Winter of the Wolf Moon am-2

by Steve Hamilton

  “You know those wolves I was talking about?”

  “Well, yeah, I kinda figured you weren’t talking about real wolves and real moose.”

  “Let’s just say Lonnie’s the first wolf,” she said. “Not the worst wolf, just the first.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You shoot one wolf, there’s more behind him. Bigger wolves. With bigger teeth.”

  I let that one go. I figured she was just talking about the rest of his hockey team. I should have asked her about it. But I didn’t.

  The woodstove started to heat the place up a little bit. She felt comfortable enough to take off her coat and sit down at the table. She told me about growing up as an Ojibwa, getting out of the U.P. as soon as she could, going downstate for college, dropping out, working a lot of jobs. No matter how bad it got, she never thought of coming back up here. Then she met Lonnie. She didn’t tell me much more about him. She didn’t tell me what he had done to her, or why he had brought her back up here.

  She asked me about myself, about why I had so many long stories. I surprised myself and told her a couple of them. Not all of them. I guess it just felt good to talk to somebody. It was the first time since Sylvia left.

  “You’re the lonely man with long stories,” she said before I left. “If I could make you an Ojibwa, that would be your name.”

  “What’s your Ojibwa name?” I said.

  “I don’t have one anymore,” she said. “I gave it up a long time ago.”

  “It’s going to be cold tonight,” I said. “You better leave the water running a little bit. Just a trickle. It’ll keep the pipes from freezing.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said. She came to the door as I left. “There’s a good lock on here, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Although you don’t have to worry. You’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Thank you, Alex,” she said. “Good night.”

  As she closed the door, I felt a vague, distant sadness for both of us. Standing there in the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust to it again, feeling a cold wind coming through the pine trees. We had both been through so much. Different problems but the bottom line was the same. People are bad for each other. And yet we keep trying. We can’t stand to be alone.

  It was late. I needed to sleep so I could get up the next day and do everything I could to help her. It surprised me how much I wanted to help this woman. Maybe it was a chance to show myself I could still do something right, after all the mistakes I had made in the last year. Something meaningful besides splitting wood and plowing the snow off the road.

  I went back to my cabin and slept. In the middle of the night I thought I heard her voice, but when I lifted my head it was nothing but the drone of a snowmobile engine. All night long those idiots keep driving those things through the woods. I cursed the man who invented them and went back to sleep.

  The next morning, there was six inches of new snow on the ground. The fire had gone out in my woodstove, so I threw a couple of logs in and stood shivering before the window, looking out at the snow. I put on some clothes, drank some coffee, went out and started the truck. It didn’t even look like there was a road anymore, just a long gap in the trees. I plowed all the way down to the main road, past Vinnie’s cabin. There was still no sign of him. If he had come home during the night, if anyone had turned off onto our road, I would have seen the tracks. There were none.

  I started to worry about him. It was thirty-six hours since I left him at the bar after the hockey game. I could go look for him at the reservation, I thought, or go to the casino and see if he’s working. As soon as I help out Dorothy. It’s going to be a busy day.

  I plowed the other way, into the woods. I honked as I passed Dorothy’s cabin. Rise and shine. The other four cabins all had vans and trucks outside them, with trailers for the snowmobiles. The people who rented the cabins would probably never drive once they got here, just park the vehicles and ride their snowmobiles all week. But I liked to keep the road plowed just in case they needed to get out. On my way back I honked again. Here’s your snooze alarm. Time to wake up while I make breakfast.

  I stopped back at my cabin and picked up some eggs and cheese for omelets, some juice and coffee. I drove back around the bend to her cabin. Funny how you think that way. She spends one night there and suddenly it’s her cabin. I knocked on the door. There was no answer.

  “Dorothy?” I shouted. “Are you awake?”

  I pushed on the. door. It was unlocked, I opened the door and stepped inside.

  The table was turned upside down. One table leg broken off. Chairs scattered in every direction.

  Nothing else.

  She was gone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I went back to my own cabin and called the sheriff’s office. After I hung up, I stood there looking down at the phone book. It was still open to the first page. Right there under the Police and Fire and Ambulance, the number for Protective Services. I had seen how these people operate, down in Detroit anyway. They come and get you, take you to a shelter. If I had called that number last night, I told myself, then she’d be safe right now.

  I went back outside, the wind blowing snowflakes into my face. The sun had come out, one of those brief interludes when the clouds break and the light shines so brightly off the white snow, your eyes hurt just to look at it.

  I stood there for twenty minutes, going over it again and again in my mind. She was so scared. I should have done something, right away, instead of waiting for morning. Was I lazy or just stupid? I wanted to go back to the cabin, start searching for something, anything that might tell me what had happened. I wanted to do something. I felt so useless just standing there. But I made myself wait. Don’t mess it up, I thought. There might be tracks there, or footprints, or God knows what kind of evidence they might be able to find. Just stand here like the useless idiot you are and don’t mess things up any more than you already have.

  I couldn’t help thinking about a murder I saw firsthand in Detroit. It was my first year on the force. I answered a domestic disturbance call with my partner. He talked to the man in the kitchen while I sat with the woman in the living room. She didn’t say anything. She just rocked back and forth on the couch, hugging a pillow. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept seeing her face. Three days later, I watched them carry her body out in a bag.

  She had tried to leave him. How many times did they tell us? When the woman decides to leave, that’s the most dangerous time. That’s the flashpoint. When a woman is murdered, the detectives always start with the same question: Where’s the husband or the boyfriend?

  “Bruckman followed us,” I said out loud. My voice sounded small in the winter stillness. “He had to. How else would he know she was here?” Was he at the bar? He could have followed my truck all the way down the main road, but then how would he know which cabin she was in? He couldn’t have followed me all the way down my access road, could he? Could I be that fucking oblivious?

  I didn’t call the police. I didn’t stay with her. I left her alone in a cabin with no phone.

  The county car pulled in then and saved me. A few more minutes alone with my thoughts and I would have killed myself.

  They came out of either side of the car, their Chippewa County hats worn just right, a young man and a young woman. The both of them put together weren’t as old as me.

  “Where’s the sheriff?” I said.

  “He’s busy,” the young woman said. Her dark hair was tucked up beneath her hat.

  “Call him,” I said. “I want him out here.”

  “I told you, sir,” she said. “He’s busy.”

  “Busy, my ass,” I said. “He needs to be here.”

  “Take it easy, sir,” the young man said. He had the standard-issue police buzz cut. He approached me with his hands up, the way you’d approach a dog you think might be rabid. “Are you Mr. McKnight?”

  “I told the dispatcher I wanted Bill himself,” I said. “And n
obody else.” Bill Brandow was the county sheriff, if not exactly my best buddy then at least a friendly acquaintance. I had bought him a couple Canadians one night, traded a few cop stories. There was something fundamentally competent and trustworthy about the man. It was his face I needed to see right now, not these two kids who looked like they were on their way to a high school costume party dressed as deputies.

  “I told you, Mr. McKnight. The sheriff can’t be here. You’re gonna have to calm down a little bit here.”

  “A woman has been kidnapped,” I said. “Do you have anybody out looking for her? Is Bill going to do anything besides sending two teenagers out here to tell me to calm down a little bit?”

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe the sheriff is out looking for her right now?” he said. “And this guy, what’s his name?”

  “Bruckman,” I said. “Lonnie Bruckman.”

  “Where do you want him to be, Mr. McKnight? Out there looking for them or standing here in the snow making you feel better?”

  I clenched my gloved hands into fists, looked up into the winter sky, then I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. Let’s just…”

  “Tell us what happened,” he said. “Where’s the cabin she was staying in?”

  “This way,” I said. “Right around the bend.”

  We all got into the county car, the two deputies in the front, me in the back. It wasn’t more than a quarter mile to the first rental cabin, but we rolled slowly down the road, the tires scrunching over another half inch of snow that had fallen since I plowed. I gave them the quick version of what had happened. Dorothy meeting me at the bar, asking for my help. The way she talked about Lonnie. The genuine fear in her voice when she told me he’d kill her if he ever found her.

  We got out of the car and stood there a moment, the deputies looking up and down the road. Nothing to see but trees. “She stayed alone in this cabin last night?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I really don’t have much room in my cabin. And besides…” I didn’t finish it.

  The deputies traded a quick look at each other while they walked through the snow to the cabin.

  “No footprints here,” he said.

  “I didn’t see any,” I said. “It snowed too much last night.”

  “No tire tracks either?”

  “No,” I said. “None at all.”

  “Even with the snow,” he said. “You’d see something, wouldn’t you? It didn’t snow that much.”

  “When I plowed the road it looked totally untouched,” I said. “Like nobody had driven on it for days.”

  “This unlocked?” he said when he got to the door.

  “Yes,” I said. “It was unlocked this morning.”

  “Was it locked last night?”

  “Yes, she locked it when I left.”

  The deputies looked at each other again. I felt a sudden urge to knock their heads together. “Can we get something straight right now?” I said. “She slept in this cabin by herself last night. And I slept in mine.”

  “Nobody’s suggesting otherwise,” he said.

  “If we were in the same cabin,” I said, “then none of this would have happened.”

  “We hear you,” he said. “Please. Let’s work together on this.” The deputy pushed the door open and looked inside.

  “Careful,” I said. “Don’t contaminate anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “What if there’s evidence here?”

  “If we see something, we’ll bag it.”

  “No, I’m talking about hair or fibers or…”

  They both looked at me. He’s seen this stuff on television, they’re thinking. He expects us to set up a crime laboratory and start picking up little strands of stuff with tweezers.

  “I was a cop once,” I said. Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. “Never mind. Go ahead.”

  “We’ll be careful,” she said.

  I followed them as they entered the cabin. There was a complete silence in the place that made me feel sick to my stomach.

  At least we’re not looking at a dead body, I said to myself. If he wanted to kill her that badly, he would have done it right here. It was the only positive thing I could think of.

  The troopers walked around the overturned table, looked at the scattered chairs. The young man stopped at the bed where the blanket had been turned back. “Looks like she went to bed,” he said. “Then got up later. Doesn’t look like she left anything behind. Did she have a backpack or a suitcase or something? You said she was running away from this guy.”

  “She had a bag,” I said. “A white duffel bag.”

  “She must have taken it with her,” he said. “Or he did, I mean. This Bruckman guy. You say you played hockey with him a couple of nights ago?”

  “Yeah, I did.” It felt like a lot longer.

  “He a big guy? How easy would it be for him to take her out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a lot bigger than her, but I can’t imagine her going with him without a fight.”

  “So why is the door unlocked?” he said. “She must have opened it, right? There’s no sign of forced entry.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “She wouldn’t have opened that door if she knew it was him.”

  “Maybe he comes to the door and says he just wants to talk to her. Then when he’s inside he starts busting up the place.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You said you were a cop once. You’ve seen these situations, right?”

  “I know where you’re going,” I said. He was right, I had seen it before, more times than I could count. The man begging for forgiveness, the women caving in. “But I just can’t see it here.”

  “Then why did she open the door?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The way she talked about him last night, I just don’t know.”

  I looked down at the table leg that had been broken off, almost bent over to pick it up before I stopped myself. Then I noticed something else.

  “Look at this floor,” I said.

  The troopers stopped and looked at me.

  “There’s too much melted snow here,” I said. You could see the faint imprints of snow puddles all over the room.

  “She had to walk through snow to get here, didn’t she?” the man asked.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “And I did, too. I even had to go around back and turn the water on. But I remember thinking about the floor as I came back in. I always try not to track too much snow in here. The white pine, it gets dirty fast. I’m sure there wasn’t this much snow on the floor when I left. Not all over the place like this.”

  “So he did come in,” the man said. “She definitely had company.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “I can’t believe she’d let him in here.”

  “How would Bruckman know to find her here, anyway?” he said. “Does he know where you live?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Even if he did, how would he know which cabin she was in?”

  “Could he have been following you?”

  I tried to remember, tried to put myself back in my truck that previous night. Were there lights behind me? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t say for sure. I didn’t notice anybody following me, but I can’t swear that it didn’t happen.”

  “Could it have been somebody else?” he said. “Maybe she called somebody.”

  “There’s no phone here,” I said. “And she couldn’t have called anyone from the bar before I got there. She hadn’t even met me yet. Although…”

  “What is it?”

  “At the bar,” I said. “I remember having this funny feeling. Like we were being watched.”

  “Bruckman?”

  “No. I would have noticed him. But maybe somebody else was there. One of his hockey goons maybe.”

  “Well, let’s call in what we’ve got,” he said. “Whatever little that
may be.”

  The brief window of sunlight had disappeared. The sky was clouding over again and it suddenly felt twenty degrees colder. From behind the cabin we could hear the whine of a snowmobile. It grew louder and louder as the machine came closer.

  “A snowmobile,” I said. “That’s how he could have gotten here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s a trail that runs right behind these cabins,” I said. “On the state land. That’s why there were no tire tracks this morning.”

  “Makes sense,” he said. “Let’s see that trail.”

  I walked them around the cabin, deep into the pine trees. We had to work hard at it. In spots where the snow had drifted it was almost up to our waists.

  “Here,” I said, fighting to catch my breath. The trail ran parallel to my road. As long as he had a general idea where I lived, he could have done it this way. Maybe he didn’t even know which cabin she was in. Maybe he just skipped mine, started with hers, and got lucky.

  The deputies looked up and down the trail. “Lot of tracks out here,” the woman said. “We’d never know which one was his.”

  At that moment a snowmobile came through the trees. I winced at the noise. The driver slowed down when he saw us. Both of the deputies raised their hands for him to stop.

  “What’s the problem, guys?” he said after flipping his visor open. “I wasn’t going too fast, was I?” I recognized the man. He was staying in the farthest cabin with a few other guys from Saginaw.

  “Were you on this trail last night?” the male deputy asked him.

  “Yes,” the man said. I could hear the apprehension in his voice. “But I was taking it easy, I swear. I know there are cabins nearby.”

  “There’s no problem,” he said. “We’re just wondering if you saw any other snowmobiles. Like around…” He looked over at me.