Streng drove by a house almost entirely hidden by foliage, tried to recall the name of the owners. His mind gave up the answer a mile after he passed. The Kinsels. Snowbirds, gone someplace that didn’t have minus-thirty-degree winters and four feet of snow by January.
“Where are you hiding?” Streng asked himself, scanning ahead for the swirling red lights of Josh’s fire truck. Streng could imagine a whole fleet of helicopters lost in these woods. If daylight never came, they’d never be found. The forest liked to hide things. A plane went missing ten years back—one of those experimental one-seaters flown by some rich moron who hadn’t bothered filing a flight plan—and it had taken a week of continuous searching before they found the wreck, less than two hundred yards from Big Lake McDonald’s east shore. By that time, a family of raccoons had already moved into the cockpit, and an egret had built its nest on the tail section. The coyotes took care of the pilot.
He reached down and rubbed his right calf, then his left one. Shin splints. The pain sometimes acted up when he drove. Every so often he toyed with the notion of seeing a doctor about it but always dismissed that as weakness. As his late father liked to say, “It’s better to have two bad legs than a single healthy one.” And Dad knew that from experience.
His cell rang, and Streng peered down his nose at the number. Mayor Durlock, from Safe Haven. In a town of less than a thousand, a helicopter crash was headline news, and the mayor never missed an opportunity to speak to the press.
“Sheriff? Something wonderful has happened.”
“Not for the people in the helicopter.”
“Helicopter? What? Oh.” Durlock sounded sleepy. Or maybe he’d been drinking. “This is about the lottery.”
“Lottery?” Streng asked. But he was talking to a dead line. No signal. He tried redial, it didn’t work, and he tucked the phone away and concentrated on driving.
Still no sign of Josh, and the road dead-ended in maybe a thousand feet. Streng passed Sal’s property and was reaching for his cell to call the firefighter when he heard the sound.
Having grown up in the Northwoods, Streng knew animal calls. The warning hoot of owls. The howl of timber wolves. The crazy piccolo chorus of the loons. This didn’t sound like anything Streng had ever heard before. It was loud and shrill, but with a gurgling quality to it. Like a woman screaming underwater.
Streng brought the Jeep to a stop and rolled down the windows, his ear facing the forest.
“OOOOHOOOOOHOOOOHOOOOOGGGGGGGGHHH …”
This time it sounded less animalistic, more human. But what could cause a person to make a sound like that? Was it Josh and Erwin, screwing around? And where was it even coming from?
He pulled onto the grass alongside Sal’s house, put the Jeep in park, dug the flashlight out of the glove compartment, and stepped onto the scrub grass. The night was unusually quiet, as if the woods were collectively holding their breath. Streng adjusted the beam for maximum distance, unbuttoned the strap on his Kimber Compact Stainless .45, and walked in the direction of the sound.
“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOO …”
That was someone in agony, and you couldn’t fake agony like that. The fire truck was still nowhere to be found. All that lay ahead was Sal’s place.
Reflexively, Streng pulled his sidearm from his holster and thumbed off the safety. He’d been carrying it cocked and locked. Now it was ready to fire.
He moved at a brisk pace, minding his footing but intent on helping the screamer. Streng was old-school, military trained. He kept the flashlight at his hip in a sword grip and his gun before him at chest level. He’d been shown, years ago, a method of locking wrists so both flashlight and pistol were aiming at the same thing, a move favored by cops in the movies. What the movies didn’t show you was the sympathetic limb contractions and hand confusion that occurred while under fire, where combatants would often shine their gun and try to shoot their flashlight. The new moves weren’t always the best moves.
Another scream. Definitely coming from the house. Every light was off, making Sal’s two-story cabin look like the silhouette of a mountain among the trees. Streng directed his beam at the front door, and from a dozen yards away he saw the pry marks on the jamb, the splinters sticking out like witch’s fingers.
Streng tucked the flashlight under his armpit and touched the knob cautiously, as if it were hot. The door opened with a faint creak, and Streng again gripped the flashlight and moved in a crouch as low as his shin splints would allow. The air in the house radiated warmth, and it tingled against his cool skin. The acrid smell of burned popcorn filled his nostrils. The silence seemed total, complete. Not even the click of the furnace or the hum of the refrigerator.
“JEEEEEESUS CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIST!”
The scream brought Streng back in time, twenty years earlier, to a traffic accident scene. A pedestrian pinned under a trailer truck, his face pressed against the burning hot muffler. They couldn’t move the semi, couldn’t lift the semi, couldn’t do a damn thing until the tow truck came, and as the victim’s face cooked away the screaming became so intense that Streng had actually pulled his gun and considered shooting the poor bastard.
This scream conveyed the same thing; unimaginable pain.
He took the stairs two at a time, calves crying out, jaw set hard, gun steady and leading the charge. The top ended at a hallway. Streng went left, toward the scream, knowing he should announce himself as a police officer, but some instinct, some voice in his subconscious, told him it would be better to use the element of surprise.
Streng stuck his head though the bedroom door, shining his light, gripping his weapon, and he turned out to be the surprised one.
“Hello, Sheriff Streng.”
The intruder’s voice was high, breathy, with a foreign lisp. Streng’s beam spotlighted him, standing next to the bed with a gun to Sal’s head. Sal sat on the edge with his legs over the side, his chin and chest bobbing up and down as if he had an accelerated case of the hiccups. Streng glimpsed something on the mattress next to Sal, something bloody and naked and sprawled out—Jesus, is that Maggie?—and then Sal screamed again, the force of a foghorn, as the intruder twisted some sort of pink-handled knife into Sal’s arm.
No, not a knife. The intruder was manipulating Sal’s bone—either the radius or the ulna—which protruded through the split flesh.
Streng aimed his .45, centering it on the intruder’s face.
“Drop your weapon!” he yelled.
The intruder offered a humorless smile, continuing to jerk the bone back and forth. Sal’s entire body vibrated, his back arched in a scream that Streng felt in his fillings. It went on and on, briefly stopping for Sal to refill his lungs. Streng felt his stomach quiver and clench, the acid burning the back of his throat.
“Your hands are shaking, Sheriff. Are you sure you can hit me? I hope you don’t miss, for Sal’s sake.”
“Drop the weapon!”
In a blur the intruder switched aim from Sal to Streng.
“You drop yours first, Sheriff. I’m sure we can talk this out, like civilized men.”
Streng knew if he pulled the trigger it was likely he would die. This man was too fast, too cold. A pro. The best chance for survival was to diffuse the immediacy of the situation by retreating, calling for backup, even though his soul cried out to shoot this creature.
In an eye blink he made his choice: get help. Streng stumbled away, out the door, Sal’s screams sticking to him like a shadow. His radio and cell phone were in the car. He had to get down there, call the staties, get a hostage negotiation team here.