Death in a Difficult Position

by Diana Killian

  “What are we going to do?” Jaci whispered.

  A.J. pulled her phone out and stared hard at the screen. There were a couple of bars of signal. Work, she willed it silently. She pressed speed dial for Jake.

  No Service flashed up.

  “Any luck?” Suze’s blue eyes looked huge.

  A.J. shook her head.

  “We should arm ourselves.” Jaci picked up a short stout branch.

  Great. Sticks and stones against a rifle. That was going to go well.

  A.J. listened tensely.

  Plop.

  Plop.

  Plop.

  Nothing but the rain splattering on fallen leaves. The snowflakes melted. That was good news. They had enough to deal with without heavy snowfall.

  Something rustled in the bushes nearby and A.J., Suze, and Jaci jumped in accord. They relaxed as Simon joined them.

  “He’s moving away, back up the trail,” Simon told them. “I spotted him through the trees.”

  A.J. asked, “Could you see who it was?”

  “No.”

  “He must be crazy,” Jaci whispered.

  “Are you sure it was a he?” A.J. spoke.

  “No.” Simon stared at her. “Why?”

  A.J. shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t understand why anyone would fire on us. Even if the first shot was a mistake, the others couldn’t have been.”

  “That wasn’t a mistake,” Suze said fiercely. “No one could have missed the fact that we were all screaming.”

  “She’s right,” Simon said.

  “Is everyone safe?”

  “A bullet grazed Oriel’s arm.”

  “Oh my God.” A.J. swallowed. “Is she badly hurt?”

  Simon’s head moved in negation. “It just nicked the fleshy part of her arm. She’s scared and in shock. Like everybody else. We need to get down to the cars.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe to move?”

  “As far as I could tell there was only one shooter.

  Unless he’s laying one hell of an elaborate trap—which seems unlikely—he’s heading away from us now.”

  A.J. said, “Okay. Then let’s move. But let’s stay off the road and stick to cover as much as possible.’

  “Good idea.” Simon turned and they followed him, scuttling through leaves and undergrowth until they joined the huddle of students around Oriel.

  Oriel had a white T-shirt wrapped around her upper right arm. The white cotton was spotted red. Not a lot of red, but even that spreading quarter-shape of scarlet made A.J. feel queasy. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ll live,” Oriel said tersely. Her face was bloodless, her hair a rat’s nest of leaves and twigs.

  “Unless that maniac shoots us all,” someone else muttered.

  “We’re going to go for the cars,” A.J. told them. “But we’re going to stay off the road and stick to cover as much as possible. Simon thinks whoever shot at us is moving away, moving in the opposite direction, so I think this is the best choice.”

  “Maybe we should vote on it,” Rose quavered. “What if he’s circling round?”

  “We’re sitting ducks here,” Suze said.

  “Vote,” A.J. said.

  Hands went up. There were a few quick yeses. Rose bit her lip.

  “You stick with me, Rose,” Suze said.

  Rose nodded.

  “Let’s move,” Simon said, turning to lead the way.

  Move they did. At first they stuck very close to the ground, but as they traveled farther and farther from the scene of the shooting, they began to risk standing upright as they darted from thicket to tree to bush to tree.

  Snow began to fall again.

  It seemed the longest journey of A.J.’s life. At last they spotted the main highway through the trees, saw the colored flash of passing cars, and knew the parking lot was just a few yards farther ahead. A.J. stopped behind a scrub pine and tried her phone again.

  She could have cried her relief when Jake answered. “Hey, how’s it going, Marco Polo?”

  “Can you get us some help?” She steadied her voice with effort. “Someone shot at us. Oriel Goode has been wounded.”

  “Someone—?” Jake’s voice changed. “Where are you now?”

  A.J. told him. She did everything but give him longitude and latitude.

  “Got it. Are you okay, honey?”

  She had to fight the ridiculous urge to burst into tears at that “honey.”

  “I’m fine,” she got out.

  “Stay low. Help is on the way. So am I.”

  A few more words and he was gone. A.J. wished he could have stayed on the line with her, but of course that wasn’t necessary. They weren’t in any danger now, and if they had been, there was nothing Jake could achieve by staying on the phone. She was a big girl now. She could deal with whatever she needed to deal with until help arrived.

  The students were running to their cars. A.J. sprinted after them. “Wait! You can’t all just take off.”

  “A.J., I think I should take Mocha home.” Jaci came back to meet her.

  “I don’t think any of us should leave yet. Everyone here is a witness. The police are going to want to take statements.”

  “Oriel needs medical help.”

  “Jake has an ambulance on the way. She seems to be okay for now.”

  Jaci bit her lip. “I still don’t think this is any place for a kid.”

  “Okay.” A.J. raked a hand through her damp hair. “Take her home. I’m sure she’s still going to have to give a statement, but I guess it won’t make much difference if she does it now or a few hours from now.”

  “Right. And don’t worry. I’ll be back, I promise.” Jaci trotted to her car where Mocha waited inside. A few seconds later Jaci pulled out onto the main highway and disappeared down the road. A couple of the other women began to protest and insist they be allowed to leave.

  A.J. tried to be sympathetic but firm. “Look, we’re not in danger now. The police are on the way. We need to wait.”

  “We don’t know that we’re not in danger,” Oriel protested. “I’ve been shot.”

  “EMTs are on the way right now.”

  “Suppose that maniac is doubling back,” Rose said.

  “I’m not going to stay here and risk getting shot.”

  “I can’t force you to stay, but you’re all going to have to give statements. Wouldn’t you rather get it over with now?”

  “I’m staying,” Simon said, “so you’re staying, too, Rose.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Suze chimed in.

  “Rose can drive my car.” Oriel cradled her injured arm.

  The wail of sirens floated in the distance.

  Hearing that banshee lament, the other students fell silent, the incipient mutiny crushed. They waited, watching as the vehicles of State Park Police sped into view.

  In a matter of seconds the cars of the Sacred Balance students were pinned in, whether by design or accident, by both State Park Police and the white sedans of State Police.

  The troopers questioned everyone at length while Simon led the Park Police back up the trail to where the shooting had occurred.

  The EMTs arrived and began treating everyone for shock and minor cuts and abrasions. Oriel had sustained the most serious injury.

  “The wound itself is superficial,” a rosy-cheeked young EMT informed A.J. when she walked up to see how Oriel was doing. “But her blood pressure is high and she’s got a history of heart trouble.”

  “She does?” A.J.’s own heart skipped a beat. Well, that was fabulous. That was what happened when you didn’t insist on a full medical history of guests and regular studio clients alike. What if Oriel had suffered a heart attack out there in the woods? What the heck would they have done then?

  “We’re going to go ahead and take her into Burlington.”

  “I’ll follow behind, if that’s okay?”

  “It’s not necessary,” Oriel said. “I’m perfectly fine.”


  A.J. and the EMTs overrode her protests and the doors closed on Oriel’s final exasperated objections.

  By then the students had been questioned, the consensus being that no one had observed anything useful, and were being allowed to leave. A little caravan of cars edged past the official vehicles, departed the parking lot, and sped toward the main highway.

  Suze trotted up to A.J. “Did you want me to follow you into Burlington?”

  A.J. shook her head. “Jake’s on his way. I’ll call and tell him to meet me there. Can you call Jaci and tell her what’s going on?”

  “Sure. No problem. And don’t worry about Rose. I’ll take her home since there’s no telling when Simon will be back.”

  “Thank you, Suze.” A.J. hugged her.

  Suze hugged her back. “You have to admit, it was definitely a bonding exercise.”

  A.J. gave an unwilling laugh. “Nothing like running for your lives to bring people together. I’m praying we don’t get sued.”

  Suze shook her head. “Nah. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault some maniac happened to stumble over us.”

  “Or we stumbled over him.” A.J. had nearly forgotten that weird glimpse of . . . something in the cellar of the abandoned house where they’d sheltered. Were the two things connected or was it just a coincidence?

  “Right. Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Suze loped back to her Beetle, waving to Rose.

  A.J. climbed in her Volvo and let her head fall back against the seat for a few seconds. She didn’t want to drive into Burlington. She didn’t want to ever move a muscle again. She was beyond tired. She opened her eyes and looked at the crystal Mala beads hanging from the rearview mirror. The smoky amber crystals sparkled with their own light on this gray, snowy day, like tiny suns.

  It looked like everything had turned out all right, but the Sacred Balance retreat could have had such a very different ending. A tragic ending. It was just luck that they’d all made it safely.

  Luck.

  They were taking it for granted they’d had the bad luck to stumble on a lunatic—and the good luck to escape without serious injury.

  But what if it wasn’t luck at all? What if there had been some sinister design behind today’s events?

  A.J. sat up, reaching for her cell phone.

  Sixteen

  As wonderful sights went, Jake striding down a sterile hospital corridor had to be right up there with the Seven Wonders of the World.

  In fact, the only thing better than the sight of Jake was the feel of Jake’s arms around her. A.J. hugged him back with all her strength. Until this moment she hadn’t really felt . . . safe.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get here any faster. How’s Oriel?”

  “She’s fine. She’s mostly suffering from shock. They’re talking about releasing her if she wants to go home.”

  Jake frowned at that news. “For now she just might be better off where she is.”

  On the cell phone with him during her drive to Burlington, A.J. had shared her fears. The fact that Jake seemed to think her concerns held merit was not exactly reassuring. “I know. One thing’s for sure: no hunter accidentally mistook our entire group for a herd of deer. But at the same time, I don’t see how anyone could have targeted Oriel. We were all bundled up, wearing hoods and hats. So unless someone followed us from our campsite—”

  “Where was Oriel when she was hit?”

  A.J. tried to remember. Her recollection of those horrible moments when she’d heard the shots was blurred. “She was a little ahead of me. I remember that. I’m trying to picture everyone’s position, but . . .” Her eyes met Jake’s. “The first shot nearly hit me.”

  Jake swore quietly.

  A.J. put a hand to her cheek. “I felt the bullet go past. I thought it was an insect.”

  If possible, Jake’s face went grimmer. “Well. You do have a habit of poking around in things that aren’t your business. It’s possible you got on somebody’s bad side. Oriel getting hit might be a coincidence. How far was she from you when she was hit?”

  “It’s really hard to judge. I know it’s a cliché, but everything really was happening fast. She couldn’t have been more than a few feet ahead of me.”

  “Great.”

  “But we were all running in a pack. That’s what I mean about it being hard to target one person. We heard the shots and we all took off. And we were all dressed very much the same. A lot of us were wearing gray or navy hoodies beneath our jackets. Oriel was.”

  Jake glanced at A.J.’s clothing. “You weren’t.”

  “No.”

  He was silent, considering.

  “I’ve been thinking. It’s just as possible that some nut was inspired by David Goode’s preaching against yoga and opened fire on all of us. Or maybe someone thinks that because Lily was accused of his murder, yoga is somehow responsible for Goode’s death. We’ve been advertising this retreat all week. It wouldn’t have been hard to track us down.”

  “Maybe.” Jake sounded unconvinced.

  “When I first moved here from Manhattan, not everyone greeted me with open arms. A lot of people thought Aunt Di was a kook and that yoga wasn’t for ‘regular folks.’”

  “Assuming this wasn’t a vendetta against yoga and women who wear leggings—”

  “Funny.”

  “Did you notice anything else odd or out of the ordinary?”

  “Beyond getting shot at?”

  “Right.”

  “Does a sighting of the Jersey Devil count?”

  Jake closed his eyes as though in pain. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “No. Mocha Ritchie woke the whole camp up last night screaming that the Jersey Devil opened her tent flap and looked in at her. This was after three s’mores and an evening of telling ghost stories around the campfire, mind. She’s fifteen.”

  “I think we can discount that sighting.”

  “Probably. The only thing is, during the commotion, Oriel was MIA.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, she wasn’t in her tent when Mocha started screaming. I know because I was bunking with her. Her story is she was answering nature’s call, which could certainly be true, but everyone else in camp came running to Mocha’s tent. Oriel apparently finished up in the woods and went back to bed.”

  “I don’t know that that proves anything. She was probably freezing her tail off. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out what was happening.”

  “That’s what Oriel said.”

  Jake shrugged. “It makes sense to me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not thinking that she scared the kid by peeking in at her?”

  “No. That is, I can’t imagine any reason for her to do such a thing. And Mocha was insistent that what she saw was neither human nor animal. She’d surely have recognized Oriel. That’s on the assumption she saw anything at all.”

  “The whole thing sounds far-fetched.”

  “Believe me, I know exactly how it sounds. But then I saw something in the cellar of an abandoned house we took shelter in. And that wasn’t very long before we were fired on.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jake eyed her narrowly. “One thing at a time. Back to last night at the campsite. Did you see anything that looked like . . .” He apparently couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

  “The Jersey Devil? No, Jaci and I found what looked like a hoof mark beside Mocha’s tent, but Jaci thought it looked like a deer.”

  “Were there four prints or two?”

  “One. That’s the thing. The other prints, however many there were, were on the grass and we couldn’t make them out.”

  They moved aside as an orderly wheeled an empty gurney down the hallway.

  “Okay, so basically . . . weird sounds, bushes moving, dark shadows. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away by the night and the wind—and nerves.”

  “Right. It was eerie out there, no question.”

  “In other words, no one really saw anything last n
ight—with the exception of one hysterical teenage girl?”

  A.J. nodded.

  “Okay. But today you think you saw . . . what in an abandoned house?”

  “I thought I saw glowing eyes in a long, red, horsey face.”

  Jake’s own face remained serious, but it was clearly a battle.

  Exasperated, A.J. said, “Assuming I saw anything at all, I saw what could possibly have been someone in a costume.”

  “A costume?” he repeated thoughtfully.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous because no one could know we would take shelter in that house, but I think someone might have been masquerading as a monster for their own purposes.”

  “What purpose would that be? You just said no one could have known you’d take shelter in that building.”

  “There have been all these recent sightings of the Jersey Devil, right? Maybe someone’s doing it for promotional reasons—to bring tourists into the area. Everyone keeps saying the economy is killing us and we need more business.”

  “Visit the Pine Barrens and see the Jersey Devil?”

  “Why not? People have come up with crazier marketing ideas than that. I ought to know. I used to be one of the people coming up with them.”

  Jake laughed. “I won’t ask what idea you came up with that was as crazy as this one.”

  “The other possibility is someone is just getting a kick out of scaring everyone.”

  “And slaughtering farm animals?”

  A.J. swallowed. “I’d nearly forgotten that.”

  “Yeah. Well, forgetting the cruelty to the animals themselves, the Baumanns took a hit for several thousand dollars. That’s no laughing matter.”

  “No, that’s pretty horrifying.”

  “If not for those dead cows and the shooting today, I’d put these supposed Jersey Devil sightings down to teenage pranks. Do you think you could find the abandoned house where your group took shelter from the rain again?”

  “I think so.”

  “You want to give it a shot?”

  “Now?”

  “The sooner the better. We’ve got local and state police combing the area, so there’s no danger.”

  “But it’s going to be dark before long. And it’s snowing.”

  Jake glanced out the picture window that offered a view of the hospital complex and the wan sun making a halfhearted appearance through the trees lining the busy parking lot.