A Death in Eden

by Keith McCafferty

“No, I think it’s because you want me to know your secret. That’s a good omen for us, I think. I don’t know about Harold.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “How long did it take to catch that fish? Six years, did you say? Let’s hope it doesn’t take that long to find Harold.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Gift Fox

  On the day when Harold added the sixth line to the cave floor—after he had roused from a state of delirium that had lasted half the night, a terror of tremors and visions brought on by hunger and cold as much as by pain—he heard a scuffing on the rock. The bats made scratching noises when they climbed the stalactites with the claws at the tips of their wings, but this wasn’t that sound.

  Harold turned his head to see an animal that at first he took for a dog. He immediately thought of Cochise, Marcus’s dog that he’d last seen on the night he’d been struck unconscious. Harold remembered seeing Marcus curled before the fire, the dog hopping on its good legs around the silent, unmoving form, nosing him. Then Job had swung the rock that sent the stars of Harold’s universe reeling.

  But this animal was slimmer, and it had something that drooped from its jaws. When Harold saw the big bush of a tail he knew it was a fox, its silhouette standing out against the light that was slowly infusing the cave. The fox whirled as Harold caught its eyes and was gone in a single fluid motion, but in its panic it dropped what was clamped in its teeth. All Harold could make out was an indistinguishable lump on the cave floor. He kneed to the extent of the chain and found that by lying down, he could touch what he now realized was a rabbit. He scissored a leg of the rabbit between his first and second fingers and inched it toward him until he could pick it up.

  Ever since his capture, Harold’s diet had consisted of a single slice of bread, tossed to him in the morning when either Job or Dewey Davis checked in, and, in the evening, another slice along with a packet of ramen noodles. The noodles he softened by holding the opened packet so it collected water that seeped through the rock ceiling and dripped, Harold had calculated, at a rate of about a quarter cup of water every hour. Before he had the packets to collect water in, he’d had to lie down on his back and catch water drops with his open mouth. He had spent many hours each day in this manner, doing little else but trying to stay hydrated.

  The fox’s teeth had ripped the rabbit’s hide and by inserting both forefingers through the slit and pulling in opposite directions, Harold peeled the skin from the rabbit like it was a sock, the way his grandfather had taught him. He tore at the flesh with his teeth and gulped it, and almost immediately felt like throwing it up. He told himself to slow down, that the morning visit from his captors was still a couple hours away and he had plenty of time to eat the rabbit. He forced himself to chew before swallowing, first the flesh, then the guts, even the dead marble eyes, saving one hind leg for later, figuring it would keep in the cool of the cave and wouldn’t bulge out his pants pocket enough to draw attention.

  When he was done eating, all that remained was a scatter of the bones he’d sucked clean, the head, the clawed feet, and the two pieces of skin. He put a piece of skin in each of his socks to help warm his feet, and setting aside the larger bones, threw the remaining evidence of his meal as far as he could into the dark recess of the cave behind him.

  Though his captors had meticulously swept rock chips and other debris from the part of the cave within Harold’s reach, removing anything that could be used as a weapon or with which he might free himself of the chain, the limestone floor remained an abrasive surface. He now began to rub the edge of one of the thin scapulas against it, sharpening the flat shoulder blade as his ancestors had sharpened similar bones with sandstones. They had used razor-honed scapulas for hide scrapers, to prepare skins for tanning, but Harold envisioned another use for it, one that brought back the pulse of hatred that had been building in him for a long time, going back to the day when Job had talked about removing his gall bladder.

  Harold recalled that day as he worked on the bone, how he had deliberately shot over the bear’s back and then had extracted the empty cartridge case from the rotary magazine and dropped it onto the grass, and hastily cut the diagonal lines into the nearest tree trunk. He had done the same thing two days earlier, a different bear, that one not so lucky, and with a different man behind the trigger. Not Job, but Dewey, who, Harold came to see, was the better shot. In fact Harold had been witness to three of Dewey’s kills, and in each location he’d been able to drop a fired cartridge case and replace it in the magazine with another empty, because he acted as the gun bearer, and the gnomelike man took the rifle from him only when its use was imminent.

  Harold’s purpose in leaving the cases was to provide evidence that the men were in proximity to poached bear carcasses, should legal proceedings be brought. At the same time, he knew that if he was caught doing it, his fate would be that of the bears.

  The entire operation had left a bad taste, and so when the young grizzly offered a target, Harold, who already had blood on his hands from his participation in earlier hunts, had almost shot it. Only at the last second had he pulled the crosshairs high, and as the bear ran into the forest, Harold had hurriedly unscrewed the cap on the horizontal adjustment turret of the rifle scope, then used his thumbnail to turn the knob several dozen clicks to the left. He had meant to do the same to the vertical adjustment, which would certainly throw off the next shot from the rifle, perhaps by as much as several feet at a hundred yards. Then he could use the scope misalignment to explain away his miss and, in the process, perhaps save the life of another bear. But the two men, who’d remained behind when Harold made his final stalk, were approaching and Harold barely had time to screw the cap back on before they came into sight, Job making the tsking sound with his tongue that Harold would grow to hate.

  With time to think it over, Harold had arrived at the conclusion that the only reason he’d survived the shots on the river was because he’d tampered with the scope. But if that was true, it was probably also true that moving the adjustment ring had caused the bullet to strike Jewell MacAllen in the bow. Harold was not a man of regrets, and better the Scarecrow God than himself. Still, the unfamiliar feeling of remorse had haunted him during the long nights, when his spirits were lowest and he had no one to talk to but the few bats that weren’t out hunting.

  One question had plagued him at all hours. He might be alive due to fast thinking in the field, but why was he still alive? And as he was alive, did that mean Marcus was, too?

  He had finished sharpening the first scapula and was beginning to shape the femur into a point, sanding to the metronome of Marcus’s name, repeating it over and over, when he heard the footsteps. From the cadence he knew it was Job, and he quieted his voice and quickly pocketed the bone.

  “What are you up to, Harold? Singing for your son?”

  The tall man towered over him, trapping Harold in the aura of his scent and vitality, then strode by to sit down opposite him, only inches out of Harold’s reach. As the days had passed, Job had begun to crowd him more, four long steps becoming two, now one, as if he were daring him to react. Dewey, by comparison, kept his distance. Harold believed that the little man’s bravado was an act, that underneath was naked fear. Dewey would be the easier to kill, but the more difficult to lure within striking range.

  “I asked what you are up to? Sounded like you were saying something.”

  “No. I was just scraping my heels on the rock.”

  Harold demonstrated, the grit caught in the soles making a rhythmic scraping sound, and as he did so, he backed away, to try to get Job to come closer. There, at the far end of his tether, he coiled, ready to strike.

  “I suppose this place gets lonely,” Job said. “The bats can’t be much company.”

  “Where’s my bread?”

  “Almost forgot,” Job said. He tossed the single slice of bread.

  Ha
rold wolfed it down. “How about my soup?”

  “No soup for you. My woman, she likes to watch the TV, says there’s a cook in New York they call the Soup Nazi. You look at him wrong—‘No soup for you!’”

  “Why don’t you just kill me, get it over with? Be one more piece of bread for you at the end of the day.”

  Job made the tsking sound. “But then you’d never see your son again. You want to see him, don’t you?”

  Harold tried not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. His face was stone.

  “You see,” Job said, “I know what you told me is a lie. That he is nothing to you, a distant relation, that you are doing his mother a favor by taking him off her hands. You sit there, you give me your stoicism, your Indian eyes. But he is your weakness. Six days ago, if I told you your cooperation would ensure his safety, you would not have believed me. No, you would have schemed against me, and I would not be able to trust anything you said. But you are no longer that man. You are broken, and despite your eyes, you will do anything I ask without question. Am I correctly assessing the situation?”

  “Just tell me what it is you want.”

  “I will. Very soon.”

  “Tell me now. And bring the boy to me. You want to loosen my tongue, show me he is well.” Harold coughed. He rubbed his stomach. His hand dipped into his pants pocket.

  “Still hungry, huh? Or are you just happy to see me?”

  Harold’s fingers fanned along the edge of the shoulder blade.

  “Tsk. Tsk. Shush now. Sing to your bats.” The tall man stretched to his height,

  Harold’s thumb and forefinger clamped on the bone. Just take one step forward, just one.

  But Job skirted him, well out of reach, and ducked out of the cave. When the sound of his footsteps faded, Harold found that the muscles of his hand had cramped around the bone. He flexed his fingers, and slowly his grip relaxed. He looked down at the lines on the cave floor. Instinct told him there would be no more, that either he would be gone or that he would be dead by the next morning. He drew out the scapula. It could be made sharper, and he picked up his mantra—“Mar-cus, Mar-cus”—as he honed the edge against the cave floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sinner or Saint

  Martha stood under the overhanging ledge and took in the pictographs—the recognizable turtle, the coyote or maybe wolf, the might-be bear, the rattler with its forked tongue.

  She set her hands on her hips. “Where’s the scarecrow?” she said.

  “Half scarecrow,” Sean said. “That’s what it said in the sketchbook.”

  Martha grunted. She lifted her hand toward the red ochre palm print.

  “Tall,” she muttered. “If I recall right, Katie Sparrow’s dog alerted at this place when the search team was looking for Harold. You think if there was a scarecrow, they would have found it.”

  “Half alerted,” Sean said. “She said they had another thirty miles of river to check. Unless Lothar got really excited, they didn’t look in any place for long.”

  While they talked, the three-legged dog had wandered out of sight. Sean called his name, and a few minutes later, when Cochise hadn’t materialized, he and Martha split up and began to look farther afield. A minute later Sean heard a short whistle and found Martha standing before the half-formed skeleton of the scarecrow. A red handkerchief tied to one of the willow shoots stirred in the breeze. Martha saw a piece of paper peeking out of it and untied the handkerchief.

  This is a crime scene. Do not touch anything. Immediately report anything that might be construed as evidence of a crime to the Hyalite Sheriff’s Department, Bridger, Montana, attention Sheriff Martha Ettinger.

  The note was dated six days previously and signed H.L.F., followed by two telephone numbers. One was the department dispatch, the other Martha’s direct line.

  “I wonder why he used us,” Martha said. “Why not say ‘Report to Division of Criminal Investigation’? That’s who he works for. Do you think he knew something was off with Fitz Carpenter?”

  “Maybe he just knew he could trust you.”

  “Maybe.” She seemed distant. “We’re, what, a mile and half upriver from Table Rock?”

  “About.”

  “And his canoe was found a mile below Table Rock.”

  “About.”

  “So whatever happened to him, it happened somewhere between here and there.” She nodded to herself. “Let’s keep our eyes peeled. The river’s dropped quite a bit since the searchers were here. They could have missed something.”

  They had.

  * * *

  —

  For the six years he’d known him, Sean had heard Harold Little Feather complain about his brown waterproof boat bag, saying that you should never buy a dark-colored bag, because you’ll never be able to see what’s inside it without a flashlight. But he was Harold, and too stubborn to trade up.

  So what might have been overlooked by another set of eyes, or dismissed as a piece of weathered driftwood, was immediately apparent to Sean for what it was. He slid his kayak paddle through the bag’s shoulder strap as he swept by the driftwood collected on an exposed boulder, where the bag had fetched up, and a few minutes later pulled to the shore at the uppermost Table Rock campsite. He waited for Martha to rope her kayak to a post before unsnapping the straps of the duffel.

  “What did you find?”

  “It’s Harold’s boat bag. Must have fallen out when his canoe capsized. Feels like there’s a bowling ball inside.”

  He pinched the top to break the watertight seal. The eyes were staring at him, and he gagged reflexively. Overcome by nausea, he made it as far as the riverbank before retching. He took in his wavery reflection on the surface and just breathed for a minute, then washed his mouth out.

  Martha was regarding the head with her hands on her hips.

  “I’ve seen worse,” she said as Sean walked up.

  “How much worse?”

  “Considerable.” She nodded. “He won’t win Miss Montana anytime soon.”

  “Is it Carpenter?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What the hell was Harold doing with his head in his boat bag?”

  Martha hitched up her duty belt. “That’s not a question I thought we’d be asking this morning. It’s a game changer, all right. Come on, let’s get the tent up while it’s still light. We can figure out the next step after we have a fire going.”

  * * *

  —

  There was a scraping sound, and a small flame danced in the darkness. The man lit the crooked cigarette as if it was the fuse of a firecracker, holding it in front of him, then put it in his mouth and drew a long breath. Slowly, he let the smoke out.

  “Harold, Harold, Harold,” he said.

  He patted his pockets and drew out a stub of a candle and went about lighting the wick, dripping wax from the molten cup and twisting the candle into the puddle so it stood upright on the cave floor.

  “There, that’s better. We can see each other now.”

  He had come when nearly all the light had drained from the cave, and at first the sound was so faint Harold thought it could be the returning of the fox. Then he heard the familiar footfalls on the cave floor. Maybe he’s brought Marcus, Harold thought. But the tall man was alone.

  “I want you to understand that I did not choose this course, Harold,” he said. The man, Job, drew on the cigarette and expelled another lungful of smoke. “You betrayed my trust. By doing so, you have forced my hand. Surely you understand the position you put me in. But what you don’t know is how I discovered your treachery, how I came to lie in wait for you on the river. Did I make a mistake? That is the question you ask yourself. What misstep put me in these chains?”

  Feed his need, Harold thought. Give him license to ramble and maybe he will be the one who makes a mistake.
r />   “I’m asking you,” Harold said. “How did you know?”

  Job drew on the cigarette. “How does the saying go? A little bird told me.”

  “What bird?”

  “Fitz Carpenter,” Job said.

  Harold had no reaction. But he said the name as a question in his mind. Fitz Carpenter? The man who sent me to Job in the first place?

  “So as you betrayed me, he betrayed you,” Job said, nodding. “I will preempt your next question.” He smiled across at Harold, a concerned, paternal look. “You want to know why a man in his position turns from the light to the darkness? It is the same reason some would risk poisoning this river—not for the resource it provides their fellow men, though that is their mantra, but for the money it puts in their pockets.”

  “‘All that is bitter will be sweet,’” Harold said under his breath. “‘All that is copper will be gold.’”

  “What is that, a proverb?”

  “Spanish. The man who built the scarecrows told me. Jewel MacAllen.”

  “That crazy cracker. But funny you should mention the name. You see, MacAllen provided me the solution to the problem you pose. When we came back from our foray into the Park, Fitz approached me, never mind how he discovered where I lived. Understand, I had never heard of the man.”

  “What’s this have to do with Jewel MacAllen?”

  Job cocked his head. “I am trying to explain to you how you ended up talking to bats and shitting in a corner, yet you interrupt. Is your intention to aggravate me into doing something I shouldn’t? In that case you will have a long wait, and only part of it while among the living.”

  “I’m sorry,” Harold said. “Go on.”

  Job stubbed out the cigarette against his belt buckle. “Fitz told me that he wouldn’t turn over the evidence you had gathered against my operation if I cut him into the profits. He insisted it wasn’t blackmail because he didn’t demand money up front, that what he was proposing was a business arrangement. He knew the ropes of the smuggling trade, had even met a couple of the Korean brokers who trafficked in animal parts. His contacts would prove an invaluable resource. With my knowledge of the country, your tracking skills, and his connections, we could grow rich together. Greed, you see. That is the true religion of our country.”