Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  “The hell are you talking about?”

  Gurney withdrew the Beretta from his pocket and made a point of confirming the presence of a round in the chamber.

  Steckle’s eyes widened. “What the fuck . . .?”

  Gurney smiled. “It’s almost funny, isn’t it? All that planning, all that elaborate deception. Then you trip over a pebble. The wrong look at the wrong moment. And it all collapses. You were positive we were here in our suite, because our conversation came to you through the bug that you planted here. Audio surveillance is such a reliable tool. Except when it isn’t. Problem is, it has a big limitation. It can’t distinguish between live voices and recorded voices.”

  Steckle’s face was as pale as the gray light from the windows. “This is completely nuts.”

  “Save your breath, Alfonz.”

  “Austen. My name is Austen.”

  “No it isn’t. Austen was the name of the rehabilitated man, the good man. But that man never existed. Inside, you were always Alfonz Volk. Embezzler, manipulator, and general piece of shit. You’re a bad man who killed good people. And that’s a real problem.” Gurney rose from the arm of the couch.

  He stepped over to the row of windows and ripped the cords out of two venetian blinds, then picked up an iron poker from the hearth. He tossed one of the long cords in Steckle’s lap.

  “What’s this?”

  Gurney adopted an attitude of creepy calmness. “The cord? The cord is the easy way.”

  “Easy way . . . to do what?”

  “The easy way to make sure you don’t run away.” He glanced vaguely at the poker but said nothing about it. The hard way was easy enough to imagine—and more frightening in the imagination than words could make it.

  Gurney smiled. “Please tie your ankles together—nice and tight.”

  Steckle stared at the cord. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I guarantee you got it wrong.”

  “You need to tie your ankles together right now.” Gurney’s hand tightened visibly on the poker.

  Steckle was shaking his head but did as he was told.

  “Tighter,” said Gurney.

  Again he did as he was told. His scalp was glistening with sweat.

  When his ankles were firmly bound together, Gurney told him to put his hands behind him. When he complied, Gurney used the second venetian blind cord to tie his wrists, running the end of the long cord under the seat of the chair and knotting it to the ankle cord.

  Steckle was breathing heavily. “This is all a bad dream, right?”

  Gurney came around in front of the chair to face Steckle. “Like the dream you dictated to Ethan?”

  “What? Why the hell would I do that?”

  “Why is obvious. What I didn’t understand at first was why Ethan would do it for you. Then I remembered something Fenton told me—to prove you couldn’t have forged the letter. He told me that up until last week you had a cast on your hand. He figured that exonerated you. But that turned out to be the answer to my question. You got Ethan to write out the dream narrative for you because of that cast.”

  “Gurney, this is crazy talk. Where’s the evidence?”

  Gurney smiled. “Evidence is only required by courts.”

  Steckle’s jaw muscles tightened.

  Gurney’s voice now was hard as ice. “The legal system doesn’t work. It’s a game. Smart guys win, dumb guys lose. Harmless idiots get jammed up for having a few street pills in their pockets, and really bad guys—the guys who kill good people—dance through the system with fancy lawyers.”

  He pointed the Beretta at Steckle’s right eye, then at his left eye, then at his throat, his heart, his stomach, his groin. Steckle flinched. Gurney continued. “The bad guys who kill good people—those are the ones who really bother me. Those are the ones I can’t ignore, the ones I can’t trust the courts to punish.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing, Alfonz. You have nothing to trade. You have nothing I want.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple. It’s not a negotiation. It’s an execution.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Gurney appeared not to hear him. “When bad people kill good people, I have to step in and do what the courts fail to do. Bad people don’t get to kill good people and walk away. Not on my watch. That’s my purpose in life. Do you have a purpose in your life?”

  Gurney raised the Beretta in a sudden movement, aiming it between Steckle’s eyes.

  “Wait! Christ! Wait a second! Who the hell are these good people you’re talking about?”

  Gurney did his best to conceal a sense of victory. He had Steckle believing he might be able to escape vigilante justice by proving his victims unworthy of any justice at all. It was a path on which the man was likely to incriminate himself in the belief that he was saving himself.

  “The good people I’m talking about are Ethan Gall and your buddies from Brightwater. But especially Ethan. That man was a saint.”

  “Okay, just a second. You want to know the truth?”

  Gurney said nothing.

  “Let me tell you about Ethan, the fucking saint.”

  Steckle launched into an excoriation of Gall as a maniacal control freak, obsessed with manipulating the lives of everyone around him—a tyrant who used the Gall New Life Foundation as a prison where his whims were law.

  “Every day, every minute, he tried to humiliate us, rip us into little pieces that he could glue back together, whatever way he wanted to—like we were goddamn toys. The great god Ethan. The great god Ethan was a disgusting monster. The whole world should be grateful he’s dead!”

  Gurney frowned as if absorbing significant new information. He lowered the gun, just a little. It was a tiny gesture with great meaning. It suggested that he could be persuaded. “What about Wenzel, Balzac, and Pardosa? You going to tell me they were control freaks, too?”

  Now Steckle’s eyes were full of calculation—the process of deciding how much to say without irrevocably incriminating himself. “No. I wouldn’t say that. My honest impression of them? From what I saw of them here at the lodge? Ants at the picnic. Petty criminal types. No loss to anyone. Trust me.”

  Gurney nodded slightly. A man learning sad truths. “No one would miss them?”

  Steckle produced an approving little click with his tongue. “In a nutshell.”

  “What about Hammond?”

  “What about him?”

  “A lot of damage has been done to him with that nightmare nonsense.”

  “Yeah? Well, how about all the damage that bright-eyed little faggot did—screwing up people’s lives with his great-to-be-gay crap?”

  “So you’re saying he deserved to be framed for four murders you committed?”

  “Whoa! All I’m saying is what goes around comes around. You’re saying good people got killed. I’m just setting you straight. Those people were scumbags.”

  Gurney lowered the gun a little further, creating the impression that Steckle’s argument might indeed be softening his determination to execute him. Then he frowned and steadied the gun, as though he’d come upon a final decision point.

  “What about Scott Fallon? You telling me he was a scumbag, too?” He aimed the Beretta directly at Steckle’s heart.

  “I had nothing to do with that!” The denial came out in a burst of panic—the denial and, in its wording, the implicit admission of his presence at Brightwater.

  Gurney raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The Lion, the Spider, and the Weasel . . . but not the Wolf?”

  Steckle seemed to realize that he was stepping into quicksand to escape from the fire.

  Steckle shook his head. “They were crazy. All three of them.”

  “Your buddies in the secret club were crazy?”

  “I didn’t realize how crazy. Fucking horrible. Horrible pointless shit they would do.”

  “Like what they did to Scott?”

  Steckle was staring at the floor. M
aybe wondering how deep the quicksand was.

  Gurney repeated his question.

  Steckle took a deep breath.

  “They dragged him out to the lake one night.”

  “And?”

  “They said they were going to teach him to swim.”

  Gurney felt himself recoiling inwardly from the scenario that was unfolding in his mind. He forced himself back to the moment. “I heard that the police dragged the lake but never found a body.”

  “They fished him out and buried him in the woods.”

  “They being Wenzel, Pardosa, and Balzac?”

  Steckle nodded. “Crazy fucking bastards. Hated homos. I mean really hated them.”

  “Which made them the ideal recruits for . . . your project.”

  “What I’m saying is that they were worthless fucking brain-dead assholes.”

  Now Gurney nodded. “Not good people. So killing them wouldn’t—”

  He was stopped by something that sounded like a faint scream. It seemed to have come from another part of the lodge—somewhere above him.

  He left Steckle tied to the chair and ran out of the suite, down the corridor, and into the dark attic staircase where he’d left Madeleine.

  CHAPTER 55

  She wasn’t on the stairs where he’d last seen her.

  He called to her. There was no answer. He remembered there was a switch on the wall of the stairwell. He felt for it, flipped it up, and the bare-bulb light came on in the ceiling over the top landing. He bounded up the stairs, two at a time, the Beretta still in his hand.

  He opened the attic door and felt for the wall switch he knew was there. The fixture high in the peaked roof came on. In the dusty light, the sheet-covered objects in the room—excess furniture, he assumed—appeared as before.

  He made his way quickly through this large storage area toward the door at the opposite end.

  He called out Madeleine’s name again.

  A strained voice came from somewhere beyond the far door. “In here.”

  He ran to the door and pushed it open.

  At first all he could see were the wolves—crouching in the unsteady beam of a flashlight—and their distorted shadows moving jerkily on the wall behind them.

  Then he saw Madeleine, backed into a corner, flashlight in hand, and he immediately regretted his decision not to mention the wolf tableau when he told her about his attic exploration—for fear that it would only raise her already high anxiety level.

  He located the cord dangling down from the roof-beam fixture and gave it a yank. The huge cave-like space was filled with a dim, dirty-looking light.

  He went to Madeleine. “Are you okay?”

  She pointed with the flashlight. “What are they?”

  “Wolves. Killed by Ethan’s grandfather. Part of the weird family history.” He paused. “How did you end up in here?”

  “I was at the top of the stairs. I thought I heard someone in the corridor near the foot of the stairs, so I went into that first room, the one with the sheets over everything. Then I was sure I heard the stairs creaking, so I came over into this room. At first I didn’t see the wolves. But then—my God, what a shock! But what about you? What happened in the suite?”

  Gurney related the key points of the confrontation as quickly as he could—everything from Tarr’s alleged chopping of the battery cables to Steckle’s panicked admission of prior contact with Wenzel, Balzac, and Pardosa; his knowledge of Scott Fallon’s death; and his hatred of Ethan Gall—all to Madeleine’s increasing astonishment.

  “Steckle’s down there now? In our room? My God, what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. The main thing is, he’s out of commission. But I am curious about those battery cables. Let’s go down and take a look.”

  THE SCENE THAT GREETED THEM IN FRONT OF THE LODGE WAS exactly as Steckle had described it. The hoods of the Outback, the Land Rover, and the three Jeeps were raised, the cables on all five batteries had been severed, and the battery casings had been penetrated by powerful blows from a very sharp hatchet or other axe-like implement.

  “Looks like he was telling the truth,” said Madeleine, zipping her jacket up to her chin against the sleety wind.

  “About what was done, yes. But who did it is still an open question.”

  “And you’re thinking Steckle did it to implicate Tarr?”

  “He could have.”

  “But . . .?”

  “But he might have had another reason, too. To keep us here.”

  “You mean, to keep us from getting away from him?”

  “Yes.”

  He realized that they might be able to snowshoe out, but the nearest civilization was at least fifteen miles away—and in sub-zero storm conditions that were getting worse by the hour such an endeavor could be extremely dangerous, if not fatal.

  “God, I’m freezing to death,” said Madeleine. “Can we go back inside?”

  Before Gurney could answer, all the lights in the lodge went out.

  The background hum of the generator died.

  And the only sound was the icy wind gusting through the pines.

  CHAPTER 56

  With the help of their flashlights they made their way back into the lodge.

  In the reception area, Gurney went behind the main desk to the old-fashioned pigeonhole compartments built into the wall and took the key from the compartment labeled “Universal”—which he hoped would open all the guest-room doors. The idea of keeping Steckle in their suite with them overnight did not appeal to him. He was thinking the best solution would be to keep the man securely immobilized in a neighboring room.

  In the upstairs corridor, instead of going directly to the suite, Gurney stopped at the door next to it and tried the key. It worked. He explained his plan to Madeleine, and they went into the room to look it over.

  In the beam of his flashlight Gurney spotted two kerosene lamps on the fireplace mantle along with a propane igniter—which he used to light both lamps, turning up the wicks for as much brightness as they could offer. Although the room was smaller than the suite, it had similar features and furnishings.

  With the central heating out of commission with the failed generator system, there was already a noticeable chill in the room—which prompted Gurney to set about building a fire. He wasn’t particularly concerned about Steckle’s comfort, but letting the man freeze to death overnight would create unnecessary problems.

  Madeleine watched anxiously as he bent over the hearth, arranging a pyramid of split logs over a bed of kindling. “Shouldn’t you be calling someone? The state police? The sheriff’s department?”

  “I can’t. The generator powers the cell tower.”

  “Aren’t there any landlines?”

  “The nearest would be in Bearston. Might as well be on the moon.”

  “What are you going to do about Tarr?”

  “There’s not much I can do—not at the moment.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Norris? Richard? Jane? Shouldn’t you tell them about Steckle? And warn them to be on the lookout for Tarr—in case he’s the one who wants to trap us all here?”

  The overload was starting to get the best of him. “I should. Of course. He straightened up from his fire-making and took a deep breath. “But there’s something important I need to tell you first. Something we discovered with the help of Robin Wigg. I got a text from Jack while I was with Steckle. It’s about what you saw in the tub.”

  She stood very still.

  “What you saw may have been a projected image—projected into the tub from the space above the ceiling.”

  She blinked in bewilderment.

  “Wigg gave us access to a password-protected website. There was a picture there of one of the devices that I believe was in the attic, over our bathroom—a very high-tech projector.”

  Madeleine blinked, looked stunned.

  “There’s a good chance that what appeared
to be an actual body was a manipulated image. Probably an old photograph of Colin Bantry that had been digitized, sharpened, colorized . . . then altered in ways consistent with the effects of drowning.”

  “But what I saw didn’t look anything like a photograph.”

  “It wouldn’t have. It would have looked very real. Very convincing.”

  Her appalled gaze seemed fixed not on him but on her memory of what she’d seen. “My God, who would do such a thing?”

  “Someone hell-bent to get what he wants at any cost.”

  “Someone? You mean someone other than Austen Steckle?”

  “Steckle is certainly clever and ruthless and willing to kill to get what he wants—but this projection thing has a different feel to it. Maybe it’s the restricted technology angle, maybe it’s the fact that it doesn’t quite fit with the other things he’s done. Steckle is a practical man, and I don’t see a practical relationship between the trouble he’d have setting that up and any benefit to him. And there’s the knowledge question—how could he possibly know about you and Colin Bantry?”

  Madeleine nodded. “Okay. I see that. But where does that take you?”

  “In the direction of a hidden manipulator. One with unlimited resources. Someone willing to use those resources to get us to leave Wolf Lake immediately.”

  “By terrorizing me?”

  “Yes. By creating that godawful bathtub illusion.”

  She shook her head, seemingly at a loss for words.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to the truth of it sooner.”

  “But you’re sure now? You’re sure that’s what it was?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God, I’m so . . . so . . . I don’t know what. Confused? Furious? Relieved?” She let out a small nervous laugh. “So I’m not crazy after all, am I?”

  “No, Maddie, you’re perfectly sane.”

  “We have to get him. We have to get that rotten bastard.”

  “We have to. And we will.”

  She nodded, her eyes alive with a new focus.

  WITH THE BLAZE IN THE FIREPLACE WELL ESTABLISHED AND BANKED with enough logs to keep it going through the night, Gurney decided it was time to move Steckle in there from the suite.