No sign of him. The pounding on the ground, however, told me he was closing in. I picked up my pace.
I tripped and lay crumpled in a clearing of moss. Branches snapped. The thud of running feet closed in. My time had run out. I looked around in desperation. The massive remains of a downed, rotting tree stretched along one side of the clearing.
Suddenly it was quiet. He’d stopped. A flash of red through the branches told me he’d found my jacket. I inched slowly towards the fallen tree. The footsteps started up again, this time more slowly. I watched yellow legs move towards me.
I jumped up and over the deadfall. I landed at the bottom of a narrow trench concealed by a tangle of ferns and roots. I heard the sound of laboured breathing. I held my breath.
“Christ! Where is she?” came a hoarse whisper. The footsteps stopped. I sank further into the ditch. I didn’t dare look up. Something scrapped along the ground. Clunk! The rifle barrel rattled against a rock. A thump against the rotting trunk, which quadrupled the rate of my already racing heart. “She can’t be far from here!”
Suddenly a muffled crash sounded from the direction of the beaver swamp. My pursuer’s footsteps retreated towards the sound. But I kept my relief in check and remained in my hiding place, terrified he would return. A shot rang out, silence, and then another.
FORTY-TWO
I waited in the gloom of the dripping forest, my senses on full alert for the gunman’s return. I started at a small animal scurrying over twigs. I jumped at a bird’s flutter. I waited while twilight closed around me. With the memory of the gunshots still ringing in my ears, I prayed Sergei hadn’t been the target.
I couldn’t remain here much longer. I had to find my dog. I had to warn the police that the man who’d shot Tommy and probably killed his parents was hiding out in my sugar shack. I hoped with his hideout discovered, he wouldn’t be back. But as I touched the sack containing Aunt Aggie’s wedding picture and Tommy’s money, I knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t leave without this money. Who was he? Charlie Cardinal? Louis’s partner? Or were they one and the same? And what about Gareth? Where did he fit in?
I waited a few more minutes in the silence, then grabbed the sack, scrambled out of the trench and headed back the way I’d come, away from the gunman. Using the sack as a shield against sharp branches, I felt more than saw my way through the deer tunnel. Although the dying day still managed to outline the top branches, at ground level everything blended into opaque night.
Afraid of betraying my presence, I trod as silently as I could over the needle packed ground. Instead of smashing branches aside, I gently pushed them away. At one point a twig snapped and sent a shattering message through the listening forest. I held my breath and waited. Empty silence. I continued.
Gradually, very gradually, branches began to take shape against a brightening background of grey light. I was reaching the end of the spruce. Next moment, I stepped with relief into the more visible expanse of the sugar bush. Although this wasn’t where I’d entered the spruce forest, I knew my location. The light flickering through the trees had to be coming from my cottage.
I walked towards the light, stopping frequently to listen to the night noises. But other than a startled bird, which sent my heart racing, stillness reigned. I could feel the tension slowly easing as I neared home. Soon I’d be safe inside, locked behind solid doors with the police on their way.
A dog began barking angrily. Sergei! Thank God. He was alive. And then he stopped. My telephone rang. It too abruptly stopped. The gunman was in my house, waiting, waiting for me to return with his money.
I inched slowly forward, trying to decide what to do. Escape via truck was out. Stupidly, I’d forgotten my keys in the pocket of my red jacket now lying abandoned in the spruce forest, and the spare was inside the house. That left me the option of either walking the half mile to the main road in hope of flagging one of the few passing cars, or of taking my motor boat and fleeing to the Fishing Camp, a short ten minute ride away. I opted for my boat.
However, once made, the decision didn’t remove me completely from danger. I still had to pass close to the house in order to get to the safety of my boat. Unfortunately, the path to the lake stairs would take me into the glare of the floodlights at the front of the house. I decided instead to skirt behind the woodshed at the back of the house where there was less light. I would then use the cover of the pine forest to reach the stairs.
I continued walking towards the cottage, trying to keep the sound of my passage through the wet leaves to a whisper. Within minutes, I was standing in the shadow of a large maple, looking onto the side yard drenched in yellow light. Beyond the brilliance loomed the darkened house. He’d extinguished all the indoor lights.
How dumb! If he were trying to ambush me, he should have kept everything the way it was. On the other hand, maybe the blackened house was intended to provide a better view of my arrival. And then again, maybe it was intended to hide his actual position.
I peered into the darkness beyond the light’s perimeter, searching for a faint movement or the black outline of a waiting presence. I strained to hear unusual sounds above my nervous breathing. Leaves rustled. An owl hooted. The distant putt-putt of a boat’s motor sharpened the air.
Willing myself to silence, I walked towards the woodshed. Staying well outside the circle of light, I inched my way slowly towards the back wall. When a twig snapped underfoot, I stopped and let the silence erase the sound, then inched forward again.
Cigarette smoke! He was close by! I stopped with one foot in mid-step. Another whiff of smoke. I held my breath and waited.
A chair scraped against the wooden floor of the verandah. He was waiting for me around the corner, out of sight. I slowly let out my breath, picked up my pace and reached the woodshed with little more than a whisper’s disturbance of air.
Taking the stairs to my boat had suddenly become too dangerous. I would be in full view of the waiting gunman on the verandah. Instead I would have to take the longer, more precarious route that skirted the shoreline beneath the cliffs of Three Deer Point.
Anxious to reach my boat before his patience ran out, I hurried towards the little-used track that would take me away from the cliffs to a more accessible part of the shoreline. In the growing night I felt more than saw the darker outline of the trail. And when I stubbed my toe on a large rock, I cursed myself once again for not bringing a flashlight.
I was within earshot of the restless lake when I stumbled across a large inert hump on the path. It gave with a soft, all too familiar pliancy that I recognized with dread. I knew because Marie’s body had felt the same way.
My immediate fear was for Sergei. But it couldn’t be him. I’d just heard his bark. No. This killing had been caused by those last gunshots fired after the gunman had failed to find me in the spruce forest.
Dreading that it was some poor person who’d got in the killer’s way, I gingerly reached towards the dark mass and touched something that felt like stone, but wasn’t. I stretched my fingers and felt fur, then brushed over the sinewy hardness of a slender leg.
He’d killed a deer, probably the deer that had saved my life by showing me the trail through the spruce forest. I sadly patted the still-warm fur. I could even detect a faint murmur. And then with one final shudder, the body relaxed as blood dribbled onto my fingers. I whispered a brief homage to kije manido, praying that this useless death would be avenged, like the other two deaths.
From this point,
