Dead Dancing Women (28 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

Dolly didn't like my
idea.

“That's crazy, you going over there alone.”

I shook my head at her. “I'm not taking Flora, and you make too much noise.” I nodded toward her crutches.

“Call Lucky. He'll check it out without letting Harry know.”

“No, he won't. Harry will know. He's like everybody else in town. He can smell things happening before they happen.”

“You're nuts. They've got police scanners, is all. It's like the biggest hobby next to bowling.” She laughed hard at me.

I thought awhile then disagreed. “It's not about police business. They know about me. About things that happen.”

I got an exasperated look back from Dolly. “If one person knows something, they all know it. I'd just say, be careful who you talk to.”

I took a long, circuitous route through Harry's woods, over to the old logging road that ran behind his house, a two-track worn down by the huge wheels of the horse-drawn carts that once brought logs out from the deep woods in winter. The old logging train ran just a ways off, through a clearing where the logs got dropped, then loaded on flat cars and taken down to Grayling. Much of the road and rail line was obliterated by new growth but still the ruts ran true, as clear as an animal trail; places where the big wheels had been pulled along by a team of horses, and places where the iron rails ran. Once in a while I still picked up a hand-forged spike when I walked through here. Some winter nights, I swore I heard men yelling “Timber!”

Today there was no adventure involved in my walk. As I neared the back of Harry's place I walked slower, quieter, careful on the crisp, dry leaves, not wanting to alert his dogs.

The leaf mold was deep and soft. In places, trees, nature-pruned by last spring's winds, lay in disjointed heaps, hard to get around, impossible to get through. When I stepped on branches and broke them with a snap, I froze, waiting for the dogs to start barking. From where I stood I could see the back of the kennel. I saw a dog or two get up from where they slept near the fence and walk over to a food dish or a water bowl. One or two gave a sharp woof, as if to keep in voice. They hadn't seen or heard me yet.

Harry's half-breed car/truck was parked off to the side of the kennel. Too close to the building for comfort. The only thing I could imagine doing was sneaking around the far side, to the west, and circling back in a direct line with the vehicle between me and the dogs.

I stole on beyond the kennel keeping deep in the trees. I started my loop around, back toward the west side of Harry's property. I kept as close to the ground as I could get and still stay on my feet.

There was little breeze. I came up on the back of the car/truck, parked with its nose facing Harry's house, its handmade flatbed toward the woods. It stood directly in front of me, but angled enough so I couldn't see the front fenders. I had to get closer.

I got to the truck without the dogs taking notice. I knelt down and waited, not daring to breathe. I was close to the house now. I could see Harry's windows, and then could see Harry in his kitchen, moving near the sink. I swallowed hard. What would I say if he caught me? How did I step from behind his car and pretend I was just out for a walk? Harry moved away from the window. I had to go then or never. I stood and leaned out to get a look at the front of the car. The metal was pushed in, dented, as if it had hit something hard. The right fender was smashed.

“Hey!” Harry called from his back porch. Dogs began to bark.

I ducked down and hid, scuttling back on all fours, away from the car. If only I could get to the cover of the trees, I thought. Then I would run, hiding behind one tree after another. I'd have a head start.

“Hey!” Harry shouted again. “You, over there! What the hell you think you're doing by my car? You bent on stealing, you little shit? I got my gun. Come on out of there.”

The dogs barked full force. I stood and ran as fast as I'd ever run. Harry was after me, and he had his gun.

I heard the dogs, but different. Baying now, as they did when on the loose, hunting an animal in the woods, running it to death.

I could feel my heart against my ribs. My head was filled with sounds that couldn't be there. All around me: voices, I thought, but it was my own heavy breathing. My feet hit the ground and sometimes slipped on the light leaves that weren't part of the earth yet. I caught myself with a hand on a tree trunk. I fell to my knees and leaped back up, running down through hollows and up hillocks. I tripped again and again, then toppled forward, onto my hands and knees. I stayed a minute, head bent, trying to catch my breath and stop the panic. I needed to think.

The logging road was behind me, back where I could hear Harry calling to his dogs. Once, I was sure I heard a gunshot and waited, very still, to see if I'd been shot, if I was going to fall, if blood would begin to spread. I'd heard that people didn't always know when they'd been hit. That there was a time of shock to the body, when the body protected itself the way a body protects itself from profound trauma, with amnesia. I stood behind a thick tree, listening, checking myself for blood.

Where were the dogs? Where was Harry? I put my hands to the coarse bark of the maple and tried to become part of the tree, invisible, a thing pasted to its backside.

The barking got closer. If he found me, I would die. This was the perfect place to get rid of my body. No one would find me buried out here. Not in this century, maybe not in the next, until some developer wanted to make a golf course in a future time and turned up a few inconvenient bones, which he might hurriedly rebury, thinking to save himself the trouble of archeologists and investigation.

I heard a faint whooshing and thumping farther off in the woods. An oil pump. Maybe there. Could be people. Someone. I pushed off from the tree and ran headlong down an embankment. At the bottom was a tangle of raspberry canes I couldn't penetrate. I had to get around them, down to the small creek running at the base of the hill. I'd go along the creek, come up the other side. Get to that oil pump.

I ran, hit slippery rocks and skidded, falling again, landing on a knee, which immediately let me know I was hurt, that I'd lacerated the skin beneath my jeans, that blood was going to soak through my pants leg, probably give the dogs something stronger than my faint scent or sound to follow. I got up and hurried on though I was no longer running. It wasn't possible.

I knew I couldn't run, couldn't walk, couldn't move much farther. I looked for cover. Anything. I thought of crawling into another thicket of raspberry bushes. I found, instead, a kind of cave dug into the hillside. The home of an animal, I imagined. A fox hole. A bear den. Last year's, I hoped, as I crawled into the depression in the earth and pulled leaves over me. I stopped breathing to listen. I couldn't hold my breath for long. The dogs came closer. There was snuffling in the leaves at my head and the sudden, sharp bark of a discoverer dog.

The next thing, I was being poked with the barrel of a shotgun, the gun nudging into my hiding place, then whipping leaves away.

“Gotcha,” Harry said above me, triumphant, pulling leaves off faster, tapping my arms in my heavy jacket.

Harry hushed the dogs. There was a moment of silence. I didn't dare look up.

“Emily?” The voice was quizzical. “Emily Kincaid? Is that you?”

I took a long, deep, difficult breath and kept my eyes tightly closed. “Yes,” I said.

“What the hell … ? What were you doing at my place? Hanging around my car? I thought you was some kid come to steal it. What'd you run for? Damn dogs could of took yer leg off.”

“Don't kill me, Harry,” I begged. I pulled in air. “I thought we were friends. Why would you do this to me?”

“Me? Do what? You're the one was skulking around my house.”

I dared open one eye and peek up at him. He was hunkered down in front of me. His rough face was perplexed. He put up one hand and scratched at his chin. The gun lay beside him, in the leaves. Clearly, Harry wasn't about to kill me. At least not at the moment.

“I saw your car, Harry,” I said, sitting up and brushing at my jacket, my pants, where leaves and dirt clung. “I know what you did.”

“Yeah.” He stood now and reached down to help me. “You're not turning me in though.” His voice was matter-of-fact. Harry had to be a raving lunatic if he thought I'd keep his secret.

I shivered and waited, not knowing what to say. How could he not kill me? What choice did he have? I sure wasn't going to protect him.

I stood beside him, huddled in on myself. I looked for a way to run but the pack of slathering, heavy-breathing dogs sniffing around my feet wouldn't make it easy.

Harry shook his head. “Couldn't help it.”

“Why would you do such a thing? I can't believe it was you.”

“Nothing I could do about it. You won't tell. I know you.”

“Not tell? Christ, Harry, I can't cover for you on this. I was in that car. It was me you almost killed.”

He stepped back and gave me an odd look.

“Nope. Wasn't you.”

I nodded. “Yes it was. I don't know which one of us you were after, but I was in there. Me and the others—Dolly and Flora Coy. And you left us to die like that.” I shook my head, feeling so sad—for me, for Dolly, Flora, but most of all for Harry.

He took a step away and stared harder. “I don't know what the hell yer talkin' about. I killed a deer. Ran right in front of me yesterday. I didn't call nobody, the way I'm supposed to. Stupid state law. The thing was dead. I didn't see nothin' wrong with bringing it home. Already got it cut up and in the freezer. I'll have meat right through the winter without doing another bit of hunting. Now if you think you got to report me, well you go right ahead. They'll have to come and take it. I've got my rights and …”

“A deer?” Something wrong here. “I'm talking about last night.”

“Yeah.”

“When you ran Dolly's police car off the road out by Arnold's Swamp. Nearly killed us.”

Harry stepped back and gave me a stupefied look. “You're nuts. I done no such thing. I killed a deer. That's what happened to my car. I figured if I had to fix my car, least I could take the meat. Thing was dead, as it was. No sense leaving it by the side of the road for the crows to get.”

I couldn't take in what he was saying. My legs buckled under me and I sat down fast, sending Harry's dogs in all directions, barking and snarling.

“You OK, Emily?” Harry knelt beside me. I nodded, not sure I was telling the truth. He was talking about hitting a deer, not a police car. He was talking about illegally taking the deer home without reporting it, the way he should have. I was talking about something different.

Harry stayed beside me. “What in hell is this all about? Me trying to kill you. I didn't hit no police car or any other car. Somebody did, it wasn't me.”

I told Harry what happened and how I'd been at his house to get a look at his car, because it was big and black. I told him I saw the damage to the front of his car and naturally assumed …

“Well, you ‘naturally assumed' wrong,” he said, then was quiet, picking up a golden leaf, sticking it into his mouth, and chewing at the stem. “But, I got something I've gotta say. Should've said it earlier, but didn't.”

I waited.

“You know Miz Poet?”

I waited.

“Well, that head and that arm?”

I waited again. Harry turned his face away, looked off at his dogs that all looked back at me.

“Wish my dogs woulda found the murderer instead of Miz Poet. Poor woman. It was my dogs dug her up, I guess. They brought home her head and dropped it on my doorstep. Same with the arm. Thought they had something. Guess they did.”

“Oh no, Harry. You're the one put it in my garbage can?”

He nodded, still turned away from me.

“Why didn't you call the police?”

“And have 'em out here nosing around? Have Lucky Barnard and those state boys all over this place? Why, what's to say they'd believe I didn't kill her myself? I'm not like you, ya know. You're from the city. A writer and all. Nobody's gonna think you'd kill an old lady. But me? Crazy Harry Mockerman?”

“Oh, Harry.”

He made a noise and chewed harder at his leaf. “Sure they'd blame it on me and that would be that. I didn't know what to do. Just took it up to the road, saw your garbage can, and put it in there.”

“And the arm?”

“Had to get rid of it. Couldn't let 'em find it on my place. I knew you'd take care of everything, writing mysteries and all. Being a reporter. Coming from down below. Nobody was gonna suspect you of a killing. But me … well … maybe they'd take my dogs away. Who knows?”

“They wouldn't take your dogs, Harry.”

“You never know anything anymore. Things are changing up here in the woods. People don't want us to live the way we're used to living. I don't trust nobody.”

“You know one of Dave Rombart's militia men saw you with the head?”

He gave me a dark look. “You don't say? Why didn't he turn me in? No love lost between them and me.”

“Dave called the state police. I told them what you said about Dave Rombart and his group—that they were up to no good. I don't think anybody took either side seriously.”

“Hmm. Well, they were up to no good. Poaching. Saw 'em myself.”

I suspected Harry saw them poaching when
he
was out poaching, but I didn't want to say so and didn't want to laugh. There were still more important things to think about.

“Who's been doing this, Harry? Who's been killing the women?”