Deadfall

by Sue Henry

They followed the marks around the curve of the beach, found where one set of them led to a space between the logs, where another set approached and abandoned the stairs, and where the depressions faded out past the tide line toward the rocks that led to the cliffs. With growing alarm, Alex recognized the splintered marks of bullets on the stairs and stones.

  “He was shooting at her,” he exclaimed.

  “It could be the other way ’round,” Cas suggested hopefully.

  “Let’s get over there.”

  They went up the stairs and were soon half running along the trail at the top of the cliffs. The rain had stopped and in the treetops the wind had exhausted itself from gales to sighs. Looking up, Caswell noticed a small patch of blue sky to the west and was relieved that the storm had blown itself out.

  Reaching the top of the cut Jessie had climbed earlier, Jensen paused to take a look at the marks at the edge of the precipice.

  “Someone came up here,” he said. “And there’re the marks of a line. See where it scored the edge? Here…and here. Some of Tank’s paw prints, too, so either Jessie came up the face of that, or she helped someone else do it. Probably Jessie. Why would she help Wynne?”

  Caswell decided that it was time to confess.

  “It may not have been Wynne,” he told Alex.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “Well…you remember I told you I knew a guy in the Air National Guard Pararescue?”

  “Yes. And?”

  “I probably should have told you—but Jessie was so adamant about not having someone watch over her that I didn’t want you tangled in it. I asked Terry Gill to come out and make sure she was okay. He’s been here since Friday morning, before we flew in. He could have helped her up the cliff.”

  For a minute, Jensen said nothing, staring at Caswell, absorbing what he’d just been told.

  “You mean…? Oh, boy. Is she going to be mad at me.”

  “No. It’s my doing. Let me take the heat.”

  “That may seem reasonable to you—and me. But do you really think Jessie’s going to see it that way? Would Linda?”

  Cas shrugged. “Does it matter? She’ll get over it. If he’s made sure she’s safe, isn’t that the important thing?”

  “Well…” The frown on Alex’s face deepened. “We don’t know that, do we? Where the hell is she—is he? And what’s going on with Wynne?”

  He started on along the trail, running now, leaping over roots and obstacles, shoving back overhanging branches and brush that Cas had to watch or they snapped back to hit him in the face. Coming around a sharp curve, Jensen slowed for a log that had fallen across the trail in front of him. There was just enough room to duck under, and he had started to do so when Cas called out from behind him.

  “Hey, wait up. You’ve got longer legs than I do.”

  Already leaning over and on his way under the log, Jensen decided to finish the motion and pause on the other side. He took two long strides, one under the log, one far enough away to turn around. His first stride tripped the wire release for the deadfall, left in place by Gill’s impersonator. His second stride carried him barely beyond its trajectory as it crashed into the ground, just missing his head, grazing his left shoulder and arm with its rough bark.

  “Jesus!”

  He staggered away from the trap, half expecting more destruction in its wake, but nothing else came down around him.

  “What the hell was that? Alex? Alex!”

  Unable to see, Caswell was shouting from the other side of the log that now made that section of trail impassable. It was not as large as the other, but completely filled the opening Jensen had gone through.

  “Alex? Are you okay? Did that thing get you? Dammit—answer me.”

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. It just missed. Scraped up my arm a little, but I’m not hurt.”

  Panting, light-headed with adrenaline, he moved back to take a look at the trap he had so closely, and luckily, avoided.

  “You better go around this thing. Easier than trying to climb over.”

  As he spoke, the crack of a shot rang through the quiet woods and a bullet thudded into the log beside him. Throwing himself down, near the logs and behind some brush, he shouted to Caswell, who had started uphill to go around the trap.

  “Get down. Someone’s got a rifle up there. Down—down.”

  Cas dove for cover back the way he had come, rolling to a position next to the fallen log.

  “Can you see him?”

  “No,” Jensen answered, more quietly, from the other side of the barrier that now effectively separated the two. “But he could see me, all right—and see that his trick didn’t work like he planned.”

  “Can we flank him? You go east, I’ll go west, and we’ll get him between us?”

  “The brush is too thick. It’d be a bitch getting through, and he’d hear us coming—know exactly where we were.”

  “Go back? Go down?”

  “Maybe…”

  Another shot from above gave them the answer to that. The shooter had moved enough to see both sides of the log. The bullet buried itself just over Caswell’s head. He scrambled back into a patch of devil’s club, swearing as its thorns abused his hands and face.

  “Ross Wynne?” Jensen shouted. “We’re State Troopers Sergeant Jensen and Caswell. We know who you are and why you’re here. Give it up before somebody gets hurt.”

  His answer was another well-placed bullet.

  “Goddammit. He’s got us pinned,” Caswell observed. “What do you suggest?”

  “Don’t give him a target,” Jensen answered. “We’ll think of something.”

  Again he shouted up the hill to where the shooter was hidden.

  “Wynne, I know it’s not Jessie Arnold you really want. If you’ve hurt her, I’ll make you wish you’d never had anything to do with her, but I don’t think you have…have you?”

  His angry voice broke just a little on the last question.

  There was a silent hesitation from above before Wynne called an answer.

  “No,” he said. “I haven’t hurt her.”

  Alex took a deep breath, realized the hands that had been gripping his Colt .45 semiautomatic were trembling as he eased off on his hold, and admitted to himself the idea that had terrified him most. His greatest fear had been that Wynne would decide he needed to frame Moule for murder to be sure he would be sentenced to a severe punishment—and that Jessie would be the victim of his irrational plot. Could he believe what the man said? Was Jessie really unharmed?

  “Wynne, we have Moule in custody. You’ve won—he’s going back to jail. Put down the rifle and we’ll talk about all this. If you haven’t hurt anyone, we can work it out.”

  Another silence, then, “No. It’s not enough. I want him dead.”

  “We can work it out, Ross. He won’t get away with it this time. We’ll work the case till we find enough to get him for what he did to Michael. Let the law take care of it.”

  “The law always screws it up,” Wynne shouted, in a furious tone. “You focus on protecting his rights. What about ours—mine and Michael’s? He’s got to die.”

  “Look, we know that you’ve been harassing Jessie Arnold to frame Moule. We can understand why, and can work with you on it. You’ve had a pretty good reason for what you’ve done. But I can’t promise you he’ll get a death sentence.”

  There was a silence so long that Jensen thought maybe Wynne had gone away—escaped into the forest. He raised himself just a little to take a quick look.

  “Wynne?”

  The response was immediate in another bullet hitting the log.

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” Wynne called down in a cold, determined voice. “I want you to bring him out here so I can kill him myself. Then I’ll let Jessie Arnold go—and that Green Beret of yours. If you don’t bring him, you’ll wish you had, because before this’s over I’m going to kill someone.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Caswell, who had been following the exc
hange from the other side of the log. “He’s got Gill, too.”

  “Can you see any way of getting away from here and reaching him without getting one of us shot?”

  “Nope. He’s picked a perfect vantage point—he can keep us pinned down, we can’t see to shoot at him, and for a bookkeeper he’s no slouch with that rifle.”

  31

  In the goat shed, both Jessie and Terry Gill were slowly working themselves loose. Although Wynne had been good at using the duct tape to secure them, he had forgotten one important thing—fingers that cannot pull tape from their own arms can, awkwardly, pull it off someone else’s.

  The two had first managed to remove the tape that covered their mouths and Jessie was now tugging at the tape that held Gill’s wrists.

  “Just a little more,” he told her.

  “This part’s going to pull off the hair on your arm. It’s going to hurt.”

  “Who cares? Rip it off if you can. We may not have a lot of time here.”

  She did.

  He grunted, but with an increased freedom of motion was able to accomplish more, and they were soon unfettered.

  Gill opened the door enough to give them some light, carefully checking to be sure their captor was not near enough to notice, while Jessie knelt by Tank and worried over how to get the tape off his fur. It would not be an easy or painless procedure.

  “Look through that duffel,” Gill advised. “He’s got a lot of stuff in it. You may find a knife or something sharp.”

  She found a folding hand saw, blade sticky with sap, that had probably been used to construct the deadfall. Using its jagged fold-out blade cautiously, she managed to cut through the tape that held the dog’s muzzle closed, then free his legs. Until she could figure out how to get the tape off without removing the hair along with it, she decided to simply leave it.

  Tank, however, didn’t agree, and immediately went to work to lick and chew it off, with remarkable success. Soon he was left with only two pieces, one under his chin, where he couldn’t reach it, and one on a hind leg.

  As Tank gnawed at the tape, Gill went through the duffel, with less reward.

  “Thought maybe he’d have some first aid in here.”

  “Your foot looks awful,” Jessie told him. “Can you walk on it?”

  The gory sock had dried and was stuck to the top of his foot, which was swollen and, as he hobbled, oozed a little fresh blood.

  “Something’s broken, and that damn trap cut the hell out of it, but we haven’t got any medical stuff, so I’ll use some of this tape to stabilize it and see,” he said, picking up the roll of duct tape Wynne had so confidently tossed down.

  “Have you got anything to wear on your feet?”

  “Yeah. Bastard took my boots, but I couldn’t get this into one of them anyway. He left those.”

  He indicated a pair of rubber boots, similar to the ones she was wearing. They looked large enough to accommodate the injured foot.

  As he used the duct tape to tightly wrap his foot and ankle, Jessie upended the duffel and went through its contents, looking for some kind of weapon.

  “There’s not much.” She sighed, frustrated. “He’s got my shotgun stashed somewhere, but here are a couple of the things we might use.” She held up a crowbar and a hand ax.

  “Take ’em. O-ouch!” Gill gingerly pulled a boot over his injured foot, swore, and bit his lip at its pressure. “They just might be useful. Take the rest of that tape, too. If we can catch him, I’m going to put it to damn good use.” He stood up and tested the foot. It held him, but he limped in pain when he put weight on it, reminding Jessie of the limp the stalker had faked.

  “You can lean on me if you need to,” Jessie told him. “I have no use for macho men, especially if they’re willing to sacrifice practicality for the sake of their holy egos.”

  Gill grinned and nodded, but was able to move out on his own.

  They left the shed and skirted the meadow, staying out of sight of the windows in the apartment above the shop. He glanced at the filthy adhesive tape and splints on her hand.

  “Are you all right? Your face looks like you’ve been through a war, and what’s wrong with your fingers?”

  “Broken in the truck wreck, then I got a dislocation I had to put back in place. The rest is dirt and bruises—nothing disabling.”

  “You relocated your own finger? Gutsy. Hurt like hell, didn’t it? I had one once.”

  “I wouldn’t like to do it again. Come on. Alex and Cas may show up here anytime. We haven’t talked since Sunday and if he can’t reach me, he’ll be here soon, if he’s not already.”

  “I had a radio, but our friend broke it when he found it on me.”

  “He smashed the radio at the beach house and my cell phone, too,” she told him. “How’d he catch you?”

  “This foot. Pitched my rifle into the brush when I fell. I couldn’t find it, and couldn’t move fast enough to avoid him. He must have heard me looking and waited—ambushed me in the upper trail.”

  Jessie noticed that, lame or not, Gill was alert and searching everything around them with his eyes. He moved smoothly despite his limp, and with no hesitation, no wasted motion, constantly aware and ready for anything.

  “Where do you think he’ll go?” she asked.

  “Don’t know, but we’d better…”

  The sound of a shot echoed from the woods beyond the bluff—then another—interrupting what he had been about to say.

  “Oh, dammit,” Jessie said. “Come on. He’s not shooting at squirrels. They must be here.”

  She hurried past the shop and took the stairs two at a time to the top of the bluff, Tank—ragged bits of tape still clinging to his muzzle and hind leg—trotting close, and Gill hobbling rapidly after her. Looking back, she realized he couldn’t quite keep up with her and waited impatiently.

  As they reached the edge of the forest, they heard a third shot.

  “Hey, slow down a bit,” Gill told her. “Those shots aren’t coming from this lower trail. Whoever’s shooting is off it, in the brush and higher up. Let’s go farther up and come down from above him—see what he’s shooting at before we make any kind of move.”

  It made sense, though it was all Jessie could do to turn away from whatever was happening west of them. She had visions of Alex caught off guard, hurt and bleeding. But Gill was not only right, she realized, he was trained in handling emergencies and knew much more about what he was doing than she did. She found that she trusted his judgment, and wondered how she had ever mistaken the stalker for him. Still, she was reluctant as she followed him up the hill. He had taken the hand ax and clutched it like a tomahawk, leaving her the crowbar, which she hung on her belt as she used both hands to move aside the brush as quietly as she could. Ahead of her, Gill slid through it with very little noise.

  Farther up the slope the brush thinned somewhat and they made better time as they moved through it. The wind had dropped, but still blew hard enough to cover the small sound of their passing.

  Gill decided they had gone far enough uphill, turned west for a ways, then started slowly back down through the trees. Motioning to Jessie for silence, he carefully led the way over the uneven ground and soon she began to hear shouting from below. The voices were still too far away to make out what was being said, but she thought she recognized Alex’s voice and that of the stalker.

  As they came along a small rise and around a patch of devil’s club leaves, Gill stopped so suddenly she almost ran into him. He turned and pulled her to her knees beside the broad stump of a downed tree.

  “He’s there,” he whispered to her, and pointed directly below them across a small clearing. “Is that your friend Jensen he’s yelling at? It’s not Caswell’s voice.”

  She nodded.

  “Stay here, okay?”

  Again she nodded, and watched as he slipped off into the trees to the right. Injured foot or not, he was very good at melting into the landscape, for in just a few seconds she lost sight of
him completely. Now, listening carefully, she could hear the words of the exchange.

  “Wynne?”

  Who was Wynne? Jessie wondered.

  Another shot was fired by the stalker.

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” he shouted. “I want you to bring him out here so I can kill him myself. Then I’ll let Jessie Arnold go—and that Green Beret of yours. If you don’t bring him, you’ll wish you had, because before this’s over I’m going to kill someone.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. Jessie leaned back against a log. It rocked slightly. She looked more closely at it and found that it had not fallen by itself—it had been cut with a saw, for the stump nearby was flat on top. The log was not the whole tree, but only a piece about ten feet long and over a foot thick.

  Millie’s son periodically culled dead trees from the forest to use for firewood. This seemed to be the evidence of such labor, left to dry, perhaps.

  She tested it again to see how heavy it was. It weighed a lot, but rocked easily, one end resting on a large stone.

  Gill slipped back to kneel next to her on the ground, having completed his reconnaissance.

  “He’s got Jensen and Caswell pinned down next to a couple of fallen logs on the lower trail,” he told her. “They can’t move.”

  “It was a deadfall,” she told him. “He made it and left it there. But look.” She rocked the log she had discovered. “Could we…?”

  “Roll that down the hill—right on top of him? Yes. Good thinking, Jessie. It’s only about thirty feet and there are no trees to stop it and hardly any brush between here and there. I was trying to think of a way to cross it without him knowing; now I won’t have to. We’ll shove it over the edge and it’ll be on him before he has a chance to get out of the way.”

  “Can we get it going fast enough?”

  “You bet. And that crowbar will come in handy.”

  Positioning themselves one on each end of the log, they coordinated their efforts—Jessie using the tool to push what she couldn’t lift, Gill throwing all his strength into shoving the log off the rock and over the edge of the slight rise.

  The thick log was resistant at first, but after the first turn, it quickly gathered speed. With thumps and thuds, it rolled, slid, and bounced its way across the clearing straight at the stalker.