CHAPTER
ONE
HUNTING
SEASON
Loring Jeremias is tempted to turn back,
but this decision is not reversible. No. She's come too far and given up too
much. The time to reconsider is past.
In the late fall chill, she quickens
her pace along the forest trail, the ground hard and frozen beneath her
moccasins. The winter snows have yet to fall in Jackson, Wyoming,
and for this, she is grateful. The sawed-off shotgun digs through the backpack
into her waist. She shrugs its weight to the side, rubs her hands over her arms
to warm them, and forces her fingers deep into her gloves. Her mouth is so
parched, her lips cling to her teeth.
The fog forms and fades away, only to form again in different shapes,
hunters...witnesses.
Don't think. Just get it done.
Beside the Snake
River, trees pierce the haze. Tendrils of fog slither down the
alder standing alone in the center of the clearing, and she imagines them
creeping along the ground toward her. Magpies tch, tch, tch. An eagle
screeches, wings flapping, and the river churns in the distance.
At the side of the clearing, she
clambers over a fallen pine, and crawls under the boughs she arranged so
meticulously the day before. The laces on one of her moccasins have come undone.
She ties them, this time with a double knot, loads the tranquilizer pistol and
settles down. It shouldn't be long now.
Nothing obstructs her view of the
pathway leading from the town to the river. She rests her arms on the log, and
waits.
Something crawls up her neck. She swats
at it; a spider lands on her arm. She coughs back a scream, and brushes it off.
After a time, her knees ache and she shifts on the damp leaves, releasing a
whiff of mold and decay.
A twig snaps.
Her hand tightens around the dart
pistol.
Please let it be Devlin.
He's whistling, a tuneless wheeze she's
heard before, and he carries a plastic bag. She knows what's inside: a Sears
catalog with pictures of children in their back-to-school clothes.
Will he take a leak as he did yesterday
and the day before? She tries not to breathe.
He hangs the bag on a branch of the alder and unzips his
fly. Urine steams against the tree. He grunts, zips up and paws for the bag.
The dart won't kill him, but if they find him before the
Medetomidine-Ketamine dissipates...
Too many ifs.
She fires.
"What the fuck?" He grabs his
rump, yanks out the dart, and frowns.
She rises and shakes the branches from
her shoulders.
His hand grasps for the tree. He
stumbles and drops to his knees, as though praying for forgiveness.
Damn, he's going to fall
forward. She wants to
rush to him, to prop him up, but she waits for the drug to take effect.
He rubs his eyes and
squints. He's hallucinating. She can hear her own ragged breathing over his
mumbled gibberish.
When he
falls forward on his hands and knees, and leans to the side, she scrambles to
him, props him up with her hip. She places the shotgun on the ground, picks up
the dart and jams it into its case in the pocket of her vest. One piece of
evidence out of the way.
His
eyelids flutter, his jaw sags, and when his head nods, she rolls him onto his
back the way she learned in First Aid. It's easier than she thought. Too much
beer and age have thinned his bones, wasted his muscles.
With her
arms under his armpits, she drags him and props his back against the tree. His
body remains upright. No need for the rope in her backpack to keep him in
place.
Fetid
whiffs of sweat and mothballs rise from his wool jacket. She holds her breath,
picks up the shotgun and confirms the chamber is empty.
To
test the suicide position, she wedges the gun barrel into his chin with the
butt on the ground between his legs, close to his groin.
His eyelashes . . . long and curled
like a child's. He was someone's child once. But so was she.
She needs his
prints. He's right-handed--for days she watched him open doors, drink beer, and
scratch his nose, all with his right hand. But early in the morning, in the
woods, and free from the vigilant eyes of the locals who tried unsuccessfully
to run him out of town, he turns the pages of his scrapbook with his left hand.
His special pictures. His special children.
She places his right hand around the
trigger guard, shoves the thumb into the slot, presses hard, removes the hand
and clamps the fingers and thumb around the stock and again on the action and
barrel. Except for the area around the trigger guard, she repeats the process
with his left hand, near the muzzle end, compressing thumb and fingers into the
barrel, and steadies it under his stubbled chin.
Satisfied, she removes the box of
shells from her pocket, keeps two, and scatters the rest on the ground. She
presses his fingers onto the box and on the shells.
From the backpack, she pulls out the
drop sheet, shrouds her body from head to toe. She finds the armholes and
ensures the gun is in the proper position, but when she tries to chamber a
shell, the grip won't move.
Damn.
She pumps.
Nothing.
She pumps again.
Thunk. The grip loads.
She drops to her haunches and rams the
barrel under his chin. The world pauses, waiting for her to fall. She remembers
to breathe.
Gritting
her teeth, she thinks about the children and squeezes the trigger.
Sound
waves blast through her and beyond. And blood, so much blood. Brain tissue
gushes onto the drop sheet, splatters on the tree, startling her even though
she memorized the after-effects of shotgun suicides.
Wave upon wave of nausea. Gagging
sounds.
Hers.
Run.
Hide. Anywhere. Anywhere but the
closet, that musty closet, behind Mommy's muskrat coat.
But she mustn't run. She cannot leave
evidence. She has done what she had to do; now she must save herself and the
others who depend on her to escape.
She sacrifices stealth for speed, rises
and folds the sheet into itself and away from her. An alert forensic
investigator might notice a gap in the splatter pattern where her body shielded
the ground, but the investigators might be parents. A parent might choose to
overlook many things.
Or might not.
Perhaps animals will disturb the site
and cover her tracks.
Hurrying now, down the bank to the river, rinsing the drop
sheet, folding it into itself, resisting the urge to plunge into the river
until her soul runs clear, stuffing the drop sheet into a green garbage bag,
cramming it into her backpack.
She's
still alone. Still safe.
She hangs a camera around her neck, and
pulls an orange vest over her camouflage jacket. If other hunters come, she'll
say she was hiking, taking pictures, heard the shot, and found him.
She will cry. It won't be difficult to
cry.
One last check of the site. Devlin's
bag still hangs on the tree. Would he have brought it today? No, not if he intended
suicide. She shoves it into the backpack. Are there furrows where she dragged
him? A few. She scuffs the dirt with a fallen branch.
Where's the spent shell?
It should be on his left. No, his
right.
Think!
She can't see it. She should be able to
spot the red casing.
Did
she trap it in the drop sheet and flush it into the river? What if she can't
find it?
Tears push at her eyes. It must look
like a suicide. She cannot fail now.
She steps back. "Calm down.
Breathe." She's muttering, but can't stop.
With a stick, she checks up and down
his clothes.
Nothing.
She pokes the leafy debris.
A glimpse. Red plastic and brass still
in the chamber. How could she have forgotten? Pump-action shotguns don't eject
the shell until the next round is chambered. She swallows to moisten her tongue
and struggles to her feet. When she checks her clothes and her moccasins, she
can't see any evidence. No obvious bloodstains, no brain tissue. She backs away
from the body, shoulders the backpack and slides the straps over her jacket.
To survive now, she must
leave unseen and she must forget, but forgetting is not one of her skills.
Along the trail, she prays they'll find
his body soon, that she'll read about his suicide in the Jackson Hole News
and Guide when she checks the Internet back in New York. A pointless prayer because what
will be, will be, and that's okay.
The sun breaks through the sky's
stinging haze. She feels exposed. Someone is shining a flashlight into her
eyes, the closet door is open, and she can see Daddy's shoes, and Daddy,
waiting.
At the edge of the forest, protected by
the pines, she watches a Range Rover leave the Edelweiss
Motel's parking lot and turn left onto Harbinger Road. When it chuffs out of
sight, she slips out of the woods and into the end unit of the motel, changes
her clothes, and cleans the room. She shuts the door behind her, throws the
backpack into the trunk of her nondescript Ford and drives away.
For the first hundred miles, she fights
back nausea, and grips the steering wheel with whitened knuckles until her
hands cramp. Gunshot echoes rumble in her ears.
Will they ever disappear? She wants to
forget them, but she won't. She knows she won't.
At the second hundred-mile interval,
she buries her moccasins and the drop sheet in the woods. At the third, she
rips the Sears catalog to shreds, imagining that same catalog sitting so
openly, so innocently on the coffee tables of homes with children. She stuffs
the pieces into the bag, buries it, and tries not to think about the picture of
a little girl she knows, holding a Barbie doll, Gold Jubilee edition.
The
dirt settles over the bag. She exhales and straightens her shoulders.
Later, deep in the woods,
she digs one last hole, burns her hunting clothes and gloves, and buries the
ashes.
From time
to time along the way home, she pulls over and tries to sleep in the back seat,
a shallow sleep, floating on top of a pond roughed by the wind.
In Summit, New
Jersey, she parks the car in a garage she rents under
a false name, and changes into a navy business suit.
She will
take the Transit to Hoboken
and the P.A.T.H. train to the subway. She'll ride the elevator to her office.
There, she'll search for hints of suspicion in her colleagues' voices, and
pretend to be normal. She's had a lifetime of pretending to be normal.
Perhaps
her next murder will be easier.
Robert L. Bacon
theperfectwrite.com
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