Cold Quiet Country (27 page)

The ash I’m standing behind is at the corner of a stretch of woods that runs to a pasture. Tree cover will get a rifle within fifty yards of the house, and at a good angle to put bullets into both the living room and kitchen. And through the front door.

Still, this is going to come down to a face-to-face.

Static bursts through the Bronco’s radio. Prob’ly Fenny. I head back. Should have gotten a bite to eat instead of bending Fenny. I’ve gone a day on two eggs and a handful of jerky.

I pack my pipe as I walk. Reach inside the Bronco. “Fenny. That you a second ago?”

“Sager and Odum both is about there.”

“All right.”

I climb inside, turn the radio volume down, and kill the Bronco’s engine. The wind whistles across the roof but sounds far off.

I locked the redheaded vagabond back up when I was done with her. Told the judge she was exemplary and asked him to go easy. She was a wild one, and I’d have liked to keep her around, maybe cultivate something regular. Low-class women can hump. But she disappeared after I cut her loose. The address she’d given was made up. The street was real but the numbers wasn’t. One fine quinny, though.

She could have moved anywhere. Could have run off to Monroe, most likely. They got the population to absorb a trampy woman. I suppose a baby given up for the orphanage could find his way back to Bittersmith.

Ahead, lights cut through the falling snow and then blink out, leaving a black form slowly approaching. Travis parks a few yards ahead of the Bronco’s nose and gets out. Comes to my window. I roll it down. He’s flushed.

“The tracks go to the house,” he says.

“You learn to shoot in the Army?”

“Before the Army.”

“Never killed a man, though?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Come in the Bronc a minute.” I start the engine and crank the heat. He climbs into the seat and claps his boots. Brings in his legs and the snow sticks all the way to his knees.

“How far’d you track him?”

“The woods end at a pasture closed off with barbed wire. From there it was only two hundred yards to the house.”

“Get a good look? You’d have been facing the front porch?”

“That’s right. It was dark inside. The tracks and the smoke says he’s there.”

“See anything else?”

Travis hesitates. “There’s a mess of snowmobiles parked on the back slope, far side of the house.”

“That so?” I think a minute. “How do we know it isn’t Roosevelt in the house, roasting wieners? Maybe called a friend or six over to help him with the suspect?”

“We don’t know. Either the men that rode the sleds are in the house, working Gale G’wain over, or they’re dead.”

“Why would they send one man outside to move all the sleds to the back of the house?”

The heater gets toasty and I crack my window. Travis removes his gloves and rubs his hands above the vent. He keeps his eyes straight ahead. “They wouldn’t. But if it was just G’Wain, and he knew we were coming…”

“Uh-huh. So. You give any thought to your future?” I say. “Because you’re about to face a man with a body count of, what? Eight armed men? In ten hours? You may as well be going up against God himself. Body count like that.”

The question hangs. Finally Travis meets my stare. “What angle you workin’, Sheriff?”

“No angle. I’m done. Odum’s got the sheriff’s badge.”

“How’s that going to work out?”

“Depends on facts we don’t have. I’m curious. Your daddy could have pushed your name with the town council. You two didn’t have a falling-out?”

“It’s a matter of experience. What town has a twenty-six-year-old sheriff?”

“How far you going to go in life only doing what’s been done? Or what other folks say is okay?”

“That’s been your guiding principle?”

“This is an easy town to sheriff. Crime wave is two cars with bad taillights in a single day. Only two suspicious deaths in forty years. Only one, really, seein’ as how they died at the same time. Now, I’ve gotten square in a man’s face and told him about life in Bittersmith. I’ve suggested different men might examine their hearts and think hard if they want to spend their time in a peace-loving town. And that’s something like doing more than other folks say can be done.”

“Where’s this going, Sheriff?”

“We don’t know if Roosevelt’s dead or alive.”

“More’n likely dead, the longer we jaw.”

“More’n likely dead since before either of us got out here. But supposing he’s taken hostage in there. You think Odum’s got the stones to get him out? Alive? Take a step back and look at the big picture. You think Odum’s capable of looking a man in the eye that’s bigger and stronger and faster and meaner, and telling him he ain’t welcome? Capable of telling this big ornery sonofabitch he’s liable to wind up swinging by his balls from an oak tree if he sticks around?”

“Maybe.”

“No way in hell. Odum would book him. Judge would give him a fine, and he’d be right back doing what he was doing to begin with. Only now he knows nobody’s going do a goddamn thing about it. Tough love takes toughness. A goddamn spine. A sheriff has to be able to call up a mean streak. Has to be able to turn off that little voice that only looks at short-term right and wrong, and take the long view. After the dust settles, this town’s going to be better off with Gale G’Wain dead. So if I was sheriff, one way or the other, by the end of this evening, he’d be dead. You understand that kind of logic?”

He nods slowly, like I’m dealing a trick question.

“Well, Odum don’t. So take him out of the picture. You think Sager could understand that kind of logic? And if he did, you think he’d have the nuts to say, ‘I don’t care if Gale gives himself up, he’s as good as dead’?”

“Nah. Not Sager.”

“Hell no. He puked his breakfast at Haudesert’s after twenty minutes getting used to the corpse. Roosevelt’s likely dead. Odum’s going nowhere. Sager’s about as useful as a steering wheel on a mule. That leaves you. The only one of the bunch that can do the job.”

“They’d change their minds if Odum screwed this up.”

“Town council?”

“They’d keep you on.”

“Like hell.”

It’s time for a smoke. My pipe bowl is crusty with carbon and ash. I pull a pocketknife and, arms out the window, scrape it clean. “No, Travis; I’m done. Don’t have the stamina.” I pull my arms back inside and fish my tobacco bag. “The job’s yours if you want it. Rules are a lot of words on a lot of paper. The town council will find the ones to back you. Only thing you got to think about is Odum.”

Travis looks through the windshield again. Jaw locked, thoughtful. Come on, boy. You ain’t that fuckin’ dense. I shift my leg and groan like it pains me.

“How?” Travis says.

I shrug.

Travis keeps his own council a minute. His brow wrinkles and his jaw sets. “You must be hurting after a day tromping through that.” He nods at the window. “How was she? The girl?”

“Stabbed right through her heart, I’m guessing. Her eyes were closed.”

“That ain’t normal, is it?”

“No.”

“Why would a cold-blooded murderer close his victim’s eyes?”

“Make it look like remorse set in,” I say.

“How many men are clever after killing their lover?”

“Why did the snow on the road not get hung up in the tree limbs? Who the fuck knows? There’s always things that don’t fit.”

Travis is silent. Finally he meets my eye. “If he starts shooting, there isn’t a whole lot we can do but defend ourselves. Bullets flying all over the place, maybe.”

Travis glances at me like a child testing his answer.

“All right. You go back to your car and wait on Odum and Sager. They’ll be here in a couple of minutes.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’m going up ahead, loop around. Take Election House Road back to town.”

“You’re going back to town?”

“I’m not sheriff anymore. You think on all that. Good luck.”

“Did Gwen ever tell you about the music?” Liz says. “She heard it when someone was about to die.”

We’re huddled beside the fireplace. The kitchen and stairwell are dark. Most of the windows are blasted out. We’ve kept the fire small and take heat from embers and tiny blue flames. Sitting close on the hearth, we’re as grave as orphans telling ghost stories.

During our preparations, we cached candles and matches at the basement steps, and every rifle in the house is reloaded and repositioned by a window. We even dragged Cal and Jordan into the cellar.

Liz has been indispensable and I don’t know a thing about her save she was Gwen’s friend and she tried to seduce me at Haynes’s that night I froze with the cows on death row. But all the help she’s given has just been her playing along to find out what happened. If she doesn’t like the way the story ends, our partnership will dissolve and she’ll be my worst enemy.

Problem is, I don’t know why Gwen died.

Liz says, “Gwen told me she saw faces with the music, and that’s how she knew who was going to die.”

We can’t go back…they’ll kill you,
Gwen had said.

“She must have seen faces last night,” I say.

“Maybe she didn’t want you to know.”

An ember pops and the fire sounds like crinkling foil. A flame issues from the butt of a half-burned log, and though Liz is beside me and the firelight makes her face about as gentle as Gwen’s, I’m alone like that flame, and as weak.

“You’re here to find out about Guinevere’s death,” I say. “But it won’t be long until the sheriff and his boys come for me. Every minute you stay risks your life.”

“I don’t have a life to go back to.”

“You got family—other’n your brother?”

The question hangs.

“Suit yourself. Since you can walk easier than me, you mind taking a peek through the kitchen window? See what’s going on outside?”

She rocks to her feet.

“Stand way back from the window. If there’s people outside, you don’t want them to make out your shape.”

She regards me with a look that I interpret as meaning I’m less intelligent than she is. Or maybe it’s the harsh shadows across her face. In her behavior there’s a secondary melody that clashes with the main tune. It’s like she wants to be a coquette but doesn’t clearly remember the song and mixes lines from one instrument in with another and the whole thing sounds awful. This girl doesn’t quite know how to be a girl.

She stands silently in the kitchen a few moments, and then her footsteps move more distant, and she is silent again.

Can I trust her?

I’ve told my story as if purging confusion with my words. Dying to have the truth out. There’s only one person alive who knows what happened to Gwen, and it’s me, and I don’t know what went on inside her. I don’t know Liz’s story, either. I shot her brother and she hasn’t said a word of complaint. Been too caught up in my drama to ask why she didn’t mind me killing him and is all-fire concerned with understanding Gwen’s last minutes.

In her heart, is she on my side, or is she ready to turn as soon as she knows? Is Liz the one who kills me? Or is she still looking for me to help her run away?

“I guess you went home that night after visiting me at the butcher’s?”

She answers from the other room, “I had no choice.”

“I was sorry about that—not being able to help.”

Her feet shuffle across the kitchen and I squeeze the rifle’s grip.

“There’s no one outside,” she says, rounding the corner into the living room. She stands to the side of the window overlooking the lake, where Jordan poked his rifle through, and watches. “Maybe no one will come. Why do you think they will?”

“The first man I killed was a deputy. I woke up on the couch and he had a gun to my temple. He was here for revenge, and I guess he figured he’d make it look like I resisted arrest and he had to kill me. He didn’t know I had a revolver on my hip. If he figured out where I ran to, the whole mess of them can figure it out.”

“Finish your story about Gwen.”

“There’s more than that. I’ve seen vehicles parked through the trees. They’re out there.”

“What happened with Gwen?”

“I’d prefer if you come over here, beside me.”

She reaches to the rifle propped at the corner of the sofa and the wall, cocks the hammer and points at me. “I prefer staying over here.”

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

“Tell me the story, Gale. I won’t leave until I’m satisfied with what happened to Gwen.”

“Satisfied? That’s a hell of a word.”

“Maybe if you’d tell the fucking story you’d be satisfied too. Maybe.”

“Don’t point the rifle at me while I’m talking. You’ll have plenty of time to aim if you don’t like what you hear.”

She lowers the muzzle. “You left off when you and Gwen entered the woods.”

“It was getting hard to walk. The shock of the whole thing with Burt and the knife wore off and I was starting to think better. I don’t know if you’ve ever been really, really cold, but your mind gets cloudy and then clear. Tranquil, like everything’s going to be fine. By then we were at the forest and had difficulty crossing all the brush Burt left when he cut firewood a couple years ago. Gwen had to help me move my leg high enough a couple times. Once we worked through twenty or thirty feet of brush and briars, the trees calmed the wind and it wasn’t quite so cold.

“I kept thinking about her foot, and that there was no way she’d escape frostbite. I couldn’t move fast enough. I swiped a few curls of bark from a paper birch tree and told her, ‘Hold up and we’ll build a fire.’ And she said, ‘Just a little ways farther so the smoke won’t catch anyone’s eye.’ I said, ‘There’s a grove of bull pine ahead.’ Ponderosa is good for holding the smoke and spreading it out before letting it go. I’d built a fire there the night before while I waited to go see her.”

Liz nods.

“Gwen took the lead. I watched her feet cut through the snow. Even in the woods it was deeper than her ankle. She didn’t say a word about it. I saw through the tree limbs that we were getting close to the pine and I wanted to build a fire and press her feet to my belly and make them warm, and then trade out with her and let her wear one of my boots, even though it’d be too big. We’d been in the snow fifteen or twenty minutes, and I still hoped…she’d be able to stay healthy. If I could have gotten her warm.