grab that towel and wrap it around her burning body.
I rolled the window down, let the fresh cold air slap me in the face. I was in a little better neighborhood now. The houses were a little bigger, with longer driveways and more dead grass between the houses and the street. I passed the Beer Store. The red sign glowed in the dark, although the store was closed. It was coming up on two in the morning now.
Where are you, Vinnie? Where are you right now? I know you didn’t kill those people. No matter what happened to your brother, you are not capable of doing something like this. But where are you?
One more left. Then a right. I turned my lights off again, rolled slowly down the street, looking for house numbers. Seventy-one, seventy-three, seventy-five.
I stopped in front of seventy-seven. It was a ranch house with tall, barren trees on either side of the walkway. It would have been a nice house on a normal day. I slipped out of the truck and pushed the door closed. I looked both ways down the street as I went to the front door.
There were a lot more porch lights on in this neighborhood. I felt exposed standing there at the front door. I didn’t bother to knock this time. I tried turning the doorknob, but it was locked.
I rang the doorbell. I heard it chime two notes, somewhere deep in the house. Nobody answered.
If somebody was going to break into this house, they wouldn’t stand here at the front door and do it. It wasn’t nearly as dark as the last house. So I went around to the side door, hidden from the street by a tall wooden fence. There was a metal storm door that had been practically torn off the hinges. The door inside that was open.
I stepped inside. The smell of gasoline came to me again.
But no, it wasn’t like before. I could just barely smell it. If it happened here, it was somewhere in the back of the house.
I walked through the house. The only sound was my own breathing. There was a sudden flash of light as a car drove by outside. The headlights swept across the wall and then they were gone.
The front room had bookshelves on every wall. There were thousands and thousands of books. I walked through to the back hallway, poked my head around each door. In the darkness I could barely make out the shapes of beds and dressers and tables.
I went into what had to be the master bedroom. There were framed pictures all over the room, but it was too dark to see the faces. I could make out a faint light from another door. It had to be the master bathroom.
I went to the door and slowly leaned against it. It creaked open. There was a small night-light glowing above the sink. No bodies to see. No horror in this bathroom.
I left the master bedroom, walked back down the hallway, through the room with all the books and back into the kitchen. The smell of gasoline got stronger.
There was another door I had walked right by. I shouldered it open. It was a small guest bathroom. It was empty.
I stood in the darkness, in the middle of the kitchen, trying to figure it out. Then I noticed a piece of paper on the table. I bent down and tried to read it. I could barely make out the letters.
“Millie, I’ve gone to the lodge, back in a couple of days. Helen.”
It made no sense to me. I was there when she was packing up. I heard her say how much she wanted to get out, how much she hated that place. Like a sickness, she said. Why would she go back up there?
I didn’t have an answer for that. But I knew one thing. It came to me all at once. Whoever killed Ron and Millie came here next. That’s why I smelled the gasoline. They brought the smell with them, into this house. But Helen wasn’t here. I didn’t know why she’d gone to the lodge, but whatever the reason, it had saved her life.
At least for now. If they knew where the lodge was, they’d go there. They’d find her.
They. Who were “they”? The same people who burned the men at the lake? Was this more of the same?
I went back out to the truck and picked up the cell phone. As I drove away, I dialed the Hearst Detachment. A man answered the phone on the second ring.
“I need to know when Constable Reynaud comes on duty,” I said.
“She comes on at seven,” the man said. “Can I help you with something?”
“Please have her call Alex,” I said.
“Just Alex? Can I have a last name?”
“She knows my last name.”
“Can I have your number, please?”
“She knows my number.” Or if she doesn’t, I thought, she can find out.
“Sir, are you sure I can’t help you with something?”
“There’s one thing you can do,” I said. “I’m going to give you an address in Sudbury. You need to send someone over there.” I gave him the Trembleys’ address.
“Sir? Can you tell me what happened?”
“Tell her to call me,” I said. “Tell her I didn’t do this. And neither did Vinnie.”
I hung up the phone and kept driving.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I left Sudbury and headed north. It was three hard hours to Timmins, Ontario. I crossed the Canadian Pacific Railway just north of Onaping, and then the Canadian National in Gogama. The road was empty, which was a damned good thing. I would have run over anything that got in my way.
Timmins was another old mining town. They had struck gold up here, a long time ago, and you could still see the traces in the names of the streets and the businesses. Prospector Street. The Gold Rush Cafe. A sign on the highway advertised tours in one of the old mines.
It was five in the morning when I stopped to gas up and grab some coffee. This time of year, it was still dark. Sunrise was two hours away.
I drove out of town and it was all wide-open spaces and potato farms for a while, and then it was back into the trees. I finally hit the Trans-Canada Highway and headed west through Smooth Rock Falls and Kapuskasing. The sun was just starting to come up when I hit Hearst. I drove right by the OPP station. It was just after 6:30 at that point, so Reynaud wasn’t there.
I slowed down as I passed the station, then sped back up when I was clear. I drove west, with the sun coming up behind me. I was still half an hour from the lodge.
I passed the turnoff to Calstock and the Constance Lake Reserve. Being up here again, it had to be either a bad dream or a bad joke. I rubbed my eyes with one hand. When I opened them, I was drifting right off the road. Drive off the road and hit a big tree, I said to myself. That would be perfect.
I drove past the turnoff for 631, the road down to Wawa. I had spent the whole night making a big circle through Ontario, from the Soo to Sudbury to Timmins and now back on the Trans-Canada, all the way up here. A few more miles and I saw the little dirt road that led up to the lodge. It was the road Vinnie and I found the first time we came up here, when we weren’t even sure it was the right one. How much had changed since then?
There was a heavy mist hanging in the air as I turned off the highway. The early sun hadn’t burned it off yet. As cold as it was, that mist might have hung around until noon. That last morning, when we were up in the woods, the air had felt exactly the same way. It was just as wet, and the chill was just as penetrating. Even with the windows rolled up, I could feel it.
I took it easy going up the road. I couldn’t see where the hell I was going in the mist, and I didn’t want to end up in the mud again. That plus the fact that I really didn’t know what I was getting into. I had no idea what I was going to find when I got to the lodge.
My cell phone rang. I picked it up. “Is this Reynaud?”
“McKnight, what the hell’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m at the lodge. I think Helen’s here.”
“Don’t move. We’ll be right over.”
“Vinnie might be here, too. I have to find him.”
