Cold Heart (20 page)

“Maybe it's a bear.”

“Maybe. So then why did Clive blast off all those shells?”

“We don't know it was Clive,” said Marty.

“Exactly.”

“We won't find out standing here.”

“Why don't you say it?”

“Say what?”

“It was El Hoskins.”

Marty spit into the snow. “I don't know anything of the sort.”

“You been saying for years El was going to go off like a stick of dynamite someday. Everybody knows it.”

“This is silly. We're wasting time standing here.”

“We ought to get down to the store and find Clive.”

“Ten minutes ago you wanted to take off and go back to get packs. Now you want to get right over to the store,” said Marty, disgusted. “Go. I'm going to find out what the shouting's about.”

He clomped down the steps and past Stan, close enough to brush him with his shoulder. He had one foot on the bridge, expecting to hear Stan's footsteps behind him, but the only sound was the wind howling overhead and the barely audible murmur of the creek, tugging at the wood pilings of the bridge.

Marty waited, as though catching his breath. But still there was silence.

Finally, he turned.

Stan was standing right where he'd left him, hand still on his hip, pouting.

Marty sighed. It was like bringing up a kid.

He waited.

Stan looked away, ignoring him.

Marty tightened his grip on his rifle and hiked back up the trail.

“I'm not going to the store yet, Stan.”

“We should go there first.”

“Stan, do you have any idea how much time we waste arguing?”

“Then don't argue,” said Stan. “Let's go.”

But Marty shook his head.

“No. First I'm going to go see if Terry and Dawn are all right. Doesn't that make any sense to you at all? We hear shots. There are two unarmed women here. It's time for bears to come out of hibernation. Let's think now.” He tapped the top of his head with one finger.

“So, who took Howard's guns?”

The only idea that Marty could come up with on short notice was that someone had broken into Howard's cabin and stolen them.

But where was Howard?

Stan was right. The whole thing stunk of El.

“I don't know,” said Marty. “I'm just trying to figure this out.”

“Who would do something like that?” said Stan, shaking his head. “Everybody here knows everybody else.”

“Maybe an Indian.”

“Yeah,” said Stan. “Maybe.”

But Indians didn't steal and the chances of one bothering to wander deeper into the valley than Cabels’ Store were almost nonexistent.

“I don't want to go on alone, Stan,” said Marty.

“Well, why didn't you say so?” said Stan.

Marty hiked back across the creek, listening to Stan's boots clocking on the wooden bridge.

M
ICKY STOOD HALFWAY TO
the cabin, in the midst of the garbage that now bore an icing of thin wet snow. The old bear sat up on her haunches, ignoring the bag between her legs, watching Micky.

The bear looked like a fat old woman, with her bag of popcorn, waiting for a movie to begin. If there had been a sturdy fence between them, Micky might have found the image humorous.

She had again considered giving up her quest and backing down the trail. But she had to get her hands on a gun and if El was trashing them all as he had hers, the closest place to look for one was inside
his
cabin.

Somehow she had to get the bear off the stoop without provoking the animal. The problem was that her plan to scatter more garbage for the bear had a flaw.

To get to the bags Micky had to edge along the side of the cabin and eventually that would place her outside the bear's range of vision and the old sow wanted to know where Micky was at all times.

The closer Micky inched, the louder and more ominous the bear's growls became. She was lazily baring her teeth to let Micky know that she wasn't happy. Micky could see the dirty ivory color of the animal's claws and she knew how
sharp they could be. There were bear trees all around the valley, favorite scratching posts where the big grizzlies would stand on their back legs and reach up and rake their talons down through the bark, leaving deep scars in the trees, often an inch deep and ten or twelve feet off the ground.

“I'm going to get you some more food!” Micky shouted. “Food!”

She felt silly, talking to a bear. Even if bears did communicate, would they speak English? She tried to remember if she knew the Athabaskan word for food or garbage.

Jesus.

She might just as well have been shouting
oogahbooga
for all the damn bear understood. But she kept talking, more for herself than the bear's sake.

“Not going to bother you! Just gonna get you some more food!”

With each syllable she eased another mincing step through the snow.

Now the bear had to lean her head out to see around the end of the cabin. The logs on each corner were stacked in a staggered pattern and Micky could see the bear's muzzle framed between two of the square-cut ends. When Micky reached the point that she could no longer see the bear's one cold eye, she bolted for the stack of bags.

She hadn't counted on how slippery the trash had become beneath the dusting of snow. Her second step landed on something that shot out from under her. She lurched forward, and before she could brace herself, the ground hit her solidly in the face. The wind blasted from her lungs and her diaphragm screamed for air.

No problem.

She forced herself through a mental inventory to see if she had damaged anything.

Her first concern was her back. She recalled the long weeks in agony, the pain shooting up her spine, the nights when she had to sleep in a recliner because there was no comfortable position to be found anywhere in bed.

But there was no back pain.

Thank God.

What there was, was a snuffling sound behind her and a
nasty rash of goose bumps creeping up where the pain should have been. She lifted her head ever so slowly and turned to the rear of the cabin, where she got a fleeting glimpse of another big black nose, poking around the logs.

She managed to catch her breath but let it out instantly as the sow's cub came sauntering around to see what all the excitement was about.

D
AWN MADE CERTAIN THE
volume on the radio was way down before depressing the talk button. She wasn't sure if Micky was hearing her anymore but she desperately needed to communicate with someone.

El was still in Clive's workshed. She could hear his voice but couldn't make out what he was saying.

She pressed the transmit button and whispered Micky's name.

Nothing.

She experimented by turning up the volume. Just a hair.

Nothing.

Outside the wind whistled under the eaves, and the day was gloomier than ever. Dawn thought of her mother, back in their cabin, surrounded by cold and darkness, and tears stung her eyes.

She was alone as she had never been in her life. Her mother was the only family Dawn had known for years and she felt deserted and betrayed even as she experienced a deeper guilt than she had ever known could exist.

I didn't do anything to help her.

When El was stabbing the knife into her back, I didn't even scream.

She had just stood there, motionless, sucking in her
breath, terrified, useless. When he'd murdered Howard she had been equally worthless. She knew that Terry or Howard would have sacrificed their own lives to save her and she had done absolutely nothing for them.

A tiny voice argued that there was nothing that she could have done. That anything she'd tried to do would only have gotten her killed too. But it was a small voice and ineffective against the massive guilt welling up inside her.

El began to take on new dimensions.

Dawn began to wonder if El had some kind of magical powers.

Look how easily he'd killed her mother and Howard and Rita.

How he knew to wait for Clive.

And what was he doing to them now? Why was he cutting them up like that?

It seemed like some kind of sick ritual.

“Micky?” she whispered into the radio. “Are you still there?”

From the store below came the eerie sound of El, humming a tune.

T
HE CUB EYED MICKY
curiously. He snuffled through the garbage on the ground around her while, behind her, Micky heard the alarming sound of the steps creaking beneath the massive weight of the sow. Dawn's voice screeched from the radio in her pocket.

Micky couldn't reach for it. She was afraid to move or breathe.

She couldn't believe the situation.

She pictured Aaron coming upon the scene and laughing.

A bear behind her. A bear in front of her. And she was lying in a pile of garbage.

Add to that the fact that Aaron was lying dead up the trail.

Terry and Howard lying dead down the trail.

And Dawn calling on the radio to announce that El was mutilating his victims.

Micky didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

She wanted to jump up and scream at the two bears to get the fuck out of her way because she really didn't have time for this shit. A part of her mind told her to go ahead. That it just might work. Bears were known to back down when faced with a noisy, aggressive opponent.

But not a sow with a cub.

Micky knew that if she stood up right now, if she made any move that the mother took to be in any way threatening to her offspring, she would die.

She turned her head to watch the cub but she sensed the sow right behind her. The big bear was close enough that Micky could hear its rumbling breath. Close enough that she got a good whiff of the rancid smell of the animal. She had heard that bears stunk but she never expected to get close enough to one to actually experience it. The odor was a mixture of rotten garbage and feces and wet soil.

Aaron said that some bears were like dogs. They liked to roll in anything that stank. Now she had direct proof. The cub dropped down on all fours right in front of her face and rolled over in the snow, dredging up half-empty food cans and plastic bread bags. He rolled back over onto his stomach, his nose inches from hers. At that range, with his canines exposed, he didn't look at all cute and cuddly.

Something sharp nudged the nape of Micky's neck.

M
ARTY LIFTED A PILLOWCASE
from the ground and dusted off the snow. The rest of the laundry sculpted odd white patterns on the Glorianus front lawn. Stan reached down and retrieved a sheet. When he shook the clinging wet snow from it, Marty let out a low gasp.

“Shit,” said Stan.

They both stared at the bloody boot print that desecrated the perfect white of the cotton.

Both of them dropped the linens and lifted their rifles. They turned back to face the dark windows of the cabin, which suddenly seemed to have a much more foreboding stare. Marty lowered himself into a crouch and hurried closer to the wall, where he wouldn't be a good target. He waved impatiently at Stan, who was still looking left and right, peering inside. Stan nodded, then slipped over beside Marty.

“You want to get your ass shot off?” hissed Marty.

“I didn't see anything.”

“Neither did they,” said Marty, nodding back toward the laundry.

“Yeah,” muttered Stan.

They glared at each other for a minute, Marty knowing that he had to take charge and also knowing that Stan was going to argue with him.

Marty tried to think where the voice had come from. It sounded like a woman and it had barely carried through the gathering storm.

“You think he's inside?” said Stan. Both of them knew who
he
was. That wasn't a bear track on the sheet. And Terry would never have left her linens out in the snow.

This had to be El's doing.

He was Dawn and Terry's closest neighbor.

The shots had come from this area.

And nobody else in the whole world was as fucking nuts as El.

Maybe Dawn or Terry had gotten away and El was after them or maybe he had taken one or both of them back to his cabin. But then whose blood was on the sheet?

Or maybe he was inside.

Maybe he was wounded.

Maybe it was El's blood.

Maybe a lot of things. He and Stan couldn't leave the cabin without finding out first if El was in there or if Terry or Dawn were in there and needed their help. But Marty didn't want to shout to find out. What if El wasn't inside but close by? They'd just be alerting him to their presence.

“We need to find out if anyone's inside,” said Stan, loudly.

Marty cuffed him on the mouth.

“Hey!” Stan reared back, his face reddening.

“Shut up!” rasped Marty. “Do you want to let him know where we are?”

“You shouldn't have done that.”

Marty skittered along the cabin to the door. He reached out and pushed it in. Stan hurried past the opening to the other side of the jamb.

At least he was smart enough not to deliberately make a target of himself.

The door creaked slowly open.

Marty listened.

The wind camouflaged any noises from the cabin's interior. But a wide smear of blood started at the threshold.

Stan's jaw dropped.

The shit had definitely hit the fan in McRay.

M
ICKY STRAINED TO HEAR
.

But the snuffling of both bears, the pounding of her heart, and the crying of the wind was closer and more immediate than the voice that she thought she'd heard back down the trail.

It sounded like a man's voice.

Had El slipped out of the store when Dawn wasn't looking? Was he coming back to the cabin? She pictured herself caught between two grizzly bears and a serial killer.

But surely he hadn't had time.

She closed her eyes and started to count seconds between breaths, forcing her lungs to take in only enough oxygen to keep her body running, and willing her heart to slow. She relaxed her hands and wriggled her toes in her boots.