“Oh, God. 1712 Commanda Crescent. Send someone now. He’s going to kill me.”
She shoved the phone back into her pocket and peered around the corner of the garage. No one.
She made for the side door and he came from around the front, black and featureless. She wouldn’t make it to the house. She veered back to the garage and got her key into the lock and got the door open and inside and turned the lock again as he slammed into it with a noise like thunder that made her scream. It didn’t come out as a scream but like a noise her cat might have made. He wouldn’t be able to bust through that door-that was only in the movies, right? Doors don’t break that easily.
There was a splintering sound, and she remembered that long thing he’d been carrying. A crowbar.
It was dark in the garage, but she was afraid to turn on the light. She felt her way around to the far side of the car. Not locked, thank God. She opened the passenger door and the dome light came on, just enough of a glow to make out her father’s workbench, the shapes of hammers and saws and wrenches.
That splintering sound again.
She shut the car door and moved through the dark to the workbench and got up on it, damaged knee screaming. She felt on the wall and pulled down the crossbow, felt to her right for the leather quiver. She got behind the car and fitted an arrow into the groove, and wound it back until the loud click told her it was cocked. The Vixen had an automatic safety that she now pressed into the Off position.
Sam saw it in her head before it happened. She knew how it would look-dark silhouette against the glow from the moon and the street lights. After that he would find the light and he would kill her.
The door crashed open. The dark shape. Sam stood up and released the arrow. The man doubled over and made a sound like he was puking. He fell back, got up, staggered, fell against the garage. Then his footsteps- uneven, dragging-moving away.
She waited behind the car. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She’d seen squirrels breathing like that when Pootkin stalked them.
After a time she heard a distant siren, and closer, the sound of voices and car doors slamming. The squawk of a radio.
Flashlight beams playing over the surfaces outside, and then a man’s voice, cautious, saying, “Police. Police. Hello?”
A cop’s face and hat flashed in the doorway and disappeared again.
“I’m going to have to ask you to put down that weapon, miss. Now.”
“Did you catch him?”
“We have an individual in custody.”
“Tall bastard with a mask on?”
“He also has an arrow sticking out of his liver. Now put down the weapon and step to the front of that car and place your hands on the hood. I’m not asking.”
Sam looked at the bow. She didn’t even remember doing it, but there was another arrow in the bow and it was cranked all the way back.
19
Cardinal had been in bed but not asleep when the call came. He got out of bed and got dressed and drove up the hill to City Hospital. The shock of moving from the warmth of his bed to the cold of a December night was still reverberating in his bones when he found the patrol officer waiting for him outside a recovery room.
“Girl claims he’s the guy did the murders out at Trout Lake. He denies it up the wazoo, of course.”
“Where’s the girl now?”
“Down in emerge with PC Gifford. Bad cut on her knee, but you know how it is with emerge-if you’re not dying, you’re there for eternity.”
Cardinal had to get by the nurse on duty in the recovery room.
“This man has just come out of surgery,” she said. “You can’t be cross-examining him.”
“Just a couple of questions,” Cardinal said.
She led him past a row of beds, all but two of them empty. “Five minutes,” she said. “I’ll be timing you.”
The man on the bed was hooked up to an IV and a pulse monitor, but other than that, he looked in pretty good shape. His blond hair needed a wash, but his powerful shoulders, where they emerged from beneath the sheet, looked wider than the pillow he slept on.
“Troy Campbell,” Cardinal said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you again.”
Campbell opened his eyes and contemplated Cardinal with medicated calm. After a while he said, “I didn’t touch that girl.” His speech was slow but clear. “And she shot me with an arrow. She perforated my spleen. I plan to press charges.”
“Troy, you want to tell me again where you were Thursday night? Keep in mind that we already know where Randalll Wishart was.”
Campbell’s features maintained their contemplative cast. “I was at work that night. Ask my supervisor. We have a time clock that’ll show I clocked in.”
“So you weren’t in fact at home with your buddy Randall.”
Campbell shook his head, making the pillow rustle. “We have a TV at work.” He lifted his hand and encountered the handcuff that secured him to the bed frame. He squinted at it for a good thirty seconds. “You’re kidding, right?”
–
PC Gifford, standing outside Exam Room 3, gave Cardinal the particulars. “Samantha Doucette. Eighteen years old. Art student up at Algonquin. Her mother and brother are in the exam room with her. Mother won’t let her out of her sight. Got a pretty tall tale, if you ask me.”
“The doctor in there with her?”
“Yeah, they must be about done by now.”
The doctor came out and Cardinal identified himself. “How’s she doing?”
“She has a deep laceration to her left knee. Wouldn’t have been so bad except she didn’t get it treated for so long.”
“So it didn’t happen tonight.”
“No, no. Days ago. But she’ll be fine. I stitched her up and gave her a scrip for ampicillin.”
Cardinal went in and identified himself to Sam and her mother. The girl had put on a fresh pair of jeans and was shoving the others into a shopping bag. Her brother was entranced by an iPod or some other cyber-drug.
“I want to stay,” Mrs. Doucette said.
“Your daughter’s eighteen,” Cardinal said. “I need to talk to her in private.”
“She should have a lawyer.”
“Officers at the scene are satisfied that she was responding to an attack. I don’t anticipate charging her with anything-provided she tells me the truth.”
“Of course she’ll tell you the truth. Why would she do anything else? Don’t worry, honey, I’ll be right outside.”
When her mother and brother were gone, the girl sat on the edge of the exam table. “She doesn’t know the real story. She just thinks I was attacked by a complete stranger out of the blue.”
“And that’s not what happened, is it?”
The girl folded her arms across her chest and stared at the floor, shaking her head.
“You were coming home from work, is that right? Where do you work?”
“A restaurant. Part-time. I’m a cook.”
“Don’t tell me,” Cardinal said. “Bistro Champlain.”
“That’s right.” A puzzled look crossed her face. Her features were small, perfectly formed, and she had a dark-eyed intensity that without too much effort on her part might cause a married man to lose his head.
“Okay,” Cardinal said. “Why did this man attack you?”
“Because of what I saw. In the Trout Lake house. Not saw-heard.”
“You’re talking about the couple that was murdered.”
