Cold Black Earth (30 page)

He sat where he had been sitting when her light first fell on him, with his back to the wall of the pantry, his knees pulled up to his chest and one hand trailing on the floor, palm up, at his side. He was not, after all, looking at her; he was in dreamland, his gaze going over her head to a spot high on the wall. Rachel held the light steady on him long enough to see that he was a man in middle age, balding and gray, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and he did not look well.

Rachel was hyperventilating again, her heart threatening to punch its way out the front of her chest, the flashlight beam oscillating with the trembling of her hands. As the seconds passed and the man on the floor of the pantry did not move, it began to be clear to Rachel that he was never going to move again.

After a minute or two had passed, Rachel had calmed enough to struggle to her feet. She was scrambling to put together a picture, groping for a context that would make sense of the hysteria of the past few minutes of her life.

She had almost decided that in spite of everything she was in no imminent danger when a footstep sounded, soft but distinct, on the porch outside, and she heard the front door creak as it swung open.

Rachel flicked off the flashlight and sagged back against the wall, stress sapping the strength from her legs. Steps sounded in the front room, and light glowed faintly through the doorway. She had heard no car approaching. There had been no tires crackling on ice, no engine murmuring through the woods. And yet a person had materialized on the porch and was now coming slowly toward the kitchen. A beam of light came through the doorway and lit up the battered linoleum.

He heard me cry out, thought Rachel. He knows I am here.

She flicked on her light just long enough to find what she had stumbled over: a piece of wood, a wedge of split log about a foot and a half long and just thin enough to grasp with one hand. She switched off the light, stepped forward and bent to find it by touch, then retreated to put her back against the wall. The footsteps had halted at the doorway into the kitchen, the light playing over the walls and floor.

Rush at him, blind him with the light as soon as he comes through the doorway and then swing at his face, sharp edge first. With flight no longer an option, Rachel was ready to fight.

The beam of light swept the kitchen as the flashlight came through the doorway. Rachel flattened herself against the wall, waiting for the man holding it to take one more step.

“Rachel,” said a voice. “Come on out of there. I know you’re in there.”

Rachel waited as the light swept her way and fell full in her face.

“There you are,” said Roger Black.

30    

“Roger?” Rachel’s voice wavered.

Roger had advanced into the kitchen, lowering the light so it no longer shone in Rachel’s eyes. She in turn had clicked on her flashlight and caught Roger full in the face. He was in uniform with the fur-lined trooper’s cap on his head, and as he squinted into the light he wasn’t smiling. “You look a little shook up,” he said. “Don’t tell me your boyfriend ditched you.”

Rachel understood nothing except that help had arrived. “Roger, where’s Billy?”

“Don’t worry about Billy. He’s OK.”

“Is he here?”

“He’s not far away. I’ll take you to him in a minute.”

“Is he all right?”

“Billy’s fine. Here’s the guy you ought to be worried about.” Roger jerked his light toward the body in the pantry.

Rachel quailed. “Who is that?”

Roger made a noise that might have been a grunt or might have been a soft laugh in the dark. “Don’t you recognize him?”

“Who is it?”

Roger shined his light in the corpse’s face. “That’s the man of the hour, Rachel. The guy everybody’s been looking for. This here’s Otis Ryle.”

In the silence Rachel could hear her heart beating, a steady muffled thump. She held her light as stable as she could on the waxen face. Now she could see it, the face she had seen on television and in the news photos. Bewildered, she said, “Is he dead?”

“He doesn’t look too good, does he? Yes, I’d say he’s pretty dead.”

Rachel was working at it, fighting hard to jam things into a frame that made sense. “Roger, that guy, Billy’s friend Stanfield, he hid in the backseat of my car and he had a knife. Just like it happened with Carl Holmes. And he was just here. He must have killed all these people.”

“Now that’s an interesting idea.” Roger had wandered over to the pantry and stood examining the body in the beam of his flashlight. “Believe me, I’d love to hang this on Stanfield. But I’m not sure he’s smart enough. Anyway, he’s not gonna get very far. He’s got three agencies looking for him tonight.”

Rachel drew a deep breath, steadying. “Roger, what the
hell
is going on?”

“Come over here.”

Doubt blossomed, black and cold. “Why?”

“So you’ll understand. I want you to come over here.”

“I don’t want to.”

Roger swung the light into her face and held it there for a few seconds. “Rachel. It’s very important to me for you to understand this. Now come over here, please.”

Rachel walked slowly across the kitchen, keeping her light on Roger. He was frowning at her, but it was a frown of absorption, concentration. “What?” said Rachel.

“Touch him.” Roger bent over and laid the back of his hand against Otis Ryle’s cheek. “Go on, touch him.”

“Why?”

He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward the body on the pantry floor. Rachel cried out and nearly lost her balance. “Touch him, Rachel.”

She put out a trembling hand and brushed a cheek with her knuckles. It felt like a slab of frozen meat. She wrenched herself free of Roger’s grasp and took a couple of steps back.

“What do you feel?”

“He’s cold.”

“He sure is, isn’t he? Mighty cold.”

Rachel took a step backward, toward the door. “So, he’s cold. He’s dead. So what?”

“If Stanfield killed him just now, he’d still be warm. And the house is warm. Somebody’s been feeding that stove, and judging by the embers in there it’s been going a while. Ryle shouldn’t be
that
cold, even if he’s been dead for a while.” Roger shone his light in Rachel’s eyes again and she squinted and turned her head.

“What?”

“He’s
thawing
, Rachel. That’s what Otis is doing here. He’s thawing out. You know what that means?”

“What?”

“It means all the time these people were getting slaughtered, Otis was on ice. He had nothing to do with any of it. Poor Otis got framed.”

Rachel managed to steady her light on Roger’s face, and he was smiling his crooked smile. “That’s crazy,” she said.

“You bet it is. But it’s God damn brilliant, too. If you want to kill three men and get away with it, a homicidal maniac on the loose is the best cover you could have. Of course, you’ve got to deal with the maniac first. You’ve got to catch him, kill him and put him on ice. Then when you’re done with your business you can thaw him out and arrange for him to get found hanging from a tree or drowned in the creek, the crazy man finally committing suicide after the rampage. And who’s going to question it?”

Roger fell silent, and Rachel wondered if he expected her to say something. All she wanted was to break out into the clean night air and run. “Who?” she breathed.

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Let’s try Stanfield on for size. He came running in here and then back out again in a hurry. What was that all about?”

“He was looking for Billy.”

“And how did he know to come here?”

Rachel had to think for a second. “He didn’t. That’s why he carjacked me. He needed me to take him to Billy.”

“So he didn’t know Ryle was here.”

“No.”

“Must have been a shock. That’s why he went tearing out of here again.”

Rachel’s knees were trembling; they could hardly support her. “Roger, what are you saying?”

“Well, let’s think about it some more, Rachel. You remember that deer?”

“What deer?”

“The deer you found in the creek bed. The one the hunters had left.”

“What about it?”

“What kind of shape was it in when you saw it? Was it all torn up?”

Rachel shook her head. “No. It was just skinned, just lying there.”

“Did you think about that? Why was it still intact? If it had been a fresh kill there wouldn’t have been much left of it within an hour of being left there. But the coyotes hadn’t made much progress, had they?”

In the silence Rachel’s heart kept cadence, time slipping away. All she could say was, “Why?”

“Because it was frozen. It had been dumped there, frozen, just that night, and hadn’t thawed any in the cold weather. Now why would somebody dump all that fine venison?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Rachel. Use your head. Somebody had to make room in the freezer.”

Rachel stood in the dark in the evil suffocating air and fought it with all her might. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe that.”

“You got a better story? I’m all ears.”

“No. That’s all wrong. I don’t believe it.”

A few seconds passed. Roger said, “OK, Rachel. Suit yourself. Let’s go for a walk. I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“Just follow me. Let’s get the hell out of here.” He stalked past her, lighting his way with his flashlight.

Rachel turned and went after him. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to take a little hike. Along the creek.” Roger swung the door open and went out onto the porch, into the clean night air.

Rachel was close behind. “Roger, please. Can we please just go find Billy? Don’t you have to report this or something?”

Moonlight on snow gave enough light, even under the trees to make it seem like high noon compared to the black pit behind them. Roger went down the steps. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call it in. But you have to see this first.”

He was striding toward the creek, his flashlight beam playing over the ground in front of him. Rachel followed, a few steps behind him. “This creek runs clear across the northern part of the county,” Roger said over his shoulder. “This is the same one that runs past your house.”

“No,” she said, trotting to catch up. “I don’t believe that.”

“Oh, it’s true. And if you have a good sturdy truck, or for that matter a vehicle you don’t really give a shit about, and take it slow, you can drive along it most of the way. Have to climb out to get around a few culverts, but it keeps you off the roads. You can move around in the middle of the night without being seen.” Roger stepped down into the creek bed, his light showing the shimmer of water over rock, ice glinting at the edges. “Watch your step,” he said. He led the way, stepping carefully, stone to stone, slipping once or twice and wetting his boots.

“Roger, where are we going?” Rachel was following, afraid of being left, missing stones and plunging into the freezing water ankle deep.

“We’re going to see where this path leads,” he said. “Come on.”

Following the light, Rachel scrambled up the bank on the far side. Roger had turned to wait for her, the light shining on the ground.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Roger, you’re wrong, you have to be. I know my brother. Matt could never do that.”

Roger halted at her touch and spun to face her. She could just make out his face. “Matt? Who the hell says I’m talking about Matt?”

Rachel stared at him in horror, then took two shambling steps back. “No, God, that’s even worse. Not Billy.”

In answer Roger said nothing, but froze suddenly and flashed his light into the trees. “Rachel,” he said quietly. “Who knows you’re here?”

In the silence she could hear only the gentle murmur of water and the sighing of wind in the trees. She found the breath to say, “Stanfield. He brought me here.”

Roger flicked off the light, and the woods were very dark suddenly. Rachel heard Roger undoing the snap on his holster and easing his gun out. “And Billy,” he said. “Billy knows.”

Thunder and lightning, simultaneous and impossible, exploded in the trees, a few feet away. Rachel cried out, dropping into a crouch before she had made sense of it.

It was Roger’s grunt of pain that told her it was a gunshot. Something moved in the darkness ahead, and a footstep crunched on snow. The cold, metallic sound of a slide being racked was unmistakable.

“Run,” said Roger, his voice a ragged gasp. He staggered away from her, into the trees. Rachel spun and glanced off a tree, regained her balance and took off for the creek, the only clear space she could make out.

Another shot cracked; the flash lit the woods and shotgun pellets peppered the tree trunks. Rachel tripped and went sprawling. She scrambled to her feet, lurched forward and fell headlong into the streambed.

She lay dazed, listening, her left hand immersed in cold water. To her right she could hear someone stumbling through the woods, gasping every couple of steps. The slide was racked again.

Lie still, Rachel’s instincts told her. She heard the second set of footsteps, steady and unhurried, moving away from her.

He’s going to kill Roger, she thought. And I am going to lie here and listen to it.

Rachel hauled herself to her feet and looked into the woods. Snow covered the slope beyond the trees, just enough of a background to let her make out movement across the pattern of the black tree trunks. Roger was fifty feet away from her, heading toward the road, and behind him, quite close to Rachel but receding, a figure tracked him. Roger groaned as he went, listing to one side.

She climbed back up the bank, no conscious decision involved, knowing only that she could not lie still and listen. She stopped just long enough to orient herself as best she could, then trotted forward, desperately searching the ground.

There was snow under the trees as well, and she spotted Roger’s black gun lying where it had fallen next to his flashlight. She snatched up the gun and whirled. It was an automatic; she had her finger on the trigger, hands trembling, and she knew there had to be a safety, but she didn’t know where it was. She was already rushing after the figures ahead of her in the trees. “Stop!” she cried.

She found something that clicked under the pressure of her thumb, and she raised the gun, aiming high so as not to hit Roger by mistake, and squeezed off a shot. The strength of the recoil surprised her but she managed to hold on to the gun. “Drop that gun or I’ll kill you!” she screamed, not expecting to be obeyed. She halted, shielded by a tree trunk.

Silence. Nothing happened for what seemed a long time, and then the footsteps ahead of her resumed, slow and steady, moving away.

Rachel had no training and no experience and no plan; she was propelled by adrenaline and instinct. She scrambled to her left, expecting shotgun pellets to come flying through the woods at her, slowing as she approached the bank of the stream this time so that she was able to slide down on her seat, more or less under control.

She ran along the streambed toward the road, crouching, making no attempt at stealth, hoping only to outflank the man with the shotgun and get between him and Roger. She slipped and fell, rose, stumbled over rocks, and then finally threw herself against the bank, gun raised, panting, and listened, scanning the dark woods.

Roger was no longer moving. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him, breathing heavily somewhere just to her left. Nothing else was stirring in the woods. Behind her was the soft trickle of water.

“Roger, where’s your car?” Rachel called, softly.

Weakly, fighting for breath, Roger said, “Run, Rachel. Just run.”

WHAM!
went the shotgun, the muzzle flashing about a hundred feet away, pellets smacking into trees and kicking up snow.