Cutter's Run (29 page)

It stopped about where the concrete remains of the tannery were scattered beside the beaver pond. The headlights went out and the engine stopped, and for a moment all was silence and darkness.

Then I heard two doors slam and saw fainter lights bobbing down there, and I could hear deep growly voices, although they were too muffled and far away to identify or to understand what they were saying.

Okay. This was why I had come here.

I took a deep breath, stood up, arched my back against the stiffness that had set in, and worked my way down the sloping meadow where I had kissed Susannah, heading toward the beaver pond where I had fished.

When I got to the woods at the foot of the meadow, I could distinguish the voices more clearly. They were low and conspiratorial, as if they didn’t want to be overheard. There was tense anger in those voices, too. They were arguing, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I slipped into the thick woods, holding my forearm in front of my face to fend off branches and briars, and worked my slow way along the mud-caked rim of the beaver pond to the dam. The damp night air carried the faint but distinct odor of rot and decay.

When I stepped on a dead stick, the crack in the quiet woods sounded like a gunshot. I stood absolutely still, but there was no indication from the voices that they’d heard me.

The bright night sky showed shadows and shapes, and its reflection on the pond guided me downstream to where Cutter’s Run spilled over the dam and continued along its way. I stepped in below the dam and started to wade across. The cold water of the stream came to my knees. It sent a chill all the way to my groin. I moved slowly, feeling for each step before shifting my weight to my forward foot. The streambed was paved with round, slick, moss-covered rocks, and a couple of times I slipped and nearly went in.

When I got to the other side, my feet and legs were drenched and numb. I crept on hands and knees up the steep slope on the other side of the stream. The voices were a little clearer now. They sounded familiar, although I couldn’t identify them. I caught a few disconnected words—“beavers” and “damned dog” and “another load”—but I still couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I knew I was quite close to them. I moved cautiously, feeling the soft ground under its layer of damp leaves with my hands, hitching myself forward and dragging my knees along behind me. It wouldn’t do to snap another twig.

A few minutes later I was crouching behind a screen of hemlocks on top of a little knoll looking down into a clearing. Two men were standing beside a silver-colored delivery van no more than fifteen yards from my hiding place. They both held flashlights pointed at the ground. They were talking softly, but I heard tension in their voices. Now and then the flashlights waved around, illuminating a face.

Leon Staples, in his overalls and work boots, was leaning against the truck. Paul Forten was the other one. He was wearing khaki-colored pants and a dark windbreaker.

Paul was shaking his head. “We’ve got to find someplace else,” he was saying. “First the beavers died. Then her dog. It’s starting to stink here. Eventually someone’s going to figure it out. Got any bright ideas?”

“All you gotta do is blow the fuckin’ dam,” said Leon. The van, I realized, was his. It was usually parked in front of his store. Its rear doors were swung open, and it was backed up to a square slab of plywood which covered a fifteen-foot-square fieldstone foundation that rose a foot above the ground. “Them beavers flooded it,” Leon was saying, “and that’s how your crud got into the pond.”

“How the hell do you expect to blow the dam without tire noise bringing someone in to check it out?” said Paul.

Leon shrugged. “I kin do it.”

Suddenly Paul held up his hand. “Shh!” he said. He pointed into the woods.

He wasn’t pointing in my direction, but I flattened myself on the ground anyway.

The two of them stood there with their heads jutting forward, peering into the darkness off to my right, listening intently and sweeping their eyes around.

I lay there motionless. Surely they’d hear my breathing and my heart hammering in my chest.

Leon reached into me front of his van and pulled out a shotgun. It was an autoloader, the kind that held five shells in the magazine and another in the chamber and would fire as rapidly as you could pull the trigger. He held it in one hand like a pistol, aiming at the sky. His elbow braced the stock against his hip, and his finger was hooked in the trigger guard.

The two of them stood motionless for a minute, listening and looking intently. Then Leon lowered me shotgun to his side and pointed it into the bushes. He jabbed Paul with his elbow and jerked his chin toward where his gun was aiming.

Paul flashed his light into the bushes. Then Leon yelled, “Git on out here or I’ll blow holes in you.”

Leon moved quickly toward the bushes. I heard the rustle of brush, a cracking stick, a muffled “Shit!” and the sound of someone crashing through the woods.

As I watched, Leon stopped, lifted his shotgun to his shoulder, aimed up into the trees, and fired.

The muzzle flash was a quick explosion of brilliant flame in the darkness. The report echoed through the trees. When it died, I heard a new voice, high-pitched and childlike and frightened. “Okay, okay,” it wailed. “Jesus. Don’t shoot me.”

“That was stupid,” growled Forten. “You want every cop in Maine here?”

“What, you wanted ’im to get away?” said Leon. “You,” he called. “Git on out here. Come on, now, before old Leon blows yer head off.”

There was a moment of silence. Then I heard the sounds of someone shuffling through the woods off to my right. Then a figure entered the clearing.

Paul shone his flashlight on him.

He was holding his hands up in the air. His hair was long and yellow.

It was Paris LeClair.

L
EON GRINNED AT PARIS
. “Well, well,” he chuckled. “Lookee what we got here. A pretty little yellow-haired girl. Awful late at night for a little girl to be out alone in the woods, ain’t it?”

“I know what you guys’re doin’,” said Paris. “He looked at Leon. “Weezie told me about them swastikas, and I guess I know what you done to Miz Gillespie, and—”

With a motion too quick for my eyes to follow, Leon swung his shotgun, smashing the barrel against the side of Paris’s face.

Paris collapsed on the ground. I could see blood trickling down his cheek. He pushed himself up on his elbow. “You guys killed old Noah, too, didn’t you? What’re you dumpin’ in the water, anyway?”

This time Leon swung the heavy butt of his shotgun. Paris managed to block it with his forearm. The crack of the impact and Paris’s sudden scream left no doubt that a bone had been snapped.

“Hang on,” said Paul to Leon. “Lay off for a minute. I want to talk to this boy.” He ambled over to where Paris was lying on the ground and looked down at him. “What’s your name?”

“Fuck off,” mumbled Paris.

“This here is young Paris LeClair,” said Leon. “A dumb little local kid with a knocked-up girlfriend.” He nudged Paris in the ribs with the toe of his boot, then turned to Paul. “What’re we gonna do with this pitiful little critter?”

“We’ve got no choice,” said Paul. His hand slipped inside his windbreaker and came out holding an automatic handgun. He pointed the gun down at Paris’s face. “Now you listen to me, boy,” he said.

Paris started to sit up. He was cradling his broken arm with his other hand. “Up yours,” he said, and he lifted his chin and spat at Paul.

Paul kicked his shattered arm. Paris screamed and fell back onto the ground.

“You ready to talk to me?” Paul said softly.

Paris’s eyes flickered open. He nodded.

“Does anybody know you came here?”

“Someone knows, all right,” Paris said. “He’s gonna come looking, too.”

“Really?” said Paul. “And who would that be?”

“Ain’t telling you, asshole.”

“It’s too late to lie, I’m afraid. Not that it would’ve made any difference.” He aimed his automatic at Paris’s face. “You should’ve stayed home with Mommy and Daddy. Too bad…”

Paris squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away. He looked like a frightened little boy. Which, of course, he was.

This was the kid who thought he’d knocked up his girlfriend and was proud of his manhood. The kid who was so affected by watching
Schindler’s List
that he couldn’t breathe. The kid who said my boys were lucky to have a father like me.

And the man who I figured had killed Charlotte Gillespie and Noah Hollingsworth was aiming a gun at his face.

I couldn’t hide in the bushes and watch Paul Forten murder Paris LeClair, too.

I took a deep breath, got my feet under me, sprang forward through the hemlocks, and charged down the little slope directly at them, howling like an enraged bull elephant. I was vaguely aware of Paul’s head jerking around to look at me. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open. He brought up the gun and started to swing it around at me. I plowed into him, knocking him backward, and we both sprawled on the ground. One of his fingers gouged at my eyes, and I twisted away from his knee as he tried to ram it into my groin. I grappled for the gun with both hands. I got hold of one of his fingers, gritted my teeth, and bent it as hard as I could. I felt it snap. Paul screamed in my ear.

An arm hooked around my neck and hauled me off him, and then something heavy and hard smashed into my kidneys.

I lay curled on my side, swallowing hard against the terrible shafts of fire burning in my back.

“You shoulda minded your own business, Mr. Coyne,” said Leon conversationally. “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.” He was standing over me. His shotgun was aimed at my chest.

Paul came over. He was holding his right hand against his chest, gripping his wrist in his other hand. He peered down at me. “Brady?” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What’s in the van?” I said.

Paul shook his head. “That’s none of your business.”

“You’ve been dumping something poisonous in these old holding tanks,” I said. “And when the water from the beaver pond backed up, it started leaching into the stream. It must be nasty stuff. Charlotte Gillespie’s dog drank it and died. So did the beavers, probably, and it killed all the trout in the pond. What happened? Did Charlotte figure it out? Is that why you murdered her?”

Paul looked over at Leon. “Come on. Drag him to the tank.” He gritted his teeth. “My fucking finger’s killing me. Son of a bitch broke my finger.”

Leon leaned his shotgun against his truck, reached down, and grabbed me under the arms. He dragged me over to the fieldstone tank with the plywood top and let me fall to the ground.

My knee was throbbing. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, and a sudden wave of dizziness swept over me. Then I felt my stomach clutch and heave. I bent forward and vomited on the ground.

“Hell,” said Leon. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“Get the top off the tank,” said Paul to Leon.

Leon pushed and shoved at the plywood covering and managed to slide it off onto the ground.

I tried to shake the dizziness out of my head. I was aware of a tingly numbness in my tongue. It felt swollen and hard. The ground seemed to be tipping under me, and I puked again.

When I looked up, Paul was standing over me. He was holding his automatic in his left hand. I was looking straight up into the bore. “Sorry you’re not feeling well,” he said. “It’ll go away in a minute, I promise you. Come on, now. Stand up.”

“Fuck you,” I mumbled.

“Give me a hand here,” he said to Leon.

Leon grabbed me under the arms and tried to lift me to my feet. I slumped there, too weak and sick to resist, as he wrestled me up onto the edge of the tank so that my head was hanging over the top.

The odor that rose from it was more rank and rotten than anything I’d ever smelled in any outhouse. I gagged and retched again. I turned my head and aimed for Leon’s pants, but it just dribbled down the front of my sweatshirt. He muttered, “Jesus,” and dropped me onto the ground.

Then Paul was there again, his automatic only inches from my face. I felt so sick that I almost welcomed the relief that was coming, and I couldn’t do anything except close my eyes and wait for the big white light to flash and then expire in my brain.

The explosion made my ears ring, and it took me a moment to realize that it was not Paul’s gun that had fired, and that I was not the one who was screaming.

Paul was writhing on the ground beside me, holding his thigh with both hands. Blood was oozing out from between his fingers.

Paris was holding Leon’s shotgun in his good hand. It was braced on his broken forearm and pointing steadily at Leon. “Sit down there beside him, Mr. Staples,” said Paris. “Do it now or I swear to God I’ll shoot you, too.”

Leon shrugged and sat down beside Paul, who was lying on his side, moaning softly. A big puddle of dark blood had formed on the leaves under him. His eyes were closed and his face looked pale.

Without taking his eyes off Leon, Paris said, “Mr. Coyne, you okay?”

“I’m awful sick,” I muttered.

“You strong enough to hold a gun on these guys?”

I closed my eyes against another wave of dizziness. “I don’t know.”

Paris came over and handed the shotgun to me. “Just for a minute,” he said. “Come on. Hang in there. You can do it.”

I braced my back against the side of the tank and held the shotgun in my lap, pointing it at Leon, who was sitting on the ground beside Paul about ten feet from me.

I took deep breaths. I didn’t want to puke again.

Paris reached down, picked up Paul’s automatic handgun, and tossed it into the vile-smelling tank. He was holding his broken arm against his stomach, and I could see the pain on his face.

“I gotta go get help,” he said to me. “Can you keep the gun on them?”

“I don’t know how long I can hang on,” I said. “I never felt so sick…”

Leon was grinning. “So now what’re you gonna do, boy?” he said to Paris. “We gonna sit here lookin’ at each other until poor Mr. Coyne dies? Or you gonna let me go?”