“How long should we stay out here for?” one trooper asked the other as he slapped his gloved hands against his thighs.
“Should have worn your tights.”
“It’s not my legs I’m worried about.”
“Like that would be such a loss for humanity,” his colleague replied. “Let me check with dispatch.”
They were parked in an open stretch of road that seemed to reach the end of the horizon on both sides. Behind them the glow from Sherman Falls was too distant to be visible, and ahead of them the blank road seemed to lose itself in the mountains. The beams from the cruiser were the only lights for miles, and they fought a losing battle against the approaching nightfall.
Chapter 25
The darkness could be hard to deal with, especially in winter, when it appeared to come suddenly and so completely that it felt like a hood had been pushed down over your face. Still, the darkness was little compared with the cold. The long summer evenings, with their soft light filtering through the gaps in the planks, were a relief when they came after the torture of the sunny days, which transformed the tin-roof shed into a small hell for anyone who deserved it—and many did, it seemed, on a regular basis.
The cold in winter, though—the numbing cold that drained all the life out of one’s body—that was the worst of all, and it was reserved for those particular days when the offense had been of outstanding malice and thus needed the cold to purge it out of the sinner. Samuel sat in the lonely place—he could only sit or stand because the hut was too small for any other kind of physical exertion. He couldn’t remember how it came to be named the lonely place. It was what everybody had always called it—even his younger brothers and sisters—and for a reason he couldn’t explain, it made him achingly sad when they did.
The punishment had come, as he knew it would, and he had been inside the hut for hours. Incapable of stirring to keep himself warm, except for the most basic of movements, the boy opened and closed his hands and shifted his feet against the dirt floor.
He had not eaten all day, he had not drunk since noon, and he had on his back only what he had been wearing when his father had woken him up and sent him out into the forest for the hunter-and-prey practice.
The offense had been serious because not only had Samuel been caught by his brother Luke, but he had also lied about the circumstances of his capture. He had been hunted and captured and had tried to escape the consequences of his mistakes. No one, his father had said, escapes the consequences of their mistakes. And he was there to teach them that some mistakes were more serious than others, and lying was the worst.
Samuel had understood too late that his fate had been sealed the moment his father had seen him in Luke’s grip, that nothing he could say would have changed the man’s mind. He wondered what lesson his father was trying to teach him. What was the good in being stuck in the lonely place for a lie he had not told? Samuel wiped his nose on his sleeve.
Cold and hungry and weak as the boy felt, Samuel thought of Cal, and the mere notion of his brother being free somewhere out there in the world was a warm spot in his chest, under all the layers of chill. Cal had explained to him that the best way to get through the lonely place was to make sure his body didn’t become too rigid in the winter and too parched in the summer.
He always had to be prepared for a stint in the hut and must keep himself strong in order to withstand it. “There will be hours when there’s nothing but the cold trying to hurt you. So you forget about the lonely place and think about walking in the forest, think about going for a walk in the woods with me. What we would see, where we would go. Can you do that?”
Samuel had been twelve at the time—the age when grown-up punishments had begun—and he had nodded. His first stay in the hut had been a nightmare: ten hours one April. He had come out at the end with shaky legs and hollow eyes.
Though Samuel’s body was bound to the inside of the hut, his mind was not, and it kept traveling back to Luke’s words and the leer in his voice. What had he meant? Cal had run away one night after their father had put him in the hut for a particularly long spell. It had been months earlier: last spring, just before the thaw. When his father had gone to release him at dawn, he found that Cal had disappeared. And from that day on, the boy’s name could not be uttered in his presence. Something uncoiled in the back of Samuel’s gut, a nameless dread that he could not and would not face. He stood up suddenly, feeling a bite of damp, freezing air deep inside each breath and reaching into the middle of his chest.
There was a rustle close by and Samuel stood still. Hardly any light filtered through the heavy drapes in the main cabin across the clearing and Samuel’s eyes blinked in the gloom. Had his father come to let him out? No one else was allowed to come close or even talk to someone when they were in the lonely place.
A soft step creaked behind him and the boy whipped around. Something scraped at the wood, at the planks that had been hastily nailed together. It could have been an animal, it could have been anything. Samuel backed away from the wall as far as he could, flattening himself against the door.
“Samuel . . .”
It was barely a whisper and he leaned into it, praying it would come again.
“Samuel . . .”
The boy reached forward. His hands were on the rough, plain surface, on the gaps between the planks. He felt it immediately, and his numb fingers caught hold of it. Bread. A slice of bread first and then a hunk of cheese. The smell of both flooding the darkness of his senses.
Samuel held both in one hand and waited with his head leaning against the wall, afraid to make the smallest sound in case anyone in the cabin heard him.
Nothing more came for him through the gap, and after a few minutes the boy sat back down and devoured the food. He honestly tried to eat slowly and make it last, but it was entirely beyond him. He was famished, and the fresh bread and tangy cheese tasted wonderful.
Who could have done such a thing? He himself had never dared. As far back as he could remember no one had ever dared to bring food to someone in the lonely place. The food made him giddy. That’s why it was called the lonely place, silly, because no one could talk or give food or water to anybody in it. Could it have been one of his younger sisters? Would any of them have been so brave, so reckless? What would it take to go against his father’s will? Only a strong heart would dare, only someone who was not afraid. Samuel shivered in the shed as the icy breeze found all the openings and the slits in the walls around him.
He was not entirely alone, he thought, someone out there was on his side. It was the first spark of hope in months, and it made him feel all lit up inside: he could get through the night, he could survive being hunted and Luke’s clasp around his neck, because he was not alone. In a way, he had always known that Cal would not leave him—not entirely—and he would be watching over him, somehow.
Samuel stood, stamped his feet, and ran his hands over his wiry arms. His head felt warm now, like his chest. When his father came to let him out—hours and hours later—Samuel wobbled his way back into the cabin and curled up in front of the wood stove without a word. None of his siblings looked at him and he didn’t even try to meet their eyes.
The boy bolted down the half bowl of stew he was given, but it didn’t taste as good as the bread and cheese had. What a strange day it had been: so dreadful and yet so good. There was the wolf pack out on the mountain and the wolf pack on the wall of his cave—and he had managed to protect both.
The mouse had saved the wolf.
Chapter 26
Joyce Cartwell had decided that the Magpie Diner should stay open. The doors would be locked, but she would be inside should anyone decide that the comfort of company was preferable to being at home, possibly alone, waiting for news of what to do next. She had made a fresh pot of coffee, hung her apron in the back-room closet, and now sat behind the counter reading the next book in her book club—something funny and snappy set in New York that she just couldn’t get into—while the local news burb
led quietly in the background.
People had come: a single man first, then a couple, then a woman who lived alone nearby. Within ten minutes of the “shelter in place” instruction—or was it an order? Joyce wondered, almost as if they were at war—about ten people occupied the booths of the diner. There had been a lot of talk at the beginning, but since no one could contribute more than conjectures and guesses, the chat had died down and mostly they were just waiting to see what would happen next. Even George Goyer, the pilot who had flown in the Seattle detectives only the previous day, had had very little to add to the conversation and had sat in silence, working on a slice of key lime pie.
When the state police cruisers and the county sheriff’s cars drove onto Main Street, most of Joyce’s customers stood up to watch them pass. Before long the streets were awash with blue uniforms and khaki uniforms, the hurrying shapes blurred behind the frosted glass. And for the first time that day, watching the scurrying and rushing, Joyce was afraid.
Darryl, the bartender at the Tavern, had locked the doors and turned off the outside lights as soon as he had made it back from the vigil. He had told the other staff to go back to their homes and had retired to his flat above the restaurant. It had a good view of Main Street, and if he stood on tiptoes he could see the bright lights of the investigators still at work on the hill behind the square. He went online and posted a short piece on his blog, titled “Inside the Ludlow shooting.” It received fifty likes in three minutes, which pleased him more than he’d care to admit.
Darryl popped open a bottle of his lightest ale—he needed his wits about him—and dragged a chair close to the window. Some of the troopers and the deputies wore body armor, and even Darryl—who was a country kid and had grown up around firearms—was impressed by the display of gunmetal.
After a brief conversation with Chief Sangster, Fred Cherevka, the sheriff of Colville County, directed his men to work through the town in a grid sweep, and he posted lookouts on the back roads that led out into the wilderness. They had no description of their quarry and no idea as yet about what kind of rifle had been used.
Sheriff Cherevka had not asked to speak with any of the Seattle detectives: he had a manhunt on his hands and no time to waste.
Chapter 27
“Ty Edwards’s medical file was accessed at 3:37 a.m. on Dennen’s computer the morning he was killed,” Alice Madison said.
“That’s our link.” Brown gave Madison a tiny nod. It was a “Brown gold star,” and Madison pinned it on her imaginary board.
Sorensen looked up from the evidence bags that Madison had brought back from the clinic. She had twigs in her hair, and in spite of a good shake at the door, her boots had trailed dirt all over the senior center floor.
“Log sheets?” Sorensen asked.
Madison passed her the pages where she had noted each item she’d recovered. She also placed a cup of coffee on Sorensen’s table, because the woman had just come back after hours on the hill and she looked like she could do with warming up.
“Well, are we all agreed that—if the blood on the window matches the doctor’s—the killer met Dennen on the road home from the Jacobsens, took him to the clinic, and forced him to open that particular file?” Madison said.
“So far, so agreed,” Brown replied.
“If the blood matches . . . ,” Sorensen added.
“It will. It’s the only way that makes sense of how the killer got in—with Dennen’s key—and why nothing else in the room was touched, because all he was interested in was in the clinic’s server.”
“Why Ty Edwards’s file?” Brown said.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Madison replied.
“Did he go into any other file?”
“I don’t know. He could have. It’s impossible to work it out without checking every single registered patient. I’d like Dr. Lynch to start on that first thing tomorrow morning. Unless . . . well, unless we can get one of our people to do it remotely from Seattle.”
“I’m reasonably sure you’re not actually talking about hacking into the system.”
“No, more like getting in through the back door. It wouldn’t be hacking if Lynch knew about it. It would be a shortcut. Getting to what we need a little faster, that’s all.”
“And you think he would agree to that?”
Madison rolled her tense shoulders and puffed out air from her cheeks. “Never in a million years. I’m just venting out of frustration.”
Brown smiled.
“Where’s the tissue?” Sorensen said.
For a moment Madison hesitated about handing her the paper bag: if she had screwed up the collection, the case would be compromised.
“Give it here,” Sorensen said, took it out of Madison’s hands, and undid the seal. “Why was a tissue left in the wastebasket?” she asked no one in particular as she lifted the square of paper with tweezers and unfolded it gently on a clean work surface. “I’ve been asking myself the question since you told me about it.” She shifted her lamp. “We now know that Dennen was very probably taken there by coercion,” she continued. “I’m willing to bet that the doctor realized the kidnapper wasn’t going to let him go, and he wanted to leave something behind to tell anybody who might come looking that he had been there. Clever Dr. Dennen.”
“He might not have realized about the blood on the window,” Brown offered.
“The blood might have happened after he left the tissue, anyway,” Madison said.
Sorensen examined it with her magnifying glass. “Here . . . ,” she said. “It’s not much, but it’s the thought that counts.”
Madison leaned forward; she hadn’t noticed anything when she picked it up.
“A very small amount of spit, probably from a nice bit of fake coughing, enough to give us the beginning of a DNA match.” Sorensen smiled, and there was little mirth in it, only the sneer of the cat who’s got the canary. “It will put Dennen in the clinic after the cleaner, which the blood couldn’t do. What about the note?”
“When you say note,” Madison said, “you imagine pen and paper. This,” Madison held up the bag that contained the scrap of cloth, “is a piece torn off somebody’s shirt.”
They gathered around the table. Under Sorensen’s blazing lamp the fabric and its scrawled message looked pitiful. The fabric had been cut off roughly on two sides, and the other two were crudely stitched like the shirt tail of a fledgling tailor. It spoke of despair and determination, and the voice in the uncertain handwriting felt awfully, appallingly young.
Vague panic and a sense of being trapped flashed across Madison’s consciousness as she studied the fabric. For a moment they all just took it in.
“A kid,” Brown said.
“Looks like it,” Madison replied.
“Let’s keep a straight head and go over what we have, not what we think we have,” Brown said, and he turned to Sorensen.
Madison’s eyes stayed on the words scribbled in charcoal. Help us. What had Dennen discovered? And who wanted to shut him up?
Night had fallen—frosty and clear—and, for once, only a few windows were lit on Ludlow’s Main Street. One after the other, the customers had left the diner and Joyce Cartwell had reluctantly driven back to her house, a few minutes away, and locked herself in with her drapes closed and her cell within reach.
Darryl had watched the work of the patrols on the streets from his window above the Tavern until daylight had faded away and only their footsteps crunched in the gloom.
The senior center and the police headquarters, across from each other at the end of Main Street, were the only signs of life in the empty street. The parking lot was crowded with law enforcement trucks, deputies, and state police officers in full SWAT gear, waiting for instructions.
“We can’t go talk to him now, I think we can all agree on that,” Sheriff Cherevka said. He was leaning against the wall of Sangster’s office and his arms were crossed—an impressive task considering the breadth of his chest and the ballis
tic vest he was wearing.
The overheated room was thick with bodies and purpose. Brown and Madison stood to one side, watching the interplay of personalities and jurisdictions. In the outer room the telephone rang every few minutes; Polly, the chief’s assistant, would answer, give the agreed reply to the inquiries, and then replace the receiver. After a minute it would ring again.
“His farm is at the end of a dirt track—ten minutes’ worth of dirt track after the road runs out, actually,” Chief Sangster said. “So, no, we can’t go talk to him now. Not in the dark. There’s little kids up there and it could get messy ’cause he’s not exactly a people person. We’ll go at first light, and even then I recommend a small group. He’s just one man alone and I don’t want him to get cranky before we’ve even had a chance to interview him. In the past, we haven’t had the best of relationships.”
“The way I understand it, there’s no physical evidence to tie him to either of the crime scenes,” said the captain from the state patrol.
“We’re working on that,” Brown replied.
“Well,” the sheriff continued, “we’ve been through the streets and back at the hill, and everyone’s locked in nice and tight. I’m going to leave a couple of patrols to keep an eye on things overnight and all you good people will be back here tomorrow at 8 a.m. to go talk to Mr. Tanner and see what he’s got to say for himself.” He turned to Brown and Madison with a half smile. “I bet you’re real happy you put your hand up for this little experiment.”
Brown pushed his glasses up on his nose and returned the smile. “We have only the beginning of a trail of evidence: it barely makes him a suspect. Tomorrow morning we’re going to have to tread lightly.” It was one of Brown’s great gifts that he could make a warning sound like the kindest piece of advice.
“I hear you, but he’s all we’ve got,” the sheriff replied, “and I don’t see anybody else in town causing upsets.”
Sweet After Death Page 16
