She stopped and looked at me. “Mr. McKnight,” she said. “When Edwin called me and told me what had happened, I begged him to leave this house. But he wouldn’t. He said I was being foolish. So I did the only other thing I could do. I drove all the way up here myself. Can you believe that? My driver had the day off, so I got the car out and came all the way up here. I haven’t driven a car in ten years. I don’t even have a license anymore. But I knew that I had to come up here and try to get Edwin and Sylvia out of this house.”
“They wouldn’t leave, I take it.” I could see Edwin staying, but why would Sylvia want to stay here? God knows she hated this place.
“No, they didn’t believe me,” she said. “I guess I can’t blame them. But then, last night…”
“Last night? What happened last night?”
“I was staying in one of the guest rooms, but I couldn’t sleep. I kept walking around down here, looking out the windows. I think I finally fell asleep on the couch here for a while, but then a little while later I woke up again. I thought I had heard something outside. So I went to the back door, where you can see the road. And, I don’t know, I thought I might have seen something. A car.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell. I’m not even sure it was there. I might have just imagined it.”
“Mrs. Fulton, what time did this happen?”
“It was just after two o’clock.”
The phone call came at three, I thought. And the man did say that he had been watching Edwin. “Did you do anything?” I asked. “Did you call the police?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “When I looked again, it was gone. I mean, if it had even been there in the first place.”
“Did you tell Edwin about it?”
“Yes. He said that if you look out into the darkness long enough, you’ll start to see whatever it is that you’re afraid that you’ll see.”
“So what would you like me to do?”
“I want you to stay here tonight,” she said. “Maybe for a couple nights, if that’s what it takes.”
“Mrs. Fulton-”
“I’m begging you, Mr. McKnight. I’ll pay you anything you want.”
“Mrs. Fulton, I’m sure the sheriff could keep a man out here for a few nights…”
“No,” she said. Her voice changed into that of a woman who was accustomed to having things her own way, especially when she was willing to pay for it. “That will not do. The sheriff is not going to send a man out here all night just because an old woman has a dream, and thinks she sees things in the darkness. I just want someone to stay here for a night or two. To make me feel better. I want you, Mr. McKnight. I’ve already said that you’ll be well compensated.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of staying in this place, but Mrs. Fulton kept working me over like an old pro until I finally agreed. There’s something faintly annoying about rich people, I’ve noticed. They don’t even wait to see if you’ll do something for them out of the goodness of your own heart. They go right to the money. They wave it in front of you like a candy cane in front of a child.
Sylvia was still on the road when I left the place. “You’ve been out here all this time?” I asked when I stopped next to her. “You just had to get one more shot in, eh?”
“I was not about to go into that house when you were in there,” she said. Her cheeks were bright red from standing out in the wind.
“It’s a big house,” I said. “You wouldn’t have even had to see me.”
“I would have known,” she said. “I would have felt you there.”
“Yeah, well then you’ll be feeling me quite a bit tonight,” I said. “What’s for dinner, anyway?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to make sure I bring the right wine.”
“If you’re trying to make a joke, it’s not funny.”
“It’s no joke, Sylvia. Your mother-in-law just hired me to spend the night. Now, are you going to tell me what’s for dinner or aren’t you? If I bring red wine and you’re serving fish, I swear to God, you’ll be one sorry woman.”
I drove back down to my cabin, figuring I’d just pack an overnight bag, make sure everything was okay around the place. I had a friend up the road named Vinnie LeBlanc who could keep an eye on things for a couple days. He was a Chippewa Indian, a member of the Bay Mills tribe. Like most of the Chippewas around here, he had a little French in him, a little Italian, a little God knows what else. He worked as a blackjack dealer at the Bay Mills Casino, and during the hunting season he’d sometimes act as a guide for some of the men who rented my cabins. He knew how to play up the Indian thing when he was leading a bunch of downstaters through the woods. And of course he went by his Ojibwa nickname, Red Sky, because as he himself had said many times, who’s going to hire an Indian guide named Vinnie?
I pulled in next to my cabin and got out of the truck.
When I went to the door, I saw something on the step.
It was a rose. A single blood red rose.
I picked it up. I looked around me. Just pine trees. Nobody would have seen him put this here. I looked around on the ground. No footprints, no tire tracks.
I opened the door and looked inside, letting out my breath as I saw that my cabin was empty. There was no sign of forced entry, but you never know. I checked the phone. No messages.
A single red rose. It made me start to think of something, but I couldn’t quite get to it.
Or maybe I didn’t want to get to it. Maybe I didn’t want to make the connection.
I was about to crush the rose, but then thought better of it. It’s bad luck to destroy a rose. Somebody told me that once.
I put the rose in a glass of water, packed my bag, went back outside, and locked the door. “I’m going to have to miss your phone call tonight,” I said to the wind. “Whoever you are, if you call me in the middle of the night, you’ll just hear the phone ring four times and then you’ll get the answering machine. Maybe I should change my message. ‘If you’re a homicidal maniac calling to fuck with my head, please press one. Everyone else, please press two.’”
I went to the truck and sat in the driver’s seat for a few minutes. Finally, I got back out of the truck and went into the cabin.
I dug through the back of my closet, throwing clothes and boots in the air until I found what I was looking for. I put a bullet in each of the six chambers and stuck the gun in my belt.
CHAPTER SIX
“ God, this feels so good, Alex,” Edwin said. “I feel like a free man now.” He was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in front of the fireplace, his feet up on a leather hassock, brandy snifter in one hand, a cigar in the other. I was sitting in the other chair, looking into the fire. I had a brandy, too, but I had taken a pass on the cigar. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it,” he said.
“What’s funny?”
“The way things work out. Something so… horrible. And yet it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s like, have you ever seen a top spinning, and it starts to get wobbly and out of control?”
“Uh-huh?”
“And then it runs into something, bam, and suddenly it’s spinning smoothly again? That’s what happened to me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Good.”
“No, I mean it,” he said. “I have absolutely no urge to gamble anymore. It’s completely gone.”
“If that’s really true, then I’m glad, Edwin.”
“Of course it’s true,” he said. He got up to put another log on the fire. There was a deer head with a twelve-point rack mounted on the wall above the fireplace. I wondered if there was anyone in this world who would think for a second that Edwin had shot that animal himself.