said, “Mrs. McCall, what size boot does your boy wear?”
Kate said, “Ten and a half.”
“I think someone was watching your lodge,” Johnny said, “saw your boy come through the trees and followed him.”
Kate felt a rush of panic. “Why would somebody do that?”
All three of them glanced at her like they knew something and looked away.
“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Bill said.
They hiked for over an hour, the sun rising, filtering light through the trees that in places were so close together, it was difficult to move through them. They followed the tracks up a slope to a ridge and then down to a ravine. Johnny and Dell stopped and told them the tracks ended at the stream, which was cold and clear, about five feet wide, with a fast-moving current that rippled the water. Kate could see the orange flash of brook trout gliding by, and remembered being at this very spot with Owen, watching the excitement on his face as he landed four ten-inchers they took back and Kate dusted with flour and sauteed for dinner.
Bill said, “How you doing? Want to rest?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Kate said, “let’s keep going.”
Johnny took a chub out of his pack and ate it, the air smelling of smoked fish. Del spit a gob of brown juice, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and drank from a small silver flask, holding it up, saying, “Anybody care for a snort?”
No one did.
Kate smoked a cigarette. She was tired, nerves raw from worrying and lack of sleep.
They crossed the stream single file over a fallen tree, Bill walking behind her, holding her hips, trying to steady her balance. But it felt like more than that to Kate, like he was looking for an excuse to touch her. She turned and said, “Bill, I think it would be better if I did this on my own.”
Bill said, “Sure, okay” and backed off.
Johnny picked up the trail on the other side. They hiked uphill for about twenty minutes and now stood on a ridgetop, Kate breathing hard, vowing to herself to quit smoking. The view looked like a landscape oil from a Traverse City gallery. There was a pristine farm spread out in the distance: a silo and a red barn and white clapboard house and outbuildings looking like pure rural Americana. Beyond the farm, she saw the deep green colors of the woods and beyond that, Lake Michigan shimmering blue in the distance.
Johnny scanned the woods below them with the binoculars. He said, “Something I want to take a look at.”
They hiked down to a clearing where the woods ended and a cornfield began, Kate wondering if it was the field where the accident happened. There was a two-track road carved out of grass and dirt that bordered the farmer’s land.
Johnny and Del followed the terrain down a hill to an area where the leaves had been kicked and scattered. They studied the ground, talking, interpreting what they saw.
Johnny said, “There was four of them all together.”
Del said, “Somebody was running after somebody by the look of things. We found two more sets of prints. I’d say one belonged to a girl by the size of it.”
Del and Johnny went over and talked to Bill in hushed tones, like they were trying to keep something from her.
Kate said, “Tell me what’s going on, will you?”
All three of them looked over at her.
Bill said to Johnny, “Go ahead.”
“Mrs. McCall,” Johnny said, “I could be wrong, but I think this is where they grabbed your son.” He pointed to the two-track road. “And that’s how they took him out.”
Kate said, “You don’t know for sure. They could be hunters.”
“Maybe,” Johnny said. “But the boy’s missing and someone was watching your place and these marks sure look like a struggle took place. Dragged your son across there to a vehicle they had and drove off.”
“Come on,” Kate said. “How can you be so sure?” It seemed impossible-none of it made sense. How’d they know Luke was going to be at the lodge when she didn’t know herself? And how’d they know he was going to take a walk in the woods? Or where he’d end up? “What would anyone want with a sixteen-year-old kid?”
“Money,” Dell said. “Oldest motivator there is.”
She looked at Bill and could see he was nervous, unsure of himself. “Bill, what do you think?”
“You make a good point,” Bill said to Kate. Now he glanced at Del. “If Luke was kidnapped, why hasn’t there been a ransom demand?” He hesitated, like he didn’t know what he was going to say next, and turned back to Kate. “But there’s got to be something to what these boys are telling you. If he’s not back at the lodge and he’s not out here, where’s he at?”
She could see Bill was out of his element. He was used to pulling over tourists, writing tickets and keeping order at the cherry festival, not solving crimes.
“We’re going to find him,” Bill said with fake enthusiasm. “That’s a promise.”
Bill took out his cell phone, punched a number in the keypad and said, “Earl? Bill. I need you to do an all-points on Luke McCall, age sixteen, five nine, brown hair-hell, you know what he looks like.”
NINETEEN
Kate got back to the lodge at ten thirty, after four and a half hours in the woods. Bill offered to stay with her, keep her company until she heard something. She said she wanted to be alone and that she’d call him if anyone tried to contact her. She still didn’t
believe Luke was kidnapped, in spite of the tree stand and all the tracks Johnny and Del found and their collective speculation. None of it made sense until she walked in the kitchen and saw the ransom note on the refrigerator, held there by a Detroit Tigers magnet.
The note was cutout pieces of newsprint centered on a white eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper. It looked amateurish, like a grade school art project. It said:
WE HAVE LUKE. CALL THE POLICE AND YOUR NEVER GOING TO SEE HIM AGAIN EVER
Kate splashed cold water on her face at the kitchen sink, trying to hang on to her emotions. She stared at her reflection in the window glass, wondering what to do. She dried her face and hands with a paper towel and picked up the phone and called Jack-got his voice mail and left a message. “Listen, something’s happened. I need your help.”
She walked in the main room and wondered where Leon was, thinking they’d done something to him. She called him, then saw his big head looking down at her through the slats in the railing on the second floor. He came down the stairs and she slid off the chair onto the Persian rug, hugging him, glad to see him, glad he was okay. Leon, the worst watchdog ever. If somebody knocked on the door-instead of getting up and barking, he’d yawn.
She looked out the window at the tree line and had a strange feeling that someone was watching her and ran upstairs to the bedroom and took her Beretta out of the gun box in her closet and checked the magazine. It was full-twelve nine-millimeter rounds ready to send some kidnappers into oblivion. She slid the gun in the waist of her jeans, felt the coolness of the metal against her stomach and moved across the room.
Owen kept binoculars on his nightstand next to the bed. She picked them up and looked out at the yard behind the lodge to the lake. The water was calm. She watched a couple gulls flying in low, searching for fish. She panned the beach to the tree line on the east side of the lodge. She crossed the room and looked out the side window, adjusting the focus, moving the binoculars slowly along the wall of trees, stopping, holding on a trunk, a branch, a section of ground cover. She zoomed in on the big maple, saw the tree stand-looking up at it forty yards away. She’d always thought the place was so secluded and private, but not anymore.
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