These Silent Woods: A Novel(65)

I lean back against the post while Finch finishes the article. Close my eyes because everything is spinning and burning white. The sheriff. If he missed the Bronco—and I’m not sure that he did—he now has a second clue. He’ll almost certainly recall that right around when Casey Winters disappeared, he had a run-in with us at the gas station.

“They’ve called in the FBI,” Scotland says. “Cooper, the technology they have now.” He begins pacing back and forth. “Twenty-four hours. That’s what you have, max. Paper printed this morning. By tomorrow, they’ll know—they’ll know who you are. That you’re here, close. They’ll find you. Cooper, you have to do something, quick. No time to sit around.”

I pull my knees to my chest.

“Facial recognition. They’ll figure it out. You, Finch.”

“What do you want me to say, Scotland?”

“I don’t know. You got some kind of contingency plan?”

“A contingency plan for what? A girl wanders onto our land, takes our picture, then dies. Yes, dies.” We hadn’t seen him or told him yet. “Found her down in the valley. Yesterday. And—” I flash a glance at Finch, then motion for him to follow me to the side of the house. “It wasn’t an accident. Someone did it. Killed her.”

“Does Finch know?”

I nod. “She went down there looking for her.”

He shakes his head. “Is she all right? I mean after seeing that.”

“She’s shook up.”

“You need to talk to her. Help her sort it out.”

“That’s the least of my concerns.” It shouldn’t be, I see that, but for the moment there’s no time. I tell him about the boyfriend, Finch seeing him hurt Casey Winters. “He saw her. Finch. Came after her.” The words are spilling fast.

He shakes his head, takes in a sharp breath. Anger ripples across his face, the scar above his eyebrow glinting. He turns to the woods, looking. “Want me to stay? Help you keep watch here? Whatever you need. Just say the word.”

Overhead, the December sky: an endless, swallowing blue.

Tired, that’s what I am. Wore out. I’ve never wanted to be a person who gives up. A quitter. But there are times when a man has to assess a situation and call it. Fall back. Fold. “Naw. Appreciate the offer, though. And the heads-up.”

“Well, if you’re sure then I’ll head home. Got my CB radio, and I’ll be listening. Watching, too. If anyone’s coming this way, I’ll be here.” He lumbers off across the yard and into the woods.

A twinge of guilt, for suspecting he might’ve been tangled up in Casey Winters’s disappearance, for thinking he might betray us. “Thanks,” I call after him, and he raises a hand.

A plan is swimming to me, piece by piece, and I hate it but once I’ve come to it—looked it in the face—I can see there is no other way. Which allows me some resolve. Some clarity. I’m well aware I’ll need both.





THIRTY-TWO




There is a moment, in parachuting, when you must yield yourself to the pull of the earth. You’re twenty, sometimes thirty thousand feet in the air. You’ve been breathing straight oxygen, trying to get all the nitrogen out of your system. You’ve got your pack and your parachutes; you’ve done everything you can to keep yourself alive. With HALO jumping, you step out of the airplane and you’re sailing through the air, flying, but not really, because flight has a certain element of control. A certain beauty to it. Not so with HALO. You’re dropping. You don’t open the parachute until you’ve gone down thousands of feet and meanwhile you’re going a hundred miles an hour through open sky.

The first few times, my instinct was to panic. I would think about what if the parachute didn’t open, what if I got tangled up, couldn’t open my arms and legs wide, what if I died. But after a while, I learned to like it. That feeling of letting go. Surrendering.



* * *



I tell Finch to climb in the Bronco.

“Are you going to the police station?”

“Yes, but not yet. We’ll be back—there’s just a quick thing I need to do.”

“Can I take Walt Whitman?”

“Sure.”

“Where are we going?” she asks as she scrambles into the back seat, Walt tucked beneath her arm.

“Need to make a phone call. Get a few things in order.”

We drive to the gate. Unlock it, close it back up. Trundle over the dirt road, soft and rutted from the recent snowmelt: the ground, saturated and soft. On the paved road, Finch asks if we can listen to the radio, so I click on the music. We pull into the gas station, and I grab a handful of coins from my pocket and dial the number Marie wrote on a scrap of paper for me.

I explain to her, best I can, what has transpired, and ask her if she can come. To her credit, she doesn’t ask a bunch of questions, doesn’t tell me I should’ve reported seeing the girl days ago, like I promised. She just says she’ll gather up a few things and be at the cabin by morning, and I think back to that first time Finch and me drove out to the very same pay phone and called Jake to tell him we were staying at the cabin. How he came right away. I hang up the phone and climb back into the Bronco.