Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1)

by Mark Stevens

  The voice was gritty and old. Anger filled Allison’s mouth with panic and determination.

  “You don’t—” Another whack.

  She wriggled and kept struggling. He groped for control on top of her, crunching her hands.

  “My arms—”

  He was fiddling with her ankles, which snapped together. Rope flew and her ankles went up with a jerk. She was off the ground, upside down. The world spun. She made out a hulking shape. She twisted slowly as she dangled, blurry shots of him in each rotation. He was heading away.

  Was he gone? For good?

  Her left shoulder throbbed and burned. It felt loose and wobbly. She did half a sit-up, holding that position for a few seconds to study the knots and rope. The pain was searing. Her knife sat in its sheath on her belt, all tucked in. With her arms behind her and with the knife sealed behind a flap of Velcro, the blade may as well have been resting on the Sea of Tranquility. She uncurled and dangled back down, eyeing the snow far below.

  ****

  “Trouble,” said Grumley.

  The voice grated in Applegate’s ear. He held the phone away for a second, realized Ellenberg might hear it. He pressed it back tightly.

  “What?” said Applegate, eyeing the clock.

  12:15 a.m.

  “Who is it?” said Ellenberg.

  “It’s okay,” said Applegate.

  “What the fuck?” said Grumley. “Are you listening? You got trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind of trouble that comes from fucking with me. But that ain’t nothing. This Allison Coil number. She’s getting so close to you she’s about to smell what a true asshole is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You gotta get your butt back up here and deal with her,” said Grumley. “I sure as hell ain’t doing your dirty work. You gotta put a scare into her or she’s going to nail your ass. That is, unless you want it to get nailed.”

  “Who is it?” said Ellenberg again, a hand gently stroking his back.

  “It’s okay,” said Applegate again, feeling torn. What could he do? If he did anything he might expose himself to the police. “I can’t,” he said to Grumley.

  “I’m sitting here looking at your rifle. Nice one. Maybe the cops will enjoy a peek, too.”

  Fucker, thought Applegate. “She can’t have anything worthwhile, can’t put anything together.”

  “You haven’t seen nosy until you’ve seen this bitch.” Grumley hung up without any good-byes.

  It had been such a great evening. The spaghetti hadn’t turned out that badly and they had plowed through a bottle and a half of red wine before making love next to the gas-fired fireplace on the white carpet in his townhouse living room. They had watched a thriller on the cable and Ellenberg had made mental notes during one section where a horse was forced to dive off a high cliff. The movie studio was not one of the majors. Ellenberg wanted to pass a note along to the national organizations, to see if the studio had signed any agreements about not abusing animals. There was no disclaimer with the credits.

  “What was it?” said Ellenberg.

  “Nothing,” said Applegate. “At first, I thought it was somebody I knew. But I was wrong. Wrong number.”

  ****

  The rapidly dimming orange dot of fire was Allison’s reference point. She focused on it as she spun.

  Her ankles were tightly lashed. She could manage a half sit-up but the position didn’t accomplish much.

  The surreal aftershock of her attacker’s departure was settling in. The cold was getting a grip on her insides.

  She shimmied up again. She wanted to howl, but the fear demanded quiet. She couldn’t see the knots that bound her ankles.

  Her back creaked. She needed energy to keep her arms upright, behind her.

  The orange dot of fire was right side up as she peered off. She shook the rope with her body gyrating. She ignored the pang of her complaining shoulder and inched up, her body like a high diver tucked in a jackknife, hands around her knees. She searched for the strength to lift up above the knots that gained the cinching power of her own weight.

  Up. An inch. Endure the pain.

  Her toes wiggled. The bottoms of her heels came up—down— from the inside of her boots. He had lashed her boots, not her legs. There was room to wiggle but no bootjack for good leverage.

  She clawed up using her hands, her right foot finding more leeway. Her right foot popped loose and then her left but she stayed in her boots for a moment, keeping her toes curled, holding her in place.

  She looked at the snow below. She slowly pointed her toes and fell out of her boots, beginning a flip as she felt gravity take over, hoping for a soft landing and wondering if she should come up swimming or taste salt water.

  Eleven

  Pete Weaver had wrapped her in a colorful serape. She sat on a floral-pattern couch in his huge farmhouse, a hundred yards from the barn where she had arrived, obviously injured. She sipped tea and stared into the huge fireplace, roaring full bore.

  “I called Sandstrom,” said Weaver. Either he or someone else will meet you in his office late this afternoon.”

  She stared at the fire, looking for answers.

  Why hadn’t the assailant killed her? Had he meant to give her a chance to survive? If so, why?

  “You’ve got to report it,” said Weaver, his kindly old eyes unwavering. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

  “There’s not much they can do,” said Allison.

  “Hell there isn’t,” said Weaver.

  “There’s nothing to look at, the camp site is trampled all over. I’ll report it, but don’t think it’ll exactly fire ’em up.”

  “What about Mr. Forest Service?”

  The thought of repeating the story more than once was agony. She wanted to tell Slater and maybe Trudy, then sleep the whole thing off.

  “I’ll tell him. I’m sure Sandstrom will play Bigfoot on it, keep all the other forms of government footprints away.”

  “They still oughta be told.”

  “It’s not like they need to warn everybody who goes into the backcountry. It was me he was after.”

  “This whole business, I don’t know,” said Weaver.

  “It seemed like everything was fine in this valley until the mother of all protests,” said Allison.

  “That’s not—”

  “What?”

  “...what I meant. But you’re right. Everyone in the valley is on edge. This won’t help.”

  “It doesn’t have to get out.”

  “Doesn’t have to. It just does.”

  “How much tranquilizer would it take to kill an elk?” asked Allison.

  Weaver, who had taken up a cozy spot on a recliner and started to light a pipe, stopped and gave her a funny look.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “Would two shots do it?”

  “I have no idea,” said Weaver.

  As soon as she talked to Sandstrom and grabbed a good night’s sleep, she’d go get answers to her own questions.

  Why hadn’t he killed her?

  “I’ll need a couple days’ R&R.”

  “It’s okay,” said Weaver. “We’ll make do.”

  ****

  “Big like football-linebacker big ... or was it somebody bigger than your petite self?”

  A few flecks of spit flew as Sandstrom hammered the t’s in puh-teet.

  Allison lowered her tender left arm onto the sheriff ’s steel desk. It wasn’t her whole arm that stung, but the throbbing strain in the bicep made the entire limb flash messages of anger every time she moved it.

  “Big, strong. Lumberjack. Paul Bunyan.”

  “You didn’t get a good look at his face?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t hear or see anything else all day?”

  “At one point, I thought I heard a horse off in the distance. That was in the morning. Maybe behind me.”

  Slater, who had escorted her over, s
at on the couch in Sandstrom’s office. He was busy taking notes as if she’d come in off the street and they had never met. In fact, Slater had her run it down several times and asked lots of good questions.

  “No other indications?” said Sandstrom. “That someone was following you?”

  “Another time I had seen tracks, heading up the trail and then splitting off. I didn’t think much—”

  “Obviously you were being watched,” said Slater, cutting to the quick.

  Sandstrom cast a look at Slater that said kids in college calculus classes shouldn’t demonstrate their ability with adding fractions.

  “But no visual contact?”

  “No. Oh, this,” said Allison. “I almost forgot.” She pulled a long length of rope from a plastic bag and plopped it on his desk.

  “Standard issue,” said Sandstrom. “Hardware store variety. Plus, this one’s already served a lifetime. But that’s appreciated and quite smart of you.” Sandstrom put the rope on a shelf next to him, as if it was something she was returning.

  “And your assailant said, again, the part about fucking around.”

  “Where I don’t belong,” said Allison. “Fucking around where I don’t belong.”

  Allison slid another glance at Slater, who looked like he had his mind on the backside of a distant planet. There wasn’t much Slater could do now. This was her pickle.

  “So a guy comes and strings you up upside down in the middle of nowhere because you’ve been doing nothing, asking around about nothing.”

  She had seen this slightly difficult problem before deciding to report the incident, but hadn’t resolved how to deal with it. Slater had urged her to get it on the record, at the very least, and she softly dodged questions about her level of involvement.

  “Any particular individuals you’d care to mention who might have had their feathers ruffled?” said Sandstrom.

  “I was simply reporting the assault. I really didn’t think there was much you could do about it, unless I had more of an idea who did it.”

  “Then consider it reported,” said Sandstrom. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested. We’ll need you to show us where this happened.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “He might have dropped something.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “We’d like to see.”

  “Take the east trail to Buffalo Peak. Halfway to Wall Lake, you’ll see the remnants of my camp. If you get to one of our campsites, you’ve gone too far by about a mile and a half. There are two couples staying there now. The tracks around should explain everything.”

  “I know where it is,” said Slater. “Our people can show you.”

  Standing up, Allison winced as her arm again came under its own weight.

  “You know, whatever it was I saw—originally ...” Allison let the thought hang, to see if Sandstrom bit.

  “Yes?”

  “... is connected with this.”

  Slater took a breath and cocked his head as if his neck had a painful kink.

  “You’ve stirred the bees off the honey pot, if that’s what you mean. Although I don’t think you’ve come clean with me, young lady. Speaking for myself and not the official government record, I believe one thing. When we find the brainless piece of particulate matter that killed Ray Stern and if we get a confession, you’ll discover that what you saw was Ray Stern’s killer, trying to hide things away. I don’t think you were exactly where you thought you were, with all due respect for your guide skills. I think you saw the spineless idiot who killed Ray Stern. Maybe he was cleaning up his mess. You were, after all, a city girl until recently, were you not? Those mountains, I mean, really. How many varieties of shapes, bowls, peaks and ridges can there be? Don’t they all look alike after a while?”

  “Then where the hell is Rocky Carnivitas?” she said sharply.

  “Whoa,” said Slater, standing up, reaching out. Allison stepped away, but kept staring at Sandstrom.

  “Off following oversized hoof prints in the next county. There was nothing tying him down, nothing. Talk about your transient business, guiding is one fleeting way of life.”

  “Find him,” said Allison. “Put out the word. Ask why his truck’s been parked at George Grumley’s barn in the same spot for a couple weeks now. I drive by it all the time.”

  “It was a huge storm. He could have been trapped,” said Slater.

  “It’s possible.”

  Allison shot Slater a stare, upset that he’d derail her train. “Me or you,” said Allison. “Not Rocky, no way.”

  Slater offered back a weak smile. Allison felt her heart begin to thump hard, felt a bit of confusion clog her throat.

  “Track Rocky,” said Allison. Although he won’t be much use when you find him, she thought. She did the one thing she’d been sure she wouldn’t do; she wiped a sobless tear from her cheek. At least neither one of them came to comfort her. That would really have pissed her off.

  “We’ll see what we can do,” said Sandstrom.

  “Thanks,” said Allison and stood to leave without saying good-bye. “If you don’t find him, I will.”

  Allison waited for Slater in her Blazer, thinking of spending a day scrubbing the cabin down within an inch of its life or giving Bear a thorough groom for the heck of it. But both activities involved her shoulder. She wouldn’t mind a day of not thinking about it, of not forcing the puzzle together. The view through the binoculars had seemed, at first, like it would remain clear forever. When had the image started to wobble? Who was responsible for that? Could the moment she heard the shot really have coincided with the last moments of a human being’s life? One she knew? Was that possible?

  Slater ambled out and stood by her rolled-down window. “You think the report amounts to anything, really? Telling Sandstrom?”

  “A chance for him to talk in football lingo,” said Slater.

  “It’s the season,” said Allison.

  “You hit a nerve, anyway. Someone went to a whole lot of trouble up there, chasing you around. But when you get a minute, think about it. It might have been the protesters.”

  “What?”

  “Whoa now. A thought. This guy was suicidal.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe he had help with his wish and now, because of what you saw, maybe it wouldn’t look so good anymore. I’m saying it may not be the obvious.”

  The idea was hollow, offered no substance as she unwrapped it in her head. It was a strange world—but not that strange. Not worth debating.

  “Do you think Sandstrom will do anything?”

  “Depending on what there is to do, yeah, he’ll take a look. Maybe someone else saw this guy, can give them a description.”

  “Maybe,” said Allison.

  He leaned down, kissed her briskly and headed to his own truck at a slow jog.

  Out on the highway, Glenwood Canyon was draped in its late-fall garb. The canyon’s cliffs were dressed in their finest, butterscotch brown. Here and there, daubs of gold from the late-season aspens. She let her eyes go soft-focus. The scene looked as if a painter had come through with a brush full of water that forced the colors to run together. A long freight train picked its way along the opposite bank and she briefly thought she spotted a hobo poking his head out of an empty green boxcar. But the road veered sharply in front of her and by the time she flicked her eyes back he was gone, even though she could now see deep inside the boxcar. She sped up to see if she had the right car, but there were no other green ones on that whole section of the train.

  There was no giving up.

  Now, as she headed home, the thought of being alone wasn’t unpleasant. Her arm and shoulder still stung. Her mind swirled between Sandstrom’s odd interview style, which was too carefree, and the snapshots of sounds and images—snorts and strange horse tracks—leading up to the assault by the fire.

  How long would it have taken for somebody to find her body hanging from a tree? Her brain zipped through the ev
ents like a mental mobius strip that forced her to relive each moment again and again, sometimes in slow motion.

  After freeing herself from the rope, she had lain awake in her sleeping bag, gingerly avoiding putting any weight on her stinging arm. Fear turned every creak of a tree branch into the return of her attacker. She had fed the fire every hour. At dawn she’d hopped over to Bear in her socks, her feet in frozen agony. Climbing up on the saddle, she had guided him around and stood on his back to retrieve her boots, still stuck in the rope. She had warmed the boots and her feet by the fire. She had stared into the flames, replaying the attack as if it had been a movie. She had to watch the movie over and over. It was the only theater in town. There was only one person in the audience. There was nowhere else to go.

  ****

  It was the same space. Same cats, same plants, same everything. But Trudy felt shaky. She could not adjust to the sensation of being a prisoner. Her mind ran wild with theories and speculation. She kicked herself for giving in to George and leaving Allison there on the riverbank, for only putting up a minor fuss.

  Trudy tackled chores and routines, letting the small stuff soak her up. She repotted plants and cooked a bit, but nothing freed her mind, let her relax. She made a game out of making nice with her half-hearted captors, those switched temporarily out of “Trudy Duty” to “Jail Guard.” Every morning they passed the baton. Once or twice they had even overlapped for a few hours. She could hear them both in the living room, laughing and shooting the breeze while they ate their coffee cake and worked their way through a pot of good French roast, not that they knew the difference. It was all very civilized.

  George hadn’t said much of anything. The point was clearly to stay put and mind her business, but how was that possible? Her mind tried to slash its way through a thicket of anger and uncertainty. She felt trapped by the facts from Allison. It all made sense except for the sheer scale of the hole George had dug for her, a hole from which she hadn’t been able to see much of anything but a pinprick-size glimpse of his whole dealings. Rocky must have gotten caught up in the tangle of money and illegal junk. Trudy half wondered if it was something she had said that might have given Rocky the feeling that he could be more bold confronting George. She wondered what Allison would do with the information, where it all might lead. She knew that it wouldn’t work to sit back and wait. Someone had to make a move.