Never Far Away

by Michael Koryta

  “We’ll be in touch with them,” Mason said. “But I have less confidence in the good faith of government, sir.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “I hope so.”

  Mason looked at Reggie Taylor. Unspoken communication passed, and then Mason nodded.

  “We’ll let you go, Mr. Spoonhour. Thanks for your time. We knew it was a long shot, but…” He tapped the breast pocket where the photograph rested. “We had to take it.”

  “I understand,” Everett said.

  They left his office then. When the door was closed, Everett realized his heart was racing. He was not a nervous man, and yet the two of them had triggered his adrenal system like the buzz of a rattlesnake.

  He went into his office, closed that door, too, then sat behind his desk and drank his bourbon. It went down faster than usual. He replayed the bizarre conversation in his mind, thinking about what he’d said and what he wished he’d said. Something bothered him about those two, something more than Reggie Taylor’s cold eyes and empty voice. He was almost certain that they weren’t private investigators, not in Texas, not anywhere.

  “Speculation, Everett,” he said aloud. “Strike it from the record.”

  He almost reached for the Blanton’s again. He knew better, though. Willpower bred contentment. He put the bottle back on the wet bar shelf, rinsed the glass, and walked out of his office.

  They were waiting in the reception chairs.

  Neither of them reacted when he jerked to a stop and let out a little sound of surprise. They just sat there, watching, both with feet flat on the floor and hands flat on their thighs. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t heard them come back in. Then he remembered the way Reggie Taylor had closed the door the first time. Almost soundlessly, and studying the latch as if learning it for later.

  He was able to say “What the hell are you doing?” before the first blow.

  Taylor exploded off the chair with speed most men couldn’t muster coming out of a sprinter’s crouch and hit Everett once in the throat and kicked him in the side of the knee and then Everett was dropping, choking and gasping and falling, beaten in a blur, never so much as getting a hand up. He might have had time to feel shame about that if he’d made it to the floor, but he didn’t. Mason caught him, spun him, and sealed a forearm around his throat.

  “Office,” he said. “Walk.”

  Everett was having trouble staying upright, let alone walking, but Mason bore most of his weight. They trundled out of the reception area and into Everett’s private office and Taylor closed the door behind them. Soundlessly, of course.

  “Desk,” Mason said, and for a moment Everett took it as an instruction for him and started forward. Mason held him tight, though, and Taylor went behind the desk and opened drawers, moving quickly, checking for a weapon, most likely. He’d donned a pair of thin black gloves for the task.

  “Clean.”

  The pressure on Everett’s windpipe loosened. Breath still didn’t come easily, the pain continuing to constrict his lungs, but there was reassurance in the physical freedom.

  I will do what they want, he told himself, and I will live. It was that sad and that simple. Sometimes you could fight. With these two, there was no hope of that. He needed to do what they asked.

  “Where do we find her?” the one who called himself Mason said. By now Everett understood that all names were lies.

  “I honestly do not know. There is a post office box in Greenville, Maine. That is all I have.”

  “Think harder,” Reggie Taylor said. His name also a lie, of course. Lies stacked on lies that ended lives. Everett offered the truth. What harm could the truth do now?

  “The post office box and her e-mail address are all that I have. The rest is in her file. His file, I mean. Doug Chatfield’s file.”

  “And where are the files?” Mason asked.

  “Hard copies in the cabinet and the rest in the computer,” Everett said, his voice a rasp from his swollen throat. “That’s all of it.”

  “Good boy,” Mason said in the tone of someone training a puppy. “Which cabinet, which drawer?”

  “Middle cabinet. Second—no, third drawer. Alphabetical.” He rubbed his throat. Breathing was easier now, but he was more aware of the pain in his leg where the kick had landed. He had his weight on the left side because his right knee felt loose, untethered, as if a tendon had detached.

  Reggie Taylor went to the cabinet, opened the third drawer, and scanned through the files, searching for Chatfield. Found the accordion folder and removed it. He didn’t check the contents, just took the folder and closed the drawer.

  “What’s on the computer that’s not in this?” he asked.

  “E-mails.”

  “You need to log in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it. Move slowly. Hands above the desk.”

  The instructions were pointless; Everett had no choice but to move slowly, limping around the desk and favoring his wounded leg. He fell heavily into the big leather swivel chair, feeling a pop in his knee. Taylor stood behind him and Mason stood across the desk while Everett logged in to his computer, pulled up his e-mail, and found the exchanges with Leah Trenton. There weren’t many of them, and they were mostly one-sided queries from Everett.

  Reggie Taylor used his phone to take pictures of the screen. Everett, uninstructed, hit Print. The printer glowed, chimed, and then hummed as it went to work. Mason looked at it, laughed, and said, “Good boy,” again.

  They were silent until the printer was done. Then Mason walked over, collected the documents from the tray, folded them, and put them in his pocket. “That’s all?” he said.

  “That’s all. Really.”

  “Why you saying really? Think we don’t trust you, Everett? That’s not a nice thought to have.”

  Everett knew better than to argue or fight or beg or plead. He knew better than to do anything, and yet he found himself asking a question. “Who was Doug Chatfield?”

  He was starkly aware of two things when the words left his lips: these men would not answer, and he would not live. That was why he had asked the question. Because it felt unfair to die without even knowing why.

  “He’s unimportant,” Mason said, and Everett expected him to leave it at that, but instead Mason added, “He married the wrong woman, that’s all.”

  “There was no wife,” Everett said, suddenly hopeful that he could disappoint them with this enough to send them from his office. “By the time I met him, she was dead.”

  Mason reached into his pocket and withdrew a photograph. Everett was expecting to see the shot of the two children again, but instead there was a woman in the frame. She was dressed in a flight suit but there was no military insignia. She was standing beside the wing of a plane, a small jet, and she was smiling into the sun. Tall and lean, with an angular face, her suntanned face split into a smile, dark eyes gleaming.

  It was Leah Trenton. An old picture, but a clear one.

  “That’s not his wife,” Everett said. “That’s his sister-in-law.”

  Neither Mason nor Taylor spoke, and in their silence, Everett understood his own mistake.

  Mason looked at Reggie Taylor and smiled. “Tell us where to find her, Everett.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I guess we’ve got nothing more to gain from you,” Mason said conversationally, and he started for the office door. Everett watched him go and thought with relief, It is over, they are going to leave.

  He was right about both things, and wrong only in his relief.

  Without looking back, Mason said, “Your turn, bleak.” The phrase was curious and Everett was just about to say that he didn’t understand what that meant when Reggie Taylor stepped forward with a knife in hand and sliced Everett’s throat. The blade was in and then out and then Everett’s hand was finally raised but it was too late and instead of defending hi
mself against the blade he was closing his fingers around a geyser of hot blood.

  In his last thought he understood the phrase that had confused him before.

  Bleak was the man with the knife.

  18

  Labor Day weekend came and went, the weather so beautiful that it seemed determined to reassure Leah, the warm breezes whispering, You are safe here, they are safe, it will all be fine.

  The house helped. She’d known that it would. Nick had already made enough of a mess in his room that it felt occupied, not so sterile. Hailey, however, refused to leave so much as a crease in the sheets to indicate her presence.

  They watched TV and rejoiced at the presence of Wi-Fi. Nick had an endless array of bizarre YouTube videos that made him laugh. The laughter was loud in the house and Leah was grateful for it. She now had about a hundred more streaming options than she’d ever known existed, with Nick adding app after app.

  “They’re all gonna be free for a while,” he’d told her.

  For a while. Reassuring. She knew this was a mother’s moment—enforce some rules, don’t just sit back and let them take control—but she was so happy to see him lounging on the couch with mismatched socks on his feet and a smile on his face that she didn’t give a damn about policing the TV. They’d been through real tragedy; she wasn’t afraid of what the TV could do to them.

  They went shopping in Rockland, returning with a carload of items deemed essential. To Nick, for reasons unexplained, this involved strings of outdoor patio lights that he hung from the bedroom ceiling. He was entranced by the tiny Edison-style bulbs, and Leah loved the delight he showed when the sun went down and he could finally see his new, softly glowing room.

  It was his now.

  Hailey had requested a stop at Home Depot, where she walked through the paint aisle with purpose and came back with a small can of black paint that said it had a chalkboard finish.

  “Do you care about the basement wall?” she asked.

  Leah had barely thought about the basement. It was an unfinished space, although the walkout doors and nicely trimmed windows suggested the builder had entertained bigger plans for it at one point. The floor was bare concrete and the ceiling was exposed joists. The walls were primed but not painted.

  “I do not care about the wall,” she told Hailey, and they bought the paint. There was an art-supply store in Camden (it seemed there was an art-supply store in every town in Midcoast Maine; if one could survive solely on art supplies, scented candles, and lobster-themed trinkets, one would never need to leave), and they stopped there at Hailey’s request and bought chalk.

  “What’s your plan here?” Leah asked.

  “The paint works like a chalkboard,” Hailey responded as if speaking to the world’s dumbest human. “That’s the whole point.”

  “Understood. But what will you put on it?”

  Hailey just shrugged. That night, while Leah helped Nick hang his patio lights in the bedroom and offered crucial advice about collision points between the bulbs and the blades of the ceiling fan, Hailey descended into the basement with the paint, a roller, and some tape. When she was done, the wall looked like a black hole, something with depth, something you could pass through. Leah found the effect strangely unsettling, but Hailey was pleased.

  After all three coats of the paint had dried, Hailey got to work with the chalk, and Leah learned something new about her daughter: She was an artist. Not just an artistically inclined kid, but an artist, with very real talent. The sketches that went up on the chalk wall were intricate, vivid, and precise. They were also of a frightening theme—monsters that glowered, snakes with wings, demonic caricatures of men with leering smiles and sharp teeth. When she first saw the artwork, Leah said, “So how did you come up with these things?”

  “I didn’t come up with them,” Hailey said. “Writers did.” She pointed at one monster. “Neil Gaiman.” Pointed to the tall old man with the fang-like teeth. “Joe Hill.” On to the next. “Chuck Wendig. Paul Tremblay. Dean Koontz. Stephen King.” And so on.

  Her artist daughter was also, evidently, a voracious reader.

  “I didn’t know you liked books that much,” Leah said lamely, although how had she missed this? Back at the cabin, Hailey had cycled through Leah’s books with the only real enthusiasm she’d shown for anything.

  “How would you have known?” Hailey said, and though her tone wasn’t unkind, it was still painful to hear. Leah was on the steep part of the learning curve, and it was a constant reminder of all that she had missed.

  You loved Paddington Bear, she wanted to say. The old book, the copy from when I was a child. You loved it. And the silly little drum that your dad bought you. You’d sit on my lap and bang away on that and you would laugh and I’d look at him and say, “What have you done, why would you give her something to make her louder?” and then we’d all laugh.

  Unable to relive these memories with Hailey, she instead endeavored not to miss any more. The next day they went to the gorgeous harbor-front library and got cards. Nick left with one book—and Leah had the distinct impression that he was taking it out just to please her. Hailey, though, left with a stack that had to be distributed among the three of them just to get the books back to the car. Driving home, Leah considered asking Hailey why on earth she hadn’t expressed her desire to go to the library sooner, but she already knew the answer. In Hailey’s eyes, it would have been a double failure: it showed a need for Leah and allowed Leah to gain a better understanding of her, a glimpse behind those walls.

  Everything in those days felt like progress, with one crucial exception: Ed.

  Leah had missed the fly-in at Moosehead for the first time in years. She’d talked to him on the phone briefly afterward. He’d finished second in one of the races, a timed rescue simulation, losing to the pilot from Quebec who beat him every year. She asked who his partner was in the canoe race, and he named a woman they both knew and said she was not an ideal replacement since she was scared of the plane. They laughed about that but already Leah felt the distance between them growing.

  “First day of school for them tomorrow?” Ed asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Terrified. But everyone says they’re great schools, and the counselor I met with was excellent, so I guess I shouldn’t be.”

  “I meant are the kids nervous,” Ed said with a low laugh.

  “Ah. Right. The kids. They have to be, but they aren’t showing it much. In fact, if I had to guess, I think Hailey is looking forward to it. The daily routine, the purpose, the…” Chance to get away from me. “Just the return to normalcy,” she said. “Nick is probably more nervous.”

  “He’ll do fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you miss the woods?”

  “There are woods here. I’m staring right out at Camden Hills.”

  “Camden Hills is a park with roads and public toilets.”

  She laughed. “Doesn’t count, I get it. I will miss the woods. I just haven’t had much time to yet. But they’re not far away, right? I can get to them in a hurry. And I will soon.”

  They both understood that they were talking about more than the woods, but Ed wasn’t going to pressure her to visit. Pressure was not his style.

  Later, after hanging up with him, she stood on the deck cooking burgers on the grill and turned his question over in her mind. Did she miss the woods? Nina Morgan had been uncomfortable in the woods when she’d arrived in Maine, but Leah Trenton had no such past. Leah Trenton was nothing but a future. She’d become obsessed with that idea. She asked herself what intimidated her most about Maine, and the Southern city girl who’d once been Nina Morgan answered immediately: the winter and the wilderness.

  So she’d found a two-week course that taught winter woodcraft in the Allagash. There’d been times—snowshoeing through gale-force winds, scraping a tent site out of snowdrifts, chipping ice away from fishing holes because it was so cold they’d kept refre
ezing—when she’d hated everything about it.

  But there’d been good moments, too. A below-zero dawn when the sun crested above her camp and lit the snow-filled valley. A day on snowshoes when a hare ran beside her, keeping pace with her as if she were a natural companion. Lighting a fire in a howling wind in the dark without needing to use a flashlight. Pulling up a rainbow trout from beneath twenty inches of ice, its speckled body glistening like a ruby in the winter light.

  Moments of beauty, moments of triumph. Small victories each day.

  That spring, she’d signed up for the professional guiding course. Maine regulated its guides to ensure that anyone who took money to lead strangers into the wild was qualified to do so. She was delighted to learn that Maine’s first registered guide had been a woman, Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby, certified in 1917. Fascinated by the idea of a woman being the first licensed guide in a field so dominated by men, Leah had read up on Crosby and come across a quote that pleased her immensely. “I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six feet in my stockings…and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven.”

  Leah Trenton, who stood five feet nine inches in her stockings, had never fished a day in her life until the winter when she’d pulled the trout from the frozen lake. In the spring, she landed a three-pound smallmouth bass on a dry fly. There was a moment, with the bent rod trembling in her hand and the trout a silver streak in white-water spray, when heaven descended briefly to earth and joined it, and Leah was there between the two.

  She finished the guiding course in a year and went to work in Rangeley the next spring. Now when people asked why she’d come to Maine, she had an answer: for the wilderness.

  She hadn’t anticipated how deeply she’d fall in love with the solitude and the beauty and the relentless, irrepressible creativity of the wilderness. The way that standing alone in a forest or dipping a kayak paddle into a cold river could produce a healing that seemed to come from the inside out.

  The lessons of the Allagash went beyond hopefulness and found grace. You had to fight for every inch, nothing was easy, but all of it was beautiful. The rivers and woods held all you needed to be nourished and sheltered as well as all you needed to be wounded or killed. They swirled together there, danger and beauty and threat and triumph. In the wilderness, Nina Morgan became Leah Trenton.