by Ellen Parker
She pulled out her apple, took a bite, and savored the crisp tangy sweet flavor. Her lips touched the fruit ready for the second bite.
Bam!
Gunshot. She held her breath, listened to the sound bounce around the geography, and failed to determine the direction. It was loud. Close. Much closer than during previous walks.
Bam! The balsam in front of her shuddered and shed snow.
Laura dropped her apple into nature’s white blanket. This is not a poacher. I’m the target. She breathed in and tried to gather her common sense scattered by the shots. Lift. Swing. Forward. The commands speeded to her feet and she maneuvered forward, then behind a perfectly sheered six-foot balsam.
In the shelter of the tree, she knelt down and unbuckled the snowshoes. The sight of her bright orange sleeve as she worked the straps reminded her she needed to become less visible. She fumbled for a heartbeat, then found the sweatshirt hem and pulled the garment off over her head. One hasty toss and it dangled on lower branches of evergreen.
“Taffy. Cocoa.” She hesitated long enough to be certain both dogs turned in her direction. The pumpkin field, a hundred yards of uneven ground, old vines, and cull gourds buried under a blanket of white, lay between her and the relative safety of the buildings. She stepped off the snowshoes, sank almost to her knees, but managed to talk herself into an invented gait.
Bam! A white mound exploded in a burst of pumpkin and snow.
She stumbled, sprawled in the snow at the border of long grass and tilled earth. As she pushed up she shook her head. The faint engine whine didn’t vanish.
Do it! She rose up, leaned forward, and lurched deeper into the field.
Bam!
Her foot slipped and she fell onto her shoulder. She curled up deep into her white parka and breathed into her mittens. The engine, rather like a chainsaw, grew louder. Her mouth dried and her body chilled. She rose and felt strength flow into her legs.
Run. Stumble. Push up. Run. Her chest burned from cold air as once again she landed face down next to a snow-covered vine. Phone. She started an inventory of her pockets, beginning with the parka and ending with her jeans. Nothing. Sweatshirt. Easy access lays under a tree somewhere.
Bam! The dusk to dawn light shattered into a million pieces.
Her body contracted into the fetal position.
Whir.
An image of the shooter on a snowmobile flashed through her vision. Her legs found strength and propelled her a few steps closer to the buildings.
Wham! She fell, rolled, and stopped with a weight pressing her into frozen ground.
“Stay down!” Brad hissed into her ear.
The weight lifted and she opened her eyes to focus on Brad crawling toward a snowmobile. Her arms reached out.
Zing! Another shot froze her in place.
By the time she risked a glance up the hill to the garage, the building had lost a patch of roof snow. She gulped. A wall might not be protection. The world moved in slow motion and double speed at the same time as she hurried after Brad.
He reached over the snowmobile saddle and pulled his rifle out of the scabbard.
Zing! Vinyl snowmobile seat ripped and snow flew. Brad’s weapon sailed off in a horizontal spin.
Laura reached up from her kneeling position, grasped the rifle stock in one hand, and wrapped her other around the barrel. Weight and momentum tipped her back. “Oof.”
“You okay?” Brad snatched the gun and, after a brief inspection, brought it down across the snowmobile’s broad seat.
How did a person define okay? Myriad sensations tumbled inside her body. “I think so.”
She edged closer, spotted Cocoa running toward them, but didn’t see a shooter.
Bam!
Her head throbbed from the close explosion from Brad’s gun.
“Send ambulance to Starr Tree Farm. Sheriff Bergstrom needs to know ASAP.”
Laura wrapped her arms around her torso and stayed silent. Brad talked into a phone — Bluetooth, or another type of hands free device. He didn’t take his eye away from his riflescope.
Cocoa slammed into Laura and sent her toppling over.
She grasped the dog, dug deep for the leather collar, and hung on tight. “Did … did you kill him?”
“Myles? No. Shoulder wound, I think. As long as he doesn’t do something stupid, like reach for his rifle, he’ll live.”
Laura buried her face into the collie until she could feel a rapid heartbeat against her skin. The dog became the only real thing in her world. The only sane, sensible, living being.
Myles? Scott’s physical double? He shot at her? A shiver deep in her bones worked its way to the skin. “Myles tried to kill me?”
“Scare, more likely.” Brad continued to peer through the scope.
Laura crushed Cocoa against her in another fierce hug. “He did.”
• • •
Brad adjusted the crosshairs to his target’s chest. Don’t be foolish.
The force of a single rifle round had sent Myles flat on his back into the snow. He began to move now, jerked his left hand across his chest to grip his upper right arm and curled into a sitting position. With a turn of his head he began to rise.
Brad stared at the enemy. The weapon recently firing at Laura laid a good three paces from where Myles knelt. I’ll allow one step. No more.
“How?” Laura panted behind him.
He didn’t risk a glance. Her presence, including the hold she kept on the dog, came like radio waves to his exposed slivers of skin. “We’ll talk later. Call the other dog.”
Snow compressed with a soft squeak as Laura moved around. She peered over the snowmobile next to his shoulder. “Come, Taffy.”
The dog emerged from behind a tree in the nearest row, intent on bringing her new toy along. The snowshoe trailed beside her, the nylon strap firm in her mouth.
Brad kept his concentration on the view through his riflescope. Myles turned his head straight toward them.
Bam! Snow kicked up in front of Myles mid-lunge toward the rifle.
“I didn’t kill him.” Brad spoke for Laura’s benefit and glanced in her direction in time to see her head re-emerge from her parka. He touched his transmitter. “What’s your ETA?”
The dogs stopped their circling concern for Laura and raised their ears. The first wisp of siren registered with him two breaths later.
“Pardon me while I keep Myles away from his gun.” He continued to stare through the scope.
Myles sat now, holding his wounded shoulder, facing them across the gully and field.
Brad weighed several possibilities. Would Myles run? Make another attempt for the weapon? In the moments the siren gained volume, he got his answer.
Myles stood and began to back into the woodlot with its bramble.
Brad adjusted the crosshairs and caressed the trigger.
Bam! The tree behind Myles trembled and dumped snow.
Higher than I intended. He watched Myles drop to his knees in defeat.
The sheriff’s Chevy Blazer cut the siren and led the ambulance down the service road.
Only after the first officer crossed the footbridge and stood close behind Myles did Brad allow a sigh of relief. He began carefully collecting the brass from his expended bullets and stowing his weapon in the scabbard. “Best you stay where you are, Laura.”
“Why? What did I ever do?” She braced her arms on the snowmobile saddle and pushed up.
Patrol cars arrived in parade for a good three minutes. Brad identified this county, the adjoining jurisdiction, and one state patrol vehicle before Daryl’s black sedan appeared. He blinked away moisture he wanted to blame on the cold and turned to Laura. His arms begged to engulf her, protect her from the ugly debriefing she faced. No, that w
asn’t his motivation. It boiled down to a desire to claim her.
He shifted weight from one foot to the other. “Can you walk to the house?”
“I think so.”
Deputy Kingman met them at the edge of the garage. “Are you injured?”
“No,” Laura responded.
“I need statements. Separately.”
Brad nodded, gestured her forward. “I suggest you interview her first. Inside. I’ll chat with the next officer with a clipboard.”
He sighed as she walked away, Deputy Kingman’s hand supporting her elbow on the slippery, pressed snow. He squatted down, called softly to the closest dog, and rubbed his hand against the collie’s coat. “She’s going to be okay, girl. Our Goldilocks will walk out of the woods with her head held high.”
• • •
Laura gripped the empty coffee mug as if it were her only connection with normalcy.
“If you’ll initial at the bottom, please.” Deputy Kingman turned the official notes from their interview around. “The office will fit in information from the recording and have it all typed up and ready for your official signature sometime tomorrow.”
“That’s fine.” She attempted a smile to go with the lie. Nothing in her world resembled fine or normal at the moment. Her nerves remained as shattered as the pumpkin exploded by the bullet as she stumbled across the field.
“Take care, ma’am. We’ll be in touch.” The deputy tucked the papers and voice recorder into a nylon case.
“I’ll walk you out.”
Laura startled at Daryl’s words from the living room. After initial greetings, he’d been silent as a ghost. He approached now, gave her one of his small, lopsided smiles, and mouthed, “Excellent statement.”
Not even coherent. She stood at the large dining room window after the men walked out and failed to make sense of the scene. Marked patrol cars of white and deep blue plus Daryl’s black sedan were parked between the various sheds with no apparent pattern. Uniformed officers clustered around the sheriff’s Blazer and widened their circle to include Daryl and the deputy.
A harsh laugh escaped her throat. She looked down at the windowsill and imagined the steers — all eleven of them in the yard — panicked by gunfire, breaking the fence and stampeding down the slope to the gully. Would they find the bridge? Take the ditch in a leap? Chase Myles into the woods? She wiped at sudden tears. “I’ve got to stop this.”
“Stop what?” Brad asked.
She brushed her sleeve across her face and blinked him into focus. He already knew too many of her secrets. No reason to tell him this foolishness. “Nothing important.”
“Everything’s important.” He pulled a chair from the table, straddled it, and eased his prosthesis across the back.
Snatches of her middle of the night confession returned. The daylight streaming in warned her to hold the rest private. “Did they send you to babysit?”
“Negative. Came inside to warm up. And clear the air between us.”
“I’m not in a frame of mind to make decisions.” She pulled a decorative pillow against her chest. A tremor entered her fingers. His expression remained serious, too much like after her nightmare.
“A question from Amy this morning got me to thinking. Thursday afternoon I had a visitor, an unexpected female caller. And I’m thinking you might have gotten the wrong impression if you saw us together.”
“I’ve no claim on you. Don’t want one.” She curled her fingers against the corded cushion edge. For a moment she considered whether she’d just told another lie. The edges of her heart stiffened, prepared for a description of the brunette in the bright blue jacket.
“Kimberly Beel hired Frieberg Investigations to look into her uncle’s death. She’s a college buddy. Half a dozen of us roamed Madison together.” He looked straight ahead, an expression of determination overlaying his face. “Thanks to alphabetical order and our last names, we stood next to each in more ROTC formations than I care to remember. She’s good people. A little on the exuberate side. Raised in one of those families apt to hug a person at first introduction.”
She glanced at her toes, eager to look at anything other than his eyes with their silent plea to hear him out.
“Kimberly’s engaged to marry a forester in Minnesota come spring.”
The room quieted until Laura could count the ticks of the cuckoo clock.
She squeezed her eyes tight. Scott’s image smiled at her then faded. “Please go.”
“Think on it, Laura.”
She listened to Brad stand, move the chair, and then his footsteps echoed across the kitchen.
Chapter Nineteen
Laura wrote her initials and turned to the final page of her official statement. Her pen still touched the paper at the end of her signature when the door to the conference room opened.
“Finished?” Sheriff Bergstrom leaned in.
“Yes.” She scribbled the date and flipped the report back to the beginning. “Do you need the room?”
“You have guests.”
At the sheriff’s office? She glanced around the room — yep, she was still in the utilitarian meeting and break room with fridge, microwave, and one table surrounded by sturdy chairs. Before she could stand and present the statement to the sheriff, men started to file through the door.
She forced a smile at Uncle Daryl and nodded to Brad. Her breathing stalled at the sight of the next man.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tanner.” Detective Wilson of St. Louis closed the distance between them with a few steps and reached across the table.
“What … ”
“Never been this far north for a winter vacation.” He reached into his jacket pocket and scattered wrapped mints on the table. “Sheriff Bergstrom and others in this room can be very persuasive.”
Laura found a smile one degree warmer than her usual customer service style for the lead detective on Scott’s case. An instant later, she became aware of a stranger beside him.
“John Schultz, Kenosha Police Department.” He offered his hand.
“Kenosha.” Laura mixed puzzled with polite. “Pardon me. My geography fails me at the moment.”
“Extreme southeastern Wisconsin.” He released a short, firm grasp on her hand. “I’ve been assigned to take another look at the James Beel death.”
Sheriff Bergstrom retrieved one of the legal pads from the center of the table and claimed a chair. “Shall we begin?”
Laura nodded along with the others. Light glinted off Brad’s hook mere inches from her clasped hands weighting down her signed statement of yesterday’s events. Sea breeze aftershave and the bubble of fresh air he tended to bring into a room tickled her senses.
“Are you okay?” Brad whispered.
She managed a nod.
“We’ve come from the hospital.” Daryl filled the simple words with serious meaning.
“Is Myles … ” She moved her gaze from Daryl to Brad. Did he kill a man? For her?
“Mr. Wilcox, if that’s his true name, will make a full recovery. He’ll be moved to a cell in the adjoining wing before the end of today.”
Laura set her attention on the sheriff.
“Mrs. Tanner, are you familiar with the name Brian Klipper?”
“No, ma’am. Should I be?”
The sheriff jotted a note without losing eye contact with Laura. “What about Jason Young?”
She glanced at her hands and concentrated on attaching surnames to the several men with that first name from work, college, and her St. Louis neighborhood. “No. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”
“My deputies found three sets of identification in Mr. Wilcox’s truck. Are you certain you’ve not been contacted by either Brian Klipper or Jason Young?”
“I can’t recall either name. The
re’s always a chance one of them shows in my computer, but I can’t make a connection. Do you need to check it? I didn’t bring it with me today.” Laura thought back on the messages since her arrival in Crystal Springs. After her employer closed, her email circle consisted of family, a few friends, and business contacts for the bookstore. Nothing close to these names mentioned stood out.
“Early last year,” Wilson spoke around one of his mints. “We gathered evidence connecting Brian Klipper to Scott Tanner’s murder. We traced him as far as the Minneapolis airport and then he vanished like smoke. We found a witness in St. Louis, but the man consistently picked Mr. Tanner out of the photo array. I didn’t understand the why of that until a few hours ago. That pair looks like brothers, even twins.”
Laura clenched her hands to suppress a tremble. Not many witnesses would notice a difference in voice or fingers of the right hand. “Scott’s true brother is different at a glance. Mr. Wilcox … he unnerved me.”
Brad nudged her with his hook to get her attention. “Your husband did not have an evil twin. I checked with his mother.”
You called my mother-in-law?
“The accountants finished with the files Mr. Tanner left for you to find.” Wilson claimed the conversation again.
“I’ll confess to keeping a partial copy,” Laura fought the urge to grasp the rings under her sweater. “They totally confused me.”
Daryl tapped the table. “Makes me glad to hear you say that.”
“You like me confused?” She moved her gaze to her uncle’s eyes and failed to find a hint of humor this time.
Wilson gave Daryl one of his half smiles. “I think your uncle is reassured that you’re not familiar with accounting tricks to hide laundered funds.”
“Drug money? Gary Browne?”
“We arrested Gary Browne and his new business partner last night. Along with Mr. Wilcox, we’re hopeful to climb further up the chain than ever before.”
“And thanks to the persistence of the family, and Mr. Asher,” Detective Schultz nodded to Brad, “we’ve established a connection between the Kenosha construction company and Browne’s new partner.”
