The Enemy We Know (Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery)

by Donna White Glaser

  Heart pounding, I moved back to the living room, heading for the loft stairs. When my knees gave out, I decided crawling was eminently sensible and not the least bit undignified. Marshall’s bedroom door stood open, the sun pouring in with a cheerful vigor that mocked the realities of danger and death. His room was orderly, bed made, clothes hung up. It certainly didn’t look like any kind of struggle had occurred.

  Feeling foolish and more than a little relieved, I went back downstairs. I still hadn’t found Marshall, but maybe he was out chopping wood or fishing or doing some other manly, woodsy activity. I decided to try the bell again.

  I saw the blood as soon as I stepped outside.

  About five yards to the left of the path, a section of the grass had a chaotic, churned look. Droplets and ragged smears of blood splattered the fresh, green blades. In my headlong, scurry-dash evasive maneuvers, I’d rushed right passed the signs, only spying them from the higher vantage point of the porch.

  Pulling my cell phone out, I dialed Blodgett’s number with surprisingly steady hands. Only two reception bars showed, the call immediately switching to voice mail. I told Blodgett my suspicions, gave directions, hung up.

  I was a northern girl. I’d gone deer hunting with my dad. Kind of. I knew how to follow the blood track. I took off down the ATV trail, walking on the center strip of foliage between the two parallel ruts of dirt. Ominous dots and random smears of crimson sprouted like sinister blossoms. After a short distance, I realized I couldn’t create a more perfect shooting target unless I drew target circles on my chest and yodeled.

  I scurried off-trail, pushing through the scrub trees and bracken, ignoring the branches stabbing my arms and legs. I’d made a god-awful lot of noise, so I stood silent, listening. Only the leaves, oblivious to the human drama below, rustled in the light breeze. The birds stayed mum; small mammals, hidden.

  It was the larger ones I was worried about.

  The problem with being off the path was that I couldn’t see the blood trail any more. It looked like the bleeder was heading straight down the ATV path, but I’d miss the signs if he veered off. Moreover, the thick undergrowth made it next to impossible to move with any stealth.

  I hoped that all this was unnecessary, that Mary Kate had taken off, but could I be sure? The tinny flavor of fear coating my mouth argued against that hope. I kept going. Someone was hurt and that someone was surely Marshall.

  Swallowing past the pounding heart currently relocated to my throat, I moved back to the ATV path. Prepared to dive back into the brush, I crept forward as fast as my spotty vision and shaking limbs could carry me. The bloody smears grew fainter and farther apart. I scurried along, hoping the diminishing marks meant that the wound wasn’t too bad rather than that he was bleeding out.

  It took forever and a day before I finally came to the edge of another clearing. A tall oak had been felled, the branches scavenged for firewood and cleared away. The stump, sheared nearly flat except for a taller segment that had been ripped away from the falling tree, resembled a throne for a kingly wood elf. A golden carpet of shavings and wood chips littered the forest floor, making it all too easy to spot the gory splash of fresh blood.

  I didn’t faint. Almost, but I didn’t. If I had, I wouldn’t have heard the slight panting coming from behind the five-foot-high wall of stacked logs at the very edge of the clearing.

  “Marshall?” I called. Tried to, that is. The only sound that escaped my dry mouth was a cross between a moan and a hiss. I cleared my throat, and the panting stopped.

  “Marshall?” This time my voice traveled far enough that it made me nervous.

  I took it as a good sign when nobody popped out and shot me. I crept forward, twigs snapping under foot, the sharp aroma of cut wood filling my nose. A decades-absent yearning for my daddy flooded my soul, forcing me to choke down a sob. Holding my breath, I peeked around the pile. Marshall lay curled on his back, head propped against the side of the stacked logs, legs braced to keep his body angled upright. One hand clamped tight over his lower right abdomen, his blood tie-dyeing his formerly white t-shirt. The other hand clutched an axe.

  Our eyes met, but he didn’t seem to recognize me. His lips, white and thinned with pain, trembled; his body shook. I took a step forward, stopped when he raised the axe. It wobbled, the effort making him pant harder. I sank to my knees. We didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have time.

  “Marshall,” I whispered. “It’s okay. It’s me, Letty. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Something flickered behind his eyes. He lowered the axe slightly.

  “We’ve got to get you out of here, bud. We’ve got to get help.”

  He whispered something I didn’t catch and lowered the axe to the ground. I pulled my cell phone out, flipped it open—no bars.

  “I’ve got to stop the bleeding, Marshall.” I pulled my T-shirt over my head, shivering as the breeze cooled the sweat on my body. Wadding it up, I crawled to his side, praying he didn’t bury the axe in my head.

  When he didn’t, I moved his hand, placing the shirt against his wound, and applied pressure. Now that I got a good look, I could see that he’d been pegged by a bunch of buckshot, ragged holes speckled his abdomen like a grisly version of connect-the-dots. Shock and prolonged exposure added to the danger. “Look, bud, this is all the first aid I know. We have to get you back to the clearing.”

  He mumbled again. This time I got it.

  “She’s out there? Are you sure? I just came from the cabin; she could have shot me anytime if she was still here.” Nevertheless, skin tingling, I scanned the clearing—including the sky—as if Mary Kate might be perched like a sniper in a tree top. Or a vulture, to keep the image true. Hell, for all I knew, she could have had military training along with geology and cake baking. She was certainly eclectic.

  “Outta shells,” Marshall whispered. “Back . . . more.”

  “She’s gone for more ammo?” Great, now I was talking like a commando.

  He nodded weakly, eyelids fluttering against his cheek like papers caught in a draft. Red splotches where he’d wiped his face glistened against pale, clammy skin; his long, black eyelashes, a series of stark commas.

  I had to get help.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “I’ve got to get back to where my phone has signal.” No response. “Marshall, do you hear me?”

  “…hear you.” He opened his eyes, stretched a smile and licked his lips—a dry, raspy exercise. His gaze dropped to my bra. “See you, too.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.” Although I was wearing a particularly cute bra—orange with pink trim, reminded me of sherbet. Not that it mattered, of course. “I can’t believe you’re trying to flirt now.”

  “. . . last chance.” He reached out, clasped my wrist. His grip was ice-cold but surprisingly forceful, fingers digging into my skin. “…knife!”

  The blood drained from my head. “She has the knife?” I repeated dully. Of course, she did. All the better to stab you in the heart, my dear.

  Eyes closed again, he nodded and let go my wrist.

  “I’ll hurry,” I said.

  I took off running as fast as my donut-eating, caffeine-fueled body would allow. I prayed that Marshall was wrong, that Mary Kate had fled when her ambush had failed and didn’t plan to come back. She’d be crazy to stick around.

  Oh, wait…

  Something crashed wildly through the branches, and I tripped over a root and fell, nearly gouging my eye out on a spiny branch. A freaked-out squirrel leaped in panicked frenzy from limb to limb. I could relate. Jumping to my feet as though the loamy ground was made of rubber, I took off again, checking the bars on my phone every few feet. The reception flirted with me, once going up as high as two bars. As soon as I stopped to attempt a call, they winked out again, not even returning when I held the phone straight up at arm’s length, turning like a human antenna.

  By the time I made the clearing, sweat slicked my body like a glaze, sherbet-bra heavi
ng as my lungs struggled for air. Bent over, gasping like a landed fish, I peered blearily at the face of my cell phone. Three bars. Good deal.

  At first, 9-1-1 thought I was a pervert, but when I finally caught my breath enough to sputter out “shooting!” we all got on the same page.

  I didn’t know Marshall’s address, so I gave the operator his name and a series of country directions, involving instructions like “Take Highway 29 east past the big red barn with the llamas and turn north on the corner where the old gas station that closed down used to be.”

  As I talked, I spied a tool shed tucked a few feet into the woods about fifty yards from where I sprawled. A dingy brown, on-the-To-Do-list paint job and a scraggly hedge of wild grasses and scrub trees nearly camouflaged the structure, explaining how I’d missed it.

  The operator wanted me to stay on the line, but I was afraid of running down my batteries. Besides, I had an idea.

  I pulled on one side of the double doors, making the hinges squeal like a stepped-on rat, and stood blinking helplessly as my eyes coped with the abrupt change from sunlight to darkness. Heart thumping, I imagined my pupils struggling to adjust, willing them to expand quicker. If Mary Kate lurked in the shadows clutching her knife, I’d certainly cooperated in my own demise. At least I couldn’t hear any maniacal giggles coming from inside. According to every scary movie I’d ever watched, that was a good sign.

  My pupils finally did their job, and I stepped inside. A wooden shelf ran along one wall cluttered with tools, garden utensils, some crumpled beer cans and other manly doodads. The usual shed things.

  Cobwebs coated the ceiling, stretching across the two-by-four rafters like eco-friendly insulation. Probably not very effective though. They wafted gently in the breeze, undulating like a cloud. Thoughts of spiders dropping from the heavens onto my bare head and even barer shoulders made my skin twitch. I started sweating again. A sherbet-bra was clearly not an effective spider barrier.

  I couldn’t leave Marshall bleeding on the woodchips, though, so I forced myself deeper inside. Besides, my entire back was probably covered with deer ticks anyway, what difference would a few spiders make? That happy thought made my knees buckle. I grabbed the shelf for support, taking a deep breath.

  The whole place reeked of gasoline. Spying a huge, tarp-covered lump in the center of the dirt floor, I let out a yelp, then promptly slapped a hand over my mouth hard enough to cut my lip. I could never have been an Indian scout.

  I yanked the tarp off, uncovering the ATV. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, no keys rested in the ignition and, for a second, my heart seized, certain that Marshall had the keys buried deep in his pocket or secreted somewhere in the house. I didn’t have time to rummage through his junk drawer.

  But, no. Like any good northwoods, Wisconsin boy, he’d driven a nail into the shed wall for the sole purpose of dangling the key ring from it. I snatched them down, stuck them in the ignition, and whirled to swing the doors open.

  A figure stood in the door, the sun back lighting her into a shadow woman. Now she’d have made a good Indian scout.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Where is your shirt?” She sounded like my mother. I glanced down at my nearly naked torso in the same stupefied bewilderment as when I’d been forced to explain to my real mother why Tobby Zuckerman was hiding under my bed. Didn’t have a shirt then, either.

  “Hey, Mary Kate. How are you doing?”

  Not the most inspired response, I admit, but I was a little distracted. It didn’t matter. She was entirely fixated on my lack of attire.

  “Did you spill something on it? Aren’t you cold?” She took a few steps into the shed, her features materializing as she moved away from the light. Her face—flaccid and empty and haggard—had aged. She held the buck knife in her right hand, angling herself between me and the door.

  “No. I gave it to Marshall to stop the bleeding.” My throat made a sticky clacking sound as I tried to swallow.

  Mary Kate’s face remained scary-blank. “Oh,” she said. Just that. Her eyes moved, traveling around the shed, searching and skittish.

  My own eyes flitted after, trying to catch up, trying to identify what she was looking for before she found it. Trying to find something to defend myself with. My stomach roiled with acid at the sight of all the objects—screwdrivers, chisels, garden claws, hammers—that Mary Kate could use to kill me dead. The Spanish Inquisition would have loved this place.

  A wad of gray fabric caught my attention.

  “Oh, look!” I said in the world’s most unnatural “surprised” voice. “Is that a shirt?” Pretending I didn’t believe Mary Kate was about to plunge the buck knife into my heart, I took two shaky steps over to the work bench.

  She shifted nervously, bringing the knife up. Keeping my movements broad and open, I reached over, picked the rag up. I stepped back carefully, away from the arsenal of wannabe weapons that I both coveted and feared, and moved closer to the ATV.

  Still holding the wad of cloth at arm’s length, I shook it out, demonstrating its harmlessness. It was an old, ratty T-shirt covered in blotchy oil streaks and gooey brown spots. A dead spider, legs curled in brittle arcs, fell out of the folds.

  “Eww,” Mary Kate said.

  Grimacing, I pulled the shirt over my head. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much of an improvement in the modesty department since a large, jagged hole exposed one scoop of boob. I twitched the fabric sideways.

  “Oh, there you go,” Mary Kate said. “That’s better.” For the first time, an emotion—relief—showed on her face.

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  Now that I’d addressed her shirt concern and demonstrated trustworthiness by not flinging a trowel at her head, I took a chance.

  “Mary Kate, I’m worried for you. If something. . . um, bad. . . happens to Marshall, you might get in trouble.”

  Discretion seemed wise. Thus, the word choices of “bad” and “trouble” in lieu of “fatal” or “sent to prison or straight to hell, whichever comes first.” Semantics 101.

  She sighed and rubbed her forehead, her face leaching of emotion again. “It didn’t work out right, but I think it will be okay pretty soon.”

  My stomach clenched. Her idea of a good outcome didn’t bode well for our boss. I debated telling her that the cops were coming, but she still gripped the knife and still blocked the door, and she might just wonder who called the police in the first place.

  “Mary Kate, why do you want to hurt Marshall? He’s been a good friend to you. And besides, it might be kind of hard for him to hire you back if you . . . you know. . . kill him.” Lame, so lame. I winced at my ineptitude, but Mary Kate reacted with a slight glimmer of emotion.

  She frowned, just a little. “Yeah, I know. That part sucks. I liked working at the clinic.”

  “Mary Kate, don’t do this. It’s not right. You need to let me go help Marshall.”

  I didn’t think I’d moved, but in my mind I was preparing to step forward and Mary Kate sensed it. She raised the knife, pointing it toward me. The edge caught a stray bit of light from the outside, making a tiny beam dance along the blade like a malicious sprite. Mesmerized, I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

  “You were so sad,” Mary Kate said in a raspy whisper. I dragged my eyes away from the knife to meet hers. “The week he pulled us apart. I didn’t understand at first; I thought it was you. I thought you didn’t want me anymore, but then you shared your secret with me. You let me in. That’s when I knew that you felt the same way I did.” She smiled then, but it was ghastly—a caricature of her former self, a rictus of pain frozen in a death mask.

  I couldn’t answer. She waited for my response, and when the silence dragged on, she nodded, turning away to stare blankly at the cobwebs tethered to the walls. “I did it for you, you know. I understood. Every time I looked at you, I could feel you drawing me to you, giving me all your pain and fears to hold for you. Like a present.” Her eyes flicked sideways at me, th
en away again. “It made an ache inside, like frostbite in my heart. You know? I mean, how long could that go on? He was killing you and that was killing me. I couldn’t let that happen. I even tried to warn him to back off. So I finally did what you always tell me to do. I set boundaries.” Another eye flick and a sly proud-of-me? smile.

  “I never wanted you to kill,” I made myself say. “Not Wayne, not Robert, and not Marshall.”

  The smile slid off her face as she turned back to me. “Don’t. Just don’t. You can’t take it back now. Not after everything I did for you. I knew it was you, right from the start, when you asked for me to be assigned to you. You picked me.” She pointed the knife at my chest. Her hand shook, making the tiny mote of light jig wildly down the knife’s edge. “And at lunch? I saw how you looked at me when I switched my order. I don’t even like scampi, but I wanted you to know what it felt like to be pushed away. But of course, I couldn’t really do that. I was just teasing. It meant so much, you know? That you picked me. And then to just push me aside?”

  “You were assigned to me,” I said. Rage swelled, filling my head, pushing reason to the far corners. “Marshall picks out the supervisors for the interns. I didn’t even know you. And if I had—”

  “Don’t—”

  “If I had—”

  “Don’t say it!”

  “I wouldn’t have asked for you! I would have refused to work with you. I would ha—”

  Howling, she flung herself at me, so ravaged with pain she didn’t even remember the knife clutched in her hand. I was ready, leaping sideways to the work bench, grabbing the first thing in reach. I struck, aiming for her head and missing, hitting her in the shoulder with a torque wrench. Swung again and hit her in the ear. Now she had a reason to howl.

  And she did, too.

  She also remembered the knife, which was unfortunate. The romantic in her obviously had a thing for hearts and she stabbed at the center of my nasty, ratty T-shirt. So much for true love. Dancing back, I flung the wrench at her face, smacking her in the mouth with it. A fountain of blood gushed out and she fell to her knees, clunking up against a rusty, red can. A guttural sound, a hybrid of moan and growl, erupted from her split lips. Blood sprayed in an arcing mist as she screamed, splattering her shirt front, dripping down the gas can to the concrete below.