“If you look closely, you can see the little house,” she whispered.
It was like a reclusive goblin’s hideout from a fairy tale—a peaked roof with green shingles and a green door, almost concealed by tall pines. No smoke came from the chimney, but they could definitely smell smoke by then.
“I can’t let Roman go up there, because whoever is in there could shoot him if he has a gun,” Lorrie said. “So, I’ll try to come in from the side. Don’t either of you move. Promise. No matter what you hear.”
Even the trees maintained silence as Lorrie used her snowshoes to leap quietly over the faint tracks toward the little house. Ben nearly started forward as he saw a movement from inside … or was it a trick of the sunlight on the glass? Lorrie, out of the line of vision of the front windows, edged closer, slowly removing her gun from its shoulder holster and steadying it in both hands.
Then they heard the blast of the gunshot.
Ben screamed, “No!” And both of them stumbled forward.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Beth, Candy, Kerry, and Pat wandered through the streets of Durand, searching for somewhere to eat something even vaguely urban. A scone. A muffin. In Durand, such a place didn’t exist. There was a diner, but even the condition of the window, so smeared with grease and handprints it was impossible to see whether it was open or closed, deterred them. There was a shop that sold exquisite rock-based jewelry, two gas stations, three bars, Pitch’s Sporting Goods, the Walgreens, and probably ten restaurants of varying ethnicities—all closed for the winter. The owner of the Lone Star thoughtfully gave them tortillas and cheese and there were peanut-butter crackers and milk from the drugstore. One boutique displayed luxe men’s and women’s clothing. It was called Darandella’s.
“The town’s single Italian,” Pat said.
At the same moment, they all noticed in the window the slight smattering of children’s things—quaint Elefanten shoes, tiny smocked and flowered Oilily dresses with polka-dotted tights, sturdy yellow-and-green spring corduroys for boys. Quickly, as if pulled by one string that joined them, they turned away from the smocked dresses and bright spring rompers.
All of Durand was composed of four streets, with the residential portions arrayed around the square like layers removed from a cake. During their second tour, they decided to ascend Paramount Drive, which was steep, and walk for a while. It kept them warm and no one could bear the silence of the inn—broken only when Eliza woke and wept behind the door—or the silence of the single cell phone that they had left, which was Pat’s. As they tromped along, although they first imagined it to be a trick of the wind, they heard someone calling them. “Pat! Beth!” Whirling around, expecting to see the sheriff or Bill Humbly, they saw Claire Whittier, a white cardigan hugged around her, gesturing to them from the door of a massive stone-and-cedar house. Following Candy, who took a step toward her, they found themselves on Claire’s doorstep. She said, “Please come inside. Let me make you something to eat at least. I have bread and eggs and Blaine is a good cook.”
In the kitchen, surrounded by drawings painted and framed by the lost Jacqueline, they drank French-pressed coffee and ate slices of sourdough with Blaine’s spitfire cheese-and-salsa omelet. Pat noticed that Blaine didn’t eat and mentioned it.
“I can’t,” Blaine said. “My father spent my whole life telling me not to eat so I wouldn’t get fat and now I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening up there. Sarah hasn’t heard a thing.”
“No news is not necessarily bad news,” said Candy, who, strangely, had some appetite for the first time in a week. “It just means slow going.”
“I feel like all I want to do is sleep,” Blaine said.
“My sister-in-law, Eliza, is the same way, Blaine,” Kerry told her. “Now that the doctor gave us Valium for her, Eliza sleeps and sleeps. She just gets up to brush her teeth. Sleep knits up the raveled sleave of care.”
“Was that Dr. Slaughter?” Claire asked.
“Yes,” Candy said. “Quite a name for a doctor.”
“When we’re awake, we just talk about it all the time and around and around it goes. There’s not a thing you can do,” Blaine went on, ignoring Claire.
“We know,” Candy said. “We absolutely know.”
“My father held a grudge. Obviously against whoever took my sister, but it was more too. He felt responsible for what happened to Jackie.”
“You do,” Beth said. “Even if you aren’t. I did. I was … well, basically, I was nearly catatonic for at least a year after Ben was taken. I never once believed Ben was alive. In itself, that’s not so strange.”
“He never once believed Jackie was alive!” Blaine said. “Not from the first moment. He convinced both of us. And I wanted so to hope. I think that was what pushed me over, into a real depression. I had to have medication, and gained weight, and of course …”
“That infuriated Bryant, although it wasn’t Blaine’s fault,” Claire said. “He wanted us to keep shipshape, like a military troop.”
“What a thing to think about at a time like that,” Candy said. “That wasn’t fair to you.”
“I distracted myself. You grasp at anything,” Pat said. “For me it was, let’s start a restaurant. Let’s start a great theme restaurant, like an Italian wedding, only every night …”
“That was one distraction that worked out well, at least,” Beth said gently.
“Yeah, it let me avoid how my wife and my kids were falling apart. So I guess you could say it was successful.”
“Pat, honey,” Beth said. “I’m lucky you didn’t leave me.”
“You sure?” Pat said. No one laughed.
“We saw your shopping center,” Candy broke in, politely. “Your one clothing store, besides the sporting-goods place.”
“Oh, Darandella’s been an old friend for years. I’m sure my friends and I have kept her in business,” said Claire. “Bryant never had time to go shopping. I bought a good many suits there for him, and had shirts made. And of course, when friends had babies …” She literally clapped one translucent hand across her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t mean anything by it,” said Candy. “It’s okay, Claire. We should walk back now. My daughter’s alone at the inn.”
“Let me walk with you,” Blaine said. “I can’t stand to sit here anymore. Pictures of my sister. My father’s … lair in there.”
“I’ll come too,” Claire said.
“Mom, you don’t want to do that,” said Blaine as though Claire were a much, much older woman.
“Yes, of course I do. It would do me good to get some air. Just let me grab a coat and my boots.”
In the end, the six of them walked back down past the imposing faces of the homes on Paramount Street and around the corner where Darandella’s Boutique faced both the main thoroughfare and the ascending residential road. As they shook hands, Claire said suddenly, “Wait for me here. Just for a moment.” And it didn’t take more than five minutes for her to emerge, with three white bags, tufted with golden tissue, looped over her arms. “Here,” she said, handing them to Beth, and when Beth couldn’t hold both with her mittens, to Candy.
“What are these?”
“Spring clothes. Please take them. I thought, nine months? Babies are bigger now than the age they put on the clothes. I’ve often thought it’s so mothers can feel pride in their children getting so big. Dresses and a couple of little coats …”
“We can’t take these,” Beth said gently.
“You mean, from us,” Blaine said softly.
“No, I mean …”
“Please take them, for luck,” said Blaine, and Claire nodded. “Please believe she’s alive, for us. Because I know my dad is crazy but I don’t ever think anything would make him hurt a baby. Please help us believe she’s safe.”
“They’ll be the first things we put on her,” Candy said. They watched as the Whittiers made their way slowly back up the block to their haunted house. “Je
sus,” Candy said.
“I’ll keep them in my room,” Beth said.
“I was just going to throw them in the trunk of the rental car,” Candy told her. “I don’t want to look at them.”
“That wouldn’t be right,” Beth said. “She’s trying to help us believe. I … threw away everything everyone gave me for Ben, back then. Now, I don’t know if I should have shoved hope away from me so hard.” She remembered how she had thought of the little pagan gods, how the Chinese believed the opposite of Westerners, that it was best to have those bored little gods catch sight of something shiny—elsewhere—than to notice a healthy child, good fortune made flesh. She thought for a moment of all the pagan ones that scarpered in these mountains and the ancient people who had prayed to them and tried to placate them. Would the bored little gods turn impassive eyes on this street where the meltwater torrented down the drains and nod?
The group finally caught sight of the awning that announced the Lone Star Inn. On the steps, they saw a figure in white, waving and leaping. Whatever she was calling was torn away from their ears by the steady push of the wind that came down from the mountains.
“It’s Eliza,” Candy said, and she and Pat began to run, the bags slapping against their legs. Beth stood in the snow, her hands clasped under her chin. Had she let herself hope too much? Had she let herself hope enough?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It took Vincent’s and Ben’s combined strength to shove the door open against what was blocking it.
They glanced down when it finally budged. It was a man’s leg, in denim with a flannel cuff.
“Jesus Christ,” Ben murmured.
Bryant Whittier lay sprawled where he had fallen. He was dead.
Lorrie Sabo knelt and said, “I’ll look for a pulse.”
Vincent said, “I’m thinking that won’t do much good.” What had been the back of Bryant Whittier’s head festooned the coat racks and one arm of the built-in benches that circled the one main room of the house.
Quickly, they turned away from the sight and examined the room. A ladder rose to a sleeping loft. Ben and Vincent nearly vaulted up. “He put the fire out first.”
“Where is she? She’d be crying if she heard me!” Ben said. “Where’s Stella?”
They clambered back down from the loft.
“Wait, wait,” Lorrie said. She opened the door and with a cluck of her tongue, summoned Roman inside. He immediately took up his peculiar stance in front of a deep bank of recessed kitchen drawers. One of the drawers was open perhaps an inch.
Vincent pulled it out all the way and Stella kicked her feet and smiled.
“Stella bella. She wasn’t afraid,” Ben said, scooping up the baby, holding her close. “Stella. My baby.”
“Of course she wasn’t, were you?” Lorrie cooed. “You knew your dad was coming. You’re a smart chick, isn’t ya?” To Ben, Lorrie said, “In another life, I was a nurse. Let me just have a look at her quick.” After a few deft presses and peeks, Lorrie said, “Heck, she’s fine. She’s not even dehydrated, though I’d like her a little bit warmer.”
Ben opened his parka and shirt and tenderly zipped the baby inside, unconsciously humming the denied old song, If a bunny catch a bunny…. “My little girl. My little girl. Daddy’s here. Daddy will never let you go ever again. My little heart. Mio piccolo cuore.”
“You don’t speak Italian,” Vincent said.
“What do you know? For a guy who won an Oscar, you don’t know that much,” said Ben. His face was childlike with rapture.
Quickly, Vincent turned away and examined the panes of glass on the windows of the little house, each a prism in the morning light. The carol of Stella’s steady stream of rolling nonsense vowels made him weak; her face was a beacon of contentment. Vincent stared around the inside of the little house—trying to take in the genius of its economy, from the built-in beds to the fold-down table. Bryant Whittier’s body, with its achromatic face, took up much of the floor space.
Lorrie pulled a plastic tablecloth from the head of her pack—she called that piece a “cranium,” perhaps in deference to the scene—and said, “Let’s see how much propane he had left.” She pumped the levers to get the stove going long enough to warm water in a pan. “There we go. I knew there was a reason I kept one of Mariel’s old bottles.”
“What’s that?”
“Ah, that would be baby formula,” Lorrie said. “I fed some without iron to a mouse my daughter Dana found last winter. Now I have the fattest mouse in California. Then I just kept the formula. Who knows why? Anyhow. You think it’s just your B.O. that’s making her cry? Think she might be hungry?”
“Where’re the bottles Whittier had?” Vincent asked.
“In the trash. They’re disposables,” Lorrie said. “I looked first. They’re the kind they have on planes.”
“We didn’t think of bringing a bottle,” Ben said.
“Among so much else,” Lorrie said with a radiant, mischievous grin. “We have enough for one, anyhow.”
They sat on the built-in bench, keeping their feet away from Bryant Whittier’s corpse, while Ben fed Stella and changed her into one of two remaining disposable diapers in the cabin. Then he found an absurdly light stretchy suit, one that Eliza had brought to L.A., and dressed her. With Lorrie directing him, Vincent searched the loft and the bags for anything they could wrap around Stella. Her little hands were pale and chilled. There was a snowsuit, perhaps an eighteen-month size, that was too big, so they stuffed the legs and the feet with burp cloths and a baby blanket to make it snug. Vincent turned up the brim on his Blackhawks cap and pulled it down over Stella’s black hair, leaving his own pink headband in place. Then Ben picked up his child, holding her cheek close to his own. “Do you think she’s deaf?” he asked Lorrie.
“Why the heck would you think that?”
“She would have heard that gunshot.”
“That drawer was probably her bed. It was lined with blankets. She probably startled and then went back to sleep. Babies don’t startle that easily if they feel safe. He probably made her feel comfortable here.” At that thought, Ben exhaled a long breath and rubbed his forehead. “I’ll never figure this out if I live a hundred years.”
Lorrie began marshaling the troops. “You don’t have to. Now, Vincent, Sam, listen. I’m going to go back for help and you’re staying here. You fell once and you can’t fall now. We’re at least fifteen miles in over rough country. But it’s country I know like the back of my hand. If I hike as fast as I can, which is a lot faster than you, and given how much the snow has melted today, maybe I can make it out by sundown. There’s a good chance of that. The sky’s still clear. That’s good as far as the likelihood of there being no more snow, but it also means it might get cold. Too cold to take a chance with Stella.”
“How long?” Ben said. “Why can’t we all go?”
“Your job, Ben, for your baby, is to stay here. Stay right here until I send help. I will have the FBI guy send a helicopter for you three. This is the safest place you can be. Shelter and light and water. At least enough.”
“Sit here? With Whittier’s body?” Vincent asked.
“Push him outside. Turn on the heat …”
“For as long as it lasts …” said Ben.
“You have wood,” she said. And glanced at the tiny stove. “Well, a little. You have your sleeping bags too. You know how to zip them together. Get in together. Put her in the middle and just huddle if it comes to that,” Lorrie said. “But it won’t. You hired me to find her, didn’t you? And bring her back safe? This is the only way I can do it.” She stepped just outside the door for a moment and tried her cell phone. “Shoot! Nothing.”
“Lorrie, just go,” Vincent said. “I’ll make the deciding call here.”
“We can’t even let Eliza know!” Ben said.
“I’ll call as soon as I get a signal. That way, help might be on the way before I even get to the trailhead,” Lorrie insisted. “The sooner we do t
his the better. I’m going to unload my pack to travel light. I’ll leave you everything I don’t need for an emergency. I’m going to take my phone and a few power bars. I’ll take my gun. You … obviously have one,” she added, looking down at Bryant Whittier. “Let’s, ah, pull him outside so that you can … it’s just better.”
Lorrie held Stella while Vincent and Ben gingerly hauled the body outside the little cabin. They laid him a few feet from the door. Before they used one of the blankets from inside to cover him, Vincent looked down at Bryant Whittier’s placid, businesslike face, the hole in the back of his head invisible. He had aimed the rifle up through his mouth and apparently used his toe to pull the trigger. Inside, he had set his boots carefully to one side. They were nice Merrells. Whittier wouldn’t have wanted to splatter them. Vincent thought briefly of Jackie’s ballet slippers. He and Ben pulled the blanket up to cover Whittier’s face.
Back inside, Vincent wondered if the boots would fit him. He used the toe of his own lousy boot to bend back the boot top and see the label. They were yet another size too small.
Damn. Whittier could have done some good in death he hadn’t done in life.
What had this guy’s life been? Vincent wondered. What had his thoughts been?
Back inside, Lorrie was hurrying to get ready to leave. She said, “Just promise me you won’t move. Promise you won’t leave here. Nine of ten times that civilians go with you, they get all excited or worried and they can’t wait. They go off thinking, Hey, I made it here, I can make it back. Don’t. It always has a bad result. Sometimes a really bad result.”
“How many times have you let civilians come with you?” Vincent asked.
“Twice. This is the second time. The first time I swore I would never do it again.”
“So nine out of ten times was really one out of two times,” Vincent said.
“Every tracker I know says the same thing,” Lorrie told them, her mouth a grim line. “No one listens to good sense.”