A Dark Path #5
Tomasetti straightens, sweeps the area with his beam, pausing in the direction we were heading. “More prints there.”
“They’re going to the Bobwhite Cabin,” Enos says.
“Nice of them to leave tracks,” Tomasetti growls.
We start off at a brisk pace with Tomasetti in the lead. Spurred by fear or adrenaline or both, the Amish man somehow keeps up. I take my place at the rear, keeping my eyes on the ground, my beam sweeping left and right, looking for tracks or any indication someone has left the trail.
Wind and snow thrash us as we head west. Twice, Enos is pushed sideways by a gust, but he recovers quickly and keeps moving forward.
“How much farther?” I shout to be heard above the roar of wind.
“The cabin is just around those trees!” Enos yells back.
I look past him, discern the silhouette of a structure. I spot the glow of light in a window and hope leaps in my chest. That hope transforms into alarm when I notice the front door standing open.
Ten feet ahead, Tomasetti unholsters his Kimber. “Stay alert.”
I set my hand on Enos’s shoulder. “Get behind me,” I tell him.
His eyes flick down to the .38 at my side and he lets me pass without argument.
Tomasetti enters the cabin. “Police!” he shouts. “Show yourself! Come out and talk to us!”
“Stay put.” I leave Enos at the foot of the steps that lead up to the porch.
Raising my .38, I go through the door. A hundred details fly at me at once.
The smell of smoke in the air. Mrs. Nisley on the floor, sitting up, looking dazed.
Ahead, the back door swinging back and forth, the wind nearly wrenching it from its hinges.
Tomasetti is already in the kitchen. “Clear!”
“Mrs. Nisley.” I go to the Amish woman, set my hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She blinks at me, focuses, her hand on her temple. Her eyes move past me.
I turn to see Enos rush toward us. “Liebchen.” My darling. He falls to his knees next to her. “What in the world happened?”
“Stay with her.” I get to my feet.
Tomasetti sidles past us and moves into the hall. “I got the bedroom,” he says.
My .38 in hand, I go left toward the bathroom. The door stands ajar. I shove it open with my foot, lean in, and smack the switch with my left hand. Light floods the room. I step inside, reach for the shower curtain, rip it aside.
No one there.
“Clear!” I call out.
Then I’m back in the hall, and see Tomasetti come out of the bedroom. “No one here,” he says. “Looks like someone tried to start a fire in the kitchen.”
“Damage?” I ask.
“Just a mess,” he growls.
I start down the hall. Relief flutters in my stomach at the sight of the couple sitting on the sofa. Enos has his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“Mrs. Nisley, are you injured?” I ask.
“I’m okay,” she says firmly. “Just shaken up a little.”
“Was there someone here with you?” Tomasetti asks.
“Just that rude young man,” she says. “He ran out the back door.”
“Did you recognize him?” he asks.
Lovina shakes her head. “Never seen him before.”
“Was he armed?”
“Didn’t see a gun. Had some sort of bag on his shoulder.”
“Did he say where he was going?” he asks.
“No.”
“Can you take us through what happened?” I ask.
“While Enos was taking care of the lambs,” she says, “I walked to the Hummingbird Cabin to clean. We’ve got a family checking in tomorrow.
I walked in and found a young man standing in the kitchen.
Gave me an awful start. When I asked him what he was doing, he gave me a nonsense story about his car breaking down. I didn’t believe it for a second.”
The Amish woman tightens her mouth. “I was a shool-teetshah for twenty years.” Schoolteacher. “I know when I’m being bamboozled. That young man was up to no good and being disrespectful.”
“What did he do?” I ask.
“Told me to sit on the sofa and be quiet.” She bristles. “I heard him moving around in the kitchen and went to see what he was doing only to see that he was trying to start a fire. Can you imagine? For goodness’ sakes, we’d just lost our other cabin.”
Next to her, Enos tilts his head, looking concerned. “Lovina, what did you do?”
“That young man wasn’t much older than our grandson, Enos. So I got my broom and I put it to use on his backside.”
He groans. “Oh no.”
She huffs. “He tried to take it from me. The broom, you know. Cursed like a rough man. Pushed me into the wall. And then he ran out the door and didn’t look back.”
“But there was blood,” Enos interjects.
“I bumped my nose is all. Bled just enough to make a mess of things.”
“But how did you get here?” I ask.
“Well, I followed him, of course.”
Enos gapes at her. “Ach du lieva.” Oh my goodness.
“What else was I going to do?” She waves off his concern. “Let the fool burn another cabin? I think not!”
“Mrs. Nisley, can you tell us what he looked like?” I ask.
She doesn’t hesitate. “He’s twenty-five or thirty years old. Skinny. Black coat. Black ski mask. Not too tall.”
“Do you have any idea where he was going?” Tomasetti asks.
“All I know is that he went out the back door a few minutes before you arrived.”
Reaching into his pocket, Tomasetti pulls out the brochure. We study it in silence a moment.
“Lake Road is too far to make on foot in heavy weather,” I say.
Tomasetti looks at Enos. “Is there another road?”
“No.” The Amish man shakes his head. “There’s only one. Lake Road.”
Eyes narrowed, Tomasetti sets his finger against the map. “How far is the Turkey Creek Marina?”
“At least a mile,” Enos tells him. “It’s closed. Been abandoned for going on four years now. Docks are crumbling.”
I raise my eyes to Tomasetti’s. “You think he’s got a boat?”
“If he’s got a Zodiac or some other craft that’s small and maneuverable and doesn’t require a lot of depth, all he needs is a protected place to tie up.”
“It could be done.” The old man nods. “I walked over there last summer. Water’s plenty deep. The main dock is still standing.”
I look at Tomasetti. “Worth a look.”
He’s already pulling on his hat and gloves. “Yep.”
I turn my attention to the couple. “Stay here. Lock the doors. Don’t let anyone in.”
“Ja.” Enos gets to his feet, looks from me to Tomasetti. “Where are you going?”
“We’re going to go get the son of a bitch,” Tomasetti tells him, and we go through the back door and into the storm.
Conditions had worsened in the minutes we were inside the cabin.
With the wind cranking to forty knots and the snow coming at us like darts, visibility has dwindled to just a few feet.
Side by side, Tomasetti and I fly down the steps and ease into a ground-covering jog.
We traverse the yard and enter the trail that will take us to the marina.
I set my flashlight beam on the ground, sweeping left to right, looking for any indication that our suspect came this direction.
“Kate!”
Ahead, Tomasetti stops. I come up beside him to see the partial print illuminated by his beam.
“Same waffle pattern,” he tells me.
“Definitely came this way.” I shift my light to the trail, see another print ahead. “Gotta be going to the marina.”
“Hell of a day for a boat ride,” Tomasetti growls.
We continue our course at a brisk pace.
The trail is narrow and crowded with tree branches and low-growing brush. Tomasetti is five or six feet ahead of me. Snow sandblasts my face, making it nearly impossible to see. I focus on his dark silhouette and the bob of his Maglite, and I keep pushing.
A half mile in and we round a curve. I catch sight of more footprints, and Tomasetti picks up the pace. I can feel my heart laboring from the physical exertion. The thrum of adrenaline beneath the surface. Despite the cold, sweat breaks out beneath my coat.
“Tracks are fresher here,” Tomasetti says.
“We’re gaining on him,” I tell him. “He’s not far ahead.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
The snow is four or five inches deep now and piling up fast. For the tracks to be so fresh, we’re mere minutes behind our quarry.
The trees thin and we enter a clearing. The black expanse of the lake hulks to my right. Above the roar of the wind, I hear the waves thundering against the rocky shore. No sign of the marina. Or our perp.
Tomasetti leans close and says in a low voice, “Water’s too rough to park a boat here.”
“No place to tie off.”
We keep going. The trail veers left, taking us away from the beach, and back into the forest. Visibility is nearly zero now; I stick close to Tomasetti as he pours on the speed.
It takes every ounce of energy and strength I possess to keep up.
I lengthen my strides, loosen and pump my arms, trying to find my rhythm—and hope like hell I don’t trip over a rock or log beneath the snow. Or God forbid walk into an ambush.
Tomasetti stops abruptly, and I nearly plow into him.
A rough-hewn sign with the pyrographic lettering TURKEY CREEK MARINA hangs from a post at a cockeyed angle.
We’re still within the relative cover of the trees.
Ahead, I discern the vague outline of an inlet.
Half a dozen posts jut from the water’s surface at varying angles.
I can just make out the silhouette of a dock.
Keenly aware that we’re likely not alone, we douse our flashlights.
“Can’t see a damn thing with all this snow,” Tomasetti mutters.
“Wind isn’t helping.”
I look past him, squinting into the maelstrom.
A few feet away, I see what looks like the mast of a sunken sailboat sticking out of the water at a forty-five-degree angle.
Next to it, the hull of a long-abandoned pontoon.
A few yards to my right, a stone jetty separates the inlet from the lake beyond.
“There’s a light ahead,” Tomasetti whispers, and motions left. “Ten o’clock.”
Sure enough, I can just make out the bob of a flashlight. A ghostly figure moving around. The dull yellow glow of a craft in the water.
“Looks like a Zodiac,” Tomasetti says quietly.
“Inflatable raft?” I whisper.
“With an outboard motor. Fast as hell. Easy to maneuver. And perfect for rough water.”
“He came prepared.”
“This was planned.”