From a Dead Sleep (30 page)

For Lisa, she felt that her last glance back at the cottage was like watching a door close on her life as she had come to know it.

They made their way through the forest and before long Sean heard the sound of crashing water—the same sound he had heard on the other side of the large wall in front of the cul-de-sac he had parked by. They approached an opening in the woods where sunlight divided the trees like a hot knife through butter.

“Your car is down here?” she asked, breathing heavily.

The sun’s reflection across a body of water glimmered brightly, almost blindingly in contrast to the cover of the forest. The steepness of the hill turned abruptly sharp, causing both of them to pick up speed as they flailed down the slope across elevated roots and through low-lying limbs.

Something on the ground hooked Sean’s foot. He lost his balance and stumbled wildly forward. His arms flung before him to break his fall as he crashed chest first into what looked for a second like snow under the radiant sun. But it wasn’t snow. It was sand—soft, white sand like one would see in the trenches at a golf course. Lisa leapt down to his side where she saw him scrambling to climb to his feet after grabbing the envelope that he had dropped.

As he rose and adjusted his eyes, it was as if he had entered a portal into a different world. Sleek, crystal-blue waves stemming out from an endless horizon of water that crashed when they reached the shore. A large schooner could be seen far from land, skimming smoothly across the water. Seagulls hovered in the air, crying out into a light breeze as they dropped in unison to greet an elderly man with glasses and a brown leisure hat. A young child beside him held scraps of bread above his head. The child’s laughter sounded as foreign as French to Sean at that moment.

“I don’t get it! Did you come in a boat?” he heard Lisa ask.

Geography had admittedly never been Sean’s strong suit, and he hadn’t a clue until just then that Lake Michigan resembled a coastal ocean. It was radiant and beautiful, like a painting, crushing the preconceived notion of a large pool of glorified sewer water that he had long pictured in his head.

“What?” he asked, realizing that she’d spoken.

“Where’s your car?”

Their attention immediately turned to the sharp sound of wood snapping somewhere up along the hillside they had just repelled down. He peered to his left where he saw the large, imposing wall at the far end of the beach about a hundred yards away where sand flowed out from under slabs of concrete and large rocks.

“Come on!”

He grabbed her wrist again.

She complied but glanced back at the old man and apparently his grandkid as they ran, wondering if she should have pled for their help or asked them to call the police.

Sean continually snapped his head back to check for anyone coming after them as they sprinted through the sand that hindered their forward motion. No one.

When they reached the wall, the out-of-breath duo climbed up a short hill of gravel and jagged chunks of broken cement to an adjacent retaining wall. Sean bent and deftly hoisted her up by her ankle with surprising grace, glaring back down the beach as he did. He gasped as he made out a male figure jogging out from the forest and onto the beach. He reached for his gun, drawing it out in front of him in one fluent motion. When a female figure joined the male in an affectionate embrace, however, Sean took a breath.

Lisa had hooked her arms across the top of the wall and pulled herself up. Sean did the same, but it took two tries. They straddled the top and crawled their way along, prying some imposing tree branches aside in the process. The sound of traffic trickled in through the leaves before they crossed an intersection where the two walls met. One last stolen glance from Sean detected no one. They dropped down to the other side of the wall where they were no longer visible from the beach.

Moments later, the bald tires from the old Nova whined as Sean rounded a corner quickly. Lisa’s small body was pumping with adrenaline. She hadn’t bothered with a seatbelt and she paid the price for that oversight when the sharp turn sent her sliding along the front seat’s slick vinyl and into Sean’s shoulder. She felt the sweat of his sleeve along her face for only a moment before scrambling back to her side.

She spun around to face the rear window, straddling the seat and draping her arms over the backboard to check for pursuers.

“You see anyone?” he asked, finding it difficult to share his attention between the curves of the road and the rearview mirror.

She shook her head, chest heaving in and out. She swallowed and turned toward him with questioning eyes.

“Please pull over,” she asked in a tone that echoed her glazed and reddened eyes.

“What?”

“Just . . . I need a minute. We need to figure this out.”

He checked the mirror again while a couple strands of sweat traced the outline of his jaw before disappearing into the scruff of his shallow beard. Once content that they weren’t being followed, he took a left turn at the next intersection and quickly whipped down the first side street.

The two found themselves at the inlet of a residential dead end where he was sure they couldn’t be seen from the main road. The unfinished homes that surrounded them were skeletons of natural wood and plastic tarps. Only a couple of them looked anywhere close to being finished.

Lisa began to speak, but he stopped her with a finger. He turned his head to glare out the back for a good ten seconds to verify they didn’t have any company. He then turned his attention to her.

“We need to call the police. Do you have a cellphone?”

He shook his head and held out his hand in an attempt to calm her though his heart wasn’t beating any slower than hers. “You need to know some things before we do anything else.”

She looked at him as if he were crazy. “We
have
to call the police!” she shouted like a mother scolding her child. “Are you kidding me? I was attacked! People are trying to kill me!”

“I know that!” he snapped back. “I was there, remember? What you don’t know is the whole story! There’s more going on here than . . .” He wasn’t sure where to begin. “There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about!”

He reached between his legs and pulled the large envelope out from under his thigh. “Your husband wrote you a letter,” he said gravely. “Read it before we call anyone.”

The Previous Friday

Chapter 32

A
n uneven row of green and brown beer bottles implode at their centers as speeding lead slashes through them like they were decapitated by the single swipe of a samurai sword. Fine, glass shrapnel floats in the light breeze behind them, appearing as dust before dissipating into nothingness.

The rest of the men look to be cackling like crows around me, and they are slapping their hands together in applause. I join in when Alvar twists his head in our direction. The glare from the diminishing, early evening sunlight bounces off his glasses and his mane of silver hair, sparing me from the fountain of pride that is most certainly emitting from his dark eyes judging from the way that those crooked, yellow teeth of his show in a smile. The small shadows cast inside the deep pockmarks along both sides of his cheeks make his face look like one of the numerous weathered rocks that line the forest floor. In his large hands, he’s holding a weapon Frank described to me as a “scoped thirty-thirty rifle.” I have no idea what the number means but it looks shorter in length than most rifles I’ve seen. It has a wooden stock behind black metal and it doesn’t really seem to fit Alvar, who’s a city guy like the rest of us. Neither do his new cowboy boots that he bought in town yesterday. But when in Rome, I suppose . . .

The scenery here is beautiful. It really is. Standing among the tall, needled trees and struck with the surrounding smell of pine, it’s an aura I’d nearly forgotten.

From his post about forty yards away beside the remnants of the bottles, Tony excitedly yells something into his walkie-talkie, which prompts everyone else to laugh. It’s absurd that he’s even using the radio. It’s not as if the others couldn’t hear him if he just raised his voice. He’s not all that far away. Alvar likes his toys though, and he likes them even more when he has a playmate. The transmitters are fancy, with more buttons than you’d find on a phone. I’m sure each feature has its own useful purpose, but right now they’re as pointless as two paper cups with a long string fastened between them.

Frank is squeezing a rush of saline solution up his nose again. It’s the third time I’ve seen him shove the tip of that white tube up his nostrils today. His allergies don’t like the climate. I’m surprised he even came along on this trip. He’s getting up there in age, and if there’s any muscle work needed, it shouldn’t be anything that Alvar can’t handle. Clad in a burgundy polo shirt and slacks, he’s cleaned up a little more than usual.

“Your head’s getting a little color,” I tell him after eying the redness along his bald, freckled head.

Without bothering to turn around to face me, he raises his middle finger in response. He’s not enjoying himself at all out here in the wilderness.

I glance over at Moretti and Arianna. He’s decked out in a charcoal Italian suit that was probably tailor-made for him years ago. It still looks sleek and in fine shape, but its buttons are pulled so tight that it seems they could burst at any second. Every shoe-polished, black, glistening hair is in place along his broad scalp. Arianna is dressed to kill in a short, black cocktail dress far more suitable for a night out on the Vegas strip than in the mountains of Colorado. Moretti never misses an opportunity to show her off to business partners though, and tonight will be no different. She’s clearly feeling the chill from the stirring wind, even with a fur stole draped over her bronze-colored shoulders. Her toned arms are crossed in front of her, and her glossy, thick lips are puckered in annoyance.

Moretti notices my attention turned to them and he nudges his stout elbow into Arianna’s side, misinterpreting my gaze as an appeal for someone to relay to me whatever joke Tony just made. Visibly irritated by his touch, her yellowish eyes greet mine and she signs to me what Moretti is certain to believe is an interpretation.

“Have you ever fucked in the forest?” is the message she articulates with her hands.

Moretti laughs under his thick mustache when my eyes widen, thinking I’m reacting to Tony’s words. He hasn’t a clue what she just told me. Arianna’s lips twist into a seductive smirk, and I’m forced to look away to avoid turning red.

Alvar raises the partnering walkie-talkie to his mouth, with the muzzle of the rifle in his other hand lowered toward the dirt. He broadcasts a message back to Tony, turning his back to us first so I’m not sure what he’s saying. From across the narrow, open alley in front of us, Tony, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, disappears behind a bordering tree. He retrieves what looks to be a long, broken-off tree branch. It doesn’t look completely dead like the hundred other ones that litter the ground around us. It’s got some green on it and is rather flexible, bent into the shape of a cane. Tied to the tip of the cane is a short piece of rope or twine that is attached at its bottom to a dangling object that has some weight to it—weight that is the cause of the bend in the branch. At first glance, it looks to me like a child’s stuffed animal. When it begins wildly flapping around in the air, I realize it’s no toy. It’s a wild rabbit, scared out of its mind.

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” I see Moretti mouth with a half-smile draped across his face. “Who are you now? Elmer fucking Fudd?” He snorts in captivation.

Arianna’s not amused, but Tony sure is. He’s dancing around like an idiot teenager while holding the branch up in the air as a trophy, like a fisherman who’s just caught the big one. He then wedges the base of the branch between two of the relatively flat rocks that played table to the beer bottles. The branch holds firm and vertically in place as the rabbit squirms and kicks, to no avail. Tony skips out of the line of fire.

Alvar gets off on this stuff—tormenting the helpless. At least it’s just a rabbit today. Lord only knows how he managed to trap it alive in the first place.

He’s hunched forward now, sizing up his new target. From behind, his pearly hair above his broad, tall shoulders makes him look like a silverback gorilla who’s envisioning himself devouring a banana. To everyone’s surprise, he lets the rifle drop from his hand to the ground. We all exchange glances, wondering what theatrics are in store for us. He twists his shoulders parallel to the direction of the struggling animal. He then slowly raises his arm closest to his prey. He holds it there, outstretched to its extent, and he looks like a magician ready to will something to appear in front of him. He holds perfectly still in the position and seconds that seem like minutes go by. Arianna doesn’t bother to watch, completely agnostic to the display. But she jumps when Alvar’s elbow snaps and gray mist appears in front of him. I can tell by the others’ reactions as well that a sharp noise just discharged.

I poke my head up over Alvar’s shoulder and see Tony again bouncing around like an imbecile, now pointing to the bloodied, lifeless corpse of the rabbit. When Alvar turns back to us to take a bow for his performance, I spot a small, toy-like gun poking its muzzle out from under his jacket sleeve. Frank snickers at the sight of it and asks to take a closer look at the weapon, but Alvar shakes his head in rejection. The magician’s not revealing how his trick was pulled off. This irritates Frank, who swats his own hand in the air and starts walking back toward the house in protest, much to Alvar’s toothy delight.

Tony comes sprinting in from his stage with his cigarette pinched between two of his fingers, trying to latch onto Alvar’s glory like a pilot fish swimming under the belly of a shark, eager for scraps. No one pays him any mind, even with his trademark dopey, attention-begging grin plastered on his face. With his dark hair spiked out in front of him and his oily complexion, he looks more like he could be Moretti’s teenage son than one of his paid flunkies. He’s wearing a dark gray, short-sleeved dress shirt with his bolo tie in an apparent attempt to fit in among the other Colorado ranch hands in town. He probably bought it wherever Alvar bought his boots.