“Probably,” I said.
“And so, I put my…I put my hand over his mouth, and I pinched his nose, and I pressed really hard, and he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t move his arms, he couldn’t twist away or anything. It took, I don’t know, a minute or so, maybe more. I think I kept my hand there a lot longer than I needed to. I was scared, that maybe I wouldn’t have done it for long enough.”
Now neither of us spoke for a minute.
“That’s cold, Bob,” I said, finally. “Getting into a shoving match, accidentally knocking Leonard over the cliff, I could see that. But the finishing him off, the smothering him, I have to be honest. That surprises me.”
Bob kept looking away. “Me too.” He paused. “I’m not proud of what I did.”
“So what happened then?”
“Once I knew, knew that he was dead, I tried to think of what to do. And I thought about the bear that, supposedly, was roaming the woods. I thought up a story, about how we’d run into it, made a run for it and got split up. When I got back up top, I really did run, deliberately tripped, let myself get pretty scraped up, to make the story as believable as possible.”
“You had us all fooled, Bob,” I said. “You did a darn good job of that.”
“I was already scared about what really did happen. But I just pretended it was something else that scared me.”
I shook my head sadly, turned the reel a couple of cranks.
“Zachary, are you taping this?” Bob asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“No, Bob,” I said. “I’m not wired, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just wanted to know what happened.”
Bob, one hand still holding his fishing pole, opened his tackle box and reached inside with his right hand. When it came back out, it was holding a gun. His Smith & Wesson pistol.
He pointed it in my direction.
“Oh, come on, Bob,” I said. “You’re not going to kill me.”
He swallowed. “I don’t know as you leave me much choice, Zack. I’d hate to do it. I like you. You’re a good kid. And I think the world of your father.”
I said, “There’s not just that. A guy falls and breaks his neck, you can call that an accident and get away with it. But you shoot a guy, how you going to explain that?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said. “I guess I could say you drowned, fell overboard. Weigh your body down, let it sink to the bottom. I could tip the boat over, there could be an accident.”
“They’d find my body, Bob. This isn’t that big a lake. And even Dr. Heath could probably find a bullet hole. And the other thing is, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I admit, what you did, smothering Leonard, I’m a bit taken aback by that, but you were a desperate man in a desperate circumstance. It was wrong, but I know how you must have been thinking at the time. And I know how badly you must feel about it now.”
He still had the gun pointed at me. “I do,” he said.
I said, “Honestly, Bob, I don’t know what to do. I could tell them what I know, but I don’t think you’d ever spend a day in jail. You could deny telling me this story. You could stick with your original version. Maybe there really is a bear out there with a clipped ear. How would they prove there isn’t? There are no witnesses. And it’s only my word about what Timmy Wickens said, and he’s dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t even file charges. They’d realize, from the get-go, that they’d never get a conviction.”
“So then what’s the point of telling them?” he asked, resting the arm that was holding the gun on his knee, but still keeping me in his sights.
“Because that’s what you did,” I said.
“So you’re going to tell them.”
I sighed. It should have been an easy question. I knew Bob Spooner had killed a man. But it had started out as an accident. I knew Bob Spooner was basically a good person. A good man on the verge of being what’s known as an “old man.” I am not what you’d call a moral absolutist. There are a lot of shades in my world.
And yet.
“I don’t know, Bob,” I said, being honest. “If you’re worried about what will happen if I do, then you’ll have to shoot me. Now.”
I could see he was thinking about it. Thinking about it pretty hard.
Bob’s line started to go out.
“What the…” he said, looking down at his reel, the spool of white filament spinning away.
Twenty feet off our port side, a fish broke the surface, briefly. A muskie, a big one at that. The fish disappeared, then came up again, its head poking out of the water, trying to shake the lure from its mouth. Its cold black eye caught a brief glimpse of us before it went back under.
“Oh no,” Bob said, staring at the ripples where the fish had gone back under.
“What?” I said.
“It’s Audrey,” he said. “I saw the scar.” The scar under the eye. The scar that marked the fish that had been toying with Bob for years.
He didn’t have a chance of reeling her in, however. Not with one hand holding a gun on me.
“You’re going to need both hands,” I said. “And me holding the net, if you can get her close enough to the boat.”
More and more line was being fed out. Audrey was getting farther and farther away.
It was a hell of a choice for Bob. Take a chance at finally getting the fish he’d been trying to catch for so many summers, and risk spending the rest of his life in jail. Or take care of me, make sure I never told my story to anyone, and lose any chance of landing Audrey.
“Take this,” Bob said, handing me the gun.
I took it from him carefully, then laid it on the bottom of the boat, ahead of the middle seat, where I was perched.
The moment he’d given up the gun, Bob went into action, reeling in, bending the pole back toward him, horsing it, then easing it forward and reeling in the slack.
I grabbed the net, got ready to scoop Audrey.
“The hook’s really into her,” I said. “Way more than when she hit my line.”
“Looks like it,” Bob said. “But she’s spit it out before when I was sure I had her.” He glanced at me, just for a second, and said, “I couldn’t have done it.”
“I know,” I said.
He reeled in Audrey a bit more. “Are you going to tell?” he asked, watching where the line vanished into the black.
I kept watching for the fish. “I don’t know.”
Bob nodded. “Maybe, if you tell, and they do convict me, they’d let me hang Audrey on the wall of my cell.”
I smiled at that. The metal handle of the net was cold in my hands. I could see a shape in the water, something moving under the surface, darting left and then right. I leaned over the edge of the boat, let the net slip into the water. My hands dipped below the surface.
“Are you ready?” Bob said.
“I think so. Just lead her this way.”
When the fish was almost into the net, Bob said, “I’m not a bad man, Zack.”
“I know, Bob,” I said. “I’ve met bad men, and you’re not one of them.”
40
IT WAS A LONG DRIVE HOME.
I got in the car after saying my farewells to Dad.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning up against my Virtue’s fender. The ankle was bugging him a bit, and he was using his crutches. “For a lot of things.”
“It’s okay.”
“Bob’s pretty excited, coming in with Audrey. I’m gonna take some pictures.”
“E-mail me one,” I said.
“He seemed kind of troubled,” Dad said.
I nodded. “He’s got a lot on his mind,” I said. “He’s been through a lot this week, like all of us.” I thought for a moment. “Tell him not to worry. Tell him I said not to worry.”
Dad nodded. “Listen, promise me you won’t think less of your mother.”
“I won’t.”
“People make mistakes, but they often have help. I helped her make hers. Remember that, with you and Sarah. You be good to he
r.”
I gave him a hug. “We’ll be talking,” I said.
Dad peeked into the back seat, saw something wrapped in a blanket. “What’s that?” It was a Smith & Wesson. I’d kept it, and when I got back to the city, intended to get rid of it. I hadn’t taken it so much for my own personal security, as to put my mind at ease over what Bob Spooner might do with it. I had a fear that he might find an expedient solution to his dilemma.
“So long, Dad,” I said.
“Bye, son,” he said.
I got in the car and as I headed up the drive back to the highway, I slowed and took one last look at the smoldering ruins of the Wickens farmhouse. There was nothing much left but a foundation and a few blackened timbers at what was once the back of the structure.
Something caught my eye. Something large, and black, and lumbering, moving amidst the debris that was once the farmhouse.
It was a bear.
I stopped the car, opened the door, and stood by the car, one foot on the rocker panel, a hand on the roof, ready to jump back in if I needed to.
The bear was rummaging around, hunting for food, I figured. Suddenly aware of my presence, he rose up on his haunches, sniffed the air, looked in my direction. He stared at me lazily for a moment, then, quickly losing interest, he dropped back down onto all fours, and wandered off into the woods.
There was a lot to think about on the ride back. About Dad, Dad and Lana. The revelations about my mother, and Lana’s husband. About Orville. About Bob, and what he’d done.
About evil.
Sarah met me at the door. After we kissed, and held each other for at least a minute, she said, “It’s all over the news. There was even something on CNN. But their details are really sketchy. And the office has called. Three times.”
“It’s already written,” I said. “In my head. They say how much they want?”
“They can go three thousand words, starting on front, turning inside. They hired a helicopter, took shots of the site from the air. And Lawrence called. He’s got May and Jeffrey settled in. Monday morning, they’re going to meet with some social service types, see what they can do for them. I’ve got some clothes, too, that we can drop off. And linens, stuff like that. I’ve got clothes I could give May, but I don’t know what size she is.”
“You’re pretty close,” I said. “Why not throw some stuff in, we’ll take it over. I’ve got some old Star Wars toys tucked away that I’m going to take as well.”
“You look tired.”
“Yeah.” I slipped my arms around her, and for a moment or so, I cried.
She made me a bacon sandwich. As I sat at the kitchen table eating, my seventeen-year-old son, Paul, breezed through long enough to grab a Coke from the fridge. “Hey, Dad,” he said, and disappeared. The phone rang while Sarah was out of the room, and I grabbed it. It was Angie, calling from the library at Mackenzie University, working on that second year of her psychology major.
“Oh, hi, Dad. I didn’t know you were back. Everything go okay up at your dad’s place? Mom didn’t say a lot.”
“Pretty much.”
“Is Mom there? I need to ask her something about what to get for a friend of mine who’s getting engaged.”
“Hang on.”
“Oh, and Dad? What do you think about us getting a dog? Paul and I were talking. We think it would be neat.”
I called Sarah to the phone and took my sandwich upstairs to my study, fired up my computer, and started writing. Ninety minutes later, I had it done. The broad strokes. The Wickenses, what they were planning, how it went wrong.
Nothing about Bob Spooner.
I phoned the city desk and said I was e-mailing them the story.
I recalled that this had all begun with a phone call while I was having lunch with my friend Trixie Snelling, and how it had seemed, up until the moment when I got word that there was a very good chance my father had been eaten by a bear, that she’d had something important on her mind. Something she was working up to telling me.
So now that my story was filed to the office, I felt I needed to make amends. I went into the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. Sarah came up to me, hugged me from the side, leaned her head into my shoulder. I gave her a squeeze back.
“You’ve filed?”
I said yes. “I figure I’ve got about a half hour before they start calling with stupid questions.”
“At the outside,” Sarah said.
“I’ll take advantage of the lull before the storm to give Trixie a call.”
“She called, while you were away, to ask about your father. To see if he’d really been eaten by a bear. I set her straight.”
“Good.”
“Zack?”
“Yes, hon?”
“Promise me. No more of this. This is not our life.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
I nodded and glanced at the clock on the wall. Saturday night, eight o’clock. There was a very good chance Trixie might be with a client, but if she didn’t answer, I’d just leave a message.
I went back into the study, dialed Trixie’s personal number. She picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” I said.
“Zack,” Trixie said. “How’s your dad?”
“He’s okay.”
“Sarah said. But she said there were some other problems. Did everything go okay?”
“Things…are okay. If I weren’t so tired, I’d tell you all about it now, but as they say in the newspaper biz, you can read all about it tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Listen,” I said. “I kind of had to rush off when we were having lunch Tuesday, and maybe I’m wrong, but I had the feeling there was something you wanted to talk to me about.”
It was quiet at the other end of the line.
“Trixie?”
“Yeah?”
“If I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, tell me. You just seemed, I don’t know, like there was something you wanted to get off your chest.”
Another long pause. Finally, she spoke.
“I’m in trouble,” Trixie said.
will be back in May 2007 with
STONE RAIN
another suspenseful
Zack Walker adventure.
Read on for a preview…
Stone Rain
On sale May 2007
MIRANDA HEARD NOISES coming from the bottom of the stairs. They were back. If they find me here, she thought, they’ll kill me.
It had to be them, downstairs in the bar. It was after hours, after all. Everyone else had cleared out. The Kickstart had been closed, the girls had been sent home. They’d be coming upstairs any moment now.
Oh yeah, they’d kill her. Well, maybe not Leo. Chances were he wouldn’t kill her. Gary would be the one to actually kill her. But Leo, he wouldn’t do anything to stop it. He always let Gary take the lead in these things. I’ll end up as dead as the others, Miranda thought.
If I don’t get out of here right now.
The others hadn’t been dead long.
Only minutes, although it seemed much longer. It was true what they said, Miranda thought, about things slowing down. Maybe that’s why, in the movies, when something terribly dramatic was happening, they ran it in slow-motion. Not just because it was a neat effect, but because it was a reflection of human experience. Maybe your brain had to play tricks with time, give you a chance to absorb what the hell was happening so you could figure out how to deal with it.
Miranda felt as though she’d been in this room with the three dead men for some time now. But maybe it hadn’t even been minutes. Maybe it had only been a few seconds. She wasn’t sure.
All she knew for certain was that they were dead. You didn’t need a medical degree to figure that out. All you had to do was look at them. Sprawled out across the floor, not stirring, their shirts and pants soaked with blood.
Payne, dead. Eldridge, dead. Zane, dead.
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And only moments before, all alive.
Eldridge had been the last to die. He’d hung on long enough to look into her eyes and say, “Candy. Help me.”
But there was no helping him now.
Even before she heard them at the bottom of the stairs, she tried to pull herself together, to think. Focus, she thought. Focus.
She poked her head out the door and into the dingy hallway. To the left, the stairs. The smell of stale beer, human sweat, and cigarettes wafted up. To the right, at the end of the hallway, a window that opened onto the fire escape.
Miranda grabbed her bag and ran for the window, pushed up on it. It didn’t want to budge.
The voices were getting closer. Maybe halfway up. She could hear their footsteps. She pushed harder on the stuck window, and it rose an inch, just enough for her to slip her fingers under it. She put everything she had into lifting it, opened it wide enough to get one leg out and planted on the rusted metal grating. Then she swung her body through, her other leg.
She caught a glimpse of them entering the far end of the hallway as she pressed herself against the building’s cold brick wall. And then, as if willing herself to be weightless, she descended the metal stairs without a sound, and when she reached the bottom, ran off into the night.
She knew she’d have to get away and never come back. She couldn’t go to the police. She was on her own.
She would have to disappear. She’d have to make it so no one ever found her.
Because she knew he’d be looking. And she knew he’d never give up.
1
YOU HAVE TO EMPTY all the change out of your pockets,” the uniformed woman told me. “And I need your wallet.”
For a second, I thought about making a joke. Maybe, under less stressful circumstances, I might have. A visit to a prison under normal conditions—does anyone visit a prison under normal conditions?—would have been stressful enough. But my reasons for being here were far from normal. And there wasn’t anything normal about the guy sitting in the pickup truck, out in the prison parking lot, waiting for me to do what I’d come here to do.