— Christ, Dick, that doesn’t matter just now. I know the place he called from. It’s Alec Reynolds’s place.
— Stan, this is some kind of a goddamn mess. I’ll get some cars scrambled-
— The nearest tactical team is two goddamn hours away. I’m going.
— I don’t want you to do that, Stanley.
— I think I know what kid Lee was talking about.
— You jackass, look how old we are. I have a crown of pork waiting for me when I get home. I’m telling you to wait right here.
Stan was already moving back to his truck. He heard Dick shout his name. Dick was standing alongside the cruiser with one hand lifted in a gesture of entreaty.
— Follow me, said Stan.
He drove his truck quickly down the road. He parked it in the clearing where he’d parked it before. The deadfall was cloaked under the snow. Past the culvert and a hundred yards farther down the road he could see the entrance to the laneway. He got out of the truck and took the.410 out from behind the seat. By that time Dick had pulled up behind him and was getting out of the unmarked car.
— Stanley, Christ. There’s cars coming from every detachment from here to North Bay. The tactical team there is standing up. We can sit tight.
— I know where to go, Dick.
Stan could see Speedy in the back seat of the car. Stan looked at Dick. Dick lifted his hands and held them palm out.
Then Dick got one of the detachment’s 12-gauge shotguns out of the trunk. He loaded it. Stan could see that his fingers were fumbling slightly. Dick left Speedy in the back seat, and then he and Stan went into the bush, backtracking the way Stan had gone before, taking deep steps through the snow. It was slow going. Up ahead was the shallow fold of the creek. Beyond that was the rocky slope. He watched the high feature for movement in the breaks between the trees. Dick thrashed through the snow behind him. He’d unholstered his pistol again.
They came to the creek. Stan slipped going down the bank and put one leg up to the knee into the freezing water. Dick hauled him back out by the shoulders.
— Look, said Dick, pointing.
Fifteen feet downstream there were fresh tracks coming crosswise down the slope above the creek. Right at the bank the snow was cloven away to the mud beneath, as if someone else had stumbled and fallen. The tracks resumed on the other side, heading to the road.
— He was in a hurry.
They stepped over the creek where it narrowed between two rocks. It was hard work climbing the slope past the creek, and they would be long in reacting if anyone appeared above. At the crest they leaned on tree trunks, sucking wind. Fifty yards across open ground stood the back wall of the shed. Nothing was moving.
They looked at each other and then set out across the field, moving abreast through the snow. The feeling had gone out of Stan’s foot where he’d put it in the water. They stopped to study the tracks through the snow that Speedy had left as he fled. They watched the shed and the campers. They could see an import hatchback parked a little farther down the laneway. They came around the shed to the laneway and saw the van. There was an array of tracks in the snow. There were ejected 9mm casings, maybe six or seven of them, and three spent shotgun cartridges. They saw the buckshot holes in the side of the van.
— Airplane, said Dick.
— What?
Down past the store they could see the flat white surface of the bay. There was a small airplane, maybe a Cessna, sitting on the ice just below the drop-off, almost obscured from view by the spruce.
— None of this can be any good, said Dick.
Drops of blood lay in the snow, pink and oddly delicate, tracing a path around the van to the man-door in the shed.
Before there was opportunity to track the blood, they heard the Airstream door open up. A bearded man came out on the step. He had a detachable aviator’s headset around his neck and he was bent under the weight of a duffle bag. The man was holding Arlene by the wrist. She was lurking in the doorway just behind him, wearing a slip and a jacket and snow boots. Her face was vacuous and makeup was smeared down her cheeks.
— Oh, said the bearded man. Fuck.
Dick pointed the 12-gauge and told the man to drop the duffle bag and to come down off the stoop with his hands plainly visible. The girl too.
— How many other people are in that trailer? said Dick.
The pilot looked at Arlene. She just stared at the ground.
— There’s nobody, said the pilot. There’s just us. Can we talk about this?
— You’re goddamn right we can, said Dick. I’m very interested to know what you have to say.
Stan covered with his.410. Dick had a couple of plastic cable-ties tucked in his hat. He used these to bind Arlene’s wrists and the wrists of the pilot, who stiffened angrily. He told them how there was some crazy asshole with a shotgun sitting in the shed.
— What are you boys going to do about that, is what I want to know? said the pilot.
— Stanley, said Dick.
But Stan was already moving to the man-door, seating the.410 into his shoulder and laying his finger along the side of the trigger-guard. He passed through the door frame and blinked to get the brightness out of his eyes. He saw the blood spotted across the floor. Something was hunched against the locker in the corner.
He crossed half the distance and the thing moved and it was Leland King, sitting with his legs forked out in front of him. He had a sawed-off shotgun across his lap. As Stan came forward, Lee made some effort to move the shotgun. He appeared to be incapable of fully lifting it. He just braced the stock against the wall beside him and hefted the barrel up on one knee. He held it for a moment and then he lowered it and let it slide out of his hands altogether.
Stan moved up and shoved the shotgun away with his boot. He heard Dick call after him from outside and he turned his head and shouted that he was alright. Up above, the trusses were creaking quietly. Lee had not bled through the hole in his jacket but he’d bled down his jeans onto the hard-packed dirt around him. He was pale as candle wax.
— Lee, said Stan.
Lee’s eyes were fixed not on the old man but at a point in the middle distance. He spoke in a dry and cracked voice: One time I guessed I knew something.
— Tell me where the boy is.
— I guessed I knew something. But I wasn’t right at all.
— Where is he, Lee?
— I was wrong about it the whole time. Everything. Maybe you think you can understand that. But you can’t.
Lee lifted his hand and grasped the edge of the locker door. He was able to pull it open a few inches and then he dropped his hand back onto the ground.
Stan reached the.410 forward and hooked the foresight on the door and pulled it open. The door was heavier than it looked. He thought the boy was dead until he saw the eyes blinking on either side of the broken nose. The boy’s mouth moved.
— You can’t understand it, said Lee.
— I can understand it. All of it, pretty clear.
The man on the ground shook his head: No. There’s nothing clear.
— He’s alive, Lee.
Where he goes, I won’t see him.
But already the old man was turning away, calling to his friend outside. What remained for Lee was that which lingers through the smallest, loneliest hours. Rising, stirring, stepping out of the dark, calling his name.
It had always been there.
The new year came and there was a great deal of talk in town and there was talk through the months that
