Winter Study (47 page)

He
believed Anna would, too, but she couldn’t quite get there with him.
She couldn’t get her mind around a God who was purported to know — and
care — about the ins and outs of human suffering. If there was such a
watcher of the falling sparrows he — it was always he — was a
bloodthirsty son of a bitch. Or he was a helpless son of a bitch.

Spending all eternity with either incarnation didn’t appeal to her.

The
next article she clicked on brought her upright in her seat. The
headline read: “No Ring Found in Trap.” Beneath it was a quarter-page
color photograph of a young Adam Johansen on the front steps of a brick
fourplex, carrying a bloody, naked woman. The woman’s arms hung at her
sides. Her hands were completely red, and blood trailed down the leg of
Adam’s khaki shorts and painted the side of his calf and the top of his
running shoe. Cynthia’s head was back in the classic Fay Wray swoon,
but the woman in the photograph was either dead or soon to be dead.
Long hair, brown or dark blond, streamed to Adam’s ankles, the ends
pointed and dark with water and blood. Anna could see the white paint
on the doorframe behind Adam streaked from where the hair had been
drawn across it when he carried Cynthia outside.

“It’s a still from a videotape.”

The
voice was no more than six inches from her ear. Years of not responding
to the machinations of people whose day she was ruining for one reason
or another, Anna didn’t leap out of her skin, shrieking.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked.

Adam
leaned down, looking at the photograph on the screen. He was shirtless.
Heat radiated from his skin. Threads of long hair trailed across Anna’s
neck like the tickle of spiderwebs walked through in the dark. Muscles
at the corner of his jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.

Fear on men smelled sour. Adam smelled of molten iron and metal ice-cube trays, red coals and rocks brittle with cold.

Adam reeked with a distillation of rage.

27

Anna
sat perfectly still, her eyes on the picture on the monitor, and waited
for the scalding anger boiling off Adam to dissipate. The back of her
chair moved fractionally, the oak creaking as Adam leaned on it hard,
using it as a lame man would use a crutch to push himself upright. The
palpable heat of the man moved away from Anna’s cheek and the sense of
being on thin ice over a raging volcano abated. She clicked the BACK
arrow, getting rid of the bloody photograph.

“I
can’t imagine anything worse than what you had to go through,” she
said. She didn’t have to pretend to be sincere. If he had killed his
wife, by the look of the young man in the picture it hadn’t been nearly
as much fun as he’d hoped.

“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Adam said.

“The
coroner ruled it suicide,” Anna replied evenly. Adam was no longer
breathing in her ear, his hair trailing over her shoulder, but he’d not
stepped away either.

“Why
are you looking at that?” Adam sounded more worried than angry at the
breach of his privacy, or such privacy as remained in the
instant-information era.

“Getting
to know you,” Anna said. “Since we’re neighbors, let’s be friends.” She
didn’t take her eyes from the monitor, but she wasn’t seeing. Every
pore was opening to sense Adam: where he stood, how he stood, if he was
dangerous.

His breath puffed out on a dry cough. The closest thing to a laugh he was going to make.

“You’re
a piece of work, you know that?” he said and, rather than leaving,
pulled up another straight-backed chair to sit next to her, scooting it
up till his knees were less than a foot from hers. He put his long
forearms down on his long thighs and leaned in till their faces were
close enough, Anna could see the tiny red rivers of blood from broken
vessels in his eyes. “Do you think I took Robin? Is that it?”

His
breath was hot, residual fire from the fury, and smelled sweet, as if
he’d chewed a mint leaf. Anna couldn’t back away from him without
tipping her chair over.

“Adam,”
she said wearily. “You’re crowding me. People crowd to intimidate.
Could you either back off or do it in a more interesting way?”

Another cough of laughter. Anna considered whether or not she should go on the comedy circuit in the Catskills.

“Sorry,”
he said, sat up straight and smiled. It was a good smile, full of
healthy teeth, and it went all the way to his eyes crinkling the
corners. Anna believed he was sorry, that he’d not meant to scare her.
It didn’t mean he was a nice guy.

“Did you make Robin disappear?” she asked.

“Robin
didn’t need to be here this winter. She should have stayed home or
waited tables in St. Paul.” He rubbed his face. Both hands continued up
until his fingers pushed his hair out in thick tresses. “We’ll start
the search at first light?”

The question took Anna off guard. “Yeah, I guess. Will we find her?” she asked pointedly.

He
smiled again. This time, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Who knows?” He rose
and walked from the common room. A second later, Anna heard the door to
his and Bob’s room opening and closing again.

She couldn’t tell if she’d just had an up-close-and-personal conversation with a backwoods John Wayne Gacy or not.

“Ted Bundy,” she corrected herself.

In
the minutes spent drinking the essence of Adam from the air as he stood
over her half dressed and burning, she’d not tasted the sour warp of a
psychopath. But, then, one didn’t. That was why they got away with it.

Anna
logged off. She wanted to rest, to sleep, but seemed to have lost the
knack. She wanted to go outside, but she’d freeze to death in the dark.
January’s paltry eight hours of daylight depressed her. It was just
enough to remind a person they weren’t blind before it abandoned them
for another winter’s night. Because she could think of nothing more
productive to do, she went back into Katherine Huff’s room and stood
staring at the simple dorm furniture. Two mediumsized duffel bags; all
the personal gear any of them had been allowed to bring. There wasn’t a
lot to dig through, but Anna did it. Dirty socks and underpants were
her reward. Since she’d taken the laptop, the desk was empty but for
the cell phone charger plugged into the same outlet the computer had
been.

Everything
was so ordinary, so expected, at first she didn’t realize what she was
looking at. Modern conveniences had become as air; only when they
weren’t there were they noticed.

Why
would Katherine have a cell phone charger out and plugged in when there
was no cell reception on the island? Anna unplugged the charger and
carried it back to her room, locking the door behind her. Katherine’s
cell phone was still in her day pack. She’d kept it, not as evidence
but out of spite for Bob. Not particularly flattering but, as it
happened, useful. Having plugged the charger into the wall, she
connected the phone. A red light behind a dark blue plastic oval lit
up. The oval had a star on it. Around the star, an elliptical circle
was traced in silver.

It
was a satellite phone. Katherine did have cell service. If she had it,
Bob had it. Bob had been anxious to retrieve this phone. He’d said he’d
have to replace it out of his own pocket if it wasn’t found. At the
time, Anna’d merely been impressed with his callousness. Now she
wondered if he’d wanted the phone so no one would notice it was a
satellite phone, know they had access to the outside world and one
another.

Why
wouldn’t he want anyone to know that? Afraid they’d all make pests of
themselves asking to borrow it? It wasn’t as if they didn’t know why he
was on the island. Anna hit the CONTACTS button and scrolled down the
list of names. None of them were familiar but Ridley’s, with his work
number at Michigan Tech, the Park Service office in Houghton and Bob
Menechinn.

Without
thinking why, she did it; Anna clicked on Menechinn and hit SEND. The
warble of a loon called through the house. Quickly she pushed END. If
Bob woke, if he looked, if he checked for missed calls, he would know
the phone had been found. For several minutes, she sat still as stone
and listened. There was no sound of doors or feet. Bob must have slept
through the ringing.

A loon. The call of a loon in January.

The
night Katherine had gone missing, Anna was awakened by the call of a
loon. Since there wouldn’t be any loons on the island for months, she’d
thought it a dream, like the dream she’d had of coyotes on her mother’s
ranch. The coyotes frolicked in dreamscape, but the loon had been of
this world. Bob had been called the night Katherine died. Katherine had
died with the satellite phone in her hand.

Anna found RECENT CALLS and opened it. The last call was to Bob Menechinn.

Maybe
he’d slept through that one too. There was no way Anna could tell if
the call had gone through or how long it had been but, even if Bob had
missed it, presumably Katherine would have left him a message. Her last
words. Bob never mentioned a message.

For
a moment, Anna wondered if Bob had been the instigator of the
mysterious “HELP ME” that had appeared on the window. The loon call of
the cell phone had been after that by hours, but it was possible
Katherine had phoned earlier, or he had phoned her.

If
he knew she was in trouble, why wouldn’t he have said so, led the
rescue effort? When there was no physical danger to himself, Bob liked
playing the white knight. If he didn’t know, why wouldn’t he have
shared the message after the fact? Afraid they’d think he’d dropped the
ball? Or was the message so vitriolic or damning, he didn’t want them
to hear it?

Reflexively, Anna looked over her shoulder, checking to see that the parka still covered the window. It did.

Not
being a devotee of the cell, Anna’d not given it enough thought. But
cell phones took pictures. They text-messaged, and did far more things
than anything smaller than the Pentagon should be able to do. A
person’s cell phone was almost as rich an information trove as his or
her computer. Anna hit MENU and began methodically deciphering icons,
reading tiny print and punching buttons.

Katherine
had not taken any snapshots of the wolves. Being crippled, then eaten,
was evidently sufficiently entertaining that there was no need to
record it. Anna couldn’t tell if she had text-messaged anyone. She kept
pushing arrows and buttons and hitting SELECT.

“Ish.”

The
phone also received photographs. The pictures Katherine had taken were
of the same ski vacation as the photographs on the laptop, just
different shots and poses. The photographs that had been sent to her
had been unopened till Anna’d pressed buttons and pried her way into
where they waited like evil beings in a dead-end alley.