World Tree Girl

by Kerry Schafer

  Mac’s face is unreadable, but there’s a grimness around his eyes that wasn’t there before. “It’s a matter of a certain hen house and a red fox,” he says.

  The reference to his dream clears things up a little. Obviously we can’t talk here, so I start moving, a little slower than necessary for the benefit of the impatient passenger behind me.

  “Do tell me you didn’t come on the Harley.”

  He laughs. “Nope. I’m acceptably equipped with an enclosed vehicle. You’ll see.”

  We cross the skybridge into the parking garage. Mac’s vehicle—a serviceable Jeep Cherokee, dented on the front fender, but equipped with studded tires, four-wheel drive, and a deer guard—is parked wonderfully close to the elevator. I make him stop by my Jag so I can check on it and recover a couple of critical items from glove box and trunk. I’m not going anywhere else without my gun.

  Once we’ve cleared the parking lot, I start with the questions. “Who, what, when, where…All the details.”

  “There’s been another murder.”

  “So that’s why Jake really sent you.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Even for me, this is a stretch. I’m willing to bend, break, and repurpose the rules, but some channels are there for a reason.

  “Whatever you tell me, I’m going to fill him in.” Either I trust Jake, or I don’t, no more halfway.

  “Your call,” Mac says. “On a side note, while I was waiting for your flight, I swung by the address we had for Dason in Spokane.”

  “Find anything interesting?”

  “A brand-new set of renters and a landlady who swears she never heard of him.”

  “Wonder how much they paid her? All right. Nothing to be found there. So we’re going to look at a body, then?”

  He shakes his head. “There is no body.”

  “Are you being cryptic on purpose? Or can you not help yourself?”

  The idiot in the car in front of us, going way too fast, hits his brakes at a red light and slides sideways into the intersection. Mac, smart enough to keep a good distance and pay attention, slows down and takes a right onto a fortuitous side street. I don’t press him, letting him focus on the traffic and driving. Thanks to a traffic report on the radio warning us that Division is locked up with a multiple-car pileup, he works his way over to the Maple Street bridge, and we’re able to avoid the worst of the traffic, but it’s still slow going.

  Once we’re out of city limits, things ease up a little, traffic wise, but the road hasn’t been plowed, and visibility is minimal, what with snow coming down from the clouds and blowing around on the road. I try to call Jake, but he doesn’t answer. Neither does Matt. I leave them both messages, but I don’t like the silence and can’t say much, other than that Mac picked me up and is bringing me home.

  By the time Mac turns off the highway onto an unmarked road just inside the Shadow Valley County line, my nerves feel like a whole classroom of middle schoolers is dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard.

  Here, under the shelter of forest on either side of what I assume is a road, the snow floats down in leisurely flakes, no longer swirled by the wind. Mac slows to put the Jeep in four-wheel drive and speaks for the first time in an hour.

  “Not too far from here. Up past Skeleton Lake.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “Likely named after a dead deer or some such. It’s a popular fishing hole.”

  “Not in this weather, one assumes.”

  “Are you kidding? This is perfect fishing weather.” He laughs, relaxing a little, obviously back in his own element.

  “So you’re taking me to a murder scene, but there’s no body.”

  “Yep.”

  “And the murderer?”

  “Presumed long gone.”

  “Hmmm.” The haze of fatigue that’s been sucking me in for hours lifts with a burst of adrenaline. I take the opportunity to load my revolver. Lead in the first two chambers, then silver, then my own special amalgam. Extra rounds in a pouch. All in order. I don’t have my ankle sheath, but I’ve got a knife in my pocket. I’m set, unless we’re off to see the Medusa, in which case I’m my own best weapon. The bits of silver left in my body from the incident that nearly killed me saved me from the creature once. I also have Phil’s altered flashlight, another thing the Medusa didn’t like.

  None of these things will kill it, though, and I want it dead.

  My thoughts are interrupted by a lurch and sway and some creative cursing from Mac as we turn off what I already think of as a track onto an even narrower road. Branches scrape the sides of the Jeep. The tires spin and we lose traction climbing a hill, and I have visions of trying to drag my aching leg through the snow. Mac shifts into low gear and tries again, and this time the Jeep makes the climb. The trees open up into a small clearing, and he parks next to a pickup that has seen better days.

  At the far edge of the clearing there is a cabin. The logs are weathered to silver gray. A plume of smoke rises from a stovepipe chimney, and firewood is stacked neatly on a covered porch. A narrow trail leads to a small lake about fifty feet farther on, with a dock so rickety I’d hesitate to set foot on it. All else is trees. Pine, fir, and cedar, mostly. A couple of naked vine maples.

  Mac knocks at the cabin door, which is opened promptly by a gnome of a human that could be either male or female.

  “Aunt Leo,” Mac says, bending to kiss a cheek that is more wrinkles than not.

  Aunt Leo wears a flannel shirt and patched blue jeans held up by a pair of strawberry red suspenders. She’s under five feet tall, with wispy gray hair in a shoulder-length braid and a triangular face. A wall of heat, bearing the odor of wood smoke, wet wool, and bacon slams into me, overpowering, but not unpleasant.

  She turns her head sideways to peer up at us out of bright black eyes. “Cormac. ’Bout time you showed up. Who is this, then?”

  She does not invite us in, standing square in the middle of the doorway and looking maledictions at me.

  “This is Maureen. She might be able to explain things. Can we come in?”

  “No explaining needed, far as I’m concerned, but suit yourselves.” She steps aside to let us enter.

  The interior of the cabin is small and dark, lit by only one light bulb, dangling from the low ceiling by a wire. A woodstove at the center is the source of the heat. A cot presses up against one wall. Wet wool socks hang on a dryer close to the fire. A pot simmers on an old green stove next to a low table holding a pitcher and wash basin.

  There are only two wooden chairs. Leo drops into one of them with a little grunt and looks me over from head to toe.

  “You trust her, then?”

  “I do.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That there has been a murder. The rest is yours to tell. Or not.”

  “I wouldn’t say a murder,” she says, “Although certainly a mystery. Come here, then, you.” I obey the summons, standing in front of her while she makes an assessment. Her eyes check me over from head to toe and then she actually snuffles like a hounddog, though how she can smell anything beyond the olfactory overload already going on in this cabin I can’t imagine.

  “This good-for-nothing told you there was a murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not who, or how?”

  “True.”

  “Give me your hand.”

  I give her my left, reserving my gun hand in case it’s needed. She holds it palm up, tracing the lines with one finger. I’ve got no patience with palm reading, any more than I do with crystal ball gazing. The future will be what it will be. Trying to avoid some coming catastrophe is probably what leads to the disaster in the first place. But I contain myself and let her do her thing.

  “Patience and trust, not your virtues,” she says, dropping my hand. “And yet here you are. You have a great desire to know something.” Her eyes are impenetrable. “Many secrets you keep, many secrets you are after. All right then. I have a
story to tell you. Sit.”

  Mac carries the other chair over for me and I lower myself into it, knowing that Leo’s sharp eyes don’t miss the stiffness or the involuntary hitch in my breath as the leg spasms. She would never allow such weakness as pain to slow her down, I’m certain, but she makes no comment and waits for me to settle before she begins talking.

  “One week ago, my grandson Vince comes to stay. He doesn’t tell me so, but when he shows up, I know he’s got himself on the wrong side of the law again. Why else does he come to the woods to sleep on the floor beside the fire of an old woman? Not out of love, you can be sure, although I’m the one who raised him.” She fishes a can of tobacco out of her pocket and inserts a pinch into her cheek.

  “He doesn’t tell and I don’t ask. Soon enough he’ll run back to the city and they’ll catch him. Not the first time he’s been locked up; won’t be the last. Usually, he only hides out here for a day or two. This time, it’s five days and counting. I’m getting antsy, worrying my food stores aren’t going to last until the monthly shopping. I figure he’s really got himself mixed up in something bad this time and wonder should I call the cops and have them come pick him up? I send him down to the pond to go fishing; get him out of my hair so I can make that phone call, maybe make himself useful while we’re waiting for the law to come and pick him up. And then, before I have a chance to even dial the phone, the spirit of the lake wakes up and takes the decision out of my hands.”

  She nods her head once, decidedly, as if she has made a clear and important point, and then rummages in a paper shopping bag beside her chair and comes up with a ball of yarn, knitting needles, and what looks like a sweater with arm holes in all the wrong places.

  “Winter gets cold,” she says, by way of explanation as the needles begin to click. The minutes tick by in time with her stitches and I open my mouth to ask a question, stopped by a slight gesture from Mac.

  Leo appears to be focused on her knitting, but catches him in her peripheral vision and shakes her head. “Always with the questions and the signals. Like I don’t see what you’re up to. Both of you want to know more about the Lake Spirit, and Mac over there thinks I’ve gone bonkers.”

  “How many years you lived out here now?” Mac asks. “And no sightings of this mysterious Lake Spirit before now? Excuse me if I’m skeptical.”

  “Just because she never showed herself before don’t mean she hasn’t always been there.” She glances up at me, her sharp eyes not missing a thing. “And you, inquisitive Miss that you are, want to know what she looked like. Well, I will tell you that. Young, she looked, despite the fact she must be timeless. Smooth and slim and shapely, she was. She rose up out of the water, naked as a baby from the womb, her skin all covered in symbols and patterns. Vince drops his fishing pole at sight of her, goggling. Should have got down on his knees to her—maybe she’d have spared him.

  “But no, he whistles at her. Catcalls. That was Vince for you. She stands there in the shallows, her feet in the water, all come-hither eyes. And he goes to her. Makes a grab at her breasts and she lets him. Something about that finally clues him in and he starts screaming and stumbles backward, but by then she’s got her arms around him, her mouth latched onto his. He’s still struggling, but he can’t scream anymore and she starts backing into the water. One step at a time, dragging him with her.”

  She stops there, going back to her knitting, a faint crease between her eyebrows.

  “There’s something more you don’t want to say.”

  She finishes a row. Inspects her stitches. Makes the turn. Starts knitting again before she finally answers. “Even I think I’m a little bit crazy. From here it seemed to me like she wrapped him up inside her own body just before she pulled him under, like the two became one. They went down without a ripple. Two days ago, that was, and I’ve walked the perimeter of the lake twice over and never seen hide nor hair of a body. That’s how I know it was the Lake Spirit because nothing else makes sense.”

  “And you have told no one? Not his parents, not anybody other than Mac?”

  She makes a chuffing noise, like a steam kettle. “The boy’s parents are either dead or as good as. Haven’t heard from them since his mother dropped him on my porch twelve years ago. Nine years old he was, a rat-faced bag of bones, mistreated and neglected. Nothing I tried to do could set him right. If he ate a deer all by himself every day of the week, that one would never gain a pound. His heart was the same. He sucked up my love like milk from a bottle and never gave back a drop. I guess now he never will.”

  Her voice doesn’t change, and she doesn’t miss a stitch, but her eyes brighten and silent tears roll down her cheeks. I give her a moment for her grief, all the time I have to spare right now.

  “I’d like to show you a photograph.” I open the manila envelope I’ve brought in with me. “Is this your nephew?”

  I show her the mug shot of the rat-faced man who showed up on Dason’s laptop.

  “That’s him, sure and certain, right down to his favorite outfit,” she answers, cheeks and eyes already dry again. “How did you come by this?”

  “Another mystery,” I tell her. I pass it to Mac, who hasn’t yet seen the five laptop photos of different people.

  “And the Lake Spirit—did she look anything like this?” I hand Leo the picture of the World Tree Girl. She takes it from me and holds it close up to her eyes, poring over it as if it holds the secrets of the universe. To her, maybe it does.

  “Explain.” She levels a commanding stare at me.

  “It’s best I don’t,” I tell her, getting to my feet. “There are people who would kill you and dump you in the lake without thinking twice if they knew what you have seen. Mac will explain, later, when we’ve got things under control.”

  “Secrets mean more than my life just now,” she says. “Tell me.”

  I hesitate, looking from one to the other, but the truth is that they’re both already in up to their eyeballs.

  “Her name is Aline. Aline Montgomery. She was recently killed in Shadow Valley County. Mac here saw the body. She’s actually from Seattle.”

  Leo looks at Mac, questioning, and he nods. “I found her, but then she vanished. Whatever the thing is that killed her, there are people who want to hush it up. I begin to see why.”

  “So it was a ghost that killed my Vince?”

  “Not exactly. Listen, Leo—was there anything unusual about Vince’s birth?”

  Her fingers slow as she considers my question. “Perfectly normal, as far as I know. If you can call it normal for a woman to carry a baby and keep on shooting up methamphetamine. Poor child was born addicted.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “About the normal birth? Five hours of labor is what she told me. He was just a bit of a thing, under five pounds. But what do you expect from a meth whore?”

  “Leo,” Mac says, very quietly. “Sherri was your daughter.”

  “And you want me to speak gently of the dead? Believe you me, that is as gentle as it’s going to get. Her getting herself pregnant and pawning a damaged child off on me.” The pace of the knitting accelerates, her toe tapping on the wooden floor.

  The house of cards I’ve been assembling to link Aline with Vince and Sophie no longer makes sense. No scientist, collecting data about genetically altered DNA, would choose an unstable drug addict as a test subject. But it’s the only angle I have, so I show her the rest of the pictures. “Have you ever seen any of these people?”

  “I don’t get out much. Town for supplies. That’s about it.”

  “Vince didn’t bring any of them here?”

  She snorts. “If he had, I’d have run them off with a shotgun.”

  “Any idea where else he might have gone besides here?”

  “Jail. Don’t know of anything else.”

  I look up at Mac, hoping he has something else to offer, but I can tell from his face he’s got nothing, and is busy trying to figure out where I’m going with my line of inquiry.
Which is fair, since I haven’t filled him in on the whole Genesis Project. Time to bring him into the loop.

  “Does the name Genesis mean anything to you?”

  “Like the Bible you mean? God created them male and female and said, go on and multiply. Bad idea, I’ve always thought. But then, He’s God and I’m mortal, so what do I know?”

  Dead ends wherever I turn here. The Medusa—if my guess is right and it is the Medusa who killed both Aline and Vince—can’t be just randomly wandering the countryside, all the way to Seattle and back again. These have to be targeted killings. And if they are targeted killings, then they have to have a common denominator. What do a teenage runaway with a love for water and a rat-faced jailbird have in common, if it isn’t for the Genesis factor?

  But I’m hitting a wall with Leo. Either she doesn’t know anything, or she’s not talking. If that’s the case, maybe Mac can get to her later.

  “Didn’t picture you for a Biblical type,” she says now, her expression as guarded as can be. “I don’t take to missionaries, coming around, trying to convert folk. I saw the Lake Spirit, plain as plain, and I’d thank you not to be putting doubts in my head.”

  Leo shoves her knitting back into the bag and stands up, making it clear that I am no longer welcome.

  I manage to get myself back to my feet, grateful for the solid wooden arms of the chair. “I’m not fond of missionaries myself. You believe whatever you want and I won’t try to change your mind. If you think of anything, would you let Mac know? Also—if something shows up at your door looking like Vince, don’t let it in. In fact, I’d recommend a line of salt right across the doorsill as soon as we leave.”

  “Don’t you worry none about me. I’ll be just fine. You drive safe now, you hear?”

  Mac gives her a quick hug. “Don’t talk about this, Leo. To anybody else.”

  “Who would I tell? They’d lock me up, certain sure. That, or put me down on my knees and pray my memories away.”

  She precedes us to the door, light and spry as a child despite her years, and stands in the doorway watching us, despite the snow blowing in around her. The phone in my pocket vibrates as we step out onto the porch and I pull it out for a look, hoping for a message from Jake. If I’m getting messages from his phone, chances are good he’s still alive, although there are other possibilities. But it’s just a text from Verizon letting me know my bill is ready to view online.