“Maybe.” But he didn’t believe it. The pine bole was thick and the splintered end had looked to be wedged between the trunks of the pines surrounding it. “There’s a better way. If Ben has a gas-powered chain saw, we ought to be able to cut through the upper end once the storm passes.”
“Maybe in that locked shed behind the carport.”
“I’ll go see. There’s a bunch of keys on a hook in the kitchen—one of them ought to open the padlock.”
He took the keys and the flashlight out into the thick, ropy downpour. Stood hunched in front of the shed door, the flash tucked under his arm with the beam steady on the padlock. Among the keys were two small ones; the second fit the lock. But the staple was rusty and it took him a minute to free it from the case. He shined the light inside the shed.
Gardening tools—pick, shovel, rakes, trowels. Dull-bladed ax that a lumberjack wouldn’t be able to wield effectively. Electric weed-whacker. Hedge clippers, a long-handled tree saw. Handsaws, hammers, and other small tools. A wheelbarrow, a push broom, a pile of roofing shingles, a clutter of useless odds and ends. Everything you needed for the maintenance of a cottage like this except a chain saw and the gas necessary to run it.
He closed up the shed, leaving the padlock hanging unclosed through the hasp, and struggled back to the cottage. “No chain saw,” he told Shelby.
“Lomax is a builder. He’s liable to have one.”
“Yeah.”
“He’ll have to be told in any case. They wouldn’t have heard or felt the tree come down—they’re too far away.”
“Might as well do it right now, while there’s still some daylight left.”
“You want me to go? You’ve been out twice already—”
“No, I’ll do it. I’m already soaked.”
Out into the blow for the third time, running bent to the carport. All he’d need now was for the car not to start … but that didn’t happen, the engine caught on the first turn of the key. He backed out onto the lane, got the Prius turned and moving—toward the fallen tree first, to see if there was any chance of moving it alone.
The wind slammed into the car with enough force to rock it from side to side; he had to take a tension grip on the wheel to hold it steady. The wipers, on high speed but with the one blade still sticking, were barely able to keep the windshield clear of sluicing rainwater. He hunched forward with his nose only a few inches from the glass and his eyes slitted; it was the only way he could follow the jittery path of the headlights.
When he neared the tree, he eased off to the right—letting the high beams pick out a place where he could nose up against it. If there was any chance of moving it, it would have to be at the slender upper end.
No chance at all. The blacktop was too slippery and cone-littered, the trunk too thick and its base too tightly wedged. The Prius’s rear tires couldn’t gain traction, spun futilely; the pine didn’t budge an inch.
Macklin jammed the gearshift into reverse, backed carefully to the cottage drive; turned and headed the other way.
House lights swam up out of the liquidy dusk; the Lomaxes’ auxiliary generator was still working. But as he neared the entrance drive, Macklin saw that the gates across it were closed. He braked alongside, left the engine running as he got out.
The gates, their stanchions anchored into socket holes in the blacktop, weren’t just closed, they were also chained and padlocked together. He caught hold of the two halves, shook and stretched them apart with enough force to rattle the chain. That created a gap between them, but it was too narrow for him to fit through.
He peered through the opening. No outside lights, no interior lights visible in the front part of the house. The ones he’d seen from down the lane filtered out from the living room at the rear. The bulky shape of the SUV loomed dark and dripping on the parking area.
He switched the flashlight on, aiming the ray at the front door of the house. It wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the downpour, and there was still enough daylight left to dilute the beam, but if either of the Lomaxes looked out this way they ought to be able to see it. He waggled the flash from side to side, up and down. Kept doing that for more than a minute, without getting any kind of response.
Finally he gave it up, slid back into the Prius and swiped trickling rivulets out of his eyes and off his face. It took him three tries to position the car so that it was facing the gates. They were made of solid wood, but the high-beam glare penetrated the gap between the two halves and shone glistening off the curtain of rain. He flicked the lights on and off, on and off, a dozen times.
That didn’t get him anywhere, either. Even if Lomax noticed the signaling, he wasn’t coming out.
In frustration he leaned hard on the horn. More wasted effort; they wouldn’t be able to hear it through the wind shrieks and the ocean’s roar. He pounded the wheel with his fist. He was wet, cold, wired up as taut as a guitar string. And his breathing was off a little, coming short and painful, the same as in the aftermath of one of the nightmares; he hadn’t noticed it until now.
The hell with it. Tomorrow was soon enough to tell Lomax about the blocked lane, find out if he had a chain saw. None of them was going anywhere until then anyway.
S I X T E E N
THREE OF THE CANDLE flames had been snuffed by the incoming blast of wind when Jay shoved his way through the door. Shelby got the box of matches, relit the wicks. Still murky in there, like the gloom in an underground grotto, and it wasn’t even full dark outside yet; shadows and clots of blackness seemed to lurk beyond the edges of light from the candles and the fire. She was feeling the old fear of dark, empty places again. It never bothered her when she worked night shift on the ambulance; there were always lights, people, movement. But when she was alone in a closed-in environment like this, the fear crawled up out of her subconscious and scraped on her nerves, built an edgy restlessness.
The storm made it worse, screeching out there like all the pain cries from all the accident victims she’d ever heard combined. So did the fallen tree blocking the lane, trapping them. So did what had happened to Gene Decker. She’d had plenty of experience with death; watched Mom die by degrees, watched strangers die at scenes of mangled metal and flesh or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. But proximity to cold-blooded murder was something new and unsettling.
She wondered again how Claire was holding up. Not too well, probably, alone in that house with her abusive husband. Maybe she should have gone along with Jay, talked to Claire while he talked to Brian Lomax about the tree. But what could she say to the woman now? Words of comfort from a stranger usually rang hollow; that was a lesson she’d learned early on in her job.
She couldn’t sit still. Kept pacing back and forth, waiting for Jay to come back—animal in a cage. Her wineglass was empty; she detoured to the kitchen to refill it. What she really wanted was a martini, or a slug of straight gin without the trimmings, but she’d had two glasses of wine already and if she mixed in hard liquor this early—not even five o’clock yet—she’d be down and out fast. And getting wasted wouldn’t accomplish anything anyway, except to give her a hangover to deal with tomorrow. Alcohol was fine for dulling the edges of anxiety, but too much of it did more harm than good.
She’d been in a dull funk ever since she’d made her decision yesterday afternoon and confronted Jay with it. There should’ve been some sense of relief, of sadness and loss; she ought to be giving some thought to the future, to other decisions she’d be facing. But she seemed mired in that same cold emptiness she’d experienced in the car yesterday. Feeling a kind of bleak disconnection, too; her mind wouldn’t stay focused. Why? Because at some level she wasn’t convinced a divorce was the right choice after all?