“What the hell are you doing?” Nicky asked, his voice more irritated than scared as he looked up from the magazine.
“Interrogation time,” Del answered. “Desert Rose, what were you doing talking to Ellie today at school?”
“Just talking.” I let myself exhale as I whispered the answer, then took a slow gulp of air.
“About what?”
“Nothing.” I kept my eyes on the worn mattress, afraid to look up.
“That’s bull. No one talks about nothing.”
“It was nothing. Nothing important. I don’t even remember. I guess she’s trying to be my friend or something. Something dumb like that. No big deal.” The barrel of the gun was cold and hard against the middle of my forehead. I knew it was just a BB gun, that it wouldn’t kill me, but it would hurt and leave a hell of a dent in my head. I believed Del would pull the trigger if I said the wrong thing.
“You’re my deputy! My friend! You swear allegiance only to me!” Her voice was frenzied, so loud and shrill it made my teeth ache.
I stared up at her, gave a careful nod.
“Say it! Say you swear allegiance only to me!”
“I swear allegiance only to you.”
“And you’ll do whatever I tell you!”
“Anything you tell me.”
“Cause I’m sheriff of this whole rotten town!”
“You’re sheriff.”
“And I’m your best friend,” Del added, her voice calm now, quieter.
“You’re my best friend.”
“Forever,” she said.
“Forever,” I promised.
“Okay, you two,” Nicky said, leaning over and guiding the barrel of the gun away from my head, pushing it down to the ground, “now kiss and make up.”
“Girls don’t kiss girls,” Del spat back at him.
“The ones in this book sure do,” Nicky answered, gesturing to the magazine. “Well then, shake on it at least.”
Del set down the gun and extended her hand to me. I took it and as we shook, her grimace turned into a satisfied smile. Then Del leaned forward and kissed the middle of my forehead, right where the indentation of the gun barrel must have been. Her lips were cool and clammy. Her breath smelled like hot wind through a damp cave.
“Now let’s go hunting!” Nicky said, leaning over to pull the gun from off the floor and set it in his own lap while he stubbed out his cigarette in the dented tuna can.
WE SPENT AN HOUR or so roaming through the woods on the hill, hunting tigers, crocodiles, wildebeest. Every time we heard a sound, Del would say it was some new and improbable animal: hippopotamus, wild boar, python.
As we walked through the woods, scouting for prey, we talked about how stupid those girls at school were. Del said they deserved to be put in their place.
“Ellie and Sam think their shit don’t stink,” she said.
“Maybe we can bring them down a peg,” I suggested.
“How?” Del asked.
“I dunno for sure yet. But I have an idea.” And I did. A plan that came together in my mind fast and hard. “I could spy on them. You know, pretend to be their friend and get them to trust me. Then I could learn some bad secret about them. Something we could hang over their heads.”
“What kind of secret?” Nicky asked, interested in the downfall of these girls he didn’t even know.
“I dunno. But everybody’s got secrets, right?”
“You think even girls like them have secrets?” Del asked, her thin eyebrows raised, her right hand fluttering absently above her heart, playing with the fabric of her dirty blouse, protecting her own secret.
“One way to find out,” I said.
“Okay, Deputy. Your orders are to spy on the enemy camp. But you have to tell me everything you learn. I mean everything. And if you fail, you go on trial for treason.” She pointed her finger at me with this warning, turning her hand into a pistol. Then she fired right into my chest, laughing.
I agreed to Del’s conditions, and silently congratulated myself for my skillful manipulation—now I had free rein to be friends with both Del and the other girls. The perfect plan.
After a lot of whining, Del convinced Nicky to give her back the gun. She said she felt lucky and he gave in at last not only because he was sick of her pestering, but because once again, she threatened to tell on him—to reveal his big secret to the world.
Del was about ten paces ahead of us, aiming the gun into treetops. Nicky was close beside me and reached out to take my hand. We walked like that for several minutes—Del concentrating on the hunt, Nicky holding my hand tight, like he might never let go.
Suddenly, Del fired at something in a fir tree and let out a shriek of delight. Nicky dropped my hand and we ran to see what she’d shot. Only when it hit the ground did I see what it was: a mourning dove. It was still alive, a sleek gray bird with a pointed tail, fluttering its wings as we approached, moving itself in frantic circles.
I can’t say how long we stood in silence watching that poor dove struggle on the forest floor. I can say only that it felt like hours, and when the bird finally gave up, stopped moving, its wings resting at odd angles in the pine needles and maple leaves, Del dropped down on her knees to touch it. She stroked it tenderly and held it in her hands like it was ever so fragile. She turned the bird in her hand, and her fingers found the place on its chest where the BB had entered—a small, bloody hole in the putty-colored breast. She carried the dead bird the whole way home and even then did not let it go, hiding it in the soft folds of her shirt before turning to go inside with no good-bye, Nicky following solemnly behind her, no final words spoken.
8
November 14, 2002
THAT NIGHT, after Nicky tried to convince me that Del’s ghost was murdering people, after I’d finally started locking up my own mother, I dreamed of Patsy Marinelli. The dead can blame, she kept saying. Tell me, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
When I woke up, the sun was just starting to rise and I had that feeling again that someone had been watching me while I slept. I counted to three and checked the back corner—nothing. Then I looked over at my mother’s painting of the fire on the easel. It was too dark to make out the details, but as I studied the shapes of dark against light, I saw that hidden in the high left corner of the painting was what appeared to be a pair of eyes looking back at me, watching. Then, in my half asleep state, it seemed that they moved. Gave a sidelong glance in my direction.
I damn near fell out of bed. I lit the oil lamp on the crate next to my cot with shaky fingers, carried the light over to the painting, and saw that, of course, there were no eyes, no face. Just bold strokes of bright color—not much different from a child’s finger painting. Nicky’s ridiculous ghost story had gotten to me after all.
I pulled on my slippers and searched for my watch, sure I’d left it on the crate next to the cot. But it wasn’t there. I thought maybe the cat had knocked it down, then remembered the cat was AWOL. I scrabbled around on the floor and couldn’t find it.
“Shit,” I mumbled.
I’m sort of unnaturally attached to my watch. It’s a fancy diving watch with a lighted digital readout, alarm, stopwatch, timer and all those other bells and whistles. It was Jamie’s but I inherited it when he bought his first Rolex. I’ve never been diving but I like going into the shower and hot tub with it, knowing I could go diving any time I wanted and still be able to keep excellent track of the hours, minutes, and seconds as they passed. And, pathetic as it may be, I like knowing that it was Jamie’s. My wedding band went long ago, but the watch remains.
After my futile search, I shuffled into the kitchen, the oil lamp swinging in my hand, my wrist feeling small and naked without the clunky old watch. It was a cold morning and I eagerly started a fire in the cookstove and filled the blue enameled coffee perker with water, measuring ground beans into the basket before setting it on a burner. I used my key to open the padlock on my mother’s bedroom door and turned back toward
the kitchen. That’s when I heard it. A meow—soft, yet insistent—coming from outside.
“Magpie?”
I held the front door open and waited hopefully. No cat. Had I imagined it? Surely not.
There was only the surprise of fresh snow—the first of the year. I ducked back inside, pulled on a coat and boots over my pajamas, and stepped out into the white morning. There was a little less than an inch of soft, fluffy snow covering the steps and yard. The bowls of tuna and milk were empty, and I was sure my mother’s cat was close by. An image rose tantalizingly in my mind: me gently settling the cat next to my mother’s sleeping form, her pure delight when she awoke and found a somewhat bedraggled—but healthy and whole—Magpie in bed with her. Kate saves the day. But I saw no cat tracks leading up to the empty bowls. What I saw in the half-light of dawn looked an awful lot like human footprints. Small footprints. The impressions a child’s boots might make.
My still-sleepy brain tried to make sense of what I seeing. A feral child in the woods with a taste for tuna and milk?
The tracks led up to the bowls, then back down the steps, leaving the same way they’d come—across the driveway and into the woods. I took a deep breath of cold, snow-scented air and began to walk beside the tracks, letting them take me right to the path that led down the hill. It was the path I used to follow on my way to and from Del’s every day that spring long ago. The path I’d caught Opal coming up the day before, poking at the grass with a long stick as if she were looking for snakes. I hadn’t been down the trail since the day before Del’s murder, and though I wished for a long stick, it sure as hell wasn’t snakes I was afraid of.
The Volkswagen-size rock that Del and I hid behind once, listening to the voices of the women baking bread, was to the left of the path’s entrance. Disrespectful, Mimi had said to Doe. And only later did I realize who they were talking about. Only later would Raven’s true father be identified, shaking up all of New Hope.
I rested against the cold boulder, inhaling the scent of wood smoke from my mother’s chimney and staring down the path at the two sets of small footprints, one coming, one going. I am, by nature, a curious person. I don’t like unsolved mysteries. I pushed off from the rock and stepped into the woods, determined to find the child.
I could almost hear Del’s footsteps coming after me, feel her hand on my shoulder. Boo, she said. My best friend’s living in a goddamned for-real Indian tepee.
The old path to the Griswold place was overgrown but not impassable. Some of the saplings trying to grow in the middle of the trail had been recently trimmed, showing that someone had worked to keep the path clear. Opal was the only one I had seen using it, so maybe it was her handiwork. But these tracks looked too small to be Opal’s—she was a tall girl, like her mother. My feet in their boots sank into the soft snow, just as the child’s feet had. I continued on, my heartbeat quickening. I felt slightly dizzy. Disoriented. Part of me was ten again, hurrying down to Del.
Catch me if you can.
The tracks turned right onto the side path that led to the old leaning hunting camp, as I had somehow known they would. I stopped there at the fork, my heart thudding, and tried to convince myself to go home. Turn around. The coffee would be ready and in another hour or so the sun would melt the snow and the footprints would be gone. I could tell myself I dreamed it. It was just part of the dream I had that started with Tiny Marinelli’s warning: The dead can blame.
The few details I knew from the latest murder popped into my mind. Where had Tori’s body been found? Near the old cabin? Would I come across lines of police tape? Would there still be signs of what had happened just a week ago? And just what had happened? Was it really possible that whoever killed Del had killed again? That he had been in town this whole time, waiting, watching, living his life? And was Opal the intended target? Each question I asked seemed more absurd than the last.
I felt that old sense of danger that being in the cabin used to give me and pulled my coat tighter around me, wondering if I dared go on. I mean, there I was at seven in the morning in flannel pajamas. I wasn’t ready to go traipsing into a crime scene or come face-to-face with a killer. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet.
Despite my quickened breath and the cool dread that filled me, it was too late to turn back. There I stood, looking down the path that led to the old cabin Del’s grandfather had built. To a place I hadn’t been since the day before Del’s murder, when Del stormed out on me and Nicky, furious. Nicky said the building was still standing and I decided I needed to see for myself. There was nothing to be afraid of. It was just a kid I was chasing. I worked in a public elementary school after all—I could handle kids. I continued toward the cabin, eyes on the child’s tracks in the snow.
The old hunting camp was closer than I remembered. And smaller. Like a slightly oversized playhouse. There was no bright yellow police tape, no sign any crime had occurred either last week or thirty years ago. The front door was still missing and snow had drifted in. The small tracks led right through the cockeyed doorway. I stopped where I was and studied the crooked building. A house of cards, I thought. Just waiting to fall.
Then I heard laughter inside—the soft giggle of a child.
“Who’s there?” I called. “Is that you, Opal?”
Silence.
“Come on out now, I know you’re in there!”
More silence.
“You’re not in trouble. I’m not angry with you. I just want you to come out.” I tried to fill my voice with an adult authority I did not feel.
There was nothing. No sound or movement.
“I’m going to count to three and then I’m coming in there. I mean it. One,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other, hoping to see a small frightened face appear in the doorway.
“Two!” I didn’t want to go in there. Not then. Not ever. Seeing the dark little cabin was enough for me. I was ready to head home, make myself a steaming cup of coffee, and forget all about the footprints. I was too old to be playing Nancy Drew.
“Three!” Okay. It was just a child. A child playing games. Nothing to fear.
I mustered up my courage and stepped through the doorway. There was the same musty, mousy smell. The old cots were still along the walls, the potbellied stove was more rusted, but had not been moved. Nothing appeared to have changed. There had been no vandalizing, no Ted luvs Ann-Marie graffiti spray-painted on the walls. If kids had been there, they’d treated the place with respect; treated it like a shrine.
I looked under the cots and into the dark corners of the room. There was no sign of anyone downstairs. Then I heard a rustle from the loft. A soft scuttling that, absurdly, reminded me of a giant crab.
“Who’s there?” I called.
Just a child. A tuna-and milk-stealing child. No claws or pincers, no hideous exoskeleton.
“Hello?”
I half expected a familiar voice to come back to me: It’s Del. It’s Nicky. Come have a smoke.
But that was thirty years ago.
I approached the ladder and started up, gripping each rung tightly and stopping with each step to listen. The ladder felt steep and dangerous, a sure sign that I was not ten anymore. The rustling happened again, then stopped. I clung to the ladder, nearly halfway up, holding my breath, listening.
“Is anyone there?” I called, my voice high and soft, despite my best efforts. There was no response. No more sounds of movement above me. I continued my climb, the ladder creaking a little.
My head came level with the loft’s floor, and I nervously peeked over the edge at the open space, surprised yet relieved to see that I was alone. Mice, I told myself. Squirrels. Some trespassing rodent had made the sounds I heard. But wasn’t I the trespasser? And what about the footprints? A kid doesn’t just disappear into thin air. I scanned the empty space, not quite believing I was alone.
There was no mattress. No magazines. No place for a child to hide. There was only an old box of wooden matches, which had been chewed through
by mice. Blue-tipped matches lay scattered, but there was something odd about the way they were spread out, something orderly. I hauled myself up into the loft for a closer look. There, where the mattress used to be, someone had used matchsticks to make letters that spelled out:
FIND ZACK
DEPUTY
My heart did a slow crawl into my throat and I could feel it pounding there, choking me. The command in matches stared up at me, daring me not to do as it said. My mind raced for an explanation, spinning its wheels in sand until finally, a plausible idea occurred to me, putting me back on solid ground. Back in the land of the living. Opal, it had to be Opal, desperate to make me believe. Then it occurred to me that only one person other than Del knew my old nickname.
“Nicky,” I mouthed the name, my throat still too full of fear to make a sound. I kicked the matches away, scattering them.
“Son of a bitch,” I gasped. “He knew I’d come here. Son of a bitch.” I backed down the ladder slowly, feeling tentatively for each rung beneath me. Once my feet were on the wooden floorboards, I heard a rustling in the loft again, but instead of climbing back up, I tore out of the cabin as fast as I could, my lungs aching for the fresh air.
The sun was up over the tree line, bright and blinding. The snow was melting quickly, taking with it the footprints I had followed. As I hurried back toward home, I wondered how Nicky had managed the trick with the footprints—he must have paid some kid to do it. He had set up the matches the day before, and then dropped by for a visit and set me up, talking about the old cabin. I had walked right into it—pathetic, really. But why had he gone to the trouble—to what end? To make me believe in ghosts? To send me on some wild goose chase back into my past? Find Zack, Deputy. What the hell could Nicky have to gain by my finding Zack, a man I had all but forgotten? A man who, last I heard, was up in Canada somewhere.
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