Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  She had so little reaction he wondered if she was hearing him.

  “Kimberly?”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  Despite the oddness of her comment, he pressed on. “Moe Blumberg told me that after Scott disappeared you kept coming back to Brightwater to look for him. Is that right?”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly. “That was foolish of me.”

  “Were you able to find any trace of him at all?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why do you put it that way?”

  “I was looking in the wrong place. He’d already crossed over.”

  “You mean you came to the conclusion that . . . that your son was no longer alive?”

  “No, that wasn’t it. Life never ends. Scott had simply crossed over to a place of peace and happiness.”

  Something in her tone prompted his next question. “A happier place than Brightwater?”

  Her smile faded. “Brightwater was nothing but torment. Scott hated every minute of it.”

  “Why did you send him there?”

  “That was his father’s idea. The sports, having to deal with the roughness and toughness of it—that was supposed to make him a real man. Scott was no good at sports. How does being beaten up and laughed at and called filthy names make you a man? I could have killed him.”

  “Scott’s father?”

  “I wanted to kill him. But he left. You know why he left? Because I kept going back to Brightwater to look for Scott. He couldn’t stand that. He knew it was all his fault.”

  “The boys at camp who bullied Scott—was he afraid of anyone in particular?”

  She nodded slowly. “The ones with animal names.”

  “Spider, Lion, Wolf, and Weasel?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he know any of their real names?”

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t sure. They wore black hoods over their faces.”

  “Did he have any guesses?”

  “He only told me one name, once, in a phone call home. It was an ugly name. But I can’t remember it now. I stay as far away as I can from all that darkness. My spiritual advisor says that we have to put the darkness behind and move toward the light.”

  “I understand, Kimberly. But please try to remember. It could make a huge difference.”

  With a reluctant sigh she raised her face toward a light somewhere above her. In its glare the copper highlights in her hair shimmered like little flames. “I think it began with a P . . . or maybe a B.”

  She turned her hands up to the light, as though hoping that a fuller answer might alight on her palms. Gurney, impatient, was about to prompt her with the names of the four dead men, when she announced her recollection in a voice suddenly hard with hatred.

  “Balzac.”

  CHAPTER 39

  After concluding his video conversation with Kimberly Fallon, Gurney checked his phone and discovered voicemail messages from Jack Hardwick and Jane Hammond.

  The moment he saw Jane’s name he felt a stab of chagrin at what he guessed was the reason for her call.

  “Dave? Madeleine? Is everything all right? I was under the impression you were coming here for dinner. Give us a call, okay?”

  Another casualty of the evening’s stress and confusion. He’d have to apologize, explain. He was about to listen to the message from Hardwick when he was stopped by an odd sound in the bathroom ceiling directly above him.

  A faint creaking.

  He looked up and saw, or thought he saw, a few tiny specks of plaster dust descend from the edge of the light fixture over the tub. He focused on the spot, waiting for it to happen again. After a few moments, he stepped up onto the rim of the bathtub to get a closer look, balancing himself with one hand against the tile wall.

  From there he could see that the decorative medallion around the fixture was imprecisely aligned over the wiring hole in the ceiling, leaving a gap of a millimeter or two along one edge. From the floor the gap appeared to be nothing more than a shadow line.

  His first thought was that the opening might provide access for audio or video surveillance. The scanner, however, should have picked up any electronic activity of that nature, and it hadn’t. And it certainly wasn’t the only poorly centered light-fixture medallion he’d ever seen. He would have dismissed it as a matter of no concern—if it wasn’t for that muted creaking sound he’d heard, and that almost-invisible wisp of falling dust.

  He went back to the bedroom alcove and put on his shoes. Then he strapped on his ankle holster and inserted the Beretta into it. Listening to Madeleine’s breathing, he was relieved that it sounded more regular. But the tic was still active in her cheek. As he was wondering if there was something more he could be doing for her, his phone rang.

  It was Hardwick again.

  He decided to take the call, but the bathroom no longer seemed a secure place to talk. He got the suite key, went out into the corridor, and locked the door behind him.

  He kept his voice low. “What’s up?”

  “Got some answers back from Palm Beach PD. You asked if there was any evidence that Christopher Wenzel had a bright view of his future. According to Bobby Becker, just before Wenzel headed up to Wolf Lake he put a down payment on a new Audi.”

  “How does Becker square that with Wenzel’s suicide a week later?”

  “Becker wasn’t the detective who caught the Wenzel case, so this is all kind of secondhand. But it seems that the detective that was on it was taken off it almost immediately. So squaring the purchase with the suicide wasn’t a problem anyone down there wrestled with.”

  “Any explanation for his removal from the case?”

  “He was told national security issues were involved. End of story.”

  “So we have a pattern.”

  “Of optimistic guys ending up dead?”

  “And local investigations being preempted. Anything else from Becker?”

  “One big item. You asked if anyone besides Pardosa got an odd phone call before they made their Wolf Lake arrangements. Well, according to Becker, there’s a phone record of Wenzel receiving a call from a prepaid cell phone a week before he went up to Wolf Lake. And a record of him calling the lodge reservations number that same day.”

  “How do we know there’s a causal link between the two calls?”

  “Let me finish. He got two calls from that prepaid cell number. One on the day he made his reservation, and the second on the day he cut his wrists. The origination point of both calls was the Wolf Lake cell tower. I’d be willing to bet that Balzac and Pardosa got the same pair of calls from that same untraceable phone.”

  Gurney was quiet for a long moment. “I’m not sure what this particular convergence means. It seems to mean that someone at the lodge—or at least within range of the lodge cell tower—may have persuaded three of the four victims to come and meet with Hammond.”

  “Right. And called again on the day each of them died.”

  “That would be the call Fenton claims was a post-hypnotic triggering device—whatever the hell that means.” As he was speaking, Gurney was pacing along the corridor outside the suite. The light fixtures on the wall had been turned down, and in the gloom the crimson of the carpet was as dull as dried blood. “This phone call angle could be hugely important, Jack, but I need to let it sink in. Meantime, let me tell you what I found out from Scott Fallon’s mother.”

  “She actually spoke to you?”

  “Yes. Definitely on the flakey side, but she gave me some facts and confirmed some assumptions. Her son was gay, constantly bullied, and terrified. But here’s the big news. There was a boy her son was especially afraid of. His name was Balzac.”

  “Goddamn!”

  “So now we know that at least two of our current victims were at Brightwater at the same time. Steven Pardosa and Leo Balzac.”

  “If two of them were there, then I bet all four were. That could be the connection we’ve been looking for. And that ant
igay shit sure does keep popping up.”

  “Yes,” said Gurney. “And it keeps getting uglier.”

  “Are we thinking our four dead guys might have been behind Scott Fallon’s disappearance?”

  “It’s a workable hypothesis.”

  “In the interest of calling a spade a spade, can we agree that disappearance in this case means death—even though the kid’s body was never found?”

  The question jarred Gurney back into the world of Madeleine’s bathroom breakdown—her traumatic vision of another body that was never found.

  Hardwick cleared his throat. “You still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “When we say Scott Fallon disappeared, we’re saying he was killed, right?”

  “That’s the most likely scenario.”

  “You all right, ace? You sound a little off.”

  As Gurney was weighing the pros and cons of discussing Madeleine’s experience, his train of thought was derailed by a sound from the attic.

  A barely perceptible creaking.

  “Sorry, Jack, got to cut this short. I’ll get back to you soon as I can.”

  He ended the call and began searching for a back staircase or other access to the upper floor. Heading along the corridor, he passed eight widely spaced doors that presumably led to guest rooms, four on each side. At the bottom of the last door on the right, a thin line of light was visible, and he heard music playing—something baroque.

  With no other guests in residence, he figured it had to be Norris Landon’s room.

  When he reached what he expected to be the end of the corridor, it made a right-angle turn into an unlit cul-de-sac. This claustrophobic extension terminated in a metal door of the sort one might find on a janitor’s closet.

  Surprised to find the door unlocked, he opened it to discover the bottom steps of a narrow staircase that lead up to the attic.

  He noted odors of dust and mold and something faintly rotten. He located a light switch and flipped it up. A low-wattage bulb came on in a bare porcelain fixture at the top of the stairs.

  When he reached the top landing he found that it led to another door.

  The door was slightly ajar.

  He called out in a loud voice, “Is anyone there?”

  Surely it was his imagination, but the silence behind the door seemed to deepen.

  He called out again in the authoritarian police cadence that was etched into the circuits of his brain. “If anyone is there, speak up and identify yourself.”

  There was no response.

  He nudged the door open with his foot.

  The musty smell grew stronger. The weak bulb in the landing illuminated very little of the attic room in front of him. He groped along the inside wall until he found a switch. The light fixture that came on was attached to a ridge beam high in the peaked ceiling of what appeared to be a vast storage room. A number of large angular objects, perhaps unused pieces of furniture, were draped with sheets. A corroded drip bucket was positioned under a rafter that was glistening with moisture. The air in the room was cold and damp.

  Gurney paused to get his bearings. He began to form a picture of how the attic space related to the floor below. He had good spatial instincts and was confident that he’d soon be able to locate the portion of the attic that was above the suite bathroom.

  After a few more angle and distance estimations, he made his way cautiously to a door on the far side of the extensive storage space.

  Like the previous door, this one was an inch or two ajar. The overall surface bore a thick coating of dust, but the knob was clean.

  “Is anyone there?”

  The responding silence was so absolute it gave him a touch of gooseflesh—a feeling that was intensified by the high-pitched squeak of a hinge as he pushed the door open.

  Reaching around the door jamb to grope for another light switch, he failed to find one. But he heard something that caused him to freeze. A soft sound. The sound of a single exhaled breath.

  He stepped forward quickly into the dark room, then sidestepped a few yards along the inside wall. He dropped to one knee and pulled the Beretta from its ankle holster.

  Peering fruitlessly into the near-total darkness, he thought he heard another breath, not as close to him as the first.

  He remained perfectly still and waited.

  A hint of movement caught his eye, so slight he wondered if he’d seen anything at all. Then he felt a movement of air and heard the sound of a door some distance away being eased shut.

  Quietly he rose to his feet, holding the Beretta with its muzzle pointing up. After listening intently for at least another minute, he began moving tentatively in the general direction of the door he imagined to be on the opposite side of the room.

  He’d taken no more than three or four steps forward when something touched his face. Startled, he jumped back, his free arm rising automatically into a defensive combat position.

  As the seconds passed and his rational mind caught up with his reflexes, it dawned on him that what had touched his face was probably just another form of the switch he’d been looking for.

  He reached out and wrapped his hand around a dangling pull cord.

  He gave it a gentle yank. A pale light came on high in the timbered ceiling, drawing his attention upward—and delaying for a brief moment the paralyzing impact of what awaited him on the shadowy attic floor.

  CHAPTER 40

  With gleaming white fangs and glaring amber eyes, rough gray fur bristling and legs flexed for attack, a huge wolf was crouched less than ten feet from Gurney—a distance he knew could be erased instantly in a single leap.

  Even with his gaze fixed on the beast, his hand tightening on the Beretta, he realized that the wolf was not alone.

  There were four more, spread out in a loose semicircle behind the first, all with bared teeth and malevolent eyes, motionless, as if waiting for a signal.

  Gurney absorbed all this as he was lowering his weapon to a firm and steady firing position. And then, as he was sighting down the barrel at the head of the feral monster in front of the pack, his finger settling into position on the trigger, he suddenly understood why the wolves confronting him were motionless.

  They were all dead.

  Dead, gutted, and preserved.

  Their taxidermied bodies set in shockingly vivid attitudes of attack.

  Their ferocity strangely undiminished by death.

  Whoever had assembled this savage diorama was plainly a master of his peculiar art. But what was the diorama’s purpose? And for whom was it arranged?

  Weren’t wolves a protected species in this part of the world? How long ago had they been killed? Who killed them? And why were they here in the lodge?

  Engrossed in the questions raised by the presence of these . . . stuffed cadavers . . . Gurney was brought back to the moment and reminded of his purpose in the attic by the sight of a door on the far side of the room. Surely that was the door he’d sensed opening and closing in the darkness before he found the light pull.

  With his weapon still in his hand, but with the safety back on, he stepped gingerly around the wolf pack, its fierce realism keeping him on edge, and headed for the door.

  Before he got to it he was stopped by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching.

  A moment later the door opened, and Austen Steckle stepped forward wielding a powerful LED flashlight.

  The intense beam of light swept back and forth across the room, projecting shadows of the wolves across the floor and attic walls, coming finally to rest on the pistol in Gurney’s hand.

  “Christ!” He raised the beam to Gurney’s face. “What the fuck’s happening here?”

  Gurney blinked. “Get that out of my eyes!”

  He held it in place until Gurney began to move toward him, then quickly lowered it. “Sorry. What’s the problem?”

  “Did you pass anyone?”

  “What?” He seemed honestly confused.

  “Someone was in t
his room and left by that door less than a minute ago. Did you see or hear anyone?”

  “Not as I was coming up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I heard from all the way downstairs was someone calling out, ‘Is anyone there?’ A couple of times. Really loud. Sounded like something was wrong. Nobody’s supposed to be up here. This is not a public area.”

  “That’s why I thought it was odd to be hearing footsteps up here.”

  “What footsteps?”

  “Footsteps over our bathroom. Slow, quiet, as though someone was trying not to be heard. You have any idea why someone would be creeping around up here?”

  He shook his head, seeming to find the notion outlandish.

  “Whoever it was, was just in this room. And left by that door less than a minute before you walked through it. You’re sure you didn’t see or hear anyone?”

  “Not a soul, not a sound. Nothing.”

  “This area is the part of the attic that would be directly over our suite, is that right?”

  Steckle ran his free hand over his shaved scalp, which was sweating as usual, despite the attic chill. “It could be.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I got no reason to know what’s directly over what.”

  “That door you came through—where does it lead?”

  “Back stairwell, fire escape, ground floor, exit door, basement. Lot of places.” He paused. “If someone went out that way, that could be why I didn’t see him.”

  Gurney slipped the Beretta into the back pocket of his jeans and gestured toward the crouching wolves, whose shadows continued to shift eerily on the wall with each movement of Steckle’s flashlight. “What’s the story with the private zoo?”

  Steckle produced a harsh, guttural sound—one of the most unpleasant laughs Gurney had ever heard. “It’s a joke, is what it is.” He aimed his light beam at each of the wolves in a curiously deliberate way. “You heard about the crazy Gall legend?”