by Ann Minnett
"Hello, Kirk," Lark mumbled. “I’m glad you’re here. Where's Dee?"
"Nyquil knocked her out." Nora pushed a third chair away from the table for Lark to sit in. Kirk grabbed his wife's hand and held on, and Zane sat in the fourth chair.
Lark asked, "Where's the… gun?"
Nora laid it on the table along with the clip.
Kirk's baritone crept across to her. "Who bought the gun?"
"Me. I'll take it. I'll take care of it." Lark's eyes settled on its grip.
"Stop it!" Nora scooted her chair back. "Stop fucking taking care of everything." She went into the kitchen and returned with a mug of black coffee and set it on the table in front of Lark. "We're all in this."
"Tell us," said Zane, sixteen next week and going on thirty-five.
Lark's fingers hurt, gripping the hot mug. "Of course." Guilt settled around her shoulders, but the others carried their share as well. Her ego had driven a lifelong need to be responsible, even when no one asked it of her.
She took thirty minutes to explain how she had "taken care of Rob.” Zane listened with his forehead on his folded arms on the table. He cried a little, she could tell by his gulps, but he kept his head down. Kirk rubbed his face until his eyes reddened and his whiskers tangled. Nora listened, slumped and hardly blinking. Her pudgy features had hardened, but Lark didn't remember when the transition occurred.
She told them everything except that she had intended to shoot him in the belly with his own gun. She feared verbalizing the body's sigh… surely she had imagined it.
"I can't believe how you kept your head." Nora shook hers. "That was extraordinary, even for you."
"You committed crimes in the cover-up." Kirk's chin rested on the chest hairs sprouting from his shirt. He hadn't accused or reprimanded, but stated the obvious.
"We've all committed a crime tonight." Lark put her hand on Zane's arm in apology and deep sadness. He didn't react.
Dee emerged from the bedroom, dirty bedhead in disarray. Tissues once again tusked from each nostril. She had been crying or was feverish, maybe both. She croaked, "I'll turn myself in," and shuffled into the kitchen amid protests.
Lark had no energy to go to her. No one did.
Mason rolled on the floor toward the others, raised his head. "Shit." He turned his head and didn't move.
Zane raised up then, and Dee scuffed to his side.
"Like hell, you'll turn yourself in." Lark unzipped her jacket, finally warm after an hour inside the house.
Dee yelped, making them flinch. She pointed at blood spatters on Lark's shirt and coat cuffs.
* * *
Axel’s thoughts drifted as his dually climbed Star Meadow Road, neglecting to dim his bright lights for an oncoming car. The fifteen-hour drive home from the oil patch in North Dakota had tired him beyond caring. His weary mind already dreaded the drudgery of carting his gear cross-country over the half mile from this road’s dead end to his place. In deep night. He registered the oddity of passing a vehicle on the remote road late at night in winter, but he figured someone headed into town for a night shift—probably a railroad worker on call. He had retired from the railroad himself as a young man of fifty.
He rolled down his window. Frigid air rushed over him. He breathed deeply. The smell of smoke caught his attention and snapped him out of reverie. Given the absolute darkness and winding nature of the road, Axel couldn’t locate the direction of the fire. His first thought: smoke signaled more than a neighbor’s woodstove, and no one dared burn a brush pile covered in four feet of snow, at night no less. As his truck climbed, the smell grew more intense, and fears that his own home was on fire took hold of him. Fully alert now, he pressed the accelerator for the final hill.
Smoke wafted from his neighbor’s place. Lodgepole pine silhouettes contrasted against orange and gray smoke listing into the dark.
Axel parked his truck halfway down Rob’s driveway—volunteer fire fighting taught him never to park too close to an active fire. He hurried as fast as his stiff knees could take him toward the structure. Gawd-awful alarms hurt, so he turned down his hearing aid. One side of the cabin burned, but the other side remained dark. Rob’s heavy front door stood open with smoke seeping out. Axel hopped up the steps and stuck his head inside. Too smoky to see, he dropped to all fours on the threshold and shouted for Rob. His neighbor lay on his back on the floor, bending and pushing off with his legs to scoot away from the flames.
"Rob!"
Rob's head jerked up at the sound of his name. "Axel? Over here." He extended a hand, and Axel crawled to him. Rob's weight didn’t challenge Axel's mountain man strength. He dragged him out to the porch and heard the man scream only once when his body bumped over the threshold. That's when he noticed Rob's wound.
"God Almighty." Axel looked for leverage to lift Rob down four feet to the ground, but found only a pile of split logs. He flexed his shoulders to loosen his shirt and vest, then reached for both of Rob's arms.
"This is going to hurt, buddy."
Rob closed his eyes in silent acknowledgement. Axel dragged Rob, arms and head first, down the four steps. He screamed with each thump. Once on the snowy walkway, Axel easily dragged him twenty feet to the base of a limbed spruce. Rob's socks and pants cuffs were blackened by fire, so Axel packed snow around the man's feet to extinguish any flame.
"What the hell happened?" Axel turned toward the smoldering cabin. The fire remained confined in the living room.
Rob grunted, both bloody hands covering his wound. "Stupid. Shot myself." He groaned. "Accident."
Axel brushed the snow from Rob's feet.
"Fire extinguisher?" Axel evaluated the distance to the extinguisher in his truck versus the danger in the house. The house was closer.
"Mud room. To the left behind the kitchen." Rob raised his head and nodded to the left.
Axel ran to the porch, fell to hands and knees, and crawled under the smoky layer and past bar stools. The smoke hadn't yet sunk to the floor, but he still had difficulty breathing and pulled his sweatshirt over his nose and mouth. He located the closed door and pushed it open. The extinguisher hung on the wall next to the door frame.
Axel flipped the lever and sprayed smoldering furniture in the living room. A blanket and rug had burned along with a stuffed chair. He inched through the room. The fire had singed the plastered walls up to the open second floor ceiling. The faint glow he had spotted from the driveway might indicate fire in the attic. For good measure, he sprayed foam around the wood stove, which still contained embers, and on the wall behind it.
Axel stumbled over a mound of charred embers near the scorched sofa, dispersing them with his steel-toed boot. He crouched. Smoke billowed from what appeared to be Rob's bedroom. Odd. The closet belched smoke. Axel approached as close as he could, held his breath, and blindly sprayed the rest of the foam into the closet. He figured the fire had spread from either the attic above or the crawl space below.
The alarms deafened his good ear. He ran back through the bedroom, yanked a comforter off the bed, and waddled outside just as red and blue lights flashed through the trees up on the road.
Rob lay where he’d left him.
Axel shouted, "Hey, buddy," and wrapped Rob in the comforter. Thankfully, Rob’s eyelids fluttered, and Axel tucked the spread under him until groans of pain made him stop.
"Looks like the cavalry has arrived."
Rob grimaced. "How's the cabin?"
A pumper truck and ambulance, sirens blaring, pulled in behind Axel’s truck which blocked the driveway.
Axel yelled, "Hold on!" He sprinted to his truck and hopped in. His wheels spun out off the main drive where he parked next to Rob’s outbuilding. Both emergency vehicles drove in with lights on, but they had cut the sirens.
Axel leapt out of the truck. "He's over here. Been shot." He ran to Rob. "I think the fire is out inside, but there may be involvement in the crawl space or the attic. Not sure.”
A woman knelt beside Rob and
spoke to him. Reassured that Rob responded, Axel approached the building with the three men from the pumper truck. "The wellhead's over here." Axel pointed behind the shed toward Rob's parked truck.
"Bob, go hook up. Jimmy and I'll check out the inside." The older guy said to Axel, "Show us what's happened."
The three loped toward the porch. The alarms finally silenced when one of the crew shut off the electricity and dismantled the detectors. Jimmy went around back to check the crawl space. The old guy shined his flashlight ahead into the smoky darkness. The high beam flitted along wood rafters supporting the ceiling. It danced from corner to can light to the track lighting in the kitchen.
"He’s lucky you was around, Axel."
"On my way home from Williston." Axel kicked at the sofa. "Some of this furniture might still be burning." He kicked at more debris on the floor. "The closet in there burned, too."
"We'll take care of it," the old guy said. Volunteers all, Axel wondered if they were a disappointed at the fire's containment. Nonetheless, the two men dragged a fire hose through the front door. The old guy pointed toward the bedroom, and they headed that way.
Axel went back outside. The woman had wrapped Rob's belly and waited for someone in a third vehicle, a pickup, to help her load Rob into a van.
"I didn't know you could transport," Axel said.
"We can in cases like this. Two Bear can’t land in these close conditions, and an ambulance dispatched from Whitefish would take too long."
"You’ll take him there?”
The woman nodded, all business.
“How is he?"
"The bullet went all the way through. That’s likely a good thing." She pushed curly hair off her forehead with the back of her gloved hand. "Says he shot himself?" She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow.
He found it hard to believe, too.
"Axel, have you seen my dog?" Rob’s voice sounded weak.
The pickup driver dragged a full-length body board through trampled snow and laid it next to Rob’s left side. The deceptively strong woman rolled Rob on his good side while he whimpered. The duo had maneuvered bodies like this before because Rob landed perfectly on the board.
"Here, let me help." Axel took over for the woman now at Rob's feet. "Haven't seen your dog, but I'll keep an eye out for her."
A deputy's car arrived as the van drove out of Rob's driveway.
Axel retrieved his coat from his truck. He sank wearily to a nearby tree stump, as the deputy approached him.
It was going to be a long damn night.
CHAPTER 21
Rob went straight from the ER in Whitefish’s North Valley Hospital into x-ray and surgery. The bullet had clipped his left hip and taken an upward trajectory, hitting no vital organs. It broke his first rib before exiting the left latimus muscle. His side hurt like a son-of-a-bitch when he awoke and was trundled down the hall to a private room. He recognized neither of the people who fussed with the medical equipment attached to him.
“Here’s your call button, Mr. Whalen,” the stocky woman said. She patted his arm and slid the call button under his open hand.
The man who had been in the room just a second ago disappeared.
She asked, “Ice chips?”
Rob nodded, yes. “And raise up?”
“Hmm.” Her pale mouth screwed tight. “You might not like it.”
“Up,” he said. She raised the head of his bed until he bellowed, “Stop!” His guts twisted, and his chest crushed into his lungs.
“Okay?” When he said nothing, she left the room.
The IV in his right hand attached to two clear bags of liquid above his right shoulder. A monitor of some kind gripped his left index finger. He didn’t dare move anything but his eyes. On his left stood a plain table with a phone like his grandmother had back in the day. A princess phone, she called it. He had a damn princess phone in his room.
His nurse returned with a cup of ice and a plastic jug of water. She set it on the tray table near his right hand. A large man wearing a hat that resembled the rings of Saturn in shape waited at the door for her to leave before he entered Rob’s room.
“Mr. Whalen? I’m Deputy Sorensted.” The man removed his hat and set it gingerly in the sparse room’s only chair. The band left a red crease on the bald man’s forehead. Pale green eyes bored into Rob’s, but the man sounded friendly, business-like. “I have a few questions about your gun shot.” Massive hands produced a small spiral notebook from his vest’s interior pocket. “I hear you shot yourself?”
Rob croaked, “Right.” He cleared his throat and reached for the cup. The deputy waited silently for Rob to grasp the cup and slowly bend his elbow to bring it to his dry mouth. The motion gave Rob time to think. He crunched a couple of soothing ice chips. “That’s right.” He held onto the cup. “Nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson.”
“Yours?” asked the deputy.
“Yes.” Rob fluttered his eyelids for effect.
The notebook Sorensted wrote in fit the palm of his hand. He scribbled a lot more words than Rob had spoken. The deputy glanced up from his writing. Green-eyed calm. Noncommittal.
“Explain how it happened.”
Rob swallowed melted ice from the cup, thinking, thinking. “Noticed a gouge in the handle.” He paused for a wave of pain to subside, but it didn’t. He needed medications. “I removed the magazine and didn’t know a bullet remained in the chamber. Boom.” The sound effect came out weak and understated, exactly what Rob intended. “Stupid mistake.”
The deputy hadn’t written down any of the last part. Rob worried about it.
Sorensted stretched his spine. His piercing stare drifted to the window for a moment. “What I don’t understand is how the fires started.” He leveled a placid gaze at Rob.
“I can’t explain it.” Rob grimaced, not completely embellishing his pain. He pressed the call button. “I was about to feed the fire and got distracted? Maybe a spark flew out after I shot myself. I think I blacked out for a while.”
The deputy’s heavy brows furrowed. He didn’t buy it. Rob shrugged his shoulders and daggers of pain shot through his side. He winced, this time for real. “Don’t know.” He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth.
The nurse appeared when he opened his eyes. “What is it Mr. Whalen?”
“I’m really hurting.”
“I’ll see what the doctor ordered for you.” She left.
“Can we talk about this later?” Rob asked.
Sorensted thought a moment. “Right. I’ll come back this afternoon.” He slid the notebook into an interior pocket and picked up his hat on the way to the door.
Rob sighed with relief. He hurt like hell.
The nurse returned and handed him two tablets in a tiny paper cup. She poured water into his ice chips. He dumped the tablets onto his tray table and fed them one at a time into his mouth then washed them down—all with his right hand. His nurse finished noting his meds and the time on a dry erase board.
“How often can I get pain meds?”
“Three to four hours.”
Rob leaned his head into the flat pillow and waited. When numb relief came, he reached for the princess phone and called directory assistance for Axel’s landline number.
* * *
A rudimentary plan had developed around 4:00 a.m. before Nora and Kirk went home and Lark took Zane and Mason to the condo. Their plan, such as it was, involved telling no one and continuing their routines as if nothing had happened. Mason and Zane would sleep for two hours and go to school. Lark would clean Sky's real estate office and return in time to wake up the boys. Dee would call in sick, and Kirk would work in their shop for as long as he could without a nap, and Nora would try to keep up with the twins. Everyone would meet at 7:00 p.m. to revisit their situation and the risks ahead, hopefully with clearer heads.
Two problems loomed: First, Sky would pester Lark about the late-night phone call from a stranger's phone number and ask about the ammo. Lark devised an excuse a
bout writing a story for class concerning a kid throwing bullets into a campfire for fun and getting wounded. Then again, Sky might be more concerned with Melanie and his own personal life than his sister’s crazy questions about bullets in fires.
The second and most vexing problem was Mason. While he dozed on the floor, the others had agreed Mason was the weak link. Zane assured them Mason would keep quiet, if only to avoid his dad from killing him. When they woke Mason up to leave Dee's house, he worried about lying to his family about where he'd been all night. Lark wondered how long the boy could hold out.
She drove to the condo in silence. The boys in the back seat fogged cold windows with their breath. She contemplated a still sleeping world and kept eyes peeled for a loose black dog on the streets. At home, the boys crashed while she showered. No sleep for her. She turned her stained coat, shirt, and jeans inside out and wadded them into a garbage bag. She hid everything in the closet, including the splotched boots she had worn.
She had to burn them. Soon.
Lord, she was weary pulling into the McDonald's parking lot two hours later for Mason to pick up his abandoned bicycle before school. The boys hadn't spoken since she woke them. Mason said nothing getting out of the car.
She cranked the window, but Zane reached across her to make her stop. She wanted to holler, Don't tell anyone.
"Don't say it. He knows." He wiped his sleep-crusted eyes. "We both do."
She and Zane watched Mason walk toward the overgrown junipers where he had hidden his bike. He'd borrowed a sweatshirt from Zane—his shirt had Rob's blood on the sleeve—and the XL shirt hung almost to Mason's knees. He hiked it up to straddle his bike seat and took off toward the high school four blocks away. Lark gave him a long lead before she drove there to drop off Zane. Katie waited at the flagpole and waved when she spotted their car.