Chapter 44
At the entry to my drive, I don’t bother to ask the new deputy’s name. I don’t want to know. I’m still feeling too raw over what happened to Zane, but when I grab his number, he gives it to me anyway. Deputy Carter.
By the time I turn my car off in my garage, it’s very late.
I step outside into my drive and take stock.
The cops and forensics have wrapped things up and departed.
Police tape still circles my backyard where Zane went down.
Crickets have begun chirping in the fields, as if they know Zane is safely tucked away in the ICU.
Still, I can’t shake the sense that eyes are on me.
But the sense of being watched, of being paranoid, is logical given my situation. And now, a shooting on my own property. Intensifying everything. Making what has been surreal and bizarre up until this point all too material and devastating.
I continue to scan the area. My house is still and dark.
I never even went in. I followed the ambulance straight to the hospital.
Now the sliver of the moon that was dimly casting some light has dissipated as it has sunk lower and farther west. Blackness envelops the fields, and tree branches in the forests play tricks on my eyes.
The awful sucking sound from Zane’s wound stays in my ears.
Perhaps Leon’s or Sophie’s ghosts are out weaving like wisps among those skinny pines, watching me. Perhaps even Mark Coleman’s. And shit, the living—Ridgeway, Lasserio, even the CA . . . ? I shudder. Any one of them could be out there right now watching me, hunting me.
I tell myself I need to get to bed, force myself to get some sleep so I can be alert these last days. The home stretch. But as I turn to go in, a snap of a twig breaks through the night. I whip out my gun and freeze, waiting.
I’ve been here before. It could be anything: deer, elk, mountain lion, fox, coyote . . .
I stand still, my eyes and ears straining to see or hear something moving.
Then another sound. A crunch of underbrush.
I lean forward, toward the woods, but everything goes still again. I continue to scan the forest, my gun ready, elbow cocked. Darkness seems to separate and fold, my eyes straining to make out what’s between the dense trees. Suddenly, a faint ping rings out. But barely.
A phone, a notification coming through? Or am I overstressed and overtired? Overwired?
I keep scanning, trying to spot some kind of light from a device or any movement at all. I stay perfectly still, like I’m having a standoff with the night, with the trees, with ghosts, with even the looming, dark, ridged mountains.
Then, more rustling, something fleeing, scuffling through the underbrush, bashing through branches.
Adrenaline courses through me as I run closer to the edge of the forest. My pulse pounds in my ears. I search for the white tail of a deer, listen for the pounding of hooves. I see or hear neither, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t one. But it sounded bigger, like a human or even a bear.
And the ping? Did I imagine it?
I call the new guy, Deputy Carter, they’ve posted out front and ask him to call the guy they’ve finally posted out back by Dillon Road and tell him to have that deputy patrol the area, to search for any cars parked on the outskirts of the forest or any of the surrounding roads or driveways, especially on Dillon Road where Jeremy walked in from.
Then I grab my Maglite from my car and slowly walk across my yard, into the woods toward the place I heard the sound.
The light bounces off the ground, off the branches and bramble, off the trees and their boughs.
Game trails thread through the forest floor.
Deer and elk pellets scatter about here and there.
Off the edges of the beam, darkness pools around me, but I see nothing unusual.
The late-night cold is sharp edged. Autumn nestling in more forcefully. I feel impossibly small, a speck among the fields and before the dark mountains.
I’ve decided there’s not much more I can do when my light catches something white, something caught up in the spindly branches of a small gooseberry bush.
I walk over and inspect. It’s a tissue. A simple piece of trash. It could have come from anywhere, but it looks intact, fresh and white, recent. One of the cops searching the place after the shooting could have dropped it.
I go back, grab some gloves and a Ziploc to bag and tag it.