The Wildman (24 page)

Still gripping the birch stick, Jeff stepped forward to find out what was going on. He moved silently, and Mike was the first to realize he was there. He jumped and let out a squeal as he wheeled around.

“
Take it easy,” Jeff called out. “It’s just me.” He waved the hand holding the walking stick. “What’s going on?”

“
It’s Fred,” Tyler’s voice was low and shattered. “We starting getting worried about him—about both of you—and when we came out looking for you. Evan found him in the water.”

“
He either fell in and drown, or else he did it on purpose,” the man posing as Evan said.

Jeff wanted to confront him then and there, but Ben was still trying to—or pretending to—resuscitate Fred, who was lying on his back on the sand. His head was cocked to one side as Ben administered artificial respiration.

“
It’s no good,” he said after another few tries. He turned and looked up at Tyler. “He’s gone.”

“
Oh, Jesus … Oh, sweet Jesus,” Mike muttered. He began pacing back and forth while pounding his fists against his thighs. His feet kicked up sprays of wet sand.

“
You get a signal on your cell yet?” Tyler asked.

Mike shook his head and muttered a curse.

“
It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. “It ain’t gonna do any good.”

Jeff eyed him intently, amazed that, even in an emergency like this, he could
keep up the façade so well.

But then again,
he thought,
that’s exactly what he wants, isn’t it? … for all of us to trust him so can kill us?

“
He’s not breathing,” Ben said. He reached down and placed his fingertips on Fred’s neck. “And I don’t feel a pulse. Even if we got him to the hospital, I don’t think there’s anything they could do for him. He’s dead or will be before we got off this fucking island.”

He sat back on his heels and, clenching his fists, pounded the sand in frustration. Jeff was impressed by his acting skills because he knew that’s all this was—an act.

“
Christ!” Mike shouted, still pacing back and forth as he repeatedly punched his leg.
“
Christ
all
fucking
mighty! What are we gonna do? … What are we gonna do?”

“
There’s nothing we can do,” Ben said softly.

Moving stiffly, his face framed by ringlets of wet hair, Ben stood up slowly. When Tyler trained his light onto Fred’s face, Jeff recoiled in horror. The dead man’s tongue was hanging from his opened mouth, looking pale and large, like something he’d tried to swallow and choked on. He eyes were wide and staring, and they held a silvery gleam that looked like mercury.

“
Who … who found him?” Jeff asked as he moved closer.

“
I did,” Ben said without any hesitation.

Jeff immediately thought that, by admitting it right up front, Ben could deflect any suspicion he’d had anything to do with it. And how did Jeff know he had? Maybe Fred really had been so despondent he killed himself.

Ben picked up his flashlight from the sand and swung the beam onto Jeff, who shielded his eyes against the glare.

“
So where the hell
were
you
?” he a
sked, his voice a mixture of exhaustion and impatience.

Jeff shrugged and, shaking his head, indicated the woods behind him with a feeble wave of his hand.

“
Just out walking … I needed some time to think.”

“
Really?” Ben said.

Something in his tone of voice made Jeff bristle. He knew Ben was trying to raise at least a hint of suspicion that Jeff might have had more to do with Fred’s drowning than he wa
s letting on.

Nice move,
Jeff thought.
Put suspicion on me when you no doubt did it.

“Yeah … I … So what the hell happened
?” Jeff asked.

“
Who the fuck knows?” Ben bent down and brushed wet sand from his knees. Jeff saw that he was wet up to the waist.

“
He was acting suicidal earlier,” Mike said in a low, tremulous voice. “We all saw it, but what if—you know, what if the stuff we were talking about drove him to it?”

“
What the fuck are you talking about?” Tyler snapped. “We didn’t make him do anything.”

“
But we were pushing him real hard,” Mike said. His lower lip was pale and trembling. Jeff had a strong suspicion he was afraid they might be held responsible for Fred’s death. “We didn’t … we didn’t realize how much this was affecting him until it was too late, but all that stuff about killing his kid … Jesus! How could anyone live with something like that?”

“
We didn’t force him to kill himself,” Ben said with just a touch of disingenuousness in his voice. “He snapped. That’s all there is to it, and there’s nothing any of us could have done to stop him. He’d been living with that guilt for so long that facing it probably drove him over the edge. No one drowned him except himself.”

Jeff caught the reference to drowning and wondered if Ben was using it intentionally to remind him of what had happened to Jimmy.

“
Yeah,” Mike finally said, gasping, “b
ut
we
w
ere the ones who pushed him. He wouldn’t have done this … He wouldn’t have killed himself if we hadn’t badgered him the way we did.”

Jeff wanted to point at Ben and say: “The way
you
did,” but he turned to Mike and said, “That’s bullshit, and I want you to cut it out. We didn’t force him to do anything. If he was going to kill himself, he was going to do it sooner or later.” He grabbed Mike by the arms and shook him “Think about it. Think about how down he’s been acting all weekend.”

“
He didn’t seem all that down to me,” Tyler said. “No more than when he was a kid, anyway.”

Mike apparently wasn’t convinced, either, and he stared long and hard, and Jeff had the feeling he half suspected Jeff might have had more to do with this than he was letting o
n.

Good work, Ben,
Jeff thought.
Plant a seed of suspicion and watch it grow.

“We have to get the goddam
ned boat working so we can bring him to the mainland tonight,” Tyler said, struggling to remain calm. “We have to report this right away.”

He sounded like the most reasonable one here, but Jeff could tell by the way his eyes shifted that he, too, wasn’t far from losing his composure. For some reason, he wondered if this was the first time Tyler had ever seen a dead body. He sure was acting like it was. And once again, the mental image of Jimmy Foster, lying on the stretcher with his throat sliced open rose in Jeff’s mind.

I know what I saw!

Now that Jeff knew what was really going on here, when he looked at Ben, he was ashamed at himself for not figuring it out sooner. Ben looked a lot like a grown-up version of his brother, Jimmy. Jeff realized he probably did catch the family resemblance, at least subconsciously. That’s why he’d been feeling so uncomfortable all weekend about the man he knew was posing as Evan Pike.

It wasn’t memories of Jimmy’s death or childhood fears about the ghost stories their counselor told them in the tent or stupid fears that an Indian spirit named Hobomock actually haunted this island.

There was a killer in their midst, and Jeff was sure he still intended to kill all of them before the night was through.

He’d already gotten Fred.

Jeff wanted to ask Ben why his pants were so wet. Had he struggled with Fred and forced him into the water where he drowned him?

But this wasn’t the time. He had to make sure he had the advantage.

“
We’ve gotta cover him up or something and get him off the beach … at least until morning,” Jeff said. He hoped everyone—especially Ben—would take the tremor in his voice as an expression of how nervous he was about what h
ad happened, but when Ben glanced at him, he saw a flicker of suspicion—
or was it knowledge?
—in
his eyes.

“
Give me a hand,” Ben said. “We’ll carry him up onto the porch.”

Jeff and Tyler each took one of Fred’s legs while Mike and Ben each took an arm. The mist rolling in from the lake made everything wet, and they kept losing their grip. They almost dropped Fred a couple of times, and it took them a while to get into synch. Eventually they got Fred under the shelter of the porch roof. All of them were panting from the exertion.

“
Does anyone’s cell work?” Jeff asked, panting as he leaned against the porch railing. Now was a good time to overpower Ben, but he was beat from the exertion.

They all took out their cell phones, but after checking for service, they shook their heads in disappointment.

“
What d’yah expect?” Mike said. “We’re out in the goddamned willy-whacks here.”

Jeff turned to Ben, watching him closely, studying him and trying to read his reaction, but in the darkness under the porch, he couldn’t see Ben’s expression.

“
This is so fucked,” Ben said, lowering his gaze and shaking his head.

Jeff was absolutely convinced Ben had something to do with Fred’s death. It couldn’t have been an accident or suicide. If he was perturbed now, it was only because he hadn’t been able to exact his revenge on all of them yet. Maybe he was getting nerved up to finish the job. If he planned to kill them, as Evan said, would he make his move now? Or was he confident enough to toy with them first?

“
So what the hell do we do?” Mike asked, his voice shaking as much from the cold as fear. “We can’t just leave him out here all night. Jesus! The animals will get him.”

Jeff was angry at Mike for not holding it together better. He’d always been the tough guy of the group, and here he was, falling apart like a little kid. If Ben really intended to get revenge for his brother’s death, Jeff wanted to be able to count on Mike and Tyler to hold their shit together.

“
I’m freezing my ass off,” Tyler finally said. “And it sure as hell won’t do Fred any good if we stay out here in the fucking cold and die of hypothermia. Let’s put him in the entryway.”

With that, he opened the door and bent to lift Fred. The others joined in, and before long Fred was lying on the floor just inside the building.

Jeff looked at the warm glow of the fire inside. It was so inviting he wished he could forget about what was happening and not have to deal with this stuff, but he had to find some way to get Mike or Tyler alone and tell them what was really going on.

Tyler went inside, but the others stayed outside on the porch, not saying a word. The wind had died down a bit, and when Jeff looked up, he thought the overcast looked like it was breaking up. Maybe the worst of the storm was past.

“
How ‘bout you?” Ben asked Jeff.

“
What about me?”

“
We could all use a knock of rum to drive out the cold, don’t you think?”

Jeff grunted but made no move toward the door. He was hoping Ben would lead the way inside so he could grab Mike and tell him what he had found out. But Ben lagged behind, leaning against the side of the building, his arms folded across his chest
as though challenging Jeff to make the first move.

Is this what it’s gonna be?
he thought.
A duel of nerves? … All right, then … I’m up for it.

“I think I might grab a smoke first,” Jeff said as he fished into his shirt pocket inside his raincoat. He was sure his cigarettes were ru
ined from the dampness.

“
I didn’t know you smoked,” Ben said.

“
Oh, there’s a lot about me you don’t know,” Jeff replied. Even in the darkness, he didn’t miss
Ben’s reaction. He narrowed his eyes and practically glared at Jeff as if to say—
All right, asshole, I know you know, but I’m gonna get you, don’t you doubt it.

“Mind if I join you?” Ben said.

Jeff hesitated a moment, then shrugged.

“
I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I need some time to think things through.”

He wished Ben would get the hint and go inside so he could be alone with Mike, and he knew if he went inside now and tried to corner Tyler, Ben wou
ld be right there with him. Mike apparently caught the tension and, without another word, went inside, leaving Jeff and Ben on the porch.

Okay … This is it,
J
eff thought.

He co0uld easily confront Ben right now. Put him on the spot. Ask him to explain himself. If it came to a fight, unless Ben had a gun with him, Jeff was confident he could take him. He was bigger than Ben, but then again, Ben looked to be in pretty good shape. In any confrontation, it’d be best to have Mike and Tyler for backup. Then, if it came down to a fight, it would be three against one.

But Jeff was sure Ben had a gun. If he was going to kill them because of what he thought they did—or didn’t do— to protect his brother, he would have everything planned so he could isolate each of them and take them one by one.

Fred was the first casualty.

The way Jeff figured it, Ben must have gone out pretending to look for him. When he found him down by the lake, after a brief struggle, he had held him under until he drowned.