“Has it occurred to you that maybe the sheriff is out looking for her right now?” he said. “And this guy, what’s his name?”
“Bruckman,” I said. “Lonnie Bruckman.”
“Where do you want him to be, Mr. McKnight? Out there looking for them or standing here in the snow making you feel better?”
I clenched my gloved hands into fists, looked up into the winter sky, then I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. Let’s just…”
“Tell us what happened,” he said. “Where’s the cabin she was staying in?”
“This way,” I said. “Right around the bend.”
We all got into the county car, the two deputies in the front, me in the back. It wasn’t more than a quarter mile to the first rental cabin, but we rolled slowly down the road, the tires scrunching over another half inch of snow that had fallen since I plowed. I gave them the quick version of what had happened. Dorothy meeting me at the bar, asking for my help. The way she talked about Lonnie. The genuine fear in her voice when she told me he’d kill her if he ever found her.
We got out of the car and stood there a moment, the deputies looking up and down the road. Nothing to see but trees. “She stayed alone in this cabin last night?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I really don’t have much room in my cabin. And besides…” I didn’t finish it.
The deputies traded a quick look at each other while they walked through the snow to the cabin.
“No footprints here,” he said.
“I didn’t see any,” I said. “It snowed too much last night.”
“No tire tracks either?”
“No,” I said. “None at all.”
“Even with the snow,” he said. “You’d see something, wouldn’t you? It didn’t snow that much.”
“When I plowed the road it looked totally untouched,” I said. “Like nobody had driven on it for days.”
“This unlocked?” he said when he got to the door.
“Yes,” I said. “It was unlocked this morning.”
“Was it locked last night?”
“Yes, she locked it when I left.”
The deputies looked at each other again. I felt a sudden urge to knock their heads together. “Can we get something straight right now?” I said. “She slept in this cabin by herself last night. And I slept in mine.”
“Nobody’s suggesting otherwise,” he said.
“If we were in the same cabin,” I said, “then none of this would have happened.”
“We hear you,” he said. “Please. Let’s work together on this.” The deputy pushed the door open and looked inside.
“Careful,” I said. “Don’t contaminate anything.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “What if there’s evidence here?”
“If we see something, we’ll bag it.”
“No, I’m talking about hair or fibers or…”
They both looked at me. He’s seen this stuff on television, they’re thinking. He expects us to set up a crime laboratory and start picking up little strands of stuff with tweezers.
“I was a cop once,” I said. Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth. “Never mind. Go ahead.”
“We’ll be careful,” she said.
I followed them as they entered the cabin. There was a complete silence in the place that made me feel sick to my stomach.
At least we’re not looking at a dead body, I said to myself. If he wanted to kill her that badly, he would have done it right here. It was the only positive thing I could think of.
The troopers walked around the overturned table, looked at the scattered chairs. The young man stopped at the bed where the blanket had been turned back. “Looks like she went to bed,” he said. “Then got up later. Doesn’t look like she left anything behind. Did she have a backpack or a suitcase or something? You said she was running away from this guy.”
“She had a bag,” I said. “A white duffel bag.”
“She must have taken it with her,” he said. “Or he did, I mean. This Bruckman guy. You say you played hockey with him a couple of nights ago?”
“Yeah, I did.” It felt like a lot longer.
“He a big guy? How easy would it be for him to take her out of here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a lot bigger than her, but I can’t imagine her going with him without a fight.”
“So why is the door unlocked?” he said. “She must have opened it, right? There’s no sign of forced entry.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “She wouldn’t have opened that door if she knew it was him.”
“Maybe he comes to the door and says he just wants to talk to her. Then when he’s inside he starts busting up the place.”
“Impossible.”
“You said you were a cop once. You’ve seen these situations, right?”
“I know where you’re going,” I said. He was right, I had seen it before, more times than I could count. The man begging for forgiveness, the women caving in. “But I just can’t see it here.”
“Then why did she open the door?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The way she talked about him last night, I just don’t know.”
I looked down at the table leg that had been broken off, almost bent over to pick it up before I stopped myself. Then I noticed something else.
“Look at this floor,” I said.
The troopers stopped and looked at me.
“There’s too much melted snow here,” I said. You could see the faint imprints of snow puddles all over the room.
“She had to walk through snow to get here, didn’t she?” the man asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “And I did, too. I even had to go around back and turn the water on. But I remember thinking about the floor as I came back in. I always try not to track too much snow in here. The white pine, it gets dirty fast. I’m sure there wasn’t this much snow on the floor when I left. Not all over the place like this.”
“So he did come in,” the man said. “She definitely had company.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I can’t believe she’d let him in here.”
“How would Bruckman know to find her here, anyway?” he said. “Does he know where you live?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Even if he did, how would he know which cabin she was in?”
“Could he have been following you?”
I tried to remember, tried to put myself back in my truck that previous night. Were there lights behind me? “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t say for sure. I didn’t notice anybody following me, but I can’t swear that it didn’t happen.”
“Could it have been somebody else?” he said. “Maybe she called somebody.”
“There’s no phone here,” I said. “And she couldn’t have called anyone from the bar before I got there. She hadn’t even met me yet. Although…”
“What is it?”
“At the bar,” I said. “I remember having this funny feeling. Like we were being watched.”
“Bruckman?”
“No. I would have noticed him. But maybe somebody else was there. One of his hockey goons maybe.”
“Well, let’s call in what we’ve got,” he said. “Whatever little that may be.”
The brief window of sunlight had disappeared. The sky was clouding over again and it suddenly felt twenty degrees colder. From behind the cabin we could hear the whine of a snowmobile. It grew louder and louder as the machine came closer.
“A snowmobile,” I said. “That’s how he could have gotten here.”
“How do you know?”
“There’s a trail that runs right behind these cabins,” I said. “On the state land. That’s why there were no tire tracks this morning.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “Let’s see that trail.”
I walked them around the cabin, deep into the pine trees. We had to work hard at it. In spots where the snow had drifted it was almost up to our waists.
“Here,” I said, fighting to catch my breath. The trail ran parallel to my road. As long as he had a general idea where I lived, he could have done it this way. Maybe he didn’t even know which cabin she was in. Maybe he just skipped mine, started with hers, and got lucky.
The deputies looked up and down the trail. “Lot of tracks out here,” the woman said. “We’d never know which one was his.”