“No!” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. It’s all just... blank.”
“Did she...” Redd licked his lips. “Was it the cold? Hypothermia?”
He had to ask that, didn’t he? He couldn’t let Collins just get to that point on his own. Couldn’t let him have a little bit of peace before realizing that his bride hadn’t just wandered off and died in her sleep or succumbed to the cold. He had to know the reason.
“No,” Kenzie said shortly. “Something happened to her.”
Collins removed his hands from his eyes and looked at her. “What happened? What do you mean?”
Kenzie looked away from him, looking out the window. She was getting deeper and deeper into something that she was really not qualified to investigate. She wasn’t a cop. She didn’t interview suspects.
“I think maybe we should leave that to the police.”
“The police? What do the police have to do with this? It was an accident.”
Kenzie raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t sure how he could decide that it was an accident if he claimed not to remember what had happened.
“No, it wasn’t an accident.”
“Of course it was,” Redd said. “Wandering off in the middle of the night like that. It doesn’t really matter what she died of, it was obviously an accident. She didn’t go out there intending to get killed.”
“What do you remember?” Zachary asked. “You were out last night, weren’t you?”
“No. Well, yes. But that was... I was just checking on the weather. And I did hear a bit of the commotion. I just wondered... A person can’t help what they overhear. I wasn’t eavesdropping. It wasn’t as if I was listening with my ear pressed to the door.”
Collins looked at Redd. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The two of you were pretty loud,” Redd said defensively.
“Loud?” Collins’s face flushed. “We’re not loud enough for the neighbors...”
“You were arguing,” Redd explained. He made a gesture to indicate the room. “Look around you. What do you think happened here? You were yelling at each other, throwing things around.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You were here?” Collins asked. “In our house?”
Redd shifted uncomfortably. “I knocked. You guys were... I thought maybe someone had broken in. Attacked you. Or you were trying to chase out a burglar. A wild animal. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Weird stuff was going on. I thought I saw something outside... I thought... I don’t know what.”
“You saw what outside? You were in here? How did you get in?”
“You left the door unlocked. I just... you know... opened it to see if everything was okay. I knocked, but you didn’t hear me, with all the noise you were making. So I just opened the door to have a look. It was unlocked,” he repeated.
Collins looked at the front door as if he might be able to prove Redd wrong. Kenzie remembered Burknall telling them to lock their door. Had he seen Redd go into the Collins’s cabin uninvited?
“So what happened?” Zachary asked. “We’re trying to figure it out. You’re the one who seems to know something, so why don’t you tell us what it was you saw or know?”
Redd paced back and forth and ran his fingers through his hair. He tried to compose an answer, but obviously he wouldn’t be able to come up with something that would suit everyone. Collins, at least, would be embarrassed. A woman was dead. Redd had already admitted to walking into the cabin through an unlocked door, knowing that he hadn’t been invited in. He was guilty of that much, if nothing more.
“I just wanted to see what was going on, see whether anyone needed my help,” he repeated. “They were being really loud. Yelling and throwing things around. So I opened the door; I thought there might be an intruder.”
“And...?” Zachary prompted.
“There wasn’t anyone else there, just the two of them, screaming at each other. Pushing, throwing things, acting like... wild. I don’t know. You don’t see people behaving like that. Grown adults. A married couple. After all of the mooning around, making out, ignoring everyone else and pretending to be in love...”
“We are in love,” Collins insisted.
“They were behaving like wild animals,” Redd repeated, not meeting Collins’s eyes.
“Okay,” Kenzie said, trying to keep her voice calm and nonjudgmental. Neither one of them needed to hear how she felt about their behavior the night before. Or her suspicions. “So you saw that they were fighting. Did you know what it was about? Did you stay and talk, or leave again? What happened next?”
“I just kind of stuck my head in the door, and I saw what was happening. I thought maybe it was an act. They were pretending, or doing it for a video, or role playing. I don’t know. But they seemed to be really... both of them really angry, like none of it was put on.”
“And...”
“And I left. I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t stop them, could I? I didn’t want to get in the middle of something and end up getting hurt, or maybe someone else getting hurt because... I made things worse.” He gave a sort of a shudder, standing still in one place.
Kenzie saw the motion mirrored by Zachary, sitting on the other side. It was very small, and if she weren’t so attuned to his emotional state all the time, she would probably never have noticed. But what Redd had said had caused an emotional reaction in Zachary. Kenzie closed her eyes briefly, and she could see Zachary, a little boy, peeking around a doorway at his parents in a drunken fight. He had told her that they used to fight. Not just yelling and arguments, but hitting and shoving each other and throwing things. Probably leaving the house in much the same state that the Collins’s cabin was in now. He knew the feeling that Redd was talking about. Knowing that if he made a sound, if he put himself into the middle of the fight, he would get hurt or make it worse for one of his parents.
“So you left,” Kenzie said. “You thought that was the best thing to do.”
Redd nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry I didn’t know how else to handle it. You can’t get into the middle of something like that. One person can’t stop it. Sometimes... several people together can’t stop it.”
“Did you go to get help?”
“I saw Mr. Burknall. He was coming out of Raven’s cabin. She must have had trouble getting a fire going or something. He was all over this place, trying to make sure everyone was comfortable last night. He was probably up half the night.”
And so were several others, apparently.
“And you tried to get him to help?”
“Kind of... I told him that something was going on... that I thought they needed help.”
And then ran the other direction and hid behind his own door.
“I’ll talk to him later about what he did,” Kenzie said. “But I know he said that the two of you were... acting strangely,” Kenzie addressed this to Collins, who was looking bewildered by Redd’s description. “Later, when he came over to our cabin.”
“It was a spooky night,” Redd said. “All of that wind and snow. The whole world looked different. And then it was suddenly quiet, the wind gone, like we were in the eye of a hurricane. Everything was... too still. And there were things...” Redd scratched his arms and shook his head, looking small and afraid. “I don’t know what. It doesn’t make much sense when I look back at it now. But last night, when it was all going on... I could see things.”
“What kind of things?” Kenzie asked.
“I don’t know. Shapes in the dark. Shadows. Maybe they were animals. But with weird shadows.”
Kenzie had to shake her head at that one. She had no idea what it was Redd had seen. But it didn’t seem to be anything to do with Andy and Brooke Collins.
“And that’s the last that you saw of Brooke last night?”
Redd paced to the window to look out. “No.”
28
You saw her after that? Doing what?”
“She a
nd Andy were outside. I guess... I don’t know if the argument spilled outside, or she wanted to go to one of the other cabins to get away from him. But she ran out. And he ran out, and they were still talking, arguing, going back and forth, around the cabins...”
Creating at least part of the trampled-down snow trails outside. Like a bizarre game of fox and geese, a tag game she used to play in the snow at school.
“Did you see either of them... hurt each other?”
“Just chasing around. Arguing.”
“I don’t remember any of this,” Collins insisted. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No.” Redd lifted his hands up helplessly. “It didn’t.”
“So did they eventually go back inside?” Zachary asked.
“I don’t know. They were all over the place, I had a hard time keeping track. And I was trying to watch the other shapes. Worried that the storm would come again when we had passed through the eye. If I went out there, I might get stuck in the blizzard or caught by one of the monsters. So I didn’t... I didn’t go back outside again. And I don’t know... what happened eventually, if they both went back inside.”
But of course, they knew that she hadn’t gone back inside. Or if she had, initially, then she had soon left again. Going off into the woods. Being stabbed to death and dying out there of a stab to the heart.
“None of this makes any sense,” Collins said. “We love each other. I would never do anything to hurt Brooke. She must have gone off and... did she trip and fall? Or maybe a wild animal...?”
“No.” Kenzie decided she would have to be up-front about it. She couldn’t very well keep the truth from Andy Collins. They were going to keep asking questions and guessing and making up bizarre excuses and explanations until it was all out in the open. The police might have made a different choice in their interrogations, but the police weren’t there. And who knew how long it would be before they were. “Andy, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but your wife was stabbed.”
“Stabbed.” He looked at her with wide eyes. “What do you mean, stabbed?”
“With a knife or another blade-like instrument. In the chest. Somebody intended to kill her. And they succeeded.”
“Who would do something like that? What kind of monster could even consider...” Collins shook his head in disbelief.
His choice of the word monster echoed what Redd had just said about being afraid of being caught by a monster outside. What the heck had been going on the night before? Weird stuff, Burknall and Redd had both said. But something must have triggered it. Some animal shape or noise? A person with a mask? Brittany in her furs?
What could Redd have mistaken for a monster? Or what had he taken to trick his brain into thinking that he had seen one? Collins claimed that he and Brooke had not taken anything, but she was pretty sure he was lying. Had they shared with Redd? Or had he taken something on his own? Or just had too much to drink and his writer’s fertile imagination had taken over? How much of what he had seen in the night had been real and how much had been imaginary or a nightmare when he had nodded off to sleep?
“I don’t know who it was,” Kenzie said. She slid her chair an inch or two closer and leaned toward him. “I wanted to make sure that you don’t have any injuries. I thought maybe if the two of you had fought off an intruder, like Redd suggested, or if you were both attacked in the woods... maybe you hit your head and you don’t remember.”
“No. I don’t have any injuries,” Collins said doubtfully. He ran his hands over his head, searching for a goose egg. He patted his body lightly. His chest in case, like his wife, someone had stabbed him and he had somehow failed to notice. He didn’t appear to have sustained any injuries in his fight with Brooke or in the aftermath of that fight.
“Maybe I could take a closer look?” Kenzie offered. “I have some training in first aid.” No need to tell him that she was actually a doctor. He would probably be more comfortable if he thought she was a nurse or had just taken a corporate first aid class. She stood up and approached him.
As soon as Collins nodded, Kenzie looked at Zachary to make sure that he had seen the man consent, and then moved in. She touched his head lightly. “I’m just going to make sure there are no bumps or bruising.”
She took longer than he had to examine his scalp to make sure he didn’t have any sign of a head wound. There wasn’t anything. There was a scratch down one cheek that she hadn’t noticed from farther away. A scratch that could have come from a stray tree branch on the trail. Or his wife’s fingernail.
“One scratch here,” Kenzie murmured, hopefully loud enough that Zachary’s recorder would pick it up, “high on your left cheek. Let’s see your hands.”
He offered them to her palms-up. Kenzie checked for any cuts on his palm that might indicate he had been the one to stab Brooke, his hand slipping off the handle and running down the blade. She turned them over, checking the knuckles for bruising or split skin. “No marks on your hands.”
She didn’t lift up his shirt or make any examination of his torso. “And you don’t have any injuries anywhere else? Any tender spots that I should check?”
“No.” He moved experimentally, feeling his range of motion. “Sore muscles, that’s all. As if I had worked out or slept on an uncomfortable bed.”
Or the couch or the floor where he had eventually collapsed.
Or maybe he was sore from a physical altercation with his wife.
29
I can’t understand what happened,” Collins said. He dropped his head into his hands and held it as if it were throbbing. Depending on what he had partaken of the night before, he might have a pretty nasty hangover. Maybe things would get clearer when he was feeling better. But for the time being, she didn’t think she was going to be able to get anything more out of him. The previous evening did appear to be one huge blank for him. There was no indication that he remembered anything that had happened after dinner, however bizarre it all seemed. “It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t believe that Brooke is dead. How could she be dead? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
As difficult as it was to call a death in the freezing temperatures Brooke’s body had been exposed to, Kenzie knew that she wasn’t going to revive when her body thawed out. Not with a stab wound through the heart. Kenzie gave Collins a smile that was as sympathetic as possible. “I’m so sorry. I think... you probably shouldn’t be alone. Someone should stay with you.”
She looked at Redd, who immediately understood. Redd looked at Zachary. “Maybe you could stay with him? I’ve already been with him... I should probably get breakfast. Get to work. I am here on a writing retreat, not just to relax.”
As if anyone would relax sitting with the man whose wife had just been murdered.
“I need to stay with Kenzie,” Zachary said. “Make sure nothing happens to her.”
“She can just go back to her cabin. Or she can stay here with you. You can both stay here,” he said brightly. “That would be better, wouldn’t it?”
“We need to go find Vance Stiller,” Zachary explained.
Kenzie’s heart sank. She didn’t want to deal with the man again. No matter what kind of mood he was in or what had happened the night before. She didn’t want to ever speak to the insufferable man again. Especially not when she was feeling so tired and raw from everything that had already happened that morning.
“We need to,” Zachary repeated softly, reading Kenzie’s expression.
“I know.”
“Sorry.”
“Why do you need to go find Vance Stiller?” Redd demanded. “I can do that.”
“We need to do it. But before we go...” Zachary looked at Kenzie, raising one eyebrow.
Kenzie was uncertain what he was trying to impart to her, what he expected her to say. She shook her head slightly. What?
“We should probably make sure that you’re not hurt either,” Zachary explained. “With everything that happened last night, all of that disruptio
n and the weird stuff that happened. You could have gotten hurt too.”
“I didn’t hit my head,” Redd insisted. “And I didn’t fall asleep and dream this whole thing up, I’m telling you that.”
“No, of course not,” Kenzie agreed. “And Zachary’s right. With all of that weird stuff, you’ll want to know that you’re okay.”
He seemed far less certain of this than Collins, but when Kenzie approached him, he gave a shrug and let her take his hands, examine both sides and his forearms, and then his face. “No marks,” Kenzie said for the recorder. “Face and hands are fine.” She ran her hands over Redd’s head, fingers light, alert for anything that was not as it should be. He was very warm. Did he have a fever? That might account for the claim he had seen monsters the night before. And it might account for anything he had seen of Andy and Brooke Collins, too. His was the only eyewitness testimony they had so far, but that might be tainted if he had a fever.
“Maybe a bit warm. Are you feeling okay?”
Redd felt his own forehead as if this might help him to answer the question. “I don’t know. I feel strange, but I don’t think I’m sick. I haven’t been throwing up or anything. I don’t have those usual ‘flu-like symptoms’ they’re always talking about.” He gave a small laugh. “Why is it so many diseases start with flu-like symptoms?”
“I don’t know,” Kenzie said, shaking her head. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it? Do you hurt anywhere else? Do you have sore muscles or joints?”
“No, all pretty much the same as usual. A little writer’s elbow, maybe,” he said, rubbing the back of his right elbow. “But that comes with the territory.”
“Really.” Kenzie knew that repetitive stress injuries for workers who used computers all day tended to be in the wrists and shoulders. But who knew what kind of posture he used at the computer? Maybe he did have writer’s elbow.
“Okay, we better be going then,” she told Zachary. “Let’s see if Mr. Stiller is in his cabin.”
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