In the Dark of the Night

by John Saul

  Chris looked up at the sky. The rain that had been falling all through Ellis Langstrom’s funeral had all but stopped, though the clouds still hung overhead like a shroud, which would probably be enough to keep anyone else from coming down to the village. He knew if they didn’t do something, Adam would spend the next two hours bitching about the summer people. “Let’s go,” he said, never noticing that Adam hadn’t been staring at the lake at all.

  Rather, he’d been staring at the little boat that was bobbing on the water off the point that separated the town from The Pines.

  ERIC PUT HIS fishing pole in a rod holder and zipped up his sweatshirt against the wind that had started blowing down from the north.

  “I thought fish were supposed to bite when it rains,” Tad complained.

  Eric glanced up at the dark sky. Half an hour ago, taking the boat out had seemed like a good idea. Better, anyway, then just sitting around thinking about Ellis. But now that they were actually on the lake, he wasn’t so sure how good an idea it had been.

  The lake was empty except for a couple of old fishermen in their rain gear, sitting motionless at anchor in the midst of the wild rice that spread out from the far shore. Even as he watched, a brief rain squall made them vanish altogether. A moment later the squall passed, and once more Eric could see the old fishermen, as oblivious of the rain as they seemed to be of anything else. And yet Eric couldn’t stop thinking.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about Ellis Langstrom, and about the funeral, and about everything else. He reeled in his lure, then cast it out again, barely watching where it landed, and as he eyed Tad Sparks and Kent Newell, he knew they were thinking about the same things. “You think maybe something could have happened when we started putting all the stuff back together?” he asked, seeing by their expressions that they knew exactly what he was talking about. But when neither of them spoke, he went on. “I don’t know, this sounds so stupid…” he began, but then let his words trail off, not sure he wanted to voice what he was thinking.

  “What?” Kent asked. “Say it.”

  Eric took a deep breath. “It just seems like—well, maybe we helped the personalities of the killers who owned those things come back to life.” He looked at Kent and Tad, who were staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Sort of,” he added.

  “Oh, man,” Tad breathed. “That’s just too weird.” But in spite of his words, he shivered, and unconsciously pulled his jacket tighter.

  The three of them sat still, staring at one another, none of them quite willing to be the next to speak. Then the far-off sound of an outboard motor droned across the water, and all three boys looked toward its source.

  A boat was coming directly toward them, running at full throttle.

  A boat Eric instantly recognized. He quickly reeled in his line as it approached, praying he was wrong about what was about to happen. But as the boat raced closer and he recognized Adam Mosler standing at the wheel, he knew his first instinct had been right. “It’s Mosler!” he yelled, and then Kent and Tad were scrambling to pull in their lines as Eric pulled the rope on the outboard.

  The little engine didn’t catch.

  “Hurry!” Tad said.

  Eric checked the choke and pulled again.

  Nothing.

  Mosler’s boat was bearing down on them, the roaring engine echoing across the silent lake.

  Eric pulled again, and this time the little motor sputtered and then came to life.

  Too late.

  A split second before the prow of Adam Mosler’s boat would have slammed into the side of their skiff, Adam suddenly cranked the wheel hard, his boat heeled into a tight turn, and a huge wake surged toward the little boat that was already all but overloaded by the three boys in it.

  The pitch from the wake caught Tad standing up. He stumbled, tried to catch his balance, then collapsed into the boat, banging his head on the gunwale. “Sit down!” Eric yelled, and Kent instantly responded, dropping to the center bench and holding on to both sides of the rocking boat.

  Eric crouched on the bottom, holding on to the tiller.

  Mosler gunned the motor again, spun in a tight circle around them, and even in the gray light of the evening, Eric could see his eyes glittering with rage. Then he tore off to the north, turned, and came racing back, once again turning at the last possible moment, sending water cascading over the three boys in the rowboat and making it pitch and roll so badly it nearly capsized.

  Then, on the third run, Adam cut it too close, and the stern of his speedboat caught the small outboard, wrenching it loose from the transom and sending a wash of water over Eric at the same time the boat rolled for the last time.

  Eric lost his balance, his elbow smashing against the gunwale an instant before the boat capsized, dumping him—along with Tad, Kent, and all their gear—into the lake.

  Adam, seemingly stunned by what had happened, throttled back his boat, and for a moment he and Chris McIvens stared at the three boys thrashing in the water. Eric thought they were going to come back and help them, but then Adam gunned the engine once more, twisted the wheel, and a moment later the runabout was up on a plane, racing back toward town.

  Eric grabbed a floating cushion and swam over to Tad, who was clinging to what was left of a Styrofoam cooler. Tad had a gash on the back of his head and blood was sheeting out of it and running down his neck. He seemed too dazed even to realize what had happened, but when Eric shoved the cushion under him, he managed to cling to it.

  As Kent swam over to them, Eric looked toward shore. Pinecrest was nothing more than a small smudge of green lawn in the distance. “I don’t think Tad can swim all the way back,” Eric said as they bobbed in Adams slowly calming wake.

  As if to confirm Eric’s words, Tad laid his head on the cushion, and his grip on it visibly weakened. Eric grabbed onto Tad’s shirt. “We’ve got to get him back in the boat.”

  “I don’t think we can even get it turned over,” Kent said. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t just sink. Let’s see if we can get Tad onto it, then maybe we can push the boat ahead of us.”

  Together, the two boys towed Tad back to the overturned boat. Kent carefully hoisted himself on top of the hull and helped Eric muscle Tad up the keel. Though barely conscious, Tad gripped the slippery wood, then began to shiver, his lips turning blue.

  Kent slid back into the water. “Push,” he told Eric, grabbing hold of the broken transom and kicking his legs as hard as he could. Eric, a flotation cushion under his chest, worked his way up next to Kent, and then both of them were kicking, trying to move the overturned boat toward shore.

  But the boat didn’t move.

  “The anchor,” Kent said, realizing what was happening.

  Eric moved around to the bow of the boat, groping inside the overturned hull until his fingers found not only the rope, but the rusty eyebolt to which the rope was tied.

  Tied so tightly that Eric knew he wouldn’t be able to work the knot loose.

  Nor was there anything left with which to cut the rope.

  “We’ll have to pull it up,” he called to Kent, and a moment later the other boy was beside him.

  Once more climbing up onto the hull, Kent grabbed the anchor line and slowly brought it up while Eric did his best to keep the overturned boat from rolling so far that both Kent and Tad would be thrown back into the water.

  Slowly, so slowly that Eric wasn’t sure it was happening at all, the anchor began to come loose from the mud at the bottom of the lake. Then, at last, he felt the boat lighten, and as Kent kept pulling up the anchor line, he once again kicked hard.

  The boat inched toward shore.

  After a few minutes that seemed like much longer, Tad regained enough consciousness to cling to the rope while Kent slid back into the water to help Eric move the ruined skiff through the water. They swam in silence, kicking hard, gripping the stern of the boat even as their fingers, then their hands, and finally their arms, went numb.

  As darkness was
falling and Eric was about to give up hope that they would make it, he felt something beneath his feet.

  “We did it!” he croaked as he stood up, the water now only chest-deep.

  Moving around to the prow of the boat, he took the anchor line from Tad and pulled the boat far enough in so its gunwale stuck in the mud. Then, as Kent helped Tad get to shore, Eric hauled the anchor out of the now shallow water.

  But it wasn’t just the anchor that came up. An ancient crawfish trap, its float—and the rope that tethered the float—stuffed inside the trap itself, appeared.

  When they’d dropped the anchor, one of its tines had caught the trap. Even with the whole mess on shore, it still took Eric nearly a full minute to extract the anchor from the rusting trap. Meanwhile, Tad regained his strength, and Kent came over to help Eric.

  Then he saw that the anchor, the float, and its plastic line weren’t the only things that were in the trap.

  There was something else as well.

  As Kent picked up the old float and started scraping the slime away, Eric gazed silently at the other object that had fallen from the trap.

  A moment later Kent had scraped enough of the slime from the float to read the single faded word that had been put on the float to identify the trap’s owner.

  “Jesus,” Kent whispered. “Look at this.” He held it out for Eric and Tad to see. DARBY.

  All three of them gazed at the float for a long time, then, though no one had said anything, they turned to the other object that had been in the trap.

  It was covered with rust and missing its handle, but there was no mistaking what it was.

  The blade of an axe.

  ADAM MOSLER AND Chris McIvens sat silently in Sheriff Ruston’s office, their heads down, their gazes fixed on the floor. “Tad Sparks had to have eleven stitches in the back of his head,” Ruston began. “You two should both be on your knees thanking your lucky stars that none of them were killed.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” Adam stammered, but Ruston didn’t hear anything that sounded like genuine penitence in his voice.

  “You’re going to be a lot sorrier when those parents decide what charges to press.” Ruston got up from his chair and walked around to the front of his desk. “Criminal mischief. Destruction of property. Reckless endangerment.” He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. “Attempted murder, three counts.” He let that sink in for a moment, then went on. “You’re in serious trouble, Adam. Eric Brewster’s father is a lawyer. A damned good lawyer.”

  Adam sucked in a ragged breath. “It was an accident,” he whispered.

  “‘Accident’ my ass!” Ruston snapped, his words lashing like the tip of a whip. “Fortunately for you, those same three parents have cool heads, and seem to think maybe at least some of what you two did could have been accidental. So here’s what’s going to happen. They’re going to talk things over tomorrow, after all of them have had a chance to sleep on it, and see how the Sparks boy is doing. Wednesday is the Fourth, so they’re not going to tell me what they’ve decided until Thursday morning. Which gives you two days to think about things, deal with your own parents, and hire yourselves an attorney.” His eyes fixed on Chris McIvens. “And don’t think for even one minute that just because you weren’t driving the boat that you’re off the hook. You’re not.” He wheeled back to Adam Mosler. “As for you, at the very least you’ll be buying Pinecrest a brand new boat.”

  Mosler glowered up at Ruston. “That boat was a piece of shit.”

  “Well, the new boat you buy for them won’t be.”

  Adam’s features hardened into a sullen mask. “Those assholes killed Ellis.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ruston said.

  “Why?” Mosler sneered. “Because they’re rich?”

  Ruston’s eyes narrowed to a dangerous squint. “If I were you, I’d start watching my mouth,” he said softly, “otherwise Dan Brewster might just add a slander count to the rest of your offenses.”

  Ruston’s phone rang once, and then the fax machine on the credenza behind his desk came alive. He glanced at the clock—almost nine-thirty. Frowning, he reached back and pulled the cover sheet out of the machine the second it finished printing, glanced at it, then peered once more at the two boys he’d been doing his best to scare some sense into for the last hour. “Out of here,” he barked. “Both of you. And I don’t even want to hear any rumors about you two, understand?” He held Adam Mosler’s gaze until the boy finally broke, nodding his agreement to the sheriff’s words. Ruston tipped his head toward the door and both boys bolted before he could change his mind.

  As the door closed behind them, he reached out and picked up the next few pages of the report the coroner’s office was faxing, knowing from the lateness of the hour that the news was not going to be good.

  He scanned the pages, searching for the cause of death, and when he found it his stomach knotted.

  Blunt force, trauma to the head, resulting in cranial fracture.

  The details were even worse. Pieces of pine bark had been found embedded in the skin, the skull, and brain, indicating that Ellis Langstrom had been clubbed so hard that it crushed his skull.

  His arm had been severed inexpertly by a saw, right through the bone.

  The pages clutched in his hand, Rusty sank deep into his chair. How the hell was he going to tell Carol Langstrom how her son had died?

  And how was Mayor Ray Richmond going to keep it from Gerald Hofstetter? He couldn’t, any more than he could stop Hofstetter from printing the story.

  Which, he was certain, would be the end of the lucrative summer season.

  It wasn’t just Carol Langstrom who was going to be battered by this report.

  It was the whole town.

  Beyond that, there was his own personal problem: finding out who had killed Ellis Langstrom, why whoever it was had done it, and how he was going to prove it.

  Adam Mosler’s accusation rose unbidden in his mind: Those assholes killed Ellis.

  He remembered all three of them being at the funeral.

  The perpetrator always revisits the scene of the crime.

  He remembered thinking that those boys knew more than they were saying.

  From the depths of his memory he recalled a book he’d read a long time ago, about two other boys from Chicago. What were their names?

  Leopold. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

  Best friends who had killed someone just to see if they could do it.

  Just for the fun of it.

  Was it possible that the same thing had happened here, only this time there were three boys involved?

  Why had the fathers of two of those boys come into his office the next day? Had they been just taking the temperature of the local officials, or was there something they knew?

  Maybe he’d been a little too hasty in giving those three boys the benefit of the doubt.

  Maybe he ought to talk to them again.

  Maybe he ought to ask them to come into his office, instead of going out to Pinecrest.

  He unconsciously tapped the end of his pen on the report as he turned it over in his mind.

  Seconds turned into minutes.

  He kept tapping, kept thinking.

  And he listened to his gut, which was still telling him that those boys had not killed Ellis Langstrom.

  Who, then?

  And then he remembered something Dan Brewster had said only a couple of hours ago, when he’d gone out to Pinecrest to hear exactly what had transpired on the lake that evening when Mosler and McIvens rammed the Pinecrest boat. He hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time—he was far more interested in what Adam and Chris had been up to. But just before he’d left to pick up the two delinquents, Dan Brewster said his daughter had seen a scary looking man out on the lake in a rowboat that, at least according to his daughter, had something like a cross in the bow.

  Ruston had known who it was right away, of course—old Riley Logan, who’d been living out in the wood
s for years, minding his own business except for his occasional forays into town to do some Dumpster diving.

  And not causing anyone any trouble.

  Yet now, as he reread the coroner’s report one more time, Rusty Ruston found himself thinking about Logan.

  And not just about Logan.

  There was also the Hanover girl’s murder.

  Suddenly his gut was stirring.

  Not churning, but stirring.

  Trust your gut, he told himself.

  Trust your gut.

  AT PRECISELY EIGHT o’clock the next morning, Ashley Sparks parked her car in the small lot behind Carol Langstrom’s antiques shop and found the key to the back door in the same spot where it had been “hidden” for at least the last five years. She was an hour early; that would give her time to go over the inventory book and familiarize herself with anything in the store she might not have seen before.

  A square brown box—stained and battered—sat on the top step, and Ashley opened the door, turned off the alarm with the code Carol had given her, then picked up the box. Taking it inside, she put it on Carol’s desk and started to open it. But even before she’d pulled the first of the interlocking flaps loose, she hesitated.

  Why hadn’t the box been taped shut? Surely it hadn’t been shipped like this. It took her less than five seconds to find the answer to that question: the box bore no label at all, which meant it hadn’t been shipped.

  Then why was it there?

  The answer to that question came just as quickly: it was something personal that someone had left for Carol, not knowing it wasn’t going to be Carol who opened the store. And if it was personal, she shouldn’t open it.

  Turning away from the desk, Ashley moved through the office door into the shop itself, savoring the fragrance of the store; it smelled like tung oil and furniture polish. She’d always loved that smell, ever since she’d been a little girl and started poking around antiques shops with her mother. But this morning there was a dark undertone to the familiar fragrance.