sinking into the ground, watching.
Cork followed the boot prints away from the resort into the trees and found a trail that led south through the woods. Whoever had been interested in the car and the cabins had come and gone along this trail.
Cork leaned on his cane. His leg throbbed from the effort he’d put into the tracking. A hungry animal he could understand. A man in boots was something else.
24
Stash’s family was a mystery to Ren. He’d been to their house a few times but mostly he hung out in his friend’s big bedroom with the blinds drawn, watching tapes or DVDs or playing video games. Stash’s mother was a slender blonde with nails painted a shiny red like drops of blood at the ends of her fingers. She wore a lot of makeup. Whenever Ren visited, she was cordial but a little tense and seemed to watch them both with uncomfortable concern. His father was like a telephone pole in a suit, tall and silent, and he never laughed. He bent and shook Ren’s hand every time they met, his grip strong and purposeful. Stash didn’t talk about his parents much, and when he did it wasn’t with great affection. Stash had an older brother, Martin, who was seventeen and an athlete. He played for the Bobcats and had lettered in a bunch of sports. Stash sometimes called him Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy, a reference that had something to do with an old radio program Ren had never heard of. To Ren, Stash’s family seemed just fine, but he didn’t have to live with them. That always made a difference.
Stash was in the Intensive Care Unit and not allowed visitors other than his immediate family. There was a waiting room down the hall and Stash’s brother sat there, staring toward the windows that opened onto a vista of Marquette and a sky full of promising morning sunlight. Ren and Jewell were about to step into the room when Stash’s mother emerged from the ICU and came toward them. She looked exhausted.
“April,” Jewell said, “I’m so sorry.”
The woman’s eyes were red, and Ren figured she’d been doing a lot of crying.
“They say he’s stable now,” she said. “All we can do is wait and pray.”
Tears rimmed her eyelids and Ren’s mother took her in her arms. Ren slipped into the waiting room. Martin looked his way.
“Hey,” he said to Ren.
“Hi, Marty.”
Stash’s brother hadn’t shaved. His face was a drawn landscape of sparse stubble and teenage blemish. The television in the corner was on, tuned to CNN, but the volume was turned to a low, unintelligible drone. Ren stood with his hands in his pockets.
“What happened?” he asked.
Marty wore his hair in a buzz cut, like a Marine. He ran his hand over the bristle. “He was on his skateboard, going down Ruby Hill. A car hit him from behind, didn’t stop. He’d probably be dead except some guy was walking his dog and saw it happen. Jesus. That skateboard. I’ve been telling him it’s dangerous. I’ve been trying to get him into a real sport.” He balled his fist, but there was nothing to hit. “Jesus.”
“Do they know who hit him?”
“No. A car, that’s all. It was almost dark. He shouldn’t have been skateboarding so late.” He looked across the room again. The light from the early morning sun washed orange over his face. “I’d love to get my hands on the guy behind the wheel, the son of a bitch who didn’t have the guts to stop.”
Ren glanced at the television, where CNN was running images of damage being done by a tropical storm in Florida: a mobile home with the roof peeling away, a downed power line popping sparks.
“Have you talked to him?” he asked.
“He’s still out. Dad’s with him. He hasn’t left the room. God, it’s killing him.”
“Ren?” his mother called to him from the doorway.
“Gotta go,” he said to Marty.
“Yeah.”
“He’s good,” Ren said, before he left. “He’s really good.”
Marty looked at him, his tired face blank of understanding.
“On his skateboard, I mean. He’s awesome to watch. He’s way better than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
Marty considered this and nodded thoughtfully.
“When he’s awake, tell him I said hi.” Ren turned to leave.
“Ren, come back to see him. He doesn’t have a lot of buddies.”
“Sure.”
In the hall, Ren’s mother put her arm around his shoulders. Stash’s mother was just vanishing back into the ICU.
“I can’t see him at all?” Ren said.
“You can’t go in. But I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm in taking a look from the hallway.”
They went together and stood outside Intensive Care. In a small room on the far side of the nurses’ station, Ren saw Stash’s parents standing beside a bed, looking down at a lump of linen. All he could see of Stash was a bare arm with an IV tube attached to it. Stash’s father put a hand down, and Ren could tell from the way his arm moved that he was stroking his son’s hair. It was such a gentle gesture from a man Ren had always viewed as being as caring as a chain saw.
“Let’s go,” he said, and turned away, thinking that if he ever heard Stash dis his father again, he’d let him have it but good.
25
“What do you think?” Cork said.
Dina’s keen green eyes followed the boot prints as they disappeared down the path through the woods.
“Where does this trail lead?” she asked.
“Damned if I know. But Charlie might.”
Inside Thor’s Lodge, Dina knocked on the door to Charlie’s temporary bedroom.
“What?” came the girl’s surly reply.
“We need your help,” Dina said.
“Bite me.”
Dina opened the door. Charlie lay sprawled on the bed, a comic book in her hands. Her eyes cut into Dina like razor blades.
“Get out,” she spat.
“Normally I would, Charlie, but the circumstances aren’t normal right now.”
“What do you want?”
“There’s a trail just west of the resort,” Cork said, moving in next to Dina. “Do you know what it is?”
“The Killbelly Marsh Trail. It’s part of the Copper River Trail system. Hiking, snowmobiling, that kind of thing.”
“Where does it go?”
“Loops around the marsh and connects with the main trail along the river.”
“Is it heavily used?”
“Heavily?” She rolled her eyes, as if having to think about it was an incredible imposition. “It’s fall. A lot of trolls come up here for the color. The trail’s popular.”
“ ‘Trolls’?” Dina asked.
“People from the lower peninsula,” Cork clarified. “Below the Mackinac Bridge, get it?”
“ ‘Trolls,’ ” Dina said.
Charlie put down her comic book and sat up. “Why do you want to know this stuff?”
