His back disappeared through the bedroom door.
4:42
MARTY COULDN'T GET THE fucking buzzing out of his ears. The sound mixed with the muffled rattle of ammo exploding, reminding Marty of the sound of a wasps’ nest that had erupted outside his bedroom window when he was a child. The angry insects hummed madly, splattering against the pane.
Now he had dragged himself almost to the tree line down the trail. There were patches of dirty blood on his palms and he glanced around and realized that he had pulled himself back to where the struggle with the grizzly had happened.
Today?
Yesterday?
His right arm was useless. The pain there and in his back throbbed with enough power to knock the wind out of him when it reached the high end of a wave. He was getting the feel of it, though. It rolled over him slowly, pulsing with his heart. As though the nerves throughout his torso and arms were all attuned to the blood flowing through his veins, and the pain would thrum to a roaring crescendo, building, building, dragging him to the brink of darkness and then rolling over him, then easing for a minute or so, leaving only a dull, mind-numbing ache throughout his body.
But the buzzing was driving him crazy. Like mosquitoes on amphetamines. And it was growing louder. Not mosquitoes. Bees. Infuriating and dangerous and something that he needed to focus on if only the damned pain would let him breathe.
And of course there was the fire.
Even as far away as he was from the cabin he felt the heat. Smoke poured through the window and around the edges of the door and out from under the eaves. But he welcomed the heat now. The cold ground was sapping what little strength he had and he knew that he had to find the strength to get up and find shelter.
He needed help.
He tried to push himself up to a kneeling position but it was like trying to lift a truck. He had no strength and the bloody muck between his fingers would give no purchase. His hand kept sliding out from under him. He lay there for a moment, cheek on the back of his hand, catching his breath, letting one more wave roar through and out again and listening to the goddamned buzz.
It grew to a thrum.
Then a high-pitched scream.
And suddenly he knew what it was.
The sound roared over and away and he was fighting again, ignoring the pain, his fingers clawing for a grip in the icy gravel. His chest felt like burning bands of iron but finally he was on his knees, swaying drunkenly. It was all that he could do to remain upright. His body wanted to fall first left then right. Each time he overcompensated and it took all his strength to keep from falling onto his face again.
Upright, he could see the fire better. Evidently there was an upstairs window out back. A tall, thin flame, like a giant butane lighter jet roared heavenward there. It struck Marty as beautiful. Like a sign from God. He watched the flame lurch and whip in unseen currents of wind, swirling and mixing with the dark puffs of smoke.
The buzzing returned.
He tried to get to his feet.
But that was a mistake.
One knee buckled and he fell forward, landing hard on his wrist.
He balanced there for interminable seconds wondering how much more pain he could be asked to endure. This new one was a lightning flash, shooting up his wrist, into his elbow, and clawing through his shoulder. He bit his lip hard and pushed himself backward, perching precariously again on his knees.
The plane approached from up the valley. Marty could hear the buzzing getting closer and just when he thought that it would clear the top of the cabin, he began to wave wildly. He couldn't even keep his eyes open. The pain shut them and he wondered if he was biting through his lip. But he heard Rich roar over and he prayed that he had been seen.
One last wave and his strength vanished, and he felt himself slipping back down into the muck.
4:44
AFLOORBOARD CREAKED.
Dawn slid her hand silently along the floor and, finding the radio, quietly clicked it off. She didn't need it anymore. El was in the bedroom. The radio wasn't going to help and if he spoke and heard himself, it would give her away.
She knelt on the floor, her right side pressed against rough studs and itchy insulation. Her left side touched cardboard boxes. Her elbows clasped her knees and her forehead rested on the back of her hands on the floor.
For what seemed an eternity, her entire world consisted of the incredibly loud thrump of her heart.
Then she heard El rummaging around in the clothes closet. She expected to hear the door opening immediately, but for some reason it didn't. There was an occasional bump or squeak but not the distinctive wood-on-wood sound that she knew the tightly built door made.
What's he doing?
Surely he wouldn't search the bedroom closet. There was no place for anyone to hide in there.
She could hear him talking and assumed that he was still speaking to her on the radio. There was something that might have been anger or frustration in his voice but it was not the anger of a normal person.
Then she heard it.
She felt it.
And, in her mind, she saw it.
The little hidden door opening.
El's head, slipping through into her tunnel.
The mirror glasses taking in the narrow space, the stacks of boxes and old clothing.
Dawn held her breath and waited for him to speak and when he did, she bit her lip and stifled a sob.
“Dawn?”
There was nowhere left to hide.
She remembered the way he had lifted the big knife over her mother.
Dawn could feel it, ripping through her flesh, cutting and breaking through her rib cage, slashing her organs. She shivered in the darkness. Every muscle in her body quivered but somehow she made no sound.
“Dawn.”
The voice was so calm. So unthreatening.
How could it be attached to something so evil?
“Dawn, honey, I know you're in here. Come on out, now.”
She heard the door scrape open. Cloth rustled as El struggled through the narrow opening. Something snagged and ripped and he cursed. Another creak and then he was in. His presence polluted the air around her. The evil pressed against her paper sanctuary like a dark river of blood.
“Leave her alone!”
Micky's scream came at Dawn from all directions at once.
“Goddamn you, El! Leave her alone, you bastard!”
Dawn pressed her head down so hard onto her hands that her fingers ached. She wished that Micky would stop screaming. When Micky was screaming Dawn couldn't hear El.
Is he closer?
Or has he stopped, listening to Micky?
A floorboard groaned and Dawn knew that he had crept closer.
“Come on, Dawn,” he coaxed, ignoring the shouts from below, speaking calmly, as though he hadn't even heard them. “Come on. Don't make me come in there and get you.”
He was closer now and she heard the sound of cardboard crunching and then being shoved around. Part of her cave had just disappeared.
Then another.
She tried to picture in her mind what he was doing. How long it would be before he could move the last box and then be staring down at her over the top of her useless cardboard fort. He was cursing and she heard the sound of slashing and ripping and labored breath. It must be hard for him to move the boxes around. It was a tight space even for Dawn and El was so much bigger than she.
And there was another noise too.
A dull buzzing from outside.
Like a swarm of bees.
“You hear that, El?” screamed Micky. “You hear that, you bastard?”
The slashing stopped and the buzzing grew louder but Dawn was so terrified, so paralyzed that, although she knew that she should recognize it, she couldn't place the sound.
“That's Rich, you shit!” yelled Micky. “He's going to see Stan's body! He'll report you to the troopers!”
Could it really be?
Could t
hey be saved?
But Dawn felt the boxes beside her sliding away.
El was on the other side trying to remove the tightly packed sleeping bag and blankets.
She was like a mouse that had stared too long into the eyes of a snake. All she could do was wait for the boxes to crumble, and she knew that she would lie right where she was without even looking up, as El drove the big knife into her quivering back.
She wouldn't be able to look into his face. A dull, unreasoning part of her brain had wrested control and told her body that if she stayed where she was and didn't do anything, nothing could happen to her. She tried to convince herself that her only safety lay not in playing dead but in becoming nothing.
She focused on the pain in her lip and in her hands and the air trapped in her chest as the buzz grew louder again, climbing into a roar that sounded and then echoed away down the valley.
“He's seen Stan!” screamed Micky.
Why doesn't Micky shut up?
She's just going to make him angrier.
But the box stopped moving.
Dawn could feel the weight of El's hand resting against the wall of cardboard, pressing it into her ribs.
She knew that all he had to do was drive the big knife into the box and he could slash all the way through and cut her into little pieces along with the boxes. He could poke and jab the nasty blade through like a magician sticking swords in a basket, only she wouldn't appear at the end and take a bow.
“Five o'clock,” came the machine voice.
Dawn opened her eyes and she could just make out the grain of the wood under her hands. She didn't dare move or make a noise.
What about five o'clock?
“Early. Why is he early?”
Rich.
He's talking about Rich.
But Rich wasn't always on schedule.
“He's calling Anchorage now!” shouted Micky.
“Shut up!” shouted El, echoing Dawn's thoughts.
“Calling the troopers, El! They'll shoot you down like a dog when they get here!”
“Shut the fuck up!”
He pounded the boxes and Dawn was crushed against the wall but she was deadly silent. El couldn't know she was right on the other side. For all he knew there could be ten more rows of boxes. She didn't feel safe but a ray of hope entered her heart.
“Shoot you down and take pictures without your fucking glasses, El!” Now El slammed the boxes again so hard that the sleeping bag fell across Dawn's back and more light seeped in.
El hadn't brought a lantern or a flashlight with him. He was searching by the faint illumination that made its way through the clothes closet and into the tiny door. To El it must have seemed incredibly gloomy. But to Dawn it felt as though a searchlight had just fallen on her and she was close enough to El now to smell his body odor. It had a musky, animal scent.
She held her breath, not wanting to disturb the bag.
A heavy rumble shook the floor, walls, and ceiling. From inside the tunnel it sounded like distant thunder. But thunder was a once-in-a-decade event in interior Alaska. Dawn had never heard it since moving to McRay.
No.
That was dynamite.
“The bridge,” she heard El mutter.
His voice was right in her ear.
A heavy silence hung over the store and then, from the distance, the buzzing of the plane returned.
“Hear that, El?” taunted Micky. “Rich is circling. He's seen Stan. Did you hear that explosion? Whatever you just blew up, Rich saw it. Your timetable's off, El! You're all finished!”
“Shut up.”
Dawn couldn't help but flinch. It sounded like El was right in her face. His voice was so near he had to have seen the sleeping bag move. The boxes crunched against her again, and then there was the sound of El crushing his way, cursing, back through them.
He was leaving.
4:50
MICKY HAD MANAGED TO shift and hop around until the rocker faced directly up the stairs. But the El that came down them was not the same El that went up.
His face was ashen. The knife jerked in his hand and his other hand was so tight on the grip of the pistol—still holstered—that his knuckles were bone-white. His head whipped left and right, trying to follow the plane's flight through the walls and ceiling as though it were a mockingbird, diving on him to protect its nest. His chin was tucked down into his chest, accentuating the odd impression.
But there was no blood on his knife.
And Micky had heard no scream.
She had to assume that he had not yet found Dawn.
For her own sanity she had to believe it.
Because if he had murdered Dawn, she would not be able to live with the guilt. She had failed her parents. She had failed the dancer and then Wade. She had even failed Aaron. And finally, she had failed herself. But she wasn't going to fail Dawn. Somehow, she was going to get the girl out alive.
And then, as she watched El's back disappearing up the stairs, she had felt as though even that bit of salvation was going to be denied her. She had screamed to distract him, never believing that it would work. But her screams were all she had.
And he had been diverted.
At least for now.
The problem was that she had no idea what El would do next.
He was staring directly at her, and with his stiff motions and the gleaming knife in his hand, he reminded her of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Should I talk to him?
He'd told her to shut up.
Would I be better off obeying?
Outside she could hear Rich's Supercub circling the clearing.
Even if Rich hadn't spotted Stan's corpse, he'd be wondering why no one was coming outside to greet him. If the explosion had been El's cabin, as she suspected, then that, too, would surely have set Rich's antenna buzzing.
What had happened at El's?
Had Marty somehow blown himself up?
Or had he intentionally destroyed the cabin as a warning to Rich?
She didn't think Marty was in any shape to accomplish that but she prayed it was so. Still, a part of her mind warned her to prepare for the worst.
She watched El, waiting.
“Five o'clock,” he said, shaking his head.
What was he talking about?
“Five o'clock,” he repeated, hurrying past her to the window.
He craned his head, watching the plane circle overhead.
She was hoping that he would do something stupid, like going out front and shooting at Rich. It was damned near impossible to hit a moving plane and do much damage with a revolver and Rich was certain to see El and realize that something had gone terribly wrong in McRay.
But El just waited.
Would Rich land? Or would he call Anchorage and then circle, waiting for help?
That would be the sensible thing to do. The thing a lone officer might do. But Rich wasn't a police officer. He was a mail pilot in a remote bush village. He might very well land at the strip and come in to investigate.
Of course he'd call Anchorage first.
Wouldn't he?
She heard the plane disappearing to her right and over her shoulder. She could see El leaning hard against the front window.
To her dismay, he slipped the knife back in the boot sheath and retrieved the rifle. He turned to stare at her and she gave him what she hoped was a hateful look.
“I'll be back,” he said. Again the voice was deadly calm but she noticed that his hands were still shaking.
Nerves or fear? Or both?
She didn't say anything. She wanted him to leave.
God help her, she wanted him to go out to the airstrip after Rich so that she and Dawn would have a chance to escape. She prayed that Rich would see El and fly away, but beyond that, she just wanted El to take his knife and his gun and get out long enough so that she and Dawn could make a break for it. She knew that if they could get away, the two of them could make it out into the woods. They coul
d hide long enough for the authorities to come, even if it took days, even if Rich hadn't made the call.
If they could just get away from El.
5:00
EL STEPPED OUT ONTO the front deck of the store. He glanced at Stan, draped motionless over the railing. Why had the plane come before five o'clock?
El knew that the mail would be arriving at five o'clock because that was the way he had planned it.
Howard had surprised him by appearing unexpectedly at Terry's, and Dawn's running into the creek hadn't been planned either. But both of those events had been fortuitous. He just put Howard in Terry's cabin and assumed that Dawn would bleed to death deep in the alders.
Everything had been going according to schedule.
He had destroyed Howard's guns and prepared the bridge for when Stan and Marty either happened along or came to find out what the noise was about. And he was ready at any time to confront Micky if she showed up.
But what he hadn't expected was the bear and Stan and Micky, charging him out of the woods.
His first thought was that Stan and Micky had somehow trained the bear. The animal was attacking him. But, even as he pulled the trigger, he had already realized that the big grizzly was in fact attacking Stan. There was a pang of disappointment when he knew that he could have let the bear do his work for him but it occurred to him that the animal might have attacked Micky too and he just couldn't chance that.
Bears were just too unpredictable.
Bears were crazy.
And that was when things started to go wrong.
He had planned to shoot Stan inside the store. But Stan had surprised him by making a break for it. Still, that was no problem. All he had to do was tie Micky up and drag Stan into the shed with Clive.
But then he discovered that Dawn wasn't dead in the woods. That she was alive, somehow inside the store…
And the explosion.
What the hell was that?
Five o'clock!
The mail plane was supposed to show up at five!
El slapped the pistol grip so hard a ribbon of pain shot up his arm.
He had planned to be finished at the store in time to take a leisurely ride out to the airstrip and wait for the plane to arrive. He had gone over the scene again and again in his head because, of the entire plan, only the killing at the airstrip could have an almost certain chance of going off exactly. And it needed to go off exactly.
Cold Heart Page 22
