“Tell me and I’ll cut you loose.”
She made a noise. “Okay.” She took a breath. “I saw a man kill my brother. He put me in his car and brought me here. I think he’s trying to decide if he’s going to kill me or not.”
His head whited out for a moment while he tried to fit that statement into the real world he lived in. The first thing he thought was Again, my luck is lousy. He had stumbled into a freaking Sopranos episode. If he let this woman go, he’d have some contract killer after him.
“What… what was your brother into? So that this guy killed him?”
“Into? He wasn’t into anything.” Her voice broke. “He was a recluse who lived in the mountains and never saw anyone except me and my sister if he could help it. I don’t know why he was killed. I don’t know anything about what’s going on.”
Recluse. Mountain. Lisa saying, Oh, honey, it’s terrible. Mr. van der Hoeven’s been killed!
“You’re not Melanie. You’re van der Hoeven’s sister, Millie,” he said.
She was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” she finally said.
“You’re missing!”
“If you cut me loose, believe me, I won’t be.”
He moved behind her and worked the tip of the knife under the fraying edge of one of her duct-tape manacles. He sawed back and forth. He had found the missing woman. Maybe she’d be so grateful, she’d give him an alibi. The duct tape parted around one of her wrists, and with a groan of pain she brought her arms around to her front.
“God.” She bent over, rocking back and forth. “Oh, that hurts.”
“Um.” He sat down, scootching a little way from her so he was out of range, in case her arms weren’t really as useless as they seemed. “Maybe since I’m helping you out, you could help me out.”
She made a noise that might have been an encouragement to continue.
“I’m, um, in a bit of trouble. That’s why I’m here. Maybe you could say that I was with you earlier? Like, in the middle of the day for a few hours?”
“I could,” she said, her voice thin with pain, “but don’t you think it would look odd that you left me tied up all day? Whatever trouble you’re in, I bet kidnapping would be worse.” Her voice changed. Became harder. “Besides, it’s up to me to get the man who killed Gene. I was the only witness to what that bastard did.”
“What happened?”
“I was…” She hesitated. “I was in an old observation tower. It’s a good walk away from where our camp is now. This man tried to take me, and my brother was protecting me, and he-the man-threw him over the railing.” She wavered for a moment before going on. “The bastard left him lying there, out in the open. Like garbage. I have to get to him, take care of his body before-” She broke off.
Randy thought of what could happen to a body left out in the woods for a few days. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too. And so will that rat bastard be. As soon as I get out of here, I’m heading straight to the cops.”
Randy twitched. It sounded too close to his own actions today. Maybe the man who killed her brother had been a cold-blooded murderer. But maybe he had been like Randy, someone who just took one more kick from life than he could take and was then left frantically pedaling to get out from under what he hadn’t even meant to do in the first place. It didn’t seem fair that a man could spend his whole life doing the right thing and then blow it all up in five minutes’ time.
“Who was he? This guy. I mean, why was he after you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know his name.” He couldn’t see her face at all, hunched over like she was, but he could hear the edge of satisfaction in her voice when she said, “But I got his license plate number. Right before he dumped me in the back of his Mercedes. I said it over and over to myself while I was locked in there.”
Randy stared into the darkness, seeing not the cold and grimy old mill but the Haudenosaunee driveway under brilliant sunshine. The driveway that was blocked by a black Mercedes.
“This Mercedes,” he said. “Did you see a bumper sticker on it? Something about the Sierra club?”
A swish of hair. She lifted her head. “Yeah.”
“Shaun Reid,” he said, scared and exultant. “That’s who killed your brother. The guy who owns this mill. Shaun Reid.”
Lisa was expecting the two squad cars that pulled into her drive. After Randy left, she had gone about her normal routine for a Saturday afternoon, showering, a load of laundry, cooking. She had a big pot of stew simmering on the stove, figuring that if she really didn’t know what her husband had done or where he had gone, she’d have dinner waiting for him. She stuck Titanic in the VCR and poured herself a glass of rum and Diet Coke, props to simulate a normal afternoon: hanging out, watching a chick flick, waiting for her husband to get home. She picked up the drink, thinking to calm her nerves, but decided the last thing she needed was to have any of her edges dulled by alcohol. Instead she swilled some around in her mouth and spat it into the sink, following that with half the contents of the glass. Simulation. The illusion of reality.
So she shouldn’t have felt sick to her stomach when she saw the headlights swinging into her dooryard. She did take a swallow of the rum and Coke then, for real, and breathed slowly and deeply before walking to the door. No sense pretending she hadn’t heard anyone driving up the road. She dropped her hand to the doorknob.
I don’t know anything. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent. I know nothing.
She opened the door. Not surprisingly, it was Kevin again, and some old cop who was, with his brush-cut hair and weight-lifting body, a preview of what her sister’s husband was going to look like in thirty years. She supposed she should be grateful. At least they didn’t send Mark out for this.
“Lisa?” No smiles this time. “May we come in?”
She stepped back, opening the door. “What’s the matter?” She had thought about this, about how she’d first react. Tossing bagged veggies into the stew pot, she’d considered what she would have thought if the police had come to her door last Saturday, a time that was forever now going to be set off as before. Now was after. And she did as she rehearsed.
“Oh, my God.” A hitch of breath. “Is it Randy? Has he been in an accident?”
The old cop smiled as he walked past her, crinkling up his eyes, as if he were playing Santa Claus. “No accident.” He held out his hand. “I’m Lyle MacAuley, Mrs. Schoof.” She took his hand, staring mostly at Kevin the whole while.
“What is it, then? Is it Mark?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Kevin was here earlier, asking about what you might have seen at Haudenosaunee.”
She nodded. Realized she was standing there with the warm air pouring out of the house. Shut the door.
“There’s been another incident today. A young woman was beaten and left on one of the logging roads on Haudenosaunee. Did your husband mention it to you?”
“No,” she said. How would I react to this news? she wondered. I would be scared of it happening to me. She glanced toward the window nervously.
“Why don’t we sit down?” The old guy phrased it like a suggestion, but he was already crossing the room, taking in everything, the movie, the drink, the stack of bills by the phone, the water stain on the ceiling. “Is your husband home?” he asked, sitting on one end of the couch.
“No.” She glanced back toward the door. “Do I need to worry about being alone out here?”
Kevin crossed his arms over his chest. “Where’s Randy?”
Lyle MacAuley patted the couch next to him. “Calm down, Kevin. Let the lady have a seat.”