Linwood Barclay: Lone Wolf

The surrounding pines seemed to be waving back and forth, as if in a high wind, but there wasn’t even a slight breeze. The blue sky was below me, the grass above, and then, seconds later, everything was back where it was supposed to be.

“No,” I said.

“We couldn’t find any sort of ID on him, so I was wondering…”

I came out of the woods like a man stumbling out of a burning building, desperate for air. I went to my car, threw my hands out and leaned over the hood, trying to catch my breath. One of the ambulance attendants was saying something to me, but I couldn’t seem to hear it.

There was the sound of a vehicle approaching, of rubber crunching gravel, and I looked up the hill I’d driven down moments earlier, and saw a blue sedan with a sign attached to the roof. I blinked, saw that it said “Braynor Taxi.”

It came to a stop behind my car, and a man I recognized got out of the back, came around to the driver, who had his window down, and handed him a couple of bills.

“Thanks,” he said, then turned and took in all the activity. The ambulance and police car, all the people standing around.

“What the hell’s all this?” he asked as the cab started backing up the lane. Then his eyes landed on me. “Zachary?”

I looked at him, stunned. “Hi, Dad,” I said.

“That a new car?” he said, pointing at the Virtue that was still holding me up.

“Fairly,” I said, just now taking my hands off the hood.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You didn’t bother to rust-proof it.”

“It’s got lots of plastic panels,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see.” Now he’d noticed Chief Thorne. “Christ, Orville, what’s all the commotion?”

“Hi, Arlen. Jesus. Have to say, it’s a pleasure to see you today. Where the hell have you been?”

Dad bristled. “Uh, just in town, Orville.” He sounded defensive.

“How early did you go in? We been here some time now.” Orville Thorne was sounding a bit defensive himself. “Did you, were you in town overnight?”

Dad sighed with annoyance. “Orville, I have to paint you a picture, for Christ’s sake? What the hell’s going on here?”

The others-the ambulance attendants and the doctor for sure-were looking at Orville with some disapproval, like maybe he’d missed something he should have thought of. He must have sensed it, because he coughed nervously.

“Well, shit, Arlen, there’s something here in the woods you should have a look at,” he said tentatively.

As Dad glanced toward them, Orville took his arm to lead him that way, but instead, led Dad right over his foot, and Dad tripped, one of those fluky kind of things, and went down.

He yelped, and when he tried to get back up, couldn’t.

“Jesus,” he said. “My goddamn ankle. I think I must have twisted my goddamn ankle.”

People shook their heads, rolled their eyes. “Nice one, Orville,” one of the ambulance attendants said.

I rushed forward, but moved aside for the older gentleman in the suit and tie, who creaked like an old door as he bent down to assist my father. Dad was on his side, his craggy face twisted in pain, raising himself up with one arm and reaching back with the other toward his foot, even though he couldn’t get anywhere close to it. “Shit,” Arlen Walker said. “Jesus, that hurts.”

“Don’t try to get up,” I said.

“No chance of that,” Dad said. “How ya doin’, Doc?” he said to the man in the suit.

“Just take it easy, Arlen,” he said. He glanced up at me. “I’m Dr. Heath. I’m your father’s regular doctor.”

“Hi,” I said, moving farther back so Heath and the ambulance guys could do their thing. I drew back up next to Chief Thorne, who was looking uncomfortable and embarrassed.

“I’m really sorry, Arlen,” he said. “It was an accident.”

“Sure, Orville,” Dad said, wincing. “I know. These things happen.”

“I was just trying to help,” the chief said. He suddenly looked very young to me, with soft white skin, a few freckles around his eyes.

The rest of the crowd was taking in the show. There was the sixtyish woman in the kerchief and hunting jacket, a guest I figured, her arm linked with a man of similar age, both of them on the short side. Her doughy face was clouded with worry, but he was a bit harder to read. Just watching. Next to him, only slightly taller, stood a man in a dark green felt baseball cap, with what looked like a basketball hidden under his unzipped windbreaker and striped pullover shirt. His clothes must have cost a bundle to make someone his shape look so good. Even in casual garb, he was the best dressed of all of us. I glanced back at the cabins, spotted a Cadillac STS parked at one of them, and knew that one had to be his.

Next to him, an old-man-of-the-sea. Tall, his face lined with deep creases, a toothpick dancing back and forth between his lips. He was dressed in olive pants and a plaid flannel shirt, and he smiled at me when our eyes met.

“Bob Spooner,” he said, extending a hand. I took it. “I’m glad your dad’s okay,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

I turned to Chief Thorne and said quietly, “Didn’t anyone call around to see if my dad might be in town? You two spoke to each other by first names, like you know each other pretty well. I had a two-hour-long heart attack driving up here, expecting the worst. You couldn’t have asked around?”

Thorne’s tongue poked around the inside of his cheek. He was taking his time to come up with an answer, like maybe he hadn’t expected this to be on the final. After a few seconds, he said, “We’re basically in the middle of our investigation here, Mr. Walker. Our first concern was finding out who this man over here is, and when we couldn’t immediately locate your father, well, you can understand why we were concerned.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Couldn’t you have made some calls?”

Thorne said, “We saw his vehicle over there, the boats were in, there was no reason to think he might be in town.”

“And why would he have taken a cab back?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t he have taken his truck into town?”

Thorne ignored that. A few steps away, on the ground, my dad said, “Christ on a cracker, that hurts!”

Thorne tipped his hat back a fraction of an inch and said to me, “I’m sorry if you’ve been inconvenienced, Mr. Walker.”

“Inconvenienced?” I said. “Inconvenienced? Is that what you call dragging me into the woods to show me a corpse I had every reason to believe was my father?”

The chubby guy in the nice threads said, “Orville, didn’t you call your aunt, see if she might know where Arlen was?”

Thorne coughed again. I said, “Your aunt? Why would your aunt know where my father was?”

I suppose it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to be as angry as I was. I mean, I’d just learned that my father was alive. I should have been relieved, perhaps even joyous. Leaping about, even. But instead I felt enraged at being made to look at that body hidden under the tarp, to have been led to believe by this incompetent rube, for however briefly, that it was my father, looking like he’d been fed through a meat grinder. Maybe, too, I was reeling from the shock of it all. Losing a parent and getting him back all within a matter of minutes. How often did that happen?

Whatever it was, I was losing my cool.

“Mr. Walker,” Chief Thorne said, trying to put some authority in his voice and placing a hand on my arm, “I think maybe you need to calm down and-”

“Get your hand off me,” I said, shaking it loose and-I honestly don’t know how the hell this happened-shoving Thorne away from me at the same time as he actually grabbed on to my arm, and his foot caught on a small rock, and then he was going down and taking me with him. The guy was a one-man tripping industry.