Дэвид Гейтс - The Blue Mirror

We took the turn we thought we were supposed to, and half a mile in we passed the horse barns. There was nobody there. After a mile point two by the odometer there was a little lean-to up against a split-rail fence. Inside the lean-to was a shelf with jars of honey for sale and a coffee can where you left the money on the honor system. The property was heavily wooded, and we couldn’t see a house from the road. I drove past slowly and pulled up a hundred yards farther along.

“You thinking to go in on foot?” Kitty asked me.

“That’s the plan,” I said.

“And this is where you tell me to wait here, right? With a cell phone that doesn’t work and no idea what’s going on.”

I’d already had second thoughts about bringing Kitty along, but she was right. “You weird with guns?” I asked her.

“No more than the next girl.”

I took out the Smith, checked the magazine, and tucked it away in the small of my back. I reached under the seat and got the compact nine out of its spring clip. I worked the slide, safed it, and held it out to Kitty. “Point it, snap the safety off, squeeze the trigger,” I said, showing her what I was talking about. “Don’t use it unless they get close and you can hit them square in the upper body, no chance of a miss.”

She nodded and took the gun. “Combat nine millimeter, double-action-only, pre-Brady double-stack, thirteen rounds. I’ve got a concealed carry permit, Jack,” she said. “My mistake, I left my own gun in my other pants.”

I was going to remark that she wasn’t wearing pants, she had on a navy jacket and a skirt that showed off her legs, but I figured I’d embarrassed myself enough already. She tucked the nine in the waistband of her skirt, under her jacket and behind her back, the same as I had. “What are we likely to run in to?” she asked me.

“Maybe just an emotionally disabled vet,” I said. “Maybe your partner come to warn him —” I held up my hand when Kitty started to protest. “Or come to explain things to him,” I went on. “Or we could be about to step into the deep end of the pool, and land in the heavy. Are you ready for that?”

“No,” she said.

I sighed. “Neither am I,” I told her.

“Might as well get to it, then,” Kitty said. “It won’t get any easier if we wait.”

We stepped out of the car into the lingering late-afternoon light. The hum of insects buzzed in the grass, and birdsong sounded in the near distance. We walked back to Creek Fortier’s drive and started up it. The maples had turned, their leaves scarlet and bronze, the poplars lemon yellow, the birches dusty gold. It was quiet under the trees. The leaves smelled dry and spicy.

The road opened out into a meadow, and we stopped at the edge of the trees. There was a small clapboard farmhouse, and a shop building in back. Beyond the buildings was an apple orchard, untended but with beehives spaced between the trees, square boxes up on platforms, the orchard left for the bees, not for the apples. Fallen fruit lay on the ground, fermenting.

“Do bees hibernate?” Kitty asked.

“I think they go dormant in the winter, if they don’t die,” I said. “Maybe you have to take them in, like tomato plants or geraniums.”

“You’re full of vegetable lore,” she remarked, smiling.

I was looking at the open ground we had to cover. We’d be exposed to the house if anyone was watching for us. There were a couple of big bikes out back by the shop, and three cars — a GTO, vintage muscle; a ‘53 Ford clunker; and a new Audi. “That’s his car, the Audi,” Kitty said.

“Andy’s?”

She nodded.

I blew out my breath, trying to think.

“Suggestion?” Kitty asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“What’s to keep me from simply going over there?”

“And your story’s what?”

She shrugged. “I’m just some yuppie twit from Boston,” she said. “A leafpeeper looking for local color.”

“Andy won’t give you away, you walk in on them?”

“Andy’s a trial lawyer, and a good one,” she said. “He can improvise.”

I didn’t have anything better.

“You flank the house,” Kitty said, and off she went.

Flank? I thought. She sounded like a platoon sergeant. I let her get out in the open where she could be seen and worked my way around the meadow, keeping under cover of the trees.

Kitty was halfway to the house, and then she paused for a second, leaning down to straighten her heel or pick a stone out of her shoe. She didn’t look in my direction.

I froze where I was, wondering if she was trying to send me a signal, but I didn’t see that anything had changed. The place was completely still except for a few late-season cicadas sawing in the tall grass, and the air felt hot and somnolent.

Kitty went on up the drive, approaching the house without any obvious apprehension, like somebody who’d run out of gas and needed to use the phone.

I’d stopped circling, watching her.

She went up onto the small porch and peered in the windows, and then she went around back toward the shop.

I waited to see if something happened, but nothing did.

Kitty came back out front and made a shrugging gesture, her hands out at her sides. I hobbled across the grass, favoring my bad leg. “Nobody home, tiddley-pum,” she said.

The sun was just below the tree line, the light taking on a metallic quality, sharp and coppery. A slight breeze lifted the leaves of the maples. There was the scent of water, a stream or a spring nearby, and something else, not acrid but steely, like a whiff of ammonia.

“What is that?” Kitty asked, sniffing the wind. “It smells like nail polish remover.”

“Acetone,” I said. It was very faint, though. From what Frank Dugan had told me about cooking meth, I’d expected more of a piercing odor.

“They’re here, then,” she said.

Did she still think Andy was an innocent bystander in this?

I didn’t ask her out loud.

We went through the orchard, moving carefully.

“Are bees territorial?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Social insects, mated to their hives. They kill intruders, but beekeepers work around them all the time and don’t get stung.”

I wished I knew what I was talking about. The bees were everywhere under the apple trees, but they seemed sleepy, headed home with dusk. You could brush them aside gently, and they’d go on about their business. We were no more than objects in the way, and they went around. There was nothing angry about them.

“Jack,” Kitty said, stopping short.

A few trees off the path a bunch of bees were swarming, confused and without any apparent purpose, rising in a cloud and then settling again, like moths. It was uncharacteristic.

I ducked under the branches and went closer. The bees were agitated and uncertain. I didn’t want them any more worked up.

He lay his length on the ground, staring at the sky. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years, but I knew it was Creek Fortier. The bees kept lighting on him, almost plucking at his hair, his clothes. I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t credit them with a dog’s intelligence or loyalty, but there it was. They seemed to be trying to coax him up. With the back of his head blown off, I didn’t think he’d rise to the occasion.

I backed away. “We got big trouble,” I murmured to Kitty.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“It’s not Andy, it’s Creek,” I told her.

She looked relieved.

“We should go to the car, and to town, and get some backup,” I said.

“Not if Andy’s down there,” she said.

“We’re in over our heads,” I said.

“You, maybe,” Kitty said, turning away.

Below the orchard the ground sloped off to a brook overhung with poplar and birch. We moved into a stand of trees to our left and worked our way down to the water. From there we made our way downstream, using what cover we could, and found what we were looking for.