It was October, and the snowbirds had all gone back to California or Florida or wherever they lived during the cold months, which left only a handful of people still on this part of the lake.
When the screaming began, Sal knew of only one person within shouting distance.
He adjusted the touchy throttle on the Evinrude and squinted toward home, still several hundred yards away.
Another scream. A terrible scream. The scream of someone in horrible, agonizing pain.
Sound did strange things over water. It echoed, amplified, reverberated, and made it damn near impossible to pinpoint its location. But when Sal heard that second scream he knew whose it was and where it was coming from.
Maggie.
The realization made his stomach roll. He pushed the engine as hard as it would go, beelining toward home.
What could make Maggie scream like that? Had she fallen, broken something? Burned herself? Appendicitis? A toothache?
Or was it something to do with that helicopter?
As the screaming continued, Sal felt his stomach go from sour to ulcerous. He had to get home. Had to make sure she was safe. Had to—
The motor chugged twice, then died.
“Goddammit! Goddamn hunk of junk!”
Sal lifted the large red tank by the handle and found it still half full. He reached for the fuel hose, squeezed the bulb, discovered it firm. The motor was getting gas. He pulled the starter cord four times, and each time it failed to turn the engine over.
Then Maggie’s screams changed. They went from incoherent and bestial to forming words.
“STOP STOP STOP GOD STOP STOP!”
Sal touched his chest. The pain in his gut had shot up into his heart. Who was Maggie yelling at? What was happening to her? He stuck the oars in the locks, turned around on his seat, and began to row.
“NO NO NO NO STOP NO!”
Sal had to get home. He hadn’t rowed in years, maybe decades. When the Evinrude refused to work, Sal would pop the cover and futz around until it started again. Sometimes it took an hour. Sometimes he had to flag down another boat and get a tow back to his dock. But rowing—never. That was for young men or those without patience. But he had to get to Maggie and had to get to her now.
“PLEASE PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD!”
Sal’s chest and arms screamed at him. His lungs were two burning bags, unable to get enough air. His back and his knees pleaded with him to stop, to rest. But Sal kept rowing. He glanced painfully over his shoulder, saw he was less than fifty yards away.
“KILL ME! KILL ME! KILL ME!”
Sweet Jesus, Maggie, what is happening? Sal’s arms shook, and he could barely lift the oars out of the water, but he kept the rhythm, kept the pace.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Each stroke closer to home, closer to the woman he loved.
I’m coming, honey. I’m coming.
Sal hadn’t thought anything could be more terrifying than his wife’s screams. But he was wrong. It was much more terrifying when the screams stopped.
Sal put his entire body into one final stroke, and momentum took him to his pier. He fumbled with the line, hooked it to a cleat on the dock, and then pulled himself out of the boat.
“Maggie!” His shout came out more like a wheeze.
On wobbly knees, Sal shuffled up to shore, toward his house. The door was open wide. Maggie would never leave it like that. Someone was in their house. Someone doing something terrible to his wife. He looked around for a weapon. On the porch, next to the tables, he saw the two-by-four. He used it to club fish before he filleted them. Sal picked it up, reassured by its weight. Then he went into the house.
The living room and kitchen were empty. He smelled burned popcorn, and something else. Something he’d smelled before, but never so strongly.
Blood.
“Maggie! Where are you!”
No answer. He went up the stairs as quickly as his old legs could carry him, up to the bedroom.
Something was sprawled out on the bed.
“… kill … me …” it said.
Sal couldn’t understand what he was seeing. It didn’t look human. When he realized what had been done, that the thing on the bed was what remained of his wife, the board fell from his hand and hit the floor with a dull thud. He was barely aware when someone came up behind him and pressed a blade to his throat.
“You must be Sal,” the man whispered. “We need to talk.”
Ashburn County Sheriff Arnold “Ace” Streng had just settled down in his easy chair for a cup of microwave chili and a marathon of MythBusters on the Discovery Channel when his cell phone rang. He set the chili on the TV table next to his chair and squinted through his reading glasses at the number. His phone blinked FIREHOUSE 4.
Safe Haven.
Streng sighed. Safe Haven required a forty-minute drive, and it probably wouldn’t be anything more than a cat in a tree or some campers annoying the residents with their fireworks. He hit the accept button.
“This is Streng.”
The line disconnected. Streng brought the phone closer, saw he had two black bars indicating reception. It flickered to one bar, then back to two. Good enough. The fault was probably on the other end. Why anyone in this county voluntarily used cell phones was beyond Streng’s comprehension. A typical three-minute conversation usually involved being dropped eight or nine times. Streng often joked that instead of cells he was going to give his deputies tin cans tied together with string.
The phone rang again. Streng craned his neck so the phone was a precious two inches higher up, that much closer to the satellite signal.
“This is Streng.”
“Sheriff, it’s Josh VanCamp from the Safe Haven fire station. We have, um, a situation here.”
Josh was a good kid, tall and strong like his late father. Kid was probably a misnomer—Josh had to be over thirty. But Streng was nearing seventy, and that meant he considered almost everyone a kid.
“Is this an emergency, Josh? I’ve got my old carcass parked for the evening.”
“It is, Sheriff. There’s been a … helicopter crash.”
Streng didn’t know of anyone in the county who owned a helicopter. He looked longingly at his chili. The cheddar cheese he’d crumbled on top had melted perfectly.
“A helicopter? You’re sure?”
“I’m standing at the wreckage site. And there’s been some … fatalities.”
Streng sat forward in his chair. “People are dead?”
“Two.”
“Did you call for an ambulance?”
“Uh, no. They’re dead, that’s for sure.”
“Where are you at, Josh?”
“Off the big lake, on Gold Star Road, two and a half miles down. I brought the tanker. Fire’s under control. We’ll keep the lights on so you can find it.”
“Gold Star, you said?”
Streng hadn’t been down Gold Star in a while. The last time was to visit his cousin Sal Morton. They’d caught some walleye, tilted a few back, and promised to do it again real soon. That had been two months ago. Streng had planned to call him, see how things were going, maybe set up a date to get on the lake once more before it got too cold. They’d been close friends since childhood, and it was wrong they didn’t try harder to stay in touch.
“Yes, Sheriff. Should I call the staties?”
Streng considered it. The state police were the ones who dealt with highway accidents, but Gold Star was a private road. They wouldn’t want jurisdiction any more than he did.