Cold Heart (12 page)

To accept the fact that the men who had callously murdered her parents and her lover and the girl in the strip joint were simply criminals who had just happened to cross their path denigrated their memories. She wanted there to be reasons for their deaths where she knew there were none. And once she finally accepted that there were no reasons, she'd reached the road to recovery.

And what Aaron said about Dawn was true, too.

Terry would never recover. The best thing that Dawn could do was get away before her mother's sickness infected her as well.

Still burdened by foreboding, Micky turned uphill. Aaron's cabin was a mile and a half up the winding valley, but just around the bend ahead she would be able to see El's place. His cabin sat down close to the water, and she'd passed it countless times but never without wondering how anyone could live there.

Even El's property was forbidding somehow. It seemed as though the cabin itself would have liked to get out of that clearing as fast as possible. And Micky was already edgy.

Passing by El's cabin would be bad enough.

The last person she wanted to see that afternoon was El.

I
F
M
ICKY HAD TURNED
and walked toward the store when she reached the creek at the foot of her cabin, she would have found Dawn, cringing in the alders. Dawn had finally steeled herself and made the dash across the North Fork, while Micky stood in her cabin, looking down at the gun she could not force herself to carry.

Dawn had made more noise than she expected, splashing across the narrow creek. When she clawed her way up the shallower slope on the far side, she had instantly burrowed down deep into the brush again. Now, all she could make out was a few feet of trail out in front of her and scattered glimpses of the far shore.

It had been almost impossible to get the nerve to stand up and sprint across the stream.

Then she heard Howard MacArthur's voice and something snapped in her brain.

Without thinking she'd scrabbled her way upward, mouthing words that made no sound. Trying to scream without success. She wanted to run to Howard, to throw herself in his arms, to tell him to save her. At the same time, another part of her brain kept asking who was saving whom.

She had to warn Howard that El was killing people. Her
fingers ripped at the loose gravel and her head was just over the top of the bank when she saw the surprised look on old Howard's face, just a few feet ahead of her.

El's gun roared and a bright splash of blood plumed on the front of Howard's crisp blue shirt. He dropped hard onto his back, his head twisting from left to right as though he was telling himself that this wasn't happening.

But Dawn could have told him that it was.

She hung there, her hands gripping the lip of the bank like a man clinging to the edge of a cliff, as El leaned slowly over Howard and pointed the long black barrel down into his face. Mesmerized, she watched El cock the hammer with his thumb, but twisted her head to the side just as he pulled the trigger again.

The gunshot thundered down the valley.

Dawn whimpered. She let her hands slip and her body slid halfway back down the bank. She hung there, motionless, unable to move, her face buried in the rich-smelling soil, her body trembling, waiting.

Is he coming now?

It seemed two eternities before she gathered the courage to claw her way upward once more. She raised her head and looked quickly all around the clearing, fighting down the sobs that choked her.

Howard lay sprawled in the sun. There was something odd about his left eye but at that distance she couldn't make it out.

He wasn't moving.

And El was nowhere to be seen.

Which way did he go?

Has he crossed the bridge to Howard's place?

She would have heard him if he'd gone back up the path to his own cabin, and more than likely he would have taken one last look down into the creek and discovered her.

Or is he in our cabin again?

The idea that El was inside their house again, with her mother's body, sent a shudder of revulsion up her spine.

She slid back down to the creek, squeezed her eyes shut.

But she knew in her heart she couldn't stay there. At any minute he was going to come back looking for her.

So she ran.

The icy runoff caught at her pant legs, slowing her down, splashing noisily. She gasped as jagged tendrils of pain shot from the tips of her toes to her knees. Slipping on the rocks she threw frightened glances back over her shoulder, expecting to see El come charging down the bank after her at any moment.

But she made the far shore and clawed her way up, across the narrow trail and into the waiting alders, digging in like a wolverine. Her face was scratched, her hands and arms were raw and bleeding, and she was soaked through to the skin over most of her lower body. The wind picked up, chilling her. She had to get someplace warm and soon, or she would die of exposure.

What did El mean by “You all have to die?”
All
didn't sound like he was talking about her and her mother.

He was crazy.

Could he be crazy enough to kill everyone in town?

Suddenly she had a premonition. She saw El striding across the clearing toward the store. Saw Rita and Clive standing innocently on the front steps. Watching him come…

If El was headed for the bridge that led across to the store she had to hurry. She was already across the creek. She could beat him to the Cabels’.

She wrapped her arms around her, gripping her shoulders tightly, trying to gain any warmth she could against the increasingly icy breeze.

She edged out into the exposed trail, glancing up and down like a terrified bunny.

Then she ran.

Y
OU GONNA GET THAT
thing fixed or not?” Rita leaned on the doorjamb, her book dangling in her hand. Clive glanced across the top of the four-wheeler. “Something wrong?”

“Micky needs that crate picked up.”

He set his pliers on the seat and stood up, wiping his hands on his pants.

“So?”

“You told her you'd go get it. That's all.”

Clyde frowned, glancing at his watch. “Rich won't be here for three, maybe four hours. I'm almost done. What's the hurry?”

Rita tapped the book against her leg before she replied.

“I don't like what Micky said about those shots.”

“You want me to go check it out?”

“On foot?”

Clive made a face, gestured at the carburetorless fourwheeler. “Well, what do you want?”

“I don't know,” said Rita, glancing nervously back into the store. “Just hurry up. Okay?”

Clive shook his head and went back to work. All he had to do was set it on the new gasket on the Honda and tighten
the bolts. He wiped it clean and put his tools away. Then he stuck his head through the doorway.

“I'm done,” he said. “I'll run to Micky's now.”

“Be careful,” said Rita.

“Jesus, Rita,” he said, taking a half step into the store. “What's the matter with you today?”

“It's stupid,” she said, tossing the book onto the counter. “Micky's got me itchy. Take your rifle. All right?”

“Sure.”

He opened the sliding door and pushed the Honda out onto the grass. The wind was picking up, the high clouds lowering. He zipped his jacket and slipped on a pair of gloves. He punched the starter button on the four-wheeler and revved the motor with the thumb throttle. Rita stepped out onto the porch and waved at him and he shot her an okay sign, rocking off down the trail toward Micky's cabin.

He drove fast, wondering if he'd catch Micky before she reached her cabin. Not that it mattered, he was just having a race with himself, giving his mind something to do on a track that he had driven dozens of times. The Honda bounced and bucked and he let the handlebars slip between his fingers, balancing expertly on the balls of his feet on the pegs.

The engine had a throaty but high-pitched whine that echoed through the trees and could be heard for a mile or more up and down the valley. Aaron never failed to bitch about the noise when Clive delivered supplies up to his cabin. But the old man always ordered more and Clive had noticed that with each passing year Aaron seemed to load fewer of his necessities into his backpack.

Micky, on the other hand, never commented about the noise. Clive got the feeling that she kind of liked to hear it. He suspected that the four-wheeler represented civilization to her and to others like Terry Glorianus, reassuring them that they hadn't exactly fallen off the edge of the earth by moving to McRay.

He pulled up close to Micky's cabin stoop and turned off the machine.

The sudden silence seemed ominous, as though the surrounding forest had been deadly quiet before he arrived. He glanced around the clearing and then down the trail to the
Fork. The wind stirred the trees and he had the strangest feeling that he was being watched. It gave him the creeps, but he shook it off.

There was nothing to be afraid of in McRay. Even the bears shied away from the noise of the four-wheeler. It was better than barking dogs for driving bears away.

The thought of barking dogs reminded him of Scooter.

In the entire village, Scooter had been the only fourlegged inhabitant.

Unlike most Alaskan towns, McRay was not overrun with stray dogs. Aaron had never gotten into the habit of raising them, never been a dog sledder, and the people who moved in later had come either to hunt or to mine. They weren't interested in keeping pack or sled animals since they used either snow machines or their feet for conveyance and it wasn't that far from the airstrip to anywhere in McRay. So, there had always been a more or less unspoken agreement between all inhabitants that the town didn't need any dogs.

Except for Scooter.

Scooter had appeared one day on the front porch of the store.

He was a rat-thin, Siberian husky with scars on his haunches and muzzle that were fresh from fighting and a limp on his right front leg that never quite healed. He had a unique white slash of fur down the middle of his back, between his shoulder blades. Clive knew right away that wherever the dog had come from he had traveled a great distance to find humans. And it didn't take Aaron to tell him that the scars were from the wolves that routinely ate huskies stupid enough to wander away from the safety of hearth and home.

Scooter moved into the store and Rita slowly nursed him back to health.

He became a fixture on the front porch during the summer and in the winter he claimed a special place by the woodstove, where he was certain to find any scrap that happened to drop from anyone sitting in the rockers. He grew fat and sassy, though his scars never completely covered with fur. All in all, Scooter looked like the perfect mascot for McRay. Old, tough, and worn, but not worn-out.

Scooter had the habit, about five o'clock every day, of going
for a tour of the valley. Even in the winter, people would find his tracks, on a regular route, up to Micky's, past Damon's place, then nearly up to Aaron's. But the dog always turned around before completing the trip to Aaron's cabin, as though he were checking on the old man but knew better than to disturb him.

Then the dog would head back down the trail to Terry's place looking for a handout, crossing the creek below El's cabin, so as not to have to pass across El's property.

Everyone in town loved Scooter.

Everyone but El.

From that day four years ago, when the two first laid eyes on each other, there'd been unmistakable enmity.

El hadn't been in town two days before he sauntered into the store with the big gun on his hip and the mirror glasses covering his eyes. That day, standing in the doorway with the sun at his back, he looked like a man trying to look like a cop. El's left hip was cocked, his right hand rested on the pistol butt, his head back, staring down that beak of a nose at the interior of Clive's store.

Clive had met El the day before, but this was Rita's first exposure to him, and when Clive glanced over at her he saw something he had never seen in her eyes before.

Fear.

Scooter rose from his perch beside the stove and Clive noticed that his hackles were vertical. The dog's eyes were slitted and focused tightly on the silhouette in the doorway. A low, guttural growl rumbled from his throat. Clive was afraid the dog was about to leap on top of El and he hurried to place himself between them.

El was a few inches shorter than Clive, thinner and wirier. He glanced around Clive, staring at the dog, and Clive knew instantly that for whatever reason, there was a natural hatred between the two.

“Rita,” he'd said, sharply, “put Scooter in the back room.”

She shooed the dog ahead of her around the counter. But Scooter fought the maneuver all the way, backing up but trying to see around her pant legs, his head weaving and bobbing like a boxer trying to get around a referee, the low growl almost but not quite turning into a bark. When Rita
had Scooter in the shed she closed the door and returned to the counter.

“Sorry,” said Clive. “I don't know what got into him.”

“I don't like dogs,” said El.

“Scooter's never done anything like that before,” said Clive.

“Mmm,” said El, his hand still on the pistol.

The man definitely made Clive nervous.

After that, whenever either Clive or Rita saw El approaching they locked Scooter in the shed and there was no trouble.

A year ago Scooter hadn't returned from his walk. Clive went searching for him the next morning.

He discovered that the dog had made it as far as Micky's place. She told Clive she'd given the dog some biscuits and bacon and watched him head off up the trail on his appointed rounds.

Damon wasn't home, so Clive stopped at Aaron's, but the old man hadn't seen the dog. That left the downhill side of Scooter's route. The side that took the dog past El's place. The closer Clive got to the little ford across the Fork near El's cabin, the more apprehensive he grew. Clive was certain that with Scooter's feelings for El and El's hatred for the dog, Scooter must have shied around El's cabin like a skulker in order to get down to Terry's place.