Sleep of the Innocent (12 page)

When she heard it again, the noise of the car engine was much closer. Too close. Hell! She had no desire for stray visitors. Only Joe MacDougal knew she was here, and he didn't go in for bothering people—just drifted by every afternoon on his way back home from wherever, his hunting rifle over his arm in spite of the season. He would nod at her, giving her a chance to speak if she had anything to say, mutter something vaguely like good night and leave. Who else could possibly turn up here? She closed her book and sat up. The car was definitely on her road. She heard it rattle over the logs on the bridge and pull up in front of the cabin. Feeling alone and vulnerable out here, she walked over to the stove, noiseless in her stocking feet, and picked up the poker. She waited for whoever it was to knock.

Instead of hammering on the door, however, he—they—had been doing nothing as far as she could tell. Maybe they're lost, she told herself, and they're just sitting in their car poring over maps. She took a step over to the small window that looked out on the road and hesitated. She had a horror of being caught staring curiously out the window, like some inquisitive old lady. Perhaps if she were quiet enough, they would go away again. She strained to hear what they were up to; there was no sound but the muttering of the brook and the sporadic complaints of a couple of birds. That must have been why the explosive smash caught her by surprise; she jumped and ran for the door in panic. Before she could reach and turn the old-fashioned key that sat in the lock, however, the heavy front door swung open, barely missing her.

Her protests died down before they were made. Coming into the room were two men, one thin and wiry, the other big and powerful-looking. Beyond that, she could not have described them. Both their faces were shrouded by dark blue knitted ski masks that covered all but their eyes.

“Grab her,” said the smaller one. He had a cracked, hoarse voice, unpleasantly high-pitched and dictatorial-sounding. She felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. She had heard that voice before, in Carl Neilson's apartment; it had frightened her then, too.

The big one had taken hold of her as though she were a naughty child, one hand around each arm, and the poker rattled impotent to the floor. He had sat her down in one of the two hard chairs that were beside the table, and held her with one hand around her throat while he walked around her and grabbed her arms from behind. “I got her,” he said calmly. She recognized that voice, too. There was nowhere, nowhere in the world, where one could go and be safe.

“We had trouble finding you, Jennifer, sweetheart—or whatever your fucking name is,” said the big man. He gave her body a wrenching shake to emphasize his words. “You caused us a lot of grief.”

“Yes,” said the other. “You made us nervous, running away like that. What did Neilson tell you about us? Or were you just there, watching?” She said nothing. The small one leaned forward and slapped her sharply across the face. “I asked you a question, you little bitch. What did Neilson tell you?”

“I still can't figure out where in hell she was hiding,” said the big one. He dug his fingers into her arms harder.

“She was hiding, that's all—it doesn't matter,” said the other one impatiently. “What matters is what she saw and what she told that fucking cop. What did you tell him, sweetheart? You might as well tell us, you know,” he added softly. “Because if we don't get it from you, we'll get it from him anyway.”

She said nothing.

“And how much Neilson told her. That matters. And what she told the cop. And that lawyer. We know she talked to that lawyer. That was stupid.” The big one's fingers dug in harder. “What did Neilson tell you, and who did you tell it to, eh?”

She knew that silence offered her protection; once she had spoken they would kill her as easily as they had killed Carl. She shook her head.

Another slap. “And what is that supposed to mean?” The smaller one glanced around when he finished speaking, leaned down, and picked up the poker from the floor.

“For chrissake,” said the voice from behind her. “Don't hit her with that. You'll kill her. You may not care what she's been saying, but it matters to me.”

“Oh, I'm not ‘going to hit her with it,” he said and walked over to the stove. He removed the lid and set the poker inside. He walked slowly back and crouched down in front of her. Fear compounded with fury made the blood pound in her ears, and as soon as he seemed to be within range, she moved her right foot back and kicked. He grabbed the foot just before it landed and held it. At the same time his friend jerked her back with such ferocity that she thought her arms had been torn from their sockets. The smaller one began pulling off her socks, both pairs, one by one. “Kick me again,” he said, “and I'll break your fucking toes. One by one.”

He walked over to the stove and removed the poker with his gloved hand. “Get her other foot, eh?” he said as he walked back, and before she could react, she was being held by one large arm around her body and the other grasping her left ankle. The little one picked up her right foot in one hand. “Okay, what did you tell that cop?” She shook her head again. “That's not an answer,” he said and touched the end of the poker to the ball of her foot. She gasped.

“That was just to show you that it's still hot,” he said. “What did you tell the cop?”

“Nothing,” she said.

He lifted her foot up to his chest level and slapped the poker across the sole, holding it there. She could hear and smell and feel the searing pain, and she screamed.

“Hey, Annie!” A rough voice from outside intruded itself sharply and unexpectedly into the scene. “What in hell is going on in there? Are you all right?”

“Hold her,” said the big man, running to the front door. The smaller one stood there for a moment, indecisive, staring at the hot poker in his hand. While he was thinking, she jumped out of the chair, knocking it over, grabbed the table, and tipped it with a smash of breaking crockery in his direction. That slowed him another second or two while she ran for the back door. She had it open before he realized that it existed. By the time he had reached it, she was halfway across the field.

She heard a shot, two shots, thick and muted-sounding, as she left the cabin. She ran even faster through the mud and melting snow. Then a crack of a rifle, and she felt a whistle rippling against the outside of her thigh. She kept running, trying to ignore the searing pain in her foot. As soon as she reached the woods, she fell into a crouch. Here under the trees she felt secure. This had been her playing ground for years, and she knew every contour of the ground, every stone and branch. She threw herself under a large pine growing in a hollow, wriggled under its branches to the far side, and kept crawling silently under the thicker and thicker undergrowth until she reached the stream at its narrowest point. She had done this hundreds of times during her childhood, eluding imaginary pursuers. Without pausing to look behind her, she reached up and grabbed the largest branch hanging over the water, flung herself across and landed on the granite boulder on the other side. Winter frosts had destabilized it in some way, however, and it rocked crazily under her foot. She plunged forward, barely saving herself from a time-consuming and noisy fall with one bone-wrenching thud to her hand. She heard a click like a twig snapping and the boulder dropped with an enormous splash into the brook. Without thinking, she dove into her little cave behind the evergreens.

The voices started up again, very loud in the sheltering woods.

“What's happened?”

“I think I got her all right. That's blood down there, isn't it? Anyway, she fell in the water.”

“Can't tell in this light. It might be mud. Doesn't matter, though—she won't last long in there,” said the hoarse voice.

She wriggled back to where the rock faces on either side of her widened and turned herself carefully around; then she curled herself up in the old pine needles and branches on the floor.

She had discovered this little hiding place when she was nine. It had been a pie-shaped crevice some primeval cataclysm had cut in the granite of the Laurentian Shield, but one that a passing ice age had provided with most of a roof, by wedging a couple of chunks of granite into its opening to the sky. Every summer she had dragged small logs over to the open spaces to complete the roof, so that by the time she was twelve, she had created a snug little cave. The continual dropping of leaves and pine needles onto her handiwork had camouflaged it completely; with its shield of evergreens in front of the entrance, it had become invisible.

Now that she felt relatively safe, she had a moment to assess her injuries. She touched her leg where the bullet had whistled by her and felt stickiness coat her fingers. Blood. She tried to ignore the cold and the fear and the pain, tried to push away the thought that, injured and bleeding, she could die in here. Her bolt-hole might well turn into a trap. She pulled her feet up as close to her body as they would come, and reached down to warm them with her cold hands. A stab of pain in her wrist reminded her that she had hurt it, too, as she had fallen on the bank, and tears of anger began to slip down her cheeks.

The sounds made by her pursuers came from farther and farther, until all sound ebbed away, and she drifted timelessly in the soothing darkness. The terror of pursuit was replaced by a kaleidoscopic succession of bright and hectic dreams, dreams of endless icebergs and snowbanks and brooks filled with clear, bright ice water.

Then, lifetimes later, her dreams were interrupted by muttering and cursing on the other side of the stream; that sound was replaced by a lot of heavy-footed crashing and thumping about very close by. “Annie,” said another familiar voice, “for chrissake, if you're out there, say something. It's Robin. I won't hurt you, and I'm getting bloody cold standing here.”

She waited for a moment, trying to think what would be the clever thing to do. Awake and trembling with cold and misery, she called, “I'm here, in here,” and stretched a hand out through the feathery concealing branches of the trees.

He was close enough to her to touch the icy hand that appeared through the branches. He pushed them aside and shone the powerful beam of his flashlight into a narrow opening, some two feet wide and about four feet high. She was lying there on her side, apparently wedged between two rock faces. Automatically, he reached in to try to get her out.

“Wait,” she said weakly, as his hand closed around her wrist. “Let go. Let me do it.”

“How in hell did you get in there?” he asked.

“It's not that tight,” she said, “especially back here.” She was breathing rapidly, ejecting her words in little spates of sound.

He focused the beam on her face. It was streaked with dirt and blood; in the white light, her skin was gray and her eyes hollow and sunken. She blinked under the scrutiny. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head helplessly. “We have to get you out of there,” he said, his voice efficient and matter-of-fact. “Can you help?” He said it as if it didn't matter much one way or the other whether she could or couldn't, although he was daunted by the prospect of trying to drag a helpless but sentient being out of there.

There was a long and frightening silence. Just as he was about to reach in for her, however, she spoke, coolly and rationally. “I've sprained my left wrist, I think—it seems to be swollen. Not a great idea to pull me out by that hand.” She paused again for breath. “I've hurt my leg, and I've lost some blood. Walking might be—” She stopped. “And I haven't any shoes or socks.”

“Or coat or hat or gloves,” he added, gently. “You have to stop going out without a coat. Okay, can you raise your shoulders a little? Then I can pull you out.” She nodded and tried to heave herself up, levering herself with her left elbow. She lurched sideways and sank down again; she took a deep breath and repeated the movement. This time she managed to stay up; he stuffed the flashlight in his pocket, reached in and grasped her by the armpits. He pulled steadily until she was out except for her legs. “Now,” he said, “reach up and grab me behind the neck.” She rolled slightly toward him and placed her right arm on his shoulder. Her grip was alarmingly feeble. He shifted his hold until he was carrying her like a tired child off to bed. “Just one more question,” he said. Her head rolled against his chest, and he was afraid she was going to faint. “How do we get to the cabin without wading through that damned river?”

“Up there,” she said, with no indication of direction, “to the road. Not far,” she added, and lost consciousness.

At least he knew what direction the road ought to be in, and he began to stumble along, following the stream bed upward. It might not have been far, but the ground underfoot was uneven and studded with large rocks that sprang up invisible under his feet. After banging her legs against a tree, he draped her over his shoulder, took out his flashlight again, and started to scramble up the small hill to the road. She seemed to drift in and out of consciousness; unaware, he hoped, of how roughly he was handling her. Back on the road, he shifted her back into his arms; her eyes fluttered open, and she began to shiver violently. Snow was drifting softly onto her face, and she buried it in the waterproof cloth of his parka. If he didn't get her inside soon, he reckoned, she wouldn't make it after all. He wondered how long she had been lying out there in the cold, and lengthened his stride until he reached the graveled parking area. Cursing his own carefulness that had insisted on closing the door when he first came in, he shifted her weight onto his upraised knee and turned the knob.

The lingering warmth from the fire in the stove had heated up the cabin again. He vaguely remembered a battered-looking couch to the left of the door, turned, and cracked his shins against it, and then set her down gingerly on her back. Once he had use of his arms again, the flashlight found him two oil lamps, neatly trimmed and polished clean, up on a shelf beside a wall-mounted match holder. As soon as they were lit, the cabin seemed to blaze with light, and he saw that the stickiness on his hands was blood. He hastily wiped them on his handkerchief and turned his attention to the girl again. She was shivering with cold, or fear, or shock, her eyes anxiously following his movements. The blood had originated from the stiffening mess on her jeans, obviously. He looked around for something sharp, picked up a paring knife from the counter by the wood stove, and carefully enlarged the ragged tear in her jeans and then in the dark-colored long underwear beneath. “What happened to your leg?” he asked.

“I must have been shot,” she said. “As I ran away. It was strange. I didn't feel anything. I heard it. I heard it go by. The shot.”

As far as he could tell, the bullet had torn away some skin and flesh on the side of her thigh but had not penetrated any farther. He ripped the cloth of her jeans back more, found a couple of clean-looking dish towels hanging from a bar, and wrapped them around the wound.

“Where are the blankets?” he asked impatiently. “Blankets, Annie. You need blankets. You're cold.”

“Up there,” she said. Her voice seemed dry and faint.

For the first time, he noticed a ladder fastened to a rafter beside the back wall. In two steps he was at the top, and shining his light into a room whose existence he had not suspected. It was a tiny bedroom tucked in under the eaves. It contained a narrow wooden built-in bed with two large drawers under it and very little else, except for a few boxes. An empty duffel bag lay crumpled on the floor right in front of him. He snatched a couple of blankets from the bed, opened the drawers and tumbled as much of their contents into the duffel bag as he could, and hurried back down the ladder to check on her again. Her eyes were closed, but the lids fluttered sporadically. He straightened out the two blankets to make a double thickness and placed them gently on top of her.

Somewhere in the pile of things he had rescued from the drawers he had seen neatly folded socks, he was sure, and he rooted around in the duffel bag until he found them. He moved one of the lamps so that he could see what he was doing and uncovered her bare and agonizingly cold feet. He slipped a sock onto one foot and then picked up the other. And gagged. That oozing filthy mess was beyond him. He put the second sock on top of the first and wrapped the blanket around her legs again.

She stirred, and he turned to look at her. “I'm thirsty,” she said. “Very thirsty.”

He looked around frantically for water, hoping he didn't have to return to the goddamn stream—which was probably polluted anyway. But on the floor, next to the back door, there was a plastic jug of spring water. He filled a cup and held it to her lips. She drank a mouthful and let her head drop back. “We have to leave,” she said. “They know I'm here. They think I'm dead, but they aren't sure, and so they'll be back.”

“You're right,” he said. “Don't worry.” He searched the cabin once more with his flashlight. The beam picked out a pair of hiking boots and a large leather purse with a shoulder strap. Those looked useful. He grabbed them, along with the duffel bag and jug of water, and slung them into the trunk of his car. He opened the rear door, ran back in, blew out the lamps, picked up Annie, tucking the blankets around her as firmly as he could, and laid her carefully down on the backseat of the car.

He thought of nothing but getting away from the cabin until he neared the intersection between the township road and the highway. At that point, far enough back from the main road to keep them from being noticed by casual traffic, he pulled over to consider what to do next. “Annie,” he said. “Annie! Are you awake?”

She moaned slightly, and muttered.

He flicked on the overhead light and turned to look at her. “Who knew about this place?” he asked. “Which of your friends?”

She swallowed and licked her lips. “No one,” she said at last.

“There has to have been someone,” he said incredulously. “Didn't Neilson know?”

“No one,” she repeated. “Espe—especially not Neilson.” Talking seemed to cost her more and more effort. “How did you—” Her voice trailed off.

“Hennessy,” said Lucas. “Your lawyer.”

“He knew. No one else. No one.” She paused, and when she answered again, her voice was stronger. “I haven't been up here for five years. Joe looked after it after Daddy died. He wouldn't have told anyone.”

Joe. That would be the body in the snow, thought Lucas grimly. He wondered if she knew that he was dead. “Was Joe local?” he asked, and winced when he realized he was already using the past tense.

She didn't notice. “Yes,” she said, drawing in a ragged breath.

Which meant that to get any information from Joe, you had to know who he was and where to find him. Which meant that you already knew where you were going. And only Hennessy knew that. Except that Hennessy had told him—but he hadn't passed it on to anyone. Had he? He had told Patterson he was going to check out her cottage. But hadn't mentioned where it was, he was sure of that. And otherwise the location had only been spelled out in his report. The report that he had dutifully filed before lunch. And someone who had access to his report had gone up that afternoon. Or had told someone else about it—who had gone up that afternoon. Which would mean that someone who had access to Baldwin's files was passing information on—probably to the same friends who had found Carl Neilson no longer useful and had disposed of him. “Shit!” he said, and pounded his fist against the steering wheel. The girl behind him stirred and muttered.

He started the car up again. Now that he had put it all into words, the only surprise was that he hadn't thought of it before. It was the logical, if unpalatable, solution. Now where to? First of all, Annie needed help. And if he took her to a hospital with a gunshot wound, the incident would be reported, and the report would land on Baldwin's desk. He had a first-aid kit in the trunk. He wasn't sure how risky trying to look after her himself was going to be, but he certainly knew how risky it would be to let other people get their hands on her. All he needed now was a quiet motel where no one would pay any attention to them.

“I'm not being grim,” said Sanders, pushing the candle to one side to get a better look at Harriet's face. “And I haven't been glaring at you. In fact, I'm not in a bad mood at all. Just thinking.”

“Thinking!” said Harriet. “I hate to imagine what you're thinking about. Strangling someone, I suppose. I can see it in your eyes—they're narrow and glittering with blood lust.” She pointed an accusing finger across the table and then converted the gesture into a grab for the wine bottle that sat between them.

“Shut up, will you, Harriet?” He caught her wrist with one hand and extracted the wine bottle from her with the other. “Something to drink, madam?” he added, and poured some into her glass and then into his. “And I wasn't considering strangling someone—only trying to figure out why Matt Baldwin's case was dumped in my lap this afternoon. It's not like Matt to relinquish his hold on anything.”

“Maybe the man is sick,” said Harriet. “It must happen.”

Sanders shook his head. “I was specifically told that illness was not the reason. Nor incompetence, no matter how justifiable.”

“Meow,” said Harriet. “I'm shocked, John. It's not like you to be catty about someone. Besides me, of course. And you only do that to my face, as far as I know.”

“Absolutely,” said Sanders. “Pure gallantry once your back is turned, that's me. But wait until you meet Baldy. He brings cattiness out in the gentlest people. My recurrent nightmare is that Baldy will be promoted over me someday and I'll have to work for him. When I think of that, I break out in a cold sweat and start making lists of alternate careers.”

“What's wrong with him?” asked Harriet.

Sanders held up his left hand and began counting points off on his fingers. “He's stupid, a self-satisfied ass, that's one. He's a pompous twit or a cringing, ass-licking jerk, depending on who he's talking to, that's two. He knows nothing and expects the people working with him to cover for his mistakes
and
let him take the credit when things work out. That's three. And he has a foul and irrational temper that makes me look like a cross between a saint and the sunshine fairy.”

“Which is four,” said Harriet. “I get your drift. You don't like the man. What case is it, anyway?”

“Murder that happened while we were away. A guy who owns a lot of property around the city—”

“Carl Neilson,” said Harriet quietly. “Lydia Neilson's husband.”

“My God,” said Sanders. “Do you know her? Baldwin claims he doesn't want the case because he knows Lydia Neilson. He probably met her once.”

Harriet got up and walked across the room over to the CD player. She shuffled through a pile of discs in silence until she finally arrived at one and slipped it into the player. The delicate sounds of baroque music played on a classical guitar stirred around the edges of the room. “Yes,” she said. “I know her—or to be more accurate, I used to know her. I haven't seen her for about four years. She's probably changed.”

“Was she married to Neilson then?” asked Sanders.

Harriet nodded. She walked back to the table and sat down. She picked up her glass, as if to drink, and then put it down again, too hard, and spilled a few drops of wine on the mat. “I didn't know her before she married Carl Neilson.”

“What's wrong with her?” asked Sanders. He imprisoned her hand before she could start fiddling with something else.

“Wrong with her? Oh, nothing. She's very nice. Bright and interesting. Knows a lot about music and art. She did—or was doing—art history in university when she married him. That's how I got to know her. Through, uh—” Harriet stopped dead.

“Your artist friend without the name,” said Sanders. “You don't have to avoid any mention of him just because of me. I don't expect to meet a woman of thirty who has never laid eyes on a man before.”