Julia Spencer-Fleming - To Darkness And To Death

He dumped her into the trunk. He had time to notice her eyes, wide with terror, before he slammed the lid down. He pushed the cart into the garage, retrieved his jacket-the only item of clothing he had not fouled with his own blood-and made his way back to the car. His legs were shaking as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat. He started the ignition, and k.d. lang began singing, “Black coffee…” He glanced at the clock. He had arrived at Haudenosaunee an hour ago. An hour. For a moment, he could almost believe he had gone back in time. There was his water bottle in the cup holder. There was his phone plugged into the recharger, and his CD case on the passenger seat. As if nothing had ever happened.

Then he heard a thump from the trunk, and his arm throbbed in response. He pulled on his jacket, covering most of the bloody marks, and started down the long dirt road. The wine bottles in the backseat clunked against each other, k.d. lang kept on singing about walking the floor at 3:00 A.M., and he nearly wept with relief when he pulled out onto the highway blacktop.

Glancing into his rearview mirror as he drove down the highway, he glimpsed a brutish SUV with a bike rack muzzling its grill turning into the entrance to Haudenosaunee. He lifted his foot off the gas, staring into the mirror. No mistake. Someone else was headed for Haudenosaunee. He caught his breath. That was the margin that separated success from failure. A minute. Maybe less.

He accelerated. He planned to be far away from Haudenosaunee when the cops showed up.

Russ had left the siren screaming all the way up the dirt road, wanting anyone up at the camp to know the police were on the way. In his experience, unless two guys were already way into it, incipient fights usually dissolved as soon as a cop car made its appearance. He hoped the sight of his red truck would have the same effect.

Ed’s SUV was in the middle of the gravel drive, not so much parked as abandoned. The driver’s door was still open. Russ pulled in behind his friend’s vehicle, switching off the siren and toggling the light. He slid from his seat with the sound still echoing in the air.

“Ed!” he shouted. “Eugene?” He took a few steps toward the open garage, close enough to see that Eugene’s and Millie’s cars were still parked inside. He tipped his head back and filled his lungs with air. “It’s Russ Van Alstyne! I want to talk with you!”

You, you, you, you, the blue hills sang back.

The door to the house swung open, and Ed Castle stumbled onto the porch. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Thank God it’s you. He’s dead. Van der Hoeven. He’s dead.”

Russ felt the weight of dread settle over his shoulders. God, he hated this. He was getting too damn old to play this scene one more time. And he liked Ed Castle. He liked him a lot. “What happened?” he asked dully.

“I don’t know.” Ed clunked down the porch steps. “I got up here, and he wasn’t in the house. So I was looking around, thinking he was maybe hiding out, and I saw the trail.”

“What trail?”

“Come take a look.” Ed beckoned Russ toward the wide, hydrangea-framed trailhead that lay between the house and the garage.

Past the low stone wall marking the edge of civilization at Haudenosaunee, the trail split off in three directions. “I was walking along here, see.” He could tell Ed was rattled. “I could see where the search and rescue team blaze-marked their trail this morning.” Ed pointed to a tree on the edge of the wider middle path, sprayed with a single orange stripe. “Then I noticed the trail on the left.” Ed pointed.

The long, thick grass growing between the trees had been recently trampled and torn. A single rut, the width of a bicycle tire, had dug into the earth in spots, leaving a crumbling of rich brown loam in its wake.

Russ’s mind supplied a picture of the open garage he had scanned a few minutes ago. Land Cruiser. VW Bug. And in the last bay, a garden cart, carelessly shoved inside, its handles almost protruding out into the drive.

“So I took off this way. C’mon, he’s up here.”

They both struck out along the trail. Russ kept his eyes moving, scanning the grass, the dead leaves drifting among the trees, the gray-limbed distances closing all around them.

He knew what the ruined buildings were as soon as he saw them. He could compare them, in his mind’s eye, to the black-and-white photos he had seen in the historical society archives. Saturated in the honey tones of the afternoon sun, even the subdued November colors were beautiful: granite and lichen, oak and boxwood, grass green and blaze orange.

“That’s where I found him.”

Russ swore under his breath. He headed toward the still figure in the grass, Ed at his side. “I touched his neck, you know, to see if I felt a pulse,” Ed said. “There wasn’t nothing.”

Russ slowed as he got close to Eugene’s body. “Oh, Christ, Ed. Jesus Christ.”

“What?” Ed drew himself up, outraged. “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

“Ed. You heard this guy pulled a gun on your daughter. You ran out on your family at the hospital screaming that you were going to kill him.” Ed looked down. His face flushed. “I get here, you’re holed up in the house, and Eugene van der Hoeven’s dead.” Russ bent over the body. No gunshot wounds. No knife wounds visible. The angle of van der Hoeven’s head looked wrong. “What did you do?” Russ barely got the question out. He took a breath and said more loudly, “Hit him with your car?”

“T’hell with you! I got here, I followed the trail, I found him! Period!”

“What’s he doing way out here?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Russ dropped his hand on Ed’s shoulder. “Come on back to the house.”

Ed shrugged him off. “What for? You gonna arrest me?”

“I’m going to call in the crime scene unit. Then I’m going to ask you to come to the station and answer a few questions.”

“The hell you are! I’m not the bad guy here!”

Russ put his hand more firmly on Ed’s shoulder and turned him toward the trail. The older man jumped, spinning around to face Russ, his fists up.

Russ was six inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than Ed, and he loomed over his hunting partner now, letting his size remind Ed what a bad idea this was. He had no gun, no cuffs or stick or radio. If Ed attacked him, he was going to have to hurt the man in order to control him, and he didn’t want to do that. God almighty, he didn’t want to do that.

“I’m not arresting you,” Russ said quietly. “I’m asking you to come in for questioning.” He stepped forward, toward the trail.

Ed stepped back. “I’m not saying one word without a lawyer.”

“You have the right to retain an attorney.” Russ took another step. Ed retreated back. “I hope it doesn’t have to come to that.” Another step forward. Another step back. “It’s just questioning. You’re not being charged with anything.”

“Yet.” Ed turned away from Russ and marched ahead of him into the forest.

When they reached the great camp, Russ asked Ed to turn over his car keys.

“What?” Ed dug into his jacket pocket. “No. Never mind. I know.” He pulled out the keys and bombed them onto the gravel. “There. Now I can’t escape. Are you sure you don’t want to tie me up, too? In case I knock you out and steal your truck? ’Cause you never know what I might do, do ya?”

Russ bent and picked up the keys without comment. “You can wait in the house,” he said.

“I’m gonna use the phone,” Ed announced, stomping up the porch steps.

“There’s one in the kitchen,” Russ said. Ed, slamming through the door, ignored him. Russ tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He hated this. He absolutely hated it. He lived in the town he was born and raised in, but he could count the number of people he called “friend” on one hand. And he had just lost one. He fished his phone out of his pocket. No signal, of course. He sighed and crunched across the driveway to the radio in his truck. He had thought no birthday could ever be as bad as his twentieth. He and his platoon had spent the day pinned down under heavy fire. He watched Gary Weyer, the radio guy, bleed to death over the course of the afternoon, and when they finally got air support in, the freaking flyboys nearly blew up their LZ. His buddy Mac kept saying, “At least it’s not raining! At least it’s not raining!”