Winter at the Door

by Sarah Graves

  The guy’s face stayed emotionless. He looked down at the fire, its faint popping and crackling the only sounds in the forest darkness, its flickering in the low evergreen branches overspreading the clearing like some ancient dance, full of strange light and shadow.

  You see it and die, Spud thought very clearly as a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold night air went through him.

  “I’ve been thinking about you.” The guy changed the subject. “Who you are, what motivates you.”

  Great, Spud thought dismally. Life lessons from some whacko with a Daniel Boone complex. But the guy’s voice was low, sort of hypnotic in a weird way, and Spud was tired.

  “Yeah?” he muttered. Tired and scared, though the Jell-O-legged terror had gone. A passive, frozen-in-place kind of fright had replaced it deep in his bones like some icy infection.

  The guy regarded him. “Yeah,” he said at last. “And what I think is, you’re smarter than I thought.”

  Well, duh, Spud thought. But silently. The guy went on:

  “In fact, now that I know you better, I think maybe you’ve got a few dirty little secrets of your own, hmm?” The guy peered intently at him.

  No. No, Spud thought, and then, How could he know? It was a part of his life that he kept locked up, buried safely away. No one knows, so how could—

  “Also,” the guy went on smoothly, “I think you work best when you understand why you’re doing things. Besides knowing I’ll gut you like a fish if you don’t do them, I mean.”

  A small smile twitched his lips briefly. Then: “So here’s the deal. I’m just a person like anyone else.”

  Uh-huh. Spud kept the skepticism off his face.

  “That’s my woman.” The guy gestured at the second hammock, while Spud noticed: Not “my wife,” or “my girlfriend.”

  “My woman,” like he owns her or something.

  “When I found her, the kid was with her. So now I take care of both of them. And that’s all I want, to be left alone, live my life the way I please. That’s my right as a man and a citizen, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Clear, simple … My right as a man.

  “Yeah,” Spud said again, but less sullenly this time because who could argue with that?

  “Right now, I want to move out of here. It’s getting cold, the food is starting to freeze … maybe to a place in town for the winter, somewhere with heat.”

  Also perfectly understandable. The frozen fear in Spud’s own veins melted a little, so it no longer felt as if his heart were pumping ice chips with each pounding beat.

  Still crouched easily on his haunches—Spud got the feeling the guy could’ve stayed that way for hours—his captor added:

  “But I can’t, because the woman you’ve been watching wants the kid.”

  The kid in the hammock, he meant. Spud felt his face wrinkle into a puzzled grimace. “What? Come on, why would she …?”

  At the same time, he got a strong, strange feeling that the woman in her own hammock was listening to all this; that her stillness at the edge of the firelit clearing wasn’t of sleep.

  As if to prove it, at the guy’s last words about the little girl, the woman sat up and turned anxiously.

  That was when Spud got his first real look at her face, and at the thick, purple scar that ran from the corner of her mouth all the way to where her hair covered her ear.

  That’s why she stays with him, Spud thought clearly.

  The guy didn’t notice, or didn’t seem to. “No one is allowed to mess with them. But the cop wants to. And that can’t be. See?”

  He got to his feet, reminding Spud of a snake uncoiling itself. “It’s as simple,” he added, “as that.”

  “But h-how?” Spud managed, clambering up himself on legs that were suddenly shaky with fright again. “How d’you know it’s what she wants?”

  The guy gazed flatly at him. “The dark-haired guy she hangs out with, that state cop? He’s been around here before, asking a lot of questions about a missing kid. A little blond kid. I heard he’s even got a picture.”

  “So? That doesn’t mean—”

  “And now all of a sudden she’s here, and they’re tight as ticks, those two. They even came up-country looking for the kid.”

  Up-country; it was what people around here called the woods far beyond the towns. Like here, for instance.

  “So what would you think?” the guy went on. “Coincidence? Or would you figure maybe now they’re both in on it? Trying,” he added, his tone turning icy, “to take what’s mine, just like—”

  “Yeah,” Spud agreed hurriedly. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Never mind whether it was true. Agreeing with the guy was his best chance at getting out of here. “But … why don’t you just leave, then? Go far away? I mean, you’ve got the van and—”

  “I’m a businessman, that’s why,” the guy snapped back. “And I’m not giving up on my business just because—”

  Business? Spud thought. In what, sticks and pinecones? But then it occurred to him what else might be in the lean-tos.

  “Anyway, never mind,” the guy said. “I’ve got enough on my plate right now, things are happening and I’ve got to stay on top of them. So all I want from you is to do what I say, when I say it. And now you know why. Have you got that?”

  “Y-yes.” Biting his lip, Spud averted his gaze, then saw, with eyes now adjusted to the dark, that there was another of the low structures just beyond the clearing’s edge.

  Another lean-to, one with more shelves in it, and on the shelves were small bundles rolled up in … what was that, plastic wrap?

  The guy’s hand gripped his shoulder, viselike. “Curiosity killed the cat, buddy. Don’t forget that.”

  Spud jumped startledly. “I-I won’t. Really, I—”

  The guy spun him around, seized both his shoulders, and held him for a moment, long enough for Spud to see what the guy wore on a leather thong around his neck, small and shriveled and fixed to the leather by a thin silvery wire.

  “That’s good,” he said, releasing Spud and at the same time giving him a little shove—

  Not hard, just enough to make Spud shuffle clumsily and step unseeing nearly into the campfire while he tried not to vomit.

  “I’m very glad you understand,” said the guy, catching Spud before he could stumble into the flames. “Because I’ve got a big assignment for you. And it would be a shame if you messed it up.”

  His grip was still strong, his voice still smooth, almost friendly—almost!—and that thing …

  “Your friends in town need a distraction, something else to think about.”

  Spud closed his eyes, but he couldn’t stop seeing it.

  “So here’s what you’re going to do …”

  That thing—

  The thing on the guy’s necklace was a human thumb.

  SEVEN

  The screech of the brakes and the blare of the car horn outside her office the next morning were bad enough, but the silence that came after the thump was horrifying.

  “Dylan, what are you doing here? I mean, still here?” she’d just that moment asked, and he’d smiled wisely at her but hadn’t replied, hunched over his coffee.

  Moments later they were charging out the front door of her office. “I mean seriously,” she persisted as she ran, noting with surprise that he was not only keeping up, he was ahead of her.

  It was just one day after he’d been shot, helicoptered out of the wilderness site, and patched up in surgery. After that, the rock through her front window had ended any hope of a night’s sleep for either of them.

  Not only that but Trey Washburn’s truck had been passing by her house just as she and Dylan came out of it. On the dead-end street, it couldn’t have been an accident; he’d been stopping by to see her, no doubt, and had seen something else instead.

  A quick wave, a tight smile, and the veterinarian was gone, almost certainly drawing absolutely the wrong conclusion—

  And now here Dylan
was, sprinting along as if he hadn’t had a hole blown through him less than twenty-four hours earlier; it was infuriating sometimes, this wiry resilience of his.

  “Over there.” He pointed at a white sedan with its hazard lights on, stopped in the middle of the street with its driver’s-side door open and people gathering around it.

  “I’m doing what you’re doing.” He answered her original question as they reached the scene, civilians crowding around it.

  “Okay. Step back. Coming through.” She took control, amazed as always by the wonders an authoritative tone could work.

  And by the fact that once she’d learned it, she was pretty much golden in the telling-’em-what-to-do department. “What?”

  The victim lying in the street was Old Dan from the nursing home, and this time it seemed he’d driven his motorized chair right out in front of a car. She assessed him swiftly while Dylan started directing traffic one-armed, his only concession to his wound that Lizzie had seen all morning.

  “I’m looking around,” Dylan went on, coaxing a timid Jeep from behind the stopped sedan, then urging an old station wagon in the other direction. “Okay, keep moving,” he called, waving at the next car in line.

  “That’s not—” she began, and then Old Dan seized her hand.

  “My son,” he whispered, “is king of the forest.”

  “Right, Dan,” she responded reassuringly. “I know. Listen, we need to get you—”

  The standard phrases came out automatically, and Old Dan seemed okay, though his motor chair looked totaled. The driver of the car that had hit him seemed in worse shape:

  “Oh my God,” he kept saying. “Oh my—”

  But he’d be okay. Meanwhile the question that had woken Lizzie before dawn: What was Dylan still doing here, anyway?

  He wasn’t on vacation, the shooting at the lake wasn’t his case, and there was no case—at least, not yet—concerning the dead ex-cops Chevrier was so concerned about, so that wasn’t it, either.

  Yet he was still hanging around in Bearkill, and the only other explanation she could think of was …

  He glanced at her, meanwhile expertly choreographing the flow of traffic around the accident site. “Lizzie, I know what you’re thinking.”

  She felt a flush climb her neck; of course he did. And it was yet another infuriating thing about him. Infuriating and—

  “But it’s not you, okay?” The Bearkill squad car arrived; gratefully, she got to her feet, but not before Old Dan grabbed her hand once more.

  “He tells me,” the elderly man said, bright-eyed. “He tells me about … his packages!”

  “Okay, Dan,” said the local cop. Behind him two EMTs with a neck brace and a stretcher pushed in impatiently. Straightening, she left it all to the cops whose job it was.

  “I’m here in Bearkill talking to folks,” Dylan said as she hurried to catch up. “Getting impressions, asking questions. You know,” he added as they headed to her office again.

  “You mean you’re …” Did he mean he was working a case? Exasperation flooded her, that he hadn’t told her about it, and—admit it—the tiniest pang of disappointment, too.

  He shrugged, winced as his wounded arm reminded him not to.

  “Maybe. There’s a thing. I’m not sure if it means anything or not.”

  They walked in together. Spud hadn’t come in yet this morning, too embarrassed maybe by his performance the previous night.

  “See, there were a couple of girls down in Bangor. They went out partying and never came back. Bodies found soon after. One last spring and another one about a month ago.”

  She pushed open the office door; still no Spud. “Dylan, you really think somebody from here might’ve …”

  Inside, Rascal lay chewing his brontosaurus femur. Dylan shook his head. “Don’t know. One of the dead girls had mentioned to one of her friends that she’d met someone from the County.”

  Which was what people here called Aroostook County, as if there could be no other.

  “And that’s all we’ve got,” said Dylan. “Can’t say I’m getting anywhere with it here, either.”

  He sank into her office chair and she let him, still too wired up by seeing Old Dan nearly pulverized to relax. And there was something else still bothering her, too.

  “Listen, sorry about your case. But closer to home … I think maybe our shooter yesterday blew away the wrong hunter.”

  He looked up interestedly. “Yeah, you know, that bugged me, too. The boots, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.” She’d described what she’d seen to him, as thoroughly as possible. “So try this on. First guy, the lost hunter, sees something he shouldn’t out there in the woods. And once he gets back, his time at the camp is up and he’s supposed to go home. So … he does?”

  “And then a new hunting client shows up,” Dylan supplied.

  “Right, but the shooter doesn’t know that. He thinks he’s killing the guy who saw … whatever he saw.”

  “A little girl,” Dylan agreed. “That’s what Nussbaum said his client had seen. So basically the shooter kills the second hunter instead of the first one by mistake?”

  “Uh-huh. Unless …” She went on to the other thing that was still bothering her.

  The scary thing. “Dylan, what if it was no mistake? Like we said last night, what if whoever it was knew somehow that we were coming?”

  He frowned puzzledly; she went on. “I mean, what if the first guy left and our shooter did realize it?”

  Then he got it, his dark eyes narrowing. “So when we get there, the shooter’s waiting. Maybe he heard radio traffic and that’s how he knew when to expect us. We get close, he attacks us, then kills the new hunting client and Nussbaum, too—”

  He stopped. “But why? He’s got to know shooting cops is a good way to bring the hammer down.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But what if no one found out? Way out there in the woods … Dylan, if he’d gotten both of us, we might not have been found for a long time.”

  In the city it would be nearly impossible. But here where the trees outnumbered people …

  “He gets my keys, he weighs down our bodies in the lake, he puts the kayaks back where they were and hides my vehicle. Maybe the other bodies, too. Presto, we’ve vanished without a trace.”

  And just like that, anyone who’d seen a child or heard the story of one would be …

  “One problem,” Dylan objected. “The original hunter. The cops looking for us would track him down and—”

  From Nussbaum’s records, he meant; surely he kept some. But: “So what? He can’t lead them back to where he was when he saw that camp or whatever it was. He was lost, remember?”

  She shook her head decisively. “And he doesn’t know anything about us at all. Case,” she finished, “closed.”

  Dylan looked thoughtful. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe.” He pulled his phone out and punched numbers into it.

  “Toby?” he said. “Yeah, it’s Hudson. Listen, the hunter who was at Nussbaum’s before yesterday’s shooting? I need to talk to him. You got names and numbers from a … What did Nussbaum have, a guest book, maybe? Yeah? You got that handy?”

  He waited, pulling out a pad and scribbling on it. “Newton. Andrew Newton … Yeah, thanks,” he said, then punched in another number and asked for Nussbaum’s previous hunting client.

  The one who hadn’t been shot, who’d left before … But then a frown creased his forehead. “Really. I’m so sorry. It happened when? I see.”

  He glanced up at Lizzie, shook his head minutely, scowled at the phone again. “I’m sorry to hear that. My sympathies. Sorry to trouble you.”

  “What happened?” she demanded when he hung up.

  He grimaced. “Well, our guy has apparently gone from being the luckiest hunter on the planet to the unluckiest.”

  He tucked the phone away. “Seems he flew out of Bangor to Teterboro, took a cab home, and got hit by a car outside of his apartment late last night, in Manhattan. Hit-and-run. The cops ar
e looking but there were no witnesses.”

  She couldn’t speak. Finally: “So she’s out there. Nicki’s out there in the woods, Dylan, he saw her and …”

  Searchers, she thought. The warden service can help. Dogs, Border Patrol officers. We’ll put posters up at the deer-tagging stations—

  And she’d go out there. Had to. “Get Chevrier on the phone, will you?” she snapped. “Tell him I’m closing up this office for a little while, I’ve got to—”

  Nicki. Her throat closed convulsively. Honey, I’m coming, I’ll make it up to you, I swear I will.

  But Dylan didn’t obey, instead seizing her shoulders to gaze down into her face. “Lizzie, it’s not that easy.”

  She shoved him away. “Easy? What do I care? You think it’s been easy for her, all these years in who knows what kind of a mess?”

  She rummaged in her bag. Weapon, ammunition, phone. All fine, but not enough. Before she left, she’d have to find out what else a person needed for a long trip into the—

  “Lizzie.” Dylan grabbed her again, this time wrapping his arms tightly around her so she couldn’t free herself.

  “Listen to me, dammit. You—we—can’t just go charging out there. We still don’t know where she is, or even if it’s her for certain. And we don’t know who has her.”

  Imprisoned in his embrace, fists clenched against his chest, she gasped for breath, so full of emotion and urgency that there seemed no room for air. “Let … me … go. I’ve got to—”

  “Yes. You do. But not like this. You could get her killed, Lizzie, don’t you see that? You saw Nussbaum and the guy with him, and now the other hunter’s dead, too, just like we’d be if that weapon he was using had any kind of accuracy at distance.”

  He held her more tightly. “What do you think, that was just a convenient accident, that hit-and-run, some kind of coincidence?”

  She stopped struggling. “No.” Of course it wasn’t, that was why she had to …“No, I—”

  He relaxed his arms. But he kept them around her, and to step away from him now seemed … well, it was too much to ask of herself, that was all. Just too much.