The Upright Man (25 page)

“They’re trying to get the killer caught,” I said, talking slowly, trying not to get in the way of my thoughts. “That’s why they tipped Charles off. Obviously. But why? Who would the Straw Men want to get caught?”

I looked up, and that’s when I saw him.

If I’d done what I was supposed to do, and stayed on the other side of the partition and kept watch while Nina did the talking, I would have seen him sooner. As it was I only got a quick impression of a slim man with short hair and glasses, standing right outside the restaurant. Looking in, straight at us.

“Shit . . .” was as far as I got—before there was a smashing sound, two claps, and the slapping thud of a bullet smacking into the padded wall behind us.

I threw myself out of the booth and went for my gun. I was fast but Nina was quicker because hers was already in her hand.

We were both firing before Monroe had the faintest idea what was happening. With my other hand I grabbed a chair and awkwardly threw it at the window, trying to give them enough time to get out from the booth.

The chair went wide but Nina was fast. The man kept firing through the hole in the glass. Measured shots, one after the other.

I scrabbled to try to get under his sight line, pulling Nina’s arm and dragging her down behind a table. There was screaming around us. Britnee was lying on the ground, glass cuts on her face.

I saw the man running past the window, little more than a shadow, but he wasn’t running away. He was heading around the front, to come into the restaurant.

“Oh, Christ,” Nina said, and I turned to see that Monroe was slumped over the table. She started to head back to him but I grabbed her arm again and yanked her back down.

“Leave him.” I heard the front door of the restaurant pulled open, screams of fresh intensity.

“Ward, he’s been hit.”

“I know.”

Then the man came around and into our aisle. I think part of me had been expecting that it would be my brother, but it wasn’t. He was younger, fit-looking but bulky in the chest. He was wearing combats and a dark coat. He stood at the end, apparently unafraid of what we might try to do, and took aim on Nina.

I shot him. I got him plumb in the chest.

He was thrown backward, crashing into a table.

He stayed down for maybe five seconds, enough for me to start to straighten up, before suddenly standing again.

There was no blood coming out of him, and I realized he was wearing a vest. I backed away, trying to get behind something before he fired again. Nina fired past me, but missed. The man shot twice more and both came close. I fired again, aiming higher, but missed. Hitting a moving man’s head is very hard. Just aiming for it isn’t easy. You’ve got to really want someone dead. By now, I did.

The sound of a shot came from another angle and I thought,
Oh, Christ, there’s another one of them
—but then I saw it was Monroe. His overcoat was covered in blood and he was wedged in the booth but had wrenched his upper body around and was emptying his gun at the man.

I took the opportunity, grabbing Nina again and pulling her around the back of the partition wall. My waitress was cowering there, breathlessly trying to scream but instead making a sound like a mouse being hit with a hammer.

On the back wall I saw a pair of half-height doors.

More shots suddenly, like the sound of slow hand-clapping.

“Ward, we’ve got to get Charles . . .”

“It’s too late.” I yanked her back toward the swing doors into the small kitchen. She fought at first but then followed me as I shoved past two terrified-looking men in whites and straight out the open back door. I slipped on the top of a short flight of stairs but grabbed the rail and made it down.

We ran past the side of the restaurant. The sound of shooting had stopped. I glanced in and saw the man standing over the booth where Monroe now lay facedown on the table.

The man turned and saw us. Then he was running toward the door. Running fast.

“Get the car!” I shouted. Nina kept on running.

I turned and pointed my gun up the street, walking backward as fast as I could. He’d fired his first shot before I even realized he was out on the street.

I shot and got him again, in the stomach, throwing him backward once more. I turned and sprinted back to the car just as the lights flashed on and I heard the motor start.

Then it felt as if someone punched me on the shoulder. I was off-balance and it threw me around and I fell and crashed onto the pavement. I pulled myself up, still unsure what had happened but feeling off-kilter and hot, and fired backward.

The car jerked forward and the door flew open and I threw myself inside. My legs were still hanging out as Nina stood on the pedal and reversed down the street at forty miles an hour. When I was inside and had the door shut she whipped the car around in a tight turn and hammered off up the street.

“Where am I going?” She glanced across at me and the sudden widening of her eyes told me what I already suspected.

I put my hand up to my left shoulder. It was wet and warm.

“Just anywhere,” I said, as the pain suddenly cut in like a knife.

THEY
STEPPED OUT OF
H
ENRY
’
S
D
INER INTO A
drizzle that was light but insistent. Tom shivered massively as the cold hit him. He’d managed to eat only half his food, hunched with Henrickson over a table in the back corner. Tom saw a few locals glance his way. You could see they were thinking, “There’s Bigfoot boy”—or maybe “bullshit boy”—and that hadn’t helped his appetite much. Henrickson had been unusually quiet during the meal, and it had been a while since the last grin. It could be he was tired too, though he didn’t seem it. His movements remained sharp and precise, and he ate quickly and methodically, making easy work of a chicken-fried steak. He’d asked for this to be done rare, which was a first for Tom—a first for the waitress, too, judging by the way she’d looked at him. When not eating, the man had looked out of the window as if wishing the darkness were over.

“Okay,” he said, as Tom tried to burrow deep in his coat against the wind. He looked away up the street. “I guess I’ll be heading back to the motel.”

Tom was surprised. He’d been assuming they’d be heading to the bar. It wasn’t that he wanted a drink. He was exhausted from the day’s walking, and the warm, stuffy diner had made him feel drowsy and dog-tired. Bed
sounded good. But if he was alone in that room, he’d have to think about calling Sarah, and he still didn’t have any proof. “Buy you a beer?” The question made him feel gauche.

“Sure,” Henrickson said, slowly. “Why not?”

There was something in his tone that made Tom wonder whether he was accepting for some reason of his own, one that had nothing to do with a desire for a drink or for Tom’s company. But when they were sitting at the counter of Big Frank’s—which was otherwise stone cold empty—the man clinked his glass against Tom’s.

“I apologize if I seem kind of elsewhere,” he said. “Just can’t help feeling the time moving on. This is important to me.”

“I know,” Tom said. “Tomorrow we’ll find it. I promise.”

“Sounds good,” the man said, eyes on the door. “But now let’s see what’s about to happen here.”

Tom turned to see a big man heading across the bar toward them. He wasn’t coming fast, but there was purpose in his stride.

“Oh, crap,” Tom said. “That’s the sheriff.”

Tom watched as Connelly and the reporter looked each other up and down. Then the policeman turned his attention to Tom.

“Mr. Kozelek,” he said. “See you just haven’t been able to give up Sheffer’s hospitality yet.”

“Who was it?” Tom asked. “The waitress? One of the old boys in the corner booth?”

“Can’t say I understand what you mean,” Connelly said.

“Think he’s implying that someone let you know he was still in town,” Henrickson said. “I’m inclined to believe he’s right.”

“This isn’t Twin Peaks, son. I just happened to be coming up the way, saw you two coming in.”

Henrickson took a sip of his beer and looked at the policeman over the top of his glass. “Do you have some kind of problem with us, Sheriff?”

“Don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m a writer.”

“And what would someone like you be doing up in Sheffer?”

“Big feature article. Charming vacation towns of the Northwest.”

“Mr. Kozelek helping you out, is he?”

“You could say that.”

“Never really had much time for writers,” Connelly said. “Most of them seem to be full of shit.”

Tom didn’t like the way the two men were looking at each other. He tried to think of something to say, something so banal that it might defuse the atmosphere. Then he looked up at the sound of the bar door opening again. Two people came into the room, shaking rain out of their hair.

“Hello,” said one of them, a woman. Tom realized it was the doctor who’d examined him. She came over and joined the group.

“Melissa,” she said, helpfully. “Don’t worry—you were pretty zonked when we met. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Tom said. Her husband was behind her. He nodded at Connelly and headed around the other side of the bar, toward the pool table in the far corner. He had the air of a man who didn’t do polite conversation.

“That’s good,” Melissa said, looking at Tom in that way doctors do: with bright, detached assessment, as if implying that his own opinion of his state of health, while mildly interesting, was of no diagnostic import whatsoever. “No nausea? Headaches?”

“No,” he lied. “I feel fine. Thank you.”

“Excellent. Oh—if I were you, I’d go easy on the herbal remedies for a while. You never know the effects of some of those things.”

Connelly seemed to stiffen slightly. “That’s been cleared up,” the policeman said. “They didn’t belong to Mr. Kozelek.”

Henrickson cocked his head. “Herbs?”

Melissa smiled tentatively, as if suddenly uncertain what she had wandered into. “I found some,” she said. “A little bunch. In Mr. Kozelek’s bag.”

“Melissa—do me a favor, would you?” Connelly said.
“Be glad to join you two in a moment. But there’s something I need to discuss with these boys first.”

“Sure,” she said, stepping back affably. Normally she might have felt dismissed, but, as it happened, some of what Tom had seen in her eyes was not professional appraisal but the pleasantly lingering effects of a pretty major joint. “You want a beer?”

“That would be great.”

The three men watched as she walked around the other side of the bar, and then turned to look at one another once more.

“So if these plants didn’t belong to Tom,” Henrickson said, “how did they get there, exactly?”

“Thought you didn’t know what I was talking about.”

“I’m sorry if you got that impression. Actually, I believe you’re talking about the valerian and scullcap Tom had in his bag.”

“What?” Tom said. He turned to the policeman. “What is he talking about?”

“Beats me,” the cop said.

“I don’t think so.” Henrickson reached into his jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag. He laid it on the counter. “This the kind of stuff the doctor found?”

Connelly looked away. “Plants mostly look the same to me.”

“Not to me. I know these are both medicinal herbs, and I know that both were used by a particular group of people.”

“The local Indians.”

“Little earlier than that, actually. So tell me, Sheriff. Judging by Tom’s reaction when I found these earlier, I don’t think he had anything to do with them winding up in his bag. But presumably you’ll be able to tell me how that happened?”

“They were put there by a woman called Patrice Anders.”

Henrickson grinned. “Is that right? This would be the woman with the boots.”

“When she came across Mr. Kozelek’s belongings in the forest it was clear to her that they belonged to someone in a poor state of mind. Mrs. Anders has an interest in
alternative therapies. She left these materials in his bag in the hope that, if he returned, he might recognize them and use them.”

This time Henrickson laughed outright. “You’re kidding, right?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Let me get this straight. She happens to be stomping around out there in her novelty footwear—kind of conveniently—and finds Tom’s little camp. She divines from this that Tom’s head is fucked up, and so she decides to leave some medicinal herbs in his bag on the off chance he will work out that’s what they are, and decide to take them? Herbs she just happened to be carrying around with her on a walk in the woods? And herbs that most modern people would dispense in a tincture, or at the very least in a tea?”

“People do strange things.”

“Yeah, they do. They surely do. Well, thank you, Sheriff. Those plants had been bothering me ever since I found them. I’m glad to have heard such a straightforward and credible explanation.” Henrickson stood, and grinned at Tom. “Well, my friend, it’s a shame we didn’t run into this gentleman earlier. He seems to have all the answers. And now I’m kind of tired from our hike today, and so I think it’s time to hit the sack.”

Connelly didn’t move. “I really would prefer it if you gentlemen would consider relocating to another charming Northwest town.”

“Maybe you would,” Henrickson said. “And I’d prefer it if you’d stop trying to bully my friend. He knows what he saw, and so do you. He saw a Bigfoot.”

“There isn’t any such thing. He saw a bear.”

“Right. You keep believing that. But unless you’re going to make an official deal out of hassling him, I’d say it’s time you got out of his face.”

Henrickson winked, and headed for the door without looking back. Extremely confused, and not sure whether things had just got better or worse, Tom followed him.

As soon as they were outside, the journalist started walking fast, heading back toward the motel through rain that was beginning to turn to sleet.

“Jim?” Tom said, struggling to keep up. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I knew I was on to something when I found that stuff in your bag. I just wasn’t expecting it to be handed to me on a plate.”

“Explain.”

“You’ve heard of herbal medicine, right?”

“Sure. People using plants to cure illnesses, instead of pharmaceuticals. Like, I don’t know, aromatherapy.”

“No,” Henrickson said, as he stepped over the low fence into the motel parking lot. “Different thing. People have been using plants for a long,
long
time. Medicine’s nothing more than a specialized form of food, right? In the 1970s they found a Neanderthal burial in northern Iraq. The body had been buried with eight different flowers, almost all of which are still used by herbalists today. The Neanderthals knew about this stuff at least sixty thousand years ago, probably a lot longer. And that’s why they’re in your bag.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“Because the creature you saw
did
come back. He came back and put this stuff where you might find it.”

Tom stopped walking. “A Neanderthal man prescribed me herbs?”

“Got it in one.” Henrickson held his car keys up and pressed a button. The lights of his Lexus flashed. “Hop in.”

“What now?”

“Get in the car, and I’ll tell you.”

Tom climbed into the passenger seat. Henrickson yanked the car around in a tight circle and took it fast onto the main road, passing Frank’s Bar and heading east.

Tom thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he saw Connelly watching them from the windows of the bar.

“Jim, where are we going?”

“To talk to someone,” the man said. “Someone who knows a lot more than they’ve been letting on.”

THE
MAN SAID NOTHING ELSE ON THE HALF
-
HOUR
journey. Tom knew where they were going long before the car turned in to the lonely road that led up into the development no one had wanted. Henrickson parked on the windy, empty road, five yards from the gateway to the Anders property. He left the engine running but killed the lights. Darkness fell like a stone.

“Wait here.”

Tom watched as the other man got out of the car and walked up ahead. By the time Henrickson was past the wooden sign it was hard to make him out. Ten minutes later he came back.

“Somebody’s home this time,” he said. His face looked cold and hard and there was wet ice in his hair. “Or isn’t hiding well enough to remember to turn out all the lights.”

He pulled the car forward and through the gate. Drove slowly down the track between the trees.

“You haven’t put your headlights back on.”

“That’s right.”

As they took the penultimate bend the lake became visible, frigid in straggly moonlight. It looked flat and eldritch, proud that nothing had changed for it, ever, that it had always been this way. Then Tom could see the dark shape of the cabin, huddled in the trees, with two small, dim rectangles of yellow light.

Henrickson pulled the car over, turned off the engine. Sat a moment, watching the house.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go. Shut your door quietly.”

“Look, Jim,” Tom said. “We can’t do this now. We should have called ahead. We can’t just turn up. Two guys appearing at her door, it’s going to scare her to death.”

Henrickson turned to him then, and did something with his mouth. It wasn’t a grin. It wasn’t a smile, even. It was similar enough to the things he had been doing with it all along, however, and it made Tom wonder, with a low, quiet dismay, whether any of them had been grins after all.

“Get out,” the man said.

Tom climbed out into the cold, squinting against the sleet. He shut his door silently, looking over at the cabin. If Henrickson was right, this woman had lied to make him look foolish. At least once, maybe twice. Of course Connelly was going to believe her instead of him, especially as he evidently hated the mere idea of Bigfoot. And through her lies, this woman had destroyed his story.

If it took a little surprise in the evening to undo that, maybe it was okay.