A Winter Haunting

TWENTY-FOUR

FORtwo weeks after Clare had left him, Dale would call her apartment number and hang up as soon as she answered. He had blocked his number so that she could not use *69 to know who had called. After a week of almost nightly calls like this, her phone suddenly refused to accept calls from any blocked phone. Dale removed the block from his phone and called the next evening. An answering machine picked up. He called again at half-hour intervals all that night. Only the answering machine responded. Dale listened intently to the silence behind the machine’s robotic tones, beeps, and hisses, but there was no hint of Clare there. The next evening, the same thing. Dale began calling every fifteen minutes all through the third night. The phone rang. The machine picked up. Dale became certain that she was not home any of those nights.

The next day, Friday, Dale had no classes. He made a point of telling several fellow faculty members that he was going on his annual autumn camping trip to Glacier National Park. He even called his old house when he knew that Anne would be away and left a message on that machine—Anne had recorded a new message to take the place of the old one with his voice on it—telling her where, roughly, he would be camping in Glacier in case he did not return for classes on Tuesday. Leaving this information had been his practice for years—the only year he had skipped it had been the first time he had driven Clare to the park and Blackfeet Reservation—and Anne would know that it was only old habit.

Dale flew to Philadelphia and drove across the river into New Jersey and on to Princeton, arriving just before dark. He had never been there before, and he found Clare’s apartment—she had given him the address way back in July when she first found it—with some difficulty. Her apartment was in a small duplex several miles from the university campus. Dale sat in the rented car for fifteen minutes before working up the nerve to cross the street and ring her bell. She was not home. She did not come home that night. Dale knew this because he sat in the car until 4:00A.M. watching, slumping down out of sight when a police car drove by twice, urinating out the passenger side door into a lawn gone to weeds rather than drive away to find a rest room.

About ten-thirty the next morning—a beautiful, crisp, red-leafed autumn Saturday—Clare arrived in a Chevy Suburban that Dale knew was not hers. A young man in his late twenties, a blond young man with very long hair and a Nordic face, was driving the Suburban. He and Clare went into her apartment. They did not hold hands or hug, nor did they touch in any way while Dale watched them, his car hidden only by leaf shadow, but Dale could sense the intimacy between them. They had obviously spent the night together.

He sat in his car and fiddled with his beautiful Dunhill cigarette lighter and tried to decide how to confront her, confront them, what he could say without appearing like the biggest loser and asshole in existence. He could think of nothing.

Five minutes later, Clare and the blond man came out of the duplex. She was carrying the same green nylon duffel she had brought to the ranch so often and the battered rucksack she had brought with her on their first trip to Glacier and the reservation. She and the man were laughing, deep in conversation as they threw her bags in the back of the Suburban, and neither looked across the street to where Dale sat as they clambered into the big vehicle and drove off.

Dale followed them, making no effort to avoid detection. Tailing someone was easier than it looked in the movies. They drove back the way he had come from Philadelphia, took the I-295 bypass around Trenton, then drove about twenty miles south on Highway 206, eventually turning east on Highway 70. By the time the big Suburban turned southeast onto Route 72, the traffic had thinned out considerably. Dale was vaguely aware that they had entered—or were about to enter—the relatively empty part of New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens.

Clare and her lover turned south again on Route 563 and drove eleven miles—Dale clocked it on his rental car’s odometer—before pulling left into a parking lot amidst a cluster of ramshackle buildings. The sign out front saidPINE BARRENS CANOE RENTAL.

Dale drove on another mile before finding a good turnaround spot in the tiny crossroads town of Chatsworth and then drove back slowly. A river ran along the west side of the highway for this stretch, and he caught a glimpse of Clare and her lover in a canoe heading south, downriver, before they disappeared around a bend in the river. He turned into the canoe rental place and parked next to the empty Suburban. Dale walked past the main building, noted the high stack of firewood there and the chopping stump and the ax embedded in it and the pile of wood chips and unstacked wood, looking as if the owners were preparing for a hard winter, and then he was waiting for the teenaged boy in khaki pants and a green Pine Barrens Canoe Rental shirt to finish helping two women shove off into the easy current.

“Howdy,” said the boy, looking at Dale long enough to register the dress pants and street shoes and to dismiss him as a canoe rental client. “Can I help you?”

Dale studied the canoes and kayaks lined up on trailers and at the river’s edge. “How much to rent a canoe?”

“Thirty bucks,” said the teenager. “That includes life jackets and paddles. Cushions are fifty cents extra. Three bucks each for a third or fourth person. More than four people, you need a second canoe.”

“I’m alone,” said Dale, feeling for the first time how true those words were.

The boy shrugged. “Thirty bucks.”

“How far do the canoes go?”

The kid looked up from counting cash and smiled. “Well, they’d go to the ocean, but we like to retrieve them before that.”

“Well, how far is a normal trip, then? The two women who just left? How far are they going?”

“Evans Bridge takeout,” said the boy as if Dale should know where that was. “They’ll be lucky to get there before dark.”

“How about the couple before them?” said Dale. “They going to Evans Bridge?”

“Uh-uh. Those folks were camping. They’ll be at Godfrey Bridge Campsite in four and a half or five hours. Then they plan to go on down to Bodine Field tomorrow where we’ll take them out.”

“How do you know they’ll be camping at Godfrey Bridge?”

“You have to have a camping permit before you can do a two-day rental. They showed me the permit.” The boy looked at Dale. “You a cop?”

Dale tried to laugh casually. “Hardly. Just curious about canoe trips. My girlfriend and I have been thinking about taking one.”

“Well, you’d better make up your mind by next weekend if you’re planning to rent from us,” said the boy, sounding bored and disinterested again. He was lifting kayaks onto a trailer. “We close for the winter after then.”

“Do you have a map I could have of the distance to campsites and such?”

The boy took a wrinkled photocopy out of his back pocket and handed it to Dale without looking at him again.

Dale thanked him and walked back to the car.

The gravel turnoff from Route 563 to Godfrey Bridge Campsite was only about ten miles south of the put-in point. Dale had expected a developed campground, but at the end of the gravel road there was only the river, some metal fire pits set back under the trees, and two portable toilets. Thick forest pressed in on all sides. The camping area was empty. Dale glanced at his watch. It was a little after two. Clare and her boyfriend should be along between 6:00 and 7:00P.M. The afternoon was clear and silent—no insect sounds and little animal or bird noise. A few squirrels scampered in the trees, but even their autumn play seemed hushed. Occasionally a cluster of canoes or a lone kayak would float by, the people either brazenly loud or as silent as the absent insects. None of the canoes carried Clare.

Dale walked back to his rental car, drove it a few hundred yards up the gravel road to an overgrown logging road he’d noticed, pulled it back out of sight, and popped the trunk open. For a while he stood staring into the trunk at the ax he had taken from the canoe rental place.

Professor Stewart? You get ahold of the psychiatrist in Montana?”

Dale looked up from the table where he was sitting drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. The sheriff had shown him to a tiny room with a bare table and telephone and left him to make his call. There was no two-way mirror in the wall, but there was a tiny slit in the door and Dale guessed that this—sans telephone—was what passed for an interrogation room in the Oak Hill sheriff’s office.

“Yeah,” he said.

“No problems?”

“No problems,” said Dale. “Dr. Williams told me what you did about Dr. Hall’s accident and agreed to phone my prescription into the Oak Hill pharmacy. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I still have some medication left back at the farmhouse.”

“Good,” said McKown. The sheriff slipped into the only other chair and laid a manila folder on the table. There was a paperback book under the folder, but Dale could not see the title. “Are you willing to talk to me for a minute?” asked the sheriff.

“Do I have a choice?” Dale was very tired.

“Sure you do. You can even call a lawyer if you want.”

“Am I under arrest or suspicion for something other than being crazy?”

McKown smiled tightly. “Professor Stewart, I just wanted to ask your help on a little problem we have.”

“Go ahead.”

The sheriff removed five snapshot-sized glossy photos from the folder and set them out in front of Dale as if inviting him to play solitaire. “You know these boys, Professor?”

Dale sighed. “I don’t know them, but I’ve seen them. I recognize this kid as Sandy Whittaker’s nephew, Derek.” He tapped the photograph of the youngest boy.

“You want to know the names of the others?”

“Not especially,” said Dale.

“This one you should know about,” said McKown, sliding the photograph of the oldest skinhead out by itself on the tabletop. “His name is Lester Bonheur. Born in Peoria. He’s twenty-six. Dishonorable discharge from the army, six priors including felonious menacing, assault with a deadly weapon, and arson. Only convicted once for auto theft, served just eleven months. He discovered Hitler about four years ago the way most folks discover Jesus. These other punks are just. . . punks. Bonheur is dangerous.”

Dale said nothing.

“Where was the last place you saw these five men?” McKown’s pale blue eyes were too intense for a poker player.

“I don’t. . .” began Dale.

Tell him the truth. Tell him the whole truth.

The sheriff’s stare grew even more intense as Dale’s silence stretched.

“I don’t know what the place is called,” continued Dale, completely changing what he was going to say, “but it’s that muddy old quarry area a mile or so east of Calvary Cemetery. When we were kids, we called the little hills there Billy Goat Mountains.”

McKown grinned. “That’s what my uncle Bobby always called the old Seaton Quarry.” The grin disappeared. “What were you doing there with these troublemakers, Professor?”

“I wasn’t doing anything with them. The five of them were in two pickup trucks, chasing me. I was in my Land Cruiser.”

“Why were they chasing you?”

“Ask them,” said Dale.

The sheriff’s stare did not grow any friendlier.

Dale opened his hands above the tabletop. “Look, I don’t even know who these skinheads are except for him. . .” He tapped the photo of the youngest boy again. “Sandy Whittaker told me that her nephew was a member of this local neo-Nazi group. They threatened me when I first got here in October. Then the other day—“

The day before Michelle Staffney showed up on Christmas Eve.

“The day before Christmas Eve they jumped me at the KWIK’N’EZ. You can ask the fat girl who works there. I got in my Land Cruiser and drove away. They chased me in their pickup trucks. I took the back way from Jubilee College Road and lost them at the muddy old quarry area.”

“‘Back way’ is right,” said the sheriff. “That’s all private land. Why would you drive across country like that with these bad boys after you?”

Dale shrugged. “I remembered Gypsy Lane. It’s an old overgrown road that we used to. . .”

“I know,” interrupted McKown. “My uncle Bobby talked about it. What happened out there?”

“Nothing,” said Dale. “My truck got through the mud. Theirs didn’t. I drove on back to the McBride farm.”

“Were the boys all alive when you left them?” McKown asked softly.

Dale’s jaw almost dropped. “Of coursethey were alive. Just muddy. Aren’t they alive now? I mean. . .”

McKown swept the photos back into the folder. “We don’t know where they are, Professor Stewart. A farmer found their pickup trucks out there in the mud yesterday afternoon. One of the pickups got turned on its side. . .”

“Yes,” said Dale. “I saw that. The green Ford followed me up and over a muddy hill there and tipped over at the bottom. But both boys—both men —got out of it. No one was hurt.”

“You sure of that, Professor?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I saw them hopping around and cursing at me. Besides, the chase—even the truck tipping over—all happened in extreme slow motion. No one was going fast enough to get hurt.”

“Why do you think they were chasing you?”

Dale held back his anger at being interrogated. “Sandy Whittaker said that Derek and his pals had read on the Internet some essays I wrote about right-wing groups in Montana,” he said slowly. “The skinheads called me names both times they encountered me—‘Jew lover,’ that sort of thing—so I presume that’s why they wanted to hurt me.”

“Do you think they would have hurt you that day, Professor?”

“I think they would have killed me that day, Sheriff McKown. If they’d caught me.”

“Did you want to hurt them?”

Dale returned the sheriff’s hard gaze with a hard look of his own. “I would have happily killed them that day, Sheriff McKown. But I didn’t. If you’ve been out there you must know that. They must have walked out of that muddy mess and left tracks.”

“They did,” said McKown. “But we lost their tracks up at the cemetery.”

Dale almost laughed. “You think I jumped them up at the cemetery? Killed all of them? Hid their bodies somewhere? Just me against five skinheads less than half my age?”

McKown smiled again. “You had a weapon.”

“The Savage over-and-under?” said Dale, literally not believing this conversation. “I didn’t have it with me.”

McKown nodded, but not reassuringly.

“And it’s a single-shot,” Dale said with some heat. “You think I went home and got the over-and-under, went back to the cemetery, and shot them all? You think they’d just stand around there and wait to be shot while I reloaded?”

McKown said nothing.

“And then why would I call you about the dogs and Michelle. . . about this delusion of mine the next day?” Dale went on, losing the heat of anger and almost faltering. “To throw you off the trail of the skinhead murders?”

“Doesn’t sound very likely, does it?” McKown said agreeably.

“Not something a sane person would do.” Dale’s voice sounded bleak even to himself.

“No,” said McKown.

“Are you going to arrest me now, Sheriff?”

“No, Professor Stewart, I’m going to drive you back to the McBride place and let you get on with your day. We can stop over at the pharmacy on the way so you can get your prescription. And I will ask you to stay around the area here until we get some of this confusion cleared up.”

Dale could only nod.

“Oh, there is one other thing.”

Dale waited. He remembered that Peter Falk as Columbo always said that right before trapping the suspect into confession.

“Would you be so kind as to sign this for me?” McKown moved the folder and slid a copy of Massacre Moon: A Jim Bridger Mountain Man Novel across the scuffed tabletop. The sheriff unbuttoned his shirt pocket to retrieve a ballpoint pen. “It’d be a real treat if you could sign it ‘To Bill, Bobby’s Nephew.’ We’re both real big fans.”

It was only early afternoon when Dale got home. The sheriff touched the brim of his Stetson and drove off down the lane without coming in. The house was cold. In the study, the ThinkPad was open and turned on.

>Did you really kill Clare, Dale?