Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

When I tried to wake Cassandra, she wouldn’t budge. Maybe it had been days since she’d slept so soundly. Or maybe Vasquez’s death had some kind of tranquilizing effect on her. Some sort of shock to the system. Whatever the case, she slept like the dead, and I was thankful for it.

Like we had done to the pastor only a short while before, I took off my belt, wrapped it carefully around the wrist of her right arm, and at the same time slipped it through an opening in the passenger-side door handle. I secured the belt as best I could without jarring her and started my walk up the drive with the silence of the black forest all around me and my.45 in hand-a round chambered, safety off. I made it to the stack of piled firewood stored under a carport connected to the west side of the cabin, and moved on slowly until I reached the side door. In the light from the headlights, I could make out the little black mailbox bolted to the wall beside the door frame. The golden eagle that had once been attached to the black box was gone now, leaving only an outline.

I stepped up onto the first of the three wooden risers and slipped my hand into the small space between the mailbox and the exterior cabin wall. The key was there hanging by a nail, just like I hoped it would be. It had been my grandfather’s idea to hide the key in that space. Now it was left there by the caretakers so renters could access the place in the summer and early fall months.

I slipped the key into the lock, twisted it, felt the deadbolt give way cleanly and smoothly. I opened the door and stepped inside and smelled the familiar mud-and-wood smell. It was a very personal smell that had not changed in all the years since I had last stepped foot inside the place. Feeling my feet on the rough plank floor, I walked blindly but confidently-the.45 leading the charge-knowing my way across the sitting room and into the kitchen where I knew a wrought-iron lamp would be bolted into the log wall above the kitchen table.

I felt for the lamp.

It was still there. I reached inside the lampshade, felt for the switch, and then there was light.

In the kitchen, cast-iron pots and pans hung from metal hooks above the black gas stove, and white plates were stacked on the exposed pine shelving beside the cabinets. There was the same black rotary phone I remembered as a kid, sitting on a small table in the far corner of the room, below the window and behind the kitchen table. I picked up the handset, brought it to my ear. The phone worked.

I returned to the great room and took a good look at the fireplace my grandfather had constructed with Adirondack fieldstone cut out of Old Iron Top. The fireplace rose up through the ceiling. A railroad tie had been mounted above the box to serve as a mantel. I gazed at the crossbeams that supported the roof-exposed beams that, once upon a time, seemed so massive to me and so high off the floor. Now I could reach the beams by raising my hands above my head.

I took a quick second or two to listen for anything out of the ordinary. When I heard nothing, I went back to the kitchen and pulled down the shade on the window. Another house or cabin could not be found for five miles in any direction, but I knew it was not unusual for the occasional car to pass by along the hard-packed east-west road. Why draw unwanted attention in a place where even a sudden shift in the weather was cause for an Ironville town meeting?

After all, if the cabin was going to be my safe house, it had to be safe.

I slipped across the kitchen into the short hall that accessed the bathroom and two back bedrooms, aiming the.45 into each room as I passed. Nothing but empty walls and empty beds. Back out in the great room, I eased the hammer back on the.45, clicked on the safety, and slipped the piece into my belt.

The light shining into the cabin from the headlights on the Pontiac reminded me of the white spotlight that lit up my office at Green Haven on those occasions when I worked well into the night, which was more often than not now with Fran gone. It also reminded me that I had to get Cassandra inside before she woke up. I had no idea who she really was or what she was capable of. She had gone along with me so far, but then her life was on the line as much as mine was. I knew she could easily undo that belt and run off, and I wasn’t about to allow that to happen.

When I checked on her and found that she was still asleep, I carried in some of the wood from the stack under the carport. Maybe it was warmer than normal down in Albany, but up here it was downright cold. I cut up some kindling using a small hatchet that hung by a strip of leather from a rusty sixpenny nail pounded into the log wall. Using some newspapers left behind in an old wooden vegetable crate and my lighter, it didn’t take a lot of effort to get a good fire going.

When I was certain the fire could sustain itself, I went out and drove the car up under the carport to keep it hidden. Then I unraveled the belt from Cassandra’s wrists and slipped it around my waist. I cradled her in my arms, carried her into the cabin, and laid her down on the mattress in one of the bedrooms. In the kitchen, I searched under the sink for anything resembling a rope. But I found nothing. So I took a towel from the bathroom, tore it into two long strips, and used them to secure one of her wrists and one of her ankles to opposing posts of the single bed. I covered her with a black-and-white-checkered blanket left behind by a summer vacationer. Then I returned to the kitchen of our new safe house and began my search for food and, God willing, booze.

AS LUCK OR GOD would have it, I found two cans of beef stew, a large can of baby peas, and an entire case of Beaujolais still packed away neatly inside its cardboard case. I set the.45 within arm’s reach on the counter while Cassandra continued sleeping in the back bedroom. Then I mixed the stew and peas together in the same pan.

I reached under the sink to open the gas valve. The gas hissed as it passed through the line and fed the stove. I lit the front burner with my lighter and stood at the stove to watch the stew heat and to think about my next move. But very soon the thick gravy began to bubble and it was suddenly impossible to think logically what with the aroma of beef stew filling the cabin.

I guess it was impossible to sleep, too. Because that was when Cassandra started screaming.

Perfect timing.

I grabbed the.45, rushed into the bedroom. She was struggling to free her limbs from the bedposts. She popped her head up from the pillow. With the pale moonlight shining in through the window against her face, her expression reminded me of The Exorcist .

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she spat.

“Protecting my assets,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t have.

“You gotta sick sense of humor, Marconi,” she said.

I was waiting for her head to spin completely around.

“Can’t take a chance on you running off.”

“Just where precisely would I run off to?”

A good point, considering that we were miles away from any kind of civilization and light-years away from New York City, her home turf.

I began undoing the knot in the cloth strip wrapped around her ankle.

“At this point,” I said, “I can’t take any chances. It’s only a matter of time until someone knows we’re here, and then the cops will find out, and then it’s all over.”

“So,” Cassandra said like a question, shaking out her now-free ankle.

“So,” I said, starting on her wrist, “I have to know I can trust you.”

“What was all that nonsense with the priest? A nice little act? I mean, I could’ve bolted right there and then. But I didn’t. Because I know you’re in trouble, and you know I’m in trouble, and maybe we can help each other out, right?”