Descent

“You think those are Billy’s tracks, Sheriff?”

“I don’t know. They might be.”

They looked again at the GPS screen, which seemed to place them in a dark void at the edge of the world. The device told them the time was 9:32 p.m.

Their speed was zero.

“How far you reckon he could get in that car, Sheriff?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”

“You want me to get Summit County on the radio, tell them we’re up here?”

“No, let’s see what’s up ahead here a ways first.”

The deputy shifted into the low range of four-wheel drive and they drove into the woods and followed the primitive road as it wound through the trees and grew more steeply pitched, more wildly switchbacked, the foreshortened way brilliant in their headlights until at last they rounded a bend and saw the El Camino. There was time and slope enough for the cruiser to stop short of the car, and the deputy skillfully worked the gas to keep them from backsliding more than a few feet, until at last they achieved a kind of stasis on the slope.

The El Camino sat aslant the road, anchored to a tree by its tailgate.

They sat watching it for a moment.

“He sure drove that car, didn’t he, Sheriff.”

“He sure did.”

“You want me to throw the lights?”

“No, there ain’t nobody in it.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well, I see that snow built up on a cold hood, and I see a car that ain’t even tried to get itself unstuck, and lastly I see them footprints going away from the car and on up the road.”

The deputy drew himself to the wheel, as if he’d lacked the proper vantage to see such things. He sat back again and shook his head. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I got a fu

“All right,” said Ki

The deputy put the cruiser in park and eased his foot from the brake, and the cruiser held. They got out and the deputy took his position in the wing of the door while the sheriff approached the El Camino. Ki

“That his phone?” said the deputy.

“Yep.”

“Why do you reckon he left it?”

“Why do you?” Ki

The deputy grew pensive. “For one, it wouldn’t do him any good up here. For two, I reckon he wanted us to find it.”

Ki

He shut the door and returned to the cruiser and handed the deputy a magazine and asked him to get on the horn and call it in, and he’d begun to walk back to the El Camino when he stopped and turned back. The deputy was staring at the magazine.

“You want me to call in this magazine, Sheriff?”

“Look again, Deputy.”

He looked.

“There on the fa

“Oh,” said the deputy. “Got it.”

A few minutes later the deputy told him the number had come back a New Mexico plate registered to one Reginald Smites who, like the plate itself, was long expired.

Ki

“Looks like he got out and followed on foot, Sheriff.”

“That’s how it looks to me.”

“Think we can move this car?”

“He didn’t leave the keys.”

“We could tow it out of the way.”

“We could try but I don’t want to spend the time. Go grab a torch, Do

“You want me to bring the shotguns?”

“I guess one ought to be plenty.”

The moment the deputy extinguished the headlights the woods grew deep in every direction. Tree articulating from tree and the steep expanse of mountain unveiled in the blue flood of moonlight. They saw where Billy had twice fallen and they saw his adjustment and they followed these strange impressions up the road with the flashlights off and no sound anywhere but their own footfalls and the faint hiss of wind in the boughs. When the sheriff’s two-way squawked he grabbed it and thumbed it into silence and the deputy did the same to his.

59

The wood split and there was the sudden edge of blade, the dull gleam of silver in the black face of the door. She did not believe it. A thing from the outside world had broken into hers. She stared at it, heart-stopped, waiting to see what it would do next. The sight of it awakened in her thin legs the memory of a day long ago on snowshoes—afloat on the deep snow, thighs full of blood, lungs stretched and burning and each step another step downslope, away from the shack, away from the cot, from the bathroom, from the chain. She watched the blade in the door and it didn’t move, and then she heard the pop of the gun, and she dropped to her knees, and the voice she heard next was the Monkey’s.

She backed away, dragging the chain with her to her place on the cot and to the sour old sleeping bag, which for a moment she had let herself believe would never again touch her skin. She drew up her legs and cowled the bag about her and watched the dim edge of blade in the door, dully lit by the glow from the stove where her next-to-last log withered on its bed of coals.

After a while he and Billy were quiet. Then he told her through the door that he would be right back, and there were a few more sounds, and she heard the sled ru

So she sat thinking of each of them, all she could remember of them, while another part of her listened for the return of his footfall, the dragging of the riderless sled, the sound of the key fitting into the padlock. He’d told Billy he did not believe the sheriff was coming but he would not take the chance. It was time. And he would do what he should’ve done long ago and then he would come down from the mountain and never return to this place and he would never be found and she would never be found, nor her sisters before her nor the two men who had tried to help her. Her family would never know and she knew now that that was the worst thing of all, to never know, and she hoped that if there was no God or no heaven that at least she might be allowed to make herself known to them one last time, to tell them everything she’d not told them when she’d had the chance, and she began to tell them now, hastily, in a fevered whisper, for once more she heard the footsteps beyond the door, distant, then steadily louder, slogging heavily in the crusted snow. She did not hear the sled ru