Another step. Then another. I match each, my feet coming down in time with hers. Soon I’m so close I can smell the sweaty musk of her. Another step, and I’ll be able to touch her. To grab her.
I force myself to stop. Then I holster my gun and say, “Maryanne?”
She wheels, leaves crackling. Her hands fly up. Mine do too, rising to show her they’re empty.
“It’s me,” I say. “Eric’s girl.”
A curse sounds to my left. Maryanne spins that way. It’s Anders. He’s turned, and when he saw her, he’d let out a curse of shock. Horror fills his face, as if he’s stumbled onto something far worse than a scavenged body.
The rough hide clothing is the least of it. Her hair is matted and wild. One ear blackened and ragged, lost to frostbite. The ends of two fingers the same. She’s filthy, and a week ago, the dirt had seemed rubbed on like war paint, patterns clear. Now it’s smeared and smudged, revealing ritualized scars below. Her mouth is open, showing her teeth, the edges of the front ones filed into rough points. Thousands of years ago, she could have stepped onto a battlefield, a Neolithic warrior woman. Today, she seems to have stepped straight out of a nightmare.
She sees Anders. She sees his expression. And deep in her eyes, there is a flash of realization. A long-buried hint of the woman she’d been. She sees what she looks like to Anders, and she lets out a gasp. Then she spots his gun. Her gasp turns to an animal shriek. She wheels and charges into the forest.
“Maryanne!” I shout.
I take off after her. Anders is at my heels. He’s already apologizing.
I ignore him and run, calling after her, telling her it’s okay, we won’t hurt her. She only runs faster, easily cutting across paths I don’t see, leaving me dodging and darting around obstacles as she disappears into the shadowy forest.
“I’m sorry,” Anders says once she’s gone. “Shit, Casey. I am so sorry. I’ve just never seen . . .”
“I know.”
“She startled me. That’s all. I’m sorry.”
I nod and start walking back.
Anders jogs to catch up. “I know I don’t do as well with this stuff as you and Eric. The hostiles. The settlers. Even Brent. I just . . . I’m not used to that. I’m sorry I scared her off.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I know that was a shock.”
“She’s the woman from the forest, isn’t she. The one you mentioned.”
I nod.
“Everything Eric’s said about the hostiles . . . it still didn’t prepare me for that.”
“She used to be a professor.”
“What?”
He’s fallen a step behind and catches up now.
“She’s a university professor,” I say. “She has a PhD in biology.”
“That—that—”
“Yes,” I say, simply, and the word hangs there.
“How . . . ?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I pause to get my bearings and then steer left. “That woman came to Rockton like anyone else. She’s has a doctorate. She taught at a university. She’s a naturalist, and when a group of residents decided to go into the forest, to become settlers, she went with them. Eric knew her. She’d taught him.” I catch his look and say, “Not that. Just friendship and a shared interest in the natural world. Gene Dalton didn’t let people just go off into the forest so Eric had to search for her. They found a ruined and abandoned camp, with what looked like signs of attack. They were presumed dead. A year later, Eric ran into Maryanne, and she attacked him. She was out of her mind. She didn’t recognize him. They’d been friends, and he remembered her as a kind, gentle woman who loved the wilderness, and then she attacks and he thought he’d have to kill her to escape.”
“Holy shit.”
“He hadn’t seen her since. Then, last week, she was with the party we ran into.”
“The ones who attacked you.”
“She didn’t. She stayed out of it. Afterwards, Eric recognized her. He talked to her, and she was different, more like what you saw. She remembered him, but vaguely. Have you ever talked to a person with Alzheimer’s? If you feed them enough information, you get flickers of recognition? That’s what it was like. Eric was making progress. She remembered who he was. She remembered that she liked him, trusted him. We had a chance there, to get her to Rockton. Then Val started shooting. She winged Maryanne, and she took off.”
“She seems okay.”
I give him a look.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “She’s recovering well from the gunshot.”
Yes, if it doesn’t get infected. I can’t imagine how it won’t, given her state. I don’t say that, of course. I don’t blame Anders’s for spooking her. I came to Rockton better prepared for people like Maryanne, or the settlers or the hostiles. As a city cop, I cultivated contacts everywhere I could find them—the homeless, the addicts, the mentally ill. For me, policing meant getting comfortable with people that I hadn’t often encountered in my upper-middle class life. Anders grew up in the suburbs, too. He’s not cold or cruel or close-minded. He just lacks experience, like the average person who crosses the road to avoid someone talking to themselves.
I find the clearing again and then the spot where Maryanne had stood. It takes only a moment to see what she set down. The “stick” is a raven feather. The “rock” is the skull of a small animal.
I lift the skull. “Predator,” I say when I see the canines. “Weasel maybe?”
“She put those there?” he says.
I nod. “Set them down and backed away. Leaving them for us. She must have heard me talking and recognized my voice. Maybe she expected Eric to be with me.”
“And those are what? Gifts?”
I turn the feather over in my hands. As I do, I remember Maryanne talking to Dalton.
“The boy with the raven,” I murmur.
“Hmmm?”
“That’s how she remembered Eric. The boy with the raven. She’d told him that studies suggest corvids can use tools, and he tested it, trying to train one.”
“Wait. Isn’t this the guy who rolls his eyes at you for training that raven behind the station?”
“Yep. Believe me, I am not going to let him forget that. But this”—I lift the feather—“means the message is for him.”
“Message?” Anders looks at the skull. “Didn’t Eric say the hostiles use skulls as territorial markers?”
“Human ones. Old human ones. I don’t know if this would mean the same thing or—”
At a movement, I turn, hand going to my gun. A figure approaches at a jog, and before I can pull my weapon, I recognize the newcomer.
“We’re over here!” I call.
“Yeah,” Dalton says as he slows to a walk. “I can hear you two a kilometer away.”
“Just scaring off the cave bears,” Anders says. “As you can see, we did an awesome job, so you didn’t need to worry about a thing.”
The cave bear joke comes from early in my stay, when Anders took me deeper into a cave, away from the others. Dalton hadn’t let us be gone long before he came to check on us, and Anders had joked about cave bears.
At the time, I figured Dalton was just being his usual overcautious self. I realize now what Anders must have at the time—that Dalton hadn’t loved the idea of his deputy sneaking me off for a private tour.
“We saw Maryanne,” I say, and I explain, handing him the feather and skull.
When I finish, he’s examining the skull. “I have no idea what it means. If she thought I would then . . .” He shrugs. “I’m glad to hear she’s okay.” He squints in the forest. “I’d like to get her back to Rockton.”
“I know,” I say. “If she’s coming out when she hears us, maybe we’ll get a chance when you’re around.”
“And when I’m not,” Anders says. “I spooked her.”
“Everything spooks her,” Dalton says. He puts the feather and skull into his pack. “What happened to getting the bodies?”
I t
ell him. He searches the clearing for clues but finds nothing, and we head back, talking the whole way, partly in hopes Maryanne will hear Dalton and come out. She doesn’t.
THIRTY-ONE
It’s midnight by the time we get to Rockton, and the sun has dropped low enough to leave only a glow in the night sky. We head for Sebastian’s apartment.
“He was supposed to share a place,” Dalton says as we walk. “That’s the one time he was a pain in the ass. He got downright snappy about it. The whole flight up from Vancouver felt like sitting beside a fucking mannequin. Most people have questions about Rockton. Even you did. Sebastian didn’t say a word. It was sp—” He rubs the back of his neck and doesn’t finish.
“It was what?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Eric? It’s me.” I wave around the empty street. “Just me.”
He wrinkles his nose and hesitates before blurting. “Spooky.”
I have to laugh at that. “What’s wrong with saying it was spooky?”
“It sounds . . .” He waves his hand. “Nebulous. People give off vibes, especially when I first meet them, ready to bring them here. Anxious. Nervous. Scared, even. Or defensive. Angry. Belligerent. Sometimes relieved. Happy. Excited.”
“What vibes did I give off?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“Like sitting beside a mannequin?”
“Nah, with you, I could tell there was more, and I just couldn’t get a read on it.”
“But Sebastian’s vibes were spooky.”
“No. See, that just sounds weird. I just . . . I don’t know. Last time I felt anything like that was when I brought Mathias in. I met him at the airport, and he was charming and polite as fuck, and all I could think was ‘I should leave him here.’ I did not want the guy in my town. Which proves that my sixth sense for people is bullshit.”
“Uh, not sure I’d go that far. Mathias . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s manageable, though.” He pauses. “Where was I going with this?”
“Sebastian’s apartment.”
Dalton shakes his head. “I’m tired and rambling. All right, so, two hours into the trip, I’m the one feeling anxious. I want to get him talking, reassure myself he’s fine. So I start explaining the living arrangements, telling him he’ll be bunking down with someone, and he turns and gives me this look. He’s a kid, right? Twenty-one? But that look, it was . . .”
“Spooky?”
I’m smiling when I say it, but Dalton still glowers. “No. See? Now you’re not going to let me live that down. The look was not spooky. It just wasn’t what I expect from a kid. It reminded me of when I bring fifty-year-olds in and tell them the rules, and they give me this look, like ‘Who the hell are you, boy?’ Sebastian gives me that look, and then he says, in this ice-cold voice, ‘That is not what I was told.’ I said whatever he was told was wrong, because he’s a new resident, and the place we have ready for him is shared accommodations.”
“And then?”
“He opens his mouth, like he’s ready to snap at me. He stops. Regroups. And that look vanishes. He asks if there are any options. His voice changes when he asks it. His whole demeanor does. Have you had any encounters with him?”
“Just a quick hello as we pass. He seems nice. Quiet, but very polite. Kind of sweet, actually. A nice, respectful kid.”
“Exactly. That’s what he changed into. He politely asked for options, and my back went down. I explained that the only alternative is . . .” He waves ahead to the building ahead. “A really shitty bottom floor apartment that we’ve been using for storage. He says he’d take that, if possible. He’ll clear it and clean it, whatever we need, and he’s very sorry for the inconvenience, but he has anxiety issues and would prefer to not have a roommate.”
“So you gave him this place.”
“We’ve had people who’ll sleep in a damned closet if it means they don’t have a roommate. Personally, I understand that. I used to tell women that my place was a mess, so they’d never expect to come in, let alone stay. Then I’d give some story about how I need—by law—to sleep in my own house, so people can find me. That gave me an excuse to get the hell back to my place as soon as I could after . . .”
I snort a laugh.
He glances over. “Too much information?”
“Never. So I’m special, huh?”
“I thought you’d figured that out by now. But, yeah, I understand when someone says they’ll do anything to avoid having a roommate, so I let Sebastian take this place.”
“Interesting.”
His brows rise as we climb onto the porch. “Interesting how?”
“Just interesting.”
“You’ll explain later?”
“I will.”
* * *
Sebastian answers the door groggy, his hair mussed, as if he was asleep. Dalton doesn’t ask if we woke him. He acts as if he doesn’t care, and Sebastian lets us in without a word.
Dalton said that the look Sebastian gave him on the plane made him seem older. Normally, Sebastian looks like a high school senior, though, admittedly, I’ve reached that age where teenagers seem like they should still be in grade school. There’s a smattering of acne on his baby-faced cheeks. Dark blond hair hangs to his shoulders. His hair flops over one eye, and he makes no motion to push it back. He never does. He just lets it hang there and hides behind it.
He’s wearing sweat pants and no shirt, showing an average physique for a guy his age, thin but not skinny, muscle tone from youth and casual sports rather than gym time. As he leads us in, he grabs a T-shirt and tugs it on. There’s a university logo on the front, and I recognize it, saying, “Alma mater?”
“Uh . . .”
“Sorry,” I say with a smile. “You don’t have to tell me. That’s the rule. Say nothing you don’t want to say.”
“Nah, it’s not that. I’d love to say yes, it’s where I went. I wanted to. It just never worked out. A girl I knew went and gave it to me. Like one of those stupid vacation shirts. Someone I know went to Western, and all I got was this crappy T-shirt.”
He smiles when he says it, a little self-conscious, hands shoved into his pockets. As I study his face, I curse Mathias. He’s told me he sees signs of sociopathy in Sebastian, so now I’m looking for them. Sociopathy, like psychopathy, is a manifestation of borderline personality disorder. As for the difference between the two, well, I’ve heard so many theories that I’ll have to ask Mathias for his personal distinction. I know that either type is dangerous.
Of the mental disorders, schizophrenia gets the worst PR. People hear about that in conjunction with horribly violent crimes, and they think every person with it is a frothing madman. I know people with schizophrenia who manage it just fine, and even at their worst they’ve never committed a violent act. It’s sociopathy that scares me because a sociopath isn’t that ranting killer, lost in delusion and madness. It’s the person who commits crimes because they see no reason not to.
Mathias says he has traits of sociopathy. I won’t argue that self-diagnosis. He is charming. He is manipulative. And while I believe—perhaps naively—that he’s capable of caring about people, it seems an active choice, which he applies to very, very few people. He is definitely dangerous. He has definitely killed people. And I doubt he loses a moment’s sleep over it.
Mathias told me that this young man shows sociopathic traits, so I’m analyzing his every move. I don’t want to. I prefer to form my opinions without bias. But that’s why I have Dalton with me. I’ve told him nothing, and yet he’s already admitted that Sebastian reminded him of Mathias.
Sebastian leads us inside. The apartment has the same setup as Diana’s, and he motions to the sofa. We sit, and he starts to lower himself to the armchair and then stops, hovering over it.
“Drinks,” he says. “Would you like . . . ?” He looks at the cold fire. “Uh, I’ve got water. I think there’s a beer?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” I say. “We’
re sorry for coming by so late. I’m sure you were sleeping.”
He doesn’t say no, that’s fine. He doesn’t argue either. Just nods.
I continue, “We’re burning the midnight oil on this case. Making the rounds to those who don’t have alibis.”
His hands tighten on the arms of his chair, almost reflexively. “Right. That’d include me.”
“Can you tell us where you were at the time of the shooting?”
“Here. Alone. Sleeping.” He pauses. “Lousiest alibi ever.”
“Sleeping?” My brows lift. “In the middle of the afternoon?”
“I worked a split shift. Chopping duty in the morning, and then dishwashing after dinner. I was off from noon until four. We’d headed out at five AM for lumber, so I was beat. I came back and crashed.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
He shakes his head. “They can confirm I had a split shift. Marlo might remember me saying I was wiped out and planned to nap.” He pauses. “Which, if I intended to commit a crime, would sound like I was setting up an alibi.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
He manages a weak smile. “Yep, I have some experience with that. Needing alibis. Setting them up, too.” He looks at me. “I’m not sure how much you know about my background, Detective Butler, but I understand Sheriff Dalton has been briefed. While I’d rather it wasn’t broadcast around town, I’m okay with you knowing my past. I’d rather you did, actually. Get it all out in the open. My personal twelve-step program for criminal rehabilitation.”
“So you’ve committed crimes.”
“What’s that joke? I don’t have a rap sheet—I have a rap book?” He shakes his head. “I got an early start. Shoplifting by eight. Jacking cars by fourteen. B&E. Petty larceny. Possession with intent to distribute.” He folds his hands in his lap, an odd gesture that I notice. “I could blame a shitty home life and shittier friends, but we all make choices, and I wasn’t a dumb, naive kid. I made bad choices. Lots of them. When I wanted out, I learned it wasn’t that easy. So now you’re stuck with me. If you need a car jacked, I’m your guy. Considering you have no cars here, though, I’m pretty much useless.”
Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel Page 22