by David Stout
“Shut up! Shut up, god damn you. It wasn’t my fault.”
He heard other dogs. Getting closer. He started to run, tugging the sled behind him.
“Hold on, Jason. Hold on, boy.”
Wolf dashed ahead of him along the stream bank, leaping like a gazelle over fallen limbs. The dog stopped, looked back at his master, and ran like a comet back to him.
The ground along the stream was smooth, but he had to zigzag to pull the sled around dead trees. He could hear the boy. Still crying.
He heard shouts, dogs. Closer now. Too close.
He came to the rotting hulk of a tree, close to two feet thick and stretching from the stream’s edge to where the land sloped up. He could rest there, and hide.
But it was too late: As he stood by the fallen tree, he saw the man with the rifle, standing on the other side of the stream about a hundred yards away. The hunter from before? Same size, same look.
The hunter was looking right at him, kneeling slowly, now getting into a prone position to shoot at him. The hunter was shouting something, but the hermit couldn’t make it out. His heartbeat seemed about to burst his eardrums.
“Get down, Jason.… Wolf, here by me.…”
He got behind the dead tree, peeked over it, and saw the hunter, who was worming sideways to take cover behind a rock.
“We’ll be okay, Jason. I promise—” As he turned to comfort him, he saw that the boy was no longer there. The boy had climbed over the tree hulk, tumbled in the snow, and now he was waddling like a duck through the snow toward the hunter.
“Jason, no! Don’t leave me! Jason!”
The hermit put his rifle to his shoulder, aimed toward the rock the hunter was behind, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit the rock, and the sound of the ricochet echoed through the woods. The hermit chambered another cartridge even as he ran toward the boy. Now he saw the hunter, looking up over the rock, getting ready to shoot at him.
The hermit overtook the boy, wrapped his left arm around the child, pulled him up to him. With his right arm, he kept the carbine trained toward the hunter’s rock.
“All right, Jason. Don’t cry. All right. Don’t kick.”
The hermit backed up, toward the dead tree. He kept his eyes on the rock; he could see the hunter’s face. His lips were moving, as though he was talking to someone.
The hermit dropped the boy on the other side of the dead tree hulk, then rolled over to the other side himself. Where was Wolf? Here he was, hunkered down next to him. The dog was growling, its ears back.
Shouts. Other dogs. Very close.
Trying to gulp enough air, the hermit looked up over the log. Other men, other hunters. Two, no three more, coming up behind the first one. Taking cover behind trees and mounds, aiming at him. Wanting to take everything.
“I’ll make it right, Jason. I will this time.”
He looked to his side. Again, the boy was gone, only now he was stumbling through the snow going the other way.
“Jason, don’t leave—”
Still holding his rifle in one hand, he got up and ran toward the boy, away from the hunters but in their line of fire.
“Jason!”
And then he saw the last hunter, only fifty yards away on the same side of the creek bank.
Trapped now. All over. Where was Jo?
As if in a dream, he watched the last hunter kneel down and aim at him, heard the hunter shout, “Drop it now!”
The hermit let go of the rifle just as a bullet hit him from behind, smashing into his back near his right shoulder and knocking him off his feet.
The sky stopped spinning, and he realized he was lying on his back. His shoulder was hot and wet, and it hurt him to breathe. The rifle was still in his hands. Jason was screaming. The hermit heard Wolf barking, heard the other dogs coming. Heard another shot, heard Wolf yelp in pain.
Was he dreaming? No.
As his heartbeat quieted, he could hear the gurgling of the nearby stream.
Will had fallen way behind Raines, he guessed by a few hundred yards. His legs were tired from trudging through the snow. At one point, he had stepped into a deep snow-covered puddle. His right foot had broken the ice with a crack that would have been heard by anyone close by. His sock and foot were still dry inside the boot, but some water had gotten splashed onto his leg at knee level, so that part of his pant leg was soon frozen as hard as cast iron.
For some time, he had been hearing dogs. Now, he thought he heard shouts and screams; he wasn’t sure, because the woods played tricks with sounds, and he was no outdoorsman.
When he heard the shots, he ran toward them as fast as he could. He tried to run in a straight line, hoping he hadn’t been fooled by the echoes. He picked up the sound of voices coming out of a radio. Cops, he thought. The cops are up this way. Maybe Jerry is there. He owes me.
Will tried to adjust his breathing so that his chest wouldn’t get exhausted. He would push himself to the limit; there was no better time.
He heard more radio squawks—he was close to the sounds, no doubt about it—and then a helicopter coming in low.
Now Will was inhaling the cold air in great gulps—he couldn’t help it—and praying his heart was in fine shape, as the doctor had said just last spring, because he knew there was a big commotion up ahead, and he was going to get to it, no matter what the cost in pain, and it was quite a big cost, because he was on a long upward slope.
And now he was at a point where the terrain went up even more steeply in one direction, but off to an angle it sloped down and followed a little stream. The low route was the one to take, because Will could tell that the noises were that way.
His legs hurt terribly now, and his back ached, but it didn’t matter. He was almost there.
Down a little slope, fresh tracks in the snow to guide him, tracks of men and dogs, and now he was almost at stream level, and there was sky above him (still snow coming out of it), and the sound of a helicopter filling the universe as it came in right over his head, stirring a great cloud of snow.
Just a few yards farther, around a little outcropping, and Will saw where the shouts and radio sounds were coming from.
“God Almighty,” he said. “God Almighty.”
The helicopter hovered deafeningly. A stretcher was being lowered by cable from it. A man lay on his back, his blood on the snow like spilled port on a linen tablecloth.
Almost collapsing, Will sat on a mound and watched several lawmen lift the body and lay it on the stretcher, efficiently wrapping the man in blankets and lashing him in place. Spinning as it was raised, the stretcher was hoisted into the copter. The scene reminded Will of television footage from the Vietnam War.
There was no need for him to take notes; there was no way he’d forget any of this.
Perhaps twenty lawmen were standing in groups in the snowy clearing. Several held German shepherds on leashes, and two or three were talking into hand-held radios.
And then Jerry Graham emerged from one of the groups, and Will saw at once that he was tenderly holding a little boy.
“God Almighty,” Will heard himself say again. “God Almighty.”
Will stood up, stumbled momentarily on rubbery legs, and walked toward the men.
“Shafer! What the hell … I thought I told you to stay back there.” It was Raines.
“I misunderstood,” Will said.
Raines stood threateningly before him, but Will was beyond being afraid, and he was in no mood to be pushed around.
“Jerry,” Will shouted. “Jerry!”
“Will!” Still holding the boy, Graham broke away from the others and came over to him. “He’s all right, Will.”
A powerfully built man in a parka trotted over to Graham and Will and started to take the child from the agent. Will recognized him as the police chief. The boy let out a cry and wrapped his arms around Jerry Graham’s neck.
“He doesn’t want to go with you,” Will said to the chief. “Why don’t you
leave well enough alone.”
“Open your mouth again, and you’re under—”
“All right! It’s all right,” Graham said. “This is a good newsman here, Chief. I’ll vouch for him. Will, we’re all tired here.” Then to the boy: “All right, Jamie. I’ll hold you. All right.”
“Jerry, tell me what you can.”
“I can’t tell you much. I’m still trying to piece it together, Will.”
Will took out his notepad, tried to keep the snowflakes off it, scribbled in a trembling hand. A Deer County deputy had spotted an armed man tugging a sled with a boy on it, had shouted at the man to put down the weapon and surrender. The man had fired from behind a log, the deputy had radioed for help, and reinforcements had arrived. The man was shot when he didn’t drop his rifle in time, and after deputies and police officers concluded that the boy’s life was in danger.
“That’s all we know for now, Will. Except that the boy is alive and seems to be in good health, all things considered. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”
Jamie was still in shock from everything he’d heard and seen. But he knew that he was in strong, gentle arms. And he knew something else, and this above all. “I want to see my mother and father,” he said.
“You know what?” Graham said. “We’re going to send you there right now. Have you ever ridden in a helicopter?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re going to fix that right now, my friend.”
Even as the agent spoke, another helicopter was hovering loudly overhead. As snow flew like cold sparks, Will saw a chair lift being lowered by cable.
“You know what?” Graham said. “There’re nice people up there with hot chocolate. Doesn’t that sound great? That nice big helicopter will take you to meet your father.”
Jamie would have been afraid because of all the noise and the wind, but the man holding him seemed like a nice man.
Then Jamie saw the funny chair dangling from the copter, and he was afraid. But not for long.
“This is better than any carnival ride, Jamie. I bet none of your friends ever rode in one of these chairs.”
Jamie felt big, strong hands strapping him into the chair, then the ground was falling away under him, and he was going up toward the big noise of the helicopter, and he was spinning around and around in the chair, up through the wind and snow. But he wasn’t afraid anymore, because even though he was dizzy he could see the nice man smiling and waving at him. Jamie laughed.
All of a sudden, he was inside another tin place, and hands were unbuckling him from the chair, and he was being laid onto something soft and warm, and his head was on a pillow. A pretty woman and a nice man were smiling at him, and hot chocolate was in front of his face. Jamie swallowed some and put his head back and closed his eyes. He tried to say that he wanted to go home, but he couldn’t make the words come out right.
He could feel the helicopter go up, up, up. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. It was all like a dream. A good dream.
“So,” Jerry Graham said as the sound of the copter faded, “how the hell did you get here, Will?”
“I walked.”
“You bastard. And what do I do with you now?”
Will thought for only a moment. “You trust me. I’ve kept some stuff off the record.”
“So you have.”
“And now I get my payback.”
“Fair enough. The pool reporters are being briefed right about now. They’ll be brought up here in a while to have a look. I don’t want them to see you.”
“Oh, they’ll find out I was here.”
“And be jealous.”
“I hope so.”
“Hmmm. Wait here, Will.”
Graham went to talk to a group of lawmen: the Long Creek police chief, two men wearing Sheriff’s Department badges, a couple of men Will didn’t recognize, and Raines. As Will watched, there seemed to be an argument: Graham against everyone else.
Will looked all around. Blood on the snow was fading to pink where the man had fallen wounded. Then Will noticed a second, smaller spot of blood some yards away.
Graham was on his way back.
“It’s settled, Will. You’ll come with me. Ready for a hike?”
“Where, Jerry?”
Graham pointed. “That way. We think the screwball came from that direction. We’re going to backtrack for a while, using dogs, and see if we can find where the boy was kept. Stick to me like glue, Will. I just told my buddies that we’d have better control over you if you were with me.”
“Thanks, Jerry.”
Just then, two deputies with German shepherds came by. Will was reminded of something. “Jerry, I thought the guy who had the boy was supposed to have had a dog with him.”
“A deputy thought the dog might be going for the child, Will. So he shot him.”
The other spot of blood, Will thought. “Where’s the animal?”
“Crawled away. Gut-shot, probably. Crawled away to die.”
That almost made Will sick. “Couldn’t one of those fat-ass deputies take a few minutes to find him, for Christ’s sake?”
Graham looked at him sadly, and for the first time Will saw that the agent was exhausted. “We can’t plan everything, Will. A lot of shooting, a lot of chaos. The dog’s gone, and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. This case has taken everything I have. More.”
“What now?”
Graham said that he and several other investigators would try to retrace the tracks for clues as to where the boy had been kept. Will could accompany them, observe everything, if he agreed to keep some details out of his stories.
“What kind of details, Jerry?”
“I don’t know yet. Things that might be crucial at the trial. Or trials. Don’t forget, we’re still looking for at least one other kidnapper.”
Something about that didn’t wash. “Don’t bullshit me, Jerry. You just have the traditional FBI man’s approach of wanting to control everything.”
“I could send you back to Long Creek right now.”
He means it. Will knew from the voice. “I’ll do it your way if I have to, Jerry.”
“Let’s go.” Graham put his hand on Will’s shoulder. It was a conciliatory gesture. “You know how the bureau works, Will.”
“Yeah, I do. After all, J. Edgar Hoover’s only been dead about twenty years.”
Twenty-three
Will lost track of time and distance as he and Graham walked through the woods. They were a little behind the main group of trackers, and Graham kept in touch with them by radio. They could hear the deep barking up ahead.
In places, the ruts left by the sled, the man’s tracks, and his dog’s tracks were unmistakable. In other places, depending on the contour of the land and its exposure to the wind, the trail was all but obscured.
The agent’s radio squawked. “Graham here.… Roger. I’m coming. Something up ahead, Will.”
The FBI man and Will caught up to the trackers, who stood in a small semicircle around a spot on a slope where the snow beneath the freshly fallen flakes was packed down. The dogs sniffed constantly and tugged at their leashes.
“They must have spent the night here,” Graham said. “Lucky they didn’t freeze to death.”
Will and Graham stood back a few yards as an officer took photographs from several angles and another jotted notes on a clipboard.
When they were done, they pressed on, led now as much by the dogs as by the tracks, which were getting harder to spot. It was almost midafternoon, and Will was functioning on adrenaline. But Jerry Graham was his age; if he could still move, so could Will. All of Will’s mental and emotional circuits were going: As a man, he was elated that the boy had been rescued; as a newsman, he was elated over a big story. He absorbed new details even as he arranged the old ones in his mind.
He was starting to worry a little about time. At some point, he would try to get to a telephone—any phone, if he didn’t get back to Long Creek in time. He would talk his way in
to a farmhouse if he had to. He would file a story for the first edition of the next day’s paper even if he had to stand dripping from melting snow in a stranger’s kitchen and dictate it off the top of his head.
“How’re you holding up, Will?”
“I’m making it. So far.”
“The next time someone says you have to get out of the Northeast to find really rugged country, I’ll shoot him.”
“Jerry, what about the other kidnappers? There’s at least one more.”
“That’s why I’m praying that our screwball friend doesn’t die, Will. We need to talk to him.”
“How bad is he?”
“Bad enough.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot. Average height and build, in his forties. Looks and smells like he lives in the woods. And he has burn scars.”
“Burn scars?”
“All around his face, Will. Something bad happened to him. A long time ago.”
“Thanks for taking care of me, Jerry. I mean, not shutting me out.”
“Hey, I owed you. We’re both old enough to know the manual doesn’t cover everything. In your job or mine.”
“God no, it doesn’t.”
The snow had stopped altogether, and the clouds were breaking up. Graham’s radio squawked again. Will couldn’t decipher the message, but Graham’s eyes went wide in astonishment.
“Roger, I’m coming as fast as I can. Rope it off. Oh, and get a canopy over it in case the snow starts again.” Graham shook his head. “You’ll find this hard to believe, Will.”
The lawmen stood around the grave-size pit, studying the rusting hot-water tank that lay within. Judging by the dimensions and depth of the hole, the tank had been buried with some care, then dug up again in haste. The snow had covered much of the dirt, and the big clumps of earth that remained visible stood out like chocolate against a pristine white.
The tank had been equipped with a door, really a metal hatch with hinges and a lock. While somewhat crude, the hatch looked efficient enough. The cutting and refastening had obviously been done by someone used to working with metal—or so it seemed to Will, who was totally unhandy with tools and never could remember the difference between soldering and welding. The hatch and its lock had been broken off, probably with a shovel or crowbar, and lay next to the tank. Will found it odd that the hatch, obviously fashioned with such care, had been ripped off in haste. Had the kidnappers lost the key?
