John Sandford - The Fool's Run

"He liked it because it was remote," LuEllen said. "The land is no good for farming, the timber is all bad second growth. The only thing up there are a few cabins along the stream. Dace said you can't even get in or out if it snows. He came up here once in the winter and almost froze his ass off before he could get out."

The road, she said, wasn't on any map. I wasn't so sure. We stopped at the county courthouse and bought a large-scale county map.

"You were right," said LuEllen, after we unrolled it on the hood of the car. "This is it." She traced a narrow track along Greyling Creek. It ran through the lower reaches of the mountains between two all-weather gravel roads.

"It's a good thing to know. Dillon will find this thing. If I give Maggie directions, the shooters will come in the other way. Count on it."

The road to Dace's cabin ran parallel to the creek, which lay off to the right. To the left was a partly wooded ridge that rose two hundred feet to the ridgeline. We followed a single strand of overhead electric wire along the road, past a half dozen cabins and two broken-down barns. The wire ended at Dace's place. The cabin was high on the bank, thirty feet above the stream.

Like the other cabins along the creek, Dace's was small and primitive, built from four-by-four timber and rough siding. The roof was covered with green tar shingles. A one-holer outhouse sat on the upstream side of the cabin, surrounded by a screen of pines, with a new moon cut in the door. Nearby, a strand of plastic-covered rope, tied between two trees, served as a clothesline.

"Dace said they get terrific floods through here every few years," LuEllen said, as we pulled onto the dirt patch that served as a parking place. "They cut down most of the trees upstream, and there's nothing to soak up the water."

I got out and looked around. The weather had broken, and though it was cool now, the day was a pretty one. Dace had thinned the trees between the house and the creek, and there was a pleasant view down to the water. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, the fishing would be prime, the muskies carrying late-season weight. I needed some time on the water.

As I walked around the yard, LuEllen tramped through the falling leaves to an herb garden beside the porch. She turned over a rock, took a bottle out of the ground, unscrewed the cap, and dumped a key out.

"His emergency key," she said.

The cabin was as simple inside as it was out. There was a two-burner electric range, a wood stove for heat, a table, a few chairs, a couch, a stack of old magazines, and two beds and a bureau behind a partition. I unloaded the luggage and we got comfortable.

We spent that day and the next walking the neighborhood. On the hill above the road, there were large areas of grassy hillside that at one time might have been pasturage. There were no animals to be seen. The grass was broken by patches of wild raspberries and clumps of ragged, second-growth timber. The strip below the road, along the creek, was heavily wooded.

We found an acceptable ambush site two hundred yards downstream from the cabin and an excellent one seventy yards above it. The site above the cabin was better. And that's where I expected to see them.

"I want to talk to Maggie."

There was a long pause. "She's here," Dillon said. "It'll be a minute." He put me on hold. A long minute later, Maggie came on.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. My voice grated out, angry and cold. I wasn't pretending.

"I didn't," she said urgently. "I knew you'd think so. But it was Rudy. He was so frightened of what we did to Whitemark and what could be done to us, that he panicked. He's sick. He's in the hospital, and he may not get back out. They're not sure, but they think now it's a brain tumor. But believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Dillon didn't either."

"Huh." LuEllen, standing with her ear close to mine, turned her head and mouthed "Dace."

"What happened to Dace?"

"He was killed," Maggie said simply. Her voice sounded low and hurt. "These assholes shot him and killed him. They would have killed you, too, and LuEllen. When you called Dillon, Dillon confronted Rudy. The argument brought on the breakdown, or whatever it is. As soon as we figured out how to do it, we called these men off. They're already out of the country."

I let the silence build until she said, "Hello?"

"What happened to Dace's body? Is it still in the apartment?"

"No. I was told they. disposed of it. I really don't know the details." LuEllen squeezed my arm and closed her eyes. Tears started around the lashes.

"Explain how they knew where we were," I said, pressing. "How they got up past Philadelphia, if they weren't tipped off by Dillon."

She had the answer. "They put some kind of radio signal device on your car," she said. "They couldn't follow you exactly, but they knew when they were close. They tracked you up north, and then, they said, you picked a motel out in the middle of nowhere. They followed the signal right in. They took the beeper off the car when they got there, so if they. found you. the police wouldn't find it on your car."

"Jesus Christ."

"Do you believe me?"

I let the silence hang for a moment, then said, "I don't know. It sounds okay. But I don't know."

"Where are you?"

"I don't want to tell you that. Not yet. I've got to talk to LuEllen. I'll call you back."

"When?" she asked.

"Half an hour."

"I'll wait," she said. "I'm terribly sorry about Dace. It's awful. But I had nothing to do with it. Goddamn it, Kidd, you've got to believe me." Her voice cracked. I could see her standing over the desk, one hand on it for support, her head bowed, talking into the phone, pleading.

"I'll get back," I said, and hung up.

"Why not tell her now?" LuEllen asked.

"So she'll think we're talking about it. She's going to be suspicious anyway. If we hold out for a while, she may be less suspicious."

"She was awful good," LuEllen said after a while. "Would you have believed her? If we hadn't left your car at the airport?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe. I'd kind of believe her. But I'd still be careful."

During most of the attack on Whitemark, I'd gone to bed late at night, after three o'clock. One night Maggie woke up and rolled onto her back as I sat on the edge of the bed, pulling off my socks.

"You wouldn't ever hurt me, would you?" she asked.

The question was a stopper. I turned and looked toward her in the dark. "Hurt you? You mean beat you up?"

"No, you dope. I mean dump me for a sixteen-year-old with up-pointy tits."

"Your tits are up-pointy."

"You know what I mean."

"We're not going to come to that," I said. "I do what I do, and you do what you do. They don't mix. Neither one of us will change. We're too old. Too committed. When you get back to Chicago, I'll come and see you. You'll come to St. Paul a time or two. Then it'll start to take up too much time, there'll be other people, and eventually we'll fizzle away."

"You're really the great romantic, aren't you?"

"I'm trying not to bullshit you," I said. "You're not stupid. You know all this. But I wouldn't be surprised if you came through St. Paul every once in a while and got laid. In between the other-people relationships, I mean. We could be friends for a longtime."

She might have agreed, or she might have demurred, or might have said something about the abstract nature of the analysis. She might have laughed. She didn't. What she said was, "You'd never beat me up, would you?"

We gave it a half hour, sitting in a greasy spoon in a nondescript West Virginia hill town, idling over coffee and cheeseburgers. It was the afternoon coffee hour, and the local merchants drifted in, said hello to each other, casually looked us over and drank coffee and ate lemon meringue pie. The pie was listed on the menu as the pie du jour. The joke was, the city folks would wonder whether it was a joke.