The Winslow Incident (38 page)

She took a huge faltering breath
and then let it out slowly, trying to get her mind to stop snapping inside her
head and her heart to stop pinging inside her chest.

A resolute clang sounded from the
direction of the jail cell.

Hazel’s breath caught in her
throat. “Who’s there?” she called.

“So dang hot!” A man’s voice. “And
all gone to pot faster than whiskers on crawdads.”

She plodded toward the cell on
feet suddenly grown as heavy and awkward as bricks. A fishing pole with a
snapped line was leaning against the wall in the hallway leading to the vault.
Several feet farther she stepped over the other end of the line, which had a
dried-out worm skewered on the hook.

“Cal?” Hazel hazarded a guess.

“Yep. That’d be me.”

She turned the corner and saw Cal
from the Fish ’n Bait sitting on the cot in the jail cell, holding a Styrofoam
cup on his lap. When she reached the bars she could see the squiggling worms
inside the container. The door to the cell was closed. She tugged on
it—locked tight.

Tiny Clemshaw had been the last
person incarcerated in the cell Cal now occupied. A few years ago her dad had
thrown him in overnight for running over Meg Foster’s poodle Pepé after too
many whiskey sours at the Buckhorn.

“Did my dad put you in here?” she
asked Cal.

“Nope.”

“Who then?”

He looked up at her with sorrowful
eyes. “That’d be me.”

The source of the clang she’d
heard. “Have you done something wrong, Cal?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Come unbuttoned, I tell ya.
’Fraid I might.”

“Might do what?”

“Somethin’ wrong.”

“Like what?”

“Hook somebody in the eye.”

“Best not to do that,” she agreed.

“Best not.” He looked back at his
cup.

“I’m glad you came down off the
roof. That looked dangerous.”

“Weren’t bitin’ no how.”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“Pest House.”

“Where?”

“Nervous water out there. Mathers
says the devil’s gonna put a stop to it.”

“You’re not making sense, Cal.”

“Told ya my bait’s been stripped.
Told ya that already.” He stared at his worms.

“You planning to stay in here
then?”

“Yep. Aim to keep myself outta the
way of all those fish.”

Hazel sighed.
Not a bad idea.
Briefly,
she considered joining him.

Instead, she slogged back to the
front of the bank and kicked open the door, then stood on the sidewalk and
loudly asked, “Now what?”

After an empty minute or two, she
headed aimlessly up Fortune Way, thinking about just going home and crawling
into bed and pulling the covers over her head.

It wasn’t until she’d passed
Buckhorn Tavern and nearly reached the Mercantile that she noticed Tiny
Clemshaw’s shotgun trained on her chest.

“I won’t have you stealing from
me!” Tiny howled.

As heavy as her flashlight weighed
in, it was no match for the shotgun. “I just want to pass, Tiny, that’s all . .
.” Hazel began to cut as wide a swath as possible around him.

Tiny held his ground on the
sidewalk in front of the store’s broken display window, hair sticking out at
all sides, infuriated features stuck in that cottonball of a face. “I won’t
have anybody stealing from me anymore!”

Hazel was quicker to recognize the
symptoms now; clearly Tiny Clemshaw was going insane on ergot. “I don’t think
you’re feeling yourself,” she tried. “Maybe you should put down the gun.”

He did not put down the gun.
Instead, he tracked her, pivoting on the knee he threw out last winter
shoveling snow. “Maybe now you’ll think twice about stealing beer from me.”

“I won’t come into your store.
Never again if that’s what you want.” What
she
wanted was to move much
faster—to turn and flee—but she worried he’d panic and fire.

“I want you to send the sheriff
over. Right away.” His aim on her was steady.

“I’ll find him, Tiny, and I’ll
send him.” She realized she was holding her good arm up in the air,
stick ’em
up.

“He’s at the Rhone place.” He
pointed up Fortune Way with the shotgun, then quickly trained it back on her.
“Go fetch him.”

She dared take her eyes off Tiny
to look toward the bakery. Trucks—including her dad’s Jeep—were
parked in front of the Rhones’ house with their lights illuminating the yard.
Hazel returned her gaze to the gun. “I will. I’ll go right now.”

And then she did turn and run,
certain she’d hear the crack and feel the rip and burn of shot filling her back
at any moment.

“Hurry,” he yelled after her but
didn’t need to waste his breath.

Her sore ribs and elbow protested,
creating shocks of pain with each footfall as she pounded past the bakery and
up the rise to the bowed house. She was relieved as rain to spot her father
standing next to the clothesline. White sheets hung slack in the breezeless
night.

Her father was looking down with a
puzzled expression.

What’s going on here?
she wondered.

“Dad!” She continued running
toward him.

He looked up in alarm and held up
his hands, crossing them back and forth in a frantic
no, no
gesture.
“Stay back, sweetheart.
Don’t
come over here!”

She did anyway, she couldn’t will
her legs to stop moving until she was almost upon her, and she forgot all about
Tiny Clemshaw gone vigilante at the Mercantile.

If it weren’t for all those red
curls, Hazel would’ve never guessed it was Melanie Rhone. Wouldn’t have had any
idea to whom those mounds of split flesh belonged. Blood glistened wet in the
lights of the Jeep; bone shone white and cold.

Poor, sweet Melanie.
If Hazel had had anything in her stomach besides hard
candy, she would’ve lost it.
Did Violet and Daisy see this?
She truly hoped
not. But that would explain the blood on their dresses. The grass surrounding
the body was soaked. It was hard for Hazel to imagine that the small woman had
contained that much blood.

“I came to ask if she’d seen any
more wolves.” Her father’s stare was fixed on Melanie but his face displayed no
emotion, as though he were looking at a stack of dirty laundry. He shoved his
hands into his pant pockets, a gesture that said,
I don’t quite know what to
do about it.

“Who did this?” Hazel asked. An ax
lay in the dandelions a few feet away. She might vomit after all.

He met her gaze with a befuddled
expression. “Wolf?”

Hazel wanted to reach over, shake
him, scream,
A wolf didn’t do this! Wolves can’t swing axes!
But his
eyes had gone vacant, he was somewhere else, not seeing her at all, she
suspected. She glanced down at his hands to see if they were swelling or
turning color with gangrene but they remained hidden inside the pockets of his
khakis.

“No, Dad,” she said, “not a wolf.”

“Is that you, Anabel?” His eyes
glinted with surprised delight.

“No! Not her—I’m
me.
”
And suddenly she was furious at her mother for not being here when she needed
her.

“Anabel . . . what should we do?”

That’s it
, Hazel thought,
he’s done
, and the earth may as
well have split open and sucked her in. Because any hope she’d had that she
wasn’t completely alone in this now drained away.

“Nothing in the house except
bloody shoeprints.” Her Uncle Pard came up behind her. “Size eleven, I’d say.”
He ignored Hazel, sidestepped Melanie, and loomed in front of her father. “What
we need to do now, Sheriff, is get things cleaned up.”

“We can’t clean this up.” Her
father’s autopilot seemed to switch on. “We need a proper investigation.”

“Do you really want people seeing
what a mess you’ve made?” Pard clutched him by the upper arm. “There’ll be
charges against you—
criminal
charges—for allowing this to
happen.”

Her father’s face twisted with
uncertainty.

Hazel stepped up. “He’s lying,
Dad. He’s trying to scare you.”

She pulled her uncle off her
father and glared at him. “We need doctors up here, Uncle Pard.”

He shook his head as if to say,
No
can do.

“Doctors
and
vets. You know
there’s something wrong with the feed, don’t you?”

He placed a fist on his hip and
leaned close to her. “I’m going to say this for the
last
damn time: My
beef could not and did not make anybody sick.”

“You don’t get it—the
feed
is making the
cows
sick. Maybe a vet from Stepstone who hasn’t lost his
mind like Simmons can help your herd.”

Pard appeared to consider that for
a moment, and Hazel hoped his certainty was finally beginning to waver. But
then he said, “We wipe up our own spills. You know that better than anyone,
Hazel. You, your father here . . . and Sean Adair.”

No
, she mentally shook her head.
He’s not still using what
happened at Hawkin Rhone’s cabin against us. He can’t be. Not now. Not with
another dead Rhone on our hands.

Her uncle pushed his cowboy hat up
off his forehead so she could see straight into his hazel eyes. “I’ve been to
the bakery.”

Cold fingers squeezed Hazel’s
heart. “Do not threaten me.”

“Only telling the truth. Besides,
folks are on the mend.”

“They’re getting worse.”

He squinted hard at her. “I’ve got
things under control.”

Hazel gestured at pieces of
Melanie. “
This
is under control?”

“Listen to me, girl: let me handle
this.”

“You’re
not
handling it!
What happened to the phones? Where’s the radio?”

“Don’t know anything about any
radio.”

“Damn you, Uncle Pard! I’m taking
the Jeep and getting outta here.”

“You won’t get far. And don’t
swear at me.”

“Why not?”

“Because the bridge is closed. And
because it’s not ladylike.”

“What are you
doing
? Have
you completely lost your mind too? We need help! Not quarantine. I’m leaving
whether you like it or not.”

“Cut and run? Didn’t realize how
much you take after your mother.”

“Don’t say—” she started to
protest.

“Though I can’t say I blame
Anabel.” Pard looked at her father with obvious disdain.

“Don’t say that!” Hazel cried.
“Don’t you ever say it was our fault she left!” She thought about picking up
the ax and lodging it in her uncle’s thick skull. Instead, she hit his chest
with her fist several times but he was a big man and it had no effect. When she
swung at him again he caught her by the wrist and squeezed.

“Be careful,” she told him, fast
running out of steam. “That’s the one Hawkin Rhone broke, remember?”

He let go and she fell on her rump
in the grass, landing just inches from the body.

Her dad hadn’t moved a muscle. He
simply stared. Hands growing gangrenous in his pockets, she supposed.

And she wondered if Tanner made it
out before they closed the bridge.

Hazel glanced up at the old apple
orchard, at the leafless trees’ misshapen branches. “Where’s Zachary Rhone?”
she suddenly thought to ask.

Her father looked at her with that
now familiar helplessness and her uncle glanced away.

Returning her gaze to the pile
that was once Melanie Rhone, former Winslow Rodeo Queen, mother of two young
daughters, she realized,
They think Zachary did this.

The gravity of Tanner’s remark that
Zachary Rhone is looking for Sean crashed down on her then with stark horror
and ice-cold panic.

She shot up and stumbled fast down
the hill, away from her dad, her uncle, Melanie, passing right by the Jeep
without even thinking about jumping in and leaving town.

Because now her only thought was,
I
must find Sean before Zachary Rhone does.

K
illing Sean Adair was the only thing Zachary
Rhone allowed himself to think about.

When the flash of images lit
through him—splashes against the white sheets hanging on the line, that
blue eye staring unblinking into the sun—he forced himself to refocus.

“I’ll hunt you down,” he repeated,
“and make you pay.”

Melanie, my Melanie.
Why had he married a woman so pretty, so sweet?
The
boy had tried to steal her right out from under him.

“Focus!” Zachary was desperate to
clear his head. “It’s so hard to think anymore.”