To Darkness and to Death

  “I’m off duty,” Russ growled.

  “Ah. Yes. I take it from your costume you’ve been looking for animals to kill? You know what Wilde said about hunting. ‘The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.’”

  Russ rose from his seat. “Oscar Wilde was talking about hunting foxes, not deer.” Clare blinked in surprise. Hugh did as well. Russ looked Hugh up and down, taking in his purple corduroy pants and floral button-down shirt. “You ought to quote him correctly if you’re going to dress like him.” He turned to Clare. “Thanks for the soup, Clare. I’ll see you later.”

  He vanished between the swinging doors. A moment later, she heard the kitchen door shutting. She was alone with Hugh.

  If you’re trapped with no way out, you’ve got two options, Hardball Wright said. Surrender or attack. Since I don’t expect anybody who’s gone through my course to surrender, that means you attack.

  “I’ll thank you to treat my guests civilly,” she said, rising from her chair and picking up the soup bowls.

  “Me?” Hugh’s jaw dropped. “What about him?” She swept past him toward the kitchen. “And what about you?” he continued, dogging her through the doors.

  She dropped the bowls in the sink and turned on the faucet. “I think you look fine,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding his question. “Very English. American men are scared of color and pattern.”

  “I’m not talking about my damn outfit. I don’t give a rat’s ass what Dick Van Dyke there thinks about my clothing. What were you doing sitting there with him practically nude?”

  She considered saying, I don’t understand. He was fully dressed, but figured one purposefully obtuse response was her daily limit. “I’m perfectly decent,” she said firmly. “He happened to stop in right after I got out of the shower. I didn’t think he was staying long enough for me to excuse myself and get dressed.”

  “Oh, but he stayed long enough for a bowl of soup and a cozy little chat.”

  She turned to face him, bracing her hands against the counter. In her bare feet, she was only a few inches shorter than him. “What exactly are you trying to say, Hugh?”

  “I don’t think you realize how much you talk about him. When you’re on the phone to me.” He raised his voice to imitate her. “ ‘I was having lunch with Chief Van Alstyne the other day and . . . I asked Chief Van Alstyne about . . . Chief Van Alstyne says . . .’”

  “He’s my friend. I’m sure I also mention my friends Anne Vining-Ellis and Roxanne Lunt.”

  “But I don’t find you sitting around sharing soup in the buff with them!” The word “soup” curled off his tongue with a salacious hiss.

  She tilted her head up, searching for a ray of calm to settle her enough to talk to Hugh without tearing his head off. He was angry and troubled, and it was her job to help people who were hurting, not to exacerbate their wounds.

  “I’m sorry you’re upset about walking in on us like that,” she said, taking a measure of pride in how even her voice was. “But I can assure you, Russ and I didn’t do anything while he was here that we couldn’t have done right in front of you, if you had gotten here earlier.”

  “Lovely. I’m assured you didn’t have a before-dinner cock-tail.”

  Her mouth gaped open. “That is just plain nasty!” Her voice, no longer even, sounded distinctly screechy, even to her. “Maybe you ought to hightail it over to the hotel. I’ll meet you there later when you’ve had a chance to rinse your mouth out.”

  “There’s another thing. We’ve been dating for over a year now, and every time I visit you I have to make shift in a damn bed-and-breakfast.”

  “I’ve told you I can’t have a man staying in the rectory with me. For God’s sake, Hugh, my church is right next door.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you won’t stay with me in my apartment when you come to the city.”

  She looked down. “Is your friend Jackie complaining?” Clare had been the guest of a divorced coworker of Hugh’s during the three times she had visited New York.

  “Of course she’s not. But even if you’re paranoid enough to think it might get back to your congregation if you shack up in my apartment, there’s no way you can tell me anyone would know if we spent a discreet afternoon or evening together.”

  “I’d know.” She pushed the sleeves of her robe up. “I’m not just playing goody-goody because I’m afraid I’ll get caught. I believe that sex should be reserved for a committed, monogamous relationship.”

  “Then how do you explain Chief Vincent Van Gogh in your living room?”

  She stepped toward him. “I swear, in Jesus’ holy name, that I have never, ever had sex with Russ Van Alstyne.”

  “Ah, but Vicar.” Hugh looked at her ruefully. “Can you swear you don’t want to?”

  Her silence condemned her. She knew it, but she couldn’t bring herself to play Peter and deny her feelings three times. Finally she managed, “What I want or don’t want isn’t important. It’s what I do.”

  “He’s married, isn’t he?” Hugh’s voice was gentle.

  “Yes.”

  “And I suppose his wife is a real piece of work.”

  Clare looked at the kitchen wall. “His wife is a beautiful, dynamic woman who loves him very much. A sentiment that he returns.”

  “Ah.” He stared at the bottle of wine he’d been holding since he walked in. “What say we crack this open and have a couple of glasses while we talk?”

  5:05 P.M.

  Randy Schoof was being very cautious. Thinking before acting. Lisa would be pleased. He had debated hiding his truck as best he could by the old mill but had decided parking it in plain sight in the employee lot was better. There was always a collection of vehicles there, and no one in a hurry to clock in or rushing to get home would be curious about one more. He had carried everything—his backpack, his sleeping bag, the groceries—in one big load rather than hiking back and forth from the mill to the parking lot. He stuck to the shadows next to the rotting clapboard as he worked his way through the skeletons of waist-high weeds. And he was quiet, as quiet as could be, despite the roar of water over the dam washing out the sound of his footsteps. At the small side door, sheltered by an enclosed overhang, he fished out his ATM card. The door was locked, but Mike, who had snuck into the building every once in a while for a joint before he was laid off, had told him the secret: The lock was crap. You could pop it with a card and reset it from inside.

  A jiggle, a lift, and Mike was proved right. He pocketed the card, slipped inside, and shut the door behind him. He took a few steps and was reaching into his backpack for his small emergency-use flashlight when he tripped over something square and painfully solid.

  “Shit!” he cried, smashing into the floor, the flashlight and the bags flying, jars and boxes thudding and clunking, his sleeping bag bouncing off into the darkness. “Shit! Shit!”

  “Who’s there?”

  He froze.

  “Who’s there?”

  It was a woman. Faint and seemingly far away, but a woman. How in the hell had a woman gotten in here?

  “Look, whoever you are!”

  Christ, they didn’t have some sort of security guard now, did they?

  “I don’t care what you’re doing here! I’m trapped, and I need help!”

  He climbed to his feet. Now what was he supposed to do? Silently he bent over, feeling for his backpack. He brushed it with the back of his hand and grabbed it. The zippers jingled, a faint noise he heard as a clash of cymbals.

  “I know you’re here. I heard you fall over something.”

  Maybe he could just stand still. Stay quiet over here by the door. Maybe he could open and close the door, pretending to leave.

  “Help me! Please, please, help me! Please!”

  Oh, God. He was never going to be able to ignore that. “Hang on,” he yelled. “I’m looking for my flashlight.” He knelt carefully and began patting down the floor, feeling for the narrow cylinder.

  “Thank you! Than
k you!”

  He got a fat bottle and a loaf of bread and something smooth and cool that he managed to identify as a knife before he sliced his palm open. He jammed everything into his backpack. Everything except his flashlight, which was nowhere within reach. “Crap,” he said.

  “What is it?” the woman called.

  “I can’t find my flashlight.” He had one in the glove compartment of his truck, but he didn’t want to appear out in the open again so soon. Maybe later.

  “Talk to me,” he said loudly. “I’ll find you by sound.”

  “I’m over here,” she said. “Near the far wall, the one closest to the river. Over here. Watch out for the stacks of pallets and the—”

  “Oof!” There was a clang as he ran straight into something large and immovable.

  “—the big machinery parts.”

  He groaned. “What are you doing here? What do you mean, you’re trapped?” He could imagine maybe one of these machines dislodging and pinning someone. But in that case, he’d expect her to sound like she was in pain.

  There was a pause. A long pause. Finally she said, “It’s embarrassing.”

  Embarrassing? Like what? The only thing that embarrassed Lisa was stuff like other people knowing she had her period, or that time he told a couple friends about her getting the hair on her upper lip zapped. “Keep talking,” he said. He meant so he could find her, but she took it as an order.

  “I met up with someone here. We were going to . . . do a bondage thing. But instead, he tied me up and left me here.”

  Randy felt a flash of heat in his belly. Christ almighty. Maybe she was wearing some weird leather getup. Or nothing at all. Not that he’d do anything. He loved his wife. But Christ, what a story to tell the guys. Then he remembered that he wasn’t going to be telling this story to anyone. Because he wasn’t here.

  His eyes had adjusted, and he could make out shapes in the darkness. Still, he almost stumbled across her. She was on the floor, leaning against another stack of pallets. The rectangular windows a story above them shed enough moonlight across the blackness that he could make out her legs, stretched out and covered in something pale. He dropped to his knees.

  She was rolled loosely into a blanket, so he couldn’t see what she had on. He couldn’t make out the details of her face, but he figured that was just as well, since that meant she couldn’t see him too well, either.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” She sounded like a runner after a race, breathing hard but trying to bring herself under control. “I’m . . . my hands and ankles are bound.”

  He reached for the blanket covering her, not touching it. “You mind if I . . . ?”

  “Please.”

  He could tell by the way she talked that she wasn’t from here. “What’s your name?” he said, still not touching the blanket.

  “M-Mel. Melanie.” She sounded as if she wasn’t sure.

  “Nice to meet ya, Melanie. I’m Mike.” He had thought the fake name up while he was crossing the floor. No use hiding out if someone could identify him by name. “I’m, uh, going to take the blanket off now.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t see you very well.”

  “It’s fine,” she said impatiently.

  Maybe she wasn’t the modest type. He tugged the blanket away, using both hands to unwrap it.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that I’ve been tied up like this all day, and it feels as if my shoulders are going to break off at this point.”

  He wasn’t interested in her explanations. He was interested in why she was trying to sell him a bullshit story about bondage gone bad. He and Lisa had married right out of high school, and he didn’t have a whole lot of experience, but he knew for sure that no woman would show up for a kinky scene with her lover dressed in a flannel shirt and sweatpants. And hiking boots? He could imagine—just—some guy getting turned on enough by the idea of struggling to undress her to leave the clothes on while he trussed her up. But hiking boots?

  His hand slipped down to her wrists, and he felt the unmistakable texture of duct tape. “I need to get my knife,” he said.

  “Of course. Thank you. Thank you.”

  He stood up and threaded his way back to the backpack and plastic bag. Thinking hard the whole way.

  His camping kit had a utility knife, but he grabbed the kitchen knife Lisa had tossed in with the groceries instead. Its serrated edge would go through the duct tape a lot faster. If he used it. He made his way back to her, this time stopping a few feet away, when he could see her outline in the dark.

  “I have the knife,” he said.

  “Thank God.” There was a quiet clink as she bent forward, like an iron manacle tapping against the cement floor. “Please, undo my hands first. My arms are numb.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” He squatted. “Just, I want to know what you’re really doing here first.”

  She stopped moving. “I told you.”

  He waited, not saying anything. It was what his dad used to do whenever he thought Randy was lying. He wouldn’t argue; he wouldn’t explain why he thought Randy wasn’t telling the truth. He’d just sit there. Quiet. Until Randy broke.

  “Cut it off! I told you, I was meeting someone here and he tied me up. I thought it was for fun.”

  He squatted, silent. He held the knife out and tilted it until the blade caught a dull gleam of light from the faraway windows.

  “Please!”

  Part of him wanted to giggle. Who would have thought it, him using his dad’s silent treatment instead of blowing up? He felt strange, grown-up and aware that he was feeling grown-up, all at the same time. Like the first time he and Lisa slept in his parents’ house, after they’d gotten married.

  “All right,” she snarled, and he was jerked into the present. “All right. Cut me loose and I’ll tell you.”

  “Tell me and I’ll cut you loose.”

  She made a noise. “Okay.” She took a breath. “I saw a man kill my brother. He put me in his car and brought me here. I think he’s trying to decide if he’s going to kill me or not.”

  His head whited out for a moment while he tried to fit that statement into the real world he lived in. The first thing he thought was Again, my luck is lousy. He had stumbled into a freaking Sopranos episode. If he let this woman go, he’d have some contract killer after him.

  “What . . . what was your brother into? So that this guy killed him?”

  “Into? He wasn’t into anything.” Her voice broke. “He was a recluse who lived in the mountains and never saw anyone except me and my sister if he could help it. I don’t know why he was killed. I don’t know anything about what’s going on.”

  Recluse. Mountain. Lisa saying, Oh, honey, it’s terrible. Mr. van der Hoeven’s been killed!

  “You’re not Melanie. You’re van der Hoeven’s sister, Millie,” he said.

  She was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said.

  “You’re missing!”

  “If you cut me loose, believe me, I won’t be.”

  He moved behind her and worked the tip of the knife under the fraying edge of one of her duct-tape manacles. He sawed back and forth. He had found the missing woman. Maybe she’d be so grateful, she’d give him an alibi. The duct tape parted around one of her wrists, and with a groan of pain she brought her arms around to her front.

  “God.” She bent over, rocking back and forth. “Oh, that hurts.”

  “Um.” He sat down, scootching a little way from her so he was out of range, in case her arms weren’t really as useless as they seemed. “Maybe since I’m helping you out, you could help me out.”

  She made a noise that might have been an encouragement to continue.

  “I’m, um, in a bit of trouble. That’s why I’m here. Maybe you could say that I was with you earlier? Like, in the middle of the day for a few hours?”

  “I could,” she said, her voice thin with pain, “but don’t you think it would look
odd that you left me tied up all day? Whatever trouble you’re in, I bet kidnapping would be worse.” Her voice changed. Became harder. “Besides, it’s up to me to get the man who killed Gene. I was the only witness to what that bastard did.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was . . .” She hesitated. “I was in an old observation tower. It’s a good walk away from where our camp is now. This man tried to take me, and my brother was protecting me, and he—the man—threw him over the railing.” She wavered for a moment before going on. “The bastard left him lying there, out in the open. Like garbage. I have to get to him, take care of his body before—” She broke off.

  Randy thought of what could happen to a body left out in the woods for a few days. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. And so will that rat bastard be. As soon as I get out of here, I’m heading straight to the cops.”

  Randy twitched. It sounded too close to his own actions today. Maybe the man who killed her brother had been a cold-blooded murderer. But maybe he had been like Randy, someone who just took one more kick from life than he could take and was then left frantically pedaling to get out from under what he hadn’t even meant to do in the first place. It didn’t seem fair that a man could spend his whole life doing the right thing and then blow it all up in five minutes’ time.

  “Who was he? This guy. I mean, why was he after you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know his name.” He couldn’t see her face at all, hunched over like she was, but he could hear the edge of satisfaction in her voice when she said, “But I got his license plate number. Right before he dumped me in the back of his Mercedes. I said it over and over to myself while I was locked in there.”

  Randy stared into the darkness, seeing not the cold and grimy old mill but the Haudenosaunee driveway under brilliant sunshine. The driveway that was blocked by a black Mercedes.