Cry for the Strangers (31 page)

They were in the tiny sitting room just off the entry hall, and Chip looked at the portrait of his grandmother that hung over the fireplace.

“She looks a lot like Harney Whalen,” he commented.

“Why shouldn’t she?” Riley countered. “She was his aunt.”

“I know. But for some reason I never think of it that way. I always think of Harn as kissing kin, rather than blood kin.”

“Around here there ain’t much difference,” Riley
said. He found the bottle of scotch, poured two tumblers full—no ice, no water—and handed one of them to Chip.

“That who’s on your mind? Harn Whalen?”

Chip nodded and sipped at the scotch, feeling it burn as it trickled down his throat. “I’m worried about him,” he said. He was thoughtful for several minutes. Then he explained, “It’s a lot of little things. But mostly it’s the way he feels about strangers.”

“We all feel that way,” Riley said. “It goes back a long time.”

“But there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.”

“Maybe not now,” Riley replied. “But there are reasons all right. Tell me what’s going on with Harney.”

“He’s been going after Glen Palmer.”

“Palmer? I didn’t know you even knew the man.”

“I didn’t up until a few days ago,” Chip said. “The day after Miriam and Pete Shelling’s funeral.”

Riley nodded briefly. “I was there, with Corey and Ledbetter. Other than us and Harn Whalen, the Palmers were the only ones who came.”

“That’s what Harney said. He made me go out and talk to Palmer. He wanted to know why Glen was there.”

“That doesn’t seem unreasonable,” the old man said. “Did you find out?”

“Sure. It wasn’t any secret really, except Glen didn’t think it was any of our business.”

“In a town this size everything is everybody’s business,” Riley chuckled.

“Anyway,” Chip went on, “Glen told me why he and his family went to the funeral, and I told Harney.
Then he did something I just can’t account for at all. He tried to wreck most of Glen’s work.”

“Wreck it? What do you mean?”

Chip told his grandfather what had happened. “I felt rotten about it,” he finished. “I stayed around and gave Glen a hand, and he’s really a nice guy. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with him. It’s funny—he can draw anything, but put a saw in his hand and it’s all over.” He smiled at his grandfather. “Wait’ll you see that gallery. With him designing it and me building it, it’s really going to be something.”

“You getting paid for it?” Riley inquired.

Chip squirmed. “Not exactly,” he said. “Glen doesn’t have any money right now. But I’m still getting paid. I’m finding out a lot of things I never knew about before. Nothing terribly important, I guess, but it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever really gotten to know anyone who wasn’t born right here. And the more I get to know Glen, the less I understand Harney’s attitude. If he’d just take the time to get to know him too, I don’t think he’d be so down on him.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Riley said.

“Well, I can understand him being suspicious of strangers, but it’s getting out of hand. He won’t do anything to find out what happened to that guy Horton, except that he seemed to think Glen had something to do with it—God only knows why—and the whole thing’s getting to me. I keep telling myself it’s only my imagination, but it seems to be getting worse. I’m thinking of quitting my job.”

Riley frowned and studied his grandson. Finally he appeared to make up his mind about something.

“Maybe I’d better tell you a little about Harney,” he said. “Life hasn’t been too easy for him, and most of the rough times were caused by strangers. It was a long time ago, but things like what happened to Harney when he was a boy stay with a man. And sometimes the old memories are stronger than the new ones, if you know what I mean.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Don’t tell anybody, but sometimes I can remember things that happened sixty, seventy years ago better than I can recollect things that happened last month.”

He handed his glass to Chip and asked him to refill it. While the younger man did, Riley’s gaze drifted away, focused somewhere beyond the room and the rainy night. When Chip gave him the full glass, his eyes seemed to be almost closed. But as he took the glass, he began talking.

“When Harney was a boy he lived with his grandparents. His mother—your grandmother’s sister—died birthing Harn, and his father took off a little after that He came back, but he was never quite the same. So it wound up that Harn’s grandparents took care of them both. Anyway, Harn’s granddaddy owned a whole lot of land around here, most of it forest. He never did much with it, just sort of sat on it, but eventually some of the big lumbering boys from Seattle came out here and tried to buy it.

“Old Man Whalen wouldn’t sell, so then they tried to get him to lease the timber rights to them. That didn’t work either, and it looked for a while like that would be the end of it. But then something happened.”

The old man stopped talking and his eyes closed
once more. For a few seconds Chip thought his grandfather had fallen asleep, but then Riley’s eyes blinked open and he stared at Chip.

“I’m not sure I ought to tell you the story—it happened a long time ago and it isn’t very pleasant. But it might help you to understand why Harn feels the way he does about strangers.”

“Go on,” Chip urged him.

“Well, it was a night very much like this one,” Riley began. There was a storm brewing, but when Harney—he was only seven or eight at the time—went to bed, it hadn’t really hit the coast yet. Then, late at night, it came in, blowing like crazy.

“Nobody ever found out exactly what happened that night, but during the storm there were terrible things done. It was the next morning that all hell broke loose. Harney woke up and the house was empty. He looked around for his grandparents but they weren’t there. So he started searching for them.” Riley closed his eyes, visualizing the scene as he talked. “He found them on the beach. Sod Beach, about halfway between where the houses are now. Neither of them was there back then—the beach was just a beach. Anyway, Ham went out there and at first he didn’t see them. But they were there: buried in the sand up to their necks, drowned. It was just like the old Klickashaw stories, but that time it wasn’t a story. It was Harn’s grandparents. I saw them myself a little while later. The whole town went out there before they even dug the Whalens up. Awful. Their eyes were all bugged out, and their faces were blue. And the expressions—you wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Jesus,” Chip said softly. “Did they find out who did it?”

“Nah,” Riley said. Disgust edged his voice. “Everybody had suspicions, of course, and what happened after that didn’t help any.”

“Something else happened?”

“About a week after the funeral, Harney’s dad gave in and signed a lease with the lumber people. The old man wouldn’t, but Harney’s dad did. And then he leased the beach to that guy Baron, who built the house out there that Harney owns now.”

“How’d Harney get it?”

“He grew up,” Riley said flatly. “He Just waited around. The lease wasn’t a long one—only about ten or fifteen years—but by the time it was up his dad had died too and Harney owned the land. He just refused to renew the lease. Baron was mad—real mad. Claimed there’d been an unwritten agreement, some kinda option, I think. But Harn got some fancy lawyer from Olympia to go to work on that. Anyway, he ended the lease, and that was it for Baron. He stayed around for a while and tried to fish, but that didn’t work either. Got himself drowned, he did. Nobody around here gave a shit—they all thought he’d been in on killing Old Man Whalen and his wife.” The old man chuckled then. “Funny how I always think of him as Old Man Whalen—he must have been twenty years younger than I am now when he died.”

He stopped talking for a few minutes, then grinned at his grandson. “Funny thing. I was telling Tad and Clem about Baron the other day, but I couldn’t remember his name then. I know it as well as I know my own
but it just slipped right on away. Anyway, like I told Tad and Clem, same thing happened to Baron’s wife as happened to Miriam Shelling. Hung herself in the woods. Might even have been the same tree for all I know.”

Chip stared at his grandfather. “She hanged herself? After her husband drowned?”

“Yup. Just like Pete and Miriam. Funny how things like that happen. I guess the guy who said history repeats itself wasn’t so far off, was he?”

“Funny Harney didn’t tell me about it,” Chip commented.

Riley made an impatient gesture. “Why would he? What happened to the Barons was thirty-five, forty years ago, long before you were even born. Anyway, that’s why Harney hates strangers so much. A couple of them killed his grandparents, even if no one ever proved it.”

Chip swirled the half-inch of scotch that still remained in his glass and stared thoughtfully up at the portrait of his grandmother. Her dark face had a stoic, almost impassive look, as if life had been hard for her but she had survived it. As he studied the portrait Chip realized that the resemblance between her and her nephew, Harney Whalen, was not so much a physical thing at all. It was the look. The look of impassivity.

Chip began to understand Harney Whalen, and his sense of worry deepened.

Missy Palmer lay in bed asleep, her hands clenched into small fists, her face twisted into an expression of fear. The rain pattered on the roof, and Missy began
to toss in the bed. At the sound of a twig snapping outside, her eyes flew open.

She was suddenly wide awake, the memory of her nightmare still fresh in her mind.

“Robby?” she whispered.

No sound came from the bunk above.

Missy lay still, her heart thumping loudly in her ears. Then she thought she heard something. A snapping sound, like a branch breaking.

Her eyes went to the window and the thumping of her heart grew louder.

Was there something at the window? Something watching her?

Her dream came back to her. In it the … something at the window was chasing her. She was on the beach with Robby, and it was chasing both of them. They ran into the woods, trying to hide, but it followed them, looming closer and closer. Her legs wouldn’t move anymore. Try as she would, she couldn’t run. Her feet were stuck in something, something gooey, that sucked at her, trying to pull her down.

Then she fell, and suddenly the shape was above her, towering over her, reaching for her.

She screamed.

She felt her mother’s arms go around her and began sobbing, clinging to Rebecca.

“There, there,” Rebecca soothed her. “It’s all right. It was a dream, that’s all. You had a dream.”

“But there was someone here,” Missy sobbed. “He was trying to get us. Robby and I were running from him but he was after us. And then I fell …” She dissolved once more into her sobbing, and Rebecca stroked her hair softly.

Robby, awakened by the scream, hung over the top bunk, a look of curiosity on his sleepy face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked groggily.

“Nothing,” Rebecca assured him. “Missy had a nightmare, that’s all. Go back to sleep.”

Robby’s head disappeared as Glen came into the doorway.

“Is she all right?” he asked anxiously.

“She’s fine,” Rebecca told him. “Just a bad dream.”

Missy’s head stirred in her mother’s lap. “It wasn’t a dream,” she cried. “It was real. He was here. I saw him outside the window.”

“Who did you see, darling?” Glen asked.

“A man,” Missy said. “But I couldn’t see his face.”

“You were dreaming,” Rebecca said. “There isn’t anyone out there.”

“Yes there is,” Missy insisted.

“I’ll have a look,” Glen said.

He threw a raincoat on over his pajamas and opened the door of the cabin, shining his flashlight around the surrounding forest. There was nothing.

Then, as he was about to close the door, Scooter dashed between his feet, his tiny tail wagging furiously, barking as loudly as his puppy voice would allow. Glen reached down and scooped him up.

“It’s all right,” he said to the puppy, scratching its belly. “Nothing’s out there.”

Scooter, soothed by the scratching, stopped barking.

But Missy kept on crying.

Two miles away, while the wind rose to a vicious howl, the back door of Glen Palmer’s gallery flew open. The horror began.

22

Early the following morning Glen Palmer put on his slicker, opened the cabin door, and let Scooter out. The puppy scuttled around the corner, and when Glen followed, he found the dog sniffing under the window of the children’s room. He squatted down, picked up the wriggling puppy, and carefully examined the ground. There was a slight depression, obscured by the still-falling rain, that might have been a footprint.

Or it might not.

Glen frowned a little and tried to find another, similar depression, but the ground was rough, soggy, and covered with pine needles.

“Well, if anything was there, it isn’t now,” he muttered to Scooter, then set the puppy down again. Scooter, having lost interest in whatever he had been sniffing at, trotted happily off into the woods, looking back every few seconds to make sure he hadn’t lost sight of Glen. Clumsily he lifted a leg next to a bush, then ran back to the front door, where he began yapping to be let in.

As Glen followed the puppy into the house, Rebecca looked curiously at him from the stove, where she was frying eggs.

“Find anything?”

“What makes you think I was looking for anything?”

“You were. Was there anything to find?”

“Not without a liberal dose of imagination. There’s a dent in the ground outside the kids’ window, and I suppose I could claim it’s a footprint if I wanted to, but I don’t think anybody’d believe me.
I
certainly wouldn’t.”

Rebecca put down the spatula she was holding and began setting the table. “You want to get the kids going?” she asked.

“Let them sleep a few more minutes. I’ll take them in when I go and drop them at school.”

“What’s the rush this morning?”

“There isn’t any really. Except that Chip might show up and I don’t want to miss him.”