“Which is?”
“That a smart lawyer poking around in the case might discover things he doesn’t want discovered. Maybe those deaths are just the tip of an iceberg.”
“Christ, Maddie, anything is possible. But I still don’t see how he’s making a fool of me.”
“Why are you taking his side?”
“How am I taking his side?”
“Whatever I say, you defend him. You believe everything he says.”
“I don’t believe anything. I’m a homicide detective, not a gullible idiot.”
“Then why are you confusing his cleverness with real insight?”
Gurney was at a loss for words. He felt that Madeleine’s animus toward Hammond was coming from a vulnerable place in herself, not from an appraisal of the facts.
But what if she was right? What if she was seeing something he was missing? What if his own supposed objectivity wasn’t so objective after all?
They arrived back in their suite in a state of strained silence. Madeleine went into the bathroom and turned on the tub water.
He followed her. “Didn’t you just take a bath? Like three hours ago?”
“Is there a limit on the number of baths I’m allowed to take?”
“Maddie, what the hell is going on? You’ve been edgy ever since we agreed to come here. Shouldn’t we talk about whatever’s bothering you?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just not . . . very comfortable right now.” She shut the bathroom door.
All of this was new and unsettling. Madeleine with secrets. Madeleine hunkering down behind a closed door. He went over and sat on the couch. It was several minutes before he noticed that the fire had burned itself out. Only a few small coals remained, glowing weakly through the ashes. His first thought was that he should revive it, give the room some warmth. But his second thought was that he should go to bed. It had been a stressful day, and the following day promised to be the same.
Thinking of the next day reminded him of the call from Holdenfield he’d let go into voicemail. He took out his phone and listened to the message.
“Hi David, Rebecca here. They’ve added some stuff to my schedule, so I’m going to be tied up most of tomorrow. But I have a suggestion. Breakfast. You don’t have to get back to me, because I’ll be in the Cold Brook Inn dining room at eight tomorrow morning one way or the other. So come if you can. You can even come earlier if that’s better for you. I’ll be up at five, working in my room on a paper that’s overdue. Okay? Love to hear more about the Hammond case. Drive safely. Hope to see you.”
From a practical point of view, the timing, although unusual, might be doable. He recalled that she’d said in her earlier message that it was just twenty-seven miles from Wolf Lake to Plattsburgh. That should take well under an hour, even in bad weather, plus an hour or so with Rebecca. So a total of three hours, max. If he left at seven, he’d be back by ten at the latest. He closed his eyes and began to compile a mental list of questions to ask Rebecca about hypnotism, about Hammond’s controversial reputation, and about Wenzel’s dream.
His exhaustion overtook him so quickly he was asleep within minutes.
As always happened when he dozed off sitting up, physical discomfort eventually intruded, dragging with it the concerns he’d temporarily anesthetized. He opened his eyes, checked the time on his phone, and discovered he’d slept for almost an hour. He was about to see if Madeleine was still in her bath when he saw her standing at the window. She was wearing one of the lodge’s plush white bathrobes.
“Turn off the lights,” she said without looking at him.
He switched off the lamps and joined her at the window.
The storm had departed, and the dense overcast had been replaced with a patchwork of clouds making their way across the face of a full moon. He followed Madeleine’s line of sight to discover why she’d called him to the window. And then he saw it.
As a cloud moved slowly out of the way of the moon, the effect on the landscape was like a theatrical light coming up on a dark stage. The stage in this case was dominated by an overwhelming presence—Devil’s Fang, fierce and gigantic, its jagged edges thrown into dramatic relief. Then another cloud moved in, the moonlight faded, and Devil’s Fang disappeared into the night.
Gurney turned away from the window, but Madeleine continued to stare out into the darkness.
“I used to come here.” She said it so softly he wondered if he’d heard right.
“You came up here? When?”
“Christmas vacations. I’m sure I mentioned it.”
That jogged his memory. Something she’d told him when they were first married. Something about spending a few Christmases with elderly relatives in upstate New York when she was in high school. “With a distant aunt and uncle, or something like that, wasn’t it?”
“Uncle George and Aunt Maureen,” she said vaguely, still gazing in the direction of Devil’s Fang. The second cloud obscuring the moon began to pass, letting the silver light shine down again on that sharp pinnacle.
“You never said much about it.”
She didn’t respond.
“Maddie?”
“One winter there was a tragic death. A local boy. A drowning.”
“At this lake?”
“No, another one.”
“And?”
She shook her head.
He waited, thinking she might go on.
But all she finally said was, “I have to get some sleep.”
“DAVID!”
There was a frantic tightness in her whisper that woke him immediately.
“There’s something in the sitting room.”
“Where?” As he whispered the question, he was calculating from memory the rough angle and number of steps to the bag that held his Beretta.
“I saw something pass the window. Could a bat have gotten into the room?”
“Is that what you saw—something flying?”
“I think so.”
He relaxed just a little and reached out to the lamp on the night table. He pressed the toggle switch. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Still nothing.
“Can you reach the lamp on your side of the bed?” he asked.
He heard the futile clicks as she tried it.
He felt around on the night table for his phone. He found it and checked the status icons. There was no cell signal, meaning the lodge’s private cell tower was out, meaning there’d been a power interruption.
In the windowless bedroom alcove it was too dark to see anything, but a pale wash of moonlight was faintly illuminating part of the main room, visible through the alcove’s broad arch. Gurney lay motionless, searching the darkness for any hint of movement. He saw nothing and heard nothing. Some minutes went by without any return of power.
Then the silence was broken by a slow creaking in the ceiling.
Madeleine grabbed his arm.
They listened together for a long minute.
A small shadow shot past a window in the main room, forcing a cry from Madeleine.
“It’s just a bat,” he said, as her fingers tightened on his arm. “I’ll open the balcony door and let it fly out.”
His assurances were cut off by another creak in the ceiling—like a careful footstep on a weak floorboard.
“Someone’s up there,” whispered Madeleine.
Bringing to mind what he remembered of the front of the lodge, he pictured two regular floors—the ground floor and the floor they were on—plus an attic level. He thought it unlikely that any guest rooms would be in the attic. As he was considering this, there was a faint scraping sound in the ceiling directly above them.
Then nothing. They listened for a long while. But all they heard was the droning of the wind at the balcony door.
What was it about Wolf Lake Lodge, wondered Gurney, that made the sound of a slow footstep, if that’s what it was, so disturbing? Was it the power outage that was creating a sense of threat? Surely the same sound in daylight, or even lamplight, would not have the same impact.
Madeleine spoke again in a whisper. “Who do you think is up there?”
“Maybe no one. Maybe it’s just the wood contracting with the dropping temperature.”
Her concern shifted to the bat. “Will it really fly out if you open the door?”
“I think so.”
She relaxed her grip on his arm. He slipped out of bed and felt his way from the alcove to the balcony door and opened it. He guessed the cold front that blew the sleet storm away had lowered the temperature at least fifteen degrees. Unless the bat flew out quickly, the whole suite would soon be freezing.
It occurred to him that a fire would be a good idea—for warmth, light, reassurance.
He stepped away from the open door and began to feel his way toward the fireplace. Shivering in his shorts and tee shirt, he stopped at the chair where his clothes were and put on his pants and shirt. As he turned back toward the fireplace, a sound in the outer corridor stopped him. He stood still and listened. A few seconds later he heard it again.
He got his Beretta out of the bag on the chair. He couldn’t help feeling he was overreacting, influenced more by the spooky atmosphere than by any real threat.
“What is it?” whispered Madeleine from the alcove.
“Just someone in the corridor.”
He heard a soft thump from the direction of the suite door.
He eased off the Beretta’s safety and began moving forward. The moonlight was limited to the area near the windows. In this part of the room the visibility was zero.
There was a second thump, stronger than the first—the sort of dull impact that might be produced by someone bumping a knee, or some other blunt object, against the door.
He felt his way into a position by the side of the door, eased the dead bolt into its open position, then stopped and listened. He heard something that might have been the sound of someone breathing, or maybe it was just the movement of air through the crack under the door.
He grasped the doorknob. He turned it slowly as far as it went, steadied his stance, checked his grip on the Beretta . . . then yanked the door open.