Walt liked the explanation and said so. He ran off some photographs, none of which came out very well. He suggested they backtrack until they discovered where the animal tracks had caught up with Randy’s. “I’ll want some photographs of that as well.”
“I’m going to cross here,” Brandon said, pointing to the course of disturbed snow, “and we’ll parallel the tracks.”
The two separated, staying on each side of the wide path of disturbed snow. Once out of the woods, the tracks became humped with snow left by the storm. Tracking the pattern was not difficult, but it became less and less clear what they were following.
Walt shuddered at the thought of being pursued by a pack of hungry wolves in a snowstorm. He’d searched Randy for a weapon and hadn’t found one, but he could have dropped it during the chase. This would help Walt explain the single report he and Mark had heard.
“If it was wolves,” Walt finally said, “then why didn’t they scavenge on the body?”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t think of that.”
Walt popped on the six-cell, flooding the area in a harsh light. The mass of tracks they’d been following separated here. There was no question that the animal tracks joined and followed the ski tracks.
“This sucks,” said Brandon, looking down.
Walt crossed the tracks to take a look. A single impression, partly protected by a fallen tree trunk. Its shape and pattern unmistakable.
A snowshoe.
“Motherfucker,” Brandon said. “Tell me that’s you or Mark Aker.”
Walt remained silent as he took a series of photographs, the flashes like small explosions in the overwhelming white. Again, he checked the camera’s screen: none of the shots was any good.
“That could have been left earlier today. With all the snowfall, we can’t say for sure it’s connected to the animal tracks,” Brandon said.
He was right: there was no knowing when any of these tracks had been left. Snow blew and drifted; it fell out of trees; it slid down mountains. A print like this, tucked under a log, could be preserved for days.
Walt snapped more photos, informing Brandon he believed the connection between the snowshoe and the animal prints significant.
“Just so you know,” Brandon said, “even if it takes all night, I’m following these tracks.”
“It won’t take all night, Tommy.” Walt pointed down a slope to where a stream of white light ran steadily along the tops of trees. A car or truck. The sound of the chains clapping against the pavement, a half mile away.
“That’s Highway Seventy-five,” he said. “Ten bucks, that’s where they’re going to lead us.”
5
HIS SELECTION OF A STOOL NEAR THE END OF THE BAR WAS no accident, for it was at the end of the bar where the waitresses refueled their trays. It required patience to wait for the seat right next to the waitress station. Halloween brought out the crazies, and the place was packed. There were two kinds of people who sat at a bar: those waiting for a table or in a hurry; and those with their elbows shellacked to the surface. Thankfully, the two stools to his right were not the thrones of legitimate barflies but only rest stops. Fifteen minutes after he took his place on the third stool, he had migrated to his right and the seat adjacent to the brass bar that segregated the drunken masses from the waitresses.
Reconnaissance had told him that the girl, underage as she most definitely was, was drinking a kir royale-champagne dyed red with crème de cassis. Easy to spot among the beer and vodka of her peers that filled out the tray as the empties returned. Easy to identify, as the bartender placed a fresh one on the bar before turning his skills to the vodka mixes. The decent-looking waitress busied herself with garnishes of lemon and lime; she stabbed a line of three olives onto a yellow plastic stick, dressing the vodka glasses as they surfaced.
The man now sitting on the stool next to her waited for the right moment. The bartender’s head came up. The waitress slipped a wedge of lime on the highball’s rim. The man pointed to a bottle of single malt, his right arm impolitely extended between the two of them. He asked about the cost and quality of the scotch. As they directed their attention to the bottle, his left hand waved over the top of the kir like a magician’s. For anyone looking closely, the champagne briefly fizzed a little more than it had before. A few grains of sediment sank to the bottom of the glass and then vanished.
He was told the scotch was excellent, and cost as much as a tank of gas. He ordered a draft beer, and stayed on the stool long enough to watch the tray make its way through the crowded room, carried high on the end of the waitress’s steepled fingers. Waited through half the beer, knowing that a young woman would go to the washroom when her head began spinning. She wouldn’t tell her older friends anything was wrong. Might not even ask a friend to join her in the washroom. First, she would try to deal with this herself.
That was when he’d strike.
He finished the beer, placed a modest tip on the bar-neither too small nor too large to be remembered-and freed the stool to one of the many waiting behind him. Working through the busy bar took some time. Given his size and the power of his body, he could have made quick work of it, but invisibility mattered more than efficiency. He took his time, finding openings, and squeezing between the crowded tables, reaching the rough-wood-paneled back hallway. The two rest-rooms shared a wall across from a gallery of tintypes of mining camps from more than a century ago. An exit at the end led to the back parking lot. It helped that it was snowing heavily, helped that his pickup was parked less than twenty feet from the door.
He saw it clearly unfold in his mind, like watching a film but with him in it. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to hunt, to stalk, to kill. He celebrated his own brilliance, reveled in the warmth that anticipation raised in his bloodstream. Got high on it. To everything… a time for every purpose, under Heaven.
He admired the tintypes, or at least pretended to: scraggly-looking guys from the 1800s, showing off rows of enormous brook and rainbow trout hanging from laundry lines outside canvas tents. With the alcohol as a catalyst, it wouldn’t take long for her to feel it. A swimming head. An unexpected warmth and euphoria. An unfamiliar lack of inhibition, accompanied by a penetrating relaxing of her muscles.
He stole glimpses of her across the barroom. Each time she laughed, her strapless bridesmaid’s dress slipped a little lower on her chest, revealing the remnant of a summer-tan line. She might have paid more attention to this even twenty minutes earlier. But now, light-headed and prone to laughter, she didn’t know what she felt except a little too good. Less than five minutes later, just before her left breast completely escaped, her forearm caught the dress, and she pinched the fabric below her smoothly shaved armpits and hiked it back up. This moment of modesty triggered something in what remained of her conscious mind, informing her something was wrong. It couldn’t have been more than a glimpse, a flicker, given the dose. But, in that instant, she excused herself, briefly lost her balance, stumbled, burst out laughing, and once again caught the bust of her dress just prior to total exposure. And then, to his pure delight, she headed directly for him.
A syringe occupied each of his coat pockets, making one easily available to either hand. He wasn’t going to need the Taser: she was cranked. She reached to the backs of chairs for support as she negotiated her way through the crowded room. The live band pounded through a John Mellencamp song, loud enough to make it impossible to think. She caught the beat, and, smiling sublimely, swayed her hips side to side, now on final approach.