“I think they would have killed me that day, Sheriff McKown. If they’d caught me.”
“Did you want to hurt them?”
Dale returned the sheriff’s hard gaze with a hard look of his own. “I would have happily killed them that day, Sheriff McKown. But I didn’t. If you’ve been out there you must know that. They must have walked out of that muddy mess and left tracks.”
“They did,” said McKown. “But we lost their tracks up at the cemetery.”
Dale almost laughed. “You think I jumped them up at the cemetery? Killed all of them? Hid their bodies somewhere? Just me against five skinheads less than half my age?”
McKown smiled again. “You had a weapon.”
“The Savage over-and-under?” said Dale, literally not believing this conversation. “I didn’t have it with me.”
McKown nodded, but not reassuringly.
“And it’s a single-shot,” Dale said with some heat. “You think I went home and got the over-and-under, went back to the cemetery, and shot them all? You think they’d just stand around there and wait to be shot while I reloaded?”
McKown said nothing.
“And then why would I call you about the dogs and Michelle. . . about this delusion of mine the next day?” Dale went on, losing the heat of anger and almost faltering. “To throw you off the trail of the skinhead murders?”
“Doesn’t sound very likely, does it?” McKown said agreeably.
“Not something a sane person would do.” Dale’s voice sounded bleak even to himself.
“No,” said McKown.
“Are you going to arrest me now, Sheriff?”
“No, Professor Stewart, I’m going to drive you back to the McBride place and let you get on with your day. We can stop over at the pharmacy on the way so you can get your prescription. And I will ask you to stay around the area here until we get some of this confusion cleared up.”
Dale could only nod.
“Oh, there is one other thing.”
Dale waited. He remembered that Peter Falk as Columbo always said that right before trapping the suspect into confession.
“Would you be so kind as to sign this for me?” McKown moved the folder and slid a copy of Massacre Moon: A Jim Bridger Mountain Man Novel across the scuffed tabletop. The sheriff unbuttoned his shirt pocket to retrieve a ballpoint pen. “It’d be a real treat if you could sign it ‘To Bill, Bobby’s Nephew.’ We’re both real big fans.”
It was only early afternoon when Dale got home. The sheriff touched the brim of his Stetson and drove off down the lane without coming in. The house was cold. In the study, the ThinkPad was open and turned on.
>Did you really kill Clare, Dale?
TWENTY-FIVE
THE five black dogs returned shortly after midnight. Dale watched from the darkened house, through the kitchen window and then from the dark dining room and then from through the parlor drapes and then from the study as the hounds circled the house, their pelts and eyes picking up the starlight, their forms visible only as negative space against the softly glowing snow.
Dale softly slapped the bat against his palm and sighed. He was very tired. He had not slept all day or evening, and the sleep the night before had been while sitting on the kitchen floor. Now, as then, he knew that if the dogs wanted to come in, they would. They were larger than ever. Larger than barrel-chested huskies, taller than wolfhounds. If they wanted to come in, the kitchen door would not hold them out.
Feeling an urge not dissimilar from an acrophobic’s desire to leap from high places, Dale found it pleasing to consider opening the door and going out into the night, allowing them to drag him down and off. At least the waiting would be over.
He went into the darkened study. The only light here was from the glow from the words he had not disturbed in almost twelve hours.
>Did you really kill Clare, Dale?
He decided to do this thing. To have a conversation. He leaned over to type.
>Are you really Duane?
No new words appeared while he watched, of course, so he took the bat and walked the short circuit down the hallway to the kitchen and back, checking to make sure that no hounds had forced their way in through any of the unprotected windows. The question went unanswered. He had not really expected an answer.
He tried again, typing, walking, finding a response this time, tapping in more words, walking, reading, thinking, and then typing again. In this way a sort of asylum conversation ensued.
>I didn’t kill Clare. I didn’t kill anyone.
>Then why did you remember doing so?
>It wasn’t a memory. Perhaps a fantasy. And how do you know what I’m remembering or fantasizing?
>Have you reached the point, Dale, where you can’t tell your fantasies from your memories?
>I don’t know, Mr. Phantom Interlocutor. Perhaps I have. Are you a phantom or a memory?
No response on the screen when Dale returned. He tried again.
>Look, if I’d killed Clare Two Hearts, I’d be in jail right now. The memory—the fantasy—had me follow her to New Jersey and kill her and her boyfriend at a public campsite. If it had happened that way, I would have left clues everywhere—plane tickets, talking to the kid at the canoe rental place, car rental bills, credit card signatures, probably footprints and fingerprints. I would have flown back to Montana a gory mess. Ax murders aren’t antiseptic acts, you know. The cops would have arrested me within twenty-four hours. Old boyfriends are the first suspects.
>If the police know there is an old boyfriend. Why would Clare tell anyone in her new life at Princeton about you, Dale? What did she call you that time you thought she was joking—“My first foray into the gray-haired set”? Why would she reveal that to anyone in her new life?
>My hair’s not that gray.
Dale made his loop, found no new words on the screen, read the exchange that was there, and laughed out loud in the dark house. “Jesus Christ, I’m certifiable.” He turned off the computer.
A soft voice said something indecipherable upstairs.
Dale got the flashlight and went up, leaning into the cold draft flowing down the staircase. There was a light. He hefted the bat, feeling his heart pound faster in his chest but also feeling no real fear. Whatever was there was there.
The remaining candle in the front bedroom had been re-lighted. It flickered as he entered, and his shadow danced on the mildewed wallpaper.
“Michelle?” There was no answer. He smashed the candle with the baseball bat, the flame skittering across floorboards before dying, and then went downstairs using only his flashlight.
Outside a dog howled.
Dale turned on the kitchen light, found the yellow legal pad he kept on the counter, and started a shopping list for the morning:
plastic sheeting
nails
After a moment of thought, he added:
new shotgun and shells
A different dog howled somewhere in the dark farther to the west, out toward the barn. Dale checked the flimsy door locks, turned out the light, and went downstairs to the basement.
It was warmer there. He turned on the soft lamp near the bed, got into his pajamas, and crawled under the thick comforter. The sheets felt clean, the pillows soft. He tried to read from an open paperback— Swann’s Way, open to the “Swann in Love” section—but he was too sleepy to make sense of the words. The big console radio was whispering dance music, but Dale was too tired to get up and shut it off. Besides, the glow of the wide dial was reassuring in the dark.
The starlight was visible through the small, high windows near the ceiling. Occasionally a dark shape would occlude the stars, then another would glide by, but Dale did not notice. He snored while he slept.
This night is where my friend Dale passed the point of no return. What was going to happen here was going to happen. He knew that even as he slept. There was no going back.