One We Love, The (26 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

P
aul chattered
nonstop for the first three miles. I only half listened, my mind going back
over everything we’d just learned. Mikey was in danger. I was sure of it. He’d
seen or heard something. Something that had scared him so badly that he
couldn’t even tell his mother about it. And it was Clotilde who’d visited them
after I did, inciting their retreat to the farm. As much as I disliked her, it
didn’t fit with my suspicions, but maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it
was
money that was the driving force of the murders.

“It’s a good thing she agreed to let you talk to the
police.” Paul’s voice broke into my reverie. “Are you going to talk to Pete?”
Paul knew Durrant from AA too. Pete was one of the few men who willingly hung
out with Paul. His awkward neediness scared most off.

I answered the first part of his comment. “Paul, she agreed
because she’s not going to be there when we get back. She’s taking off again.
She’s a runner and she’s scared.”

“What?” He swung around in the seat, looking back through
the rear window. “If she leaves, we might never find her again. We have to go
back. We’ve got to keep talking to her. Doesn’t she—”

“No. We have to get to Durrant and get him out there before
she can take off. I’m guessing Mitch will go with them this time. And you’re
right, there’s no telling where they’ll go so we have to hurry.”

I was doing 78 mph, bracing on the curves and hugging the
center line to keep clear away from the soft gravel edge that would suck me
down into the ditch if I wavered too far over. Paul clung gamely to the grab
bar over the door and didn’t complain. I was reluctant to take Hwy.53 back to
town. At the speed I was going, I was sure to attract the attention of a fine
officer of the law. I wasn’t worried about the ticket, but I didn’t want to
lose the time.

Problem was, I didn’t know the area very well. As tempting
as taking a back road short cut might be, too often they’d take you miles out
of nowhere. They enticed unwary drivers. They
seemed
to lead in the
right direction, looking invitingly straightforward. A clear shot from here to
there. But often, after several miles of confident I-found-a-short-cut joy, the
road would take a sharp left (or right, depending on which would be most
inconvenient). More times than I cared to count, I’d find myself winding my way
around farms and creek beds only to have the road suddenly peter out into a cow
path, or turn to gravel, or dead end into a corn field.

I took the highway.

We made good time, hitting Chippewa Falls in just under
twenty-five minutes. I tossed my purse into Paul’s lap. “Find my phone, okay? I
don’t have Durrant’s number but—”

He held the purse away like it’d been dipped in cow shit,
horror slicking over his face. “I can’t look in there. That’s . . .  Geez!”

“Paul, it’s not kryptonite.”
And you’re not Superman.
Didn’t
say it. “Just find it so I can call Sue and get Pete’s number.”

He peered into its depths warily. Dipping a tentative hand
in, he brought out my wallet. Another dip: my makeup case. If he looked inside
that he might find my spare tampon. It would kill him.

Grabbing my purse back, I started rummaging around the
bottom. Like most purses these days, it had come with a nice organizer pocket
for a cell phone but, for some unknown reason, my phone usually slipped out.
Digging deeper, I brought out a pack of gum, a grungy lip balm, and a
rectangular, turquoise bit of plastic that I didn’t recognize. It looked like a
memory drive, but I didn’t have a turquoise one.

 “Shouldn’t you be looking at the road?” Paul asked.

I pulled over abruptly, slamming the car into park.  

 “Letty? What is that?” He started to reach for the devise,
but I pulled it away as dread rose like bile in my throat. “Letty?” Paul tried
again.

“It’s a Buddy tracker,” I said.

G
oing back, I
buried the speedometer. Paul made little squeaky sounds. I think he was
praying. Someone needed to. For once I was hoping I would pick up a police
escort. I planned to enter the farm’s driveway with a string of cop cars behind
me like a parade.

No such luck.

We’d been gone less than an hour, but a different car was
parked next to the Wrangler when I skidded up to the house. It looked familiar,
like maybe one I’d seen at the shelter, but I wasn’t a car person, and wasn’t
certain. Just seeing it made my heart thud against my ribs.

Nobody answered my knock. I didn’t try a second time. The
door was locked and I went in, Paul following at my heels.

We found Karissa on the floor, the steak knife next to her.
Red splotches of blood spattered across the counter and walls--an
impressionistic interpretation of horror—and  her head lay in a pool of it. Her
breathing was thin and raspy. The baby wailed from somewhere deeper in the
house. Grabbing a kitchen towel from the counter, I threw it at Paul. “Help
her!” I took off at a run for the back rooms.

Myka was in his crib, red-faced and screaming full throttle.
He was safe. I left him there. A quick run through the house told me we were
the only ones there. When I made it back to the kitchen, I found Paul kneeling
next to Karissa, heedless of the blood, holding the towel to her head. His cell
phone was open on the floor next to him and a woman’s tiny voice issued from
it, giving first aid instructions.

His face had gone ashen and he was shaking so hard that his
glasses shook on his nose as he looked up at me. But he held the compress
tightly.

“The baby’s okay. I’ve gotta find Mikey.” My heart was
beating so hard I could barely hear myself talk. Paul nodded and turned back to
his charge.

I ran for the barn.

CHAPTER SIXTY

S
omebody had slid
one of the big, wooden doors slightly open on its track. I could slip in
quietly. The problem with that was I didn’t know what—or who—lay beyond. I’d be
following directly on the heels of the killer.

I preferred coming at things from another direction.

I skirted the barn looking for a side entrance. I didn’t
want to face her head on. I had one advantage—I was pretty sure I knew where
Mikey was—and I didn’t want to lose it. The weeds were fierce along the side,
but a tractor trail made me think I’d find what I was looking for.

And I did. A regular, people-sized door had been placed
midway down the east side. I gripped the metal, D-shaped latch, praying it
wouldn’t squeak. The metal was warm from the sun, another factor that worried
me. I’d be blinded as soon as I entered the dark interior. Whoever was in there
would have me at an advantage so I took the time to close my eyes, cupping my
hand over them, willing my eyes to dilate. It gave me time to listen, but if
anybody was moving around inside, I couldn’t hear them.

Enough. I sucked a deep breath and slipped inside. Dark,
yeah, everything in gray tones, but not as bad as it would have been if I’d
walked straight in. Irregular shafts of light stabbed through splits in the
weathered walls, through knotholes, and ragged gaps low along the wall where
wood met stone; rat doors, my daddy used to call those. I shivered.

Senses I rarely relied on came alive. Smells rushed in: horse,
the heady, distinctive smell that all horse lovers inhale like ambrosia; cow, too,
but an old smell, not as insistently pungent as if they were still raised here;
hay; straw; dust; diesel. Barn smells that triggered memories of my childhood
home on the farm, before Daddy died and we had to move.

And hearing. I felt like my very skin was straining to hear.
I could have been fooled into thinking the silence was pure had I not known
that a deviant version of hide-n-seek was playing out inside. It felt like the
barn was breathing. After a moment of concentrating, I was sure I heard
something. Something moving deep inside, but so quietly that I couldn’t be sure
it wasn’t my imagination.

I felt exposed standing so close to the door and slid over
to the wall, a wooden partition, the first in a series of box stalls. A
concrete strip ran in front of the stalls, the first thread of what I knew
would be a concrete and wood maze. Farmers didn’t plan for “flow” in these old
barns. They’d throw a wall up here, tear one down there, whatever they had to
do to suit the purpose of their current need using the least amount of money
and time, with whatever tools they had available. MacGyver had probably been a
farmer before that secret agent gig.

And I was stuck in the middle of it. In the dark. With a
killer and a traumatized six-year-old.

Splendid.

I had to find the stairs to the hay loft. Right or left? I
decided stairs would most likely be at the front of the barn and headed left. I
wanted to keep to the shadows along the stall fronts, but I found if I got too
close my clothes snagged on the rough planks. It created too much noise, not to
mention the likelihood of running a needle-sharp splinter into my skin.

Moving away from the side door meant moving away from the
light. A feeling of Jungian foreboding swept over me as I moved deeper into the
darkness. Instinct wrestled with irrationality as my senses continued on the high
alert designed to keep me safe while, at the same time, I fought a battle with
hysteria.

Involuntary shrieking has a tendency to give your position
away.

As a child, I was always the first one found in the marathon
games of hide-and-seek—the normal kind—that my cousins and I played every
summer. I’d find a fantastic, guaranteed can’t-find-me hiding spot and then be
consumed by the urge to giggle or to make peeping sounds, giving my position
away. I always felt sorry for the kid who was It. Co-dependency starts early.

 I felt no such urge with this It.

A third of the way down the hall, a narrow offshoot aisle
created a dilemma for me: keep forward or turn toward the barn’s center?
Usually I liked options, but this time all the choices felt like traps. Having
a killer at the end of one of them does that.

I kept moving forward, body systems going haywire under the
burden of fear they carried. The barn was cool, yet I was slick with sweat.
Despite a dry mouth, I had to pee like a race horse, but the timing seemed
ill-advised. Plus, I found that, in trying to be silent, I kept forgetting to
breathe.

Fun fact: what would normally be black dots dancing in front
of your eyes signaling impending asphyxiation turn green and sparkly in the
dark. I thought they were fireflies until the dizziness kicked in.

Another problem occurred soon after when the stall fronts gave
way to a long row of open cattle stanchions. Apparently, horses needed more
privacy than cows, which didn’t seem quite fair. On the other hand, nobody
milks horses, so they didn’t need to set up a system to keep them side to side
in a long row. What it did mean was that I would be completely exposed if I
kept going forward.

Instead, I crept up to the dividing partition that the
stanchions butted up against in order to peek through the slats. That was the
plan anyway. I’d forgotten one very important detail about stanchions. Namely,
a gutter—the concrete channel that runs behind the cow butts to deal with the
stuff cows output. The gutter makes it handy for the farmer to hose the manure
away. Very nice for the farmers. However, gutters are also very,
very
easy to stumble into.

I went sprawling. I managed, barely, to not scream, even after
barking my shins on the gutter rim and skinning both knees. Unfortunately, a
“whomph” sound escaped when I belly-flopped on the concrete pad. Crawling
forward, I huddled on the floor in front of the manger, sucking back whimpers,
tensed for an attack.

Nothing moved. I forced myself to breathe quietly, listening
hard between each breath. If she had heard me, she was probably holding still,
too. We were listening to each other listen. I shuddered.

After several heartbeats I raised myself up to look through
the boards. I found myself gazing out at a large, open area in front of the
double doors. A sort of lobby. The doors were still ajar and a large wedge of
light allowed me to see a set of stairs leading up to what would be the hayloft.
To get to them, I’d have to cross that lighted area. Right out there in the
open.

CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

I
wanted to cry. The
whole damn barn was shrouded in darkness except for the
one
section I
needed to cross. I sat back, leaning against the manger, praying for . . .
anything.

Something metallic clanged. I was fairly certain it had come
from the opposite side of the barn, farther back, deeper in. My heart was
thumping so hard I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear a second noise, but I didn’t
expect one. I imagined It, frozen as I had been after my fall. If I hurried,
I’d probably get across.

But she’d be listening now. Straining to hear any reaction
to her blunder. If she heard me go up the stairs, I’d be leading her right to
Mikey.

Just then, I heard the blessed sound of a car pulling up and
the silence after the motor shuts off. My heart leapt. The cops were here. A
door slammed, more gravel crunched, and one of the doors rumbled back along its
metal track.

Astrid stood just inside, blinking. She should have done the
eye-covering trick. If she wasn’t the killer, was she here to stop her or to
ally with her?

“Joyce?” she called. Astrid’s voice was laced with fear and
. . . deep sadness. “Joyce, I know you’re here! Come out.”

I heard something again. From the other side. Astrid heard
it, too. She darted across the entrance, hurrying through a doorway leading
toward the sound.

I took off at a dead run, hit the stairs and, for once, God
help me, kept my balance. I prayed Astrid’s noise would disguise my own and
took the stairs two at a time.

The hayloft was huge. A great, open space with timbers
curving gracefully overhead like an upside-down Noah’s ark. Long ago, as a
fully working farm, this space would have been filled to the rafters with hay
or straw bales, stacked crisscross, as tight as bricks to keep the moisture
out. Now, not even a quarter of the space had been used for the current stack.
They’d used small, rectangular bales here, not the great round bales that start
dotting the fields in the fall.

If Mikey had a fort, it would be a space dug out on the flat
top of the stack, bales arranged to make a cozy hidey hole. Perfect for a
little boy running away from the world.

Or a girl. Been there.

The stack was a flat wall rising twenty feet or more. A
corner had been chipped away as the bales were removed, one by one, to feed the
horses. It was too early in the season for them to have been used much. Pasture
grass was free and plentiful.

That meant that, although I had a few feet of dislodged hay
bales to make it easier to clamber up, most of the stack rose straight up in a
vast, green wall. But there were always handholds and places to cram your foot
if you were adventurous or dexterous enough.

I was neither, but I got up, anyway.

At the top, I flung myself flat out for no other reason than
my thigh muscles had separated themselves from the parts of my leg that they
were supposed to stay tethered to. My arms were scratched into hamburger, wrist
to elbow, from the spiky stalks and my shoulders burned like someone had poured
acid down my back. If Joyce came for me now, I’d hand her the knife.

Except I
really
didn’t like knives, and the thought
of one roused me enough to peek over the side of the stack to see if Joyce or
Astrid or some murderous combination thereof had followed me up the stairs.
Nobody in sight, but I could hear them. Not the words, but their voices, shrill
and angry, somewhere down below.

I had to find Mikey. I started making my way across the
“floor” of the hay stack, watchful of gaps between the bales where a misstep
could break my ankle. It took a few minutes, but I found a break in the
pattern, a spot where the bales had been realigned, widening a hole so a kid
could slither through to the dark space beyond. The fort. I dropped to my
knees, sticking my face close to the hole, hoping Mikey wasn’t armed with a BB
gun or blow dart . . . or machete. 

“Mikey?” I whispered. It is inherently difficult to inspire
trust in a whisper. Whispers are, by nature, designed to signal danger,
mistrust, secrets. Had to work with what I had, though. “Mikey, I know you’re
there. It’s okay. I’m here to help. Your mom’s gonna be okay, buddy, but we
have to get you out of here. The police are coming.”
And so was Joyce if I
didn’t get him out of his burrow.

Nothing. I prayed I wasn’t wrong.

“Mikey, I’m going to have to move the bale. Don’t be scared.
I just have to get you out of here before . . .” Right.
Don’t be scared.
There’s a crazed woman, whom you’ve witnessed killing your therapist and
brutally attacking your mother, hunting you down, but don’t be scared. Good
lord, I was an idiot.

“Okay, go ahead and be scared. I know I am. But we have to
get out of here. We have to get outside where the police can help us.”

I heard a stirring. A pale splotch rose up through the black
opening. Mikey’s tear-streaked face came into the dim light. “You came to my
house.”

“That’s right. I talked to your mom and your Grammy.”

At the mention of his mother, Mikey face crumpled. “That
lady killed her, didn’t she?”

“No. No, Mikey. I found your mom. She’s alive.”
Oh God,
don’t let me be lying.
“She was still breathing and a friend of mine is
helping her. He called an ambulance. We’re going to be hearing the sirens any
minute.” I held my hand out. It would have been more reassuring if it wasn’t
shaking, but I’d already told him I was scared, so maybe it added an aura of
truthfulness. He let me pull him out, and we crab-crawled to the edge.

Part of me wanted to stay here, dig another Letty-sized
burrow next to Mikey’s and take up residence. It was doubtful that Joyce would
ever think to come up here. But if she did . . . we’d be trapped like rats in a
bucket.

The sounds from below were not encouraging. The arched,
gambrel roof heightened the acoustics. They’d stopped yelling, but I could
still hear something. Scuffling and thumps. Grunts. The dull thud of flesh
against flesh. I recognized that sound. So did Mikey.

“She’s fighting someone. Is that your friend?” Mikey’s voice
quavered.

“I think it’s Astrid. She came in after me. She’s trying to
stop Joyce, I think.”

It sounded like they were duking it out right at the bottom
of the stairs, explaining why the sound traveled so well. And then, a guttural
scream lifted to the rafters, darted around the timbers, and filled our ears.
Mikey ducked his head, covering his ears with his hands. The smell of urine
overtook the faded green scent of hay as his bladder let loose. I hoped it was
his.

Something bad had happened down there. Something really bad.

A raspy panting floated up the stairs. Astrid or Joyce? If
Joyce came up, I’d have no choice but to take her on so Mikey could get away.
As long as he didn’t rabbit for the fort, he’d have a chance. I found myself
gripping Mikey’s arm so tightly, I probably left dents, but he didn’t pull
away. Probably didn’t even feel it. We were frozen, eyes glued to the top of
the stairs. Watching.

She didn’t come. Instead, it got quieter. Not silent
exactly, more like a brooding hush. The slightest sounds—a footfall, cloth
whispering, the panting dopplering in retreat—gave me hope that she was moving
away.

“Is she leaving?” I whispered to Mikey. He shook his head,
confusion more than denial, I thought. “I think she’s leaving.”

I still didn’t know who I meant by “she.” If it was Astrid,
she might not know Mikey and I were here. If it was Joyce . . .

Better to assume the worst. We waited. The longer I heard
nothing, the higher my heart shrilled. I decided it was better to stay put
until we heard sirens. We had no clue where Joyce was or if she was coming
back. I listened so hard for her return that my concussed head flared up.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t sound that ambushed our senses. It
was smell.

Smoke.