Swift Edge (13 page)

An idea hit. Why not check out Bobrova’s cabin now and hit the road for home? The traffic would be lighter heading south, and I could be basking in my hot tub by eleven thirty or midnight. The Glenmorangie made the idea seem like a good one, and I quickly retrieved my bag and checked out. Memorizing my MapQuested directions to the cabin by the dome light in my car, I hit the road again, turning south on Route 7. Almost immediately, I slipped the Subaru into low gear as the road headed uphill at a steep angle, slicked by the still-falling snow. Lights glowed from houses clustered on my left, while a dark area on the right was probably a meadow. My headlights skittered off red eyes on the shoulder, and I hit my brakes, fishtailing slightly, as six elk sauntered across the road in front of me, unfazed by my presence. My heart beat faster at the near miss—no one wins in a car-elk collision—and I pressed the gas gently as the last elk’s white butt bounded out of sight.

I passed mile marker seven and the dude ranch that were my landmarks and looked for the driveway that should lead to the cabin. I missed it the first time and flipped a U-ey, cursing the snow that was making it tough to read the house numbers nailed to trees. I found the number on my second pass and urged the Subaru into the slight gap between the trees that appeared to be a driveway. The grade was steep and the road unpaved. The car lurched over a small boulder and nosed into a shallow ditch to the left of the driveway, wheels spinning uselessly. Damn, damn, double damn. I threw it into reverse, and the car rocked back onto the driveway. Thank God. I might have to walk to the cabin from here, but at least I wasn’t stuck for the night. Grabbing a flashlight from my glove box and my ski parka from the backseat, I abandoned the Subaru and headed uphill on foot.

The cone of light from my flashlight showed only a short length of driveway. When I scanned it to either side, it glanced off the trunks of lodgepole pines and scrub oaks that merged into an impenetrable wall of darkness a few feet off the driveway. I shivered and slipped my arms into my parka, zipping it to my chin. I trudged uphill. A tenth of a mile later, my feet were cold, the hems of my jeans heavy with snow, and I was contemplating suing the hot-waterless motel for breach of contract resulting in RSD … really stupid decision-making. Just then, a glimmer of light on my right told me I’d arrived. I studied the clearing. I could make out the bulk of the cabin as a darker rectangle against the snowy background of trees. A faint light seeped from beneath a door and illuminated a step. A stair with a boot print captured in the inch of snow coating it, I discovered as I crept closer. Someone had been here since it started snowing. Someone with boots several sizes larger than mine. I held my breath and listened. I heard nothing from inside. Should I aim for surprise and burst through the door unannounced (assuming it was unlocked), or try the socially acceptable route?

I knocked. “Dmitri?” My voice sounded small, deadened by snow and wilderness and darkness. “Hello?”

Nothing. I tried the knob. It turned. Avoiding the boot print, I stepped across the threshold and found myself in a windowless laundry room crowded with a washer, dryer, utility sink, and small rowboat propped against the wall. The light came from a Nemo night-light plugged into a socket six inches above the floor. Something smelled off, maybe mildewy clothes left in the washer. I left the door open to air out the space. Cautiously, I inched into the room, my boots skidding on tired linoleum. My hip clanged into the dryer. Shit! I stilled, but heard no response from inside. Impatient now, and sensing nothing but emptiness, I pushed open the interior door, groping for a light switch along the wall. I flicked it. Nothing.

I swept the beam of the flashlight in front of me. For a moment, I thought someone had left the windows open and snow had drifted into the room. A second glance, however, showed me that the drifts were stuffing from inside the sofa and easy chairs. Someone had searched this room much more thoroughly—and viciously—than Dmitri’s apartment. I scuffed forward through the debris of confettied paper from an overturned shredder—a strange item for a mountain retreat—and feathers from eviscerated pillows. Glass shards from a shattered TV and computer monitor glinted when the light flashed over them. The beam glanced off an old rotary phone, an antler chandelier, a Coors can lodged against a space heater, and the stainless steel of appliances in the kitchen, a continuation of the living room/dining room delineated by parquet flooring rather than the great room’s low-pile carpet. My steps slowed as I neared the kitchen and saw a dark, asymmetric puddle staining the floor. I trained the flashlight on it and bent over to confirm my suspicions. I sniffed. Blood. A lot of blood. Not totally hardened, by the look of it, so fairly recent blood. Maybe Dmitri—or whoever had been staying here—had shot himself an elk and dressed it on the kitchen floor, but somehow I didn’t think so. I backed up a step, reaching for my cell phone to dial 911.

The same smell from the laundry room was much stronger in here, and I finally identified it as my finger paused over the nine on my cell phone: gas. I needed to get out. Breathing shallowly now, my head beginning to thump, I sprinted toward the laundry room, tripping over a bolster by the couch. I skidded several feet on my knees, regained my feet, and reached the laundry room as a phone began to ring behind me. Two more steps—
Whump!
The force of the cabin exploding lifted me from the threshold and slammed me into a drift at the base of a tree. My head thudded against the trunk and I blacked out.

15

Gigi Goldman shifted from one cheek to the other in the driver’s seat of the Hummer, trying not to rock the parabolic microphone she had aimed at the window of Tattoo4U. Who knew your rear end could fall asleep? After two hours of sitting in the small lot across the street from the shop, with the temperature steadily dropping, her whole body felt as tight as Joan Rivers’s face. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to hook the recorder up to the microphone, so she was having to take notes on the conversations from inside the shop, most of which had to do, not surprisingly, with the choosing and application of tattoos.

There hadn’t been a lot of activity in or around the shop. Pedestrian traffic had been light, with the bulk of it ducking into the liquor store two doors down from Tattoo4U and emerging minutes later with brown bags or a six-pack. One old bum, drunk maybe, stayed slumped beside the liquor store door, the bottle in his hand traveling to his mouth at regular intervals. He wore a shapeless coat and wiped his mouth with the scarf wound around his neck. The convenience store with the Asian signs had seen steady traffic, too, and Gigi was wondering if she could dash over there to use the bathroom when a slim male figure emerged from the door of Tattoo4U. Gigi updated her notes.

Next to “White male, 20s, black Megadeth sweatshirt, arr 4:13pm,” she wrote “Dep 5:02pm.” Nothing of interest had transpired during his time in the shop, and Gigi looked at her sparse notes with despair. She wasn’t one step closer to finding Kungfu than when she arrived. It had taken her close to half an hour and two changes of location to figure out how to set up and aim the mike to pick up the conversations inside the shop, and it worked a treat, but no one was saying anything worth listening to. She didn’t care if the man who’d left got the barbed wire tattooed around his left bicep or his right.

A movement at the door caught her eye. It was Graham, flipping over a
CLOSED
sign. He didn’t emerge, so Gigi supposed he must exit by a back door. Should she follow him? She reached for the ignition as the sound of a door opening skritched over the microphone. Must be the back door, Gigi realized, since the front entrance remained deserted.

“You! I was expecting—” The voice was Graham’s, tenser and more clipped than Gigi had heard him earlier, his Australian accent pronounced.

“He’s not happy.” The newcomer had a flat, almost monotone voice that was unsettling in its blandness, Gigi thought. Sinister. She reached for the notebook.

“Look, mate, I promise—”

“Not good enough. The kid—”

Gigi’s brows drew together. Kid? Were they talking about Kungfu? She leaned forward, as if being closer to the dashboard would help her hear better. She missed a few words as papers rustled.

“—fix him,” the stranger was saying. Then, “You do good work. When?”

A thudding sound drowned Graham’s response.

Sweat beaded in the valley between Gigi’s breasts as she struggled to take down the conversation word for word. It didn’t sound like they were talking about tattoos. Could she be listening to a drug deal, as Charlie had suspected?

A movement to Gigi’s left caught her eye. The bum near the liquor store had pushed to his feet, leaving his bottle behind. Moving with swift strides that suggested he was neither drunk nor old, he slipped into the dark gap between Tattoo4U and the dry-cleaning store. Gigi could barely make him out in the darkness, but he seemed to have climbed onto something—a Dumpster?—and to be peering into the small window on the side of Tattoo4U. He didn’t look remotely drunk. As she watched, he pried at the bottom of the window frame with his fingertips.

Suddenly, Gigi remembered the camera. She reached for it on the passenger seat, bumping the parabolic microphone, which shivered, then fell into the passenger side footwell with a clanking sound that did not bode well for its continued operation. Gigi let out an “Oh!” of frustration, then concentrated on getting a picture of the strange man spying on the men in Tattoo4U. Trying to adjust for the darkness, Gigi snapped several shots before noticing that the slim figure had stiffened. She lowered the camera and watched as he jumped off the Dumpster and ran flat out, past the rear of the shop, disappearing from view as a wedge of light poured from the back of Tattoo4U and Graham’s voice shouted, “Hey!”

Her fingers trembling, unable to make sense of what she’d witnessed but sensing real menace, Gigi decided to abandon her surveillance post. Starting the Hummer, she backed out of the slot. She paused at the entrance to the tiny lot, then started to turn right, almost striking a bicycler who appeared from nowhere, traveling south on the sidewalk. Gigi stamped on the brakes as the rider wrenched the bicycle’s front wheel aside and stopped inches from the Hummer’s door panel. She tumbled out, saying, “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I’m so sorry,” as she hastened around the back of the vehicle to check on the biker.

“No harm done,” the man was saying, swiveling the handlebars right and left as if to check their responsiveness. The bike was an old-fashioned one with fat wheels, no gears, and a wire basket clamped to the front. “I should watch where I’m going.”

“I’m so sorry,” Gigi said again, heaving a huge sigh of relief that the man was unhurt and, apparently, unlitigious. He looked up and smiled at her. Recognition was instantaneous.

“Roger!”

“Gigi.” Roger Nutt’s smile widened. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. What are you doing down here?”

“Uh … I’m … I had to—”

“Look, I picked up a few things at the Albertson’s.” He gestured to the bag in the bike’s basket. “Let me run them home and then what say we have that dinner we were talking about? Do you like Greek? Jake and Telly’s is just down the street.”

“That sounds lovely,” Gigi said, returning his smile. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Great. Give me twenty minutes.” He straddled his bike again and pedaled off with a cheery wave.

Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Gigi clambered back into the Hummer and checked both ways three times before pulling into traffic. She’d discuss what she’d overheard with Charlie in the morning. An unaccustomed bubble expanded her chest, and she realized it was anticipation. She was looking forward to dinner with Roger Nutt. He was an attractive man—she especially liked how the corners of his mouth disappeared into his beard when he smiled—and the dolmades at Jake and Telly’s were to die for. She sped up, wanting to reach the restaurant in time to powder her nose and fix her lipstick before Roger arrived.

16

I didn’t know how long I’d been out when I awoke, but I was soaked to the skin from the waist down—my parka had protected my torso—and shivering uncontrollably, despite the blazing fire creating a Bosch-esque hell of dancing flames and shadows in the clearing. I dragged myself to a sitting position. My head hurt abominably, and I figured I was probably concussed. I sat for a moment, my back propped against the tree, and watched the cabin burn. No way was anything salvageable. A wave of nausea washed over me, maybe triggered by the strobelike effect of the reds and oranges and yellows of the flames gyrating on the blinding white snow, and I threw up. Done heaving, I scrubbed my mouth with clean snow. Yep, definitely a concussion.

A loblolly pine behind the cabin burst into flame with a loud pop of sap exploding. I needed to get help before the forest started to burn and left Bambi and Thumper homeless. Geez, I was losing it. I glanced around, looking for my cell phone, but it was hopeless. For all I knew it was a blob of shapeless plastic in the inferno. Using the tree for balance, I climbed slowly to my feet and stumbled back to the driveway by the fire’s light. Putting one foot in front of the other with great care, I headed downhill to my car. Without my flashlight, I veered off the path more than once, getting slapped with needles from low-hanging pine branches before finding my way back to the driveway.

After ten soggy, cold, miserable minutes, I reached my car. The moon chose that moment to peep from behind a cloud, and I stared in dismay. The car that I had left in the middle of the driveway was now lodged in the ditch along the left side of the drive. It lay on the driver’s side. The passenger side was a mangled mess of metal, and the headlights and windshield were busted. Something big and fast coming downhill from the cabin had plowed right through it. If there’d been more light, I would have seen the tire tracks and been forewarned. As it was, I had to fight to keep back tears. Someone or a couple of someones had parked a vehicle behind the cabin where it wouldn’t be seen. They’d ransacked the cabin. Someone had been injured or killed, as the blood in the kitchen testified. Ransacker or ransackee? Dmitri? No way to know. They’d turned on the gas and waited for it to fill the cabin. Had they seen me arrive? Had they deliberately ignited the gas in an attempt to kill me? Or would I have been collateral damage?