A Stolen Season am-7

by Steve Hamilton

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Darn. That would have made my night if you hadn’t heard yet.”

  “Chief…,” I said.

  “Relax, McKnight. We’re all out of uniform here. Those of us who still wear them, anyway. Can I introduce my wife?”

  He brought the poor woman over, this woman who had married Roy Maven and conceived his children. She actually looked quite sane and even pleasant. Apparently, she had already heard about me, with Maven bringing home tales from the office, the latest trouble this McKnight character had gotten himself into. We all had some more fun at my expense, and then they excused themselves.

  “It’s always good to see you, Constable,” he said to Natalie. He gave me another nod and then they were off.

  “Okay, now all I need is a big boat to come plowing through this window,” I said. “That will make the evening complete.”

  “I think you secretly like that man,” she said.

  “If it’s a secret, it’s one I don’t know about.”

  “I think he’s very charming in his own way.”

  “You’re just torturing me now. I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Later, after dinner, we walked through the Locks Park. It was getting darker and colder by the minute. We stopped at the fountain and threw pennies in for good luck. I kissed her.

  When we were back in the truck, I asked her if I could make one more side trip before taking her home. That’s how we ended up going down to Rosedale, to Leon’s house.

  “I have to give him back his gun,” I said. “And I think this will raise my stock with his wife.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, she thinks every time I come over, it’s to drag Leon into something dangerous. So imagine if I’m just bringing you over to meet the family.”

  “And returning his gun.”

  “I won’t let her see that part.”

  The house looked empty when I pulled into the driveway. I had the sudden fear that Leon was out looking for trouble like everyone else in my life. But of course that was nonsense, a product of my overactive imagination. Besides, I thought, if he was really out doing that, he wouldn’t have taken his whole family with him.

  “I’ll hold on to the gun,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Tell him hello for me if you do.”

  Because you won’t be here tomorrow. That’s the thought that was running through my head, all the way back to Paradise. It was totally dark now. The cold mist that was settling on us every night this summer was back again, dancing in my headlights, coming together in tendrils and then drifting apart as we passed through it.

  It was quiet for a long time. Finally I spoke up.

  “You tired?”

  “Little bit.”

  Her profile in the faint glow of the dashboard. The little scar on her chin.

  “You’re really going back tomorrow?”

  “I have to, yes.”

  “Okay. But you don’t have to go undercover again if you don’t want to. No matter what anyone else says, that’s your call.”

  “They’re going to shut everything down because I’m getting cold feet?”

  “If it doesn’t feel safe to you, you can’t ignore that.”

  “I’ll go back,” she said. “I’ll see what they decide.”

  “You can’t do it.”

  “Says who?”

  “Natalie, you told me yourself you think Laraque can see right through it.”

  “It was just the fear talking. I’ll be all right.”

  “No, you won’t. You can’t go.”

  “It’s not up to you, Alex.”

  “You asked me not to let you go back,” I said. It came out with more of an edge than I wanted. “I’m doing what you asked me to do.”

  “Well, now I’m asking you to back off. You’re not making this any easier.”

  “Fine. I’ll back off.”

  “Alex, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  It hung there between us as I rounded the bay and headed up to Paradise. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Or if it would do any good.

  We passed Vinnie’s place. There were no lights on. We didn’t stop.

  “I need to call the station one more time,” she said as I pulled in front of the cabin.

  “Go on in. I’m gonna check on the family down the road. They should be here by now.”

  I watched her get out and go inside my cabin. Then I closed my eyes and swore at myself a few times. I put the truck back in gear and drove up the road to the fifth cabin. The lights were on. There was a minivan parked outside. I got out and knocked on the front door.

  The father answered. He might have been ten years younger than me. Maybe only five. But he had a couple of young kids. The boy looked about eight years old, the little girl about four. They were sitting with their mother by the wood stove.

  “Listen,” I said. “I know you reserved this place, but you didn’t have to come up here. I can’t imagine this is what you had in mind.”

  “It’s good to get away from everything, Mr. McKnight. No matter where you go.”

  “Call me Alex. Please.”

  “Hey, why is it so cold?” the boy asked.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I thought I ordered warm weather for you guys.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” the boy said. “We love it!”

  “Yeah,” the little girl said. “Is it going to snow tonight?”

  “Yeah, snow in July!” the boy said. “How cool would that be?”

  I ended up staying there for a little while, getting to know the family. I told them all about Paradise, what they could go out and do the next day, starting with a trip up to the Shipwreck Museum. The boy showed me the remote control car he had brought up with him. The girl showed me her stuffed animals. When they were all settled in, I thanked the man again, wished them all a good night. I told them to come down to the first cabin if they needed anything.

  When I was back outside, it hit me.

  It could still happen.

  I could have something like this. A wife, two kids, all of us happy to go away together, no matter what the weather was. As long as we were together.

  It was something I had given up on long ago. Something that had passed me by, something I tried not to think about. But tonight anything seemed possible. Anything. Even this.

  It wasn’t too late.

  God, Alex. Listen to you.

  I got back in my truck. On the way back to my cabin, I practiced a few versions of my apology. I’m just so worried about you. I hate the thought of you being in harm’s way. Sometimes I want to say things to you and they just come out all sideways.

  Yeah, something like that, Alex. That’ll do it. Too bad there aren’t any twenty-four-hour florists in Paradise.

  The last normal thought in my head, before everything slows down.

  Trees.

  More trees.

  Fog.

  I round the corner. The red glow of a vehicle’s taillights. One glimpse and then they’re gone.

  Vinnie out, doing what?

  But no, his truck is still grounded. It’s not Vinnie.

  Somebody else? Who could be here?

  The cabin. Front door open. Light streaming out onto the ground, like something spilled.

  The door can’t be open. It does not make sense.

  Stop the truck. Get out and move. Running now. Natalie. What on God’s earth is going on? Natalie.

  Through the open door. Squinting in the sudden bright light.

  Phone on the floor. Cord curled around a table leg.

  Natalie. Where are you?

  Push the table away. Glass breaking. Water on the floor.

  Something else. The bright color of it. The shock like something plugged into my spine.

  The red. The blood.

  Her face, her eyes open. Staring up at me.

  My sweatshirt on her ches
t now. She had put it on again. I was going to give it to her. I was. It’s dark now, stained and wet. Holes in the fabric.

  One of them here.

  Another here.

  One more. Ruined.

  Natalie.

  On my knees, holding her. Lifting her from the floor, from the blood. Her arms hang. Her hair. Hanging to the floor.

  Natalie, please.

  Grabbing for the phone, trying to remember how it works, which numbers to press. Somehow I have to keep her off the floor. I can’t drop her. I can’t let go.

  Natalie. Hang on.

  But there’s nothing there. Nobody to hear me. Her eyes do not move.

  The warmth of her gone, her life, herself. She is gone.

  She is gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A sheriff’s deputy, first on the scene. An ambulance. Natalie taken from me, pried out of my arms. Then three state police cars. Red lights spinning in the fog.

  Questions. Voices. Did you hear anything?

  No.

  Did you see anything?

  Lights.

  What kind of lights?

  A car. A truck.

  You can’t be more specific?

  No.

  Did anybody follow you home?

  No.

  We know this isn’t easy, Alex.

  No.

  No, you don’t know.

  The sun comes up. The earth keeps spinning, for whatever reason. Time is obliterated. An hour passes or a minute or a day. There’s no reference point anymore, because nothing ever changes. Everything is pain. Pain is all there is or ever will be. Pain so real it makes its own fog. I can’t see anything else.

  More questions.

  I’m in the next cabin up the road. I can’t be in my own place. A crime scene now. As if I could ever go back there anyway. I’m in the second cabin, the one my father built by himself, the summer after the first. The summer of the second cabin, the summer before the third cabin. Before the fourth then the fifth then the sixth and then he died. He’s dead.

  Name other dead people, Alex. Strange, strange thoughts coming to me now. I can’t stop them. Go ahead, name some more dead people. My mother. My old partner. Who else?

  No, don’t say it. Don’t you dare.

  It’s light out now. The sun rising on the world. It’s still cold. Jackie comes to sit with me. He doesn’t have much to say. He folds his hands together and presses them between his knees. He asks me what he can do for me.

  Nothing.

  He stays a long time. Vinnie comes to relieve him. I am apparently not to be left alone. Jackie on the way out, telling me he’ll be back. Vinnie taking the chair, his face still a swollen mess.

  Minutes pass, or hours, or days. He’s not looking at me.

  “Alex…,” he finally says.

  “Yes.”

  “Alex, how did this happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who did this?”

  I say nothing.

  “Alex, who did this?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You have an idea. You think it was them.”

  “Them who?”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  I shake my head. The rage still on the upcurve, not all the way there yet. Not by a long shot.

  “Alex, what are we going to do?”

  “We can’t bring her back,” I say. I haven’t lost it yet. I can still say things like this. “We can’t bring her back, so it doesn’t matter what we do.”

  His hand on my shoulder, squeezing hard. “Don’t worry about it right now. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Yeah. We will. We, uh…”

  Then I can’t talk anymore. From one moment to the next, I lose the ability to make words. I’m rocking in my chair. Back and forth, back and forth.

  If I had never gone up there on that New Year’s Eve, this thing wouldn’t have happened.

  If she hadn’t come out here from Toronto, this thing wouldn’t have happened.

  If I hadn’t left her alone in the cabin, this thing wouldn’t have happened.

  Or at the very least, we’d both be dead now. That would have worked just fine. Much better than living in this black hole.

  Then something happens. Time snaps back into place. The clock starts ticking again. I realize that twelve hours have passed since the thing happened.

  That’s the other important change. It’s the thing now. For the rest of this day, it will be the thing. I’ll feel the pain of it, but I’ll know that the thing itself can be kept at bay, as long as I start moving, and stay moving. For a few hours, at least, I can keep the thing just far enough away to function.

  Leon showed up. He stayed outside the cabin for a minute, talking to Vinnie, their voices a low rumble in the wind.

  “Guys,” I said. I could speak again.

  They didn’t hear me.

  “Guys!”

  They both came in at once.

  “Give me a little time here, okay?”

  “What do you mean?” Leon said.

  “Give me an hour. Go down to Jackie’s, get some breakfast.”

  They didn’t want to leave. They kept standing there.

  “Come on. Please. I need to be by myself for one hour. Go get some breakfast. Vinnie, you must be starving.”

  “The police will be coming back soon,” Leon said. “They’ll have some more questions.”

  Meaning what, I wanted to say. Like that will do any good for anybody. “I know,” I said. “I know. I just need an hour to myself. Then I’ll be ready.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” Vinnie said.

  “Please. One hour.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I need some food. You can bring me back something.”

  “I’ll stay. Leon can get you some breakfast.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Leon said. “I’ll do that. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Guys, please.”

  But Leon was gone before I could say another word.

  “Just go down there,” I told Vinnie. “You don’t have to stay here.”

  “I don’t have any choice, remember? You cut my battery cables.”

  So take my truck…The next logical thing to say, right? I didn’t say it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  We sat there. I felt the thing coming closer. I had to move.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “I need some aspirin. There’s some in the bathroom.”

  Vinnie got up. He went for the aspirin. As soon as he was out of sight, I stood up and went to the door. I tried to be quiet about it.

  “I don’t see it,” I heard him say. Whatever came next, I didn’t catch it. I was out the door and in my truck.

  And then I was flying.

  I passed Jackie’s place. Leon might have heard me roaring by, might have stuck his head out the door and caught my taillights vanishing down the road, but there was no way he was going to catch me. He didn’t even know where I was going.

  I went south, leaving Lake Superior, heading straight for the other lake. The sun was out today. I had to flip the visor down. If the sun was actually warming things up, I didn’t notice. Leon’s gun was still in the box under my seat.

  It couldn’t have been Laraque, I thought, or anyone else from Canada. They had no idea that Natalie was here.

  No, I had another person in mind.

  If he had found out that Brucie couldn’t do the job, whether Brucie admitted it to him, or whether he just knew somehow…Either way, if Cap knew I was still alive, he would come for me. If I wasn’t there, who the hell knows…Instead of waiting, instead of coming back…

  God damn, why couldn’t I have been there?

  Or maybe he really did want to take her. Maybe that was his plan. Do that to me first, break me into little pieces, then come back later to finish up. From what Brucie had said about him…

  I tightened up on the steering wheel, nearly lost my wheels for
one sick moment, fought my way back. The road was empty.

  I got off I-75, took the two-lane road east, along the shore of Lake Huron. I drove into Hessel, took the secondary road that ran down the peninsula, took the smaller residential road off of that, turned the corner.

  I saw the black Escalade on the road, saw the face behind the wheel. On pure impulse I swung hard, veering across the road. I felt the impact on the corner of my bumper, the Escalade sideswiping me and then running headlong into the ditch. I left the road on the opposite side, obliterated a mailbox, then a small tree. I was out the door before the truck had settled.

  Cap came out of the Escalade, lost his footing, and had to put one hand on the ground to keep from falling on his face. He staggered back too far the other way, trying to find his feet, looking like a man who’d been spun in a blender. I was on him before he even saw me.

  I planted my right fist in his gut, felt all the wind leave his body. He tried to grab me. I hit him with my left hand, caught too much of the crown of his head, and felt my whole arm go numb. He went down.

  I kicked him in the ribs, had the urge to keep doing that about twenty more times. Then I remembered the gun. It was still in the truck. I went back for it, looking up and down the road. My truck was off the road, but his back end was blocking half of it. If anyone came by, they’d have to slow down.

  So they’d get a good view of me putting a bullet in his head, I thought. I grabbed the gun, went back to Cap. He was on his hands and knees trying to draw a breath. I kicked him again, flipping him over. There was a bloody scrape on his forehead.

  I bent down over him. His eyes focused on me.

  “McKnight,” he said. “Fuck. You’re alive?”

  “Yes, I am. Surprised to see me?”

  He was. It was unmistakable. Under the circumstances, I didn’t see how he could be faking it. He was genuinely shocked to see me.

  “Brucie killed you.”

  “Obviously he didn’t.”

  “That pussy.”

  I put the gun to his temple. I remembered the last time I had pointed this gun at him, the way he had taunted me for sounding like some kind of yooper hick. “I’m going to kill you,” I said in a dead even voice. “How’s that sound? Am I doing better this time? I’m going to blow your brains out, all over this road. They’ll be picking parts of your head out of the bushes for a week.”