The Mad and the MacAbre (19 page)

Will stewed in silence for a moment before
rising and storming out the back door.

“
Should one of us go after
him?” Maura asked.

“
He just needs to blow off
some steam,” Cavenaugh said. “He’ll be back soon
enough.”

“
Yeah,” Gabriel said,
gesturing toward the window. The snow was falling so fast and thick
that it was like watching television static. Even the tall pines
were now invisible beneath their winter coats. “Where could he
possibly go?”

***

Gabriel was exhausted. The adrenaline rush
from the previous night had long since abandoned him and left him
drained. They had spent the remainder of the morning and early
afternoon plotting their courses through the forest and viewing the
videos chronicling the last days of their family members. It had
been painful for all of them to watch, especially with each other.
After the final entry, they had all drifted silently apart like
specters.

Will had returned after a couple hours,
noticeably subdued. He had offered a mumbled apology to them as a
group, but had said little else for the remainder of the time they
had been together. Gabriel couldn’t blame him. Will had nearly
vocalized his own thoughts verbatim. It was hard enough to lose
someone cherished, even harder when the reason why seemed absurd.
Their loved ones had vanished while searching for something that
had meant the world to them, yet made little sense to those left
behind to mourn them.

Right now, Gabriel just wanted to crawl into
bed and close his eyes. The plan was to strike out into the
mountains in the morning under daybreak, with plenty of time to
make the trek and return home before nightfall. None of them wanted
to find out what it was like to spend the night in the wilderness,
even knowing that the storm showed no sign of relenting and that
the longer they waited to leave, the more difficult the hike would
become. That was a problem for tomorrow, though, and right now he
just wanted to make all of the problems go away, if only for a few
hours.

He trudged through the shin-deep powder in
the courtyard to the back door of his cabin, opened the door, and
stepped into the kitchen. The precipitation had loosened the
bandage on his cheek, so he peeled it off and dropped it into the
trash bag, careful not to notice the amount of blood that had
soaked into the gauze. He was just about to stomp the snow from his
boots when he heard heated voices rise from the other side of the
wall in the main room. After a moment’s hesitation, he crept across
the room and pressed his back against the wall so he could better
eavesdrop.

“
I don’t care if you think
it’s a bad idea,” Jess said. “It’s the right thing to do. The only
thing to do.”

“
And just what do you think
that will accomplish?” Cavenaugh asked. He lowered his voice, but
his anger was no less apparent. “Look outside. There’s no way they
could even make it up the mountain in this weather.”

“
Of course they could. They
have SUVs with four-wheel drive and helicopters, for God’s
sake.”

“
You think they’re going to
come thundering up here with a chopper because we found some old
finger bones?”

“
No, but that’s not the
point. What we found is the evidence of a crime. That’s why we need
to call them. There’s nothing more to debate. What if those bones
belonged to Jenny? Hmm? What if that cat had been hiding under this
very floor gnawing on your little sister’s remains?”

There was a heavy moment of silence before
Jess spoke again.

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to…”

Another pause.

“
Fine,” Cavenaugh
whispered. “Make your call. Tell them whatever the hell you
want.”

Gabriel heard footsteps on the wooden floor
headed in his direction and barely had time to step away from the
wall before Cavenaugh blew past. The detective didn’t even look
back as he threw open the door, stepped out into the snow, and
slammed it behind him.

From the other room, Gabriel heard the
beeping sound of a cell phone. He stomped the melting ice from his
feet and walked into the main room.

Jess had extended the antenna on her cell
and was pacing back and forth across the room, turning in various
directions as she walked, all the while watching the small
screen.

“
Damn it,” she
whispered.

“
Are you okay?” Gabriel
asked.

She started at the sound of his voice.

“
I can’t get a
signal.”

“
Must be the storm. Cell
signals are weak up here to begin with.”

She grabbed her jacket from the back of the
couch and slipped into it.

“
Where are you going?”
Gabriel asked.

“
Outside.” She breezed past
him into the kitchen. “There has to be someplace around here where
I can get a signal.”

The kitchen door opened and closed again,
and with that, Gabriel found himself alone in the cabin with only
the company of the crackling fire. He went into the bedroom, pulled
one of the blankets off the bed, and returned to the living room.
Moments later, he was bundled on the couch in front of the
potbellied stove, fast asleep.

***

He awakened to the smell of chicken broth
and sat up to find Jess standing over him. She smiled and eased
down beside him while he rubbed the residue of sleep from his
eyes.

“
I brought you
dinner.”

She proffered the Styrofoam bowl.

“
Thanks. I didn’t mean to
be asleep so long.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the
window. The world had turned gray, save the flakes tapping at the
glass and the crescents of condensation framing the pane. “What
time is it anyway?”

“
Does it
matter?”

He smiled and nodded. “I don’t suppose it
does.”

The soup was only lukewarm, but it tasted
absolutely divine. He shoveled down a couple spoonfuls brimming
with noodles, then looked at her. She was staring blankly into the
room and working her fingers into knots in her lap.

“
Did you ever get your
phone to work?” he asked.

“
No.” She turned to face
him. “And we lost our internet connection as well.”

“
Stands to
reason.”

“
Does it?”

She rose and paced nervously in front of
him.

“
Yeah. No cell signal, no
WI-FI connection.”

“
I know, I know. But
something’s not right here. Can’t you feel it?”

“
We’re all just stressed
out. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day. If everything goes
according to plan, we’re going to find our sisters’ bodies. I need
to know… We all need to know. I just can’t imagine how much it’s
going to hurt when we finally see what actually happened to them.
On one hand, it will be a relief to finally learn how they died. On
the other, seeing it, seeing how they might have suffered… There’s
no way to un-see that.”

“
You’re right,” she said.
“I’m probably overreacting. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong,
only that something is.”

He finished his soup and set the bowl on the
floor. When he sat back, Jess leaned against his shoulder and her
hand found his. The fire bathed them in heat and the moment felt
natural, comfortable.

“
There’s an emergency
transceiver in the main cabin,” she said.

“
What do you
propose?”

Jess was silent for a moment. “I don’t know
for sure. I can only assume it connects directly to some emergency
broadband channel. Maybe we could just alert them to the fact that
we found these bones and let them determine the proper course of
action from there.”

“
That sounds reasonable
enough.”

Another silence.

“
What’s the problem then?”
he finally asked.

“
I don’t think Cavenaugh
would appreciate it. He’s made that abundantly clear.”

“
Cavenaugh? He already told
you to make the call.”

“
I get a bad feeling from
him.”

Gabriel scoffed. “What could he possibly
do?”

***

“
So is everyone clear about
the plan for the morning?” Cavenaugh asked. He surveyed their faces
one by one. “Good. I don’t want to waste a single minute of
daylight. I want us out of here by oh five hundred
sharp.”

They all rose from the couch and floor where
they’d been sitting through the final strategy meeting. The
pertinent maps had already been pulled from the walls and rolled
into neat tubes, rubber-banded, and marked with a number, one
through three, to correspond with the team number. They were laid
out on the wooden table they had dragged in from the kitchen.
Beside each map was a radio unit, which had already been tuned to a
common frequency, and a backpack containing granola, dehydrated
fruit, two bottles of water, and a flare gun with two extra
loads.

“
One more thing,” Cavenaugh
said as they were all about to disperse. He walked to the right
side of the room where the communications gear had been assembled
on top of the cases in which it had arrived. Beside the stack of
components was a metal case Gabriel had assumed to be empty.
Cavenaugh unlatched the lid and swung it open. He leaned over the
foam-lined box and reached inside. “Who knows how to shoot one of
these?”

When he turned around, he held a rifle
across his chest. The polished barrel reflected the firelight.

Will walked over and took it from him, a
curiously animated expression on his face. He whistled in
admiration and turned it over in his grasp. Aligning the sights, he
aimed it across the room, then resumed his appreciative
inspection.

“
Bushmaster RealTree Camo
Rifle. Twenty-inch barrel with flash suppressor. Nickel Acetate
finish. 5.56mm/.223 caliber, semi-automatic, thirty-round magazine.
Six hundred meter range. This is definitely not your grandfather’s
hunting rifle,” he said. “Fine piece of equipment though. You could
drop a bounding deer from halfway across the state with one of
these bad boys. How’d you get a hold of these?”

Cavenaugh shrugged. “Borrowed them from a
friend.”

Kelsey took the rifle from Will and
appraised it, but didn’t appear nearly as comfortable doing so. It
looked more like an assault rifle than anything used for
hunting.

Gabriel crossed the room and peered down
into the case. There were several stacked tiers inside, each of
which, he could only assume, housed a rifle in its custom
fitting.

“
Why do we need these?”
Maura asked. Of them all, she seemed the most wary.

“
We already know there are
mountain lions in this area,” Cavenaugh said.

“
They’re as afraid of us as
we are of them,” Maura said.

Gabriel turned and watched Jess as she
perused the stacks of equipment. She moved around the clutter as
though searching for something. When she caught him looking, she
shook her head and mouthed the words “It’s not here.”

“
Then consider it an
unnecessary precaution,” Cavenaugh said. “Better to have it and not
need it than to need it and not have it.”

Maura nodded her acquiescence, but didn’t
appear relieved in the slightest. She just continued to stare at
the rifle as though Kelsey were handling a venomous snake.

Understanding finally struck Gabriel. This
wasn’t about mountain lions. Not at all. But until that very
moment, all he had thought they might find in the forest were the
remains of their loved ones. He had never considered the prospect
that they might encounter whoever was responsible for their
deaths.

***

Gabriel leaned against the kitchen cabinets
beside the back door, dozing in and out. He was fully clothed
beneath the blanket, and anything but comfortable. The warmth from
the fire was fading fast and the bitter chill was seeping in
through the walls and under the floorboards. Best not to stoke the
flames to combat it just yet. If nothing else, the cold was keeping
him from falling into a sound sleep, and right now he needed to
remain sharp if he expected to hear anything other than the howl of
the wind and the resultant creaking of the cabin around him.

He knew he should be getting as much rest as
he possibly could in anticipation of the arduous day ahead, but
this was something he needed to do. Whether or not Oscar returned,
he at least had to try. That cat was now the only living link
between his sister and him. Expecting a now-feral feline to lead
them to the bodies was ridiculous, but Stephanie would have been
heartbroken at the idea of her furry friend being abandoned in the
wild. Maybe he would never learn what had happened to her, and
would have to live with the guilt and the loss for the rest of his
life. That would be his cross to bear, but at least if he found a
way to take care of Oscar, he could justify to himself that he had
done something. And perhaps through her cat, he could feel close to
her again.

The rational part of him knew he was being
absurd, but there were already enough regrets without adding one
more. To leave her beloved cat at the mercy of the elements and
predators would be to dishonor her memory and everything she had
stood for. Stephanie had always been the most caring, most
gentle—

There was a soft thump against the wall
behind him.

Gabriel silently peeled off the blanket and
rolled over onto his hands and knees.

The wind whistled along the eaves and
rattled the glass in the window above the sink. He must have heard
it blow the bag of trash against the siding. Hopefully it was still
tethered to the nail, or all of this was for naught.