Out Cold (22 page)

He was poking along in second gear, driving cautiously on this narrow snow-covered road. But he didn't slow down or give any indication that he'd spotted something worth noticing as he approached and then passed my hiding place. He just kept going, and after a few minutes the sound of his engine faded and disappeared.

I crawled back out to the road and started walking again. I walked fast. I didn't want to encounter another vehicle.

Soon I came to the place where the rocky brook curled out of the woods along the bottom of a hillside and passed through the culvert under the road. The end of McKibben's driveway, I remembered, was just around the bend.

If I figured it correctly, I could follow the brook into the woods for a couple hundred yards, then cut off to the left and climb up the hill. McKibben's place was on the other side of the hill.

The winter brook was running low and clear over a meandering sand-and-gravel streambed. It ranged in width from about five to ten feet. In most parts it ran just a few inches deep, although here and there the water quickened and funneled between some boulders and spilled into a pool deep enough for a trout to hide.

I climbed over the snowbank and held on to some branches as I skidded down the slope to the brook.

My leather Herman Survivors boots came up over my ankles. They were absolutely waterproof. When I stepped into the brook, I didn't feel any cold, even though the water temperature was probably one degree above freezing.

I picked my way carefully up the stream, feeling the stone-cobbled bottom with my toes before shifting my weight forward, as I had learned to do from a lifetime of wading—and slipping and falling more than once—in slick-bottomed trout streams. In places where it ran too deep I got out of the water and stepped from boulder to boulder. My aim was to leave no boot prints in the snow.

Assuming the snow kept falling, it would eventually cover the tracks I would have left if I'd decided just to walk off the road and trek through the woods. But this was better. Even bloodhounds couldn't follow me as long as I walked in the water and on the bare rocks.

By looking back to the roadway, I judged that I'd gone far enough. I left the stream and began slogging up the wooded hillside. It was slow going. The snow was thigh deep, and within minutes I was sweating heavily under all my woolen layers.

After fifty yards or so my route intersected a well-used game trail running diagonally up the hill ahead of me. It looked like the local deer herd had been following it since the year's first snowfall, and hares and squirrels and turkeys had also been using it. It wasn't exactly a boulevard, but the snow was packed enough to make the going easier for a human animal such as I.

The crest of the hill grew thick with a mixture of scrubby oaks and big hemlocks. On the far side, it sloped down to McKibben's clearing. The game trail had taken me to a vantage overlooking the rear of his rambling buildings.

A low structure with double-wide doors that seemed to be a horse stable was attached to a big barn. The barn had glass windows and wide weathered boards and a couple of aluminum stovepipes poking through the roof. It was attached to McKibben's farmhouse by a long one-story ell.

I didn't know what I expected to see, but I was prepared to spend the day looking.

I glanced at my watch. It was about half past ten on this Sunday morning. I would watch until dark. It would be better to walk out in the dark. I wouldn't even need my flashlight. I could follow the game trail, then cut down the slope to the brook, and then follow the brook back to the road.

In mid January, darkness fell around five in the afternoon. Earlier on an overcast afternoon. Six, six and a half hours. I could do that. I had juice and chocolate and warm clothes and patience, and I didn't mind peeing in the woods.

McKibben told me he lived there with his cousin, Jeanette Perkins, his housekeeper, and Albert Cranston, his caretaker. He was still mourning the death of his Ursula, he said, and he just wanted to be left alone.

Everything he told me was plausible. He really did seem to be a sad, grief-stricken man.

But he had lied to me. I was sure of it. I just didn't know which things he said were the lies or how significant they were.

I chose a large hemlock on the crest of the ridge and crept under its bottom boughs. There was very little snow on the ground near the trunk of the tree. I brushed it away, and underneath was a soft bed of dead needles. I used the blade on my Leatherman to cut out a few branches to give me a clear look at McKibben's buildings and yard and the big sloping field behind the barn. Then I opened my Space blanket and spread it on the hemlock needles. It would insulate my butt from the cold ground.

I wiggled around so that I could lean my back against the trunk of the tree and scan the area below me with my binoculars.

I took a few photos with my digital camera—some wide-angle shots, and then, through the zoom lens, shots of windows, doors, and any other details that might be worth blowing up on my computer later.

I put my camera back in my pocket.

Ate a Hershey's bar and took a sip of juice.

Sat there and watched.

Nothing happened.

About five hours later, or so it seemed, I checked my watch. It was eleven-thirty. The same day. The same morning, in fact.

A chickadee landed on a hemlock branch so close I could have reached out and touched it. I made little kissing sounds and he turned to look at me.

Then he flew away in a soft whirr of wings.

Sometime later a door on the side of the barn opened and a person wearing a knit cap, a hip-length parka, blue jeans, and boots came out. Through my binoculars I could see it was a young, plain-looking woman. She had a blond braid hanging halfway down her back.

She wasn't Jeanette and she certainly wasn't Albert Cranston. Which meant that McKibben had definitely lied to me.

I barely had time to ponder why he hadn't mentioned this blond girl when the door opened again and another young woman came out. This one wore no hat. She had short brown hair and a round face. I didn't recognize her, either. She was carrying a broom.

Both girls were teenagers, I guessed. Seventeen or eighteen, at the most.

The blonde picked up the snow shovel that was leaning against the side of the barn and began scraping off the walkway. The other girl swept the snow off the steps.

I got out my camera, zoomed in on them, and took a few photos.

From my hiding place I could hear them talking, although I couldn't make out their words. They didn't laugh or fool around the way a couple of carefree teenage girls might, and their body language in general suggested to me that they weren't, in fact, carefree.

After a while they went back inside.

A few minutes later a different young woman came outside. She was also a blonde. I put the binoculars on her, and when she turned her face in my direction, I was pretty sure I recognized her. I'd only seen her that one time outside the Shamrock Inn. It had been dark, and most of my attention was on Misty. But I was pretty sure this was Kayla, Misty's friend.

She disappeared behind the stable, then reappeared lugging an armload of cordwood. She took it to the door. She pushed it open with her shoulder and took the wood inside.

A few minutes later smoke began to curl out of one of the barn's stovepipes.

I continued watching and waiting. But now I had a puzzle to occupy me.

Why was Kayla here? Who were the other girls? What were they doing here? Did they live with Dr. Judson McKibben? And why did McKibben want to keep them secret? What was going on here, anyway?

I watched and pondered and sipped my juice. I got a cramp in my leg, which I pounded with my fist until it went away. I ate another Hershey's bar. I wiggled my butt around, trying to find a more comfortable sitting position.

Nothing happened for at least a week and a half.

When I looked at my watch, it was a little before one in the afternoon.

A few minutes later I heard a creaking noise. As I watched, a double-wide door on the side of the stable building swung open and a vehicle backed out. It was a panel truck.

The driver got out and went back to the garage door. I looked through my binoculars. It was Albert Cranston. He was wearing the same parka he'd had on when he came to my motel to pick me up.

I remembered how Misty had described the man driving the van, and her description fit Cranston, right down to the round wire-rimmed glasses.

I dropped my binoculars and fished my little digital camera from my pocket. I snapped a couple of quick shots of Cranston as he was shutting the heavy door and then getting back into the truck.

He put it in gear and started down the driveway, and when the truck turned sideways to me, I saw the Ursula Laboratories logo painted on its side.

My first instinct was to slip out of the woods, sneak back to Don's Auto Body, rescue my car, get the hell out of Churchill, New Hampshire, and find a pay phone. Call Horowitz and tell him that I'd found Kayla and had tracked down the van with the bear logo. Try to convince him that McKibben was linked to the murders of Sunshine and Misty, and that Kayla was in danger.

My second, smarter thought was that trying to sneak out of the woods and get back to my car in the daylight was too risky. I'd been lucky to get this far without being seen. Whatever danger Kayla and those other young women might be in, it didn't seem immediate. After it got dark I could get away from there without being spotted. Meanwhile, I could continue hunkering there under the big hemlock, safe and unobserved, and see what else might happen.

So I waited. I ate my last Hershey's bar, sipped some water, adjusted my position on my Space blanket. Light snow was still sifting down, but I was snug and comfortable and warm, leaning my back against the trunk of the hemlock tree.

I couple of times my eyelids grew heavy, and I allowed them to fall down for a minute. Nothing was happening. Nobody came out of the house. Nobody went in.

I daydreamed about a donut and a big mug of hot black coffee.

I was resting my eyes, drifting on the muffled silence of the snowy woods, mindsurfing about a steamy shower, silky sheets, Evie's warm skin, her lips and tongue light on my chest, murmurs in her throat, her musky earth-scent filling my head, a mingling of images all mixed up with each other—

“Put your hands on top of your head, Mr. Coyne.”

Oh, shit.

I opened my eyes, looked behind me.

Albert Cranston was standing about ten yards away. He'd snuck up the hill through the woods behind me. Now he was holding a pump-action shotgun at his hip. I was looking right down the barrel. Twelve-gauge, I guessed. The bore looked as big as a howitzer.

I put my hands on my head.

“Okay,” he said. “Come out from under there. Slowly. I wouldn't mind an excuse to shoot you right where you are. It would save me a lot of aggravation.”

A man who'd use the word “aggravation” when pondering whether to shoot a trespasser would also use the word “seek” when talking to some young streetwalkers in Boston.

I crawled out of my hiding place and stood up. I noticed that Cranston was standing on snowshoes.

“Take off your parka,” he said.

“You want me to freeze?”

He smiled. “Actually, I think that would be an excellent solution. Take it off and put it down.”

I did.

“Now,” he said, “move over there.” He gestured with his shotgun.

I took a few steps away from where my coat lay.

He jerked his gun barrel, and I stepped back another few feet.

Cranston knew that standing knee-deep in the snow, I couldn't make any sneaky moves at him from where I was standing, nor could I run away. A load of buckshot from an open-choked 12-gauge would blow a hole the size of a basketball through a man at ten yards, and you didn't have to be any kind of sharpshooter to hit your target with that armament.

He went to where I'd laid my parka on the snow and squatted beside it on his snowshoes. He held the shotgun in one hand like a pistol, with his finger on the trigger and the barrel resting on his shoulder. With his other hand he rummaged through the pockets.

He dropped my flashlight and Swiss Army knife and Leatherman and water bottle into the snow. He slid my digital camera and my tape recorder into his pocket.

When he found my Chiefs Special, he glanced up at me, and I thought I detected surprise—maybe it was admiration—in his expression.

He shoved the revolver into his pocket, then straightened up. “Take off those binoculars,” he said.

I lifted the strap from around my neck and held them out to him.

“Drop 'em.”

“These are top-of-the-line,” I said. “I paid a lot of money for these glasses. I don't want them to get wet.”

“You're not going to need them anymore,” he said. “Drop 'em.”

I let them fall to the snow.

“Empty your pants pockets. Slowly. Show me what you've got.”

I took my car keys from my right front pocket and held them out to him.

“Toss them there, onto your coat.”

I did.

“The other pocket.”

I showed him the change from my left front pocket.

“Throw it over your shoulder.”

I obeyed.

“Now your back pockets.”

I had a handkerchief in my right hip pocket. My wallet was in my left. He told me to drop the handkerchief and toss the wallet onto my parka, which I did.

Without taking his eyes off me, Cranston bent down, scooped up my keys and my wallet, and put them into one of his pockets.

Then he picked up my parka and tossed it to me. “Put it on.”

I did.

“Okay. Let's go.” He jerked his head in the direction of McKibben's buildings. He kept the shotgun pointing at me.

I considered running. The woods were dense, and the terrain was rough and rocky, and even though Cranston had a shotgun, if I ran fast and dodged and darted evasively, I had a reasonably good chance of not getting hit.

But, of course, I couldn't run fast or dart and dodge evasively in snow up to my crotch. The best I could manage would be a slow-motion lumber, and he'd have no problem blowing a hole in me.

This, I decided, wasn't the time to try something. It wouldn't be daring or heroic. It would be stupid.

So I started plowing down the hill through the snow.

Cranston, clomping along easily on his snowshoes, stayed about ten yards behind me. It took about five minutes to slog down the slope through the snow to the cleared area in front of the stables where the girls had shoveled and later the panel truck had backed out. By then my woolen underwear was soaked with sweat and I was sucking deep breaths.

A door opened, and Judson McKibben stepped outside. “Ah, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “How disappointing to see you again.”

“Likewise,” I said.

Cranston poked my back with the muzzle of his shotgun. “Inside,” he said.

McKibben held the door open. I went in. It was a long, low, dimly-lit building, obviously a stable, although it didn't appear that any horses were living there. It had thick, time-stained wood-plank walls, a few bare light bulbs hanging from the rafters, a dirt floor. The big Lincoln SUV was parked there facing a garage-sized door. A wide corridor ran down one side of the long narrow building. The other side was lined with heavy swinging double doors, so that you could open the top half and leave the bottom half closed. Or the other way around, for that matter.

“This way, Mr. Coyne,” said McKibben. He went down the corridor, stopped outside one of the stalls, and opened both the top and bottom doors.

Cranston came along behind me. When I glanced back, I saw that he'd put down his shotgun. Now he was pointing my own Chiefs Special at me.

“Go ahead in, please, Mr. Coyne,” said McKibben.

I entered the stall. It was a square room, with wood-plank walls, dirt floor, wooden trough along one wall. It smelled of moldy hay and old manure and sour urine. There was one small window high up on the outside wall. It was covered with wire mesh. On the sides, the spaces above the head-high walls were covered with chicken wire.

I stood there looking around. Cranston had come up behind me. I started to turn to speak to him when something hard and heavy slammed down on the top of my head. An arrow of red pain shot down through my head to my stomach and radiated into my arms and legs, and I felt myself tumbling, numb and weightless, through black, empty space.

My legs were icy cold. My stomach churned acid. I tentatively slit open my eyes. Shafts of thin yellow light sent darts of pain zipping through my eyeballs into the center of my brain.

I closed my eyes and the pain became fuzzy.

Sometime later I tried again. The light still hurt, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open. I was sprawled on the hard-packed dirt floor of the stall with my shoulders leaning against the rough wood-plank wall. They'd removed my parka and taken away my boots. A cold draft was blowing over me, and the dirt floor felt damp, and I was shivering.

I tried to move and failed. My ankles were wrapped with duct tape up to my knees. My arms were pulled behind my back and my wrists were bound together at the small of my back. Several turns of tape had been taken around my torso, pinning my upper arms at my sides.

All four of my limbs were numb. My throat felt like I'd swallowed a Brillo pad. A lump the size of a volleyball was throbbing and zapping darts of pain from the top of my head into my face and eyes.

I turned my head gingerly and looked up at the window. It was dark outside. I had no idea how long I'd been lying there.

After a while I heard the rumble of male voices from somewhere outside my stall. Then the door opened, and Judson McKibben came in. Albert Cranston was right behind him.

McKibben was holding a bottle of spring water. “Thirsty, Mr. Coyne?”

“Yes,” I croaked.

He came over, knelt beside me, and held the bottle to my mouth.

I took a swig, sloshed it around in my mouth, turned my head, and spit it out onto the floor. Then I took another drink and let it slide down my throat. When it hit my stomach, I had to swallow back a wave of nausea.

“Enough?” said McKibben.

I nodded.

He stood up, looked down at me, and shook his head. “You are a problem,” he said. “We don't quite know what to do about you.” He turned to Cranston.

“Sure we do,” Cranston said.

“Albert's a little angry with you,” said McKibben. “I myself am simply disappointed. I opened my home to you, extended my hospitality to you. We had a pleasant and productive conversation, and I thought we'd come to an understanding.” He shook his head. “And then we find you lurking on our property, spying on us, with binoculars and cameras and guns, for heaven's sake. Very disappointing.”

“I'd appreciate it if you'd take this damn tape off me,” I said. “I've got no circulation in my arms or legs.”

McKibben nodded. “I understand. Albert will take care of you. I do want you to be comfortable. But first, if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions?”

“I don't see how,” I said. “My head hurts too much. My brain's all fuzzy. I can't think very well.”

McKibben shrugged. “Albert?”

Cranston came over and squatted down beside me. He was slapping his palm with a blackjack. That, I guessed, was what he'd used to whack the top of my head.

Suddenly he flicked his wrist and the sap crashed against the side of my knee.

It felt like he'd hammered a spike into the bone. I was sure he'd cracked it. I howled against the pain.

McKibben reached out and touched my arm. “Let's try again, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “First, please tell me who knows you're here in Churchill.”

I was drenched with sweat, shivering from the pain, chilled to the marrow. I gasped for breath.

Cranston showed me his blackjack.

“Horowitz,” I said between clenched teeth. “Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Roger Horowitz. Him and Saundra Mendoza. She's a Boston homicide detective. They know I'm here. They'll come looking for me.”

“So who's your client?”

“Huh?”

“Your client, Mr. Coyne. You're a lawyer. Who's paying you to come snooping around my house, my town.”

“Nobody pays me to snoop,” I said. “They pay me to probate their estates and negotiate their divorce agreements. You said it. I'm just a lawyer.”

“You go snooping on your own time, then,” said McKibben. He grinned as if he'd cracked a great joke.

“Sure,” I said. “That's it.”

“Who did you call from the pay phone at the motel last night?”

“Horowitz,” I said. “I told him all about you. He's talking to the New Hampshire cops.”

“And what exactly did you tell this Horowitz about me?”

“That you're keeping girls here.”

McKibben peered into my eyes and shook his head. “You called your girlfriend in Boston,” he said. “It's not a good idea to lie to me.” He turned to Cranston and nodded.

Cranston whacked the point of my left shoulder with his sap. There was a moment of numbness, a moment when I felt nothing. Then lightning bolts of pain zinged through my body. My stomach flipped. I gagged and swallowed back the acid that rose in my throat.

“Want another drink?” said McKibben.

I nodded.

He held the water bottle to my lips.

I took a mouthful, sloshed it around, swallowed a little, spit the rest out.

“Let's try again, Mr. Coyne,” said McKibben, “I understand you're upset about poor little Dana Wetherbee, but really, what in the world compelled you to come slinking around on my property?”

“She was here, wasn't she?” I said. “Like those other girls you've got here. They're prisoners, right? Are you fucking all of them? Is that how Dana got pregnant?”