Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  “Stay here,” I tell her. “Doors locked.”

  “Usual drill,” she says, and sounds put out. “I could be your backup, you know.”

  In a strange place, walking into what is essentially a cave full of blunt objects and people with unknown motivations . . . no, she can’t. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, call Sam,” I tell her. “If anyone tries to get you out of the car for any reason—”

  “Call Sam, yeah, I get it,” she says. “Mom? You’ve got your gun, right?”

  “I got it back when we left the jail,” I reassure her. “I’ll be fine. Lock up. I’ll be back soon.”

  As I wait outside the SUV to hear the locks engage, I scan the streets. We’re near the edge of town, maybe a couple of miles out to the motel where we were so recently staying. Nothing seems out of place . . . and then I back up and look again.

  There’s another SUV on the street. It’s parked near the courthouse, a couple of blocks down, and it doesn’t look like it belongs here, especially this late in the day. Day-trippers to the forest would already be headed home. Those camping out would be settling in. This looks like a rental to me; it’s clean and polished, with dark tinting on the windows that makes it nearly impossible to see in. Could be visitors, I tell myself. But it feels off.

  I can’t deduce anything from a car, and turn away. I head for the door, swing it open, and step into dimness that smells of old oil, rust, and mold. I blink. The overhead light is dim in the office area, which is small and plain—a dirty wooden counter, an old 1970s-era cash register bolted in place, a wooden bench under the shaded window. No modern amenities like coffee or water. The jail looked more welcoming.

  There’s nobody in view. No bell on the counter either. I step up and lean over; the counter has a doorway out into the shop, which is also dimly lit—not ideal for a place to do precision work. Maybe it’s better with the doors open and sunlight bathing the bays, but I wonder just how often they air this place out like that. It smells like an abandoned building, with a nasty edge of sewer backup.

  I’m about to call out a hello when I hear voices. There’s a plain wooden door to my right that must lead out to the work area; I try it, and it opens. I expect a creak, or an alarm chime, but there’s nothing.

  Definitely voices. I’m facing a sign on the wall that says WORK AREA—WATCH YOUR STEP, with a jaunty cartoon worker in a construction helmet pointing at the words. It looks as ancient as this place feels. It’s hard to tell where the voices are coming from—somewhere to my left, I finally realize—and when I look that way, I see there’s an office behind the reception area that has another door into the work area. It’s shut now, but light is leaking around the uneven, warped edges.

  I head that way.

  I stop when I can hear what they’re saying.

  “—goddamn girl is talkin’,” a deep, raspy voice I don’t know says. “You said she didn’t know nothing about it. So what’s she got to say to that bitch?”

  That bitch has to be me. Goddamn girl must be Vee Crockett. I guess that’s not unexpected, in one sense; either Vera, Marlene, or my involvement must be the topic of most Wolfhunter conversations right now. But it feels alarming.

  “No idea,” another male voice says, and it sounds familiar. I’ve heard it somewhere before, but I can’t nail it down. Maybe at the police station. “Damn county idiots wouldn’t listen in, so we don’t know.”

  “You never should have let them move her to county, Weldon.”

  “I didn’t have a choice! That TBI man, he did it. If I could’ve kept her here, we’d have been done with it already.”

  A new voice now. “Boys, boys, calm down. We’re fine. Chances are Vera didn’t say anything that makes any sense anyway, and Marlene knew better than to run her mouth, didn’t she?”

  “Well,” Weldon says bitterly, “she damn sure forgot, because why did she call that stranger in the first place? Now we got that damn woman to deal with. And her boyfriend and kids. It’s a damn mess, Carl. This was supposed to be easy.”

  “It is easy,” Carl replies. He sounds . . . well, like he’s used to being in charge. “It’s containable.”

  “Well, then, you’d best get to it and fast,” the original voice says. No one’s given him a name yet. “When’s our money comin’?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day,” Carl says. “I told you. It takes time for the transfers to process. If you want it untraceable, then it’ll take three or four offshore banks.”

  My mind’s working furiously now. What are they talking about? What money? What did Marlene know?

  Doesn’t matter. I’ve heard enough. We need to get the hell out of here. Now.

  I back away toward the door, and ease it open behind me. It runs into something.

  It hits a man about six feet tall wearing oily mechanic’s overalls, wiping grease from his hands. He’s more than twice as broad as I am, and tops me by several inches; his biceps look enormous beneath the sleeves. I notice those more than I do his face, which is mostly in shadow. As is normal in this town, he’s a white guy, and he looks like he crushes metal for a hobby.

  “What you doin’ here?” he asks me sharply. “Customers ain’t allowed out there!”

  “I was just looking for someone to help me,” I say, and try a placating smile. I’m not sure it works; his body language stays militant. “Maybe you can? How much for an oil change?”

  It’s the first, most normal thing I can think of. It works, because he relaxes a little and steps back to let me come back into the reception area. “You should talk to—” He glances toward the counter, then looks grim; I don’t know why until he says, “Well, ain’t nobody working the counter these days. The boss, I guess.”

  “Who’s the boss?”

  “Mr. Carr,” he says. And he raises his voice, “Hey, boss? Got a lady out here wants to talk to you!”

  It’s the last thing I wanted, but I can’t bolt; the mechanic is between me and the outer door. I try edging over. He moves to block me.

  And I hear footsteps behind me, heavy and quick.

  “Ms. Proctor,” says the voice I first heard from that office. The deep, raspy one.

  I turn to face him.

  He’s almost as tall as his mechanic, but thinner. Lanky, the way only some country folk are. Older, maybe in his early sixties, with a wild explosion of white hair that ought to soften his long, lean face, but doesn’t. Paler than I would have expected, and with shocking blue eyes that look like a doll’s eyes.

  He’s smiling, but I can tell that’s just a muscle movement, not emotion. There is emotion in him, but it’s banked and burning behind those eyes.

  “Mr. Carr,” I say. I extend my hand. He ignores it, so I drop it back to my side.

  “You been waiting long?” he asks. Meaning, have I overheard his conversation with the other two in the office.

  “Not long,” I tell him. Let him make of that what he wants. I don’t say anything else. I wait to see what he’s going to do. I’m aware, acutely aware, that I might not leave this room without a fight. Or alive. I’m fast on the draw, but even the fastest can go down before they get off a shot, and all he has to do is signal the mechanic behind me to put me in a bear hug. But I have a hole card.

  “And what is it you came for? Car runnin’ rough?” He’s playing with me. I hear the mechanic move away from behind me. Checking out the window, probably. I see Carr’s eerie blue eyes move from me to him, then back. Oh God. They know my kid’s in the SUV. I know Lanny, I know she won’t open that door for anyone but me, Sam, or Connor . . . but they could break a window. Drag her out. Would they do that? Right out in public, on the main street?

  “I heard Marlene Crockett used to work here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really just came to ask if she ever mentioned her daughter, Vera, threatening her,” I say. I know he’ll take the easy answer. He doesn’t disappoint.

  “Marlene was scared to death of that damn girl,” he says. “No discipli
ne in that house without a man to lay down the law. Vera did as she wanted—drugs, drinkin’, whorin’ around. That all you wanted to know? Coulda asked anybody.”

  His chuckle sounds like a knife scraping concrete.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “Cops been by to ask about it already?”

  “That’s my business. Y’all best be going,” he says. “Mrs. Melvin Royal. Be careful on those dark roads out there on your way home.”

  I turn my back on him and walk toward the mechanic, who’s still blocking the door. I don’t stop. I see the man squint past me at Carr, and he moves at the last second.

  I walk out of the dark shop and into the clean sunlight. That place. The smell. Rust and oil, sewage and baked-in rot.

  And those men, unafraid to threaten me. My word against theirs, sure. But I could feel the odds being calculated, the cold decisions being made.

  We need to get out.

  Now.

  I unlock the SUV from the key fob and climb in. In ten seconds I’ve belted in, started the engine, and have it backed out onto Main Street. Carr’s right. The woods get dark early. And I can see him watching now from his window, blinds pulled up to follow our progress. I check behind us. The black SUV’s still parked a couple of blocks away. Now another one has joined it on the other side of the street. I watch, but they don’t follow us.

  “Mom?” Lanny’s watching me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything,” I tell her.

  That’s when my phone rings. It’s Connor.

  And he tells me Sam’s under arrest.

  11

  SAM

  The manager of the lodge tells us the best path to follow for a safe, unchallenging hike—one that’ll last a couple of hours at most and bring us back in a loop. Connor doesn’t seem that interested at first, though he’s happy to be tagging along. But the quiet of the forest turns out to be just what he needs, and it eases some of the vibrating tension inside me too. Something about the green, fresh smell of the air, the flickering shade, the sound of birds singing. Makes you forget all the bullshit for a while. Even if it’s bullshit of your own making.

  We walk up the trail a bit, and I stop to point out an almost-invisible snake—nonpoisonous, so I let him get closer than I would have otherwise. The snake flees without any show of anger, and we keep going.

  “That was cool,” Connor says.

  “It was.”

  “I’d like to have a pet snake. That’d be interesting.”

  “Sure,” I say. “You know you have to feed him what he’d eat out here, right? Bugs, mice, things like that.”

  “I could catch them around the lake,” he says. “It’d be okay.”

  I try to guess how Gwen would feel about that and fail. Though odds are, if Connor really is interested, she’d be 100 percent behind that enthusiasm, even if it means having live mice in the house.

  Lanny might not be quite as accepting. I don’t enjoy thinking about the epic battles, or the inevitable Save the Mice campaign.

  While I’m thinking about that, though, Connor says, “Can I ask you a real question? For real?”

  “How do you ask a fake question?”

  He gives me a look that tells me he isn’t amused. And he’s serious. “Are you and Mom staying together or not?”

  “Wow.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Buddy, I would if I had a good answer for it.”

  “Don’t say It’s complicated. It’s not. You either love her or you don’t. And if you don’t, you shouldn’t make her think you do.”

  I think about that. We walk on in silence for a while. Connor silently points out a frog by the side of the trail, watching us with unblinking eyes. It hops off into leaf litter as we pass.

  “Okay,” I finally tell him, “it’s not complicated. But it is hard. You get why, right?”

  “Because of your sister,” he says. “Yeah.”

  “And because she can’t forget it. Neither can I. So . . . long term, will we be together? I hope we will. But I can’t make you that promise.” Especially now. Especially with Miranda and all that ugly, stained past coming back like a sewage flood to sweep us away.

  “Well, you should promise,” he says. “Because then you’ll stay no matter what. You don’t break your promises.”

  I feel a fist close around my heart and squeeze. “I want to,” I tell him. “And it’d be a real easy thing to do, because I love your mom, and I love you and your sister.”

  “But you won’t promise,” he says, and kicks a rock.

  “Not yet,” I say. “Ask me again at the end of the week.”

  He gives me an odd look. Wary. “Why? What happens at the end of the week?”

  “That’s just it,” I say. “Hell if I know. That’s the point.”

  He gives me a little shove. I give it back. I get a rare, clear laugh from him. “You’re kind of dumb, did you know that?” he says.

  “Only kind of?” I make a snap decision. “Come on. Follow me.”

  “But—” He points straight ahead as I veer off. “The trail’s that way.”

  “Yep,” I say. “Come on. Let’s get lost for a while.”

  We go for about fifteen minutes, and then Connor spots a deer. He starts to speak, and I put a finger to my lips and slowly sink into a crouch behind the brush. He follows suit, carefully mirroring me. I stay very still as the deer comes closer. Closer. I wonder if anyone’s ever taken this kid hunting; it was something that bonded me and my adoptive father closely in my teen years. Then I think again about whether or not that would be a good idea, given the inevitable associations with his dad’s murders. And the way he killed.

  This kid’s already had enough death in his life.

  We sit crouched in the brush and watch the deer as it crops plants and scrapes at the ground for more. She’s a pretty doe, and we just appreciate her for a while. When she wanders off, we stand up, and I realize that there’s a new path, barely used, going in a different direction. It’s not an officially marked trail, more likely a game trail.

  “Can we?” Connor asks, and points to it.

  “Sure,” I say. “And if we get lost, what are you going to do?”

  He pulls a compass from his pocket. It’s attached to a small key chain with a carabiner on it, and he clips the carabiner onto his belt loop. “Go southeast,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “Is this a test?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Because the nearest place is the lodge, and the lodge is southeast from us right now. Right?”

  The kid’s got a good sense of direction and spatial awareness. Good. “And what’s in your backpack?”

  “Trail bars, flashlight, water, map, my first-aid kit, and a book,” he says. “I know you didn’t tell me to get the book.”

  “Good man. Nothing wrong with a book. Let’s find a good spot to sit and read.”

  I have a light pack with me too: compass, food, water, map of the area. And a slender volume of Garrison Keillor, but I don’t tell him that yet. I also have my Glock 9 mm and a hunting knife, a pocket fishing kit, and insulating blankets in case we get stuck out here for the night, because one thing my time in Afghanistan taught me was don’t go if you’re not ready to face what’s out there.

  And though this ought to be friendly territory, I never assume anything. Gwen and I are alike in that.

  We’ve followed the game trail about thirty minutes when I pick up the smell of something dead. It’s strong and sweet-sour in the back of my throat. Connor gets it, too, and covers his nose. “What’s that?” he asks. “Is it a skunk?”

  “Hope so,” I say. But it isn’t. The wind shifts, and the smell’s gone. I check the direction the leaves are bending. The breeze has quartered, so I make a turn off the path to find the smell again. It hits me like a pan in the face: hot, greasy, sickening. Not a skunk, alive or dead. This is something bigger.

  We’re off the path. I stop. “Connor, check the map,” I tell him. He o
bediently pulls it out of his pack. “Mark where we are right now.”

  He does, and I check it. We’re close to Wolfhunter River, which is an offshoot of larger waterways; these days it’s more of an oversize creek, but it’s likely dangerous in flood stages. We passed over it on the way to the lodge. The sky is blue and empty of clouds, but flash flooding can happen miles upstream, and it’s nothing to mess around with.

  “Are we going to find it?” he says. “The dead thing?”

  “Do you want to find it?”

  He has to think it over, but then he nods. “Yeah.”

  “You know what we find might be terrible, right?”

  “I know,” he says. And I’m sure he does. He’s old enough to Google and turn off the parental controls without Gwen noticing. He looks up at me. “It’s the right thing to do, though. I mean, it might be an animal, but what if it isn’t? There are people missing.”

  Gwen’s going to hate me for it, but I’m not about to treat this brave kid like he’s made out of glass. “Okay,” I tell him. “Mark the trail on the map as we go.” I take the marker out and swipe it along the trunks of trees as we go; they’re heavy here, but the underbrush is fairly light, and we’re able to push through. We startle birds that take off in a rush of wings and cries, but it’s almost lost in the thrashing hiss of the trees. It’s getting darker in the cover, and for safety I stop Connor and get him to take out his flashlight while I retrieve mine. The halogen beams slice the gloom like scalpels. I widen the output on mine. It doesn’t go as far, but I like to see what’s coming on the sides.

  It’s still and silent, except for the sound of the trees and now-distant birdcalls. No traffic sounds. No planes overhead. The farther in we get, the more isolated we are, and I start worrying about wildlife. Dead bodies attract scavengers. Particularly bears.

  But we don’t have to go far, and we don’t see a bear. Just a small, dappled bobcat that slinks silently away the instant I spot him.

  The smell continues to increase in intensity, but I don’t initially see the body—or at least recognize it for what it is. It’s by the bank of the Wolfhunter River, and the green water laps at the edges of the thing lying there. I think for a second, It’s a deer, because it’s unnaturally shaped and splayed and dark even in the glow of our combined light beams.