Dead Level (32 page)

Luring him away from me. “Oh, Dewey,” she coaxed, but now her voice turned taunting.

And that did it. He shoved the ladder over to the deck and began scrambling up, while she went on enticing him, luring him out onto those unstable decking boards. She’d known enough—and even better, she’d remembered—to move delicately, so she got across all right.

But if his step shifted one of the remaining boards so much as a quarter inch, an end of it would slip off the joist and the board would fall through to the ground below, taking him with it.

And that, of course, had been our original plan: trap him behind the lattice. There was one thing, though, that we hadn’t anticipated: I no longer had a gun.

I’d intended to be standing there with it in my hand, so he couldn’t just run right back out again through the gap in the lattice, or hurl himself through it; the stuff was decorative but as flimsy as matchwood, structurally speaking.

But now the gun was still somewhere in the burning cottage, and the idea of me being upright at all was out of the question. I could barely stay alert, much less hold a weapon steady.

He stepped out onto the deck platform. Any instant now, he
would
fall through. But it wouldn’t do us any good. I sat up to try to warn
Ellie, to let her know that once he fell, he’d just get up and run right out here again.

And this time, he’d be
mad
. But instead the loud ringing in my ears rose to a howl, as what little blood remained in my brain rushed down to the level of, apparently, my kneecaps.

At the same time, Dewey Hooper took one more careless step toward Ellie, kicking several of those loose decking pieces aside so that his feet went through suddenly.

As they did, his face changed and I realized just how close we’d come to failure. Because he’d
known;
somehow he’d figured out or guessed what we’d done to the deck. But in the heat of the moment and with Ellie beckoning so tauntingly at him, he’d
forgotten
.

All this went through my head in the instant it took him to understand it, too, surprise changing to a snarl of thwarted fury as he went down. At the same time, though, his hand with the kindling-wood dagger still clutched in it snaked out fast and his arm wrapped around Ellie’s neck, dragging her along with him as he tumbled into the lattice enclosure below.

“Oof,” I heard him grunt, and then he began cursing as through the lattice I glimpsed him struggling up, which right there was a disappointment: no broken neck.

But what came next was worse.

Leaving Wade behind with the makeshift tourniquet twisted around his thigh, Sam sprinted past the motionless form of the stranger who had appeared without warning out of the woods. Keeping his head low, he ran between the white pines lining the last part of the driveway.

But at the edge of the clearing, he stopped. What had been the cottage was a blackened shell, half-collapsed. The few big timbers remaining were charred like the firewood in a campfire, embers popping hotly and dropping to the smoking ruins below.

His mother and Ellie had been in there … but where were they now? He opened his mouth to shout for them, clamped it shut again as faint sounds came from the far side of the cottage wreckage.

First came a clatter, like loose lumber falling, then a low grunt as if the breath had just gotten knocked out of a person. A
male
person, by the sound of the voice, and who could that be?

Not, Sam thought acutely, anyone good. He looked down at the unfamiliar pistol still gripped in his hand. The stranger had been carrying it, and that too was somehow part of all this, Sam felt strongly.

But what the connection was, he had no idea, and right now he didn’t care. All he cared about was that the gun was loaded and that it worked.

He crept down the gravel path alongside what remained of the cottage, peeked around the end of the cabin, and saw her.
Mom—

She lay on the gravel facing away from him, trying to get up by hauling herself with both arms flung across the top of a rock. He’d taken a step out toward her when, at a sound from the shadowy area under the deck platform, he ducked back again.

A man emerged from behind the lattice enclosing the area. He had Ellie White by her hair, clutching it in his fist like the nape of an animal he was determined to control.

In his other hand he held a shotgun, aimed at Sam’s mother. When he stopped, the end of the gun barrel was just inches from her head and his finger was on the trigger.

So if I shoot him, the shotgun could go off
. Sam shuddered.

“Marianne,” the man said softly. “Move an inch, and I’ll do it. I’ll blow her head off.”

He let go of Ellie’s hair, and Sam saw what the man held in his other hand: a knife. Or … no, not a blade; a long, tapering stick of split kindling wood, like a dagger.

“So here’s the deal,” the man said almost conversationally.

Sam’s mother moaned, tried unsuccessfully yet again to haul herself up onto that rock. Not that it would do any good …

Ellie was refusing to cry, biting her lower lip so hard that Sam half
expected to see a drop of blood leaking down from it. Heart pounding, he tried to figure out what Wade would do now.

He couldn’t just come out shooting, like in the movies. If he hit the guy, the shotgun he held could go off and kill Sam’s mother. And if he didn’t hit him …

Well, that could be worse. All these thoughts went through Sam’s mind lickety-split, as his grandfather would have said.

Patience, Sam counseled himself. Just wait for him to shift that shotgun aside, even just a little bit.…

“You’ve got to be dead, Marianne,” the man said reasonably. “No more of this coming-back nonsense. So I’ve got no choice. I have to put this wooden stake through your …”

Marianne?
Sam thought puzzledly. The guy’s voice took on a plaintive note. “Don’t you see? There was a reason I couldn’t get you out of my head. It’s because I’m
supposed
to—”

He broke off, looked up sharply; Sam shrank back. But it was something down by the lake that had drawn the guy’s attention; he scowled briefly toward the water, then turned back to Ellie.

“You’re wasting time.” He jerked the dagger. “Lie down on the gravel. Do it! Do it or I swear I’ll kill her right in front of you. That what you want? Is it?”

A tiny, broken sob escaped Ellie as she sank to the path. Just one, but it told Sam that Ellie was at the end of her rope now; ordinarily, his mother’s friend would no more weep openly in front of strangers than she would strip naked on Water Street.

Which put Sam, suddenly, at the end of his own rope.
Enough
, he thought calmly, raising his pistol and stepping out into full view of the angry intruder. “Stop,” he said.

A gap-toothed grin stretched the guy’s unkempt face. “Yeah? Or what, smart boy?”

Sam took another step, noting with some amazement how steady he felt, how calm. But before he could open his mouth to reply, several things happened:

Ellie reared back, shoved the guy’s pants leg up to reveal his pale,
hairy ankle, then lunged forward and bit down hard on it. The guy howled. He swung the shotgun up and around.

Sam leapt, reaching the guy in a single bound and fastening his hands to the guy’s jacketed shoulders, then wrapping him in an imprisoning bear hug. A faint pop came from somewhere, and—

Sam felt the guy stiffen, his back arching and his shoulders trying to hunch forward in a writhing motion. At the same moment, his eyes widened more than human eyes ought to be able to, while his face wrenched in a spasm.

Then, just as Sam understood that the pop he’d dimly heard a millisecond earlier must be gunfire, the bullet exited, taking a large, untidy chunk of the guy’s forehead with it.

Sam felt his arms fall to his sides. The guy dropped, first to his knees, then forward onto his face. The gun Sam held fell from his opened hand, made a
chink!
sound hitting the pea gravel around the new deck.

Ellie looked up at Sam, her red hair wild around a face that was unreadable, then past him to where his mother still tried to struggle up.

And past her as well, to a man standing on the shore, behind him a canoe floating adrift on the waves stippling the lake. It was Bob Arnold, and even from here Sam could see that he had his service weapon in his hand.

Struggling to her feet, Ellie staggered toward Bob, and after a stunned moment Sam moved, too, stopping when he got to where his mother lay half-conscious and deadly pale, draped over the rock she’d been trying to haul herself up on. Fish-belly white, Bella would have called that face.

“Mom,” Sam whispered urgently, and her eyelids fluttered; it was something. Sam prayed to the silent sky that it was enough, then felt Bob kneeling by him.

“Sam,” Bob said. “Listen to me now.”

Her face looked as if she’d been punched. But then Sam saw that most of the blood on her was leaking from her nose, not from any wounds he could see, and he dared to feel hopeful again.

“I broke a wheel on the squad car on the way in, and lost control. The car’s sitting crosswise in the road, and it’s stuck in the mud.”

On the rough dirt road, Sam realized, racing the car in here over the rocks and ruts on that—

“Sam, it’s
blocking
the road. I radioed for help, but that was before I wrecked the car. They need to know they’re not going to be able to get the Calais squads in here. Ambulance, either.”

Which must’ve been why Bob came across the lake. Through the woods, he must have run to one of the other camps that was nearer to that part of the road, found the canoe, and—

“Sam, we need them.” Reinforcements, Bob meant. Cops, the emergency medical people.

Especially them. “Now, I want you to get in that canoe,” Bob said. “It’s the fastest way back to the car, it’s right up the hill from the cabin, just across the cove.”

Sam knew the place. “Okay,” he said dazedly, then remembered that … “Wade’s out in the driveway, he’s—”

Hurt
. Maybe dying, or maybe even already dead. “Another guy is out there, too.”

And I can’t leave my mom
, he wanted to add.
I can’t—

Bob shook his head vexedly. “Okay, look. Check Wade on your way. If you can’t leave him, don’t. But if you can … Sam, those Calais guys can come in by boat, get your mother out of here that way. Wade too—but they’ve got to know about it to do it.”

He sucked in a breath. “I’ll do all I can here, Sam. You get to the car if you can, get on my radio, you know how to work it?”

For the first time Sam noticed that Bob’s uniform was wet. “What about your cellphone?”

Bob bent over Sam’s mother to put an assessing finger to the pulse in her neck, withdrew it with a look of deep concern that chilled Sam’s heart.

“On the way over here, I fell in, all right?” Bob looked up at Sam. “Capsized, getting out of the canoe. And while I was doing that, I lost
my phone somehow. It’s at the bottom of the lake, okay? That answer all your questions?” he demanded impatiently.

“Oh. Yeah,” Sam said, feeling overwhelmed. “Okay, then …”

Ellie bent to Sam’s mother. She’d found some water; now she began putting droplets of it onto the unconscious woman’s lips, using her fingertip.

“I can work the radio,” said Sam, turning to run. But before he could go, Bob said something else to him.

“You’re still one of the good guys, Sam. Don’t waste it.”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam repeated, not understanding, and then he did run, first to Wade, who lay just as Sam had left him, bleeding. But the strange, nearly naked guy sat by him now, with the stick holding the tourniquet tight gripped in his hand.

Who the hell are you?
Sam wanted to scream at the guy.
Where did you come from?
And—
How can this be happening?
But when he crouched desperately by Wade, the guy spoke up first:

“I’m holding it.” Nothing more. But from his hands, which were red with Wade’s blood, and the look on his bruised, swollen face—like this was the first time he’d ever been asked to do something
real
, and he would do it or die trying—Sam knew he didn’t have to say anything at all. With a last glance at Wade’s grayish face, he sprinted away.

To the lake, plunging into the icy water and diving at once to get himself wet as fast as he could. A few long strokes and he was beside the drifting canoe; hurling himself onto it crosswise, he hauled his body aboard, swung his legs in, and sat.

There was still a little water in it, but fortunately, Bob Arnold had rescued the paddle after he’d capsized; grabbing it up, Sam began paddling, putting his back into it. The canoe shot across the icy lake, through the mineral-water-smelling cold air.

But when he was only halfway across, the low growl of a small plane’s engine broke the silence. Something big passed overhead fast, its shadow huge, roaring and racing across the lake. Sam stared as at the far end of the lake, the plane turned, descending.

Two pontoons touched down with a splash; only then did it occur to Sam to wonder how Bob Arnold had known to come here at all. A hundred yards from the burned cottage where his mother and Wade lay injured, the plane halted, turned halfway around, then motored slowly toward the shore.

It was a red-and-white Cessna 150 two-seater; two men hopped out, crouching, leapt from rock to rock until they reached the dock, and then ran. One was the plane’s owner, Bud Underwood; Sam recognized him and the plane, too, from its slip at the boatyard. The other was Ellie White’s husband, George Valentine.

The two men sprinted uphill, out of sight behind the pines screening the shore. Watching, Sam reversed course and paddled hard toward them, weeping with relief that help had arrived.

But he still didn’t know if they’d gotten here in time.

It was midafternoon when the Calais cops ferried Bob Arnold back across the cove in their patrol boat.

“Thanks, guys,” he said, then stood on the shore watching as they motored away toward the launch ramp, at the far end of the lake. The boat dwindled, then vanished around the tip of Balsam Point, its engine sound dropping away.