A Cold Day in Paradise (22 page)

It was dark by the time I got home. I walked around the cabin before I went in. I wasn’t sure what I might find. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Inside, I looked at the machine still hooked up to the phone. I picked up the walkie-talkie, turned it on and listened to the static, turned if off. These things weren’t going to do me any good now. I was surprised that Maven hadn’t asked me to return them. He must have forgotten. He’s probably at home right now, I thought, sitting in front of the TV, slapping himself in the head. Damn it all, he’s saying to his wife, I forgot to make McKnight give back the phone machine and the radio. That stuff is police property.

The gun was still on the table next to the bed. I picked
it up and held it. There was nothing more I could do, except sit here in this cabin and wait. It was all up to Rose now.

I sat on the bed for a while, but then I realized that was a mistake. Too easy to fall asleep. I got up and sat in one of the hard wooden chairs at the kitchen table. The time passed slowly. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. I got up and looked out the window, saw nothing but my own reflection. I turned off all the inside lights and tried again. The one light I had outside above the front door didn’t do much good. I could only see the edge of the road, my truck, the woodpile, the first few pine trees. Beyond that, the forest stretched in all directions. The moon was just a rumor behind the clouds.

It was quiet. The crickets were long gone, the tree frogs asleep for the winter. No wind. The trees were still.

I sat back down in the chair. Before long, my head started to feel heavy. Uttley was right. I needed to sleep. I should have let him come over for one night.

Maybe I can still call him. Maybe I can call Uttley. The phone. Get the phone. Pick up the phone and call him. I’ll pick up the phone now.

I saw myself picking up the phone. There was blood on it. I looked at the blood on my hands. There was a pool of it on the floor. Blood everywhere.

This is a dream. I must wake up. I cannot sleep now. I cannot sleep.

I raise my head from the table. I am not in my cabin. There is a window in front of me. I rise and go to it. There is a great courtyard. Four great walls around it, a thousand windows. In the center of the courtyard there is a man. I can barely see him, the courtyard is so big. His back is to me. He is hunched over something.

He turns and looks at me. Out of a thousand windows, he knows that I am right here. He is looking right at me. I see that he has been sharpening a knife on an old-fashioned
turning stone. He caresses the knife while he looks at me.

I run. I am in a hallway. It is the hallway in the apartment building in Detroit. I run past a hundred doors and then I open one. Franklin is lying on the ground. He is covered in blood but he is looking up at me. Don’t leave me here, he says. The walls are covered with aluminum foil.

I close the door. I hear Franklin calling to me even as I keep running. My legs will not work. I cannot run fast enough. The hallway will not end.

Finally I open another door. Edwin is there, lying on a white table. He is wet and covered with seaweed. I look down at him and say that I am sorry. He tries to open his eyes. But he has no eyes. The fish have eaten them.

There is a pounding on the door. Edwin grabs at me. He cannot see but his hands find my arm. He is pulling at me while I try to back away from the door.

More pounding. Hard enough to break it down. He will be here soon. I cannot hide from him any longer.

I woke up.

I was sitting at my kitchen table. There was no sound except for my breathing and the faint ticking of a clock.

And then the pounding on the door.

I jumped out of the chair. My gun. Where is my gun?

More pounding.

Goddamn it, my gun. I don’t know where it is. Not on the table, not on the bedstand.
Where the fuck is my gun?

Pounding, pounding.

There, under the kitchen table. It was in my hand when I fell asleep. Down on my hands and knees, get the gun. Check it. Ready to go. Get back up. Go to the door.

The pounding stopped.

I stood there by the door, listening.

Silence.

I waited. Nothing.

I raised the gun and unlocked the door. Opened it a sliver and looked out into the night.

Sylvia looked up at me. “Alex.”

She had the same clothes on, the sweater I saw her wearing as I watched her from the window that day. It was dry now, but she still wasn’t wearing a coat. I could feel her shivering as I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her inside. “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t say anything. She just stood there and looked around my cabin. All the time we had spent together, she had never been here.

I grabbed a blanket and wrapped her up. “Sit down,” I said. “I’ll make you some tea or something.”

She sat down at the table, in the chair where I had just been sleeping.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said as I put some water on the stove. “You should be home with Edwin’s mother.”

“She’s gone,” Sylvia said, looking down at nothing.

“What?”

“She went back down to Grosse Pointe. She said she couldn’t stay here another minute.”

“But what about… I mean, what if they find him?”

“Then they’ll send him down there,” she said. “That’s where the service is going to be.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there watching the water. The cabin was silent until the water finally started to boil.

“Where’s Uttley?” I said.

“I sent him home,” she said. “I don’t like him. How can you work for him, anyway? He reminds me of a used car salesman.”

“Sylvia, goddamn it all.”

“What, Alex?” She finally looked up at me. “What?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“Everything,” I said. “About everything.”

She started to say something but just shook her head and looked down again. I made her tea and put the cup on the table in front of her.

“He’s gone,” she said. “He’s really gone.”

“Yes.”

“It’s just what I wanted to happen,” she said. “I wished for it every night.”

“Sylvia, don’t talk that way.”

“It’s true, Alex. I wanted him to disappear forever. And now he has.”

“You didn’t make it happen,” I said.

“I think I did, Alex. I think I wished for it so hard, it finally happened. And you know what the funny thing is? I don’t feel a thing. If I was a bad person, I’d be happy. If I was a good person, I’d feel guilty. But I don’t feel anything either way. I’m just… I don’t even know what. I just feel nothing.”

“You’re still in shock,” I said. “You’re going to need some time.”

“And you’ll be here to help me through it, right? Is that what you’re getting at? Now that he’s gone? Now that I’m not your friend’s wife anymore?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“The hell you didn’t,” she said. She threw the blanket off her shoulders and stood up. “Why did I come here, anyway? What the hell am I doing here?” She looked around her. “This is a pretty tiny fucking cabin, you know that, Alex? I think my bathroom is bigger than this cabin.”

“Sylvia, stop it.”

“I should have known it would be this small. You built this yourself, didn’t you? I’m surprised it’s still standing.”

“I said stop it.” I went to her and grabbed her by the shoulders again. This time I squeezed a little harder.

“Let go of me,” she said.

I just looked at her.

“Let go of me,” she said again. But she didn’t struggle. She didn’t try to get away.

I kept looking at her eyes, her hair, her mouth. I could feel the warmth of her body. Goddamn it all, I wanted her more than ever.

She just stood there. I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. Her eyes gave nothing away.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I finally said. “It’s not safe.”

“What do you mean, it’s not safe? You’ve got a policeman outside keeping watch.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” she said. “In the unmarked car, hiding in the woods.”

“No, Sylvia. He’s not there anymore.”

“Yes, he is,” she said. “I saw him.”

“What are you talking about? When did you see him?”

“Tonight,” she said. “Just now, I mean. When I pulled in. He’s out there right now.”

T
HE FEAR CAME
to me. There was no way to stop it. I could feel it unfolding in my stomach, cold and alive. “Sylvia, please,” I said. “Tell me exactly what you saw. Did you see anyone inside the car?”

“No,” she said. “I just saw the car. I don’t know what kind. Just a plain car. He’s not doing a very good job of hiding, either. I could see half his car sticking out of the trees.”

“Where? Exactly where is the car?”

“It’s right out there,” she said. She started toward the window.

“No!” I grabbed her. “Stay away from the window.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“That’s not a cop, Sylvia.” I held her in front of me and looked her in the eyes. “That’s not a cop out there.”

Something changed inside her. I could feel the anger leaving her body. “Who is it?” she asked.

“It might be Rose,” I said.

“He’s the man who shot you?”

“Yes.”

“He’s the man who …” She didn’t finish it.

“I think so,” I said.

“Why is he here?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked toward the window. “What are you going todo?”

“I’ll call the police,” I said. “Here, get down on the floor.”

“Why do I have to get down?” she said. The fear was starting to overtake her. I could hear it in her voice.

I pulled her down behind the couch. “Just sit right here.”

“Alex, this is getting a little scary.”

“I’m calling the police right now,” I said. I picked up the phone.

Nothing. It was dead. I just stood there looking at it. “I can’t believe this.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He cut the phone line. He actually cut the fucking phone line.”

“Alex, this is getting a
lot
scary now.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Alex…”

I picked the gun up from the table and turned off the light in the kitchen. There was a flashlight hanging on the wall. I took that and then I turned off the lamp by the bed. The cabin was dark except for the dim glow coming through the front window from the outside light above the door.

“Alex, what are we going to do?”

I got down on my knees. “We’re going to wait a few minutes, let our eyes get adjusted to the dark.”

She folded her arms around her knees.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” She grabbed my arm.

“I’m just going to look out the window.”

I crawled over to the front window and peered over the sill. The outdoor light lit up the clearing in front of the cabin, and the first row of pine trees. On the right side of the clearing, just off the road, I could see the front of his car. Sylvia was right. It wasn’t even hidden at all. Anyone
could see it. Although I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the car. On the left side of the clearing I saw the woodpile, my truck, and Sylvia’s black Jaguar.

Both hoods were up.

I crawled back to Sylvia. “When you drove in, was the hood up on my truck?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“You didn’t lock your car, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Alex, what are you talking about?”

“He’s got both hoods up,” I said. “He must have taken out the distributor caps or something. He obviously doesn’t want us to go anywhere.”

“So now what?”

I thought about it. He was out there somewhere. He knew that Sylvia was here in the cabin with me. No phone. No vehicles. My other cabins were a quarter mile up the logging road. But there were no phones in those, anyway. Nearest phone was in Vinnie’s cabin. That was a good half mile away in the other direction, down by the main road. If I snuck out the back I might be able to make my way down there, but I didn’t want to leave Sylvia alone. And I didn’t want to take her out there, either. “I think we should just sit tight for a while,” I said. “See what he does.”

“What if he tries to come in?”

“Then I’ll shoot him,” I said.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“I’m not too crazy about it, either.”

She leaned her head back against the rough wall. A long minute passed, and then another, and then I lost track of the time altogether. It was just the two of us sitting on the floor behind my couch, listening to the silence.

Finally, a sound. A car starting, a roar and a rattle. The car needed a new muffler. And then the sound of the car on the logging road. The noise grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared.

“I think he’s gone,” I said. “He just drove away.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Who knows? The guy is nuts.”

“But why would he just leave?”

“Sylvia, he’s absolutely fucking crazy. There’s no reason for anything he does.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Had to be,” I said. “Who else would it be?”

“So what do we do now?”

“Stay here,” I said. I went to the window again and looked outside. Nothing. His car was gone. I turned off the outside light. We were in total darkness now.

“Alex, why did you do that?”

“I want to go see what he did to our cars. But I don’t want that light on. I’ll use the flashlight”

“Don’t go out there!”

“Sylvia, if I can get one of the cars started, I’ll pull up next to the door. As soon as I’m close, come out and get in. We’ll get out of here.”

I opened the door a crack and looked outside. The cold air rushed into the cabin. I stepped outside and then made my way to the vehicles, the gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I didn’t want to turn the flashlight on unless I had to. There was just enough moonlight to see where I was going.

When I got to the truck, I took a quick look inside the cab. The cellular phone was gone. I looked under the hood, snapping the flashlight on just long enough to see the engine. He hadn’t taken out the distributor cap after all, but all the spark plug wires were loose. I put the gun and the flashlight down and tried to reconnect them in the dark. Just relax, I told myself. Relax and think. How do these things go on? One through four on this side. One here, two, three, wait a minute. Is that right? Goddamn it. If I could just see what I was doing…. I turned the flashlight
on for a second, looked it over, turned it off, and tried to keep the image burned in my mind. The fourth one was right here. I could feel a thin line of sweat running down the side of my face. Where’s that fucking wire? All right, five is where? Where the
fuck
is five? I turned the light back on for a second.