Sweet After Death

by Valentina Giambanco

  “Shooter knew what he was doing,” Brown said.

  They had thought angry farmer, but by any standards the shooter was lethally proficient.

  “Are you thinking pro?” Madison said.

  “Normally I would,” he said. “The killer used a silencer—you don’t pick those up for the hell of it. I just don’t see any place in Edwards’s life where that could have happened, though.”

  “If the killer was a pro who dropped by to do a job, he would have left town already.”

  “Maybe, but not necessarily. If someone left yesterday—out of the blue, after the shooting—people might notice.”

  “He’s a pro and he’s a local?”

  “I don’t know. The Florida lead is a mess, but we need to work it,” Brown smiled. “The local law didn’t make any arrest for that armed robbery, but I’m pretty sure we can solve it from here.”

  “There’s a chance that someone went all the way to Florida to procure a dirty piece specifically to throw us off . . .” Madison saw the look in Brown’s eyes. “I don’t mean Tanner. Hear me out. We have someone who wants to make sure that Edwards is definitely who he says he is. Never mind that he’s a man who has always lived his life in or near Ludlow and has never put a foot wrong. Our guy really wants him and doesn’t want anybody to know that he got to him through the medical file. Is it so preposterous to think that he also made certain that the piece he used on Dennen had a history somewhere else? Something that was never going to be connected to him? Just to muddy the waters?”

  “Edwards must have really ticked someone off.”

  “Why the dog?”

  “The dog?”

  “He wants to kill the man, he can do it anytime he wants and wherever he wants: when he goes to the store, through the kitchen window, in his garden, and while he’s driving his SUV. Why did he take the dog?”

  “I don’t know,” Brown said. “We should get a lineup together, get the dog to point out the shooter.”

  “Sure,” Madison said. “Judge Eugene will definitely go for that.”

  They had more questions than answers and—unspoken, though acknowledged—the sense that the killer was not done with Ludlow yet.

  Hours later, in her attic room, Madison lay in bed watching the fire glowing in the hearth. Hockley had dropped them off at the Miller place and they had spent a quiet evening in the rambling guesthouse. They all needed a bit of space from one another—and from the only subject of conversation of the last three days—and had retired early to their rooms.

  Sometimes, Madison mused, in order to understand she needed not to think. Perhaps it was a contradiction in terms, and she wasn’t even sure that it was anything more than bumper-sticker wisdom, but there it was.

  The drive back had been slow and slippery, and the forecast for the following day had not brought much solace. Madison took a deep breath: the snow was pressing down on the town and every single person in it. Still, unless he had left after the shooting the previous day, the killer was still there, just as trapped as they were.

  Amy Sorensen pulled one boot off, holding her cell against her shoulder. “I don’t know, honey. Soon, I hope. How was your weekend?”

  She pictured her daughter in her room—a room that used to be yellow and had transitioned into pale green, with posters that Sorensen privately thought looked like mug shots.

  “You did?” Sorensen laughed.

  Her daughter’s voice traveled all the way across the state and lifted Sorensen away from the narrow marks on the gunmetal that she still saw, even when she closed her eyes.

  Brown tried to focus on the book he had brought upstairs from the living room. After ten minutes he gave up, lay back on his pillow, and went over the events of the last couple of days.

  The snowfall had hushed many of the sounds around the house, except for the pipes and the furnace. He heard a peal of laughter nearby. It sounded like Sorensen. They were lucky to have her there for however long it would take—possibly forever—to make sense of the case. Two stray thoughts collided and Brown made a note of something that he wanted to ask Chief Sangster the following day.

  By then, Joyce Cartwell would have returned home from the diner. What did he really want from her? How far did he want her to go—for them, for him? Brown allowed himself a small success: he had not lied. At least he hadn’t told her that they would protect her from her brother, when they would not and could not. He had wanted to; he had felt the need to tell her rise in his chest when she had looked so upset and so vulnerable. He had been glad Madison was there then. Her mere presence had yanked him back to the fact that, once they were on their way back to Seattle, and Polly and her volunteers had locked the Miller house after them, the town would continue as it always had. And Joyce would be left alone with the consequences of her actions.

  “How is Carl?” Madison said.

  “Managing Greenhut Lowell within an inch of their lives,” Quinn said. “Seems happy.”

  Quinn had called Madison. She had briefed him about the latest developments, paltry as they were.

  “You should have seen the boy, Quinn, how brave he was to speak with me.”

  Nathan Quinn knew something about the courage of boys in terrible circumstances.

  “Can you do something for them?”

  “Hope so,” Madison said. “Hope so.”

  Madison fell asleep after his call with her cell on the pillow and her Glock within hand’s reach on the floor by the bed.

  She fell asleep and into a dream of deer and knives. And the black-and-white silhouette of a man trailing a child on a snowy street.

  Chapter 41

  John James Walker’s days started early: Alice discovered that the man she had christened The Hunter would stir before dawn and expect her—or the boy he thought she was—to do the same. He spoke a great deal, although he seemingly had no wish for a two-way conversation—and that was good, because Alice was afraid of betraying herself. From the beginning he would issue an instruction and expect it to be followed; Alice wasn’t sure what would have happened if she had not obeyed.

  We’re on the wrong side of Mount Baker, boy. There are no phones, no roads, no people. Tomorrow morning I’ll see what I can do.

  “Sir, can you help me get back to my family today?” Alice said as she rolled up her sleeping bag. “I would really like to go home.”

  It was her longest sentence so far and she had kept her voice low. She didn’t like the whiny tone of it, and she certainly did not want to go home, but she sure wanted to get away from that man.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” the man replied. “Now, snap to and be ready to saddle up in five minutes.”

  What did he mean? It was not a straight answer and all that Alice could do was get herself ready, and be prepared—for what, she didn’t know.

  The weather was not cooperating; the dawn drizzle had turned into heavy summer rain, and it dogged their steps all morning. They walked under the canopy of a forest of never-ending firs and tried to stay dry. Alice was disoriented: she knew that the sun rises in the east, and attempted to divine the direction of their walking; however, the tree cover and the absence of shadows were confusing. One thing was clear, though: in spite of their hiking they were no closer to any kind of trail, and Alice had spotted no other living soul in the dense woods.

  The Hunter, three steps ahead of her, walked and talked.

  “Do you know what’s the most important thing in hunting? The single most important thing is to move through the woods like a ghost. Real hunting is done on foot, not on those so-called stands. You use one of those and you just end up sitting on your ass for days.”

  He didn’t need to turn to check that she was there because Alice had not yet mastered the skill of moving like a ghost and was making as much noise as possible—in case anybody should be nearby to hear them.

  “No,” the man continued, “you need to stalk your prey, hunt into the wind, and shoot your target in the eye.”

  I need
to get away.

  The woods opened into a valley, and a few hundred feet away, like a mirage of normality in the sudden sunshine, Alice spotted a group of five or six hikers following a stream in the opposite direction.

  The Hunter turned to the little girl and said, “I’m going to teach you how to stalk people, boy. There’s no better fun, I promise you. You learn that, you can do anything. When you’re done learning, I’ll take you back to your family.”

  He wasn’t asking a question, he wasn’t proposing a deal. He had told Alice what would happen, and that, as far as he knew, was that.

  Alice looked at the group of tourists in the distance, moving farther and farther away from her with each passing second, and she looked at the man. Whatever passed through her face must have been clear enough because he lifted her chin with one finger and said:

  “Now, don’t you go getting ideas about running after them and leaving me stranded here like a fool. There’s no saying what can happen to a group of people who don’t know the mountains and don’t know how to protect themselves in the wilderness. Many dangerous animals around. People have got to be real careful where they camp at night, because they could fall asleep and never wake up. You understand me, boy?”

  Alice nodded.

  Alice followed the man as they tracked the group all afternoon. They stayed under the cover of the shade a few feet into the forest and matched the slow speed of their quarry, who walked in the open valley and stopped from time to time to take pictures of one another by the river, blissfully ignorant that a predator had picked up their scent.

  The weather had cleared and the sun was working hard to make up for the damp morning. Alice, thirsty and hungry, felt disconnected—as if she had strayed into a weird dream, the kind you have when a fever is eating you up. The man, she observed in her haze, had never been quite as alive or as focused as he was then, keeping his eyes on the prey ahead of him and the one trailing behind him.

  In spite of the long summer evenings at that time of the year the group stopped to make camp with the sun still high in the sky; they were close to the river and in a spot completely open to the elements. There were six people—Alice had had hours to observe them. Three couples in their twenties who were setting up three small tents and collecting wood for a campfire. Their voices, their laughter, drifted in the breeze up to Alice, concealed behind a clump of spruces and shrubs.

  The man brought out a pair of binoculars. They had followed the group all afternoon without being spotted; surely this was enough, surely this was all he had meant. Alice shivered in the cool of the forest.

  “We’re going to wait until they fall asleep and then you’re going to get into the camp and take something of theirs without being noticed,” he whispered.

  “You want me to steal?” The squeak had come out before she could stop herself.

  “I’m not going to repeat myself. You heard me right the first time. What did you think was going to happen?”

  He brought the binoculars to his eyes and the little girl watched him as he monitored the six tourists, evaluating their possessions and no doubt deciding what Alice’s task should be.

  The next few hours were excruciating. Alice wanted to run, there and then; however, the man had displayed enough of his skills that she was sure he would quickly catch up with her—and then what? There was the serious possibility that she might lose what little goodwill she had with him. There was the serious possibility, Alice considered, that he had no intention of getting her back to civilization at all. That everything he had done and said was nothing but a game to him and she was in even more trouble than she had thought. She remembered her red bicycle, hidden under the ferns, and her eyes welled up. It would slowly rust, week after week, and fall apart under the rain, and no one, no one in the whole world, would ever know that it was there.

  The man gave Alice a piece of rabbit from the previous night. She hadn’t asked but had guessed that they would not light a fire, because the campers might see it. She ate the meat and drank from her own canteen while her mind was racing to find a solution to a situation that didn’t have one.

  The moon had risen above the mountains and the air had cooled down. Alice dug into her backpack for a sweatshirt and was careful to pick the blue one and leave her pink top rolled up at the bottom. As the sky darkened her heart began to pound: what was he going to ask her to do? What would happen if she failed? Could she ask the campers for help? They looked like kids—and she understood the absurdity of a twelve-year-old thinking that—but it was the truth. Compared with the man, they just looked like little kids playing in their backyard. And he had a rifle and a hunting knife as long as her arm.

  The man gave her the binoculars. “Look,” he said, and she did.

  The campfire was still throwing shadows around; four people had gone into their tents and two were talking and giggling close enough to the flames that she could see their faces very clearly in the dark.

  “The tent on the right. Can you see? Can you see the red canteen hanging on the hook?”

  Alice found it and nodded.

  “When the happy couple have had enough romance in the moonlight and go into their tent, you go to work. Make your way down there, pick up the red canteen, and get back. Quick as you can. Your mission objective is to retrieve the canteen without being seen or heard.”

  “But—”

  “If you run away, I’ll come get you and I won’t be happy about it. If you ask them to hide you, I’ll come get you and I won’t be happy about it. And if I have to ask them where you are, things might get a little rough, who knows? You go slow, you go quiet, and you get yourself back here. I’m teaching you important skills, son. What you learn here, you’ll never learn in a schoolroom. I found that out myself the hard way.”

  There was nothing that Alice could say to that.

  The young couple stood up and made their way into their tent, and all that was left was the last flicker of fire, more ember than flame.

  “Now,” the man said, and he took the binoculars from her hands, ready to follow each and every move she made.

  Alice took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the spruce. She had calculated a possible way to the camp—following the line of trees to the nearest point and then rushing through the tall grass—but she had not realized just how awful she would feel doing it. Her dread was a tight knot in her chest right next to her heart: fear for herself, fear for the campers. Fear of failing, fear of succeeding.

  Alice proceeded along the edge of the forest until she was fifty yards above the campsite. It was a bright, clear night and she could see every blade of grass between her and the tents. Was the man watching her? Unconsciously Alice looked back at the dark space where she had come from. Something glinted in the half gloom, or maybe it was her imagination. The girl shuddered. There was nothing else for it: she dropped low, her elbows brushing the tall grass, and she started her way down.

  Keep it together, just keep it together. He’s going to fall asleep at some point and you’ll leave then. Just keep it together a little longer.

  One thing Alice had not considered was how loud the forest was at night and what a blessing that would be in her present circumstances. Her steps—quite unlike a ghost and more like an awkward child trying to be stealthy—were mostly covered by the sound of the breeze in the trees and the world of birds and insects calling to one another in the dark. There were also the voices coming from inside the tents—the hikers still talking to one another, still laughing. Don’t you know what’s going on, you morons?

  Alice reached the tents almost easily and crouched next to the closest one. The ground where they had set up was scrubby and bare, the grass short, and the dirt full of river stones. It occurred to her that out of the field of grass she was completely in the open. And at least a few of the hikers were awake enough to hear her unless she was very careful.

  Go to sleep, just go to sleep.

  Alice, crouching low, worked out which tent ha
d the red canteen and made her way toward it. They had washed their dishes in the river; nevertheless, she could smell a hint of cooked food in the air, and something else—an oily herb scent that she didn’t recognize.

  Alice crawled around a tent and saw the red canteen hanging on the post six feet to her right, just as they had seen it from the forest. Something clicked in her mind as she realized that, behind the tent as she was, the man could not see her. In spite of his binoculars, in spite of everything he had and he knew, in that moment he could not see her.

  Alice peeked at the canteen and at the pitch-black forest behind her. She could creep through the grass, keeping the tent between her and the man. She could make it to the forest and from there she could follow the valley—she had an idea that it would lead her southwest toward people and safety. Could she put enough distance between herself and the man before he understood that she had run? How long she had sat, curled in the dirt, her hands digging into the warm earth, she couldn’t tell. Suddenly the flap of the tent flew open and one of the guys staggered out, stretched, and ambled toward the river. Alice skittered backward and flattened herself against the tent, her heart rising up into her mouth.

  Maybe I should just let them find me, like it’s an accident. He can’t blame anybody if it’s an accident. And yet even as the thought popped into her mind Alice knew that The Hunter would find a way to blame her and the hikers, and she did not know—because her life so far had shielded her from men like him—what he could do, only that his displeasure was a wild and dangerous thing.

  The young man relieved himself in the river and then meandered back to the tent. He would have seen a little girl crouching and trying to hide if only he had walked three steps to his right, but he didn’t. He stooped, went in, and zipped up the flap. Alice wiped a single tear of fear and frustration from her cheek. She glanced around the corner and the way was clear. There was nothing else to do.