No one came to stand next to him; the windows were blank. He seemed to be alone. She let go of the gearshift, turned off the motor, and opened the door. The interior light came on and he saw her. He leaped out the door and cried, “Eve... Evie...”
He sounded glad to see her—elated to see her. He must have missed her too, meant it when he mumbled that he loved her during those miserable phone calls. He was racing to get to her, and any second would step into the headlights and she’d see his face for the first time in almost two months.
He wasn’t Greta’s drop-dead gorgeous, no one would ask him to do cigarette ads, but he was tall, solid, with straight dark hair and dark eyes with Greta’s long thick lashes, and a long face that had those indents that made him look rugged and sad at the same time.
She called his name too, swung her legs around, and boosted herself out of the car. She took a step toward him on the heavy uneven stone driveway and her foot twisted. She started to fall, reached out, and grabbed cold metal. It was a chain attached to a swing that hung from a tree limb next to the driveway. She hung on to it, righted herself, and felt that sudden, ridiculously small sinking sensation. Like missing a step, or going down too fast in an elevator, or any of the probably million similes she’d found for the onset of the thing: her mother’s legacy to her.
The peepers shut up, a night bird was cut off in midcall. Wind blew the trees and her husband raced across the wood-slat porch in total silence. Then trees, house, clearing, and her husband disappeared and she was at the edge of another clearing. This one was smaller, ringed by old white pines that had left decades worth of their needles on the ground. A woman lay on them in a spreading pool of blood. She was naked except for a sweater and cotton button-down shirt (which would haunt Eve forever since she knew the woman had ironed that shirt a few hours ago so it would look crisp for tonight) pushed up under her arms. From there down she was bare, and her torso was slashed open from sternum to pubic bone. The flesh rolled open in layers, like a cutaway anatomy diagram, exposing a pulsing membrane over the ghostly shapes of her organs and intestines.
Eve let go of the chain, jerked back, hit the edge of the car door, and fell. The jagged stone cut her slacks and knee, but she didn’t feel it. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to drive the vision away. But that only made it more vivid. The blood was glittering crimson, the woman’s sweater was blue, the shirt was pale pink, and the layer of exposed fat running down her body was the color of new-washed wool. The pulsing membrane steamed in the night air; she was still warm, still alive. Slit open, almost bled dry, but alive and conscious. Her eyes rolled and seemed to look right at Eve with an expression of overarcing bewilderment. How did this happen to me, they seemed to be asking, how did this happen to me?
Then the pulsing stuttered, lost rhythm. The eyes, which seemed to see Eve across whatever barrier of time and space separated them, glazed, went blind, then froze in their sockets. The woman’s jaw fell open, blood gushed out of her mouth and ran across her face into her hair, and Eve sobbed and pushed her knuckles into her eyes trying to drive the picture away. It was no use. They never stopped until they were ready to, and this one was still bright, though starting to fade a little at the edges, forming a border like a frame of film. A pair of men’s loafers stepped across the border; they had tassels, were covered with blood and topped by pant legs that were also blood-soaked. Eve saw the figure from the back as it bent over the woman. A silvery rubber-gloved hand that looked leprous in the moonlight reached out and closed her eyes.
Eve huddled in front of the fire shivering like a sick dog. Sam had wrapped a Hudson’s Bay blanket around her, but she couldn’t stop shaking. He sat on his heels in front of her for a moment, then got up and went to his new phone. It had been put in this afternoon and, thanks to her, his first call would be to the police.
“What do I tell them, Eve?”
“What I told you. That I saw a body in a clearing.”
“Saw?”
“Found. Tell them I found her.”
“Where.”
“In a clearing,” she stammered, “in the woods.” Her teeth chattered.
“Honey,” he said gently, “this is the Adirondack Park. There’re millions of acres of woods and clearings. Did you see anything else?”
She had; she tried to recall what it was without having to see the dead woman again. There was the clearing, never mind the blood and corpse. Then there’d been the man wearing loafers. He’d walked away, and as he did her vision panned back just as it started to fade like the end of a sad movie. Fade to black, she thought the phrase was. She saw his back rushing into the trees, heard him in the underbrush, and saw... a shed at the edge of the clearing. It was log-sided, with one wall fallen in and crumbling green asphalt roof shingles. It could be a long-abandoned children’s playhouse, but roof shingles were pretty elaborate for a playhouse, so it must have been an outhouse or tool or tractor shed.
“There was a shed,” she said slowly, then described it to him.
“Anything else?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
She shook her head, and he picked up the phone and dialed 911.
They showed up a little after 1:00 a.m. One was a huge man, much taller than Sam, who stood almost six feet. The other was small and slight, with dark hair combed back from his forehead and liquid brown eyes. Sam brought them into the living room, where Eve still huddled in front of the fire. They had ID cases out, must have shown their badges in the foyer.
The big one, who was not fat, just big, with arms that filled the sleeves of his jacket, crossed the room to Eve. The floor didn’t shake, but she had the sense of something enormous coming at her.
He stopped and flipped the case open to show his badge and a laminated card in the slipcase next to it. He was Detective Lieutenant David Latovsky, Major Crime Squad, New York State Police.
“We found her, Mrs. Klein,” he said quietly. “Right where you said we would. A few yards from Old Man Carlin’s tractor shed. Lightning hit the Carlin house about ten years ago, place burned to the ground except for the foundation and chimney... and the shed. The Carlins threw in the towel and moved to Florida. State bought the land,” he went on conversationally, pulling over a heavy oak chair as if it were made of balsa and setting it in front of her.
He sat down facing her, their knees almost touching.
His hair was thick, dark blond, and starting to recede in a widow’s peak. His voice was gentle, but his dark blue eyes looked hard and smart in the firelight. He’d be hard to bluff.
He closed the ID case and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket.
“State left the land just as it was,” he went on. “Stone chimney and foundation full of burned debris. But I guess you didn’t notice that.”
She shook her head.
“I see. Well,” he said softly, leaning his enormous forearms on his thighs so his head came closer to hers, “why don’t you tell me what happened.”
Because you’ll think I’m lying or crazy, she thought, looking at his large-featured, handsome face.
“I was lost,” she said.
“Very lost, Mrs. Klein. The old Carlin place is a good eight land miles from here, around the other side of the lake.”
“I was very lost,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I’ve never been to Raven Lake before, and all I had was the address, no directions.”
“I see. But I thought Mr. Klein lives here.” He looked at Sam, who was standing next to a long polished trestle table he probably ate at. Whoever had rented this place to him had kept it in tip-top shape, Eve thought. The wide-board floor shone, the smell of wax grew stronger as the room got hotter. The furniture was polished, the hearth swept. If Eve stayed here with him... if he’d let her... she’d keep it as well as the owners had.