Leaning forward, he pressed down on the gas pedal and tried to think. Who could he call? No one. Should he call the police? And say what? There was a guy with a Russian accent who requested a song about a goat and it spooked me? By the time the Caboose police found their friendly way to the homestead…no. Kache reached across to the glove compartment and popped it open. Nadia had talked him into keeping the handgun in there. “Even what you call the hippies in Alaska have their rifles on a rack. You can at least hide a gun in your glove compartment, yes?” And so he had. And there it was.
He knew he was not overreacting. He knew it. Everything merged together in his mind, how Tol—Vladimir, Vladimir Tolov—kept running into Snag, how he probably trailed her to see her turn down the road to the homestead. Or maybe he’d been trailing Kache too. Shit. The asshole was at the Spit Tune the night Kache and Nadia were there. How long had he been following them around? Had he been lurking around the homestead, waiting for an opportunity?
Kache had given her a false sense of security, insisting he was long gone, all while drinking beer and chatting it up with the psychopath. And then all the horrible things Kache had said to her earlier started shooting through his head, but he stopped himself. He needed to think clearly. To be smart and do everything exactly right. He needed to not fuck this up.
“Nadia, Nadia, Nadia.” He wasn’t singing; he was pleading. “Don’t open the door. Wait for me.”
Almost there. But the truck lagged as he approached the turn off the main road. Another lag, and then it died. No. He turned the ignition. No, no, no. Shit. His head had been so far up his ass and then so lost in that damn song, he’d forgotten to get gas. Stupid and dangerous, even on a normal day.
Wait. A full gas can in the back.
At an unbearably slow speed, the gasoline meandered its way through the long spout into the tank, Kache urging and cursing it.
• • •
Denny’s Land Cruiser sat parked in the middle of the road where it turned into the driveway, blocking Kache’s truck. A motorcycle lay on the ground next to the driver’s side. Kache grabbed the gun and jumped out: Nadia’s uncharged cell phone was on the seat, keys gone. He took off running toward the house. Had she tried to drive the Land Cruiser? Had it died?
He heard Leo going crazy in the house, like he had that very first night. Trying to catch his breath, Kache kept the gun down close to his side and ran up the steps. Leo was behind the front door, scratching, barking even at Kache. He turned the knob and pushed open the door, and Leo bolted out, ran down the porch steps sniffing, ran back to Kache and then out the gate toward the beach trail, nose to the ground, fur standing up in its own path on his back. Kache grabbed the flashlight that they kept on a hook in the kitchen and followed Leo. “Good boy, good boy. Where is she, Leo? Where is Nadia?”
He wanted to scream her name, but he didn’t want Vladimir to know he was there. How far could he have taken her, through the patches of snow and ice and mud? The moon hung fully ripe, casting silver light on the land, and he saw clearly enough, even without the flashlight. Wind whipped and roared so loudly, it sounded like the ocean crashing through the trees. Why the beach? But Kache knew.
Nadia. Wait.
Leo zigzagged ahead of him, sniffing the mud and snow. He never lifted his head, just kept in a staggering, frantic line while Kache followed. “Where is she, Leo? Find Nadia.”
“Kache!” Nadia screamed. “Here!” He rounded the bend to see her kicking and twisting while Vladimir dragged her by the waist off the path that crested the ridge, toward the cliff.
There they stayed, on the precipice, the moon spotlighting them. Vladimir held his knife to her throat, and Nadia had stopped fighting. She clung onto the arm that gripped the knife, but she did not flinch. Her eyes wide with terror and locked on Kache. Leo crouched, growling. Kache raised the gun.
“Hello, my friend,” Vladimir shouted over the wind. “Took you a long while, eh?”
“Let her go and I won’t shoot.”
“You will hit her instead, pussy boy.”
“Put the knife down. Put the knife down and leave and no one gets shot.” His voice and hands shook, and he fought to keep them steady. He sounded like he’d watched too many cop shows as a kid. Trying to be the tough guy he so obviously wasn’t. He wished he had the .22 rifle instead of the handgun.
“I must look like fool,” Vladimir shouted. “I am fool. I thought she was dead.” He spit his words in Nadia’s face. “You think you can just leave again? You trick me. Why not drown yourself for real? Leave me dirty work. It’s always left to Vlad.”
Leo was still crouched, growling, at Kache’s side.
“No. Just put the knife down.” I cannot let her die. I cannot let her die.
“Say good-bye to Nadia. This makes good song. At least she told you she has to leave. Me she only tricks.” He continued talking, most of it gibberish. Kache remembered that Nadia called Vladimir a patient trapper, and he wondered if that’s what this was, him feigning insanity while waiting for his moment. While Kache waited for his.
“Let her go. She hasn’t hurt you. Just let her go, and I’ll let you go.”
“You will let me? How kind.” Vladimir laughed, his disturbingly amiable laugh, as if they were all close friends.
As if he didn’t hold his hunting knife to Nadia’s throat.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-SEVEN
Nadia locked eyes with Leo, not Kache. She didn’t want Kache to look at her, because it would be the death of them. Yes, she told Leo without speaking. Keep your eyes on Vladimir’s knife.
The knife glinted moonlight in her eyes. She knew why he had a knife instead of the easier gun, knew that Kache had interrupted his long-thought-out plan. He had told her as much. He did not want to only kill her—the killing would be the last act of a winding story, and that is why he hadn’t yet cut her throat. Now he muttered about sacrificial lambs and goats and how the bear must always be fed.
For an instant, she imagined the thin red line and how it would spread. She closed her eyes, opened them. There were special effects. The silver light on the trees could be turned up so that it too had a sinister glint.
Slow motion set in. Frame by frame. Kache holding the gun in place, Leo crouched, silent now. Close up to his eyes on her, waiting.
• • •
There are different ways to tell a story. One second can be slowed down, dissected for all its worth: life, death, retribution. But whose?
What has been unclear for a decade comes into a single, focused frame.
You. Me. A knife.
Again.
But I said never again, and I meant it.
I built my life around never again.
And yet here we are.
You. Me. A knife.
But there is more now.
There is them.
Cut to them.
Look in their eyes and admit you see that I have found love despite you.
That alone is my revenge.
But what will be yours?
Killing me?
Or forcing me to kill you?
You think this choice belongs to you.
It does not.
It is mine.
• • •
She silently said Now to Leo with a nod. He snarled and leaped onto Vladimir, going for his throat. The man reeled back, trying to regain his balance. Leo released his hold, but Vladimir stumbled back, twisted around, hung on to Nadia.
Leo attacked again, and her feet went out from under her. Was this it? Her face was covered by his open jacket, falling. But then ground, not a freefall over the edge. She lay on top of him, scrambled up. Vladimir jumped to his feet, but before he could regain his balance, Leo pounced. Nadia thought but didn’t say, Kache, don’t shoot now. Don’t shoot Leo.
With all the strength
Vladimir had given her—for his wickedness had given birth to her courage as well as her fear, she knew that—Nadia reached out and placed her hands on his back, the heft of him crashing against her, but then came another pounce from Leo, a final heave from the deepest part of Nadia, and Vladimir became weightless. He plummeted off the edge, into the canyon.
His howls joined the wind. His screams—“MY GOD… My God… my god…”—faded into the infinite sea of trees.
CHAPTER
SIXTY-EIGHT
Kache ran to Nadia, gathering her up in his arms, asking, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” and she insisted she was while Leo jumped on both of them.
“Good boy, Leo, good boy,” Kache said, rubbing his head. They took small, careful steps nearer to the edge of the canyon, but not all the way. They held back, looking down. Nothing but the black, pointed shapes of the tops of trees. Kache took out his flashlight, but it provided a pinprick of light in the vastness.
Nadia said, “We should call the police.” She heard the tremble in her own voice.
They started back, but about halfway, Kache stopped. “Nadia. I don’t think we should call.”
“What if he’s not dead?”
“Exactly. Listen to me. If we call the police, there will be a huge media frenzy. It will become all about you—the hermit woman who fled her backwoods village. The Old Believer who faked her own death. They will put some strange spin on it, and you’ll be hounded by every talk show host and news agency in the country. And I know you did the bravest possible thing—but you may still be charged with murder.”
She understood. He was right about that. “What is it that we do?”
Kache began walking in fast circles around her, lost in thought. “I should go. I’ll go and find him.”
“And then what?”
“I just want to make sure he’s dead. No one could survive that fall. But just in case…”
“And if he isn’t dead?”
“I’ll decide what to do then. It depends…”
“On what? What if he kills you?”
“He won’t. He’s going to already be dead. I just want to make sure. I want to know, to see him with my own eyes so we both know.”
“How will you ever make it down there? It’s way too steep.”
“My dad did it. I can do it. I’ll take it slow.”
She didn’t want him to go, but she saw a determination cross his face that she understood. He would go anyway. It would do no good to fight him. It would undermine his confidence when he needed all of it. And she too wanted to know that Vladimir was dead for certain.
“Only if you take Leo with you.”
“Then I’ll have to worry about him falling. I’ve already lost one dog to this canyon.”
“But that was because Walter chased butterfly, dreaming and distracted. Leo is good on his feet. He will show you the way. And he will protect you if Vladimir…” But she couldn’t finish. She watched Kache while he considered her proposal.
“Okay,” he finally said. “There will be enough light soon. Let me get some supplies and one of the smaller packs. And rope in case I need it. Call Snag and have her come out to stay with you. Hurry.”
She could not keep her hands and words from quivering. “He was taking me to the beach, Kache. He said if I want to drown so badly, I should ask him for help the first time.” She left out all the other things he’d promised he would do to her.
“I’m so sorry. I should have never left you. But it’s over now. It’s almost over.”
She knew how wretched that canyon descent was and that they were still a long way from “almost over.” The adrenaline kept her legs moving forward as they raced their way up the hill toward the house.
• • •
A few hours after Kache and Leo had left, Snag paced a pathway from the homestead’s kitchen sink to the woodstove and back. She stared out the window. “Part of me—a big part of me—thinks we should call the police. But Kache is right about the media. It will be endless. It will be twisted. And it will be hard for you to survive it.” She’d started by holding out one finger, and with each point she made, she stuck out another finger. “And there’s no way a man could survive a fall like that. And this is Alaska. It’s the Wild, Wild West. And you’re saying he didn’t have any family or friends?”
“No, none. He was always loner. He came from the village in Oregon, but he left Altai not long after I did. He never mentioned anyone this whole time I knew him.”
Snag kept pacing. She called Gilly, and Nadia could hear them going over the story again until Snag said, “Yes, yes. You’re right. Okay. I’ll wait.” Then she turned to Nadia.
“If Kache doesn’t return by midmorning, I’m calling the police and search and rescue.”
CHAPTER
SIXTY-NINE
If it wasn’t for Leo, Kache wouldn’t have known where to break trail, but the dog seemed to have a sixth sense or at least a plan about how to go about descending the crevice—and that was more than Kache had.
So Leo led the way in the first breaking light, creating his own switchbacks when he could or stopping when he couldn’t and waiting for Kache to take his scythe to the profuse underbrush, alder, and berry bushes. Much of the still-clinging snow was mud streaked and not in the least bit stable, and Kache would often call Leo to his side and test it with the ski pole before they stepped. When they weren’t managing the rickety patches of snow, they were bogging through mud and newly released creeks. Every five or six steps, Kache stopped to listen for Vladimir, or for a bear and then set down the ski pole, picked up the scythe, and hacked at another gristly bush.
The sweat poured from him, even through the ridiculous cold. His clothes went from mud crusted to damp with sweat to washed clean but soaking wet from slipping in the creek water. His boots—good mountain-man boots—helped, but Kache needed much more than a good pair of boots.
How absurd. How cavalier of him, a man so ill equipped, to tell the fair maiden he would slay the dragon, the dragon she’d had the courage to kill. The dragon probably lay dead, and odds were that Kache would end up dead too before this thing played out. But he had to go. What else could he have done? He wanted only to get this one thing right.
“Keep going. Not much farther now, Kachemak.” He was so far gone that he heard his dead father talking to him. But he let him. Kache needed the company. “There’s a bench of land you can’t quite see yet. A nice big ledge that rises out of nowhere.”
“Is that where you found Walter?”
“Yes, Son, it is.”
Sure enough, the bench presented itself. Kache must have heard a tidbit of his parents’ discussion to have this information lodged in his subconscious and hear it resurface in his dad’s voice.
But all the same, Kache said aloud, “Thanks, Dad.”
“If he’s alive, you know what you have to do. I’ll be here for you, you understand?” Kache nodded that he did. “Now head west about fifty yards.”
Kache and Leo inched on in a westerly direction and came to a cleared area where large rocks—maybe a dozen of them—lined up, and when he stepped back, he saw that they were spaced in the shape of a W.
Walter. Good Walter.
Throat tight, he said, “Thanks for showing me this. It means something to me. It does. But I misunderstood.”
“You want to find the Russian. Keep going. About forty more yards.”
Milky light filled the sky. The cold and wet had ravaged his clothing, and he wished he could discard it. Leo sniffed the air incessantly, whined, snarled, and began barking. “Shh. Quiet, boy.”
Vladimir lay on the blood-soaked snow, which had turned a disturbing pink. A branch pinned him down, both legs bent in unbendable directions. “Thank God you have come. Thank God you are here,” he whispered, his face contorted, his breathing shallow. Kache checked his coat
and pants for the knife or a gun and then knelt to give him water. He saw then that Vladimir wasn’t under the branch but had been impaled through the gut by it. The branch was so thick, it must have been the top part of the trunk of a birch tree. Kache looked away when he thought he saw a smear of the man’s intestines on the bark.
“Vodka…in my pack…there. Then you shoot… Quick, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend. I should carve my initials all over you,” Kache said, but he found the pack a few yards away, retrieved the canister, and held it to Vladimir’s lips. “I can go and get help. We can helicopter you out.” He said this knowing that Vladimir would not survive the time it would take.
“Dying. Must shoot.”
“I don’t want to fucking shoot you.”
Vladimir grimaced. “You owe…nothing…but I beg…mercy.” He was crying now, coughing up blood. “Here.” He tapped his chest. “Shoot…”
Kache swigged the vodka out of the canister. Swigged again. Saw the dark eyes of the crippled moose, that day with his father. This isn’t murder, Son. It’s mercy. Kache put his hand in his pocket and set his fingers in their places. He said, “Vladimir, let’s talk about—” And in one fluid motion, Kache pulled the gun out and shot Vladimir in his dark heart above his pierced stomach.
The dead man stared at him, his eyes blank in their sinister beauty. Vladimir’s eyes truly were unique, almost purple, set off with black brows and thick eyelashes. His mother must have loved those eyelashes. Nadia must have too, at the very beginning.
I won’t tell her how much you suffered or how you begged, Kache thought. Even though I want to. He hung his head and cried out with relief and gratitude and shame. Leo whined and scratched at his leg.
• • •
Kache wept while he dug the shallow grave with a rock and the scythe, while he spread the mud and snow over Vladimir, the tree branch ironically serving as a headstone, the nubs of new leaf buds that would never unfurl. With a pocketknife, he carved the letter B into the wet ground and watched it disappear just as quickly. It most likely wasn’t enough of a grave to keep away a pack of wolves, or bears coming out of hibernation.
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