Deadfall Read online

Cory waited for the sudden tightness in his throat to ease. Then he asked, “What’s your do-over?”

  Ty’s voice said out of the black, “I wouldn’t have missed.”

  “Missed what?”

  “I wanted to crush his throat, not his nose. I should’ve known that he’d see it coming and duck.”

  “How would that have changed things?”

  “He would’ve choked to death. I’d be in jail. And you’d be in our house instead of a ski lodge in Lusterfuck, Oregon.”

  Cory didn’t know how to respond. Too many questions were storming in his skull. Finally, he said, “I hate Thanksgiving. Pilgrims. Overcooked turkey. Dry stuffing. All of it.”

  “You and me both. But it’s not too late.”

  “Not too late for what?”

  A beam of light hit the ceiling, where it settled on a spiderweb between the rafters. Cory followed the light beam to its source. Ty was holding the yellow flashlight he took from Stellah’s car. He smiled at Cory and said, “Let’s bail tonight.”

  Cory couldn’t tell if he was serious. Considering how long the day had been already, and how good Charlene’s fig-and-Brie pizza had tasted hot out of the oven—he hoped that Ty was just pulling his chain. He said, “All our clothes are in the wash. And what about the monster-dog?”

  Ty laughed, as if that answer was exactly what he expected. “All right,” he said. “But I’m gonna hang on to this flashlight. I think it still might come in handy.”

  The light clicked off. Ty’s bed squeaked as he rolled onto his side, facing away. The unfamiliar silence returned.

  Cory looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand between their beds. 11:38 p.m. He realized as the eight changed to a nine that their world had gone up in flames just twenty-four hours ago, almost to the minute. What really happened? Who was there? Why was Benny in the shed? Why did Tweaker Teeth follow them? Did Ty really mean to kill Benny? After a while, the storm of questions in his head settled down to one. He turned to look at Ty, waited for the pain in his ribs to fade, then whispered, “Dude, did you lock the shed?”

  Silence.

  Not even the sound of a breath.

  Cory closed his eyes.

  All he saw were those flames spiraling up and up and up.

  TANUM CREEK

  NOW

  25

  I spot it first, a large mound of rocks and trees, rising up from the ground like a bump under skin. I lead her around the bottom, looking for a big black burned-out stump on the other side. It’s there, covered with wet snow but otherwise exactly the way I remembered. And not a second too soon. The snow has turned to a cold, steady rain.

  I walk to the stump, unclip my pack, and drop it to the ground. I say, “This is it. Let’s get inside while we’re still relatively dry.”

  Astrid looks at me, then the stump, confusion filling her eyes.

  “I know it looks weird. The hideout is actually dug into the hill. We enter through this stump. Inside it’s big enough to stand. It’s genius.”

  She shakes her head, backs away.

  I say, “C’mon. Take a look.”

  She shakes her head again, violently.

  This isn’t going the way I saw it in my head. “Watch me,” I say. I drop to my knees, crawl through the stump just like Benny showed us. The tarp is still there. I push it aside, smell a blast of something rank from the interior darkness, and immediately wish I had dug out the headlamp first. I retreat, stand up, take a grateful breath. Astrid backs away another step. She’s about six feet from where I stand. Her eyes are wide and terror-filled, just like they were when I found her in the trunk. The rain is really coming down now. Her hair is plastered to her face, the hoodie so wet and heavy I see the outline of the sling underneath.

  I walk toward her, slowly, hands out. She’s shivering, her body tense and vibrating. I’m two feet away and closing, saying, “It’s all right. There are candles inside. I can light them. We’ll be safe and dry….” She backs up another step; her eyes are jittery, her mouth frozen open. And I know, seeing her this way, that she isn’t here. She’s in the trunk of that car. Or maybe someplace even worse. I don’t know what to do or say.

  She glances over her shoulder. I think she’s getting ready to run. “We have to go inside. You know that, right?”

  She shakes her head. I’m not sure what that means. Does she actually think there are choices here? If she runs there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. If the driver doesn’t kill her, the mountain will. I can’t let that happen. Her best chance is in Stumptown with me.

  “Astrid, whatever happened before, that’s behind you now.” She backs up another step. I’m afraid if I move forward she’ll bolt. If she does, I’ll have to run after her. That would mean more tracks leading back to this place. I stand where I am and say, “You’re safe with me. It’s okay—”

  She turns and runs. Gets ten feet and slips and falls. She struggles to stand but can’t do it fast enough with only one hand for balance. I catch up to her, reach a hand down to help her up. “C’mon, Astrid. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  She kicks out at my legs, stands and is ready to run again. I can’t let that happen. Can’t let her die out there. Not without trying one more time. I wrap my arms around her as gently as I can. I try to avoid her arm, but she starts thrashing, kicking her legs.

  I whisper, “Calm down. Please. Just calm down. It’s okay. It’s okay. We can figure this out.”

  But her fear is too deep. Everything I say comes out wrong. She struggles with renewed fury. It’s hard to keep my balance and she’s slippery with mud from her fall. Then, out of nowhere, she lets loose an earsplitting scream. The kind of scream that startles deer and echoes across mountain valleys. I clamp a hand over her mouth, hissing, “Shhhhhhhhh. He’ll hear—” She bites my hand. I yell, pull my hand away from her mouth. She twists and is almost free. I make one desperate lunge with both arms, lock my hands across her rib cage. My right arm catches on something under the hoodie. I hear a distinct snap. She grunts, stiffens, sags in my arms, and finally is still. Her head tips forward, motionless.

  “Astrid? Are you okay?” All I get from her is silence. It’s hard to think straight with my heart pounding like it is. If I release her like this she’ll just fall to the ground. Keeping my arms around her, I drag her back to the stump. I lay her on the ground, check for a pulse. Weak and fluttery, but there. I don’t know what happened. Then I see a corner of the splint hanging out from under the hoodie with fresh blood dripping down off the foam. I remember that sickening snap, and I know exactly what I did. My stomach heaves and I throw up. Oh man, I can hear Benny now. He’d laugh and say, Well done, son. Ya jus’ turned a bucket of bad into a shitload of worse. I wipe my mouth and consider my options as the rain falls. It’s pretty simple, really. There’s only one. If I leave her out here, she’ll die from shock, or exposure, or from a killer that probably heard her scream. I crawl into the stump, reach out from the rank darkness, grab her by the shoulders.

  And pull her in.

  LUSTER, OR.

  ELEVEN MONTHS AGO

  26

  Breakfast was buttermilk biscuits with honey butter, turkey sausage, and eggs delivered this a.m. from a farm down the road. Cory couldn’t get enough of the scrambled eggs, which had warm crumbled bacon, a cheese that Justin, the Motts’ son, said sounded like “gray hair,” and flecks of green floating in the creamy yellow that Mrs. Mott said were her secret ingredients—a tablespoon each of finely chopped fresh parsley, basil, and dill. When Cory told her that he didn’t know eggs could taste this good, Mrs. Mott told him they were easy to make and she would teach him how if he wanted to learn. While savoring the last bite of those eggs, Cory risked revisiting a dream he’d had ever since his mother let him wear her apron and frost his own cake for his eighth birthday. A dream he gave up on when Benny told him, “A man’s job is to kill the food, a woman’s job is to cook it.” Cory closed his eyes and pictured himself in a busy kitchen at his own rest
aurant, wearing a chef’s hat and apron. He liked what he saw.

  After breakfast, which Mr. Mott missed due to a phone call from Scotland, they held a family gathering in the “rock room.” Chloe, their daughter, told them she gave it that name because of the huge fireplace made of rounded rocks. Mr. Mott explained how they were hauled in from a dry riverbed in Montana and sealed with a special chemical to enhance the colors. Which led to another story about the mantel over the fireplace, an oak slab milled down from a ceiling truss rescued out of a turn-of-the-century barn in Vermont that was destroyed in a flood. While Mr. Mott spoke, the kids wrestled with Pavlov, the monstrous dog, in front of the fire. Mrs. Mott split her attention between her husband’s oration and Sunset magazine, occasionally frowning under her glasses when he seemed to be stretching a truth. Cory and Ty sat across from her on a leather sofa, facing two-story windows overlooking a trampoline with sagging springs, a pond with an upside-down canoe on the shore, pine trees beyond the fence, and snowcapped mountains beyond that. They were all waiting for the caseworker, Tony Tanaka. He was supposed to attend this gathering scheduled for ten a.m. Mr. Mott received a text from him at ten fifteen stating he’d be there closer to eleven. That apparently didn’t work for Mr. Mott. He told them he had a shipment of Toyotas arriving at his dealership followed by an inventory audit at the lumberyard. “Plus,” he said, eyeing the boys, “you have a shopping spree scheduled. We’ll start without him.”

  First up on the agenda were the welcome-to-our-family gifts. Cory and Ty received Mott’s Lot baseball caps and keychains from Chloe, and Mott’s Lumber and Landscaping T-shirts from Justin. Unfortunately both shirts were size L, and Cory needed 2XL, but Charlene said she would trade it out at the store on Monday. Then Harvey began making his way down a list on his iPad, ticking off household rules, boundary issues (privacy was a big deal with the Motts), ways to address himself and Mrs. Mott (too soon for Mom and Dad, but Mr. and Mrs. were too formal; they decided on first names), chore assignments, homework expectations, medical concerns (Justin—contact dermatitis, Chloe—nearsightedness and anxiety), food preferences, church attendance (encouraged but optional) and, last on the list, family schedules.

  Cory asked, “Will we have access to a computer?”

  Harvey said, “Do either of you have decent skills?”

  Ty shook his head, nodded to Cory.

  Cory said, “I know my way around a motherboard.”

  “In that case I have a couple laptops at the dealership that should work. I will bring them home this afternoon.”

  Ty nudged Cory and whispered, “The zombies are waiting….”

  After the gathering, Harvey led Cory and Ty down a long hall decorated with dozens of framed photographs of Harvey holding up some very large fish. One of the pictures must have been taken on a jungle river because Cory could clearly see a hippopotamus on the shore in the background. Before opening the door with a key from his pocket, Harvey said, “This is my sanctuary, my man cave if you will, where I go to think and read, smoke the occasional cigar, or, in the case of this morning’s call from Scotland, to pursue the passion I’ve had since high school—acquiring vintage fly-fishing equipment.” Then he turned the knob, opened the door, and said, “Let’s talk.”

  STUMPTOWN

  NOW

  27

  I dig out the headlamp and focus on what I’ve done. She’s a mess. A cold, wet, bleeding, unconscious, broken mess. Her state is so bad I want to scream. Panic seizes me. I don’t know where to start. It would help if I could breathe. Part of the problem is that stench. A quick scan of the small space locates the source. There’s a dead animal stretched out behind the stove. I crawl over there and look. It’s bigger than I thought. The beam sweeps across a brown snout, pointy ears, brown tail. It’s a coyote. There’s a black festering hole in a hind leg, probably from a bullet. I have to get this carcass out of here; otherwise I won’t be able to concentrate on Astrid. I grab a rear leg and drag it out the door, then hold my breath, pick it up, and walk thirty feet to a big boulder and dump it out of sight.

  On my way back to the stump I attempt to cover my tracks by hand-brushing them with snow. Then I crawl into Stumptown and find the water bottle. No way there’s enough here to clean my hands, which are covered with dead coyote, clean her wounds, and have enough left for two people to survive. I’ll have to hike down to the creek for more. With weather like this, when will that happen?

  I splash a little water on my hands and dry them on my pants. Then I kneel next to Astrid and say, “Can you hear me?” No response. I touch her forehead. It feels cold, even to my fingers, which are approaching numb. Since shock and hypothermia are my biggest concerns, that means I need to get her dry and warm. The hoodie is stained with her blood and my vomit and she’s soaked head to toe. I can’t put her in the sleeping bag like that. Her clothes would soak the inside of the bag and she wouldn’t be able to get warm. I could start a fire in the stove, but that idea dies a few seconds later when I think about the tracks I would make collecting wood, plus the smoke from that stove would be seen for miles. Since I’d rather not remove her jeans, I do the next best thing. I pull off her sneakers, then open the first aid kit and reach for the scissors.

  I cut her jeans at mid-thigh, slide the legs down, and stuff them in my pack. No point having those gas fumes around when I light the candles. I slip my spare cargo pants on her, then move up to the hoodie. I’m careful to make sure it doesn’t get hung up on the exposed half inch of bone, which could reopen the wound and make it start bleeding again. While I’m pulling the sweatshirt over her head, the sweater underneath, which is still dry, shifts up to the base of her rib cage, exposing the skin underneath. My heart rises to my throat. The right side of her stomach is covered in a patchwork of bruised flesh. Thanks to Benny I am intimately familiar with the life span of a bruise. The force of the impact. The resulting shades and stages of red, blue, purple, and black. I’d put this work in the seven- to ten-day range. I lower her sweater to hide the damage. She probably doesn’t want me to see it. My hand is shaking. I choke back tears. It takes some effort to settle down.

  I start on her arm. Should I clean the wound or not? I look as closely as I can without throwing up. There’s dirt and mud and pine needles mixed in with the clotting blood. I look for barrier gloves in the first aid kit and of course there aren’t any. I curse Ty for talking me into buying the crappiest first aid kit ever. The cleanest thing I have is a fresh sock, so that’s what I use, wetting it first, then dabbing at the debris. I almost throw up twice. My breath clouds the light making it nearly impossible to see. I remove what I can, thinking that I will clean the rest later when I have more water. I briefly consider trying to move her arm so that the bone is no longer exposed, but that’s way beyond what I learned in class and I would probably pass out anyway, so I leave it as is. I place three large gauze pads over the wound, watching her constantly for any signs of movement. She’s so still I pause for a moment to see if her chest rises. It does, but barely. I wrap everything up with the compression bandage, resplint her arm with the pieces of foam, then use what’s left of the athletic tape to hold it all together. The cuts from the zip ties on her wrists and ankles look pretty raw, so I wrap some gauze around them too. The last thing I do is open Ty’s sleeping bag, slide it underneath her, and zip it closed. I put my bag on top of hers for extra warmth, fashion a pillow for her head using the stuff sack and the rest of my clean socks and underwear.

  After all that is done I realize that I’m shivering too. It’s probably a mixture of raw nerves and the fact that my clothes are still wet. My fingertips are now officially numb. I change into my long underwear, then use the lighter in my pack to fire up a dozen candles. The heat helps warm up my hands to the point that I can relax just a little. I sit on the old wooden chest and switch off the headlamp. Then look down at her and make a promise.

  A promise I hope I get a chance to keep.

  LUSTER, OR.

  ELEVEN MONTHS AGO


  28

  Harvey’s man cave was small and dark compared to the airy openness of the main house. It smelled of old cigar smoke and leather—a big change from the cigarettes, weed, and beer Cory was familiar with. Harvey raised a curtain on the main window to let in the morning light. There was a sliding glass door that opened onto the backyard patio, and another door with a dead bolt. The furniture was spare: a wooden desk with nothing on it except a closed laptop, a leather sofa with a folded blanket, a leather chair and ottoman. One wall was floor-to-ceiling books on built-in shelves. From what Cory could see they were mostly legal volumes, biographies of former presidents, and illustrated histories of fly-fishing. Mixed in throughout the room were framed displays of Harvey’s passion: fly-fishing poles, waders, reels, and collections of fly-fishing flies. Cory felt his heartbeat elevating and wasn’t sure why. It started as soon as Harvey closed the door behind them. Maybe the smell of leather and stale cigar smoke didn’t agree with the eggs and sausage. Or maybe it was something about this room, the mix of old and new, and the absence of any pictures of people, living or dead, that made him anxious. He stood close to the door while Ty walked around, examining each relic as if it were the key to some ancient mystery. He stopped in front of a rod in its own cabinet with a glass door. Ty tested the door. It was locked.

  “What’s so special about this one?” he asked.

  “That’s a Hoagy Carmichael 212 bamboo rod. All the wrappings are original and the tip guides are custom. Mr. Carmichael only made one hundred and three rods, so this is particularly rare.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “I’m a collector, not a seller.”

  “But if you did sell it?”

  “I would ask for sixty-five hundred and wouldn’t take a penny less.”