Chapter 5 Daniel
Sunlight fell through the alders, dappling the rust-colored heap of fur on the stump, and the man who sat in the old Adirondack chair, staring at it.
Daniel tracked the dancing patches of light as he made swift, sure strokes with his pencil on the sketch pad. He had carried the fox outside late in the morning and draped it over the tall pine stump before heading into the woods to dig the grave.
He’d walked all the way around the lake to the firs that bordered the southeastern shore and dug the hole there; far enough away that he might forget about it in time, where the briars grew wild in the summer, and it would be hidden under leafy blackberries.
When he returned from digging, he’d taken his seat next to the stump, and in the two hours since, he had not moved, his brows pulled together in concentration as he sketched the animal’s likeness.
When he was finished with his drawing, he would carry the fox around the lake to the grave and fill in the dirt around it, then put the memory of last night out of his mind for good.
The tip of the charcoal pencil snapped against the paper, and Daniel brushed his hand over the mark it had left.
He was pressing too firmly, trying too hard to get the face just right.
He had once heard that the aim of art was not to represent the outward appearance of a thing, but its inward significance, and that was proving easier said than done.
The trouble was the eyes. Those extraordinary red-brown eyes just a shade deeper than the fox’s fur were foggy now, flat, like the false glass eyes of a taxidermied animal. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to give them life on the page.
He wanted them to be as deep and lucid as they had been at the moment he turned on the light.
He wanted to remember the look that met his gaze from the other end of the hall, so that every time he flipped to this page in his pad, he’d have a reminder to not lose control in the heat of the moment. The truth was, he couldn’t afford to.
It could have been a person—a human being, lying there dead on the floor.
It could have been a burglar or, far worse; a kid, some runaway in the same trouble he’d been in at sixteen.
And, sure, maybe he hadn’t broken a window while seeking shelter, but close enough.
What if the place hadn’t been empty when he showed up?
What if someone had been waiting for him on the other side with a copper pipe?
Daniel leaned forward in his chair, adjusting the fox so that its face fell into shadow.
There was some sort of justice in it, or penance, maybe, sitting for hours on end, staring at the creature he’d killed.
He brought the tip of the pencil back to the paper and traced it around the outside of the eye again, darkening the feline markings that gave the pointed face that clever, cunning look.
Daniel reached for the plastic sharpener on the arm of the chair and gave the pencil a few quick twists, glancing up at a familiar sound coming from behind the trees.
Clear, musical notes were floating on the wind, the whistling preceding the man walking up the road, and Daniel scanned the pines that flanked the clearing.
Jake climbed the gate with ease and emerged with his hands in his pockets, sandy hair curling out beneath a Mariners cap that shaded his eyes in the open sunlight.
Daniel raised a hand in greeting and Jake returned the gesture, his gaze falling on the fox as he approached with a long, low whistle.
“You kill that thing so it would sit still for a portrait?”
Daniel forced air through his nose, the closest thing to a laugh he could muster, then nodded toward the animal. “You ever see a fox this size?”
Jake chuckled. “Of course not. That’s not a fox.”
Daniel looked up from his pad as Jake lowered himself into a squat beside the animal, reaching out to lift one of its dark paws.
“You ever seen a fox with legs this long? It’s a maned wolf.
” Jake released the paw, and it fell softly against the stump.
“Ronnie Boyd down the road got it into his head to open an exotic zoo on his property. He’s been buying animals illegally from all over the country, then has the nerve to come down to the station a couple weeks ago to tell Bud and me his maned wolf got loose and it’s our responsibility to find and trap it for him. ”
Daniel laughed in earnest this time. “Protect and serve doesn’t cover that?”
Jake chuckled. “Sure doesn’t.”
A moment passed as Jake inspected the animal, a line appearing on the smooth skin between his eyes. “You really did a number on this thing,” he said quietly.
Daniel turned back to his drawing pad, busying his pencil in shading the dark fur beneath the animal’s chin.
“It broke into the boathouse at two in the morning. Smashed through the window. Spooked me, I guess.”
Jake’s gaze flicked to the boathouse, then returned to Daniel, white teeth appearing in a lopsided grin. “Brother, you got nothing in there worth more than a Pearl Jam CD.”
Daniel nodded and rested the pad in his lap. “In broad daylight, I know that. But at two in the morning, it’s another story.”
“You get any sleep after that?”
Daniel shook his head.
No, he hadn’t slept. There was something about the idea of being an instrument of life and death that kept a man awake after killing something that didn’t deserve to die.
Jake pushed himself upright and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “Well, come on. The fish aren’t gonna catch themselves.”
Daniel left the pad on the chair and followed Jake to the corner of the dock where the small aluminum skiff was tied.
The identical Normark rods they used every Saturday were lying on the warped dock boards, and Daniel stooped to grab them, flinching at the pain in his left hand.
He climbed into the skiff after Jake and propped the poles against the narrow bench seat.
He’d strained some muscle or tendon in his wrist the night before, swinging the pipe over and over like a maniac, and had worsened it digging the grave. The pain was an unnerving reminder of how out of control he’d been.
He couldn’t go off the rails like that again.
If the maned wolf had been a person, how on earth would he have explained a dead body in the boathouse?
Jake could have walked right in through the door without knocking—as he often did—and it wasn’t as if Daniel could have invited him to sit down and calmly explain why he’d gone ballistic in the middle of the night.
Jake was trusting enough, but things were different now, with the badge and all.
They’d been fishing buddies for five years, and the guy was loyal to a fault.
Sure, Daniel had been less than thrilled when Jake got it into his head last summer that he wanted to be a cop and left for the Police Academy, but he came back six months later, and Daniel was relieved to find that the academy hadn’t changed him much.
If it came down to it, Daniel was willing to bet that Jake would be just as likely to help him bury a body as to drag him down to the station for questioning.
But he couldn’t risk it. If the law ever came between them, or if Jake ever found out the truth about Daniel’s past, there was no telling what he’d do.
Jake reached for the oars and pulled them through the wind-rippled surface of the lake as Daniel looked over his shoulder, watching the animal on the stump shrink into the distance.
“Ronnie thought he’d make a fortune, I guess,” Jake said, “charging folks to come look at maned wolves and peacocks and wild boars in chicken-wire cages, but way up here in the briars? Fat chance. Once everybody in town had a look, he’d be a thousand dollars richer and straight out of business again.
The guy’s always thinking he has the next million-dollar idea.
Last year it was growing rare mushrooms in his basement. ”
“Gotta admire a man with vision,” Daniel joked, but Jake’s face sobered.
“Not when he’s got a wife and daughter to feed.”
Jake rowed to the middle of the lake, stopped, and rested the oars across his lap. The skiff spun in a slow circle, and for a moment neither man spoke.
It was sacred, this spot, this quiet center of the lake.
From the boathouse, the summit of Mount St. Helens was hidden behind a dark ridge of pines, but out here, the mountain showed its rounded top above the hills.
The peak was still covered in a blanket of winter snow in defiance of the blooming valley below, and around the lake, deep-green firs as proud and thick as a front line of soldiers stood grandly, their lower boughs rising and falling in the wind.
Daniel scanned the untamed shoreline. Out here in the middle of it all, a man could shut his mind off. There were no responsibilities. No obligation beyond the simple act of being.
Jake pulled a can of snuff from his back pocket and wedged a pinch of it into his lower lip. He offered the can to Daniel, who shook his head. Jake shrugged and tucked it back into his pocket before resting his elbows on his knees and smiling at his surroundings.
Daniel watched him as he worked the tobacco back and forth with his tongue.
Innocent. An all-American boy, raised on Sunday school and Little League.
In many ways, they were polar opposites.
Jake was fair where Daniel was dark. Jake was an eternal optimist and Daniel a skeptic, but somehow their friendship worked.
They balanced each other out, and their Saturdays—reserved for fishing rain or shine—were the only dependable thing Daniel had to look forward to in the insulated life he’d carved out for himself.
“You’re a lucky son of a gun, you know that?” Jake’s voice interrupted Daniel’s thoughts.
“You say that every Saturday.”
“ ’Cause it’s true.” Jake spit into the lake. “I’d give my left arm to have inherited a place like this.”
“It’s as much yours as it is mine.”
It was what Daniel said every Saturday in reply, to rid himself of the guilt every time Jake mentioned the “inheritance.” Jake trusted him, and anytime their conversation ventured into the past, he accepted Daniel’s glossed-over answers with the candor of someone who had been raised to believe what others told him.
Daniel reached for his pole and passed the other to Jake. They baited their hooks from the tackle box beneath the bench without conversation, and Daniel cast his line out first, wincing at the pain in his wrist.
A wide, black shadow crossed the skiff, skimming along the surface of the lake like a skipped stone, and Daniel nudged Jake with a knee. Both men glanced up to watch the massive bird soaring past on the breeze.
“Bald eagle,” Jake said.
“She’s getting ready to lay, I think,” Daniel murmured, watching the bird as she rose on the draft with a long, pronged tree branch clutched in her talons. “She’s been going back and forth over the lake for days.”
Without warning, the fishing pole jerked in his hands, and Daniel gripped it tight, wrenching it back. There was a fish on the line, a big one, and he pulled hard, grimacing. Beside him in the boat, Jake whooped and abandoned his own rod as he scrambled to look over the side.
“Bring him up!”
Daniel battled with the fish, ignoring the sharp discomfort with every turn of the reel.
“You’re losing him!”
Wrenching the pole, Daniel leaned forward, peering over the side of the skiff into the lake.
Pearly lances of sunlight sliced through the gray-blue water, dancing with the rocking of the boat, and his fishing line cut a straight path through them into murky depths with no end in sight. How far down was this thing?
Daniel leaned back again, propping his feet against the bottom of the skiff and jerking the rod with all his might, muscles straining.
Without warning, the line snapped free, and he fell backward with a grunt, striking the back of his head on the thin lip of the boat as silver fireworks exploded across his field of vision.
“You okay? You all right?”
Jake’s voice sounded far away, underwater, and Daniel tried to nod, which worsened the pain at the back of his skull.
“I’m fine,” he managed.
“Turn, let me see it.”
Daniel turned his head slightly, and true to form, Jake whistled. “Bleeding, but not too bad. We’d better get you back. Put some ice on it. I can drive you down to Doc Porter’s—”
“No.” Daniel cut him off with another shake of his throbbing head. “I’m fine. I just need to lay down for a minute.”
Jake looked doubtful, but he reached for the oars and pulled them through the water with swift strokes, angling the skiff back toward the boathouse. When Daniel looked up, Jake offered him a half-hearted smile that didn’t clear the concerned look in his eyes.
“It’s really not your day, brother.”
Daniel nodded grimly. He was beyond exhausted, and both his head and wrist were throbbing. Jake dragged the oars backward as they reached the dock, and the skiff nudged it gently.
“Too bad about the fish,” Jake said as he looped the rope around the piling, and Daniel nodded again, but didn’t answer as he climbed onto the dock and staggered toward the door.
He couldn’t care less about the fish. He’d taken enough life for today.