Crucifixion River

depressed and acting out against me when he was denied tenure, but the therapy seemed to help. Until we came here. My fault, he’d say….

“Maggie!” His voice, coming from one of the cabins by the beach.

She got up, went to the porch railing, and called: “What is it?”

“I need your help down here.”

“Be right with you.”

She took the camera into the lodge and set it on the counter. Evidence of Cal’s mental instability. What am I going to do with it?

“Maggie!”

“Coming!”

Take the image card to a lawyer? The police? Destroy what’s left of our marriage? Destroy Cal? I don’t love him anymore, probably haven’t for a long time, but those years together and the boys have to count for something, don’t they?

“Maggie!” He wasn’t distressed, just insistent.

As she descended the slope to the beach, she took deep breaths, told herself to remain calm.

Cal stood on the ladder inside the cabin, holding the end of the beam that he’d first sawed through yesterday. He was smiling-falsely.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I need you to get up here and hold this for me.”

“What?”

“Just climb up and hold it for a minute. You can do that, can’t you?”

She pictured the braces and trip wires. Pictured what would happen when everything came tumbling down. And realized what Cal’s plan was. What it had been all along. The knowledge hit her so hard that her gut wrenched.

She fought to control the nausea, said: “Cal, you know I don’t like ladders.”

“Just for a minute, I promise.”

She made her decision and moved toward him. “Just for a minute?” she asked.

“Not even that long.”

“OK, if you insist…oh my God, look over there!”

She flung her arm out wildly. Cal jerked around. His foot lost purchase on the ladder, and then his hand lost purchase on the beam. He clutched instinctively at one of the ropes. The dilapidated structure came crashing down, taking the ladder and Cal with it.

Maggie’s ears were filled with the roar of falling wood and Cal’s one muffled cry. Then everything went silent.

Slowly Maggie approached the cabin. Through the rising dust she could see Cal’s prone body. His head was under the beam, and blood leaked around the splintered wood. Dead. As dead as he planned for me to be.

She fell to her knees on the rocky ground. Leaned forward and retched.

Howie’s barking penetrated the silence. After a time Maggie got up shakily, put her hand on his collar, and restrained him from charging at the rubble. She remained where she was, face pressed into the dog’s rough coat, until she had the strength to drive to town to notify the police that her husband had had a final, fatal accident.

Five days later, Maggie returned to the lodge for the first time since Cal’s body had been taken away by the county coroner’s van. Most of the time, until today’s inquest, she’d stayed in Sigrid’s guest room, unable to sleep, eat, or even communicate her feelings to her old friend. Now it was over.

The verdict had been one of accidental death while attempting to commit a felony. It was the only possible one, given the existence of a large life insurance policy on Maggie’s life, taken out at the time she was a partner in an interior design firm, as well as the photographs of Cal inflicting wounds on himself and rigging the cabin. In his testimony, Abel Arneson had said he had doubts about Cal’s stories all along: “The professor was an unstable man. Anybody could see that.”

So it was over, and she was alone. As alone as Janice Mott had been after her husband died tragically on the property. Janice had fled to town and lived the life of a recluse, but Maggie didn’t see that as an option. She didn’t even see returning to the Twin Cities as an option. In fact, she saw no options at all.

Howie was whining at the door. She let him out, sat down on the futon couch that folded out into a bed. Stared around the large room and wondered what to do with her life.

Don’t think so cosmically. All you have to decide now is what to do tonight. A walk down to the dock? No, too close to where Cal died. Quiet contemplation on the porch? Not that. A book? Couldn’t concentrate. Wait…there’s Janice Mott’s diary.

Maggie retrieved it from the bureau drawer where she’d left it.

Janice Mott had kept to her resolve of documenting John’s and her happiness at Lost Wolf Lake to the very last day. But the happiness had not lasted. At first the entries had been full of delight and plans for the future. Then Janice’s tone changed subtly, with the discovery that she and John were physically incapable of having the family they’d counted on. It grew downbeat as the lodge’s clientele eroded, depressed when she realized he was having an affair with a waitress in town. Paranoid as she began to fear John wanted her out of the way so he could marry the woman. And lonely. Very lonely.

May 8, 1970

John is gone so much. When he’s not in White Iron with her, he works on the cabins. Getting them ready, he says, for the season. But the guest list is short and most will never be occupied again. For years I’ve been so wrapped up in him and, in the season, the guests, that I’ve made no friends. No one to spend time with, no one to confide in.

May 10, 1970

I heard some sawing at the cabin in the pine grove and went there, wondering what John was doing. He was working on the roof beam, and made it clear he didn’t want me there. I don’t understand. That roof has always been in fine shape. I wish he would stop this needless work and at least spend some time with me.

May 11, 1970

John spent the whole night in town again-with her, of course. He came back this morning and went out to work without an explanation. I think he is ready to leave me, and I don’t know what I’ll do then.

He’s calling out to me now. He says he wants some help. He spends the night in town with her, and now he wants me to help him!

Under this last entry, there was a space, and then the words, scrawled large: May God have mercy on his-and my-soul!

Maggie set the journal down. Rested her head on the back of the futon sofa and closed her eyes.

Same acts, different cabins. History repeating itself? Accidental similarity of events? Or some form of intelligence reaching out from the past? Something in the land itself?

One thing she was sure of-if there ever was a curse, it was gone now. Her future was decided. She was staying.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time A “Nameless Detective” Story

by Bill Pronzini

Sometimes it happens like this. No warning, no way to guard against it. And through no fault of your own. You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

11:00 p.m., drizzly, low ceiling and poor visibility. On my way back from four long days on a case in Fresno and eager to get home to San Francisco. Highway 152, the quickest route from 99 West through hills and valleys to 101. Roadside service station and convenience store, a lighted sign that said OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT. Older model car parked in the shadows alongside the restrooms, newish Buick drawn in at the gas pumps. People visible inside the