"Yeah? Down at the sheriffs house?" Parker reluctantly coaxed his hands out of his pockets to take Melody"s binoculars. The local Police Chief was family to the White Shadow Captain, but Morgan Shaw had yet to pay his brother a visit.
"Not quite." Now it was Melody"s turn to aim him in her chosen direction. "The kid from the sheriffs house. A while ago I saw her struggling with something we might be interested in, Parker. She was taking a lot of trouble to cart it off into those trees. No, over there."
"Yeah?" Parker tried to sound fascinated, but as he raised the binoculars to his eyes, he could barely see the trees, let alone anything moving among them. "Um, I never like to rain on your parade, but I"ve had daydreams with more substance than what I"m seeing right now."
His partner s.n.a.t.c.hed back the binoculars as he lowered them. She nudged him in the ribs for his pains. "That"ll teach you to lie in, deadwood. The fact is, she was dragging a parachute. And there can"t have been many of those left lying around on this mountain, can there?"
"Not lately," admitted Parker, intrigued in spite of himself.
"You"re sure you"re not -"
Melody favoured him with a patient tilt of the head.
"No, you"re not mistaken, "he concluded aloud.
"So, are you up for a morning stroll in the woods, Agent Theroux?"
"In your company? What, are you kidding?" And Parker thought he"d have to dodge another blow to his ribs, but Melody was too intent on leading the way on the trail of the girl. By now he was properly awake, and there was no going back.
Makenzie wiped furiously at the pa.s.senger window and grimaced at the cold, burning his fingertips through his gloves. A good deal of the ice remained stubbornly fixed, doing its best to keep the car"s interior hidden.
"There"s another one up here, Chief!"
Laurie was a good twenty yards ahead of the lead vehicle and Makenzie didn"t need anything more to worry about. This was a bad stretch of road, the turn and the trees blocking line of sight, and the winter just made it meaner. Makenzie was a cautious driver though and he"d pulled them up in good time as soon as they"d seen the half-buried car. Then Laurie"s keen eyes had noticed it was just the tail vehicle in a frozen convoy.
"This one"s off the road! Looks like he swerved, coming the other direction!"
"Take it slow, Laurie! Be right with you!" He"d told her to run on, get a count of the vehicles and check further along the road. Now he was less happy with his thinking.
He shook his head. His chest hurt from all the shouting, but Laurie sounded a mile away. d.a.m.n snow ate up sound as well as all the colour.
Well, no use putting it off any longer: Makenzie swiped the worst of the ice clean and stooped low to peer into the car.
He"d kicked the snow from the plates, so he was expecting to find a couple of frozen tourists in there. The couple Byers had been concerned about. His gut was knotting at the prospect.
But all he could see in there was darkness. And the frost crusting the opposite windows.
Makenzie took a step back and his gaze hunted around.
He"d popped his holster as soon as he"d stepped from his truck; they"d had a world of trouble with coy-dogs this past week, packs of them even scavenging in the town. But everyone knew, knew, Makenzie had made sure of that. Surely to Christ these folks would have the sense to stay in their vehicles and wait for help. Get busy dialling on their cellular phones. Makenzie had made sure of that. Surely to Christ these folks would have the sense to stay in their vehicles and wait for help. Get busy dialling on their cellular phones.
Makenzie worked his steady way along the small convoy, but as he sc.r.a.ped the ice at each window he thought he should be searching the wooded slopes instead. Down to the lake, or up towards Mount Shaw. Made no difference either way, none of these folks would have made it very far in this weather.
They"d gone though. All of them.
As Makenzie stalked past the lead truck he was almost hoping to find a body in the wreck Laurie had found. He didn"t feel like hurrying his approach though. She was waiting on him by the upended tail.
"Oklahoma plates," she said. And that was like a bolt through Makenzie"s chest.
Dear Jesus, no. He had to inspect them for himself, to be certain. His eyes were permanently narrowed anyway, against the swirl of flakes. .h.i.tting his face, but he knew his frown had just got a whole lot tighter. Along with the knot in his gut, which was never going away.
"Where the wind blows," he tried a joke, for his own sake.
"What about the others. Chief?" Laurie was reading all kinds of stuff in Makenzie"s face.
"Nothing." Makenzie gestured up and down the road and the hillside. Seems none of them were for sitting still but if they"d followed the road we"d have seen them."
Wherever they"d thought they were, they had to know Melvin Village was closest. Laurie bit her lip and was probably running through the same thoughts as Makenzie.
"I"ll go take a look up the slope, Chief. The trees are pretty dense up there, might have kept the worst of the snow off their tracks."
Makenzie didn"t like it, but he wanted to have a good dig round inside this upended Buick. Now there was a more personal worry to add to his growing list. Laurie took his nod for a green light and Makenzie watched her go for a second or so before walking around the wreck to the driver"s door. It was hanging open.
The inside was a mess: cigarette packs, take-out cartons, a flotilla of plastic cups down by the pa.s.senger seat. The glove box was hanging open like the door. And when he swung around to pop the trunk, he found the worst of omens waiting for him: an untidy pile of boxes, all shiny gift-wrap and ribbons. Makenzie gritted his teeth and delved in there to grab one of the boxes. He knew what he"d find on the label but he needed to read it anyway.
"Happy Thanksgiving. To Amber With Love, Daddy."
The impulse to throw the box back in the car was strong, but Makenzie weathered it, holding the package clumsily for a while and thinking about collecting them all. He wouldn"t need help carrying them to his truck, but he"d sure as h.e.l.l need Laurie to talk to on this one.
"Laurie!" he called. "You haven"t got anything yet, I think we should be heading back!"
Makenzie looked up. Laurie"s silence was all wrong. Badly wrong.
"Laurie!" Only a cold echo came back at him, sounding angry now. "Laurie!"
But his deputy was lost in an ocean of white.
Chapter Three.
White Shadow operated as a platoon-sized unit, trimmed and pruned to fit its role. Three squads plus a headquarters squad of key specialist personnel. McKim"s squad, Delta, was stationed with the vehicles. That still left plenty of orders to be issued and Captain Shaw was out doing his rounds of the officers and sergeants, making sure n.o.body was left standing idle. Lieutenant Joanna Hmieleski was a key specialist, an Alpha female, as she liked to put it, and already had her orders: keep an eye on the Doctor, and comb these floors and walls for clues, evidence or a note from a TV magician explaining how this stunt was pulled off.
She"d ruled out any chance of the latter, but appreciated the dose of humour. Based on the reports that each room revealed a similar Mary Celeste Mary Celeste ambience, she"d elected to concentrate her efforts in the one place for now and ordered everyone out of the dining room. So it was down to her and this Doctor guy, and so far her new colleague had remained mute and humourless, pouring heavy thoughts into every corner. ambience, she"d elected to concentrate her efforts in the one place for now and ordered everyone out of the dining room. So it was down to her and this Doctor guy, and so far her new colleague had remained mute and humourless, pouring heavy thoughts into every corner.
Actually, Joanna found herself taking frequent pauses to watch him at work. Even when she was focused, on a blood-stain or the litter of dead cartridges, his was a constant presence, impossible to ignore. Why? Because, she realised, he reminded her so much of her father.
They looked nothing alike, of course. Her father had been tall, like this Doctor, but always overweight, and with a smear of dark hair clinging to his head like a thinning oil slick. A community doctor with his own practice, he was a man who might have equated with the tribal elders of Kristal"s ancestors. So loved and respected, and not least by Joanna. To her, he"d shone like an oracle, an oracle who had ultimately guided her into medicine.
But long before she"d wound up on that road, she"d seen all the unwelcome change that comes hand in hand with growing up.
Joanna had gone through the requisite teen-rebellion phase nice and early, as though to clear it out of the way; and thinned her father"s hair some more in the process. It was as she started to emerge that her father began to weaken, growing old fast, losing his mystique. In fact, he had many healthy years ahead of him, and Joanna was only coming to terms with a common discovery: her father was an ordinary man. Fallible and flawed. And in his case, bearing all his private sadnesses behind the gentlest manner and a pair of smiling eyes.
Working alongside this Doctor guy, Joanna Hmieleski was a girl again. He inspired a similar awe in her. This strangest of strangers was, she reasoned, like a father seen through the eyes of a child. "So, Doctor," she ventured courageously, "care to offer an educated guess?"
"I never guess."
His face was fixed on an area of the wall, punched and scarred with bullet-holes, a single glance tracing a trajectory between the impacts and the scattered cartridges at Joanna"s feet.
His brusque manner felt like a rebuke, and Joanna told herself she was being foolish as she stood to have another go.
"I just thought, since we"re supposed to be working together -"
She rolled a spent cartridge in her palm. "I guess I was only trying to break the ice."
The Doctor turned, all goldfish eyes and mystical smile.
"Medicine is your field, hmm?"
"Sure," she answered automatically, "but I fill a forensics role as well. Pydych is our engineer and-" The Doctor shushed her with a mime, then went on as if she hadn"t spoken.
"Do you know what interests me most, Lieutenant Hmieleski?" The way his voice made such a rich sound of her name was oddly flattering. "We have no patients. Not even a candidate for a post mortem. These cultists were firing an awful lot of ammunition at somebody or something. But your Captain a.s.sures me not a single shot was aimed at him or his soldiers."
"Not intentionally, no. It never got to that. Kristal is convinced she was. .h.i.t by accident. One desperate guy blowing an emergency exit through a back window. She saw him run off into the snows, like a wild thing, she said. That was when the rest of the shooting started inside the house and that"s when we made our move. And that that is pretty much all she wrote." is pretty much all she wrote."
"Yes, well, she she could have been a little more prolific, for all our sakes." could have been a little more prolific, for all our sakes."
Hmieleski followed the Doctor"s gaze down to the cartridge in her palm. "This little fella"s a 7.62 Long, definitely not one of ours. The only shots our people fired were the covering volleys from our two snipers but - for obvious reasons - we can"t confirm whether they hit anyone." She shook her head as she scanned over the wall. "By the time any of our people got inside the house, the shooting was all done. I don"t get it.
It"s as if the walls might have been closing in on them and they were shooting back."
"Well, if I were a guessing man," argued the Doctor, "I"d say it was more like they were shooting at ghosts, then became ghosts themselves - wouldn"t you?"
Joanna suppressed a sudden shiver. There was no heat in here.
"Which only goes to prove the futility of guesswork,"
concluded the Doctor, stepping past her into the middle of the room, where he could conduct a grand sweep of the scene from under that ridiculous hat.
"Of course," he added casually, "from a more rational point of view, we could be looking at disintegration weaponry, transmat technology; that sort of thing. Residual energy traces shouldn"t be too difficult to detect - as long as they"re tested for fairly soon."
His impossibly wide gaze was meant as a prompt, Joanna could tell. "I"ll get Pydych on it. The detection gear will be back with the vehicles, but I"m sure Irving won"t mind the-"
All set to fetch the engineer, she was suddenly arrested by a very paternal hand in the crook of her arm. She spun - straight into those eyes.
"Lieutenant Hmieleski, if we really are going to be working together, I think we"re going to have to pool our knowledge, don"t you? I mean, we might eventually persuade this house to part with its story, but some of us still wouldn"t have the full picture, would we? For instance, the part about what Captain Shaw is doing here with his delightful team of soldiers? He didn"t come all this way to arrest a few misguided cultists, now did he?"
For a moment, Joanna felt obliged to give him a precis of their mission. Then her training kicked in. "I"m sorry, Doctor, but you"re going to have to talk to Captain Shaw about that."
A crumpled paper bag appeared in the guy"s hand, right under her nose, like a magic trick. "Care for a jelly baby?"
In spite of her years of adulthood and training, Joanna found herself peering inside. "As bribes go, this is not very impressive."
The Doctor shrugged. "Well no," he owned at length, moderately abashed. But the grin returned a second later.
"But you have to admit it"s effective, hmm?"
Joanna inhaled and couldn"t believe the turn her thoughts had taken. She dipped a hand into the bag. "You do realise, you breathe a word of this to Captain Shaw, he"ll eat us both alive."
The Doctor plucked a juicy-looking sweet from the bag for himself. "I can"t speak for him, but I generally prefer to bite the heads off first."
Irrepressible. Just like her lather.
Martha swore and chucked the papers from her lap onto the coffee table. She dragged her fingers back through her hair, the pen still in one hand.
It was useless: how was she expected to concentrate?
School was out, but there were still test papers to mark, lesson plans to prepare. At this rate, she"d have to pray the snows would keep the school out long after the holidays.
She tossed the pen onto the papers as she stood. Mak"s sofa was too d.a.m.n comfortable for this kind of work anyhow.
Arching her back deep, she took a lethargic walk over to the window. Well, the snow looked set to stick around forever, so that was okay.
But it sure looked harsh out there. Harsh as h.e.l.l.
Maybe she could have been more helpful this morning. But no, she knew well enough, you step into the middle of a fight, everyone thinks you"re on the other side. It was impossible to gauge the centre line. Anyway she"d have to stick up for Amber. The kid was ten hard years old. Mak had to tread slow and careful, something you"d think he was born to - when it came to anything but Amber. His main failing, he just didn"t have the know-how to understand Amber and make her feel understood. But if it was his failing, then it was Martha"s too.
School was out, so family needn"t wait. Martha figured she should try. If Mak wasn"t driving off packs of hungry coy-dogs, as he called them, he was probably mulling over a second cup of coffee with Laurie Aldrich. She could take a drive down and meet him for lunch, take the time to talk him through Amber properly.
Truth was, she was no expert either, and Martha had to shut down on a few tears then, the thought of those days she couldn"t handle her own kid. Along with all the days she could never make up to her.
So harsh out there. Martha sent out a silent prayer for Amber, out in the midst of it. And she threw in another for Mak for good measure.
The phone rang.
Martha wiped away the mood like she"d been asleep, then dragged herself to the hall. One hand went back through her hair again as she picked up the phone.
"Yeah?"
Martha actually flinched. All the harshness of winter had crept inside her gut.
It was Curt.
"Listen, shut the h.e.l.l up for a second and listen, will you?"
"Whatever it is you got to say, I"m not interested. Do you hear me? You"re done calling the shots and you"re done telling me anything. For someone who loves the sound of his own voice, have you ever stopped to listen to yourself? Not once! So why in h.e.l.l I ever expected you to listen to me - or your own daughter, for Christ"s sake-"
Curt Redeker was ready to beat the c.r.a.p out of the phone with the receiver, just to shut her up. But he sensed the clerk watching from the counter. Why"d he even call her? Why"d he go to so much trouble to find a phone? What in h.e.l.l for? Well, he knew the answer to that, and so did Martha. Amber.
"I"m not taking this from you, b.i.t.c.h. I"ve just walked a G.o.dd.a.m.n marathon through the snow to find a phone, let you know I got here." Christ, he"d even stopped to wash his face in the snow, clean off the blood and kill the pain with the cold. "I found a call box, it was dead, so I ask the guy at the store if I can use the phone. He looks at me like I"m-"
"Let me know you got here? You were supposed to be here Sat.u.r.day morning. I told you, two days, the weekend before the holidays - and that was for her, not you. not you. She"s been wondering where you"ve been the whole weekend and guess what - I didn"t have anything to tell her. Same old story and we"ve all heard it enough, so I tell you what, you can come see her this afternoon, drop off whatever presents you"re trying to impress her with this time and then you"re gone. She"s been wondering where you"ve been the whole weekend and guess what - I didn"t have anything to tell her. Same old story and we"ve all heard it enough, so I tell you what, you can come see her this afternoon, drop off whatever presents you"re trying to impress her with this time and then you"re gone.
Back to whatever hole you"re living in, out of our lives, you got that, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Are you hearing me, Curt? Curt? Am I getting through to you this time?" Am I getting through to you this time?"