by Stephen Frey
The trees and brush are so thick I can barely see more than a few feet ahead of me. I’m trying to follow the tracks, trying not to get my eyes poked out by a branch, and trying not to get killed by whoever’s chasing this poor girl. Like I said before, people do crazy things up here when cabin fever sets in. You can’t understand how bad it is until you live here, until you physically experience the cold and gloom that stifle this territory day after day for months and months.
I grab my cell phone from my pocket and try Bear, but he doesn’t answer. Then I start pushing the precinct number but there isn’t time to finish the call. There’s no telling what these guys might do to the girl. I’ve got to get to her as soon as possible, so I shove the phone back in my pocket and move on.
A quarter of a mile into the woods I reach a clearing about an acre in size and right away I spot the men on the other side of it. They’re pinning the girl facedown in the snow and I can see that she’s definitely naked. It looks like they’re trying to tie her hands behind her back but she’s putting up one hell of a fight.
“Dakota County Police!” I yell loudly across the open ground, aiming my gun at them. Adrenaline is raging through my system and my voice is even louder than I expected it to be. “Put your hands up!”
The two men hit the ground even before my voice fades into the trees and roll away from the girl, then start shooting blindly at me. I dive behind a stump as bullets zip nastily through the branches above me. The men are so shocked right now they couldn’t drop a rock over the side of a boat on Lake Superior and hit water.
The girl scrambles to her feet and takes off into the trees, snow falling from her body as she goes. She must be very cold.
One of the men jumps to his feet and chases her. For a moment it looks like Caleb Jenkins, the ringleader of the group that was harassing Cindy the other day. I blow a warning shot across his bow and he does a one-eighty and takes off in the other direction, following his buddy into the woods. Now I’m not completely sure it’s Jenkins.
I rise and move through the trees rimming the clearing, in the direction the girl went, my gun leading the way. I’m going after her and not the men because I have no idea how long she’s been out in the elements and hypothermia could be setting in. As soon as her adrenaline rush dies she could pass out and I’d probably never find her. Or she might get lost. It’s easy to do out here, to go round and round in circles when you think you’re going in a straight line. She’d die before morning.
And going after the men under these circumstances would be stupid, bordering on insane. They’ve got a major advantage because there are so many places to hide and it’s almost dark. They could lure me into an ambush and shoot me very easily.
I find the girl’s tracks right away. The good thing is she’s heading straight for the Boulder River. The drop from the forest floor to the river in the Gorges section at that point is over three hundred feet almost straight down on both sides of the river. If I haven’t caught up to her by the time she reaches it, she’ll have to turn and she’ll probably turn north, downstream toward town and Lake Superior, because that would keep her heading away from the last point she knew the men were. I’ll call somebody and get them to wait for her at the Route 7 bridge while I follow her.
I kneel behind a couple of trees and case the area, gun still out in front of me, peering through my breath as it mists before my face. I don’t see any sign of the men and my guess is that they’re long gone. They’d love to pop me at this point, but sticking around is a bigger risk. They probably figure that I have backup on the way and all they want to do is get out of the area.
Just as I’m about to rise and go after her, I spot something moving out there in the woods. It’s a gray shape moving from tree to tree, but it doesn’t look like the girl. Whatever it is sends an eerie shiver up my spine. If it isn’t her, she’s putting a lot of distance between us, and I’m worried that I’ll lose her tracks in the fading light. I just have to hope it was some kind of animal.
I pull out my phone again and call the precinct but Davy doesn’t answer. Maybe he’s already gone home because of the storm. I dial his cell phone but he doesn’t answer that, either, which is strange. He’s usually pretty good about picking up right away when he’s on duty, even if he’s been called away from the precinct. I start dialing Bear’s number again but I’m losing too much time. I’ve got to get going. Once again I shove the phone back in my pocket and race after the girl.
I sprint several hundred yards through the snow, then stop suddenly. I swear I heard footsteps behind me. They stopped, too, a second after I did. It could be my imagination or it could be just the echo of my footsteps. I start running again, then stop quickly, but I don’t hear anything this time.
I start moving ahead again, following the tracks, trying to catch up. It’s obvious that she’s bleeding because red traces rim the edges of her tracks. The old snow is six inches deep and the top layer is frozen because the temperature went up and down so fast. It’s sharp and it’s slashing her ankles as she crashes through it. God, she must be scared.
I finally catch a glimpse of her moving through the trees. The trees aren’t quite as thick in here because the topsoil gets rockier near the river. I see her stop and lean against a large tree up ahead, shoulders heaving from exertion. It’s odd to see this girl standing in front of me in the middle of the woods. Even odder than it was to come around a bend on the river and see Cindy standing naked in the water. It’s the dead of winter, for Christ sake. Nobody should be out here like this. I’ll give the girl my Dakota County Police jacket as soon as I catch up to her.
As I watch her, I realize that this might be the girl from Hayward that Father Hannah was talking about this morning. The girl who told the minister down there she knew someone who was involved with the cult, then got spooked and ran. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since. The tearful reunion with her parents flashes through my mind. I hope she’ll be able to shed a lot of light on the cult, too. Starting with who the leaders are.
I move slowly through the trees because I don’t want to scare her. The girl’s head finally snaps around. She gazes toward the tree I’m standing behind for a few moments, then runs. I race after her. I don’t want to shout in case the men are still close. I wish she understood that I’m a friend, not a foe.
Finally I take a chance and call out to her. “I’m Sheriff Summers of the Dakota County Police Force! I’m here to help you!” My voice echoes through the trees. “I’m here to help you!” I shout again, louder this time. I stay still for a few moments, listening for her—and the men. “I’m the one they were shooting at!”
But she takes off crashing through the snow again, screaming in pain with each bloody step. I holster my pistol and race after her.
As we reach the crest of the cliff overlooking the Boulder, I’m only fifteen feet behind her. She’s plodding along almost out of energy, bent over at the waist against the driving snow, breathing hard. “Stop! Please!” I yell. We’re moving along the edge of the cliff. A few inches to our left it’s three hundred feet straight down to the river, and there are only a few places where I can still see dark water running. Otherwise, the surface is frozen solid and covered with snow. “Stop!”
Amazingly, she does. She turns and stares at me, hands at her sides, sobbing pitifully, bloody gashes in her ankles and lower legs, scratches all over her body. We’re less than ten feet apart and I make certain to keep my eyes focused on hers. I don’t want her to lose faith in me; I don’t want her to think I might be with the men who were chasing her.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I say softly, peeling off my jacket. It’s very cold out here. How can she have survived without anything on for so long? “I promise.” She’s standing ten feet from me and a foot from certain death. But in her fractured mental state she may not realize how close she is to the edge. I’m worried that she’s slipping into shock and may not even know where she is, so I stay still. Instead of moving clos
er, I hold my jacket out for her like you’d hold a piece of food out for a squirrel in a park. “Here, come on, take it.”
She takes one step toward me, then her knees buckle and she collapses.
I dive for her and I’m just able to grab one slender wrist as her body tumbles over the side. Then I lunge for the closest tree. There’s a small one growing close to the edge of the cliff—its trunk is barely bigger than the girl’s wrist—and I clutch it as tightly as I clutch the girl.
Now I’m in danger of going over the edge, too. I’m lying flat on my stomach with one arm over the edge holding on to her while she dangles three hundred feet in the air, screaming like a maniac, begging me to do something. The little tree I’m clutching is doing its best to hold our combined weight, but it could snap at any second.
It’s after nine o’clock before I finally pull into my driveway and the snow’s coming down hard. Six inches of fresh powder already cover the ground and the roads are getting bad. I had the Cherokee in four-wheel-drive low on the way home from the precinct, so driving wasn’t a problem, but anyone out there tonight who doesn’t have four-wheel drive is risking his life. I know it’s hard to believe, but not everybody up here does. It’s mostly because they can’t afford to.
By tomorrow morning even the Cherokee won’t be much good for getting around. Now the weather people are saying the storm is going to stall over the upper Midwest and spin for a day and a half thanks to another front to the east that’s coming up out of the Gulf. It’ll dump snow on us until early Tuesday and we could get three feet, maybe more. This could be the storm of the decade, maybe even the century.
Somehow I was able to save that girl. That little tree held and I was able to pull the girl back up to safety. God, I was happy, and thankful that I work out as hard as I do. I couldn’t lift a car off someone like Bear did, but I don’t think an average-sized guy could have done what I did, either.
As I wrapped my coat around her, Davy Johnson called me on my cell to tell me he was speeding out 681 to where my SUV was parked—I’d left a message on his cell phone the time I’d called him. After we hung up, he called the paramedics, and by the time I got the girl back to the road, they were there waiting for us. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask her, but I held off. She needed to get to the hospital as fast as possible, and I probably couldn’t have relied on the answers she’d have given me in the state she was in anyway.
In my high beams I notice a squirrel struggling through the blizzard to make it to that big pine tree in our front yard Vivian always parks her car beneath. He moves forward in great leaps, hurtling two or three feet in the air and disappearing beneath the snow for a few seconds on impact. Then he reappears with a flaky white cap on his head, which he quickly shakes off before leaping forward again. Finally, he makes it to the tree and scampers up the trunk.
I take a deep breath and slowly let my head fall to the steering wheel, feeling heat building at the corners of my eyes. Why, I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I cried. Since a day ten years ago when I was walking in the woods outside Madison by myself, and I realized I might have made a mistake marrying Vivian. But I’d made promises to her at that altar in front of everyone, and I couldn’t go back on them. That wouldn’t have been fair, that wouldn’t have been right.
I knew why I was upset then, but I’m not sure now. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had time to really think about the fact that Cindy’s gone forever and it’s finally sinking in. Despite the fact that Viv hated her so much, she was a good person and she was a big part of my life for a long time. Or maybe it’s the look I saw on that poor girl’s face just before she fell off the cliff. Sheer terror as she reached for me during that fraction of a second she teetered on the brink. She was hoping against hope I could save her—but I did.
I just wish I could have saved Cindy.
13
“I LOVE YOU, PAUL.”
I gaze up at Vivian from the kitchen chair, taken completely off guard. It’s been a long time since she’s said that to me without my saying it first. I’d taken her to Minneapolis for a big New Year’s Eve party a few years ago and we were staying at a four-star hotel downtown where we were spending a good chunk of my off-the-books bonus from that year. Everybody in the main ballroom had just finished a raucous countdown led by a tuxedo-clad master of ceremonies, and we were kissing to the orchestra’s soulful rendition of auld lang syne. When the song ended and we pulled back she stared into my eyes and murmured the words, “I love you, Paul.” Almost inaudibly, but she did. That was the last time she had said it to me first.
At that point we were still desperately trying to have children. She was taking all kinds of fertility drugs, and it seemed like we were having sex all the time. In fact, we had to rush back down from our room to make the countdown in the ballroom. It seemed like we’d reignited that infatuation passion we had for each other at the beginning of our relationship. The one that lasts for a few months, then vanishes like a morning fog. And you can’t put your finger on exactly when it burned off, but you know it did, because you don’t have that burning desire to see the other person anymore. And your heart doesn’t beat any differently than it does when you see anyone else.
We were kissing in the hotel elevator like two teenagers on prom night. It was a passionate kiss that went on in front of an elderly couple during the entire trip down to the lobby. The old couple was appalled, and rightfully so, though we couldn’t have cared less. We were feeling good from the wine and champagne we’d been drinking. We were enjoying a great time, swept up in the conviction that soon we’d finally find out we were having the baby we both wanted so much, certain that modern technology was going to win the battle for us.
But it didn’t. A month later Vivian got the definitive word from her doctor in Madison that she couldn’t have children no matter how many drugs she tried, and that incredible passion we’d managed to reignite had a heart attack and died in front of us before it even hit the floor.
“I … I love you, too,” I mumble.
She’s cooking a western omelet for me. It’s my favorite kind and she’s dressed in nothing but a little teddy while she cooks.
It’s ten o’clock in the morning and we only got up fifteen minutes ago. It’s the first time I’ve slept this late since last year’s blizzard dumped two feet on us, and I feel refreshed despite all that’s going on. I checked the lawn from the back porch window right after we came downstairs, and it looks like we’ve already gotten at least a foot and a half. Just a few random flakes are spiraling down from the sky now, but, according to the Weather Channel, this is simply the storm taking a break. Sometime early this afternoon the barrage is supposed to reform and rev up again. The weather people are predicting at least another foot for the north-country.
Vivian sways seductively across the floor when she’s finished making the omelet. She puts the plate down in front of me on the wooden table, then sits on my lap and feeds me.
“Good?” she asks.
It’s incredible. It’s better than the omelet I had at that four-star hotel in Minneapolis for New Year’s Day brunch as I was fighting a bad hangover. “Oh, yeah.”
In the last few days it’s as if she’s gone from short-order cook to Wolfgang Puck, from matron to runway model. Well, maybe that’s pushing it, but any way I look at it the change is dramatic. She’s wearing just the right amount of makeup, she’s still doing that thing I like with her hair, and, most important, she’s being nice. The transformation has been immediate and amazing, but there’s a double-edged sword to it. Suddenly I’m living with that person I’ve always wanted to live with, but it seems obvious why, and that could have a dark side to it.
She cuts another bite with the fork, wiggles on my lap and smiles suggestively as she slides the tines past my lips. But she doesn’t pull the fork out right away. She hesitates, then tilts her head back and gets a wild look in her eyes. Then she forces it farther into my mouth so the tips of the tines touch the ba
ck of my throat.
I gag and push her off me. “What the hell are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer. She just drops the fork to the floor, straddles me, kisses me, and grinds herself against me. “Make love to me,” she whispers as she pulls the teddy over her head. “I want you so badly.”
By three o’clock in the afternoon twenty-seven inches of fresh snow cover the territory, and the storm doesn’t show any signs of letting up. We lost the satellite again an hour ago but it doesn’t matter. This time Vivian and I do it on the couch, breaking one of its wooden legs in the process. This time I started it. Apparently, I’m over my problem of last night.
“I’m so happy, Paul.”
“Me, too.”
It’s after ten and we’re lying on the couch naked beneath two heavy blankets watching a late movie on TV. It’s been a hell of a day. It reminded me of those first few months when we were intimate so long ago, and that period when we were trying so hard to conceive. Even when we weren’t making love today we were touching each other and smiling knowingly when we passed each other in a room or in the hallway and we were giving each other lots of kisses. I couldn’t believe how good it was.
“I feel like we’re finally getting everything back on track,” she says. “Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I do.” I’m not just saying that, either. It wasn’t just the sex for me today. I felt good about her for the first time in a long time. And us.
“It’s been so long.” She looks up at me and smiles sweetly. “You’ve been a pretty tough man to live with for a while. I know it’s tough to be the sheriff, but sometimes I think it’s tougher to be the woman who lives with the sheriff.”
I don’t like the sound of that. She’s the one who’s been hard to live with, but I’ll let it go in the interest of keeping the peace and keeping the good momentum going. “Yeah, well …”
