Rise the Dark

by Michael Koryta

  “You’re mistaken,” Violet said. “I have no…”

  Sabrina was waiting on her to say son or family, and she would have accepted either. To picture this woman as a mother was both difficult and disturbing. Violet fell silent, though, the sentence unfinished, and then the new woman spoke again.

  “Markus.”

  Violet dropped the water bottle.

  Eli Pate had been standing near the door, watching, but suddenly he was on them again, kneeling just in front of Sabrina but with all his attention on the new woman.

  “You were with him? With Markus?”

  Violet said, “Don’t ask her that. She’s confused. She’s not—”

  His stare silenced her. He turned from her back to the new woman and reached out and slapped her, a hard strike that triggered another blink and a refocusing of the eyes.

  “You came here with Markus?”

  “You know that,” she mumbled.

  “That is a lie,” Violet said. Her usually distanced, daydreamer eyes were nightmare-focused now, staring down a monster.

  Eli said, “Where is he?”

  The new woman said, “With you.”

  The impenetrable calm he usually wore was obliterated now, his frustration clear. He looked like he wanted to hit her again but didn’t. Instead, he turned to Violet.

  “She believes it,” he said. “You can see that. She’s half out of her mind now, but she remembers him. Because he was the last one with her. We know she was not alone. Not during the day. It was him.”

  Violet shook her head. “I haven’t spoken to him in years. You know that.”

  “And yet he’s here,” Eli said.

  “Then he came for him.” She pointed at Garland Webb.

  For a long time, the cabin was silent as the three of them stood staring at one another in the dim light, completely ignoring the two women handcuffed to the wall beside them. When the silence was finally broken, it was by Eli.

  “If he came for Garland,” he said, “then he shall have him.”

  Violet said, “You promised me that no harm would come to him.”

  “Does this look like a place of harm to you?”

  Violet looked at the two women chained to the wall, one with fresh blood trickling down from a split lip, and said, “Of course not.”

  37

  Mark didn’t even try to go to Jay Baldwin’s door this time. He just returned to the same spot beside the white-barked pine, standing so close that the boughs touched his head, and waited. It took all of ten seconds for Jay to open the front door. When he reached Mark, he looked like he didn’t know whether to punch him or cry.

  Mark didn’t give him a chance to do either. He just held up the photograph of Eli Pate.

  “Is this the guy who has you so scared?”

  He didn’t answer, but his face said more than words could have.

  Mark said, “You asked me what I would do if I had another chance with my wife. I’m here to give you the same chance, but it’s going to have to be fast and you’ve got to talk to me. There are going to be a bunch of police in this town soon. I’m here to warn you of that and tell you that I haven’t mentioned your name. In exchange, I need to know what in the hell the deal is here. I can’t leave you alone. Not now. A woman is missing, and it’s because of this guy, and you know something about it.”

  “You can’t tell the police about me. You can’t.”

  “Then you’ve got to tell me why.”

  Jay’s voice was softer when he said, “You were right. They’ve got cameras inside. I finally found where. Thanks for going back to this place and not the door.”

  “Who is watching you?” Mark said. “Is it Pate or somebody else?”

  Jay took out his cell phone and fumbled with it and for a moment Mark thought he was making a call. Then he shoved it toward Mark. On the screen was a photograph of a woman with a disoriented, foggy gaze. She wore a blue nightgown and her hair was disheveled and there was a handcuff on her right wrist.

  “That’s my wife.”

  It took Mark a moment to find his voice, and when he did, it was ragged. He said, “I’m not taking any of your options off the table. I promise you that.”

  Jay Baldwin nodded without a word and put the phone back in his pocket.

  “Let’s talk fast,” Jay said. “They’ll notice if I’m outside too long. Trust me.”

  They stood in the cold dark while Jay Baldwin told Mark what he knew of Eli Pate, told the story of the night of the vandalism on the high-voltage lines and how he’d returned home to find Pate present and his wife missing. He told him of the ride to Chill River and the video of his wife in shackles. He wept while he told it.

  “He sends pictures, and video clips. She’s alive; she doesn’t seem hurt. She’s still alive. That’s why I can’t…I just can’t risk doing anything. If you’d met him, if you’d seen that man’s eyes or heard him talk, you’d know. You’d know.”

  Mark said, “The woman who was working with me is gone, Jay. We were together just a few hours ago, and then I left and came up here, and by the time I got back she was gone. She’s a federal agent, by the way. Not a private detective. I didn’t know that myself. But when I say there are going to be police all over this, we are talking big-league ball. You might have to cooperate. But right now I need to know how they knew we were in town. Did it come from you?”

  He looked away, his cheeks wet with tears.

  “Jay…I just need the answer.”

  “Yes.” His voice was choked. “He calls, and he watches. He told me what would happen if I lied, and so I told him…I told him that you’d come by. I told him what you’d asked about. And what you were driving.”

  What they were driving. That was all it would have taken. Red Lodge was a small town with only a few motels. They’d parked the Tahoe directly in front of their rooms.

  “Lynn Deschaine didn’t disappear tonight without his help,” Mark said. “So he won’t be surprised when the police hit town, and he won’t be surprised if they find their way to you. I think he probably trusts you to say the right things.”

  “You’re not going to tell them?” Jay’s face was so desperate it hurt to look at him.

  “I’m not going to close any doors for you, Jay, but I don’t know that you’re making the right choice either.”

  “It’s the best I have,” Jay whispered. “You think I haven’t thought about it? It’s all I think about, every minute, but the thing is…I believe him.” He was wearing just a T-shirt and the night was cold, but his shiver had nothing to do with the weather. “When he says that I have only one choice? I believe him. If you’d ever met him, you would too.”

  “So you’re going to do it. You’re going to try to shut that place down.”

  “As long as I know he has Sabrina, I am going to do what he asks.”

  Mark did not condemn him for this. If someone had told Mark that he could have Lauren back if he blew up a power plant, his only response would have been Where’s the fuse? There was absolutely no way Mark could blame Jay for his decision, but he also didn’t think it would work. If Jay Baldwin was going to see his wife again, it wouldn’t be because he’d followed Eli Pate’s instructions. That wasn’t Mark’s call to make, though. He wasn’t going to take the choice away from Jay either. He couldn’t bear to.

  “When are you supposed to do it?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Soon. That’s all he told me.”

  “Okay. So you’ve got no timeline, and until then he watches your movements with the GPS chip and cameras, and he calls you to check in.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “I don’t even know who he is. I just came home one day and he was here. It was like being picked by the devil.” He’d taken to rubbing his hands together, the muscles in his forearms bunching. “Tell me something—do you think he’s alone?”

  “No.”

  That dismayed Jay. “You know anything about w
ho’s with him?”

  “The man who killed my wife.”

  The wind gusted and tousled Jay’s hair and flapped his T-shirt around him and he looked into Mark’s eyes and then away, and for a moment Mark thought he was going to slide down to the pavement again as he had before. The more Jay had heard, the stronger he’d seemed—until Mark’s last disclosure.

  Mark said, “I’m leaving you to your choice, Jay. I don’t know if the police will come for you or not. They know that the woman who was with me is missing, but I don’t know if they have any idea that we came here. You were my idea, not hers.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because I’ve been you,” Mark said. “A version of you, at least. When do you think Pate will call next?”

  “I’m not sure. But he will. Maybe an hour. Maybe two.”

  “When he does, you tell him that I’ve gone to Lovell to find him. You don’t know my name, but you do know that I’m in Lovell looking for him. You’re going to tell that much of a lie for me. It’s not so much to ask, and it’ll help you. I think I’ve got a shot at him, Jay. A better one than most, probably.”

  “Where are you really going?”

  Mark shook his head. “I’m letting you keep your secrets, Jay, because I understand your reasons. You gotta let me keep mine.”

  He left then and got into the Tahoe. Back in town, he could see the lights of a single police car. Jeff had made the call, at Mark’s request, and now the locals were doing their preliminary work. It wouldn’t be long until the Red Lodge police realized they were overmatched.

  Lynn Deschaine, Special Agent, Department of Homeland Security.

  No, it would not be long at all.

  Mark pulled onto 212 and looked to the right, where the Beartooths loomed in the darkness. The quickest way to Cooke City was to follow 212 over the pass, but even though there wasn’t a trace of snow in Red Lodge and the temperature had been in the sixties during the day, he knew that there was no chance the pass was open. Where it crested at nearly eleven thousand feet, there would be snowpack as tall as three men. In a good year, they got it open by Memorial Day. Sometimes it was closer to July.

  You could still get to Cooke City, though. The Chief Joseph highway was open. It took longer than 212, but you could get there.

  Mark left Red Lodge and headed into the mountains in search of an uncle he hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years.

  38

  The white-haired man with the hounds in the kennel hadn’t even finished bleeding out before Doug began to fall apart. They were in the yard, and Janell was busy transferring their gear from the red truck to the GMC Yukon that reeked of wet dog fur. Working alone, because he was standing in the driveway, bitching.

  “This was never part of it,” he said as she shoved past him with another bag. “What happened with the cop—okay, maybe you needed to do it, or felt like you needed to. But inside that house? That was fucking murder.”

  “Guilty as charged.” She slammed the bag into the tailgate. She’d added all of the dead man’s weapons, which was not an insignificant arsenal. He had four shotguns, two rifles, three pistols, and plenty of ammunition for all of them. There’d been three hundred dollars in cash as well. Cash and guns were good—always useful, obviously, but she’d also thought they would appease Doug, the necessary spoils of the war he believed in.

  It wasn’t working. He hadn’t even helped her search the house. He’d spent his time in the living room, standing in front of the corpse as if he didn’t understand what had happened.

  “We could’ve tied him up, just as you said. It wouldn’t have changed anything. We’d still have had two days. The only difference now is you’ve made us a date with the electric chair. That’s all you did.”

  She didn’t bother to tell him that after she’d killed the deputy, that date had already been arranged. Instead, she tossed another bag into the Yukon, turned to face him, and tried to find a last reserve of patience. It was like sifting through sand in search of water.

  “We’ve been working toward this moment for nine months,” she said.

  “Not this moment. This was never a moment I dreamed of!”

  “Everyone else is in motion. Every…one…else. We’re already running behind. The world will change in the next twenty-four hours, and where do you want to be when it happens?”

  He stood with his jaw slack, breathing through his mouth. A car passed on the road below the house, the headlights throwing fast shafts of light through the trees, and though it drove on without slowing, it was a reminder that police might be patrolling nearby. They were wasting time, and meanwhile another band of followers was gathering with Eli, where she belonged.

  “I suppose we can wait here,” she said. “We can sit down and talk through all of this. Discuss what was planned and what was necessary. Argue the semantics of warfare. But I’d rather not be having a fucking philosophical debate when the police arrive.”

  He shook his head. His hands opened and closed at his sides—tightening into fists, relaxing, tightening. The only way he could express himself, through his hands. She had warned Eli of this. Doug Oriel was a physical titan, and a mental child.

  “It’s time to run,” she said. “I’m going, with or without you. You want to head south while I go north, take the red truck and give it your best shot. You’ll be in jail before noon, and I’ll be operating as planned.”

  “Nothing is as planned.”

  The dogs had stopped barking and howling and now paced their fence lines uneasily. She was sure they had smelled their owner’s death in the air and were curious about their own fates. How pathetic, that through smell alone they were farther along in understanding than Doug was.

  She turned from him and jerked open the Yukon’s driver-side door. “Last chance for a ride.”

  She had the engine running before he moved. Even then, he was hesitant—he looked all around him in a great, confused circle, as if searching for some other path, and finding none, he put his head down, walked to the Yukon, opened the passenger door, and climbed in beside her, his hands still clenching and unclenching. They were large hands, and she remembered the way the dead man who’d owned this car had looked at them and thought that it would be wise to watch them herself.

  She backed out of the dead man’s driveway and turned onto the country road, heading north.

  “We’ll get some distance between us and this place and then we’ll make contact with Eli,” she said.

  Doug didn’t answer. One of his knuckles popped as he tightened his right fist.

  Janell drove on.

  39

  The road to Cooke City was filled with ghosts.

  Mark was used to traveling with them, had become accustomed to that since Lauren was killed, but there were more of them now. He was in the Sunlight Basin, carving through country he’d once known so well, and the faces of men and women who had probably been dead for years rose smiling in his mind. Also in the mix, all too often, was Lynn Deschaine, her face just above his own in the dark, her body pressed tight to him, her racing heart pounding against his chest.

  The Chief Joseph Scenic Byway links Cody, Wyoming, with the northeast gate of Yellowstone, just a few miles from Cooke City, Montana. It crosses through the Shoshone National Forest and the Absaroka Mountains. The Beartooth range looms to the north and the Absaroka range falls behind to the south and the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River winds along through the low country—if a vertical mile up can be considered low country—and then the road begins to climb again, and seeing it in the daylight, many people would consider it the most beautiful drive in the West, at least if they hadn’t driven the Beartooth Highway up and over the top.

  Tonight, none of the grand country was visible beyond the reach of the headlights, and the road mocked Mark. He’d come here to settle the score for the family member who had been taken from him, but instead, he was driving the old roads in search of the family he’d left behind willingly, and he felt as i
f the mountains were laughing at him now. Even the route he had to take felt predestined, promised.

  They never met, he thought. Never spoke. There cannot be overlap, not between my mother and Lauren, between this place and that one.

  But already he knew the latter was false. Cassadaga, Florida, connected to Lovell, Wyoming. The place where Mark’s future had died was bridged to the past he’d left behind. And if that connection was possible, why not more?

  She went to Cassadaga on a case. Went for Dixie Witte. That was all. It had nothing to do with my past.

  Somewhere, a missing Homeland Security agent might have disagreed.

  It was still dark when he arrived in Cooke City, and the temperature was at least fifteen degrees colder than it had been in Red Lodge. The traces of snow that were visible on the peaks down there lay in drifts on the ground up here. He drove slowly into town and Miner’s Saloon came into view, the sign that had been over his mother’s shoulder in the surveillance photos sent to Lynn Deschaine.

  He parked in front of the saloon and cut the engine and the headlights. He turned on the cell phone just for the hell of it and saw the expected—no trace of a signal. Mark was, for the moment, at least, very securely off the grid.

  He stepped out of the car and into the bracing cold and walked down the road to see what had changed in the town.

  The answer: not much. There were a few new buildings, but for the most part, things were the same. They had a fire station now. That was impressive. Mark wondered if they had any firefighters. The summer before Lauren was killed, a forest fire had done some serious damage just beyond the town, ravaging the base of Mount Republic and chewing through the forest along Pilot Creek. Arson, apparently. People died. He’d read about it and looked at the photographs, and that was one of the few times he’d discussed the place with Lauren at any length.