Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) (21 page)

The thick woods gobbled up what light the heavy clouds did not. A cool breeze cut across her face and started loosening the treetops from a frozen slumber. The weather might be starting to pack its bags, having already stayed beyond its invitation.

Two hours later, Allison spotted a small, flat clearing down off the trail. A forest floor coated with pine needles in mid-July, now it held a foot of snow. A ring of towering lodgepole pines guarded the space.

She took the packs off the packhorse and the saddle off Bear. She tied the deer quarters together and hoisted them up on a rope, ten feet off the ground. She set up the pup tent in a patch of snow after digging out a square so she could stake it in frozen soil, using a hammer. Her hands shook as she tried to hold the stakes steady. She tossed her sleeping bag inside with a small roll of extra clothes. She would fashion a pillow out of a combination of clothes. She scouted for firewood, retrieving dead limbs from what she could reach. She made a fifty-yard sweep in four directions before there was a pile that matched the tent’s height and width. A hatchet turned one branch into wood shavings. She made four more piles of successively larger twigs, sticks and smaller limbs. A dry exterior was the key, dry enough so she could fool the fire into thinking that it wasn’t winter, that all the fuel was premium stuff.

She needed green limbs that could serve as a platform for the fire. Two perfect branches, both slender and clean, would have been reachable if she’d been able to stand on top of the snow. If she was, say, weightless. To reach another good candidate, she had to shimmy up a trunk a bit thicker than a telephone pole and whack away with the hatchet. “You’ll survive,” she said. “I’m a bee. This is my stinger.” Ten more chops and she was through. She made six pieces out of the limb closer to her tent. She lined the six up side by side, wedged together by the snow. She built a teepee of the smallest twigs in the middle of her platform.

The first match blew out. The flames from the second leapt into her vented stack of miniature lumber like they recognized good fuel by smell. A soft crackle went up within a minute. She fed the wood down the fire’s gullet. Every taste became another, larger bite. And then nothing, as if someone had covered the fire with an invisible glass hood. The flames shriveled up and died. Screw it. She went to Bear’s saddlebags for a packet of liquid napalm, a plastic tube like a frozen ice pop. She always brought a few spares along. Bear probably knew she was cheating. She dribbled the goo on the wood and lit another match to the glob.

“Hey, okay, big deal,” she said to Bear. “Turn me in.”

The fire sputtered for a second and burst into full-bloom. Dinner would be beef jerky, an apple, slices of yellow cheddar.

The fire roared. The earth around it started to soften. She went to check on the horses and give them the last of the oats. She sat by the fire warming her hands and toes. The orange furnace was the only thing to watch. The flickering light danced to an irregular but busy beat.

The horses whinnied sharply and Allison stood up abruptly out of instinct, except the ground rushed up from the side and whacked her shoulder and head. She yelped with surprise and grunted as she smacked the earth.

Her feet didn’t move and she looked up, groggy from the tackle. She tasted the residue of seawater, its stinging bitterness and slimy texture filling her mouth.

Why couldn’t she move?

His body squashed her legs. He flipped her over. He shoved her head down in the snow, all his weight and strength pounding into her. She didn’t want to exhale in case that last lungful was all that kept her rib cage from collapsing. Her cheek on the snow started to freeze. The hand on her butt felt enormous. Her left arm was tucked tightly underneath. Not for long. He jerked it around and tied her arms together behind her back. He had come a long way if this was going to be rape. The idea flashed and was gone. He was sitting on her butt, yanking the knot together.

She risked a breath, inhaled snow, spit it out.

“What the—” brought a whack across the back of her head. “You’re fucking around where you don’t belong.”

The voice was gritty and old. Anger filled Allison’s mouth with panic and determination.

“You don’t—” Another whack.

She wriggled and kept struggling. He groped for control on top of her, crunching her hands.

“My arms—”

He was fiddling with her ankles, which snapped together. Rope flew and her ankles went up with a jerk. She was off the ground, upside down. The world spun. She made out a hulking shape. She twisted slowly as she dangled, blurry shots of him in each rotation. He was heading away.

Was he gone? For good?

Her left shoulder throbbed and burned. It felt loose and wobbly. She did half a sit-up, holding that position for a few seconds to study the knots and rope. The pain was searing. Her knife sat in its sheath on her belt, all tucked in. With her arms behind her and with the knife sealed behind a flap of Velcro, the blade may as well have been resting on the Sea of Tranquility. She uncurled and dangled back down, eyeing the snow far below.

****

“Trouble,” said Grumley.

The voice grated in Applegate’s ear. He held the phone away for a second, realized Ellenberg might hear it. He pressed it back tightly.

“What?” said Applegate, eyeing the clock.

12:15 a.m.

“Who is it?” said Ellenberg.

“It’s okay,” said Applegate.

“What the fuck?” said Grumley. “Are you listening? You got trouble.”

“What kind?”

“The kind of trouble that comes from fucking with me. But that ain’t nothing. This Allison Coil number. She’s getting so close to you she’s about to smell what a true asshole is.”

“What do you mean?”

“You gotta get your butt back up here and deal with her,” said Grumley. “I sure as hell ain’t doing your dirty work. You gotta put a scare into her or she’s going to nail your ass. That is, unless you want it to get nailed.”

“Who is it?” said Ellenberg again, a hand gently stroking his back.

“It’s okay,” said Applegate again, feeling torn. What could he do? If he did anything he might expose himself to the police. “I can’t,” he said to Grumley.

“I’m sitting here looking at your rifle. Nice one. Maybe the cops will enjoy a peek, too.”

Fucker, thought Applegate. “She can’t have anything worthwhile, can’t put anything together.”

“You haven’t seen nosy until you’ve seen this bitch.” Grumley hung up without any good-byes.

It had been such a great evening. The spaghetti hadn’t turned out that badly and they had plowed through a bottle and a half of red wine before making love next to the gas-fired fireplace on the white carpet in his townhouse living room. They had watched a thriller on the cable and Ellenberg had made mental notes during one section where a horse was forced to dive off a high cliff. The movie studio was not one of the majors. Ellenberg wanted to pass a note along to the national organizations, to see if the studio had signed any agreements about not abusing animals. There was no disclaimer with the credits.

“What was it?” said Ellenberg.

“Nothing,” said Applegate. “At first, I thought it was somebody I knew. But I was wrong. Wrong number.”

****

The rapidly dimming orange dot of fire was Allison’s reference point. She focused on it as she spun.

Her ankles were tightly lashed. She could manage a half sit-up but the position didn’t accomplish much.

The surreal aftershock of her attacker’s departure was settling in. The cold was getting a grip on her insides.

She shimmied up again. She wanted to howl, but the fear demanded quiet. She couldn’t see the knots that bound her ankles.

Her back creaked. She needed energy to keep her arms upright, behind her.

The orange dot of fire was right side up as she peered off. She shook the rope with her body gyrating. She ignored the pang of her complaining shoulder and inched up, her body like a high diver tucked in a jackknife, hands around her knees. She searched for the strength to lift up above the knots that gained the cinching power of her own weight.

Up. An inch. Endure the pain.

Her toes wiggled. The bottoms of her heels came up—down— from the inside of her boots. He had lashed her boots, not her legs. There was room to wiggle but no bootjack for good leverage.

She clawed up using her hands, her right foot finding more leeway. Her right foot popped loose and then her left but she stayed in her boots for a moment, keeping her toes curled, holding her in place.

She looked at the snow below. She slowly pointed her toes and fell out of her boots, beginning a flip as she felt gravity take over, hoping for a soft landing and wondering if she should come up swimming or taste salt water.

Eleven

Pete Weaver had wrapped her in a colorful serape. She sat on a floral-pattern couch in his huge farmhouse, a hundred yards from the barn where she had arrived, obviously injured. She sipped tea and stared into the huge fireplace, roaring full bore.

“I called Sandstrom,” said Weaver. Either he or someone else will meet you in his office late this afternoon.”

She stared at the fire, looking for answers.

Why hadn’t the assailant killed her? Had he meant to give her a chance to survive? If so, why?

“You’ve got to report it,” said Weaver, his kindly old eyes unwavering. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“There’s not much they can do,” said Allison.

“Hell there isn’t,” said Weaver.

“There’s nothing to look at, the camp site is trampled all over. I’ll report it, but don’t think it’ll exactly fire ’em up.”

“What about Mr. Forest Service?”

The thought of repeating the story more than once was agony. She wanted to tell Slater and maybe Trudy, then sleep the whole thing off.

“I’ll tell him. I’m sure Sandstrom will play Bigfoot on it, keep all the other forms of government footprints away.”

“They still oughta be told.”

“It’s not like they need to warn everybody who goes into the backcountry. It was me he was after.”

“This whole business, I don’t know,” said Weaver.

“It seemed like everything was fine in this valley until the mother of all protests,” said Allison.

“That’s not—”

“What?”

“...what I meant. But you’re right. Everyone in the valley is on edge. This won’t help.”

“It doesn’t have to get out.”

“Doesn’t have to. It just does.”

“How much tranquilizer would it take to kill an elk?” asked Allison.

Weaver, who had taken up a cozy spot on a recliner and started to light a pipe, stopped and gave her a funny look.

“Excuse me?” he said.

“Would two shots do it?”

“I have no idea,” said Weaver.

As soon as she talked to Sandstrom and grabbed a good night’s sleep, she’d go get answers to her own questions.

Why hadn’t he killed her?

“I’ll need a couple days’ R&R.”

“It’s okay,” said Weaver. “We’ll make do.”

****

“Big like football-linebacker big ... or was it somebody bigger than your petite self?”

A few flecks of spit flew as Sandstrom hammered the t’s in
puh-teet
.

Allison lowered her tender left arm onto the sheriff ’s steel desk. It wasn’t her whole arm that stung, but the throbbing strain in the bicep made the entire limb flash messages of anger every time she moved it.

“Big, strong. Lumberjack. Paul Bunyan.”

“You didn’t get a good look at his face?”

“No.”

“Didn’t hear or see anything else all day?”

“At one point, I thought I heard a horse off in the distance. That was in the morning. Maybe behind me.”

Slater, who had escorted her over, sat on the couch in Sandstrom’s office. He was busy taking notes as if she’d come in off the street and they had never met. In fact, Slater had her run it down several times and asked lots of good questions.

“No other indications?” said Sandstrom. “That someone was following you?”

“Another time I had seen tracks, heading up the trail and then splitting off. I didn’t think much—”

“Obviously you were being watched,” said Slater, cutting to the quick.

Sandstrom cast a look at Slater that said kids in college calculus classes shouldn’t demonstrate their ability with adding fractions.

“But no visual contact?”

“No. Oh, this,” said Allison. “I almost forgot.” She pulled a long length of rope from a plastic bag and plopped it on his desk.

“Standard issue,” said Sandstrom. “Hardware store variety. Plus, this one’s already served a lifetime. But that’s appreciated and quite smart of you.” Sandstrom put the rope on a shelf next to him, as if it was something she was returning.

“And your assailant said, again, the part about fucking around.”

“Where I don’t belong,” said Allison. “Fucking around where I don’t belong.”

Allison slid another glance at Slater, who looked like he had his mind on the backside of a distant planet. There wasn’t much Slater could do now. This was her pickle.

“So a guy comes and strings you up upside down in the middle of nowhere because you’ve been doing nothing, asking around about nothing.”

She had seen this slightly difficult problem before deciding to report the incident, but hadn’t resolved how to deal with it. Slater had urged her to get it on the record, at the very least, and she softly dodged questions about her level of involvement.

“Any particular individuals you’d care to mention who might have had their feathers ruffled?” said Sandstrom.

“I was simply reporting the assault. I really didn’t think there was much you could do about it, unless I had more of an idea who did it.”

“Then consider it reported,” said Sandstrom. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested. We’ll need you to show us where this happened.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“He might have dropped something.”

“Doubt it.”

“We’d like to see.”

“Take the east trail to Buffalo Peak. Halfway to Wall Lake, you’ll see the remnants of my camp. If you get to one of our campsites, you’ve gone too far by about a mile and a half. There are two couples staying there now. The tracks around should explain everything.”