A Child Is Missing (23 page)

Now and then, Will heard a helicopter. He no longer heard the snowmobiles. Had he walked that far into the deep woods? More likely, the machines had already been used to bring people up as far as possible and were now idle.

Will looked at the sky; it was a lighter gray than before. What did that mean? That the sun was trying to squint through? Or did he just think it was lighter? In any event, the snow was still falling. If he gazed up into the swirling flakes for more than a few seconds, Will felt dizzy.

For a while, he'd been able to follow Raines's tracks. Now the snow and the wind, light but enough to help erase footprints, had made that all but impossible. Before following Raines, Will had checked the sky, determined the sun's hiding place, and oriented himself. He thought he was still taking the course Raines had set out on. But he couldn't be sure. For that matter, why assume that Raines had kept going in the same direction?

Jesus, Will wondered in a moment of panic, am I lost?

No. he was still going the way he'd started (roughly, anyhow), and he had to trust his senses. He knew full well that hikers and hunters who trusted their senses rather than their compasses sometimes walked in circles, but he banished that thought from his mind. Will didn't have a compass.

But he knew he wasn't that far from people. Way off to his left (to the west, he thought), he heard barking.

Will took a deep breath and pressed on.

The boy was awake. The hermit could tell from the stirring on the sled.

“I want to go home and see my father and mother.”

“I know, Jason. I know.”

“My name is Jamie, and I don't want to go with you anymore. I
don't
!”

“The men chasing us are bad. They set fires, just to be mean.”

“Are they with the men who took me?”

He thought about that. It was getting harder for him to keep things straight, and he didn't have an answer for the boy.

“Can you find my father?”

“I'll try. I promise.”

Wolf growled, barked once. The dogs were closer.

He stopped to rest, ate a piece of meat and some bread, tried to quiet his pounding heart. He didn't want Wolf to smell his fear.

He had to choose: He could keep going, knowing that the terrain continued to climb, and that before it started down again he'd have to cross an open stretch, or he could angle off about thirty degrees, taking a low route along a meandering stream. The high road would expose him to view from the helicopters, while the stream route would bring him closer to the men and the dogs but give him a chance of slipping through them into Deer County.

Why was it important that he get to Deer County? What if he just stopped and let the men find him? He touched the burn scars on his face, closed his eyes. As if in a dream, he saw the flames and smoke in a valley. The old sadness weighed on his shoulders, and in his memory he heard shouts and screams, his own among them. He put his hands to his ears, shook his head violently to get rid of the echoes, felt his knees buckle.

He should do it now: put the muzzle of the carbine in his mouth and—

No. Not in front of Jason. What would happen to him? What would he remember?

He opened his eyes, but the shouts and screams did not go away. The sounds were from the boy on the sled. He was crying.

“No, no, no. Don't, Jason. Don't!”

He hadn't meant to shout at the boy. Now the child screamed and sobbed louder than ever. Wolf barked, changed to a howl, and wouldn't stop.

“Shut up! Shut up, god damn you. It wasn't my fault.”

He heard other dogs. Getting closer. He started to run, tugging the sled behind him.

“Hold on, Jason. Hold on, boy.”

Wolf dashed ahead of him along the stream bank, leaping like a gazelle over fallen limbs. The dog stopped, looked back at his master, and ran like a comet back to him.

The ground along the stream was smooth, but he had to zigzag to pull the sled around dead trees. He could hear the boy. Still crying.

He heard shouts, dogs. Closer now. Too close.

He came to the rotting hulk of a tree, close to two feet thick and stretching from the stream's edge to where the land sloped up. He could rest there, and hide.

But it was too late: As he stood by the fallen tree, he saw the man with the rifle, standing on the other side of the stream about a hundred yards away. The hunter from before? Same size, same look.

The hunter was looking right at him, kneeling slowly, now getting into a prone position to shoot at him. The hunter was shouting something, but the hermit couldn't make it out. His heartbeat seemed about to burst his eardrums.

“Get down, Jason.… Wolf, here by me.…”

He got behind the dead tree, peeked over it, and saw the hunter, who was worming sideways to take cover behind a rock.

“We'll be okay, Jason. I promise—” As he turned to comfort him, he saw that the boy was no longer there. The boy had climbed over the tree hulk, tumbled in the snow, and now he was waddling like a duck through the snow toward the hunter.

“Jason, no! Don't leave me! Jason!”

The hermit put his rifle to his shoulder, aimed toward the rock the hunter was behind, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet hit the rock, and the sound of the ricochet echoed through the woods. The hermit chambered another cartridge even as he ran toward the boy. Now he saw the hunter, looking up over the rock, getting ready to shoot at him.

The hermit overtook the boy, wrapped his left arm around the child, pulled him up to him. With his right arm, he kept the carbine trained toward the hunter's rock.

“All right, Jason. Don't cry. All right. Don't kick.”

The hermit backed up, toward the dead tree. He kept his eyes on the rock; he could see the hunter's face. His lips were moving, as though he was talking to someone.

The hermit dropped the boy on the other side of the dead tree hulk, then rolled over to the other side himself. Where was Wolf? Here he was, hunkered down next to him. The dog was growling, its ears back.

Shouts. Other dogs. Very close.

Trying to gulp enough air, the hermit looked up over the log. Other men, other hunters. Two, no three more, coming up behind the first one. Taking cover behind trees and mounds, aiming at him. Wanting to take everything.

“I'll make it right, Jason. I will this time.”

He looked to his side. Again, the boy was gone, only now he was stumbling through the snow going the other way.

“Jason, don't leave—”

Still holding his rifle in one hand, he got up and ran toward the boy, away from the hunters but in their line of fire.

“Jason!”

And then he saw the last hunter, only fifty yards away on the same side of the creek bank.

Trapped now. All over. Where was Jo?

As if in a dream, he watched the last hunter kneel down and aim at him, heard the hunter shout, “Drop it
now
!”

The hermit let go of the rifle just as a bullet hit him from behind, smashing into his back near his right shoulder and knocking him off his feet.

The sky stopped spinning, and he realized he was lying on his back. His shoulder was hot and wet, and it hurt him to breathe. The rifle was still in his hands. Jason was screaming. The hermit heard Wolf barking, heard the other dogs coming. Heard another shot, heard Wolf yelp in pain.

Was he dreaming? No.

As his heartbeat quieted, he could hear the gurgling of the nearby stream.

Will had fallen way behind Raines, he guessed by a few hundred yards. His legs were tired from trudging through the snow. At one point, he had stepped into a deep snow-covered puddle. His right foot had broken the ice with a crack that would have been heard by anyone close by. His sock and foot were still dry inside the boot, but some water had gotten splashed onto his leg at knee level, so that part of his pant leg was soon frozen as hard as cast iron.

For some time, he had been hearing dogs. Now, he thought he heard shouts and screams; he wasn't sure, because the woods played tricks with sounds, and he was no outdoorsman.

When he heard the shots, he ran toward them as fast as he could. He tried to run in a straight line, hoping he hadn't been fooled by the echoes. He picked up the sound of voices coming out of a radio. Cops, he thought. The cops are up this way. Maybe Jerry is there. He owes me.

Will tried to adjust his breathing so that his chest wouldn't get exhausted. He would push himself to the limit; there was no better time.

He heard more radio squawks—he was close to the sounds, no doubt about it—and then a helicopter coming in low.

Now Will was inhaling the cold air in great gulps—he couldn't help it—and praying his heart was in fine shape, as the doctor had said just last spring, because he knew there was a big commotion up ahead, and he was going to get to it, no matter what the cost in pain, and it was quite a big cost, because he was on a long upward slope.

And now he was at a point where the terrain went up even more steeply in one direction, but off to an angle it sloped down and followed a little stream. The low route was the one to take, because Will could tell that the noises were that way.

His legs hurt terribly now, and his back ached, but it didn't matter. He was almost there.

Down a little slope, fresh tracks in the snow to guide him, tracks of men and dogs, and now he was almost at stream level, and there was sky above him (still snow coming out of it), and the sound of a helicopter filling the universe as it came in right over his head, stirring a great cloud of snow.

Just a few yards farther, around a little outcropping, and Will saw where the shouts and radio sounds were coming from.

“God Almighty,” he said. “God Almighty.”

The helicopter hovered deafeningly. A stretcher was being lowered by cable from it. A man lay on his back, his blood on the snow like spilled port on a linen tablecloth.

Almost collapsing, Will sat on a mound and watched several lawmen lift the body and lay it on the stretcher, efficiently wrapping the man in blankets and lashing him in place. Spinning as it was raised, the stretcher was hoisted into the copter. The scene reminded Will of television footage from the Vietnam War.

There was no need for him to take notes; there was no way he'd forget any of this.

Perhaps twenty lawmen were standing in groups in the snowy clearing. Several held German shepherds on leashes, and two or three were talking into hand-held radios.

And then Jerry Graham emerged from one of the groups, and Will saw at once that he was tenderly holding a little boy.

“God Almighty,” Will heard himself say again. “God Almighty.”

Will stood up, stumbled momentarily on rubbery legs, and walked toward the men.

“Shafer! What the hell … I thought I told you to stay back there.” It was Raines.

“I misunderstood,” Will said.

Raines stood threateningly before him, but Will was beyond being afraid, and he was in no mood to be pushed around.

“Jerry,” Will shouted. “Jerry!”

“Will!” Still holding the boy, Graham broke away from the others and came over to him. “He's all right, Will.”

A powerfully built man in a parka trotted over to Graham and Will and started to take the child from the agent. Will recognized him as the police chief. The boy let out a cry and wrapped his arms around Jerry Graham's neck.

“He doesn't want to go with you,” Will said to the chief. “Why don't you leave well enough alone.”

“Open your mouth again, and you're under—”

“All right! It's all right,” Graham said. “This is a good newsman here, Chief. I'll vouch for him. Will, we're all tired here.” Then to the boy: “All right, Jamie. I'll hold you. All right.”

“Jerry, tell me what you can.”

“I can't tell you much. I'm still trying to piece it together, Will.”

Will took out his notepad, tried to keep the snowflakes off it, scribbled in a trembling hand. A Deer County deputy had spotted an armed man tugging a sled with a boy on it, had shouted at the man to put down the weapon and surrender. The man had fired from behind a log, the deputy had radioed for help, and reinforcements had arrived. The man was shot when he didn't drop his rifle in time, and after deputies and police officers concluded that the boy's life was in danger.

“That's all we know for now, Will. Except that the boy is alive and seems to be in good health, all things considered. Isn't that right, Jamie?”

Jamie was still in shock from everything he'd heard and seen. But he knew that he was in strong, gentle arms. And he knew something else, and this above all. “I want to see my mother and father,” he said.

“You know what?” Graham said. “We're going to send you there right now. Have you ever ridden in a helicopter?”

“No.”

“Well, we're going to fix that right now, my friend.”

Even as the agent spoke, another helicopter was hovering loudly overhead. As snow flew like cold sparks, Will saw a chair lift being lowered by cable.

“You know what?” Graham said. “There're nice people up there with hot chocolate. Doesn't that sound great? That nice big helicopter will take you to meet your father.”

Jamie would have been afraid because of all the noise and the wind, but the man holding him seemed like a nice man.

Then Jamie saw the funny chair dangling from the copter, and he was afraid. But not for long.

“This is better than any carnival ride, Jamie. I bet none of your friends ever rode in one of these chairs.”

Jamie felt big, strong hands strapping him into the chair, then the ground was falling away under him, and he was going up toward the big noise of the helicopter, and he was spinning around and around in the chair, up through the wind and snow. But he wasn't afraid anymore, because even though he was dizzy he could see the nice man smiling and waving at him. Jamie laughed.

All of a sudden, he was inside another tin place, and hands were unbuckling him from the chair, and he was being laid onto something soft and warm, and his head was on a pillow. A pretty woman and a nice man were smiling at him, and hot chocolate was in front of his face. Jamie swallowed some and put his head back and closed his eyes. He tried to say that he wanted to go home, but he couldn't make the words come out right.