“She said he was chasing her. In the woods. I waited, I called him on his cell. Flashed the lights. Blew the horn. Yelled. I did a lot. Then I saw a car parked at that house, and I got the hell out of there.”
They glared at each other, shivering, shoulders hunched, the snow frosting their faces. Gator thinking how cold was hard on machinery, harder on people. Affects judgment…
“Bottom line, Sheryl. Whatever happened to Shank. The way we are now…she’s a witness,” Gator said with finality.
“Oh, Christ.”
“We find out what she knows. Then…I don’t see any other way. You found her lost in the woods. They’ll find her in the woods. Now open the goddamned trunk.”
Moving like a sleepwalker, Sheryl reached into the car. The trunk lid popped. In the agitated shine from the barn light, Gator Bodine stared at Kit Broker, who was coiled back in the cavity, brandishing a screwdriver.
“Hey, now, girl; you look cold in there,” Gator said in a reasonable voice.
“Leave me alone.”
Damn kid coiled tighter, like an obstinate snake. “Can’t do that-your mom and dad are on the way, with the sheriff. Heard you’ve had quite a night,” Gator said.
At the mention of her parents, the kid’s lower lip trembled. But the dark pockets of her eyes struck Gator as unyielding. He needed to get her in the light. See her eyes.
“Look, I’m not going to let you freeze. I’m taking you in the house.” He extended his hand; she wielded the screwdriver. Gator struck fast, snatched her arm, plucked the screwdriver from her hand, and tossed it away. Getting pissed, he lifted her bodily, roughly, from the trunk and tucked her, kicking and flailing, under his arm.
When he got her in the kitchen, he released her. Immediately, she tried to run. He caught her easily and shoved her back into the room. She banged up against the kitchen table, arching away when she saw Sheryl come into the room. Gator could see her eyes now; hot, green, hostile over the smeared dirt and blood on her face. And Sheryl wasn’t helping, walking to the corner by the stove, one arm folded across her chest, the other up, hand covering her face, fingers worrying at her forehead. Eyes downcast, Sheryl refused to look at the girl.
“C’mon, kid.” Gator gestured awkwardly. “You want something to eat, some milk or something?”
She gave him such a look of utter pugnacity that he saw, uh-uh, no way. This was going nowhere fast. So Gator tried to think it through, to solve it like a problem. Put her back in the trunk. Couple hours she’d be unconscious, then put her in back of the truck. That way Sheryl could get the Nissan out of here. Ditch it in the Cities. Then he’d sneak the kid back, say two miles from Broker’s house. Leave her in the woods. Be tricky, they’d be searching, but if the snow held, if he went on snowshoes…it just might…
“Gator!” Sheryl whipped around, alert.
He heard it too, a determined knock on the front door. “Quick,” he said, moving to the utensil drawer, yanking it open, pulling out the Luger. To Sheryl, “Get her out of sight. In the bathroom. Keep her quiet.” He glared at the kid. “Not a peep.”
The kid stared wide-eyed for a moment, fixed on the Luger, then on his face. The hot hostile eyes refocused. Very distinctly she said, “When my mom and dad catch you, they’re gonna shoot you right in the head.”
“Get her out of her, keep her quiet,” Gator muttered as Sheryl wrestled the kid down the hall into the bathroom, shut the door. He pulled his shirt out of his jeans, stuck the Luger in his back pocket, and flared the shirt around it. Then he walked to the door, moved the curtain aside, and groaned.
Cassie.
She stood in the porch light, wearing a white parka, bareheaded, hair whipping around, hugging herself, stamping her feet, face all bright and twitchy with craving of one kind or another. Gator opened the door. “What the hell?”
She stepped past him fast, shivering. “Cold out there. Crazy too. You hear…”
He stared at her. Un-fucking-believable.
“…somebody shot Harry Griffin, killed him, at his place he’s renting to that Broker guy. Except Griffin musta shot back, ’cause they found the guy they think did it. With a gun and everything. He bled to death, out in the woods. And you know what Madge Grolick heard from Ginny the dispatcher in the sheriff ’s office? She talked to Jeff Tindall who went out with Fire and Rescue and when they found the guy, he was all chewed up. Wolves, they think…”
“Cassie, you can’t be here,” Gator said. But he liked the part about Shank being off the board. Gave them some breathing room. Now if he could just get Cassie to shut up and go away.
“…and now Broker’s little girl is missing.” Cassie grimaced. “I met them, in town. The mother was…nice to me.”
Gator stared at her, mouth open. What the hell?
Cassie just continued talking, like she was gossiping over coffee. “There’s cops showing up from all over. Madge said, Ginny said, Broker was some king cop in the Cities or something. They’re bringing a helicopter, these special trained search dogs from Duluth…”
Gator gripped her arm, lowered his head, and marched her toward the door. “You gotta go.”
“Why? You been trying to get me out here ever since you got out of prison,” she said, her smile jerky.
“Where’s Jimmy?” Gator said in a dull voice.
“Showing Teddy how to wash his favorite Canadian Labrie garbage truck at the garage. Where I was, and you never showed up like you said you would. To give me something. So here I am. Drove through a lot of crap to get here, too. Now what do I have to do, sing for my supper or what?” She ran her index finger down from his throat to his sternum.
Gator swatted the hand away. “I mean it, Cassie.”
“So do I,” she said, undeterred.
That’s when the kid screeched in the bathroom: “Get your hands off me.” Stuff banging around, a struggle.
Gator sagged. Seeing Cassie react to the voice, obviously a child’s voice, he sagged more. Wasn’t falling apart. It was completely apart. Didn’t matter now. None of it. Just let it happen…
“What the hell you got going on here?” Cassie said, suddenly frantically alert. “Christ, Gator, you can’t have a kid around this shit you got out here.” Her eyes flared. “Remember Marci…” He didn’t answer, made no attempt to stop her. She pushed past him, strode down the hall, and yanked open the bathroom door.
She saw a woman standing in front of the sink with her hands cupped on a little girl’s mouth, trying to hold her steady. Seeing Cassie enter, the woman reacted in a dazed spasm. Releasing her hold, stepping back. The girl had wild red hair, matted with burrs. Her green parka was filthy, snow pants ripped, and her face all red with scratches, bruises, and dried blood. The little Broker girl she’d met last Saturday morning in town, at Big Lake Threads, with her mother.
“It’s all right, I’m Teddy’s mom,” Cassie said to Kit. Then she turned her eyes on the woman. Epiphany was not exactly in her vocabulary, but she was seized with a revelatory fury. There were things more powerful than the need to peddle her ass for a hit of meth. Than playing sick old games with her brother. “Who the fuck are you?” Cassie screamed at the woman, her voice exploding in the small dingy room.
Kit’s mouth fell open, imprisoned in the close charged air, looked back and forth at their angry faces, their hair, their physiques. Then she looked up, away from the berserk tension in their eyes, and saw a corpulent gray leopard spider in a web in the corner next to the door. The spider uncoiled and flexed its legs.
Like a disturbed ghost.
Sheryl, having her own freaky prescient moment, yelled, “Gator, what’s going on?”
Gator heard the incensed voices echo down the hall, through the kitchen to where he sagged against the peeling wallpaper next to the front door. Almost dreamy with the profound simplicity of it, seeing how they were all connected, this continuous piece of yarn. One loose end, and it all came unraveled.