Cold (46 page)

The child’s arms clutched her neck tightly.

Liesl walked on but after about a hundred yards she sat down in the snowbank and took the sling off.
 
The exposed portion of her face hurt, particularly the forehead and the bridge of her nose.
 
The ache seemed to penetrate the skin and sink right into the bone.
 
She lay back on the snowbank and held the girl tight to her chest, trying to protect her from the wind.

“Here, come inside.”

She moved as quickly as possible:
 
she put the child down, removed her coat, hung the sling with the child in it around her neck, and then put the coat on, zipping it up to her throat.
 
The girl placed her head between Liesl’s breasts and tucked her hands under her armpits.
 
Liesl folded her arms over the child and rubbed her back and shoulders.
 
She was reminded of when she was pregnant.
 
She was always thankful that she had carried Gretchen through the winter months, when the child would help keep her warm.

•

After passing a waterfall Del found that the tracks went separate ways.
 
The footprints continued down an old logging road, while the snowshoe trail went up through the wooded hill.
 
Pronovost must have thought he could catch up to Norman. Warren was farther behind but he had the advantage of wearing snowshoes and he figured by cutting over the hill he’d get to his brother first.
 
Del began to follow the snowshoe tracks up the hill.
 
The bearskin coat was long and heavy and remarkably warm; its smell reminded him of his dogs after they’d been out in the rain.

•

There was a sound behind Norman—turning, he saw his brother emerge from the shadows and walk slowly around to the front of the cage.

 
“How’d you know Yates was here?”
 
Warren held the constable’s .38 at his right side.

“Only made sense,” Norman said.
 
“The man disappears just before my trial begins.
 
Of course they suspected that I did something to keep him from testifying.
 
And when he didn’t turn up after the snow melted in the spring I knew he’d be buried where no one would look.”
 
He took a step toward his brother.
 
“The idea to make it look like I killed Yates—I know it was Pronovost’s.”

Warren smiled.
 
“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which Pronovost—Noel or her father?”

“Noel?”

Warren nodded.
 
“She was that mad at first—when she realized that her hearing wouldn’t come back.
 
She
came up with it.
 
My guess is she never thought her father would see it as something that could actually be
done.
 
You know that bitch has a lot of ideas, but she doesn’t always execute.”

“So her father did it.”

“When you come right down to it, Daddy does most everything for Noel.
 
He did the deed, and it worked.
 
But it was her idea originally.”

Norman understood that it was the thing she had been holding back.
 
He knew there was some regret she was carrying.
 
“So, you didn’t kill him,” he said, “but you went along with it.”

“I dug the hole—
that
was my contribution.
 
Seemed every fall these past few years Pronovost has me digging the same damned hole out here.
 
Lot of unhappy bears put to rest.
 
I just got tired of it.”

“But you kept your mouth shut—something you rarely do, Warren.
 
You kept quiet just so I’d go away for a long time.
 
Then you’d do all right with Noel, and that meant that eventually there’d be all this land out here.
 
For you.
 
Didn’t work out though.”

“I admit it didn’t work out the way I thought,” Warren said.
 
“And now I’ve got a simpler plan.
 
Much simpler—I’m just going to take what’s mine.”

Norman looked at the gun.
 
“The true hunter.
 
At last.”

“Noel told me about Lorraine.
 
You really believe she’s yours?”

“That’s more important than land, isn’t it?
 
Blood.
 
You know she’s mine.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Warren said.
 
“She may be
yours
but she’s going to
believe
she’s mine.
 
In the long run
that’s
what counts—not whether it’s
true,
but what she grows up to
believe
is true.”

“You really think so?”

“I do,” Warren said.
 
“I really do and you fucking know it.
 
You might say it’s my creed.
 
We all gotta have a creed, right?
 
What you believe
is
the truth.”

“You were never satisfied with just your own,” Norman said.
 
“You always had to have mine too.
 
Ever wonder why that is?
 
Why you can’t get enough?”

“I think you sat in prison and thought about things too much.”

“I had the time to work a few things through.”

“I got better things to do,” Warren said.

“No, you’ve never had better things to do.
 
That’s just it, Warren.
 
You have no purpose.
 
You never have.
 
Since we were kids, if Mom told you what to do you didn’t want to do it.
 
If there was nobody to tell you what to do, you’d just sit there, all pissed off.
 
When we got older, you just killed time the best way you could.”

“You used to get real fucked up—and for free, thanks to your big brother.”

 
“It’s the only favor you’ve ever done me and it wasn’t any favor.
 
I always knew I wanted out of it.
 
That’s the difference—I saw there was something better and I wanted to get it.
 
You just wanted what I had because you couldn’t stand to see me have something.
 
And Noel was the best thing I ever found.”

 
“Maybe you just shot too high,” Warren said.

“No, you brought both of us down.”
 
Norman took a step toward his brother.
 
“I’ll tell you one thing—it won’t work with Lorraine.
 
She won’t believe you’re her father for long.
 
She’ll figure it out eventually.”

“You believe
that?”

     
“I do.
 
I really do, Warren.
 
You know, Noel told me she’s already seen something of me in Lorraine, in her attitude, the way she thinks.
 
She gets older, it’ll come out more and more.”

“I don’t think so,” Warren said.

“Yeah, you do.”

Warren raised the gun, aimed it at Norman, but then he hesitated.

“What?” Norman asked.
 
“You’re always so certain.
 
Maybe you just can’t shoot.”
 
Norman took another step and stopped, not five strides away from his brother.
 
“You could make a clean heart shot at this range but I don’t think you got it in you, Warren.
 
Right?”

Something in Warren’s eyes was breaking down, giving way.
 
Suddenly a sheen of tears glossed his eyes and he seemed almost to be pleading.
 
But then his mouth tightened.
 
“Shit, Norman,” he whispered as he raised his arm to sight down the barrel.
 
“We’re both so far out in the cold, there’s no getting back now.”

“Warren,”
 
Pronovost shouted from the dark.
 
“Look at me, Warren.”

Reluctantly, as though he didn’t want to lose his concentration, Warren turned his head to his right.

Pronovost said, “Allow me the pleasure.”

“Fuck you.”

A gunshot echoed through the sawmill and Warren’s body was yanked backwards, his arms lifting into the air as he fell on his left shoulder.
 
Blood issued from a hole in his forehead and ran down through his eyebrows.

Norman’s face had been sprayed with blood and bone fragments.
 
The gun lay on the ground near his feet.
 
He picked it up and lunged toward the shadows as another shot was fired.

•

 
“You all right, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” Lorraine said from inside the front of her coat.

“Good.”
 
Liesl got to her feet and began walking, her back bent due to the weight of the child, her head lowered so that she watched her boots move through the snow.
 
Occasionally she looked up to get her bearings.
 
She was walking uphill and the wind was coming from the north.
 
She could see hills now, but there was no sign of the lodge on a ridge. “Know any good songs, Lorraine?”

After a moment, the child said, “‘Crazy.’”

“Patsy Cline?
 
Can you sing it?”
 
The girl was silent.
 
“Maybe we could sing it together—I think I remember the words.
 
Okay?”

The small voice inside her coat sang,
“‘Cra-zy,’”
and Liesl joined in as she walked.
 
They got through the first verse and got stuck on the second, so they went back to the first.
 
They sang it three times.

Liesl stopped walking.
 
She turned her back to the wind and among the hills below her she saw a faint dark plane—a roof.
 
It had to be the sawmill Noel had mentioned, perhaps a half-mile across a field and through the woods.
 
She looked up the road again and couldn’t see the lodge; it could be miles still, and she needed to get out of this weather.
 
She climbed over the snowbank and started across the field toward the woods.
 
Lorraine kept singing.

•

As he reached the crest of the hill, Del heard two quick shots.
 
He was certain they came from inside the building down below.
 
At this distance he couldn’t be sure if it was from his .38 or Pronovost’s 9 mm.

He hadn’t handled a crossbow since he was in high school; his grandfather only bowhunted and his collection included one crossbow, which Del was only allowed to use on the target out behind the barn.
 
The crossbow wasn’t for hunting, his grandfather said; it was a weapon for warfare dating back to the Romans.
 
His was a replica of a design made in Massa Marittima, Italy, in the fifteenth century.
 
It had ornate scrollwork carved into the wood stock and was very heavy.
 
The camouflaged crossbow Del had brought from the lodge was made of light, strong composite materials.
 
He lowered the bow and put his foot in the stirrup and drew the string back, flexing the bow, until it locked in the trigger mechanism.
 
He set one of the two quarrels in the channel groove and removed his foot from the stirrup.
 
The crossbow’s stock fit nicely into his shoulder, and the weapon felt taut and balanced in his hands.

The snowshoe tracks that he’d been following veered off to the right, and he followed them through the woods around to the back of the building.
 
Gaps in the roof admitted only thin shafts of light.
 
Chains hung from fallen beams, clinking softly in the wind.
 
There was an odor, pleasant and unexpected in such cold—the smell of freshly turned earth—and he came to a hole filled with pale sticks.
 
In the dim light it took a moment to realize he was looking at a heap of rib cages, thick femurs, scalloped hips, angled joints bent in a mockery of repose.
 
Some of the skulls faced up, while others seemed to be looking into the ground, dejected.
 
All had been shot once in the forehead.
 
Executed.

“You seem destined to be one with the bears,” Pronovost said.
 
“Something about that coat, all that long brown fur.”
 
His voice echoed among the timbers and it was difficult to tell what direction it came from—and, worse, there was almost a joyous tone to it, as though he were playing God.
 
“It appears that someone has disturbed their hibernation,” he said.
 
“Or maybe I should say it’s been extended.”

Del stepped into the shadows behind a long wooden chute.
 
He crouched down and looked along the floor but he could not see any movement.

“Constable, you have to realize that bear farming is legal in places like China.
 
Their government’s argument is that it’s for the benefit of the species.
 
Helps control illegal activity, poaching.
 
If they had started farming earlier in Asia, they wouldn’t have to look for bears over here now.
 
We’re what you might call ahead of the curve.”