Cold Heart (17 page)

She stepped into the shed, lantern first, and spotted Clive immediately.

She screamed.

The noise shattered the silence like glass and Dawn nearly dropped the lantern.

Clive was staring at her.

But he had no eyes.

Two gouged sockets oozed blood onto his cheeks.

Dawn spun away and vomited.

Did El do that to Rita too?

To Howard and her mother?

Dawn was suddenly terrified that Rita had sneaked up behind her and was about to grab her. Dawn jerked to the side and glanced back into the gloomy store. But there was no one there.

One way or the other she was doomed to have a corpse behind her. If she faced the store she would be terribly close to Clive and if she watched Clive then something could sneak up behind her from the store. She wiped her mouth on her shirtsleeve but the sickly-sweet taste would not go away.

Clive leaned against the far wall, sitting upright, his hands resting on the floor between his legs. A small puddle of blood pooled around his butt. Dawn slipped past him and set the lantern on the worktable, lifting the big latch again and pushing the sliding door half-open. A dull gray light seeped in and so did frigid air and fluttering flakes. It felt more like February than early May. But the weather was funny in the mountains. It could thaw in December and Dawn had seen a freak snowstorm in late June. This might be just a cold front blowing in for a day or so or they might soon be buried.

Now, with more light, she studied the telephone-equipment room. There was a heavy handmade door, like all the doors in McRay, with a smaller AT&T logo on it and a doormat in front of it. Clive had always wiped his feet before going in. That struck Dawn as stupid, since no one else ever went in the room. But then, maybe the AT&T people came down to work on the equipment now and then and Clive was the type of person to run a neat place.

There was a heavy padlock on a big steel hasp. The lock was nearly the size of her fist and there were no exposed hinges on the door. The door swung inward. She thought about finding a pry bar or some other tool but when she glanced around the room, the only tools she could see were saws and wrenches. So she grabbed a large crescent wrench off the worktable, sidling around Clive and glancing once more into the dark store, but all the wrench did was twist the lock around. The bolt of the lock was almost as thick as the steel handle of the wrench. No way she was breaking in.

Where would the key be?

Suddenly her anger at El and the world in general mixed with her frustration at not being able to get into the radio room. Without thinking, she flung the wrench across the shed, praying even as it left her grasp that she didn't hit Clive.

The wrench clattered along the concrete floor and out the door.

Where was the damn key?

There were only three places Dawn could think of that Clive would have put the key.

She crept back out into the store.

She searched the money box beneath the counter, surprised that El didn't seem to have disturbed it. But then he wasn't after money. He was after the whole town.

There was no key.

The other place would be on a key ring attached to the four-wheeler. She tried to remember if she'd ever seen other keys hanging from the starter on Clive's Honda, but couldn't.

That left only one place. She stood in the doorway, trying not to look at Clive's empty sockets and chewing her lower lip.

C
LIVE'S FOUR-WHEELER WAS
parked in front of Micky's stoop and her front door was open. The wind stung her face and whipped noisily through the trees. Large white flakes gusted in thickening flurries.

As soon as she reached the end of the trail and saw the Honda she had wanted to shout at Clive.

But why was he here now?

No way it had taken him this long to come by for the glass piece.

She thought of the popping noises she'd heard and the gunsmoke she could now smell coming from the direction of the store and fear gripped her.

Micky slid quickly behind a big spruce just as El stepped out onto her porch. Her heart pounded and her throat tightened. El had Clive's short carbine in his left hand. He glanced around the clearing, as though he had heard or seen her, but of course that was impossible.

But Micky knew from experience that in situations such as this senses were heightened. She remembered
knowing
what the gunman was doing on the other side of the door in the bar.

Did El sense that she was here?

After a moment he turned and went back into the cabin and, thankfully, he closed the door behind him.

But what is he doing in there and how did he get Clive's four-wheeler and gun?

Clive wouldn't have given either of them up willingly.

El might have taken it at gunpoint and left. But what were the popping noises?

Was El destroying all the ammunition at the store?

Or was the store itself on fire?

Could the shells exploding sound that loud, inside the store?

Micky didn't think so.

But none of that proved that Clive and Rita were dead. Micky clutched at that straw of hope. The last thing she wanted to consider was that she was going to be left alone and weaponless in McRay with an armed madman.

If El was destroying guns and ammo, he would have found the Glock in her cabin immediately. But he had to be certain that it was her only gun. He was probably ransacking her house.

She glanced at the four-wheeler and considered making a getaway. She was pretty sure she could start the machine, but driving it was another matter. And anyway, by the time she got the motor kicked over and figured out how to get it into gear, El would have come outside and blown her brains out.

But the Honda still held her attention.

She studied the small VHF radio strapped under the gas tank.

There was a matching radio beneath the counter in the store. Clive kept both of them charged and Rita turned on the radio whenever Clive left, so that if he needed to get a message to her he could. That radio was the quickest way that Micky could think of to find out if everyone was okay at the store, and to let them know what had happened to Aaron.

The only problem was getting it.

The four-wheeler was fifteen yards away and completely exposed. The cabin door was closed but she would be seen easily through the window if El happened to glance in her direction. He could shoot her right through the glass. She'd never even hear the bullet that killed her. She stared at the little black box in its leather holster and gauged her need against her chances.

She had to find out if anyone was alive at the store but the presence of the four-wheeler here at her cabin argued against that. Realistically she didn't see Clive giving it up or, alternatively, El overpowering Clive and Rita and leaving them alive. Not after what she'd seen at Aaron's. El wasn't tying people up.

He was murdering them.

Still, the radio called to her. She didn't have access to a gun now. Communication with another sane human being might be her only means of saving her own life. And if she stayed low, El would have to be right up close to the window to see her.

Dropping to her hands and knees, she watched the door, trying to estimate how long he'd stay inside searching her house. He might come out at any second. But she had to chance it.

She did a fast low crawl to the four-wheeler, curling up tight behind the rear wheel. Her fingers fumbled at the snap of the radio holster. She was shaking from cold and fear but she managed to get the radio into the pocket of her jacket just as the door creaked.

She froze.

The door opened just a crack.

Did the wind do that?

Or was El peeking out through the slit, waiting?

The wind could open her door. The latch didn't always hold unless the sliding bolt was secured in place from inside.

But it was just as possible that El had heard it blow open and was now glancing through it at the clearing.

Which was it?

A million scattered snowflakes twisted and twirled in the wind.

But not enough to obscure the view from her door or the window.

A giant spruce behind the cabin grated against another tree.

She couldn't stay where she was.

She rolled over onto her side and skittered back down the way she had come, into the protection of the woods below. But she didn't stop there. She burrowed into the
brush and found a spot where she could pull branches aside to afford a narrow view of her cabin and the clearing around it.

No gunfire erupted.

So El hadn't been watching.

But now the front door swayed back and forth, with the changing pressure of the wind.

Something tickled the back of her spine. Foreboding swept over her and she glanced in mounting horror at the four-wheeler.

She had forgotten to close the snap on the radio holster. It hung limply, advertising the missing radio.

Damn!

It seemed like hours, but in fact it was less than a minute before El came back out. He hurried down her steps and climbed back on the Honda. He fastened the carbine on the handlebars and was about to press the starter when he stopped. He leaned over and glanced down.

Micky knew that he was staring at the empty radio holder.

She stiffened.

El's hands dropped from the handlebars to his sides and he ever so slowly surveyed the entire clearing and cabin area. Three hundred and sixty degrees. When the reflective lenses of his glasses passed over her it was all that she could do not to leap up and start running. That old feeling of utter helplessness gripped her.

If she let it grow, it would overpower her. She had to do something to help herself or she was going to end up cowering here, waiting until El found her.

It occurred to her that that might not be such a bad idea. Hiding right here, until help arrived.

El had already murdered Aaron and probably Terry and Dawn, Rita and Clive.

Micky knew now that the shots she had heard earlier, across the creek, had been El. The scream she didn't want to think about. But it kept replaying itself in her head. The cry she had written off as the noise of a jay sounded exactly like her mother's death scream. Like Terry or Dawn Glorianus crying their lungs out. Why hadn't she recognized it for what it was?

She had ample excuse for finding a good hiding place and simply waiting for someone to rescue her.

That's what she'd done last time.

And the time before that.

And she'd survived.

She'd hidden and she'd lived.

The mail plane was due in a few hours. And of course Anchorage would start wondering why there was no weather report coming in, and if Clive didn't answer the phone, AT&T would send someone to investigate. Pretty soon the troopers would be on the scene.

But she knew in her heart that El would kill everyone else left alive in town if she didn't warn them. There were no Houston cops outside and El wasn't likely to give up and wander away the way the kid that murdered her parents had.

If she didn't do something, a lot more innocent people were going to die.

Nonchalantly, El reached down and resnapped the radio case. He cranked up the motor and made a wide circle across Micky's front lawn, coming within ten feet of her hiding place as he passed. She watched his face as he rode by and involuntarily, she sucked in her breath.

Her mind was playing tricks on her.

But in that instant, as she saw his hair whipping in the wind, and the dull light reflected in his glasses, she was certain that he was the same man who had murdered her parents, the same man who had returned years later to murder Wade. And now he was here, in McRay, still looking for her.

She crouched deeper into the shadows of the alders and shivered, clutching Clive's radio tightly in her hands and praying that the demons in her head would leave her alone, as the four-wheeler whined away down the trail.

C
LIVE WAS STILL WARM
and his flesh was soft beneath his clothing. Dawn patted the cloth and discovered the keys instantly. But getting them out was another matter.

His bloody face was only inches from hers and she was terrified that, just as she slipped her hand into his pocket, he would reach up and grab her in his dead embrace and pull her tightly to him. Goose bumps covered her entire body.

She fought her fingers down into his pants pocket and weaseled at his keys with her fingertips until she snagged the ring and jerked and worried it out, backing hastily away from Clive's corpse.

Clive never moved.

But all the keys were much too large to fit the lock. She flung them across the room in disgust and went to find a hammer. But now it, too, had proven ineffectual. She dropped it back into the toolbox and stared at the hasp.

Behind her, through the sliding door, she heard the distant sound of the four-wheeler and her breathing quickened. She had to get away. If she wasn't out of the clearing before El came down the trail again, she was dead. A gust of wind slapped her hard in the face as she started to step outside.

A tiny voice came from inside the store and she nearly peed her pants.

It was a nasal whisper and her first panicked thought was that it was Rita, that she was still alive and calling for help. Dawn stepped back into the shed and listened.

“Rita? Clive?”

The voice was scratchy and low, but it sounded like Micky Ascherfeld.

Dawn stared into the store. The growl of the fourwheeler was getting nearer. She made a decision. Closing the big sliding door but not latching it, she slipped back into the store.

The voice returned. “Rita? Clive?”

This time Dawn recognized it as coming from a radio. She glanced under the counter and there, beside the cash drawer, found a small handheld transceiver. She picked it up and fumbled for the transmit button.

H
OLDING THE RADIO AGAINST
her cheek, Micky closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. Dawn chattered into the radio and Micky struggled to make sense of what the girl was saying.