Day One (20 page)

Then he stopped.

The room was brighter now as his eyes found light he hadn’t noticed before. The sound came from another room, a stirring, a shuffling. He set down the spoon and followed the sound in the shadows. Sound in the mist. “Shhhh ...” Shadow, slinking in the darkness. The mist opened before him and he remembered a face, two faces. Angry, screaming faces. Shooting, shooting. Shotgun shooting. He blinked and the mist closed in again and he found himself in another room. Soft chairs and sofa. A room he remembered from a dark place beyond the mist. This room? Like this room?

The sound, the stirring. A tip-tap in the dark drew his eyes down to the floor. Two gleams gazed back. Eyes, he saw them as eyes. They were eyes, eyes gleaming out of a shadow, extension of himself. He blinked and the shadow coalesced into a shape. A short, shimmying shape. He kneeled down and the shape slipped up to him.

A dog. He didn’t know the word, but he recognized the shape. Small and round with frizzy fur. It shimmied and shook and
when he reached out his hand it licked his fingers. He smiled and scratched the dog’s chin, then heard a sound out of the darkness as it wiggled some more. Laughter, laughing. The sound was laughter. Shadow was laughing. The dog sidled up and pressed against his cold wet leg, its body alive and aquiver. He laughed and scratched and the dog’s tail wagged.

“Silly, silly ...”

Smiling Shadow, sated with soup. He didn’t know the sensation, didn’t recognize the simple pleasure of a quiet moment with a creature pleased with his companionship. He only knew the voices and faces that slid out of the mist. But as he scratched the dog, contented, the mist closed in and surrounded him with silence. Sweet silence he hoped would never end.

But end it did, suddenly, with screaming.

November 15

AURORA, OR: Melody Palmer of Aurora escaped a prowler last night who entered her house while she slept. There was no sign of forced entry, leading police to speculate that Mrs. Palmer had left a door unlocked.

Mrs. Palmer reported being awakened by a sound she believed to be her dog, a miniature poodle prone to epileptic seizures. She went downstairs to check on the dog and encountered the intruder, whom she described as 5’6” to 5’8” with dark skin and wearing a cloth wrapped around his head, which Mrs. Palmer described as a “turban.” The man reportedly threatened her and she fled through the back door. She ran to a neighbor’s house, who called the police.

The intruder had fled by the time police arrived. Nothing of value was stolen, though police confirmed the presence of wet footprints in the living room and kitchen. Area residents reported seeing a stranger in the vicinity earlier that day who fit the description given by Mrs. Palmer. Police continue to investigate.

Three Years, Three Months Before

S
ometimes you just have to drop everything and go.

Theirs was an unlikely bond, Ellie and Luellen, two girls too different to be anything but friends, too similar to recognize the gulf between themselves. Country girl and townie, one whose future stretched no further than her own reflected gaze in the bathroom mirror, the other whose path roamed to the limits of her imagination. As the yearswore on, they saw each other less and less often, but it wasn’t until Luellen fled the valley that Ellie came to recognize her relationship with Luellen as a kind of sanctuary. In her friend’s absence, her life grew increasingly bounded by the inescapable disquiet she felt when Stuart returned home drunk and insistent.

Two months after the first, a second note arrived from Portland, a single short paragraph:

I’m still finding my way. This address is for a mailing center. I’ve rented a box so you can write back. As I move around, I don’t want to miss any of your letters.

Ellie needed a week to gather the courage to write to Luellen about her parents’ deaths. The response was so long coming Ellie feared Luellen might never write again.

I killed them, same as if I was driving that car myself. I waited too long to write and tell them I was okay.

Ellie wished things were different. In dribs and laser-printed drabs, Luellen admitted she wished things were different too. Details trickled in over the subsequent months, but there was no further talk of her parents or of life back in Givern Valley. Only snatches of a new life far away. She asked Ellie to burn her notes after she read them.

I’ve moved again. Things are complicated, but I’m hoping they settle down soon.

Then, a few weeks later ...

I start a job this week. It’s nothing much, answering phones and setting appointments for a small clinic, but it’s enough to help me get by.

The longest arrived right before Christmas.

I’ve rented a room in a house near a city park called Mount Tabor. I guess it was a volcano once, but now it’s covered with trees and paths and playgrounds. I like to climb to the top and sit next to this statue of a grumpy-looking old guy. I like him. People ride their bikes and walk their dogs. The whole city is laid all around you, and on clear days you can see all the way to Mount Hood. It’s beautiful. I wish you could see it.

Ellie replied,
Maybe someday I will.
She didn’t believe her own words. Yet now she was here in Portland, free of her cage at last. Until she saw Hiram’s man outside the Ship Shop.

Doesn’t he understand I’m not who I am?
Portland Ellie, not Givern Ellie. Givern Ellie died on a railroad bridge in a dark corner of nowhere.

She couldn’t quite remember the man’s name. Ed something, last name started with a G. He’d been a county deputy until he was run out of the department for offenses rumored to include everything from drunk driving to assault and extortion. After that he served as one of the Hiram’s hired apes. Ellie had never spoken with him, though she remembered a time when he’d pulled the pickup over. It was shortly after she and Stuart were married, and as always Stuart was driving too fast. But Deputy G didn’t write a ticket. He and Stuart leaned against the tailgate and spoke in hushed tones. Ellie sat alone in the cab and wondered what the two had to talk about. All Stuart would say was what a shame it was the man’s wife refused to live in Givern, and then up and left him anyway after he agreed to commute from K-Falls.

She rose from the bench and headed for the café. People would be there, city people, Portland people, people slurping milk foam from the surface of their lattes as they read the paper or surfed the internet on their laptops. Two short blocks to safety, a brief stroll on any other rainy day. She felt isolated and exposed as she moved past the windowless brick wall at her side. She glanced over her shoulder, eyes flicking up and down the street. And hesitated.

The man was gone.

Ellie reached out to the wall beside her, but found no reassurance in the cool touch of brick and mortar. She drew a breath and tried to convince herself she’d imagined things. Weariness and anxiety after a long trip and a short night had deceived her, transformed a stranger into Hiram’s deputy. Then, she simply missed seeing hi
go. He probably had no interest in her personally, just some guy staring at her breasts.
All that pudding.
Even Reverend Wilburn— him on the downhill tumble past sixty—paid more heed to her chest than her face when he lectured her.

But what if she was wrong?

Be smart,
Pastor Sanders had told her. Go quiet. The smart response was to assume he was here for her, and that meant she had to get out of sight. If Luellen came for her mail, Ellie would miss her, but that was better than being caught by Hiram’s man.

She started moving again, eyes sliding up and down the empty street. Near the corner she came to a solid wooden door with worn plastic letters affixed beside the lock. MACHI E WORKS— NO S LICITING. She tried the knob, but it only vibrated under her touch. When she knocked, the sound was so hollow it threw a shiver through her. She darted through the crosswalk without waiting for an answer.

There was too little traffic, no one on foot. Ellie almost wished the woman with the spongy hips was still around. Or that boy on the skateboard. Someone to notice if Hiram’s man reappeared. She passed a knickknack shop and a martial arts studio, a specialty pet supply store across the street. Used furniture. Hand thrown pottery. Wine and cheese. Doors were locked, interiors still and dark. Signs in the windows indicated business hours starting later in the day. The other direction, a couple of blocks back, there was a convenience store, but she didn’t want to retrace her steps. She continued on, crossed at the next corner, then paused outside an auto shop. Through a half-open window she could hear activity: the rattle of a pneumatic wrench, the tinny whine of talk radio. She looked through the glass door, hopeful. But the face behind the counter chilled her. Blue striped shirt over a barrel chest, embroidered name Dutch over the left pocket. Razor stubble and a crew cut. Deputy G had a crew cut too.

What could she say? “Someone is following me.”

“I don’t see nobody.” He’d probably grin and direct his voice to her pudding.

The auto shop was separated from the café by a narrow parking lot surrounded by a black, wrought iron fence. A dozen paces further, no more. She hesitated at the open gate leading into the lot, scanning for movement. A car went past on Hawthorne, moving quickly, driver’s eyes fixed ahead. The lot was half full of cars and trucks with crumpled hoods, dented fenders, shattered glass. The long, cinder block wall of the coffee shop facing the lot had only a few windows of frosted industrial glass. She saw no one, continued on. Ten paces more. Six. Before she could clear the open gate, a hand clamped onto her upper arm. She gasped, twisted, dug in her heels. The grip was too strong. She looked up into Deputy G’s great round face. Mountain air and growth hormone.

“Hey, now. Slow down, little lady.”

He was six-six if he was a foot. Unlike Stuart’s compact, wiry strength, his was a boar’s power. Inexorable, rooted in its own dense gravity. With her free hand he grabbed her neck. “Let me go.” Her voice sounded remote in her own ears.
I’m not who you think I am.
His fingers dug into her throat, choked off her air before she could make another sound. No one nearby, no one on the street. No one to see.

He dragged her into the lot behind a minivan with missing side panels. She was a rag doll in his hand. He spun her, slammed her against the fence with enough force to bounce fluid from her eyes. A sharp ridge of iron cut into the back of her skull. His left hand remained clamped on her throat, but he eased up enough to allow her to draw a shallow breath. Her nose wrinkled against the cloying scent of Old Spice. With his right hand, he reached up and scratched at the corner of his eye. He inspected her as though trying to memorize her face.

“I’m not who—” He choked off the words before she could finish.

“You’re Elizabeth Spaneker.” Not a question. “Your father-in-law is worried about you.”

The air seemed to darken around her and she heard a sound like the rattle of a two-stroke engine. Maybe he was strangling her, or maybe she was being swallowed by terror. The man saw the fear in her face and smiled. An instant later, the sound resolved itself into footsteps on gravel.

“Heya—?”

Ellie twisted her head a fraction of an inch and saw the boy from earlier. He stood at the far end of the minivan, one foot on his skateboard, the other on the ground. Hands loose at his sides, shoulders still wet. Hiram’s man turned his head and suddenly released her, jerked his hand back as if from an open flame.

“Fuck off, kid.” His voice resounded in the narrow space between the buildings. “This isn’t none of your business.” Ellie thought of what Pastor Sanders told her.
Do the last thing he expects.
As Deputy G turned toward the boy, she shot her foot out, felt it connect with muscle and bone. The big man responded with a howl and eased his grip. Ellie scrambled along the fence, ducked a wild backhand slung her way. Her feet skidded on loose gravel as the boy kicked the back of his skateboard. The front end shot forward into Deputy G’s gut, chopping off his howl. As Ellie fled past the minivan she caught a glimpse of the two entangled, boy on his back, big man above with one knee on the ground and his arms splayed in a spread eagle.