The darkness outside was now almost complete and the frustration intense: maybe their salvation was two feet away, a phone or gun. But it was impossible to tell. They had to search mostly by touch. Michelle was cautious, moving slowly.
“Faster,” Brynn urged.
“They have black widow spiders up here. I found one in my room when I came to visit Steve and Emma last year.”
The least of our worries.
They continued to search frantically for ten minutes, through drawers, closets, baskets of papers and personal junk. Brynn smiled as she found a Nokia, but it was an old one, no battery and a broken antenna. She dumped out all the contents on the rug and felt for a charger.
Nothing.
“Damn,” Brynn muttered, standing stiffly, her face throbbing. “I’ll check upstairs. Keep on looking down here.”
Michelle nodded uncertainly, not happy about being left alone.
Spiders…
Brynn climbed the stairs. Her search of the second floor revealed no weapons or phones or computers. She didn’t bother with the attic. A glance out the window revealed flashlights in the yard around the Feldman house but the men couldn’t be counted on to stay there much longer.
She longed to turn on a light but didn’t dare and continued feeling her way through the bedrooms, concentrating on the largest. She began ripping open drawers and closet doors and finally found some clothing. She stripped off her jacket and the leathery, wet uniform and dressed in the darkest clothing she could find: two pairs of navy blue sweat pants, two men’s T-shirts and a thick sweatshirt. She pulled on dry socks—her heels were already blistering from the waterlogged footgear—but had to put on her Sheriff’s Department Oxfords again; there were no spare shoes. She found a thick black ski parka and pulled it on, and finally began to feel warmer. She wanted to cry, the sensation was so comforting.
In the bathroom she opened the medicine cabinet and felt her way through the bottles until she found a rectangular one. She sniffed the contents to make sure it was rubbing alcohol, then soaked a wad of toilet paper with it and bathed her wounded cheek. She gasped at the pain and her legs buckled. Swabbed the inside of her mouth too, which hurt ten times more. She dropped her head before she fainted. Inhaled deeply. “Okay,” she whispered as the pain dissolved. Then pocketed the alcohol, ran downstairs.
“Any phones or guns, anything?” Michelle asked.
“No.”
“I looked…but it’s so spooky. I couldn’t go into the basement. I was afraid.”
Brynn herself took a fast look down there. She risked the light but since she’d seen no windows she figured it was safe. She found nothing helpful, though, either for communications or defense in what seemed
like an endless series of small rooms and passages. Several small doorways led to what would probably be pretty good hiding places.
As Brynn returned to the kitchen Michelle whispered, “I found those.” She nodded at a block of kitchen knives. Chicago Cutlery. Brynn took one, about eight inches long. She tested the factory-honed blade with her thumb.
The deputy looked back at the Feldmans’, saw the flashlight beams still scanning the yard. She had a thought, gazed around the house. “Didn’t we see a pool table somewhere down here?”
Michelle gestured toward the dining room. “Through there, I think.”
As they walked quickly in that direction Brynn said, “The way I drove up, Six Eighty-two, was from the east. After Clausen, I didn’t see anything but some trailers and a few shacks in the distance. Nothing for miles. If I’d kept going west, would I have come to some stores or a gas station? A place with a phone?”
“I don’t know. I never went that way.”
The women entered the recreation room, a spacious place with a bar, pool table and thousands of books on built-in shelves. Beneath the big-screen TV the cable box showed the time: 8:42.
Brynn was now warm again; curious, she reflected, she had no direct memory of the cold. She recalled how terrible she’d felt but couldn’t summon up the sensation, as intense as it had been.
She studied the room, the sports memorabilia, the liquor bottles, the family pictures, the rack of pool cues, the balls aligned in their triangular nest on the table, then began rummaging through drawers at the bottom of the bookshelves.
No weapons, no phones.
“Let’s see if we can find a map.”
They began to scour the shelves and stacks of papers. Brynn was looking through a bookcase when Michelle gave a cry.
Brynn gasped and spun around.
“Look! Somebody’s coming!”
The women dropped to their knees by the window. Brynn could see, several hundred yards away, headlights moving slowly down Lake View Drive toward the county highway.
“Are there any other houses past the Feldmans’?” Brynn asked. She seemed to recall that there were only three residences here.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a neighbor. Or the police! Maybe a police
car came to look for you and we missed them. If we run we can stop them! Let’s go!” Michelle rose and in a frantic, limping rush started for the door.
“Wait,” Brynn said in a harsh whisper.
“But they’ll be gone in a few minutes!” Her voice was angry. “We can’t wait! Don’t be crazy!”
Brynn held up a hand. “Michelle, no. Look.”
The moon was higher now, bright enough for them to make out the car. It was the killers’ Ford.
“Oh, no,” the young woman said through set teeth. “How can they drive it with the flat tires?”
“You shot out two, they put the spare on the front and they’ll let the other one rim. It’s front-wheel drive; they’ll just drag the rear. Look, see the dust.”
“Can they get very far?”
“Miles, yeah, if they don’t go fast.”
The taillights cast a ghostly red aura in the dust kicked up by the dragging wheel. The Ford eased around the snaky road and toward the county highway. The lights were soon obscured by a tangle of jack pine, yew and elegant willow. The car vanished.
Michelle hugged herself. She sighed with relief. “So they’re gone…. It’ll be okay, right? We can just wait here. We can put the heat on now, can’t we? Please.”
“Sure,” Brynn said, staring after the car. “Let’s put the heat on.”
LEWIS PILOTED THE
Hart said, “Was a good shot you made with that scattergun, hitting her car all that distance.”
Lewis offered a dismissive sneer but Hart saw that the words hit home; the punk was pleased. “I wanted to take
her
out. That’s why I was aiming high. Compensated for the wind too. Didn’t want to hit the tires. I didn’t hit ’em, you see?”
“I did.”
“But I led her just right, didn’t I? About four feet. And high. Didn’t think she’d go out of control.”
“Who’d guess that?”
A moment or two passed. Lewis said, “Hey, Hart?”
Looking at the woods around him. “Yeah?”
“Okay, what it is…I shouldn’t’ve said anything. About the keys.”
“Keys?”
“In the house. With the woman cop. I gave it away…you were right. I got excited. My brother always said I do things or say something before I think. I gotta watch that.”
“Who’d’ve thought, a cop?” Hart nodded at him. “Can’t stay on top of everything. But you did some fine shooting.”
The car was filled with the smell of hot rubber and metal from the self-destructing tire.
It was then that Hart glanced back. “Shit!” he whispered.
“What? Whatta you see?”
“I think it’s her. Yeah, it is! The cop.”
“What? She got out of the water? Fuck. Where is she?”
“In that other house. The one we just passed. Number Two. The cop.”
“No shit. You’re sure?”
“In the window. Yeah. I saw her plain as day.”
“I can’t even see the house.”
“Was a break in the trees. She probably saw us go past and stood up. Thinking we were gone. Man, that was stupid of her.”
“They both there?”
“I don’t know. All I saw was the cop.” Hart was silent a moment. Lewis kept driving. Hart continued, “I don’t know what to do. We’re doing pretty good with the tire.”
“She’s holding up,” Lewis agreed.
“And we’ll be at the highway in ten minutes. I’d love to get the fuck out of here.”
“Amen.”
“’Course, then we miss the chance for some payback. Jesus, that wom
an’s slugs came six inches away from my head. I don’t dodge lead the way you do.”
“True too,” Lewis said, thinking things over and laughing about the bullet dodging.
“And wouldn’t be a bad idea to get things finished up now so we don’t have to worry. Especially since she knows my name.” Hart shrugged. “But I don’t know. Whatever you’re up for. Get her or not.”
A pause. Then Lewis lifted his foot off the accelerator, considering this. “Sure. And Michelle, maybe she’s there too…. Fuck
her
up bad is what I really want, my friend.”
“Okay, I say let’s do it,” Hart said. He looked around again and then pointed ahead to the driveway at 1 Lake View. “Shut the lights off and head up there. We’ll move around behind. She’ll never guess.”
Lewis grinned. “Payback. You son of a bitch, Hart. I knew you’d be up for it.”
Hart gave a short laugh and pulled his pistol from his belt.
In fact, Hart hadn’t seen anything in the window at Number 2. Like Lewis, he couldn’t even
see
the place. But instinct had told him that the cop was there. He knew she’d survived the crash; he’d seen footprints leading from the lake. She’d have gone toward the closest shelter she could find: the second house on Lake View, he’d concluded. None of this he’d shared with Lewis, though. Hart had been taking soundings for the past couple of hours and knew his partner definitely didn’t want to stay here. He wanted to head back to Milwaukee. He talked big about tracking down the two women and taking care of them. But Hart knew it was just that: talk. The man’d get lazy and forget about it—until somebody came for him in the middle of the night. But if Hart had insisted they remain here to hunt the women down, Lewis’d dig his heels in and there’d be a fight.
Hart did
not
need any more enemies tonight.
But seeing Lewis wipe the lip of the bottle, back at the Feldmans’ house, Hart had sized up the younger man and decided he could get Lewis to stay here if he played on the man’s insecurities: complimenting his shooting and making it seem like staying to get the cop was Lewis’s idea.
Hart was sometimes called “the Craftsman,” a reference to his hobby of furniture making and woodworking, though the term was usually used by people in his profession, the one that had brought him here to Lake Mondac tonight. And the number one rule of craftsmanship is knowing your tools: the animate ones, like Lewis, in addition to those made from steel.
No, Hart never intended to return to the city without killing these two women, even if it took all night. Or all the next day, for that matter, even if the place was swarming with cops and rescue workers.
Yes, he wanted to kill Michelle, though that was a lower priority than getting the policewoman.
She
was the one he absolutely had to kill. She was the threat. Hart couldn’t forget her. Standing by her car. Just standing tall and waiting for him. The look on her face, a flash of
gotcha,
which might’ve been his imagination, though he didn’t think so. Like a hunter, waiting for just the right moment to take the shot. Like Hart himself.
Only his instant reflex, diving to the ground, had saved him. That, and the fact that she’d fired one-handed, wisely not letting go of her car keys. He actually heard a bullet near his ear, a pop, not a
phushhhh,
like in the movies. Hart knew he was closer to death at that moment than when Michelle had snuck up behind him and taken her shot.
Lewis now continued up the drive of 1 Lake View. At Hart’s direction, he beached the Ford in a stand of brush behind the house. It was well hidden in the tall grass and shrubs. They climbed out and moved west, into the woods about thirty feet, and then started going north, parallel to the private road, moving as quickly as they could toward Number 2.
Hart led Lewis around a pile of noisy leaves and they picked up the pace, staying in the thick of the forest for as long as they could.
A snap of branches behind them.
Both men spun around. Lewis readied the shotgun nervously. The visitor wasn’t human, though. It was that animal again, the one nosing in the grass earlier, or a similar one. A dog or coyote, he supposed. Or maybe a wolf. Did they have wolves in Wisconsin?
It kept its distance. Hart sensed no threat other than the risk of noise that might alert someone in the house. This time Lewis paid it no mind.
The creature vanished.
Hart and Lewis paused and studied the house for a long moment. There was no motion from inside. Hart thought he heard someone talking but decided it was the wind, which brushed over leaves and made the sound of a mournful human voice.
No light, no movement inside.
Had he been wrong in his guess that the cop had come here?
Then he squinted and tapped Lewis on the arm. A thin trail rose from the heating system exhaust duct next to the chimney. Lewis smiled. They eased closer to the house, under cover of thorny berry bushes that
stretched from the woods nearly to the back porch. Hart carried his pistol with his trigger finger pointed forward, outside the guard. He held the gun casually, at his side. Lewis’s grip on the shotgun was tense.
At the back door, they stopped, noting the broken glass in the window. Hart pointed to the porch, at their feet. Two fragments of differing footprints, both women’s sizes.
Lewis gave a thumbs-up. He hooked the gun through his left arm and reached in through the broken pane, unlatched the lock. He swung the door open.
Hart held up a hand, whispered as low as he could, “Assume one of ’em has a weapon. And they’re waiting for us.”