The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) (22 page)

Ole’s sense of nothingness had been replaced by something else. An unspoken thing that lay deep down inside. A ghost of a thing he wanted to forget.

Morgan was a fantasy. Like an alter ego deep inside. Nothing could bring him back. No blood. Not even a vat-load of the very best vintage. He stood there shivering in a gaining breeze, wondering why he felt so close to the edge.

He ran from the marsh fowl, through giant firs and aspens and back to the tired old lodge by the river. There it was, under a hunter’s moon, bright with star glow.

The Charger was just where he left it, hidden behind a screen of trees. He pulled off a coating of broken branches and opened the trunk. Inside was a cable knit sweater, thick and gray and stinking of old man’s cologne. He saw the nozzle of the gun peeking beneath a cushion of spare clothes, let his fingers caress the glossy stock and the sling embossed with a stag’s head.

It was only a few months ago when he’d tracked an elk, but you never forget how. He’d seen a stag yesterday, four feet in the river, nose sniffing the air. It was a big one. Ole liked the meat. And so would Tess. It was too cold to be out there on her own and she would likely smell that thick gamey gravy and want some.

“I’ll fetch you home, Tess,” he murmured, checking the spring loaded well, checking the telescopic sights. He found a yellow and green box of cartridges. There were only six left.

He slammed the trunk and slung the rifle over one shoulder. Replacing a generous camouflage of pine branches over the car, he was out in the cold again, running through the trees. If she kept this up all night he’d be running well into the long golden dawn. But he knew where she was.

He could see the ruins of a small cabin through a break in the trees. The only place where red hot cinders stirred in the wind and dying flames consumed the last of them. Strangely, he felt a stirring of pity. Tess was a storm-driven girl from another land soon to be laid on the sacrificial fire.

He’d done everything Odin asked, hauled the remains up into the trees in their burlap bags and waited for the god to claim them. But they hung there during the summer months and long into the fall, and Odin was silent, taking only the blood offering from a few heads.

The rituals were tiresome and the bodies no more than a stinking mess. Blood pattered on the leaves below and Loki howled and howled until he cut them down. It was a week before he saw the animal again, snout crimson with offal.

A door opened in his mind, a memory of another land when he was a child. He was holding a lantern to his chest, windblown and timid on the threshold. The hunter met him there, rifle out before him. Possessed he was, with the face of a demon and the heart of one too. His lips were drawn back over ivory teeth, black eyes peeking beneath blood-matted hair. He had just killed a deer and the buzz of all that butchery was still in him.

Ole was afraid then just as he was now. He was afraid the hunter would find him the same way he found Morgan all because they had been peeking. He called them
stinking little rich boys.
He called them other things, too. Accused them of stealing meat from his fire. It wasn’t true. They never stole anything.

But on this day, the hunter had no ordinary visitor in his lodge. A woman with long dark hair and a face like an angel. Ole couldn’t work out what they were doing, balanced on that old wooden table, grunting and groaning like two wild hogs. It was hideous to see his mother like that but he had to know. So he watched until it was over, watched until his stomach was all dried out from the vomiting.

She said she would always love him. But she hadn’t. He thought she was a beauty queen. But she wasn’t.

He woke up crying for months to come. Years even. Whenever he pushed it aside, it came bouncing back like a lost puppy with a wagging tail. He could still see his mother, the color of her eyes and the tilt of her head. He hated what she had done.

That’s when he learned to shoot a gun. That’s when he learned to track men.

Standing at the door of the cabin now in this cold quiet wood, he saw a table turned over on its side and tattered curtains trembling in the breeze. And through the window on the far side of the room he saw something move by the corral fence and the trees.

Tessie, he thought, lifting the rifle and sighting in on his target.

There was enough moonlight to see her, a dark shadow about five feet tall. It could have just been an old coat draped over a fence post or an animal locked in fright. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought that she might already be dead, stiff and staring against that fence.

She must have heard him, knew he was there. That’s why she stood rigid like a child in the throes of playing Grandma’s Footsteps.

He lifted the rifle and fired one round at 100 yards, watched her stagger and reel about. The trees were alive with night creatures, some skittering through the trees, some howling and hooting.

To his amazement she seemed to lift herself up, body stretched out now like a wild horse. He rubbed his eyes and changed the elevation of the scope. Before he fired again, she fell and all he could see was an open space.

Calling her name, he ran to the back of the cabin, down the steps and out into the gray night world. There on the ground between an old drinking trough and the horse corral was a young elk, ears twitching, nostrils a plume of steam. One leg was caught in a twist of barbed wire, and there was a hole in the side of her face where he’d shot her.

Hardly trophy-worthy, he thought, looking at the mess he’d made.

Ole blinked, felt a throbbing in his chest. He could see perfectly in the dark, but he hadn’t seen this. The animal’s head flopped to one side, body rolling after it. He thought he heard whimpering but he knew elk didn’t whimper and he lifted his chin and sniffed.

Tess was out there watching him, listening for his footsteps in the crunchy earth. He would never see her from the ground, but perched in a tree he could see everything. That’s when he picked a lookout. A white fir with tiers of branches and a belly full of bluish-green needles. It offered enough concealment for a few hours and he could scan the ground from his high tower and pick off anything that moved.

He slung the gun over one shoulder and began to climb, keeping to the thicker branches against the trunk. He found a sturdy limb reaching out at a 45 degree angle, easy to perch on and with his back pressed against the trunk, he could nurse the gun on his lap, legs dangling on either side.

All he could see were trees running deeper and deeper into the endless shadows and directly beneath was a dusty floor barely covered with snow. Holding his breath for a moment, he listened for the modulating song of the cicadas, but the snow had silenced them. Only the pulsing hoot of an owl and the whisper of wind as it rushed between the trees. Closing his eyes, he allowed his muscles to relax and the last thing he remembered was how cold it was.

Snap!

The crunch of dried leaves. A twig perhaps. How long had he been asleep? He never slept more than twenty minutes at a stretch and he looked up through the canopy above. Darkness.

When he looked down he saw a gradual slope heading to the left leading to a game trail. To the right was the small cabin and the horse corral, and a few feet in front of the fence was the dead doe. It was the shadow that lay beside the animal that fascinated him, brought a gradual smile to his face. Keeping warm within those soft flanks was a leggy girl in hiking boots, head tilted upwards and staring right at him.

“Tess,” he whispered, raising his gun. “You clever girl.”

Darryl saw the silver cross against Pastor Razz’s sweater, flickering like a blazing hearth. “I never knew you lost your father. You never talk about it.”

Razz’s eyes reflected a dipping candle wreathed in holly on the table between them. “He was loving one minute and savage the next. Pushed me down the cellar steps when I was seven. Didn’t mean to. I hid for hours in the garden shed. Wasn’t afraid of the shadows except when I thought of life without him. When I found him sobbing in the kitchen he put out his arms and of course I ran to him. I really thought if I held him tight the demon inside would never come out again. The next day he was dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Darryl heard himself utter. He winced as he tried to swallow, hand covering his throat.

“Suicide isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He missed the first time and shot the bulb out of the hall chandelier. Second time he was lucky. Used a razor. Doctor said he bled out all over the bathroom floor,” Razz said with a shallow sigh. “Tess isn’t dead. She’s got too much spit and spirit.”

Darryl felt the rise and fall of his chest, felt like he was floating in a space without limits. He knew when to trust Razz and he nodded. “I’ve lost everything. I didn’t ask to be born. In fact―”

“Yes, we’ve already had the
in fact
. That’s why this place is crawling with cops. I was the one that cut you down, remember? Stupid thing to do. And with a neck tie. You just don’t get it, do you?”

Darryl rubbed his neck and began to sob. “I tried it twice just to see if it would hurt. Even looked it up on the Internet. Just give me a chance, will you?”

“I’ve given you many chances. Although not quite as many as the Almighty.” Razz nodded at Captain Fowler a few feet away in the kitchen. He seemed to give officer Jarvis a squinty stare as he dug into Darryl’s cookie jar.

“I wish the cops would leave.”

“They’re only doing their job.” Razz’s eyes seemed to run along the wires to the tape recorder and he pinched his lip with a finger. “She still might call you know.”

“She won’t call. He’s probably taken her phone. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Darryl had to think about that for a moment. “I just wanted to disable the car. You know, keep him there for the cops.”

“You know that’s a lie. You just said you wanted to kill him.”

“I said I
should
have killed him.”

Darryl didn’t see Tess like a spirit far above the clouds, rising like a swallow into the firmament. She wasn’t dead. Couldn’t be. “It’s never really dark in the woods, is it? It’s never really quiet.”

Razz looked over the rim of his glasses. “I know what you’re thinking. He’s probably got a gun. Probably got a knife. No doubt he’s stacked. But she can run fast. Like a deer.”

Darryl smiled at that. He could almost see her feet pattering against the leaves and he could almost smell the musty odor of the burrow where he imagined she lay. “I told the girls what to do if they ever got lost. Told them to find a place.”

Razz nodded along, face shining as it always did. “A little more faith, son.”

Darryl gently bit his lip. He never liked to talk about God, never knew what to say. It was all fluff and stuff, something to make young people behave and old people happy. “He’s taken everything.”

Razz flicked a look at Jarvis as he walked to the front door. “He hasn’t taken your cookies.”

Darryl watched the two officers, heads down and deep in conversation. “Why didn’t God just let me die?”

“Because those heavenly mansions need a good cleaning. Probably haven’t made our beds yet.”

“I want to die.”

“So do I. Can’t wait. But it’s not my time yet. Not yours either. How would I know you were hanging like a pheasant in your garage? I was called, that’s why. And not on the phone in case you were wondering.”

Darryl looked at Razz long and hard. He had a point. How would he have known? It felt like a dream to him afterwards, the tie, the rafter, the drafty old garage.

“Had to have been a miracle,” Razz said, scratching food off a front tooth with a fingernail.

Darryl felt his hands tremble, felt his foot jitter under the table. Couldn’t sift through his thoughts fast enough to understand what Razz had just said. Couldn’t quite get over that miracle either.

“Family,” Razz said, tapping Darryl’s arm. “Like the Dad we never had.”

The trilling of the phone gave them a start. That’s when the officers came running in. The Captain checked the caller ID and nodded at the number. “It’s him.”

Jarvis tapped out a rhythm with his fingers. “Three, two, one,” he whispered, signaling for Darryl to pick up the phone.

“Tess… Tess!” Darryl said. A dull excitement coursed through his veins just as the flame of the candle danced in a sudden draft.

“Tell me something, Darryl,” said a voice between short breaths. “Did you really think I was in your house on Sunday?”

“Who is this?”

“We’ve never been formally introduced. I’m Ole Eriksen. And I have your daughter.”

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“I know the police are listening so I wanted to get something straight. Tell them to bring Morgan outside the front gates. Straight exchange. Morgan for Tess.”

Silence.

“Hello, hello!” Darryl squeezed the phone in his sweaty palm, felt his fingers being prized from the receiver. He heard one of the officers telling him the line was dead and he snatched his hand away, drawing it back to his body in a protective flinch. “He could have killed her―”

“Nah, he couldn’t have,” Razz said. “Can’t make a fair exchange with a dead body.”