Bearskin

by James A. McLaughlin

  “Not yet. It’s almost three now. If I’m not back by nine, call the sheriff, tell him everything. Tell him to be careful, he can’t come alone, he should bring Janie and Stoner.”

  “If you’re not back from where?”

  “I’m going back down, to the lodge. I have to see what happens. Who it is. I need to make sure they don’t come up here.”

  “Rice,” she began.

  “I know this is happening fast. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll explain later.”

  “It’s just so far-fetched. And suddenly you’ve got this alarm system installed?” She grabbed his rain-wet hand, held it for a moment, peering at him in the light from her phone. “Remember what you were like when I drove up here Sunday? That wasn’t even three days ago. I probably shouldn’t have left you alone. Just stop and think for a minute. Is it possible you’re overreacting?”

  “You heard the alarm. Someone’s coming up the driveway. I locked the gate behind me.”

  “Maybe it’s malfunctioning. Maybe someone from the sheriff’s office is driving up here, something about the storm, or something about that Mirra guy.”

  Apparently she’d been thinking things over on the short drive up here. “I promise I’m not as batshit as I seem. Just please wait here until nine.”

  “I’ll come with you.” She felt around underneath her seat and produced a can of bear spray. “I can help.”

  “Bear spray?”

  “My father bought it for me. I have the stun gun too.” She reached under her jacket but he put his hand on her arm. She saw his face, surely ghostly in the dim uplight from her phone, and froze.

  “You’re not even a little bit scared, are you?” he asked.

  “I’m not scared. I’m pissed off. You can’t just park me up here like a goddamn mannequin!”

  He knew being brave sometimes entailed preferring physical danger to whatever psychic distress would come from avoiding that danger. Sara would rather face the real or imagined danger coming up the driveway than sit here and stew. He didn’t blame her, and he loved this about her, but she didn’t understand what was coming. He felt a surge of incipient panic and squashed it. For a moment he considered duct-taping her to the steering wheel. Instead he tried to explain about the kind of people who were after him, not rednecks with shotguns, not rapist bikers from hell, but professional killers.

  “If you come with me, I’ll be distracted. They’ll kill us both.” He tapped the alarm receiver. “This will tell you every time someone drives in or out. If you have to move around, lose the blue jacket, it’s lousy camouflage. It’s important that you not call Walker before nine, but if you have to call him, don’t show yourself until he calls you back and confirms he has everything under control.”

  He squeezed her fingers, antsy and impatient, his mind racing ahead of him toward the lodge. She was quiet, and he guessed she was angry, still struggling with her doubt. He asked her again to please not call anyone before nine. He checked his watch in the light from her phone. Eighteen minutes since the alarm. He tried to smile, said something inane and perfunctory like he’d be okay, he’d be careful. When she didn’t reply he reached down and flipped her phone over on its face, got out, eased the door shut, and returned to the truck for his ghillie poncho and the target rifle. The .45 was in its holster behind his hip.

  He unrolled the ghillie and put it on. Carrying the rifle with the muzzle pointed at the ground so the bore wouldn’t fill with rainwater, he walked blindly down the fire road, blundering into the tall grass on either side. There should have been a hint of light overhead once he was out of the forest, but he couldn’t tell up from down.

  He stopped, tried to slow his mind. If he kept going like this he was going to make a mistake. Whatever power he’d felt those days in the forest, whether it came from some mystical sylvan entity or his own twisted psyche, he could use some now.

  The grass hissed as the rain fell in sheets, warm and tropical, smelling of sea salt and coastal marsh, scents Hurricane Julia must have carried all the way from Florida. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, the big raindrops coming so fast and thick he could barely breathe, spattering on his face, thunking on his forehead, on his eyelids, slipping through his lips, pooling in his eye sockets, overflowing to spill like tears down his temples. Where had this water come from, the Gulf of Mexico? The Caribbean? He imagined it tasted like the ocean. Julia had traveled thousands of miles to flood Turpin County with evaporated seawater. Some of it landed on him but that was just happenstance. These were large forces at work.

  Half-afraid he might drown himself, he stood with his face tilted to the rain and let his mind clear. After a while, the first sketchy outlines appeared, a sense of where he was, the way the fire road lay below and behind him, an open path through the grass to the rain-drenched buildings downhill, then the sloping contours of the land all around were filling in, he felt it as surely as the topography of his own body, felt the mountain rising behind him, all the trees in the forest leaning away from the wind.

  Forty-Seven

  No lights, no vehicle, nothing but wind and rain. At the edge of the driveway, gravel underfoot, he crouched down and felt for tire tracks in the mud where he and Sara had driven onto the fire road. They’d already washed away.

  He knelt in the meadow, opened his knife, and began cutting clumps of grass and weeds, fitting them into the hood and shoulders of the poncho, tucked under the netting, tying them off with hanging strings of baling twine. He felt the pocket for the burnt cork and the dyed gloves, but they had disappeared, so he dug into the earth and smeared mud on his face and the backs of his hands.

  Holding the rifle in his arms, he crawled toward the lodge, following the gentle incline and fighting the pain in his knee. When he came to the edge of the yard he backed up a few feet, arranging the grass in front of him so it would allow a line of sight that would encompass the lodge and the shed. He drew his .45 and tucked it inside his jacket, under his chest. He draped wet grass over the rifle barrel and lay prone to wait.

  The rain came down, a staccato patter on the roofs of the buildings, splashing in puddles under the eaves. He guessed thirty, thirty-five minutes had passed since the alarm, plenty of time for whoever it was to drive up here, but they would stop at the edge of the forest and cut their lights as Rice had earlier, creep along using the vehicle’s running lights, the heavy rain providing cover. A team would deploy from the vehicle, spread out and approach from different directions, hit the place fast and hard. A single assassin would take more time, use more stealth, patience. The fact that they hadn’t showed up yet argued for the one guy.

  He lifted the rifle and fitted it to his shoulder, swept it left and right in a short arc, then he rested the fore-end on his left fist and waited. After a while, the rain diminished and the wind picked up, cooler than before. He wasn’t sleepy but he began to shiver as his body heat seeped away into the wet earth. No sound of a car engine, no tires in gravel. Only the metronomic drip-drip-drip of rainwater from the roof.

  He pulled the pistol from his jacket and laid it in the grass where he could reach it.

  The dark bulk of the lodge appeared above his tunnel of grass, or rather there was a moment when he understood he’d been seeing it for a while. The sky grew lighter, and now he could see the outlines of the other buildings. The shed was to his right, and between it and the lodge he thought he could make out the dark wet gravel of the parking area and the lighter grass beyond that. It was too early for first light, but the full moon would still be up, falling toward the mountains in the west. The clouds must be thinning, the bulk of the storm passing to the north, its remnants beginning to clear. The cool wind gusted, swishing in the tall, wet grass for a long while before it receded, leaving only the sound of dripping water, its tempo gradually slowing.

  Someone was there. Rice couldn’t see him, but his whole body tingled with certainty.

  A dark blob appeared beneath the window to his bedroom. It slowly elongated, sta
nding to peer inside the dark room. No flashlight, so he must be using night vision. That was why he’d waited—most NV tech is useless in heavy rain. The figure was still for a few seconds, then it retracted, crouching, and moved to the next window, the office, and repeated. Rice raised the rifle up a few inches and pointed it, though he couldn’t see the sights. Moving again, the intruder rounded the near corner, looked in the kitchen, crept up on the back porch, looking in all the windows, then disappeared around the far side of the lodge. Rice rested the heavy rifle and took long deep breaths. Five minutes. He would be inside now, would’ve picked the lock on the front door, or he could cut the screen from a window on the front porch, use a glass cutter to quietly remove a pane, reach through and unlock the latch.

  Another ten minutes passed. He would be stalking through the lodge, searching every room, all the closets. He would check the attic. Nothing but bare mattresses on the beds, the power switched off, empty refrigerator and freezer propped open, defrosting in a puddle on the floor. Sara had even poured some bleach into the toilets. They’ll smell it, she’d said. They’ll know you’re long gone.

  There. He was walking between the lodge and the shed. In profile, his face seemed to have a long beak, the night-vision goggles.

  Rice followed with the rifle until the man disappeared on the other side of the tractor shed. A rattle as he slid open the big door. A few minutes later, the door banged shut, then quiet. He must be checking the cabin. It would look like a work in progress, waiting for carpenters to return.

  A Carolina wren began to chip and buzz, warming up for its predawn chorus. The man didn’t come back. Ten minutes, fifteen. Rice waited, thinking no way he’s gone. Twenty minutes. Then, a big engine in low gear, coming up the driveway. No headlights, must be using the goggles, driving with his lights off. The vehicle crossed the gravel parking area and pulled around behind the tractor shed where it would be hidden from anyone else coming up the driveway.

  The driver’s-side door opened—no interior light came on—and he slid from the seat and shut the door quietly, Rice watching his dim shape over the barrel of the rifle. He leaned back against the door. He’d taken off the goggles and was peering idly around at the dark mountain, the horizon and the silvery moonlit meadow, facing Rice but not seeing him. The storm was still breaking up, the moon in the west a quick brightening and dimming, clouds moving fast in a high wind. He was tall, slender. He wore a dark knit cap and his face seemed pale, but that might just be an effect of the moonlight.

  The man no longer believed there was any danger here, and because of that, he was helpless, and Rice would kill him.

  He realized this had been his plan all along. Without ever consciously making the decision to do so, he’d been hunting this man ever since he’d left Sara in her car. He wondered at that for a moment, but the question was fleeting, barely disturbing the calm surface of his focus, then it was gone. His thoughts flew ahead, analysis and decision, one after another without slowing down for articulation. There was no more talking to himself.

  He strained to see through the rifle’s aperture sights, but they’d been designed for shooting NRA fifty-foot small-bore targets in daylight and were useless right now. He’d learned to shoot with both eyes open, and by a kind of dead reckoning he knew he could put the little bullet somewhere in the man’s torso, maybe clip his spine, his heart.

  But he also knew who this almost certainly was. Unless he made a spectacularly lucky shot, the man would be on the move and returning fire before Rice could work the bolt.

  The .45 was ready, near his right hand. If he could manage a solid hit with one of those big slugs, the man wouldn’t be shooting back, at least not accurately. Tough shot though, at this range, in the dark, and the guy might be wearing armor anyway.

  He would have to wait for better light. He’d brought the rifle for a reason. His pistol was more powerful but it wasn’t a sniper’s tool; the rifle would be precise enough at this range for a head shot. In good light, he wouldn’t miss.

  He could wait. A deadly patience settled his bones, molded his body to the earth.

  Then, as if in response to Rice’s complaint about the shooting light, the man reached into a pocket once, twice, then brought his hands to his face and a lighter flared and went out. The cigarette glowed orange as he inhaled, illuminating Rice’s sight picture: centered in the rear peep, the circular metal insert in the front sight framed the orange face, at thirty yards a high-confidence shot into the ocular cranial cavity. Even if the bullet deflected off the skull, it would stun the man long enough to allow follow-up shots.

  He slipped the safety off. The cigarette flared, dimmed. Flared. The round stamp of the front sight was locked on the man’s face.

  Wait. The voice spoke inside his mind so clearly, he worried the man leaning against the truck must have heard, and his first reflex was to shush it. But it spoke again. Can’t just murder him, the voice said.

  He hesitated, his hunter’s trance broken. His own voice started blabbing away in his consciousness again. Suddenly you give a shit, he thought. You torture a poor unemployed backwoods drug dealer whose greatest hope in life is to join a fucking biker gang, but you won’t put down a psychopathic multiple murderer who came here expressly to kill you?

  Then the man was grinding out his cigarette on the sole of his boot. He tucked the butt in a pocket and switched on a small flashlight, disappeared around the front of the lodge.

  Forty-Eight

  Rice was trembling, knees and elbows numb, his hands clumsy on the rifle. He shifted his weight around, had to get some circulation going, but too much movement might be visible from inside the lodge. He realized he was afraid, for the first time in a long time.

  Agent Johns had been right about one thing: of all the bad guys in the world, this was not the one you wanted hunting you. If you got lucky and had a chance to kill him, you took it. You didn’t try to capture him, or intentionally wound him, shoot him in the leg or the shoulder like the honorable hero in a bullshit Western. He’s been shot like that before, he can function at close to a hundred percent with peripheral gunshot wounds that would have you curled up screaming on the ground. If he hears a voice telling him to put his hands up or some stupid shit like that, the man is moving and shooting in an instant. You could have your weapon right on him and as he slips away you might get off a shot, you might even hit him, but not well, and he’ll kill you long before he bleeds out.

  Rice should have shot him when he had the chance, should have shot him in the face when he was lighting himself up with his fucking cigarette.

  But he still had the advantage. The man still believed he was alone. His guard was down. He was walking around like he was on vacation or something. Rice could still kill him.

  Dawn wasn’t far off. Only a few clouds now, moonlight giving way to first light. Off to his left, the eastern horizon was brightening, washing out the stars. He could let the man go. Sara’s plan might work. The man might believe Rice has moved out and is on the run again.

  He was inside the lodge for a long time. Light from his flashlight jumped around in the bedroom window, the office, the kitchen. This would be his more thorough search, looking for scraps of correspondence, notes, an answering machine with undeleted messages, anything to show where Rice had gone. He would look for a phone so he could hit redial and call the last number Rice had called, and he would find that antique green thing with the rotary dial in the office. He would notice the bookshelves, all those animal bones, skulls, the skins, that cow-pelvis helmet. He would recognize them as totems, and they would make an impression, though Rice couldn’t imagine what they would mean to this guy. The quasi-religious narco-cults made mainstream religions seem almost coherent by comparison.

  On Rice’s face, a light breeze, much cooler, drier. A dozen species of birds were calling, celebrating the weather, the storm’s passing.

  The front screen door slammed shut, footsteps on the porch steps, careless, there he was, headed back
to the Tahoe, coming almost straight on. With both eyes open, Rice centered the man’s face in the doughnut ring of the target sight. The safety was off. His body flushed hot and his pulse throbbed so violently the front sight veered completely away from the man’s face with each heartbeat.

  Even if he does just drive away, Rice thought, he won’t stop looking. He’ll be a threat to anyone who might know where I went. Sara. STP. Even Boger, Sheriff Walker.

  Onetwothree, he breathed, four, five, six, settling down. By his twelfth heartbeat the rifle was steady. You have to shoot him, he told himself. There’s no other way.

  Wait for him. He’s still too far out. He’s coming to you. Wait till you’re sure of the shot. Ten more steps.

  Then, movement, something new, off to the left, a small dark animal. It was beyond the limit of Rice’s peripheral vision but he saw it anyway, Mel the black cat stalking low to the ground just underneath the back porch, eyes fixed straight ahead, oblivious to Rice hidden in the grass, to the man about to come around the corner—oblivious to everything but her own prey.

  She paused with her legs gathered beneath her, quivered, and shot forward, covering six feet in an instant, moving with unnatural speed, legs could not carry a body that fast, landing at the corner of the lodge. A panicked, high-pitched chirping, and she lifted her head with a mouthful of grass and squirming wet vole.

  Mel and the man saw each other at the same moment. She turned and bolted, great full-stretch bounds to the tall grass, not the proverbial scalded cat but something less corporeal, a shadow, a trick of the mind, too quick for the eye to resolve. The man had already reacted, twisting on the balls of both feet and dropping into a half-crouch, a pistol in his hand, so fast, the arm nearly extended, the off-hand clapping into position, bracing.

  Don’t shoot the fucking cat, Rice thought. He recentered the man’s face in the front ring of his sights. He exhaled, began his trigger squeeze.