by Noel Hynd
“I don't suppose,” Hamburger said, “you could tell me what you're looking for.” The beer bottle was perfectly balanced in a side pocket of a leather state police jacket. The air temperature in the craft was under twenty Fahrenheit.
“If I knew exactly, I'd tell you,” O'Hara said. “I'm after those abandoned cabins. Those structures that were put up back in the WPA years.”
“You mean if the bears haven't knocked them down yet.”
“That's close to it,” O'Hara said. “It would help if I found one with a blue jeep parked nearby.”
“It would also help,” the pilot said, “if we weren't fighting a down draft.”
The craft shuddered as if it might go down to stay. Helicopters always spooked O'Hara since Vietnam was always his point of reference. Nothing good ever happened with choppers.
As Hamburger worked the gears, O'Hara worked with a pair of binoculars, visually searching passes between trees for any sort of structure. The glen was thick with trees in this area, so thick that even the snowy ground was dark. Sometimes the thaw here didn't come till late April.
“We've got about an hour of safe flying time,” Hamburger said. “After that we risk going into a stall due to a rotor freeze. In a stall-”
“Yeah. I know. We go straight down.”
“Those trees are a lot harder when you hit them than they look from here.”
“I get your point. And I'll take your word for it.”
They flew back to the main state highway which O'Hara had turned off several nights earlier, the night the man-the suspect-in the blue jeep had stopped when the Pontiac had been stuck.
O'Hara found the road that cut through the glen, the road that had brought death to Stacey Dissette. “See that route right there,” O'Hara asked, indicating the road to the pilot.
“Got it.”
“Follow it slowly until it hits Route 31,” O'Hara asked. “You do the flying, I'll do the looking.”
“That'll take about the full hour if you want it slow enough to do a thorough search,” Hamburger said. O'Hara glanced at him. There was a picture of a blonde woman in a bikini bottom pasted to his dashboard controls. Wishful thinking on a day flying through glacial air? Or a souvenir from a vacation?
“Use the full hour,” O'Hara answered.
“You got it, Detective,” the pilot answered. Crawling slowly through the low sky allowed Hamburger to put down his beer with ease. He didn't even share with the woman on his controls.
O'Hara had a much less enjoyable trip. He searched the snowy glen scrupulously with his binoculars. He came away with nothing. He found two structures standing that looked like they could have been habitable, but when the chopper came in low on them, they were clearly wrecks.
Nor could he find any tire tracks or anything to support his nascent theory that Gary's former partner, the killer of several women, lurked somewhere in these woods.
When the hour was up, O'Hara folded his glasses into a case. They flew back to Concord and set down. Hamburger, even in cold, strong gusts of wind, had a velvet touch at setting down his craft.
Then O'Hara drove back to Nashua to find more bad news waiting for him. A thorough search had been entered for the license plate on the blue jeep. New Hampshire WY-643T. The license plate was nonexistent as well. No such number had ever been issued.
Another damned ghost? O'Hara thought back. He was sure he had seen footprints. He was sure this man was real. But he had little more than his instinct to help him pursue.
*
O'Hara sat in the living room of his home that evening. Outside the night was still. He held a tumbler of Scotch in his hand and stared pensively across the room.
From a distance of ten feet away, Gary sat at the piano. O'Hara had made peace with his guest. So the ghost played softly, his hand drifting across the keys with the lightness of a leaf in a summer breeze.
You won't find Sandor's home from the air, Gary said, playing some Chopin. It's not visible from the air.
“But it's out there?”
It's out there.
O'Hara pondered the point. “How do I get there?” he asked.
Gary played a soft musical elegy to the women he had helped murder.
Maybe never.
“Don't mess with me, Gary!”
Gary's eyes came up. You want to go?
“Of course I want to go.”
Gary shifted from Chopin to Stephen Foster to Mozart then to Scott Joplin. O'Hara found himself thinking: Death must be an interesting place. So many magnificent people are dead. He wondered if Gary could communicate with all those composers. Then O'Hara found himself analyzing his own thoughts. Was he preparing to die by thinking this way?
O'Hara mused further to himself: Yes, Captain Mallinson. The job will kill you or render you insane. And in my case, it will do both.
Gary took a Beethoven sonata and dissected it, making it discordant, perverting the melody. Even with a piano, Gary enjoyed an occasional kill.
When you visit Sandor, Frankie . . . will you be shocked at what you find?
“After this many years, nothing will shock me.”
You'd be surprised.
“I won't be.”
Will you go now?
O'Hara looked at the clock. Not just midnight. A frozen, icy midnight. Twelve degrees and holding steady. Steady as the iceberg that sank the Titanic. “Go now? Why now?”
Gary tinkled the alto notes. Sandor is getting ready to depart this state, Gary said. Packing his bags, he is. Gary's blue eyes came up. Saw your stupid helicopter, Frankie. Not very smart. Got some money from the people who paid him. Got some money to get out of the state. You 're a fool, Frankie. He knows you 're after him.
“Sheesh, Gary-” O'Hara put down his drink.
Chicken.
“Look, I'll go,” O'Hara said. “But how do I . . .?”
Drive, Gary said firmly. The ghost lifted his hands from the piano. The music continued. Follow your instinct. And my friends will follow you there.
“Your friends?”
You've spent an adult lifetime looking at these forests. You know exactly who I mean.
O'Hara shuddered. He did know exactly who. He stood and gathered his coat, which he had left draped over the sofa.
“And you were never innocent, Gary,” O'Hara said. “I've labored over this in my mind for years. Back when it happened and now, recently, when you got into my head. You were made to pay the penalty for two men. But you were never innocent.”
Gary grinning: the glowing blue eyes. The million-kilowatt smile. The original dirtball Adonis who could charm the bark off a tree, even in death.
Yeah, I lied, Frankie, my man. But I sure got your attention.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From the start, it was an act of insanity.
O'Hara holstered his weapon, pulled on his coat, and walked from his house. The Pontiac sat in his driveway. The car door was frozen, and O'Hara needed to bang it hard with his fist to force the lock to give.
Then it opened. He climbed in. The engine turned over. He sat for a moment, letting the engine idle and allowing the car to warm up. The night was as black as a grave. The cold would have done the Yukon proud.
O'Hara closed his eyes as the car's engine rumbled.
Tired, man? Gary speaking. From somewhere in the night.
“Yeah. I'm real tired.”
I'm tired, too, man. I want to rest.
O'Hara drew a breath. The car was warming. He opened his eyes but didn't see Gary directly, but he had an image of Gary that was as big and as dark as the night. O'Hara closed his eyes again, but the image pursued him.
Hesitating, aren't you?
“No.”
You're the homicide man. Big shot death dick. Gary's laughter. A pause. He killed Carolyn, too, you know.
“What?”
Sandor killed your lady. She was my sister, man. Came looking for Sandor. Wanted to turn him in to the police. Want to see?
Gary
forced a vision upon O'Hara. O'Hara averted his head, twisting it around in the car like a man trying to escape a nightmare. But a man can escape from a bad dream. There was no escape from this.
Before him in his mind was an isolated cabin in the glen. He saw Carolyn. She looked much healthier here. More alive. More color in her face and body. Then he saw Sandor Clay pushing Carolyn to the floor. Clay held a sword above her. Carolyn was screaming, pleading for her life.
Just like Karen Stoner.
Just like Abigail Negri.
Just like. . . . How many others?
Clay raised a sword above his head and. . . .
O'Hara bolted forward in the front seat of the car, a scream of horror in his throat and ears. He gunned the engine and hit the accelerator.
That's it, man. Tonight. You have to do this tonight. Bizarre: Gary's voice had merged into O'Hara's own.
O'Hara drove through the frozen night until he hit the highway that led to Devil's Glen. Then he turned onto the bad road that led through the narrow valley. He took the Pontiac too quickly up hills and much too fast down the other side of the same hills.
The car tenaciously held the road. For a while. Then, suddenly, he was in the place where he'd met Clay in the pickup. O'Hara's instinct took hold, something he had developed from being out in the snow too long.
Here, man.
He hit his brake. The car fishtailed to a stop. The next thing O'Hara knew he was outside the Pontiac, and gazing into the forest.
Was that woodsmoke from a fireplace that he smelled?
Could that pinpoint of flickering light among the trees be the cabin he was looking for?
Again O'Hara followed his intuition, wondering if he had finally lost his mind. And for some reason as he entered the woods, O'Hara was able to walk on top of the hard snow without sinking into it.
He walked among the trees and into the darkness. And as he moved, as he passed the frozen wintery trunks of the trees, he realized that he was not alone.
He was with a small army. The forest ghosts came up out of the Earth and were all around him, accompanying him out into a mini-wilderness, following a path which O'Hara knew he could never find again.
Dozens of these dark figures. Then hundreds, all moving in his direction, acting as his escort. He wondered if Gary was somewhere among them. Not that it mattered any more.
He lost track of time. A feeling of exhilaration gripped him. He passed through a clearing. No trees, but the forest ghosts continued to escort him. Then more woods.
The next thing he knew, he was standing before a small cabin in the middle of nowhere. The structure was dark and looked as if it were abandoned.
But something told him again to follow his instincts.
Instincts? Or was it another act of insanity that followed? He pounded at the door. The cabin door opened. A man came into view, silhouetted by electric lights from within.
“Yes?” the man asked.
“Sandor Clay?”
“Yes?”
“The 'S. Clay',” O'Hara muttered.
The man was blondish and good-looking, much the same as Gary, but without the white trash harshness. O'Hara stared at him. Yes, indeed, it was the same man as the other night. The man in the blue jeep who had stopped on the road through the glen.
“Do you have a problem?” the man asked. A solicitous voice. Charming in its way. Like Gary.
“Yes.” O'Hara answered. “Can I come in?”
Clay didn't say anything. O'Hara stepped into the cabin. Clay stepped back, understanding nothing. But O'Hara did see a flash of recognition in his eyes, a flash that told him that Clay now recalled him from their previous meeting.
Clay stared at the intruder. “Are you sick? Are you injured?” Clay asked. “I don't understand what's going on.”
But O'Hara's attention was on the floor of the cabin. He saw boards that were not as old as others. Clay didn't seem pleased.
Gary speaking from somewhere. Or again, was it O'Hara's own intuition? The two were almost inseparable now. That's where he buried her, Gary said. She's down there. Want to see?
O'Hara felt his rage building.
“Look. You can't just come charging in here,” Clay protested. “I think I know you from the other night. You're a policeman? You should know that-”
O'Hara's gaze came up to meet the eyes of Clay. “Shut up,” he said. “Where is she? Where did you bury her?”
“What in God's name are you talking about?”
“You and Gary. Used to kill people. What was the connection in Concord? And what about Gary's sister? You did it to her, too, didn't you? You-”
“You're crazy! You're absolutely insane.”
O'Hara stared at the floor. “She's down there, isn't she?”
Clay turned. He took two steps. O'Hara's eyes widened when he saw that Clay was going to a shotgun that stood by a door frame.
“Mr. Clay?”
Clay wouldn't stop.
“Mr. Clay! “
The man's hands reached for the weapon. He picked it up and turned. O'Hara's hand was busy, too, lunging under his parka, groping for a weapon that he hadn't fired in years outside of the range . . . except in his own home.
“Clay! Stop! “
Clay raised the shotgun to protect himself. “You're a psycho!” Clay said. But as he raised the shotgun he saw that O'Hara already had his thirty-eight up and ready.
Gary intruded again: A mental image of Gary standing be-
hind Clay. Gary giving O'Hara a final vision of Carolyn, kneeling before Clay and begging for her life and Clay raising a sword over his head and. . . .
O'Hara squeezed the trigger. The weapon erupted with a single blast.
From a range of six feet, O'Hara's mark was perfect. The bullet smashed into the center of Clay's face, and O'Hara then had another image, one that would last forever . . . that of Clay's face exploding in red pulp as the force of the single shot threw him backwards against the wall of the cabin.
The body tumbled violently and hit a table as it hurtled toward the floor. Clay fell facedown and was dead before the sound of the shot that had killed him stopped echoing in O'Hara's ears.
O'Hara had no idea how long he stood there, but it seemed like several minutes. Then, with a gloved hand, he turned the heat off in the house. He touched nothing else. He holstered his own weapon and walked out into the night, leaving the door open.
Snow was falling. Gently this time. He knew his boot tracks would be covered by morning.
He walked into the forest and had no idea where he was. But the forest ghosts appeared again. Black figures among the trees. He followed them. He didn't know how far he walked, but eventually they brought him to a clearing.
He looked around, still lost. Somewhere in the night, he heard a whistle. He looked straight ahead. A joyful Gary was with one of those forest creatures, beckoning him ahead. O'Hara figured he would freeze to death if he stopped.
So he trudged forward. Minutes later, he bumped up against something large and cold. His car. The contours came into focus. He climbed in and started the engine, leaning back in his seat.
How could he ever drive home? How could he ever find his way out of this place? He felt a deep tumbling sensation coming up out of the horror of this night.
He closed his eyes and leaned back.
And, as blackness came in on him, he was aware of himself thinking, if this was freezing to death . . . if this was dying of carbon monoxide poisoning . . . man, it certainly was easy!
It wasn't very difficult at all.
Same as murder. A cinch.
His eyes flicked. Gary emerged from the night and was near him. O'Hara was so cold, so tired and so exhausted that he couldn't move.
Gary laughed. Then Gary smiled.
Ledbetter stood outside the car. He leaned downward and his physical being passed through the door. He kissed the detective on the forehead.
Thank you, man.
O'Hara wanted to answer, but hi
s throat wouldn't work. Instead, he closed his eyes and the blackness came over him like a mortician's blanket.
The rapping came sharply. A hard set of knuckles on metal.
“Detective? Detective?”
O'Hara's eyes flickered and came open. He was still in the Pontiac. The harsh sunlight of a bright morning poured through the windshield.
The voice came again.
“Frank! Hey, Frank! Lord! You okay?”
Consciousness came across O'Hara. He felt as if a shroud was being lifted. He was aware that he was in his car, but not where he last remembered being. He was home. In his driveway. Somehow he had driven home. Or so he figured.
Philip Reynolds stood outside the Pontiac and stared. His neighbor. His friend from the local town police.
A few profanities bubbled out of O'Hara's mouth. He pulled himself up in the seat and opened the car door. “My sweet Lord, Frank!” Reynolds said. “I thought you were-”
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
Coming awake, O'Hara shook his head. “No such luck. What the hell? What's going on?”
O'Hara stepped out into another frigid morning. He felt like he had been drugged. Or was it an ugly hangover?
“You're working too hard, man,” Reynolds said. “I know it's been that way since Mallinson went into the hospital. But you got to be more careful.”
“Yeah.” O'Hara stared at his car.
“You fell asleep in your car, man. Must have spent the night there. Would have frozen to death if the engine hadn't been running.”
“Hey, it's a dependable old beast,” O'Hara answered, looking at the car. “That's why I keep it.” Then he looked at Reynolds. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
