Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Stomach, or something lower down. Even the wispy memory of it still worked. Susan felt her body respond.

  Sick. Sick sick sick. Pervert.

  She threw the covers back, letting the December chill bite her through the damp pajamas, quick way to kill any thoughts of sex. Running flat-out, the furnace heat barely touched this end of the trailer, three sides exposed to winter, but she couldn’t sleep in the closer bedroom, the warmer bedroom. That was where they’d left Bitch . . . .

  She pushed those thoughts into one of her mental closets and locked the door, locked it on Mom murdered and Dad vanishing and the death of everything else she’d dared to care about. Locked it on her eagles. Naskeag tribal business, Aunt Jean had insisted, sovereign nation, and they had the evidence now. And Susan needed to stay on the right side of that fence. The tribe owned other roosts.

  Even without the icebox, she hated this dump. She didn’t want to come back here, but the only choice within fifty miles was a trucker’s motel still open in the teeth of winter. She’d stayed there the night after Bitch . . . .

  Don’t go there. Locked closet. Besides, she’d lived with worse on the streets. Damned old trailer had maybe a wish of insulation in the walls. Fish and Wildlife legends said that icicles dripped from the aluminum window frames in winter, six, eight inches long, scenes straight out of that Doctor Zhivago movie. Your tax dollars at work.

  The biologist who’d stayed here last winter, radio-tagging bears in their dens, had ended up using his camping gear—whole nine yards, goose-down sleeping bag and stuff, inside. He’d ended up using a latrine out back in the snow, because the pipes froze solid. Took a shower once a week, courtesy of the truck stop, while his laundry spun and dried.

  It hadn’t gotten that bad, yet. Yet. Maybe the hay bales two deep and staggered with offset joints around the crawl space were going to work. Them, and plastic sheeting duct-taped over the windows, rattling in the wind.

  But she was still always cold. She got up, tossed off the damp pajamas and wet underwear, shivering while she scrounged fresh underwear and long-johns and wool pants and two layers of sweaters from where she’d set them out before going to bed. “Always keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.” That’d been Aunt Jean, a parting shot, it sounded like she was quoting somebody. Susan found her Walther just where she’d left it, on a side table next to her bed, the second part of that equation.

  Aunt Jean had said some other things, oblique things, about teenagers and hormones and sexual identity. She’d thrown a few pointed looks at Alice. When Susan had been that age, she’d only thought about boys and sex once or twice a day. For twelve hours straight.

  Aunt Jean had gone on to mention Carlsson, oblique again, mainly that she approved of him and that the eagles wouldn’t nest near a bad person. Which, Susan was beginning to understand, Meant Something.

  Maybe that explained the dream. Damned subconscious.

  Whatever. Susan gave up on sleep for the night, anyway. She didn’t need any more dreams of Carlsson messing up her head. Those blue eyes, those muscles that had tossed her around like a doll, that swaggering walk like he owned the world . . . .

  Carlsson. She blushed in the darkness. What the hell had she been thinking of, stripping in front of him? She knew what her underwear looked like, soaking wet. She’d washed it often enough. Turned into glass, she could see her hands clear through it. He could see her . . . .

  Not that he’d have seen any big thrills. Big was the operative word. One bitch in college had said Susan was just a boy with a couple of olives in his shirt pockets. That had enough truth in it to bite. You didn’t build a Playboy body on Gook genes.

  But she’d been cold, cold enough that she would have died without that quick retreat to the stove and dry clothes. And besides, she’d been treating him like a thing, a piece of furniture. Not a person. Not a man, in any sense that mattered. Not even worth turning her back on him.

  Coffee. She did this insomniac thing a lot, knew the routine since grad school. She checked the faint glow of her alarm clock, big hand on the three, little hand just past the two. Two fucking fifteen in the morning, not a place any sane person wanted to be. And the sun wouldn’t wake up until maybe seven. Substitute coffee as an artificial sunrise, get the blood stirring.

  At that, she was getting a break. Sunrise County meant just what it said, the first sunrise in the USA. Also the earliest sunset, well before 4:00PM these days. That part could get depressing if she let it.

  Coffee. Out to the bathroom and then the trailer’s kitchen, so-called.

  She left the lights off—she hated scrunching her eyes shut against the glare and stumbling around blind for minutes until her eyes adjusted. She knew the drill, left things where she could find them in the dark, not just clothes and guns. Coffee grounds were in their bag there, scoop was next to it here, filter already in the basket. She dipped out grounds and leveled the scoop each time with her fingers, filled her measuring cup until she felt water spill over the edge, plugged in the pot.

  She could do it in the dark. Had done it, hundreds of times, in this kitchen and other kitchens reaching back to the Triassic. Probably should set the whole thing up the night before, but she kept hoping to sleep until false dawn and a little light, if not genuine sunrise. Hoping against the available evidence. She wondered how long it had been since she’d gotten a normal human’s eight hours of sleep.

  That had been damned useful in grad school, being able to get by on four, five hours of sleep a night. That was where she’d learned this bit of getting up and doing things quietly in the dark, not turning on the lights, not waking her roommates. Her mug waited over there in the drainer, washed last night and left in the same corner every time. Routine.

  Sleep cycles and normal humans—that had been the last straw with Alan. He needed eight, nine hours a night, and still lurched around like a goddamn zombie for an hour after he finally dragged his ass out of bed. But he thought sleeping together meant sleeping together, and got all bent out of shape when she got up again after he zonked, or wasn’t there warm and snuggly when he woke up.

  Incompatible physiologies, to hell with it. Life is too short for that kind of shit.

  The coffee trickled down, its hot sharp aroma filling the darkness. A wind gust shook the trailer, raising an answering cold breeze inside past the dead weather-stripping on the windows and door. Just another day in paradise.

  Should have gone into medicine, become a real doctor like Mom wanted, earn a hundred and fifty thou a year. Hot and cold running Mercedes instead of a rusty Dart. Dark thoughts at Oh-Jesus thirty AM.

  She was used to them by now. She heard the coffee subside to slow drips and swapped the measuring cup under the spout for long enough to pull the pot and pour a cupful.

  Moonlight glowed off the snow, filtered by the plastic over the windows—silver light and shadows turned into mysteries by the translucent polyethylene. Hot coffee burned her tongue, her throat. A barred owl hooted in the distance, another answering. The wind. The creak of cold and trees and the trailer adjusting to winter. Otherwise, silence. No noise.

  No people. That was why she hadn’t gone into medicine. She didn’t care much for people. She had the science skills, but not the people skills. Doctors should care about people, care about their patients the way Carlsson cared about those animals.

  Christ, there he was again. But that was one thing early morning coffee gave her, a clarity of thinking without distractions. He cared about those animals. No way to buy that.

  He might be a swaggering racist bastard, suitable for a one-way trip headfirst down the outhouse hole, but she wasn’t going to file that report she’d typed up on the State o’ Maine’s battered manual Underwood that came with the trailer. He’d been right about those rehab statistics. They showed the best record in the state on recoveries and releases. Somehow his passion overcame all the weaknesses in his rehab program.

  Car tires whined out on the main road,
some damnfool pulp cutter headed for the Coffee Pot and then a day’s slavery in the corporate paper plantation. No, pickup truck or four-wheel-drive, the off-road tread sounded different, you could tell that whine a mile away. It slowed sharply, maybe a deer or moose in the headlights. She waited for the thump of meat against metal, or the crack of a poacher’s rifle. Not her problem, she didn’t carry a badge. She caught a flash of headlights through the woods, then darkness.

  Darkness and the crunch of tires on frozen snow and motor noise now, higher revs, transmission in low. They’d turned into the fire road. They’d turned the headlights off. Susan found the counter with her left hand, put the coffee down with her right, followed the touch of the cold walls back to her bedroom, to her bed, to the bedside table and the chill metal of the Walther and its spare magazine.

  This was her problem. Nobody drove this road in winter. It turned into a private driveway for the Fish and Wildlife trailer. And anyone who had legal business here wouldn’t show up at 3 AM.

  Susan gnawed at her lip. Her hands shook, and she tried to see the shadows around her as a hunter would see them, the darkness, the light, the windows glowing with moonlight, the patterns. She moved to the door of the bedroom, set herself outside it in the hallway, closed it behind her. Dark door, no light behind her making her a target, dark clothing. Clear line of fire to the front door of the trailer, the only door of this refugee from a junkyard. What did they want? Just trying to scare her, horn and sudden headlights and maybe a rock through the window? Slash the tires on her car? Again?

  Or had they gone beyond warnings? Firebomb? Night-riders in hoods and masks with some nice fresh hemp rope? She hadn’t run away when they killed Bitch, she hadn’t run away when they butchered her eagles. Aunt Jean had told her that running didn’t help. Time for the next step up . . . .

  She heard a truck door creaking, not new, not lubed like the Dart doors now, she heard a muffled voice, at least two of the bastards or a psycho talking to himself. Footsteps in the snow. They wouldn’t expect her to be awake and waiting in the dark. No sane person would be awake at this hour. No sane person made coffee in the dark.

  Phone. The phone was in the kitchen, other end of the hall, right by the door, too close to the door, she needed that space between her and the door. Alice had warned her that a man could move ten feet, fifteen feet before you could fire a shot, getting close enough to knock the gun aside. And besides, any fool would know enough to cut the phone lines, first thing. They’d stopped at the end of the road.

  Hollow thumps echoed, feet on the wooden steps. Something scratched at the door. That door was as flimsy as everything else in this shack. Flimsy door, weak frame, el-cheapo lock.

  She flipped the safety off. She knew which way was “Off” now, courtesy of Alice and Aunt Jean. She knew a few other things. Two-handed grip, the Walther had enough space for that, finger on the trigger, she could even see the sights against the light coming through the door glass. The shadow moved outside, blocking that light.

  Splintering wood, more light, the door swinging open and the white paint acting as a mirror to send moonlight inside, the shadow moving, passing through the doorway, stopping, moving again. She squeezed the trigger.

  Shot. Shot again, the gun flashing orange in front of her, lighting up the hall, fear numbing the blast. Two quick shots and a pause for targeting, just like Alice taught. Her ears rang. The shadow had jerked, surprise or pain, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t leave.

  She brought the sights back on it, shot, shot again. She heard glass shatter, somewhere through the roar of the pistol. The shadow jerked again and then vanished through the door and she heard the truck motor roar and the door squeak and slam and tires spinning on the ice and thumping across ruts and the headlights flashed and faded. Faded to the east, headed toward Stonefort. She made sure she remembered that.

  The phone wouldn’t work, she knew that, but she kicked the door shut again, as if that mattered with the broken frame and icy wind through the shattered glass, and then she picked up the phone with one hand while keeping the gun in the other. She heard the dial tone. Didn’t they watch any TV? They were complete idiots, whoever they were. Or they expected her to have a radio instead of a phone this far back in the puckerbrush, like Carlsson.

  o0o

  “A shotgun would have been simpler. Then we’d just have a body to identify and could skip a lot of lab time and paperwork.” The deputy stopped short and shook his head as if he’d caught himself thinking out loud. “Nothing you did wrong, ma’am, I’m sorry, you’re just taking this so calmly that I felt like I was talking to my boss. I guess you’ve been through a lot worse.”

  Calmly, hell. Susan gulped another mouthful of coffee. Cold coffee, bad coffee, and it riled her stomach. But it gave her hands something to do. Her hands shook enough, she had to use both of them to hold it steady. She was sitting in a cop cruiser again, talking to a man in uniform with a clipboard bright under the dome lights.

  “You’re not going to arrest me?” She’d pulled a different deputy this time, older, shorter, more belly. Gray in his hair, gray six o’clock shadow of the end of a shift. Six AM shadow.

  “Arrest you? Take up a collection to buy you a better gun, more likely. Even if he dies, I don’t think we’ll have to take this to a Grand Jury. Word with the D.A. in the morning, open-and-shut self defense. Bullet hole in the glass lining up with the wall behind, busted frame, blood, you name it, all proves he broke in, was inside, shows you were shooting from your bedroom door. Damned lucky you were awake.”

  You wouldn’t think it was luck if you’d lived through ten years of 3 AM blues. “So you think I hit him?”

  “Possibly twice. At least once. No blood on the glass, he didn’t cut himself. Four shots. From that angle, one slug could have gone out the door. Not likely. Two in the wall. Blood smear on the door jamb, blood splash on the ice. You hit him good. He’ll end up in a hospital somewhere, and we’ll get him then. Doctors have to report bullet wounds.”

  Her teeth were chattering in the distance, something happening to somebody else. She kept seeing that shadow, seeing it jerk on the far side of the orange blaze of her pistol firing. She had a hard time paying attention to the deputy. Hadn’t even caught his name, just the safety of the badge and Smokey Bear uniform hat in the flash of blue lights when he skidded on the ice outside.

  She glanced sideways, the nametag on his uniform. Sommers. Like that cove over near Carlsson’s place. Probably the name connected to another old family. Old enough around here to have the land named after them. Wouldn’t ever be a Tranh Cove in Sunrise County. Names were already taken.

  “Ma’am? Doctor Tranh?”

  Susan blinked and shook herself. “I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.”

  “I understand. This must bring up painful memories of the war. I asked if you had someplace you could go. The mobile crime lab won’t be here for a couple of hours, and I have your statement already. I need to clear and secure the crime scene so we don’t disturb any evidence. And that trailer won’t be livable until you get the door replaced.”

  I never was in the war. I never was in Vietnam. I maybe lost a father to it, but we never knew just why or how or when. But she didn’t say that. She kept saying that to people, time after time, and nobody believed her, just assumed she didn’t want to talk about it, “painful memories,” so eventually she gave up and invented stories.

  “I can’t believe you’re through with me. This fast, I mean. Don’t you have more questions?”

  He shook his head, flashes of light off his insignia and stuff. “Two reports filed already, threats, harassment, damage, we’ve got all your contact data and a clear pattern. Evidence looks plain as hell. We can talk to you later if anything strange comes up. Plus, we’re always short-staffed on this shift. I can’t leave you in the cruiser if I’m out of it. Policy. No need for you to stand around and freeze for hours.”

  They hadn’t slashed her tires. Apparently hadn’t g
one anywhere near her car, not even footprint evidence to mess up. Probably had intended a more permanent solution to whatever bit their asses. “Jean Haskell told me to come over if I had any more trouble. You know where she is? Stonefort? Everyone seems to know her.”

  The man froze. He muttered something under his breath, muffled by the cruiser engine idling, it could have been “That old witch.”

  “You don’t think that would be a good idea?”

  He shook himself. “No, no, I love Aunt Jean. I respect her. Even if I didn’t, I’d never say so out loud in front of witnesses. And you can tell her that. She’ll get a kick out of it. Go there. You’ll be safe. Just, now I know this case is going to get a lot more complicated, very soon. I didn’t need that.”

  What the hell?

  Susan couldn’t figure it out. She sat and stared at the deputy. Local politics, with the Naskeags? Had to be more to it than that.

  “Go. That’s probably the safest place you can stay. And the sooner the shit hits the fan, excuse my French, the sooner we can clean it up and bag it and sell it for organic fertilizer. Just, if Aunt Jean gets involved, someone’s in for a world of hurt. And it isn’t you.”

  6:15 by the dashboard clock, first light pale on the eastern horizon. The sun would probably be up by the time Susan reached Stonefort. She hoped the old woman would be. She hoped that fortress would let her in. Right now, that calm and strength looked like an oasis to a dying traveler staggering out of the desert.

  She hoped it didn’t turn out to be a mirage.

  And she wondered why this deputy set her teeth on edge. Not like the other one, not just age and fat and gray stubble on his jowls. Something about his phrasing, something about his sideways looks, as if he was acting and wanted to see how she reacted to his performance.

  Something about him tripped her street radar. Sure as hell she’d learned to trust that when she was dodging pimps and pushers and just pure-ass mean walking the bad side of bad neighborhoods.