“These suck,” she said. “No contrast. Bad shadows. You’re not going to like them.”
“I need this,” Walt said.
“Yeah? Well, I need a contrast agent. A dark powder. Hang on.” She hurried back to the Hummer, pulled her purse from the car, and dug through it. “Pays that I was at a wedding and wanted to look presentable.” She held up a compact case. “Face powder. Who’s got a coin?”
She scratched the compressed face powder to dust and blew across it to color the icy tire impression. A few minutes later, she had the shots she wanted and showed them to him on the camera’s small screen, before the three of them took down the rigging and piled back into the Hummer.
“Do I get to know what this is about?” she asked Walt from the backseat.
Brandon looked over, curious as to how Walt would answer.
“It’s a murder investigation,” Walt said.
7
HE HUMMED A LITTLE THEME MUSIC IN HIS HEAD AS A soundtrack. Real life felt like the movies or television only when you added a soundtrack. The cabin was dark and smelled of wood smoke, and other odors not easily placed: cordite, medicines, old dog.
He’d placed her in his only comfortable chair, next to the woodstove. It had a green Pendleton blanket pulled over the cushions to hide the stuffing that escaped its worn pillows. An unusual footstool- woven cane with deer antler legs-held up her bare feet. He’d bound her wrists to the arms of the chair with plastic ties. He’d left her legs free, for obvious reasons.
“You all right?” he asked her. He didn’t care, but he offered his concern as a courtesy.
She giggled-a wet, guttural groan-part of her given to fantasy, part terror. That odd laughing of hers was enough to make him sick. Then again, it aroused him to the point he was needing some satisfaction and that brought him back to the soundtrack, because now he was humming the Rolling Stones. “ ‘I feel great,’” he answered, speaking for her. One of her eyes lifted partially open as he spoke for her, and only then with great effort. The eyeball spun in her head; her lid fell shut, then blinked open again.
The eye surveyed her surroundings, and she tried to sit up. Her left breast popped out of the dress. She looked down at herself, and some drool spilled from her mouth to her chest and slid into the gulf, the fleshy abyss, and was gone.
“ ‘Oops!’” he said for her, now laughing along with her as she made that sound again. “‘Hey, what’s with my arms, anyway?’” he narrated. “‘I mean, I can’t feel anything.’
“Isn’t that right?” he asked her. “Numb as Novocain. The good news is, you won’t want to remember any of this. Good for both of us. Won’t feel hardly anything either, but that’s your loss.” He rubbed his crotch, and then took hold of it and squeezed it like a rapper. “Old Max is dying to meet you.”
His looks must have frightened her on some level, for he was a big son of a bitch, with too much hair and too little grooming.
He waited for her but got only that one wandering eye.
He raised his voice an octave to imitate her. “‘I like to par… ty.’
“We’re going to have fun, all right,” he said.
Ostensibly, he was on contract, but he had ulterior motives, information of his own to collect from her. Had she been horsey, he might have gleaned the information and been done with her. But she was a rare thing of youthful beauty-and the ketamine cocktail would erase any memory of these precious hours. As a survivalist, he knew never to waste anything. Put everything to good use.
“‘Well, what are we waiting for?’” his ventriloquist puppet asked. Her good eye was locked onto the stove, apparently having lost track of him, but he didn’t let that bother him. You didn’t lose track of a man with a near-three-foot span to his shoulders and twenty-eight-inch thighs for very long. You just chose to ignore him. But that wouldn’t last either. Old Max was coming to attention.
A geometric pattern of light rounded the ceiling and fled down a wall like a ghost, and a car engine was heard shutting off. The cabin door opened a moment later, and, with it, came a gust of cold that turned them both that direction.
“Nice,” the visitor said, noticing the gooseflesh on her exposed breast, the tight pucker to her nipple and areola, as he shut the door.
“‘Who are you?’” he imagined her asking.
He’s who you have to thank for this, he answered himself silently.
The visitor was dressed like a shoe salesman. He removed his Eddie Bauer jacket-black suede peppered with melted snow-and stepped away from the door and into the light. He had uncommon good looks, though his face was difficult to read. He might have once been a high school quarterback or varsity pitcher, the kind of guy that didn’t need to drug a girl to get some action. “Stop humming,” he said.
The big man went silent and backed away. He could break this guy with one hand tied behind his back, if he had to, but he wasn’t about to. Both men knew that.
The visitor stepped toward the woodstove, holding his hands out for warmth. “Kira, you can hear me and understand me?”
“Do I know you?” Her words slurred. It was the first time she’d spoken since leaving the bar. “Help me…”
“I will help you. But I need your help first. Okay?” He waited. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. The visitor looked over his shoulder and the big man handed him a syringe from the kitchen table.
“You work at the Sun Valley Animal Center,” the visitor said.
“Do… I… know… you?” she repeated.
“You’re Mark Aker’s secretary.”
“His assistant. Ass-isn’t?” she said, amusing herself. “How do you… know… that?”
The quavering of her voice changed her in the big man’s eyes. She looked so incredibly young and childish, all of a sudden. Just a baby in a bridesmaid’s dress.
“Tell me about the sheep.”
“What sheep? Which sheep?”
“The sheep. The sick sheep. Why are the sheep so sick?”
“Are we going to party or talk nursery rhymes?” She giggled throatily.
“What’s wrong with the sheep?” the visitor asked. “What does your boss think is wrong with the sheep?”
“What sheep?” the narrator inside his head answered. She had said nothing, apparently having lost consciousness, her head now sagging.
“What happened to the partying, anyway? ” the big man wondered.
The visitor lifted her head by the hair, and the whites of her eyes showed. He held the syringe where she could see it. No one liked a needle. The girl’s eyes popped, and she shied away.
“Kira, if you don’t tell me about the sheep I’m going to inject you with this. You will not like what it does. Everything’s going to be a lot more real, more clear, for you, once you’ve had this shot. A lot less fun, I promise. He and I are still going to party with you, Kira, but something tells me you’re not going to like it. You see how big a man he is?” The visitor pointed at him. “He gets sloppy seconds. Think about that a minute.” He waited for some sign from her. Got nothing. “I need to know what your boss is thinking about the sheep,” the visitor said. “I need to know that right now. You can help yourself a lot by telling me.”
Did he really think she heard him? Maybe she could see his lips move. Maybe, even, she recognized every other word. But she was too far down, too far back, to fully understand him at normal speed.
“You know… you are really hung up on these sheep.”