Hold the Dark: A Novel (17 page)

But on the television a local news program, a female reporter in the village of Keelut, the microphone clouded by her breath. Core could not find the remote to unmute the sound but he read in blue ribbons at the bottom of the screen all that Cheeon had done there. Photos of the men he’d gunned down, a panning shot of Keelut—the water tower, generator shack, sled dogs, rows of cabins, those hills looming above. Another reporter at the morgue in town, shots of the parking lot behind it, Donald Marium being interviewed, looking bothered by the microphone so close to his mouth. More photos, the two cops Core remembered from the morgue, the coroner, the words “Vernon Slone,” and Core felt an unsnapping just below his chest.

In the shower he leaned against the tiled wall, the overhot stream on his scalp, hair long enough to touch his mouth. He felt filthy from days of illness, filthier still after seeing all Cheeon and Slone had done. He’d packed a towel in the space under the door of the bathroom and the steam swelled there around him. The water off now, he sat holding himself in the tub, addled by a dread he fought to understand, newly disgusted by his body hair. He could recall Medora Slone scrubbing herself in the tub, how he’d peeked on the night he arrived in Keelut. He reached for the razor in his bag, ran the faucet, and with a circle of motel soap he spent the next hour shaving his body, unbothered by the many nicks that dripped blood in the water.

When he finally rose he wiped the mirror clear, and with scissors he clipped away his beard and hair, sweating still. Soon the sink filled with wet clumps of white. He shaved his face, his throat. The exposed skin felt bloomed, seemed to exhale after decades of held breath. He stood studying himself for a long while and for a moment he recognized the new father he’d been at twenty-five.

A red square flashed on the telephone but he was hesitant to hear whatever news this message brought. Perhaps his daughter, his wife, someone calling him to return home. But no one knew he was here. He sat on the unmade bed and looked at the pulse of light. It was Marium’s voice saying he needed to meet, his office number, his cell. When Core dressed, his newly shaven body was cool and naked-feeling beneath his clothes, sensitive, strangely alive against flannel and denim. The sensation felt like a secret.

When he opened the door to get more coffee, a cop in a snowsuit was standing there. “Don Marium sent me to get you, Mr. Core.”

“I just got his message, yes.”

“He’s in Keelut now. He wants us there.”

“Yes,” Core said, “I’ll go to the village.”

“I can drive you.”

“I know the way,” Core said. “I’ve been there before.”

“Let me drive you,” the cop said. “I know Don’s looking to talk with you,” and Core was irked by the way he’d said it.

* * *

An eighty-minute crawl to Keelut, half that time behind a weather-wrecked snowplow fanning salt and sand across the blacktop, the cop not eager to speak and Core glad for the quiet. He read the paper, articles about the Slones, about Cheeon, this village. A foot of new snow mantled the land, undulating up into the hills, into granite rock faces. Marium was there at the entrance to Keelut, his truck pointed at the Slones’ cabin.

He waved through the windshield for Core, the cop walked off into the village, and Core joined Marium in the cab of the truck, the air burdened with the scent of coffee and smoke.

“Took me a sec to recognize you without the beard,” Marium said.

Core stomped snow from his boots and shut the door.

“You got my message?”

“I did,” Core said.

“I was surprised to see your truck still at the motel this morning. I thought you’d’ve got the hell out of here already. It’s been over two weeks. Not had your fill of us yet?”

“I guess not. I’ve been sick. I’m two days behind on everything, I’m sorry.”

Marium poured coffee from a bulletlike metallic thermos and passed a paper cup to Core. From beneath his seat he retrieved a fifth of whiskey and added a shot to his own coffee. Core reached over his cup for the same. He bit from a chocolate bar and started a cigarette with Marium’s lighter.

“What did you need to speak with me about?” Core asked.

“Just trying to get all this figured out, Mr. Core. This mess we have here.”

“I just saw what happened. I saw you on the news. You killed that man? Cheeon?”

Marium said nothing. His face did not change.

“How’s a person do that?” Core said. “What Cheeon did here?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me that.”

“Me? How would I know that?”

Marium looked at him through the steam of his coffee.

“If you corner an animal he’ll try to claw his way out,” Core said. “But that’s not what happened here.”

No animal, Core knew, does what Cheeon did. What Slone did at the morgue.

“I read some of your book last night,” Marium said. “The one about wolves that Medora Slone had? I forget the title. Good book, though, the part I read.”

“Why’d you want to read that?”

“I was hoping to learn something about Medora Slone.” He paused. “Was hoping to learn something about you too, Mr. Core.”

“Learn what?”

“Why she asked you to come here.”

“And did you learn that?”

“Nope. Didn’t learn a thing. Zip. I saw that wolves remind me of some bastards I know.”

“That’s unfair to wolves,” Core said. “They have a logic some of us could use more of.”

Marium looked at him over the top of his cup. “So I need to jog your memory, Mr. Core.”

“How so?”

“You’re the last one to see Medora Slone. Last one to talk to her. You found that boy. And right now I’m wondering why you’re still here.”

Core looked away to consider the hills, knowing he had no believable answer as to why he had not left this place. Because he’d been dreaming of Medora Slone. Because he’d been ruptured since finding the boy. Because he had little to return to. Because he was beginning to fear that man belongs neither in civilization nor nature—because we are aberrations between two states of being.

“I told you everything I know,” Core said.

“Why are you still here?”

“You suspect me?”

“I’m just asking. It’s my job to ask.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“I’m hoping you can tell me just a little more. That woman contacted you because she thought you’d understand her.”

“That woman contacted me because she wanted me to find the boy,” Core said.

“And that’s my question, Mr. Core. Why you? Why a total stranger?”

“I don’t know why me. She found my book on wolves. What are you implying here?”

“I’m not implying anything. I’m just stating what happened. A woman kills her boy and writes a complete stranger to come go on a wild wolf chase and then find the boy in a root cellar. Explain that, please.”

“You asked me these questions two weeks ago.”

“And I’m asking them again, fourteen bodies later.”

Core felt grateful for the smoke hanging there between them like a curtain. He recalled Medora’s body next to his on the sofa, the vision of her in the tub.

“Nothing happens here in a way that makes any sense,” Core said. “You told me that yourself.”

“That’s not exactly what I said. What I’m saying now, Mr. Core, is that Medora Slone must have mentioned something to you, something that might tell me where she could be right now. Because if we want to get this thing figured out, we better find her before her husband does.”

“Is that why Slone killed those cops at the morgue?”

Marium stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, then looked at the Slones’ cabin. “He couldn’t take the chance of us finding his wife before he did. That’s my view of it. So they wouldn’t take her to where he couldn’t get at her.”

“And the coroner too, why?”

“To get the boy’s body,” he said, pouring more coffee for himself and Core. “Or else he’s just evil. It’s not as uncommon as you might think.”

Evil is a distortion of love
—Core couldn’t remember who said it or when, and didn’t know how it helped explain what was upon them now.

“Slone let you drive away from the morgue that night,” Marium said, lighting a new cigarette. “He let you go. Why would he do that? The wife calls you here, the husband lets you live. Why?”

Two village boys, eleven years old, padded in fur and face masks, blared by on a snow machine that sounded like a chain saw. Villagers shoveled pathways around their cabins. With their faces pressed deep into hoods, toddlers stood nearly immobile in moose-hide suits. Every few minutes someone stopped to stare at the men in the truck but did not raise a hand of welcome. The sun was nowhere. Core cracked the window another inch, felt the air move in his stomach.

“Are you gonna answer my question, please? Why did Slone let you drive away that night?”

“He wants a witness,” Core said.

“A witness to what?”

“To this story he’s telling.”

“This story he’s telling, okay. And Medora, she wants a witness too? That makes you the chosen storyteller, Mr. Core. Please explain that.”

“How can I explain this?”

“Vernon Slone is a man and every man is explainable.”

“What kind of man does this?” and he nodded out the window at the village, as if all of Keelut were the direful work of one person.

“The human kind,” Marium said. “You should get a grip on that and you won’t be so surprised all the time.”

The human kind
, Core thought, distressed in his new wavering between words, between
animal
and
human
, in this place where one world grated against the other. They sipped their coffees through silence, the wind-roused snow like mist against the glass. Core felt hungry for the first time today. Marium pressed on the radio, turned through the stations, searching, Core thought, for a weather report, for some fact he could understand. He didn’t find anything he wanted and pressed it off.

“You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Core.”

“Which?”

“Why are you still here?”

“Because I’m trying to understand this thing, just like you,” Core said. “I’m telling you everything I know. I’m trying to help. You should be talking to the people of this village, not me.”

“These people will tell us nothing,” Marium said. “They have their own laws. Or they think they do. They think the whole world is their enemy.”

“They’re your people, aren’t they?”

“They sure as hell don’t think so. And they’re probably right. Just because you’re from this region, that doesn’t make you part of the blood of this village. Besides, as long as I have this job I’m their enemy.”

“Slone killed that old woman here?” Core asked.

“I think so. It wasn’t Cheeon, not his style. These people took her body. That’s what I mean. They have their own laws.”

“Did you find the boy’s body?”

“Nope, not his either. You can’t look anywhere now. Every eight hours new fall covers whatever there is to find.”

“What about Slone’s parents? Or Medora’s? Has anyone talked to them? I imagine they can help you more than I can.”

“Slone’s father has been dead awhile,” Marium said. “I’m not sure how. I don’t know anything about his mother, never met her. I believe I’ve met Medora’s mother in town, years ago. Very blond hair and white-white skin. Strange-looking woman, her mother. Her father disappeared on a fishing trip. Someone told me that. Went to sea and never came back. But I don’t know that for sure.”

“You’ve got to find out more about them.”

“It’s damn near impossible to know anything about these people, Mr. Core. That’s the way they want it. Why they live here. Why they stay. Everything you hear, you hear second- or third-hand and you never know how much of it is true. These people don’t come into town all that often. And when they do, they keep to themselves.”

“Still, someone should talk to the parents.”

“We tried. The Feds tried. I just tried again half an hour ago. I have a man out there trying again. No one here will tell you a damn thing. These homes you see”—he pointed with his cigarette—“they aren’t listed in any phone book. These people don’t have a paper trail like you and me.”

“There have to be records somewhere,” Core said.

“You still haven’t figured out where you are, have you?”

It occurred to Core then that his inability to comprehend this place and its people—their refusal to be known—was part of the reason he’d remained. He flicked his filter from the window, lit another, then aimed two dashboard vents at his body. He shook against a chill and reclined with his cup.

“So I’m on my own here, Mr. Core. I just went through their cabin again, looking for whatever I missed the first two times.”

“You’ve got to check the hills,” Core said.

“We’ve had planes looking from here to the border and they haven’t seen a goddamn thing. I took up my own plane yesterday before dark and there’s nothing to see except white. East, west, north, south—nothing but white.”

“You fly?”

“You better fly or know someone who does if you live out here or you won’t be able to get anywhere when you need to. We don’t have roads like you have roads.”

“They didn’t go west,” Core said.

“And you know that how?”

“West is the city and then the sea, right?”

“Eventually. So?”

“So watch wolves long enough and you’ll see what their territory means to them. The Slones have been in these hills since they were old enough to walk. They won’t flee somewhere they don’t know.”

“Keep going.”

“I’ve seen some of what’s out there past those hills,” Core said. “I know you have too. I could see that tundra. She could hide forever in her own backyard and none of you would ever find her.”

“Slone would find her. Unless he’s thinking that she’d never run to the most obvious place there is. But that’s what I need to know, Mr. Core, if I’m wasting my damn time here, if these people are long gone by now, deep into Canada or getting a suntan on a beach somewhere.”

“No, they’re still here,” Core said.

A topo map of the region lay on the seat between them. Core unfolded it and tried to study its multiple lines and shades, but the vastness it showed would not be breached.