by C. E. Murphy
“I just want you to meet someone.”
“Who, a psychiatrist?” Not that an outdoors store struck me as the most likely place to find a head doctor. A guru, maybe, but not a shrink. “Look, I know it’s not a great idea, but we have to do something.”
“Hey, Billy!” A tall, athletic brunette woman in the store uniform of a polo shirt and khakis leaned over the second floor wood railing and waved. Billy waved back, and she swung herself around the railing corner and took the stairs down two at a time, like a kid. I was torn between liking her instantly and utterly distrusting her, though the latter impulse came from the suspicion that she was the shape of my doom. She was close to my height, and her hands, one of which she offered me to shake, were bigger than mine. “Hey, I’m Mandy Tiller. You must be Joanne. Billy called a while ago to say you were coming by.”
She turned and socked Billy’s shoulder hard enough to make a meaty thump. “Good to see you, Holliday. How’s Mel? How’re the kids?”
“They’re all good. Mel says hi.” Billy rubbed his shoulder, smile a little pained as he explained to me, “Mandy’s oldest son is in Robert’s class. We’ve been doing field trips and class picnics together for years.”
A tiny spark of recognition shocked me. “Jake Tiller? I met him one time over at Billy’s house. He looks like you.” They both had long jaws and sandy-gold skin that offset light eyes, though Mandy’s hair was darker than her son’s.
Mandy’s smile lit up. She wasn’t quite pretty, but the smile was terrific. “That’s him. He’s a good kid.” The smile went away as fast as it’d come, worry pinching the space between her eyebrows. “Billy says you guys are on that cannibal case. He says you need a wilderness guide to try and flush the guy out.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again, glanced at Billy, then looked back at Mandy with my own eyebrows elevated. “Yeah, I guess I kind of do.”
She nodded once, somehow making it a stern expression. “I can take a quick break if you want to go over to the coffee shop with me and talk about it.”
“I’ll never say no to coffee.” The three of us trundled out of the store, and I felt my stress level drop. It probably said something about me that I would prefer to discuss trapping a killer than face the prospect of shopping in a big box store.
We ordered what turned out to be more-than-passable coffee and sat around a table as far away from the other patrons as possible. Mandy said, “Sorry, I don’t have much time, so let me tell you like it is. I know the news story only broke this morning, but for a big city with a lot of people, the real wilderness types are pretty close-knit. We don’t all know each other, but it’s like two degrees of separation, not six?” She nodded when we did and kept going. “So it’s not like we haven’t been talking about this among ourselves for weeks. It’s gotten bad enough that the last week or so almost nobody’s going out, or if they are they’re going up to Canada to do their hiking and weekend camping. We’re talking about a lot of green freaks here, people who avoid driving when they can, so that should give you an idea of how uncomfortable we are.”
I said, “Maybe that’s why this morning’s body was found in Ravenna Park. The hunting in the wilder areas is getting scarce,” to Billy, who nodded. I liked that idea better than the one about the killer looking for me.
“I haven’t gone out since the second body was found,” Mandy said. “Jake’s dad and I are divorced, and there’s no way I’m risking leaving him alone. That said, Billy wouldn’t have called if he didn’t need help, or if he didn’t think you could make a difference. Do you think you can catch this guy?”
Truth, rather than reassurance, popped out: “I hope so. What I can do is make sure you’re not going to get hurt out there.” Mandy looked unhappy. I couldn’t blame her. “Maybe there’s somebody else, somebody without kids-?”
“Plenty of people. The problem is they’re mostly guys.”
I said, “Ah,” after a moment, while Billy looked between us in bewilderment and demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means guys are a lot more likely to get overprotective if something bad goes down,” I said when it was clear Mandy wasn’t going to explain. Billy started to look offended and I raised my coffee cup to stop him, then took a sip. It really was pretty decent coffee. “Say you’re Generic Joe the Hiker. You’re bringing a woman, somebody who hasn’t done much hiking before, out on a trail for the first time. You happen to know she’s a fourth dan in kung fu, but while you’re out there a nutjob appears out of nowhere and attacks her. What do you do?”
Billy, just like I had earlier, opened his mouth and shut it again. I said, “That’s what I thought.”
“I would just let her kick his ass,” Billy muttered sullenly. I laughed and reached over to pat his shoulder.
“I know you would, but you’re a member of a specially trained elite force, and you’re more likely to remember that your girl Friday there has a black belt. But most guys with an ounce of decency would act to protect the girl. In this particular case, working with somebody whose first instinct is to duck is going to be safer for all of us.”
“So it’s a date.” Mandy still didn’t look happy, but she sounded determined. “I don’t work tomorrow, Detective Walker, so if you’re free then, I’d like to get this over with?”
“Just tell me where to meet you.”
We made arrangements, and I, heroically, went home and went to bed.
CHAPTER NINE
I dreamed of a funeral on Christmas day. Dozens of mourners were in attendance, washed out in the gray winter light. I was among them, taller than most, grim in the black slacks and sweater I’d bought for the service. I’d worn the only shoes I had with me, stompy black boots that didn’t match the outfit. I’d secretly liked the fact that they set me apart, that they weren’t appropriate. They played to an already-present sense of alienation from the people around me. I thought of myself as fish-belly pale, but looking at my distant family, I saw a golden cast to my skin that none of them had. I looked better in black than most of them did.
Growing up, I’d never thought about my mother’s family. She was persona non grata to me, the bitch who’d abandoned me with a father who didn’t know what to do with me. I’d never indulged in the luxury of imagining my life would’ve been better with her, and it had flat-out never occurred to me that I might’ve had aunts and uncles, or cousins, much less siblings and nieces and nephews.
By the time she finally called, I was twenty-six and she was dying. She wanted to get to know me in the time she had left, but she never did. We spent four months traveling around Europe on the basis of a relationship that meant nothing to me, and, as far as I could tell, meant very little to her. We never broke down the barriers of silence, and saw Rome and Barcelona and Prague as two strangers standing side by side. When I met her family at the funeral-aunts and uncles and cousins, yes, but no half siblings, for which I was grateful-they were too caught up in their own sorrow to know what to do with me. I didn’t exactly blame them, but I was bitter anyway.
Three months later, when my dead mother rescued me from a banshee, I learned that every one of her choices had been based on trying to keep me safe. I learned, way too late, that she’d loved me. But in the immediacy of the dream, all I knew was I stood amongst strangers who had lost someone much more important to them than she’d been to me.
They had offered-or asked, I wasn’t sure which-to let me help shoulder the weight of her casket. I’d wanted to say yes, and had declined because I was so much taller than the others. It was a stupid, pathetic logic, and I’d regretted it immediately, not just for my sake or my mother’s, but because of how her family’s faces had shut down. In instantaneous hindsight I’d understood they were trying to reach out to me, but my talent had always been in pushing people away.
The priest spoke, as unmemorable in dreams as he’d been in life. Others nodded, wiped tears away; I stared at my stompy boots and waited for it all to be over. Voices murmured around
me, whispered remembrances that the priest’s words brought to the fore, and all I could offer was she liked Altoids. A bark of laughter filled my throat, inappropriate to release, and so I jolted guiltily when I heard that sound outside my own head.
It wasn’t laughter. It was a raven, sitting on Sheila MacNamarra’s headstone. The grave was still open, shining casket a black gleam under the dull sky. The raven tipped forward, peering into the hole, and gave another one of its laughlike caws.
That had not happened at the funeral. I edged forward, somewhere between relieved that this wasn’t just a miserable dream and worried that it was a portent of some kind. The raven cawed again, then sprang into the air, wings whispering as he flew away into the winter sky.
Wailing followed him, a screech of metal tearing, and it rendered the clouds bloody and red.
I woke up far more weary than I’d been when I went to bed.
Wednesday, December 21, 5:19 A.M.
I couldn’t shake the dream, so I just got up. I was meeting Mandy early anyway, although not quite five-thirty-in-the-morning early. Still, finding breakfast and taking a shower seemed better than lying wide-eyed in bed trying to read meaning into haunted dreams.
Truth was, I didn’t think it needed that much interpretation. No banshee had cried at my mother’s funeral, but with the murders a few months later, and everything I’d learned about her then, I wasn’t surprised there was an association. The raven’s appearance seemed even less peculiar, especially with my power circle encounter the day before.
Reminded, and feeling a little foolish, I took a foil bag of Pop-Tarts up to the roof of my building and put it on one of the heating vents. “Here you go, Raven. Shiny food. Thank you for getting me out of that psychic snowstorm yesterday.” I patted the bag and, feeling even more foolish, retreated to my apartment.
Mandy Tiller swung by to pick me up about a quarter after six, which really meant she lugged a backpack up to my apartment and examined my winter gear. My boots, which were police-issue for winter wear, passed muster, but she looked dismayed at the rest of what I thought qualified as outdoor gear.
“Jeans are out. Cotton’s no good for keeping warm. I thought that might be the case, so I brought extras. They should fit pretty well, you’re a little taller but I think I’m bulkier?”
I said, “In the thigh, anyway,” before realizing that might be insulting. Mandy only nodded, though, and unzipped the backpack to reveal what looked like two-thirds of the stock from the store she worked in. She peeled a pair of leggings out and tossed them to me, grinning at my expression.
“They expand. Really. I know they look like they won’t fit a skinny thirteen-year-old, but I wear them all the time.” Disconcertingly, she peeled her waistband down to show me the pair of leggings she wore under her pants, then let the pants slide back up. “They wick sweat away. I’ve got a long-sleeved shirt for you, too. Do you have any sweaters? Wool sweaters?”
Half an hour later I was securely bundled in more layers than I knew could fit on a single human being, and was somehow still only carrying only slightly more bulk than I typically did. I wriggled my toes inside liner socks inside wool socks inside my boots and chortled. “This is kind of cool.”
Mandy got a sly look. “If you think it’s cool already, you’ve got the heart of an outdoorsman. We’re going to have fun today. Ever been snowshoeing?”
I said, “No,” fascinated, and her sly look got even craftier.
“Yeah,” she said again. “This’ll be fun.”
Except for the part where we’re trying to lure a killer to us, I didn’t say and tromped outside after her.
We took a ferry across Puget Sound, both of us getting out of Mandy’s SUV to lean into what was, with all the cold weather gear we were wearing, merely a bracing wind. I’d had my filling breakfast of pastries, but she threw me a ham sandwich and a protein bar, which I ate obediently, figuring there was no point in tagging along after an expert if I didn’t take her advice. “You do a lot of walking, right?” she asked as we got back into her car. “A five-mile trail isn’t going to kill you?”
“I did more when I was a patrol cop, but I should be okay as long as you don’t expect me to climb mountains.”
“Only a little one,” she promised cheerfully. “If you were really outdoorsy I’d bring you on a much harder hike, farther out. From what I know about the people who’ve died, most of them would be found on the tough stuff, not on Hurricane Hill. I’m hoping it’s enough to draw him out.” She gave me a sideways glance and asked the question I’d been expecting all along: “So are you like a black belt? I’ve never heard of cops going out alone to set themselves up as bait. Don’t they usually at least have backup?”
“You’re my backup.” And I hadn’t exactly cleared this stunt with Morrison. “I’m not a black belt, but I have a kind of…profiling thing with people like this. A way to fight that most people don’t.”
“And you can be sure he’ll go after you and not me?”
I found myself studying her awhile before answering. “You’re very brave,” I said eventually. “You must be, or you wouldn’t be out here offering to help me with only the bare bones of the situation explained to you.”
She went quiet awhile, too, as we drove up into the park. “Maybe. Maybe I’m a little stir-crazy, too. I haven’t been out hiking in weeks, and I promised Jake we could go out during Christmas break? That’s not happening if there’s still a psychotic cannibal out there. So that’s some of it. And some of it is that the Hollidays never ask for anything. Melinda’s incredible, with all those kids and the volunteer time she puts in at the school and the extra-curricular activities she helps chaperone…so I thought if I could do this, it would be a good thing?” She made a lot of should-be statements into questions, like she was seeking reassurance about her opinions and commentary, and I wondered if she was even aware of it. I figured it wouldn’t go over well if I called her out on it, though, and she went on breathlessly. “Besides, you’re cops. Decent people help the police when they can.”
“I take it back,” I said. “You’re not just brave. You’re also awesome.” Mandy flashed a smile, and I went back to her original question, figuring she’d earned an answer. “I can’t promise he’ll go after me instead of you, but I can promise he’s not going to get his teeth into you, and I’m ninety-nine percent certain he’ll lose interest in you once I start my thing.”
“Which you’re not going to explain?”
“I’d rather not until it’s over.” And only then if I had to. I didn’t want to detail how I could build a shield of my willpower and surround someone else with it, or how in psychic terms I was a much tastier morsel than your average bear. Mandy gave me a careful look, but nodded, and I turned my attention to the park’s winter-wonderland cascade of snow and trees. “You know I’ve never been out here?”
“Too many people haven’t. We’re going up to the Hurricane Ridge visitor’s center and we’ll head out from there. Hurricane Hill’s all paved, not that you can tell right now? So it shouldn’t be too bad a walk. Besides, families will have probably broken the trail already. The parks aren’t advertising that outdoorsmen are being slaughtered.” The SUV gave a sigh when we reached the visitor’s center and settled down into the new snow covering the parking lot. We got out into a wind brisk enough to make my eyes water, and I laughed.
“Can I change my mind now?”
“You’ll be fine. You’re dressed for it.” Mandy took snowshoes from the vehicle’s back end and got me into them, then made me stomp around the parking lot like Bigfoot. I felt like a kid borrowing her dad’s shoes, and caught myself making crunching noises to accompany the squeak of snow compressing under my feet. In almost no time we were on our way up the hill toward the distant ridge.
The sky had turned gray, then gradually clearer as we’d driven, and some minutes into our hike Mandy turned abruptly and said, “Look.”
I spun around in time to watch the sun break over the ho
rizon, a bright ball of white fire in a pale sky. There weren’t enough clouds to turn pink; it was just pure light spreading above and below us. A chime rang out behind me, and I looked back in astonishment to see Mandy swinging a tiny silver-capped bell. “You should always greet the sun with music on the winter solstice,” she explained. “It gives it a reason to come back.”
“You didn’t tell me to bring a bell!” To my utter surprise, I kind of wished she had. Greeting the sunrise hardly seemed like a me thing to do, but with the clean light spilling toward us and the music of Mandy’s bell shimmering in the air, I wanted to take part. Not to be outdone, I reached for a Christmas carol, skipping straight to the chorus: “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright!”
Mandy, sounding as happy as I felt, picked up the tune, and we stood there on the mountainside, singing in the solstice.
When the sun had reached a hand’s breadth above the horizon, we tore ourselves away from watching it, and Mandy tucked her bell back into a pocket. I was in too high spirits to let the feeling go and threw the opening line from my favorite carol toward Mandy: “Said the night wind to the little lamb.”
She gave, “Do you see what I see?” back, and we traded off lines increasingly breathlessly as we tromped up the hill. I fell over laughing and winded when we were finished, and she stood above me with a grin. “You’ve got a really nice voice.”
“So do you. We should start a choir.” I let her pull me back to my feet and accepted the ski poles she’d packed across her back. “I didn’t know snowshoeing was this hard!”
“This is nothing. If you’re not wiped out when we get to the top I’ll take you out on the ridge and make you wish you’d never been born.”
“You might want to work on your sales pitch.” We scrambled farther up the hill, exchanging mutters and jokes until Mandy said, “Almost there,” and ran a few steps ahead of me so she could turn back and offer her hand. I took it and she pulled me up over the top of the ridge.
