Cold Fear (6 page)

“Ann, I love you.”

Reed was bent over, struggling to retrieve his emergency
travel bag from under his desk. “I am nothing without you, Ann. Hug Zach for
me.”

Wilson
rolled her eyes.

Reed returned to Canter’s office where the editors
discussed what the
Star
wanted from Reed in Montana and Wilson in San Francisco.

“If the little Baker girl story fizzles,” Violet said
“would you consider, stress
consider
, a full-page feature on the case of
Isaiah Hood, the guy scheduled for execution in a few days? He is expected to
lose his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. You will be there, after all.”

“Violet, please. Just staple the name of a divorce
lawyer to that request.”

“Tom, you’re going to be right there, and again, we are
going to have you in Chicago in time for the wedding. Promise. And we’re going
to make it up to you.”

“But why the Hood case? It’s nothing. No San Francisco connection. Nobody knows or cares about that thing. It barely makes the Montana papers. I don’t even follow it. I think he killed somebody like fifteen, twenty
years ago. Bump on the head or something, I don’t know. He’s a small-town
loser. Nothing remarkable. He’s sentenced to die. End of story. Why waste the
ink? We all know not every execution is covered in this country.”

“Tom”--Violet was legendary for her coverage of
executions-- “there is something in every tragedy that we can learn from. It’s
the human condition. And given this case is so old and forgotten means the
story’s value has just been fermenting. A man is going to be put to death. Tell
me why; tell me what happened; tell me a story.”

During his cab ride to San Francisco International, Reed
checked his two phones. One was a new compact sat phone; because of the
expense, it should only be used if the cell did not work. He reviewed hard copy
of the updated wire stories on the lost girl. Not much new. Ten minutes after
leaving the
Star
building, he called Molly on his cell.

“You in Montana, cowboy?” she joked.

“You got anything for me?”

“No. Call me from Salt Lake.”

“Don’t tell anybody what we know about police suspicions
just yet. I’m going to try to hook up with Sydowski if I can find him.”

“OK. Watch out for bears.”

When the jet leveled off, Reed opened up his laptop
computer and went to all the background stories about Isaiah Hood he’d
requested from the news librarian. Reed’s jaw dropped. Expecting at least two
dozen, he found three with apologies from the library. “We have little on this
case, Tom.”

Hood had killed a kid some twenty years ago. Convicted
after a two-day trial. Sentenced to death. Usual years of appeals. Unremarkable
for a murder, except for the last sentence in the most recent story. Hood’s
last appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was made on a claim that Hood was not
guilty.

SEVEN

Emily could not
stop shivering.

Night had come. The second without Paige.

Since Paige’s disappearance, Emily had not slept or
eaten.

“You must be freezing, ma’am.” A young ranger tried to
drape a sleeping bag on Emily. She shrugged it off.

“My daughter has no blanket. I will go through this with
her.”

Doug was working with the searchers at the map table lit
by lanterns. Their radios muted. Emily stood alone in the darkness at the edge
of the camp, the distant lights of the searchers’ campsites dotting the black
valleys and mountainsides, blinking eerily as if a starlit sky had fallen to
earth.

Paige.

Her child was out there; the clock was ticking away on
her life. Every second, every minute, every hour, buying another piece of it.
Oh, Paige, forgive me. It was all her fault. Her fault. Like before.

“Guess what I’m going to do.”

Emily’s monster was brushing against her, reaching for
her, trying to pull her into the darkness.
No. Please. No.
It had taken
hold. She struggled, hearing her counselor’s voice.
When you feel it coming
up on you, reach for the good things, Emily. The good things are your
lifelines. They are real. They are unconditional. The good things will save
you. Reach for them and hold on.
She reached into a good memory….

Push, Emily! The hospital. The nurses. Doug squeezing
her hand. The doctor urging her. A couple of deep breaths, Emily. Push for me.
This is so hard. Here we go. Almost there. The sounds of the baby’s first cry.
Emily’s heart swelling with joy. Congratulations, Mom and Dad, you have a
daughter. Her scrimped little face, her bright eyes. The love washing over her.
Doug kissing her. I love you. Holding their new baby. Tender, warm heart. Love.
The pain subsiding. Have you chosen a name? Paige. We’ll call her Paige. Emily
would never let go. Paige was her new life. Doug was her new life. Her new life
was complete now.

Emily’s chain to the monster of her past was broken with
Paige’s birth. Or so Emily thought. But as the years rolled by and Paige got
older, the monster beckoned her to return to Montana for a final confrontation.
It must be done, her counselor said, or you will never find peace, never
resolve your conscience. Go to Montana. Put things to rest.

Emily had forgotten how much she loved it here. How her
girlhood on her family’s small ranch near the slopes of the Rockies had been
like a storybook. Her great-grandfather had built the house with its classic
rafter roof in the 1930s. Her mother taught her to cook and sew. She took her
to church in town on Sundays: “Emily, you must never forget that believing in
yourself is as important as believing in God. Above all, never underestimate
the healing qualities of forgiveness.”

Her dad taught her how to camp in the backcountry and
how to drive a stick-shift pickup. He conveyed the value of honesty and the
wisdom of never approaching a high-spirited horse when you’re in a bad mood,
“’cause they can smell it on you.” Emily remembered how the pine and cedar
filled the house when he sat by the fire on winter nights looking at his dog-eared
collection of
Life
magazines. How excited he was helping her learn to
use her first camera, telling her that history was something to cherish,
especially with a camera. “It’s the only way you can hang on to the people in
your life.”

That’s how it was for her, near Buckhorn Creek, where
stars were near enough to be jewelry, where the mountains were so close she
swore she could hear music as the wind danced through them. Emily embraced the
belief that a place can be as important to a person’s life as the people in it.

Emily studied the purple sky over the mountains, longing
to hear their music again. She was struggling to tell Doug what had happened
here. She needed him to know. He was her Sergeant Rock, her Gibraltar, trying
so hard to be patient with her.

His life had been a lonely one and he didn’t mind
talking about it.

“What’s to tell, Em? Grew up an only child in Houston. Dad was better at gambling and drinking than he was as a father and mechanic.
Walked out when I was thirteen. Left Mom with a kid, a mortgage and a shattered
heart. She got over it by marrying a truck driver. We moved to Buffalo.
I hated the snow. Left home before my seventeenth birthday, wandered the world
alone, searching for someone like you.”

Doug could always make her smile. Like when they first
met and she told him her name. “Emily. Now that makes me think of a bouquet of
mountain flowers.” And here he was, this gorgeous hunk of manhood with his
firm, lean body, broad shoulders, his chiseled rugged smile, the USMC warrior
who was privately reading
Paddle-to-the-Sea.
How could she not love this
man? When she showed him her favorite photos--not the weddings, portraits,
freelance news, postcards and calendar work, which paid the bills, but her
artsy slice-of-life pictures--Doug actually got it. Understood the story she
was trying to tell in a single moment stolen from time. They connected….

Ah, Doug and Paige.

She was Daddy’s girl. He was so good to her, using just
the right mixture of tenderness and Marine Corps discipline. Paige was bright
and perceptive, like her dad. At times, Emily realized Paige and Doug had a
bond so strong, it was as if he had given birth to her.

As Paige got older, it became clear to Emily her monster
would not rest. She thought it was dead, that she had constructed a new life,
become a new person. But the monster was only sleeping. As Paige got older, it
had awakened and began coiling around Emily, tightening itself, pulling her
back.

“Guess what I’m going to do.”

Suddenly, an icy wind slithered from a glacier valley,
gripping her in a flurry of images. Dragging her back.

Emily was thirteen. The day it happened, the county
sheriff brought her home in that big Ford. Emily could not step far from the
car. Her knees would not stiffen. She was drowning in fear. Her ears still
ringing.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. This was not real. It was not…Oh God.
Her mother on the porch, her face, her eyes. A couple of deputies had arrived
earlier to break the news. Her father coming to the sheriff’s car, his
tear-stained eyes searching it in vain. The sheriff removing his hat out of
respect.
“I’m so sorry, Winston. So godamn sorry,”
he says, and her
father, suddenly aged, looking so weak, moaning an awful animal squeaking-groan
as if something buried deep inside of him was breaking with such agony that it
forced him to his knees, his large fists pounding the earth. Her mother
collapsed on the porch, one of the deputies catching her. Her mother’s screams
rolling from the home into the mountains.

That night, women and men from the church came to their
house to be with them, talking softly. Her father staring at the floor.
Defeated. Mrs. Nelson, the organ player, rubbing his shoulders, whispering
psalms. Her mother had gone to her room to lie down. The reverend and his wife
were with her, talking, comforting her. The reverend’s wife, stroking her
mother’s hair, soothing her. In the kitchen, some of the men sat at the table,
talking in low tones about what the hell happened. How could it happen? The
house filled as word got around town. Emily in shock, walking from room to
room. Embraced by a grieving adult, pulled tight to clothes smelling of
perfume, cigarettes, alcohol and despair.

Oh, child. Poor Emily. You will get through this. God
will protect. Be strong. Be strong for your mother and father. Her mother and
father? What about her? She was there. She was part of it.

“Guess what I’m going to do.”

It was her fault.

Emily running alone from the woods back to girls’ camp.
Heart pounding so loud, pulse ringing in her ears. The voices of the camp
counselors were faint and distant, faces awash in concern.

“Lee, where’s your sister? What happened to Rachel,
Lee?”

Emily standing there. Just standing there, her mouth not
moving. Eyes seeing nothing. The club camp going silent except for the counselors
asking over and over about Rachel, her little sister.

It was all her fault.

“Guess what I’m going to do.”

“No. Don’t, please! No.”

The monster was out there doing what monsters do.

Her sister screaming.

“No, don’t. Oh, please!” Emily pleaded. “You can’t have
her!”

Rachel screaming.
“Lee, help me.”
Squealing
horribly.
“Save me!”

“No, you can’t have her! Stop!”

“Emily, shh-shh…Emily…”

Emily screaming at the darkness, her voice echoing from
the sleeping peaks down into the valleys.

“…you can’t have her…oh God, it is all my fault….”

Emily collapsing to the ground in tears. Rangers rushing
to her. Pike Thornton watching in the lantern light as Doug took her into his
arms.

“It’s all right, Emily. We’ll find Paige. We’ll get
through this.”

His strong arms solid around her. Safe. The good things.

But the monster was right there. Breathing on her with
the cold night winds from the mountains. She could not stop shivering

“What happened to your sister?”

It’s all my fault.

“Guess what I’m going to do.”