Gurney frowned as if absorbing significant new information. He lowered the gun, just a little. It was a tiny gesture with great meaning. It suggested that he could be persuaded. “What about Wenzel, Balzac, and Pardosa? You going to tell me they were control freaks, too?”
Now Steckle’s eyes were full of calculation—the process of deciding how much to say without irrevocably incriminating himself. “No. I wouldn’t say that. My honest impression of them? From what I saw of them here at the lodge? Ants at the picnic. Petty criminal types. No loss to anyone. Trust me.”
Gurney nodded slightly. A man learning sad truths. “No one would miss them?”
Steckle produced an approving little click with his tongue. “In a nutshell.”
“What about Hammond?”
“What about him?”
“A lot of damage has been done to him with that nightmare nonsense.”
“Yeah? Well, how about all the damage that bright-eyed little faggot did—screwing up people’s lives with his great-to-be-gay crap?”
“So you’re saying he deserved to be framed for four murders you committed?”
“Whoa! All I’m saying is what goes around comes around. You’re saying good people got killed. I’m just setting you straight. Those people were scumbags.”
Gurney lowered the gun a little further, creating the impression that Steckle’s argument might indeed be softening his determination to execute him. Then he frowned and steadied the gun, as though he’d come upon a final decision point.
“What about Scott Fallon? You telling me he was a scumbag, too?” He aimed the Beretta directly at Steckle’s heart.
“I had nothing to do with that!” The denial came out in a burst of panic—the denial and, in its wording, the implicit admission of his presence at Brightwater.
Gurney raised a skeptical eyebrow. “The Lion, the Spider, and the Weasel . . . but not the Wolf?”
Steckle seemed to realize that he was stepping into quicksand to escape from the fire.
Steckle shook his head. “They were crazy. All three of them.”
“Your buddies in the secret club were crazy?”
“I didn’t realize how crazy. Fucking horrible. Horrible pointless shit they would do.”
“Like what they did to Scott?”
Steckle was staring at the floor. Maybe wondering how deep the quicksand was.
Gurney repeated his question.
Steckle took a deep breath.
“They dragged him out to the lake one night.”
“And?”
“They said they were going to teach him to swim.”
Gurney felt himself recoiling inwardly from the scenario that was unfolding in his mind. He forced himself back to the moment. “I heard that the police dragged the lake but never found a body.”
“They fished him out and buried him in the woods.”
“They being Wenzel, Pardosa, and Balzac?”
Steckle nodded. “Crazy fucking bastards. Hated homos. I mean really hated them.”
“Which made them the ideal recruits for . . . your project.”
“What I’m saying is that they were worthless fucking brain-dead assholes.”
Now Gurney nodded. “Not good people. So killing them wouldn’t—”
He was stopped by something that sounded like a faint scream. It seemed to have come from another part of the lodge—somewhere above him.
He left Steckle tied to the chair and ran out of the suite, down the corridor, and into the dark attic staircase where he’d left Madeleine.
CHAPTER 55
She wasn’t on the stairs where he’d last seen her.
He called to her. There was no answer. He remembered there was a switch on the wall of the stairwell. He felt for it, flipped it up, and the bare-bulb light came on in the ceiling over the top landing. He bounded up the stairs, two at a time, the Beretta still in his hand.
He opened the attic door and felt for the wall switch he knew was there. The fixture high in the peaked roof came on. In the dusty light, the sheet-covered objects in the room—excess furniture, he assumed—appeared as before.
He made his way quickly through this large storage area toward the door at the opposite end.
He called out Madeleine’s name again.
A strained voice came from somewhere beyond the far door. “In here.”
He ran to the door and pushed it open.
At first all he could see were the wolves—crouching in the unsteady beam of a flashlight—and their distorted shadows moving jerkily on the wall behind them.
Then he saw Madeleine, backed into a corner, flashlight in hand, and he immediately regretted his decision not to mention the wolf tableau when he told her about his attic exploration—for fear that it would only raise her already high anxiety level.
He located the cord dangling down from the roof-beam fixture and gave it a yank. The huge cave-like space was filled with a dim, dirty-looking light.
He went to Madeleine. “Are you okay?”
She pointed with the flashlight. “What are they?”
“Wolves. Killed by Ethan’s grandfather. Part of the weird family history.” He paused. “How did you end up in here?”
“I was at the top of the stairs. I thought I heard someone in the corridor near the foot of the stairs, so I went into that first room, the one with the sheets over everything. Then I was sure I heard the stairs creaking, so I came over into this room. At first I didn’t see the wolves. But then—my God, what a shock! But what about you? What happened in the suite?”
Gurney related the key points of the confrontation as quickly as he could—everything from Tarr’s alleged chopping of the battery cables to Steckle’s panicked admission of prior contact with Wenzel, Balzac, and Pardosa; his knowledge of Scott Fallon’s death; and his hatred of Ethan Gall—all to Madeleine’s increasing astonishment.
“Steckle’s down there now? In our room? My God, what do we do now?”
“I don’t know. The main thing is, he’s out of commission. But I am curious about those battery cables. Let’s go down and take a look.”
THE SCENE THAT GREETED THEM IN FRONT OF THE LODGE WAS exactly as Steckle had described it. The hoods of the Outback, the Land Rover, and the three Jeeps were raised, the cables on all five batteries had been severed, and the battery casings had been penetrated by powerful blows from a very sharp hatchet or other axe-like implement.
“Looks like he was telling the truth,” said Madeleine, zipping her jacket up to her chin against the sleety wind.
“About what was done, yes. But who did it is still an open question.”
“And you’re thinking Steckle did it to implicate Tarr?”
“He could have.”
“But . . .?”
“But he might have had another reason, too. To keep us here.”
“You mean, to keep us from getting away from him?”
“Yes.”
He realized that they might be able to snowshoe out, but the nearest civilization was at least fifteen miles away—and in sub-zero storm conditions that were getting worse by the hour such an endeavor could be extremely dangerous, if not fatal.
“God, I’m freezing to death,” said Madeleine. “Can we go back inside?”
Before Gurney could answer, all the lights in the lodge went out.
The background hum of the generator died.
And the only sound was the icy wind gusting through the pines.
CHAPTER 56
With the help of their flashlights they made their way back into the lodge.