So it was over, and she was alone. As alone as Janice Mott had been after her husband died tragically on the property. Janice had fled to town and lived the life of a recluse, but Maggie didn’t see that as an option. She didn’t even see returning to the Twin Cities as an option. In fact, she saw no options at all.
Howie was whining at the door. She let him out, sat down on the futon couch that folded out into a bed. Stared around the large room and wondered what to do with her life.
Don’t think so cosmically. All you have to decide now is what to do tonight. A walk down to the dock? No, too close to where Cal died. Quiet contemplation on the porch? Not that. A book? Couldn’t concentrate. Wait…there’s Janice Mott’s diary.
Maggie retrieved it from the bureau drawer where she’d left it.
Janice Mott had kept to her resolve of documenting John’s and her happiness at Lost Wolf Lake to the very last day. But the happiness had not lasted. At first the entries had been full of delight and plans for the future. Then Janice’s tone changed subtly, with the discovery that she and John were physically incapable of having the family they’d counted on. It grew downbeat as the lodge’s clientele eroded, depressed when she realized he was having an affair with a waitress in town. Paranoid as she began to fear John wanted her out of the way so he could marry the woman. And lonely. Very lonely.
May 8, 1970
John is gone so much. When he’s not in White Iron with her, he works on the cabins. Getting them ready, he says, for the season. But the guest list is short and most will never be occupied again. For years I’ve been so wrapped up in him and, in the season, the guests, that I’ve made no friends. No one to spend time with, no one to confide in.
May 10, 1970
I heard some sawing at the cabin in the pine grove and went there, wondering what John was doing. He was working on the roof beam, and made it clear he didn’t want me there. I don’t understand. That roof has always been in fine shape. I wish he would stop this needless work and at least spend some time with me.
May 11, 1970
John spent the whole night in town again-with her, of course. He came back this morning and went out to work without an explanation. I think he is ready to leave me, and I don’t know what I’ll do then.
He’s calling out to me now. He says he wants some help. He spends the night in town with her, and now he wants me to help him!
Under this last entry, there was a space, and then the words, scrawled large: May God have mercy on his-and my-soul!
Maggie set the journal down. Rested her head on the back of the futon sofa and closed her eyes.
Same acts, different cabins. History repeating itself? Accidental similarity of events? Or some form of intelligence reaching out from the past? Something in the land itself?
One thing she was sure of-if there ever was a curse, it was gone now. Her future was decided. She was staying.
Wrong Place, Wrong Time A “Nameless Detective” Story
Sometimes it happens like this. No warning, no way to guard against it. And through no fault of your own. You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
11:00 p.m., drizzly, low ceiling and poor visibility. On my way back from four long days on a case in Fresno and eager to get home to San Francisco. Highway 152, the quickest route from 99 West through hills and valleys to 101. Roadside service station and convenience store, a lighted sign that said OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT. Older model car parked in the shadows alongside the restrooms, newish Buick drawn in at the gas pumps. People visible inside the store, indistinct images behind damp-streaked and sign-plastered glass.
I didn’t need gas, but I did need some hot coffee to keep me awake. And something to fill the hollow under my breastbone: I hadn’t taken the time to eat anything before leaving Fresno. So I swung off into the lot, parked next to the older car. Yawned and stretched and walked past the Buick to the store. Walked right into it.
Even before I saw the little guy with the gun, I knew something was wrong. It was in the air, a heaviness, a crackling quality, like the atmosphere before a big storm. The hair crawled on the back of my scalp. But I was two paces inside by then and it was too late to back out.
He was standing next to a rack of potato chips, holding the weapon in close to his body with both hands. The other two men stood ten feet away at the counter, one in front and one behind. The gun, a long-barreled target pistol, was centered on the man in front; it stayed that way even though the little guy’s head was half turned in my direction. I stopped and stayed still with my arms down tightly against my sides.
Time freeze. The four of us staring, nobody moving. Light rain on the roof, some kind of machine making thin wheezing noises-no other sound.
The one with the gun coughed suddenly, a dry, consumptive hacking that broke the silence but added to the tension. He was thin and runty, midthirties, going bald on top, his face drawn to a drum’s tautness. Close-set brown eyes burned with outrage and hatred. The clerk behind the counter, twenty-something, long hair tied in a ponytail, kept licking his lips and swallowing hard; his eyes flicked here and there, settled, flicked, settled like a pair of nervous flies. Scared, but in control of himself. The handsome, fortyish man in front was a different story. He couldn’t take his eyes off the pistol, as if it had a hypnotic effect on him. Sweat slicked his bloodless face, rolled down off his chin in little drops. His fear was a tangible thing, sick and rank and consuming; you could see it moving under the sweat, under the skin, the way maggots move inside a slab of bad meat.
“Harry,” he said in a voice that crawled and cringed. “Harry, for God’s sake…”
“Shut up. Don’t call me Harry.”
“Listen…it wasn’t me, it was Noreen…”
“Shut up shut up shut up.” High-pitched, with a brittle, cracking edge. “You,” he said to me. “Come over here where I can see you better.”
I went closer to the counter, doing it slowly. This wasn’t what I’d first taken it to be. Not a hold-up-something personal between the little guy and the handsome one, something that had come to a crisis point in here only a short time ago. Wrong place, wrong time for the young clerk, too.
I said: “What’s this all about?”
“I’m going to kill this son of a bitch,” the little guy said, “that’s what it’s all about.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“My wife and my savings, every cent I had in the world. He took them both away from me and now he’s going to pay for it.”
“Harry, please, you’ve got to…”
“Didn’t I tell you to shut up? Didn’t I tell you not to call me Harry?”
Handsome shook his head, a meaningless flopping like a broken bulb on a white stalk.
“Where is she, Barlow?” the little guy demanded.
“Noreen?”
“My bitch wife Noreen. Where is she?”
“I don’t know…”
“She’s not at your place. The house was dark when you left. Noreen wouldn’t sit in a dark house alone. She doesn’t like the dark.”
“You…saw me at the house?”
“That’s right. I saw you and I followed you twenty miles to this place. Did you think I just materialized out of thin air?”
“Spying on me? Looking through windows? Jesus.”
“I got there just as you were leaving,” the little guy said. “Perfect timing. You didn’t think I’d find out your name or where you lived, did you? You thought you were safe, didn’t you? Stupid old Harry Chalfont, the cuckold, the sucker…no threat at all.”
Another head flop. This one made beads of sweat fly off.