by Giles Blunt
“So I run to this house, screaming and yelling for help, and bang on their door. Guy answers. Big guy, maybe fifty, fifty-five, and he’s got a gun in his hand. That should have clued me in right there.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“A girl. Girl maybe thirteen.”
“Was she with him? Was she a hostage? What was the situation?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, man. My brother was in a fucking trap, I was in total panic mode. I just wanted someone to come and help.” Burwell squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into his knees. When he looked up again, there were tears in his eyes. “She called him Papa.”
“Papa.”
“Papa. ‘You want me to go, Papa?’ But he said no. He throws on a coat and comes with me.” He collapsed once more into sobs.
Cardinal found a bottle of whisky and poured some into a glass. He handed it to the man and he drank it down in one shot. He poured him another and offered some to Delorme, but she shook her head.
The man started to calm down. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to get hysterical.”
Cardinal went to the door and opened it a crack. “The storm’s easing off a little. I’m going over there.”
“Don’t do that. I can’t go back there! You can’t make me go back there!”
“You don’t have to.” Cardinal pointed to the other tiny room. “There’s another bunk in there. You’d better lie down. You’ve had a terrible shock.”
“Oh, man. Shock is not the word. I think I’m gonna go out of my mind.”
“So go lie down.”
The man went in to the other bunks and threw himself down on the bottom one.
“John,” Delorme said in a low voice, “you can’t go alone.”
“They won’t know I’m alone—and they won’t be expecting police anyway. They won’t be expecting anyone. Not in this weather. You’ll be all right with him.”
“I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about you.”
“They have an old man hostage. I have to at least take a look.”
“John, we have to call for backup.”
“They won’t come. Look, it’s one man and a girl. And they don’t know we’re out here.”
—
Once Cardinal had closed the door, the only sounds Delorme could hear were the hiss of the lamp, the wind outside and the occasional crackle from the stove.
From where she was lying, she couldn’t see into the darkened other room. She called out, “Are you okay?”
No answer. She lay listening, the pain in her leg a deep throb. The sounds of the wind and the stove reminded her of camping trips she had taken with her parents as a little girl. The guy in the other room began to snore.
After a time she realized she was hungry and very thirsty. There would be nothing to eat in this bare-bones shack, but there were a couple of large bottles of water on a shelf near the stove. Beside them, a box of Lipton tea.
She pushed herself into a sitting position and nearly passed out from the pain. She gripped the iron frame of the bunk and waited for it to settle back into its former throb. She pushed herself to a standing position, putting all her weight on her good leg and leaning against the wall. It wasn’t much worse than sitting down.
The stove and the water were a couple of hops away. The first hop got her as far as the door frame between the two tiny rooms. She gripped the frame, sucking air through her teeth.
The man was flat on his back, his mouth open slightly. He was not that old, maybe thirty, but his features bore the bruised look of the utterly exhausted. He still had his coat on, the orange hunting vest closed over it.
Delorme took three deep breaths and made the next hop. She nearly fell, and had to grab onto a wall stud. A sliver bit into her hand.
She reached for a water bottle and got it and twisted the cap off. She poured water into a saucepan and put it on the stove. There was a tremendous crack of thunder and there must have been lightning, but through the boarded-up windows nothing of the outside world could be seen.
—
Cardinal stopped to wipe snow from his eyes. There were ice pellets mixed with it now that stung as they hit his face, but visibility had improved. He could see the hydro wire again, much farther away than he had thought. His feet were wet and cold, and he wondered how long he would have before frostbite set in.
An odd shape materialized amid the diagonals of snow, about twenty yards off. Dark grey on light grey, hanging like an ink blot among the trees.
As Cardinal approached, he saw that it was human, a man dangling upside down, his hands hanging as if in surrender toward the forest floor. One of his legs was folded down, the other was held fast by a rope that stretched upward into the higher limbs. The body swayed and turned.
Cardinal gripped his Beretta. The man’s face, inverted, was at the same height as his own. Cardinal took hold of one of the arms to stop the swaying. The eyes were open, a black, gleaming hole in the forehead.
Off to Cardinal’s right, faint depressions in the snow led in the direction of the trapper’s shack. Impossible to tell if there had been one set of tracks or two. He turned back to his original direction. There was something orange on the ground—possibly the hanging man’s safety vest. Cardinal went to it and started brushing snow away.
It wasn’t just a vest. Cardinal reached under the shoulder and turned it over. The hat fell off, and snow slid from the features. Again a bullet wound between the eyes. Cardinal found a wallet buttoned in the man’s cargo pants. Tony Burwell. The similarities to the hanging man beside him were those of a sibling: same widow’s peak, same dirty blond hair, same slightly protuberant eyes, long upturned nose, small ears. Brothers.
Cardinal reached into his parka for his cellphone. Not there. He found it in his outside pocket—not good in this weather. He hit the speed-dial for Delorme’s number. He listened to it ring five, six, eight times. The tiny screen showed strong signal, weak battery. That would be the cold; he had charged it the previous night.
“Delorme.” Her voice was all but lost in static.
“What’s your guest doing? Can you talk?”
He didn’t get much of her reply. He thought he heard the word “sleep.” Cardinal spoke as quietly as possible. “Can you get outside? Signal’s breaking.”
The phone crackled. Delorme’s fractured voice: “hear you.”
He repeated his message. “The hunters—the Burwells—are both dead. They’re both dead. Murdered. Can you hear me? Get cuffs on him if you can. I’m heading right back.”
No response except the hiss of dead air.
He put the phone in his inside pocket. Maybe his body heat would revive the battery.
Snow was jammed in the tops of his boots. He knelt to tie a lace, and as he did so, a sudden burn on his ear. He heard the crack a second later. A powerful weapon, fired from some distance. The snow had dropped for the moment, improving visibility. Cardinal ducked behind a tree that was not big enough to cover his entire body.
The shot had come from somewhere between him and the trapper’s cabin. Gusts of wind kept changing the visibility. He thought he saw a hooded figure bent low and moving. He took aim and fired. Cardinal was a good shot in a controlled environment, but he had no confidence in his talents under these conditions. What are you going to do now? he asked himself. What’s your next brilliant plan?
He scanned the trees. Nothing moving but snow and sleet. A stump and a fallen tree about ten yards up the trail. If he could get past that, he might have enough cover to get back to Delorme. Keeping low, he moved back slowly, keeping the tree between him and where he thought the shooter was positioned. When he was close enough, he jumped across an open space and landed hard behind the stump.
Another round whizzed by. The crack of the shot. Closer. Making a run for the cabin—left or right made no difference—would put him in plain view.
38
NIKKI BRUSHED AT HER HAIR, patted it down with her left hand, and brus
hed at it again. She attacked first one side, then the other, then the back. Brush, brush, brush, it made no difference. No matter what she did, it stuck out from her head in wiry tufts. The only time it looked good was when it was soaking wet, and even then it was only a matter of minutes before it started to frizz out.
“Bozo,” she said to the mirror. The last time she had been called Bozo, she had nearly throttled the girl, a total skank named Charlene two cells down from her in juvie. But she said it to herself all the time. She’d had a laptop for a while—stolen, of course, but it still hurt when it got stolen in turn from her—on which there was a program where you could change your hair, your makeup, your clothes. She wished she could really do that—replace her nose, her cheekbones, her piggy eyes, and most of all this hideous hair.
Nikki curled up on the bed and held Lemur’s iPod. Turned out he had liked a lot of the same songs as her. She wasn’t listening to it right now because she’d forgotten to charge it, but she held it anyway.
The family was coming apart. Lemur dead, and now Papa and Jack had had another fight. Even worse, this time. Jack must have thought Papa was out hunting, because he came on to her at exactly the wrong moment. She had stepped out of the shower, dried off and—wearing her bathrobe—gone straight to her room. Jack was in there with the door shut behind them in a split second. Pulled the bathrobe off, big hands squeezing her tits then shoving her onto the bed.
The funny thing was, she’d been fucked so many times that if Jack had only asked her, she’d probably have fucked him too, just to keep the peace. Or at least she would have before Papa began to get to her about self-respect. But Jack wasn’t asking and she fought and it was noisy and Papa burst in.
Usually when people fight, it lasts about thirty seconds. A couple of wild punches, a kick in the balls, and it’s over. But this went on and on. She thought Jack would win, since he was younger than Papa, and crazier. He picked up the entire coffee table and swung it at him, Papa stepping back cool as you please—then stepping forward and shoving Jack headfirst into the wall. Jack came back at him with a knife that caught Papa in the forearm a good one. Blood everywhere. Papa took it away from him, but when Jack snatched up the poker, she thought Papa was as good as dead.
Papa took the poker from him too. He could have killed Jack then; he had the opportunity. All it would have taken was a crack on the head with that length of iron, but he didn’t seem to want to—it was like he was being held back. He grabbed Jack from behind—by the nuts must have been, judging by the way the fight went out of him—and threw him to the side door. Opened it, shoved him out with his boot and tossed his coat out after him.
There was a knock at the bedroom door, and Nikki said to come in. Papa never came in without knocking. He entered and sat beside her on the bed and put a hand on her shoulder, as if she was the one needed comforting. He was wearing a clean shirt, well ironed—he was fanatical about ironing his shirts—and you’d never have known he’d been in a brawl and got his arm slashed.
Nikki asked how the arm was doing.
“It’s fine. It’s nothing. How are you doing?”
Nikki shrugged.
“Thank you for standing by me,” Papa said. “For helping me.”
Nikki didn’t know what he was talking about. Sometimes Papa saw things totally backwards. “I didn’t do anything,” she said.
“Nikki, Nikki, what am I going to do with you?” He squeezed her shoulder. “Always putting yourself down. Minute Jack was out the door, you were right there for me. Whisky in one hand, clean towel in the other. You were my battlefield medic. I could not be more grateful.”
“If I’d been thinking, I’d have got the hunting rifle and put one in his head.”
“Jack’s your brother. No one wants that.”
“Was my brother.”
“Oh, don’t be surprised if Jack comes slinking back. I’ve seen it happen before, and he’s not going far in this storm. When he does come back, he’ll need forgiveness, and you know what? He’ll get it.”
He handed her the box of Kleenex and she blew her nose and tried to get hold of her feelings.
“Sit up, now. There’s no call for a posture of defeat.” He gripped her biceps and hauled her into a seated position beside him. He draped a comradely arm over her shoulders. They were facing the dresser mirror. “You’re looking so pretty today. Did you do something to your hair?”
She pressed at the frizz. “My crazy hair.”
“Crazy beautiful. That hair’s got spirit, kid, same as you.”
She met his gaze in the mirror and smiled.
“You don’t know how proud I am,” he said, “how grateful I am, that you’ve shared your beauty and your spirit with me. I know I don’t deserve it.”
“But you do everything. You look after everyone.”
“Not so well sometimes, the way it seems lately.”
“Jack’s just psycho. He’s not your fault.”
“I was hoping to be a better influence.”
“You are, Papa. You are. Like you say, he’ll probably come back.”
“You think so?”
She nodded.
“You’re a fine individual, Nikki the Kid. You truly are, and you make me one proud Papa.”
Nikki’s heart was full and she wanted to give him something. Sex was the only thing she had of any value, and she would have really liked to show him what she could do in that regard. But Papa didn’t want sex from her.
“I need you to do something, Nikki.”
“Sure. Anything.”
“We talked about it before. It’s something for the family. It was going to be Lemur’s job, but Lemur’s no longer with us.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s a hard thing and it’s crucial and it just absolutely has to be done. And to be honest, Nikki …” He looked at her, those honest blue eyes creased with worry. “To be honest, I’m not a hundred percent sure you’re ready.”
—
Delorme tried her phone again. She got crackle and fizz and nothing else. Cardinal had been trying to tell her something. Something he didn’t want the man sleeping in the other room to hear. Go outside, he had said.
She got up on her good foot again and steadied herself against the wall, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn’t, but she moved anyway, taking a quiet hop into the other room.
The man had turned on his right side. His mouth was open, but he had stopped snoring. In his left hand, an automatic. Well, you could have an automatic with you in case you wounded an animal and had to finish it off, Delorme told herself. Not exactly a sporting weapon, but possible. Balancing herself against the door frame, she took a short hop forward, noisier than she wanted.
The man stirred but did not wake.
Another hop. Delorme nearly fell, and touched the end of the bunk with her fingertips to keep her balance. She held her breath. The man didn’t stir. She bent forward, fingers still on the end of the bunk, to try to see the make of the gun. It looked almost identical to the one at the ATM scene, but she had to squint to be sure of the manufacturer’s imprint: Browning Hi-Power.
The man’s eyes opened. “You got a problem?”
“I was just trying to see if you were awake. You want some tea?”
“Thought you had a broken leg.”
“I’m thirsty. I’m going to make some tea.”
“You look like you’re in pain. Maybe you should lie down.”
“I’m all right.”
“Plenty of room right here.” He tapped the bunk with the gun.
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on. See if we can make that leg feel better.”
“You want some tea or not?”
“Tea. Sure. Why the fuck not? Where’d your partner go?”
“He went looking for the house,” Delorme said, and regretted it right away. Wished she’d said something that meant he’d be back in one minute.
“If he finds it, he’s gonna wish he had an
army with him.”
Delorme turned and took a hop toward the door.
Behind her, a creak, and the sound of the man’s feet hitting the floor.
She hopped as hard as she could and that got her into the other room, but the man’s full weight hit her and slammed her to the floor, the pain forcing a scream out of her.
He pulled back hard on her hair. “Hold still.”
Delorme twisted onto her back and brought her good leg up and around his face. She forced him back and he let go of her hair, but as he fell he yanked at her broken leg and she shrieked in agony.
When Delorme regained consciousness, he had her belt buckle undone and was trying to slide her pants down. He had put the gun aside on the floor. Delorme reached for it, but he got to it first and clouted her in the temple.
She hit him a hard backhand, her knuckles catching him in the eye.
He swung again with the pistol, but the floor took most of it. Delorme got hold of the barrel and twisted and the man let go. The gun flew out of her grasp and hit the floor somewhere behind her head. The man lunged for it, his face so close she could smell his breath. She pulled him closer and bit his cheek. The sudden heat of his blood on her face.
The man roared and clutched his cheek, blood spilling through his fingers. Delorme reached back for the gun and the man grabbed her throat and punched her face. His knuckles slid on blood.
Delorme grabbed his waist and felt the knife handle. The man lunged for the gun and she undid the snap and got the knife out. He reared back with the gun in her face and she brought the knife up and jammed the blade just under his arm.
He screamed and dropped the gun and fell sideways to the floor. When he reached for the gun again, Delorme twisted and brought the knife down hard on the side of his head. The bone gave way and she could feel the blade lodge in his temple.
She held on to it and felt the force drain out of him. It was as if he were becoming smaller under her hand. He lay there, half curled, still breathing, staring at some fixed point through and beyond Delorme. Blood flowed from his face wound into his eye, but the eye didn’t blink. Delorme kept her grip on the knife until he stopped breathing, and for a while after.
