The Winslow Incident (45 page)

When Nate returned his gaze to the
deer he was shamed by her unblinking, incriminating stare.
Why didn’t I help
you?
He ran his hand across the patch of white adorning her chest. “I’m
sorry.” He felt himself choking up. “Why did this happen?”
If I couldn’t
save Melanie Rhone, who can I save?
Nate swallowed his tears and swiped
angrily at his stinging eyes with the back of his wrist. Three murders he lay
witness to now: the doe, Melanie, and Hawkin Rhone.

The last, a while ago. Five years.
After the children had confessed what happened, Nate and Jules Foster had
hurried out across Three Fools Creek and found what was left of the baker in a
wet pile next to the cabin’s only door. It appeared the man had been trying to
crawl into the shelter of the cabin but something got him before he could make
it through the doorway.

“Was it an animal that killed
him?” Nate had asked the doctor hopefully.

“Could be animals got at him after
he was already dead,” Jules replied.

Either way, Hawkin Rhone’s remains
were a snarled, soaked pile and even Dr. Foster couldn’t sort them out.

But that was hardly murder, Nate
reminded himself. If Sean Adair hadn’t hit the man, had instead run away to get
help, who knows what Hawkin Rhone would’ve done to Hazel? And nobody missed him
when he was gone. Zachary Rhone had seemed almost relieved when Nate went to
him and said that he was sorry, but he’d been to the cabin and while he
couldn’t be certain, it looked as though a bear had gotten the better of his
father.

Sean had protected Hazel, and
nobody ever saw a good reason to punish him for that. Nobody had ever even
brought it up again. Until now. Now an exhumation felt imminent. Pard Holloway
had threatened as much to keep Nate from getting the help from down mountain that
Nate was convinced they needed. “We are the authorities, Winslow,” Pard said
Monday night, back before it was too late, “and we clean up our own messes
around here. You know that better than most.”

So Nate had had to go along with
the quarantine, with not radioing for a doctor, because now it was his turn to
protect Hazel and Sean.

Staring at the wound that gaped
along the doe’s side, he felt devastated.

He placed the Smith & Wesson
on a flat rock, grabbed hold of the deer beneath the ribcage, and pulled her
out of the creek. He could do that at least. Corpses pollute. “I’m sorry,” he
repeated as he released her into the ferns.

He returned to the creek bed and
plunged his hands into the cold water, scrubbing his palms together and then
wiping them dry against his pants.

When he turned and reached for the
gun, it was gone.
Oh, no.

Defenseless, he jerked his head
from side to side. Where was the gun? Where was the
creature
?
Nate
knew it could rip him to shreds in seconds, his only shield his bare hands, and
the thing would bite off his fingers before tearing through his tendons with
its barbed claws.

Feeling it at his back he spun around—not
ready to face it but left with no choice—and there it was.

The gun. Right where he’d left it.

He stooped to pick it up (too
relieved to berate himself) and offered one last apology to the doe before
turning away from the creek.

Calm down. Your heart’s beating
too fast. You’ll have a heart attack like Dad.

Then what good will I be to
anyone? You’re no good now. You know that.

Have I moved? My feet are stuck
in these bristlecones. So crunchy and dry. I hope there’s not a fire. I’m hot.
I’ll get in the creek. The water smells clean. No—don’t get any closer to
the edge. Stay here. Keep the revolver out. It’s safe here. But while I’m out
here, nobody’s safe.

Okay. Then I’ll track it down
and make sure it doesn’t hurt anybody else. I smell you . . .

Nate climbed up the embankment to
the trail. “I’m sorry, Anabel, that I let you down. I’m sorry, Melanie. I’m
sorry, Hazel.”

Go find it.
He resumed hiking down the path, heading east toward the
ponds.
Go now.

“Don’t lose the scent,” he
instructed himself. “That’s what Dad would say. Don’t lose your bearings.”

Bearings.
Nate suffered a sinking sensation.
Losing . . .
He
blew out his breath.
Lost.

I wish I didn’t know.
Now he felt his brain weeping—twisting and wringing
with sobs.
Better not to know. And if only I’d lose it a little bit more,
then I wouldn’t have to know anymore.

What am I thinking?

He kept his eyes on his feet,
trying to stay on the path and not lose himself to the trees. But he knew; he
understood: “I’m thinking it’d be better not to know that I’m losing my mind.”

A
ring around the moon means soon it will rain.
A red ring heralds something worse. Once the moon rose last night Patience
Mathers saw the red ring. There was no use denying it: the ill omen that
misfortune would soon befall her or someone she loves.

Patience clapped her hand around
the charm bracelet on her opposite wrist and walked toward the tourists waiting
at the entrance to Matherston. It seemed even dustier than usual so she looked
down and saw her pony-hair boots kicking up dirt, and she was almost there when
she realized she didn’t have on her Victorian dress. Too late now, she’d have
to give the tour in the rodeo outfit she’d changed back into after Hazel
abandoned her in Prospect Park.

I don’t want to do it I don’t
want to.

When she reached the half dozen
tourists she said, “Look—I’m shaking.”

And they looked at her shaking.

She said, “Welcome to Matherston.”

And they said, “Give us the ghost
town tour!”

“If you’ll follow me,” Patience
turned and led the group up Prospectors Way, “we’ll start with the blacksmith
shop on the right and the livery stable next door where you’ll see a collection
of mining equipment, including the original Burleigh drills and rolling
mounts.”

But they passed the livery without
stopping, clomping along the warped plank sidewalk.

Patience felt faint. It was too hot
and she felt thirsty and empty and weak. “Hazel told me I’m looking for more
trouble,” she said, “but that’s not true. Trouble is coming even if we close
our eyes.” She glanced back and saw the tourists spread out all over the place,
not even listening to her. “Pay attention!” she reprimanded. “Stay with the
group!”

Hazel never pays me attention,
except when I said he wanted me.

“I begged her don’t leave me, I
need you,” Patience told the tourists. “She knows what the crystal ball said,
but doesn’t care. She only says, ‘Where’s Sean? Where’s Sean?’”

“Where’s Sean? Where’s Sean?” the
tourists echoed.

“I could tattle on him, you know?
Tell what he did that summer across the creek.”

“What did he do?”

“But I crossed my heart and hoped
to die.”
I don’t want to die—

Patience abruptly halted in front
of Holloway Harness.
It’s so simple
, she suddenly realized.
I’ll find
him first.

She faced the group. “I’ll find
him first—he’s so sick, I could see that when he tried to kiss
me—and then she’ll know how it feels to be low fruit nobody wants even if
they are easy pickins and she’ll pay me attention and she’ll help me then.”

“You’re not giving us the tour!”

“Oh.” She glanced around at the
false front buildings up and down Prospectors Way before pointing at the Chop
House Restaurant across the street. “Thickest steaks and . . . and something
else-est in the West courtesy of Holloway Ranch . . .” she trailed off.

“What now?” the tourists demanded.

Patience suddenly felt sick to her
stomach all over again and bent at the waist and dry heaved over a hitching
post. Then she stood, took a deep breath, straightened her suede vest, and
looked into their expectant faces. “Now Hawkin Rhone is back to punish us for
what Sean Adair did.”

“You’re scaring us!” the tourists
cried.

“Me too,” Patience agreed and then
led them through batwing doors into the Mother Lode. “This is one of three
saloons in Matherston—”

The dog, Hazel Winslow’s familiar,
was crouched beneath the cursed poker table, red fur matted, ears forward, wet
eyes narrow. “Easy, boy, easy.” Patience held up her hands to placate the dog
as he drew back his lips to bare sharp teeth. He smelled like mushrooms, which
sent her stomach roiling again.

“What’s wrong, Patience?” the
tourists behind her asked.

Then Jinx snapped his jaw.

She spun around and pushed past
the tourists and through the doors, stumbling off the sidewalk onto the dirt
road.

“What’s wrong?” they called after
her.

But she was already running down
Prospectors Way, crying and thinking,
Why did she tell me to shut up? That’s
no thing you say. Things are cooking. Now we’re cooking with gas, like Gramps
always says. If only she would hear me, I know what’s cooking in that vile
place. Gramps tells me and she should know too and be afraid.

Patience paused at the timber-framed
entrance—soaked in sweat, hair hanging in her face—to look back at
Matherston.

“I warned everybody,” she
whispered, panted. “Dogs death, smoke fire, creeks rain. Cows on fire, bread on
fire.”

She closed her eyes to it all. “I
warned them they’ll come in threes.”

“
O
lly olly oxen free!”

Hazel’s voice had gone hoarse
calling to them. She’d been searching everywhere and all she wanted was to see
their little heads pop up from their hiding spot, to see them weaving their way
to her between the apple trees.

In fact, she wished everyone would
come out of hiding. She found it entirely odd: in a town so small, how could so
many people be lost?

Her body thrummed with tension,
nerves taut with paranoia. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

The orchard was hot and still and
smelled of rotting fruit, although no apples clung to the branches or littered
the ground.
These trees are dead
, she realized. She grasped a narrow
gray branch and snapped it off.
Ought to be chopped down and burned for
firewood.

The bakery still smoldered down
the hill. She’d skirted it first before looking for the children, trying to
determine if Zachary Rhone were lurking about. But she hadn’t seen him or
anybody else.
Come out, come out . . .

The front door to the Rhone house
had been hanging open like a slack mouth but there was no way in hell she was
going in there. The second story appeared even more sloped than she’d
remembered, the paint more severely blistered. From the recent heat wave, she
supposed.
Not going in there—uh-uh, no way.

Continuing now through the orchard
graveyard, each tree a brittle corpse, she reached the far side of the orchard
at the base of Silver Hill and yelled again with all she could muster, “Olly
olly oxen free!”

Then she waited . . . while not a
creature stirred.

Last night, the woman in the
ballroom had cried, “Where are the children?”

“Hawkin Rhone got ’em.” Kohl
Thacker had answered without hesitation.

That made Hazel’s pulse race as
she approached a long wooden bin, appropriately kid-sized. Hoping coiled snakes
didn’t spring out at her, she lifted the lid. Empty except for a dark red
gemstone—the garnet ring she’d given to Daisy. She bent to retrieve it
from the floor of the bin, mindful of her vulnerability since all anyone would
have to do is kick her from behind and she’d tumble in. She snatched up the
jewelry, then hopped back from the bin and let the lid bang shut.

Rubbing the cold stone of her
grandmother’s ring, she blew out a long breath. “You aren’t here anymore,” she
decided. “The fire scared you away.”

Then she noticed the ax lodged in
the trunk of a decapitated apple tree. Her heartbeat skidded as she wondered if
it were the same weapon that had been abandoned to the dandelions next to
Melanie’s body. She averted her gaze, not wanting to consider it any further.

Instead, she glanced west toward
the bridge, thinking that when Daryl came with the mail tomorrow and saw the
bridge closed, she’d know something was really wrong.

Hazel clicked her tongue against
the roof of her mouth, “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

Can we wait that long?

“Tick.”
No.
“Tock.”

A lot could happen in one day.
She
thought about gangrene, about suffocated tissue and split black skin. Can spread
to the rest of the body, the encyclopedia warned.

No, too much could happen in only
one day.

Unable to stop herself, she looked
at the ax again and thought,
Who else will die if no help arrives?
Her
chest constricted painfully.
How soon?