Safer (32 page)

The snowfall thins as we enter the woods. Above us, the clouds are drawn across the sky like a tattered quilt; a bright full moon shines through a bare patch, casting the bare- boned forest in a silvery gleam.

The trail is too narrow to take side by side through the thicker timber. Stockman leads the way, never allowing a moment of slack. Each time I stumble, the steel cuff grates against my wrist bone. When I trip on a root and fall to my knees, he drags me along the ground behind him. My wrist is bleeding by the time I make it back to my feet.

Our cold snap appears to have broken. But it’s still not a night for a stroll through the forest without a coat; while the work of keeping up with Stockman keeps me warm in the middle, my fingers and toes are numb. I can’t feel my ruined nose, either, which may be a blessing. All I can hear is the sound of my breathing. The occasional creak of bare branches around us. The crunch of frosted leaves under our feet. The shifting clank of whatever Stockman is carrying in that bag on his shoulder.

Should I be saying something? Should I be making some sort of plea for my life? I can’t imagine what good it would do,
but still, there must be something more than quietly allowing myself to be led into the woods.

On the other hand, the last word I spoke, in the hospital parking garage, had prompted Van Stockman to flatten my nose with his forehead. I’m not a tough guy. It hurt a lot. Based on the look in his eyes at the time, I can only imagine that he’d been restraining himself.

The truth is, I’m scared of what this guy is going to do to me. Simple as that. I don’t want to make it worse.

So I keep my mouth shut and stumble along.

Roger is waiting for us when we reach the clearing. He’s dressed in a barn coat and heavy pants, standing at the edge of the hemlock grove. His hands are in his coat pockets. His hair is disheveled.

“Paul,” he says.

There’s a small battery- operated lantern near his foot; the dim yellow light is just enough to bring up the edges of the clearing, throw a few grasping shadows over the ground between us.

I clear my throat. “Hello, Roger.”

Our voices seem unnatural in the stillness. It occurs to me that the last time I spoke to Roger, Brittany Seward was still alive.

Van Stockman uncuffs my hand from his and shoves me into the clearing. I hear a zipper behind me, then the sound of metal clanging against metal. I hear other sounds.

After a few moments, something heavy hits the ground by my foot. I look down and see a folding camp shovel nestled in the snow- flecked leaves. It’s been unfolded.

“I didn’t want this,” Roger tells me. When he takes his hands out of his pockets, I see that he’s wearing latex gloves. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Be sure and tell Pete that.” Between my parched throat and shattered nose, I hardly recognize my own voice. In the clearing, the snow falls freely, and the flakes have gotten bigger.

I can feel them on my face. I see them collecting in Roger’s hair, on his shoulders, in his eyebrows. If they keep falling, this clearing will be completely covered by morning. “Melody, too. Maybe after Brit’s funeral you can pull them aside and tell them how their little girl throwing herself off a bridge isn’t what you wanted.”

Roger flinches at the mention of Brit’s name. I’ve never seen him look quite like this. Unkempt. Vacant. He says, “I didn’t create the situation.”

For some reason, I don’t feel scared anymore. Uncuffed from Roger’s thug- in- law, I don’t feel anything. “You brought James Webster out here too,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

Roger is quiet.

“Did you make him confess first? Or did you just go ahead and kill him?”

Behind me, Van Stockman says, “Shut up.”

“How did you know, Roger? You couldn’t just murder a man over something you found in his trash. Could you?” While I’m talking, Roger’s expression seems to darken in the lamplight. “Brandon slept over there all the time, isn’t that right? He could have forgotten things there.”

“Things?” Roger stands like a golem in the snow, eyes hidden beneath his brow. After a few moments, he raises his chin and repeats the word curiously. “Things.”

“I don’t know, Roger.” I’m thinking of what Gaylon Stockman told me from his hospital bed not an hour ago: a shoe. A pair of underwear. A homework assignment. “Nobody knows, now. Except you and your buddies. Right?”

Roger looks at me as though he’s contemplating a stranger.

After a long silence, he finally says, “He told me that he didn’t want to hurt his own boys.”

“Actually, never mind,” I tell him. “At this point it doesn’t even—”

“Urges, he called them.” If Roger’s composure was lost when we arrived at this clearing, he’s found it again. “See, he wanted me to understand. Said he’d done it so that he wouldn’t
accidentally hurt one of his own boys. He thought I’d be able to understand that, as a father.”

Hearing this, I honestly don’t know what I’m feeling toward Roger Mallory. Disgust? Pity?

Mercy?

I can sense Van Stockman standing directly behind me.

“And then after, he didn’t want
my
boy to have to live with what he’d been through. That’s what he told me.” Roger gazes toward the hemlock grove. “Isn’t that something?”

“It was your money, wasn’t it?” I’m still hearing Myrna Webster’s voice:
There was child support, if you want to call it that.
“Ten grand for each of them, that’s what Myrna told me. College money. She said Webster left it on their pillows before he ran off. But he didn’t run off, did he?”

Van Stockman’s voice is cold on my neck. “I said shut the fuck up.”

But I’m not talking to Van Stockman. I’m talking to Roger. I just wish I could say that I’m not scared anymore.

“Is that what they’ll say about me? That I ran off?” Snowflakes are already collecting in the blade of the shovel at my feet. “Two people disappear from the same house? In eight years? I don’t know, Roger. You could run into perception problems.”

“He’s right,” a new voice says.

The sound startles both of us. Roger blinks, pivots in the direction of the voice. We look to the edge of the clearing together.

A bald man in a camouflage hunting coat emerges from the trees. I recognize him immediately.

Roger says, “John?”

John Gardner blows on his bare hands, rubs them together. “I was afraid you might start without me.”

Roger glances toward the trees with a puzzled look on his face.
How did I not hear you coming?
“John, what the hell are you doing out here?”

“Van called me.”

Roger fixes his gaze past my shoulder. “That right, Van?”

Behind me, I hear only silence.

“Come on, Rodge.” The owner of Sentinel One Incorporated shakes his head. “You can’t fly solo on this.”

“Go on home, John. You don’t need to be here.”

The shovel at my feet is nearly covered in white. I imagine going for it, using it as a weapon; the thought makes my heart thud in my chest. How far behind me is Van Stockman standing? Could I make it past him?

How far could I get before they caught up with me?

Gardner steps fully into the clearing. “Bill Bell’s the lead on this, isn’t he?”

“You know he is, John.”

“Well, I know he’s not stupid. You make it so the professor here disappears without a trace, old Bill’s bound to get curious.”

“It’s my mess,” Roger says. “I’ll pick it up.”

“Not just yours, Rodge.” Gardner puts his hands in his coat pockets. “Don’t forget. It’s mine and Nancy’s. Van and the old man; Valerie too. Tommy Harmon, Carol, that little girl of theirs. Lotta folks with skin in this.”

“I said I’ll take care of it.” This time Roger’s voice is louder, harder, a bark swallowed up by the trees. He lowers his volume. “Just like I’ve been taking care of this place all these years.”

“Roger…”

“I’ll take care of it, John. Then I’ll tend this ground the way I’ve been tending it. For all of us.” Roger’s gaze drifts back to the hemlock grove. “I don’t forget what I owe.”

“Rodge.” Gardner’s voice remains steady. “We’ve been friends a long time.”

“Someday, they’ll sell off these woods.” Roger gestures all around us. “They’ll come in and scrape off these trees so they can throw up their houses. They’ll turn up this dirt.”

“I’m asking you to listen to an old friend.”

“God has any mercy,” Roger says, “by then it won’t be ours to worry about anymore.”

Even under the circumstances, part of me feels something akin to compassion for Roger. Part of me tries to imagine what our house must mean to him. The rest of me is thinking about that shovel.

When I look up, John Gardner is watching me. His eyes flicker briefly over my shoulder. I can still sense Van Stockman back there, waiting.

“Go on home now,” Roger says.

Gardner shakes his head. He appears to contemplate his old friend for one last moment, then finally sighs and says, “I tried.”

“All right, then.”

“Rodge?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry.”

Roger nods once. “I’ll come by in the morning.”

When Roger turns, Gardner extends his arm. As if by magic, his hand has dressed itself in a glove and produced a gun. I don’t know how he’s performed this trick; his hands were bare when he put them in his pockets, and they’ve been there all this time.

The gun bucks. There’s a flash.

I jump at the bang, a sharp ringing sound that echoes out into the cold woods.

A wad of matter leaves the side of Roger’s head. His head bobbles a moment; his expression freezes as it is. He collapses to the ground like his strings have been cut.

By the time I see what I’m seeing, it’s over.

“Jesus,” Van Stockman says.

I turn and look. He’s standing with his mouth open, one hand on his brow, staring at Roger’s body in the snow.

Gardner says, “Go easy, Van.”

Stockman shakes his head slowly. He looks past me, toward Gardner. “Lieutenant?”

“Lotta guys with skin in this.” Gardner stoops and picks up his spent cartridge from a small hole in the snow between
his boots. “Guys with families. You did the right thing. Tommy agrees.”

Stockman seems slow to absorb what he’s hearing. “Harmon? You telling me that son of a bitch
knew
this was the—”

“We did the right thing.”

“I thought you were gonna
talk
to him.”

“You heard me talking. There’s no talking to Roger.” Gardner’s eyes seem sad. “Not anymore.”

Stockman rubs his forehead. “He always listened to you.”

“He didn’t listen when I told him he ought to call in Bill Bell on that goddamned schoolteacher in the first place. Did he? But I trusted his judgment. We all did.” Gardner thumbs a lever on the gun, lowers the weapon to his side. “And after the school teacher, it’s been one goddamned thing after another.”

“Yeah, but—”

“He’d lost it, Van. None of us wanted to see that. And now here we are.”

“Jesus.” Stockman takes a deep breath through his nose. “Here we fuckin’ are, huh?”

I hear a sound near Roger’s body, and at first I think he’s moved. Then I see the syrupy puddle spreading slowly through the snowy leaves around his head. His blood looks black in the dimming moonlight.

Gardner leads me aside by my dangling handcuff. “Get square, Van. We’ve still got work to do.”

Stockman steps nearer to Roger’s body and bends at the waist, hands on his knees. He shakes his head, gazing at Roger’s lifeless profile as if wondering whether to wake him up or let him sleep. “Christ on a bike.”

I look down. Gardner is holding my empty cuff by the tips of two fingers. Just two fingers. That’s all. The shovel is two feet away, an irregular shape in the snow.

My breathing quickens.

It would take only one good yank to get free. I could go for the shovel. Or I could forget the shovel and just run like hell. Maybe if I’m lucky…

The sky cracks open, and my mind goes blank. I can’t see anything for a minute. I’ve closed my eyes reflexively.

When I open them, I see Gardner lowering his gun from the back of Van Stockman’s head.

“And you haven’t been helping,” he says.

Stockman falls forward. His body hits the ground like a sack of grain. I stand where I am. Stunned.

Gardner turns and smiles at me. “Hope the neighborhood patrol didn’t hear that, huh?”

He lets my cuff drop, lifts his coat, tucks his gun away behind his back.

I move without thinking. On my knees, in the snow, I grip the frigid handle of the camp shovel, pull it toward me.

“Deep breath, Professor. Try to keep it together.” Gardner’s voice is casual. He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned that I’ve flung myself out of reach. Of course not. He has a gun, I have a small folding shovel. He says, “Don’t pass out on me.”

He thinks I’m going to be sick, I realize. Has he even noticed the shovel?

“Just slow down and breathe. Count to ten.”

My heart is pounding against my ribs. My back is to Gardner. All at once, I’m afraid that I might actually pass out on him.

I take Gardner’s advice.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“Okay.” A firm hand grips my shoulder. “Up we go.”

Five. Six. I find my feet.

“Good.” The hand goes away. “Keep coming.”

I stand. Seven.

“Now let me see your—”

I turn and swing with all my weight, aiming for the sound of Gardner’s voice. Apparently, I’ve been deemed such a non-threat that he’s not even looking at me while he’s talking. He’s looking at the bodies a few feet away.

He’s in mid- sentence when the bottom of the shovel blade catches him above the ear. The sound is a hollow, metallic
tbonk,
like a frying pan striking an unripened melon. The impact rattles up the shovel and into my hands.

Gardner doesn’t even see it coming. His eyes seem to jitter in place, then glaze.

Does he fall? I don’t know.

I’m already running.

SARA.

As I crash blindly through the trees, away from the clearing, into the thick of the refuge, that’s the only thought in my mind. I’m begging God to let her be safe, even though I haven’t said a prayer since I was a boy. I don’t know if I remember how to do it properly. I don’t even know which direction I’m running.