The Fall of Never(51)

Raintree knocked his boots against the wall, leaving splatters of melted frost on the linoleum. “Coffee on?” he called to Annie.

“I’ll put some on.”

“Don’t bother,” he said and entered his office.

Graham Rand was seventy-seven and looked twice that. He was as thin and as spindly as an uprooted weed. To Raintree, Rand’s face looked as if someone had untied some essential knot at the back of the old man’s head, allowing nearly eight decades of cheesecloth flesh to hang loose. He had the jowls of a junkyard bulldog and the head-works of a common house rodent that’d been cracked over the cranium one too many times with the business end of a broom.

Rand paused in midpace as Raintree entered the office, his hands frozen in a death-grip around his wool hunting cap. His granite-colored eyes were wide and obtrusive.

“Detective,” Rand said.

“Graham,” Raintree said, moving behind his desk and taking a seat. There was a sharp draft coming from a crack in the windowpane behind his head—he could feel it on the nape of his neck when he leaned back. “You could take a seat.”

“Thank you.” The old man dropped into the wooden chair on the other side of Raintree’s desk. So thin, he appeared to be swimming inside his hunting coat.

“Annie says you had some trouble up in the woods today?”

“Oh, yes.” He was fidgeting and looked uncertain where to begin. “I was out most of the day. Collecting box-traps. It sometimes takes a while, having to stick them way out past the yard—”

“I’ve told you about trapping squirrels, Graham.”

“They get into my shed, tear apart the birdseed, tear apart the fertilizer. Damn things already gnawed the life out of my spark-plug wire on my mower…”

“What happened?”

“One of them varmints chewed right through the wire.”

“No,” he said, “what happened today in the woods?”

“Oh.” His eyes were red and shifty and Raintree guessed the man had been drinking. “Well, it was just starting to get dark—sun was just slipping through the mountains out west, could see it through the trees—and I’m out collecting the last of the box-traps when I heard something. Sounded like someone laughing. Well, I stood stark still and started looking around—you know how I don’t cotton to folks trespassing, and I own that whole lot right until that valley begins, and then it belongs to Mr. Kellow…”

“Someone laughing?”

“Yes, sir. And it sounded close by, but I didn’t see nobody when I looked up. But like I said, it was getting dark and things in the woods tend to look funny in the dark.”

Raintree leaned forward in his chair. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, working the cold out of it.

“Anyhow, I shout out, ‘Who’s there?’ but no one answers, so I think maybe it was an owl or whippoorwill or something and I start heading back home. And then I stop because I saw something on the ground.”

In one quick motion—quite agile for such an old man—Rand pulled open the snaps of his jacket with his left hand and dove into the jacket’s lining with his right. In that instant, Raintree had time to think, Dear God, I think the old coot is actually going to pull out a gun and shoot me. But Rand didn’t pull out a gun. What he pulled out was a wool hunting cap, nearly identical to the one he’d been wringing through his hands just moments before, except this one was green, not red.

Rand slammed the cap down on Raintree’s desk. “I found this,” he said with as much conviction as someone who’d just presented incontestable evidence that there was life on Mars.

“A hunting cap,” Raintree said.

“A hunting cap belonging to one of them,” Rand said, and pulled back the inner lining of the cap, exposing the brand tag. Two initials were written on the tag in permanent marker: J.M.

“Them?” Raintree said.

“One of them hunters that disappeared,” Rand said, now with some agitation. “One of them fellas was named Justin McCullum, am I right, sir?”

“Shoot,” Raintree said, reaching out and grabbing the cap from the old man’s gnarled fingers. “You playing some kind of head-game with me, Graham? That’s serious business with those hunters, you know…”

“No games, Detective, no way.” He thrust a finger at the hunting cap. “Sure as shade, that cap belonged to one of them disappeared hunters, I’ll bet any amount of money on it. I read the names in the papers last month when everyone was out looking for them and I know one of those names was Justin McCullum, know it just like I know my own shoe size. I’m right, yes?”

Raintree sighed. The cap was still damp from having been out in the woods—presumably for a month, if the old man’s story was authentic. “Justin McCullum,” he acknowledged, “yes, one of the hunters. You found this where? Could you take me back to the spot where you found it?”

The old man’s face grew dark. Jesus save the world, his eyes just wouldn’t stop.

You’re pumped up a good one there, pal, Raintree thought.

“I ain’t going back.” Rand’s voice suddenly sounded very small.

“And why is that?”

“I can tell you where I found it, right down to this rock and that tree, but I ain’t going back in those woods. Not now, not tonight and in the dark.”