CHAPTER 6

MaryAnne was just about to start getting ready for the funeral when a police car pulled up in front of the house. A uniformed officer strode up to the front porch and rapped loudly on the door. "MaryAnne Carpenter?" he asked as she uncertainly opened the door a few inches.

She nodded, and the officer smiled at her. "I'm Rick Martin. I think you met my wife a couple of days ago. Gillie Martin?"

The instinctive nervousness she'd felt at seeing him evaporated.

MaryAnne pulled the door open wide. "Of course. Won't you come in? I think I still have some coffee in the pot."

"No thanks," Martin replied. "Actually, I'm here on business." As MaryAnne's expression faltered, he quickly reassured her. "Nothing to do with the ranch this time. At least I hope not."

She smiled uncertainly. "Then I'm not sure how I can help you. I don't think I've been away from the place since I got here."

"I was just wondering if anyone here might have -seen something last night. Or heard something. There was an attack up at the campground."

"The campground?" MaryAnne said. "I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Maybe I'll take you up on that cup of coffee after all," Martin told her. As they started toward the kitchen, he began explaining what had happened. "It's Coyote Creek Campground. It's up the mountains to the south, maybe a mile from here. It's not on the ranch, but it adjoins the property, and there's no fence." He chuckled soffly. "Ted said the hikers wandering down here were getting worse than the yellow jackets.

Anyway, one of the campsites got torn up last night."

MaryAnne, the coffeepot in her hand, looked up at the deputy. "My God!

Was anybody hurt?"

Martin shook his head. "No one was there. The folks who were camped in the site had gone down to Sun Valley for the day, and decided to spend the night. They didn't discover what had happened until this morning."

"But what did happen?" MaryAnne asked as she set a steaming mug in front of the deputy, who had settled himself onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

The back door opened then, and Joey Wilkenson, followed by Logan and Alison Carpenter, came inside, Storm wriggling past them to sniff curiously at the policeman.

"These are my children, Alison and Logan, and of course you know Joey.

This is Deputy Martin."

Though both Alison and Logan said hello to Rick Martin, Joey Wilkenson said nothing, and suddenly Charley Hawkins's words came back into MaryAnne's mind. Don't be surprised if someone comes to talk to Joey, that's all.

The nervousness she'd instinctively felt at the deputy's appearance a few minutes before flooded back, and as she listened to what Rick Martin was saying, she could not keep herself from glancing at Joey every few moments, searching his face for some sign of how he was reacting. Had something really happened at the campground, or was Rick Martin actually here only to talk to Joey?

"I'm not sure what happened," the deputy began. "I got called up there about an hour ago, and I still can't figure it all out."

The campground at Coyote Creek consisted of only ten sites spread over five acres. The creek babbled through the center of the grounds, and while every one of the sites faced the water, not one of them was visible from any of the others. Until this morning, neither Rick Martin, Tony Moleno, nor any of the rangers who patrolled the area had ever experienced any trouble up there.

No complaints of drunken parties involving college kids on a weekend bender. No motorcycles disturbing the quiet of the summer nights. Not even any problems with fires left untended, or campsites left filled with litter.

But this morning a camper had appeared in town with a report that his campsite had been destroyed. Though Rick had suspected the man might be exaggerating, he'd followed him back up to Coyote Creek to take a report.

What he found had shocked him.

The tent, one of the old-fashioned kind made of thick canvas, was in tatters, and when he examined the frayed edges where it had been torn, Rick saw no signs of knife marks. Searching through the ruins of the tent, he found one of the sleeping bags, which had been torn nearly in two. Oddly, most of the feathers were still inside; indeed, when he turned it over, the down cascaded to the ground.

Surely, if an animal had done the damage, the feathers would already have been spread all over the campground.

All his life, growing up in one part of the mountains or another as his father had moved from sawmill to sawmill, he'd watched wildlife hunt, watched animals stalk their quarry, watched predators worry their prey once they'd caught it. They never simply ripped something open and then let it lay. Invariably, the animals he'd watched picked up their kill and began shaking it just as his dog shook the occasional rat he managed to kill, instinctively trying to break the rodent's neck even long after it was dead.

Finally, after he'd examined the rest of the ruined camping gear and searched the area for trucks, he'd shaken his head uncertainly. "I want a couple of other fellows to take a look at diis-see what they think-but I have to tell-you, I'm not sure what we can do about it. Unless someone saw something, or at least heard something, I'm not real sure we'll ever figure out what did this."

"What about a bear? Or wolves?" the camper, whose name was Roy Bittem, suggested, unwilling to accept that he might never find out what had savaged his gear.

"Could be a bear, I suppose," Martin had agreed. "Except with this kind of damage, and no reason for an attack, you have to assume a rogue bear.

And rogues don't stop.

They just keep on rampaging, till someone comes along and shoots 'em."

Bittem had gazed speculatively at his shredded tent.

"Unless this is just the beginning," he mused out loud. "What about wolves?"

Rick Martin had already thought about that possibility and dismissed it.

"Not a chance. Wolves have a bad reputation, but as far as I know, that's all it is-just a reputation.

They stick to themselves, and grab a sheep now and then, but that's pretty much the worst of it. Never heard of wolves doing anything like this. Best guess I can come up with is that it's a grizzly gone bad, and if it is, you're right.

This is just the beginning."

Finishing up his notes on the incident, and assuring Roy Bittem that two rangers would be up to look over the vandalism within the hour, Rick Martin had gotten into his Jeep and started back down the ratted dirt track that led to the valley floor.

If it was a bear that did the damage, he suspected there would be another incident within a night or two. Once a bear went bad, it never stopped.

But if it was a bear, where were the tracks?

As he came to the main road, he thought of Joey Wilkenson.

Joey, who had always been a little odd, and who had now lost both his parents to "accidents" that neither Rick nor his assistant deputy, Tony Moleno, were yet willing to accept at face value.

Joey, who often took off into the woods on his own, with only the company of his dog.

Was it possible that Joey might have come up here in the middle of the night and wreaked havoc on the campsite?

On the spur of the moment, he'd decided to go up to El Monte and have a talk with the boy, and watch his reactions carefully.

"Lucky those people weren't there," he finished now, covertly keeping his eyes on Joey as he spoke. "If they had been, they probably would have been killed."

MaryAnne shuddered at the words, but didn't miss the fact that Rick Martin was watching Joey as he made the statement. Her own eyes shifted to the boy, who had listened silently to Martin's account.

Joey, though, said nothing, betraying no reaction at all.

"What I was wondering," Martin went on, "was whether any of you heard anything last night, or saw anything."

Now Joey stirred in his chair. "I did," he said. As everyone in the room turned to face him, his brow knit into a deep frown. "Something woke me up," he said. "I don't even know what it was. Anyway, I went to my window and looked out, and I thought I saw someone outside."

Rick Martin felt his heartbeat quicken. "You thought you saw someone?"

he pressed. "Or did you actually see someone?"

Joey's eyes flicked toward MaryAnne for a moment, almost as if he was seeking her help, but then he turned back.

"I'm not sure," he said. "It was just a sort of shadow outside. At first I thought it was a deer, but then I knew it wasn't. It was out in the pasture, and I could barely see it.

But it looked like a man."

"Do you know who it was?" Martin asked.

Joey shook his head. "I told you-I could hardly see it."

"Why didn't you tell me about it this morning, Joey?"

MaryAnne asked.

Joey shrugged. "I hardly even remembered it when I woke up," he explained. "I mean, it was almost like it happened in a dream, you know?"

"What did you do after you saw it, Joey?" Rick asked.

"I just went back to bed."

"You didn't go outside?" the deputy pressed. "You didn't go out and take a look?"

"Why would I do that?" Joey asked, his eyes narrowing.

Though he could sense MaryAnne Carpenter glaring at him, Rick decided to go on with his questions. "But you do that sometimes, don't you Joey?

Your dad used to tell me you like to go out in the woods by yourself."

"Y-Yeah, I do that sometimes," Joey reluctantly admitted.

"But I didn't go out last night."

"Are you sure?" Martin pressed. "You went out a few nights ago, didn't you? The night your mom@'

"Do we have to do this?" MaryAnne interrupted. "He told you what he saw last night, and he told you what he did."

Rick Martin hesitated, then decided that for now he'd gone far enough.

But he'd watched Joey carefully while questioning him, and taken careful note of one thing.

The boy hadn't flinched at the deliberate mention of both his mother and his father.

Indeed, though the funeral was only a couple of hours away, Joey had barely reacted to the mention of his parents at all. _ Didn't he care that they were dead?

Or was he still in shock?

As he left the house a few minutes later, Rick Martin knew that at the funeral, he would watch Joey Wilkenson very carefully. He still wasn't sure whether he believed Joey's story of having seen someone in the pasture last night, just as he still wasn't sure Joey had told him the whole truth about what had happened the day his parents had died.

That, in fact, was Martin's whole problem with Joey.

He could never tell when the boy was telling the truth and when he was lying.

MaryAnne Carpenter stood in the graveyard on the edge of Sugarloaf, Alison and Logan on one side of her, Joey Wilkenson on the other. Her eyes were fixed on the twin coffins that stood at the edges of the open grave, and she determined once more not to give in to the sob that was rising in her throat. Her role here was not only that of the grieving friend, but that of the survivor's guardian, as well.

For Joey's sake, she must not give in to the terrible sense of loss that had all but overwhelmed her last night, after the children and Alan had gone to bed and, unable to sleep, she had found herself alone in the cavernous downstairs rooms of the house. Finally she had retreated to the den, built herself a fire, and had herself a good cry.

Today, though, there would be no tears. She would bid her closest friend farewell, and then begin the process of building the new family that would, from now on, include Joey Wilkenson.

Not that it would be a difficult thing to do, she reflected.

Already, Logan seemed to think of Joey as the big brother he'd never had, and Alison appeared to have taken to him as well, though MaryAnne suspected Joey's primary attraction for her daughter was his knowledge of horses. Horses, for Alison, had been at the center of her dreams for the last five years.

Dreams that, until two days ago, had been all but unattainable.

But for the last two days, with Joey showing her what to do, Alison had learned to groom the horses, saddle them, feed them, exercise them, and, MaryAnne had noted with amusement, muck out their stalls.

Now if only Alison would muck out her room, as well, she thought.

Suddenly she was aware that the murmuring of the crowd around the twin graves-nearly the entire population of Sugarloaf-had ended and the service had begun.

MaryAnne automatically reached down to take Joey's hand in her own as the minister began the first prayer. When it was over, amens dying away, the boy made no move to pull his hand away, but stood silently staring at the caskets in which his parents' bodies lay, his expression almost puzzled, his eyes dry. MaryAnne squeezed his hand reassuringly, but if Joey was aware of the pressure, he gave no sign.

Shock, MaryAnne told herself. He's still in shock.

And yet, though she tried not to let it even take form in her mind, another thought wormed its way in as well.

It's almost as if he doesn't care.

She banished the thought instantly, wishing that Charley Hawkins had never planted the tiny seed of doubt about the two deaths in her mind, and that Rick Martin, when he had come to the ranch this morning, hadn't nourished that seed with his questioning of Joey.

Her eyes flickered over the crowd. She found the deputy at once, standing almost directly opposite her.

His eyes were fastened on Joey, his frown reflecting his own suspicions of her godchild.

But Joey was a little boy, for God's sake. A little boy who had loved his parents! Slipping her arm around him protectively, MaryAnne pulled Joey closer, as if to shield him from the disturbing doubts that suddenly seemed to be hanging in the very air of the cemetery. Indeed, as she scanned the crowd now, she imagined that everyone there was gazing at Joey with veiled eyes, their suspicions barely concealed, ready to boil to the surface at any moment.

Even a couple of children his own age-a boy and a girl who looked enough alike that MaryAnne was certain they had to be twins-were staring at Joey, then whispering to each other as if passing on some dark secret.

No! MaryAnne told herself. You're acting like a paranoid, and thinking like one, too! Steeling herself against the unsettling thoughts that had begun seeping into her mind, she turned her attention back to the service, forcing herself to concentrate solely on the words of the minister until he'd finished his eulogy.

Then, one by one, the people of Sugarloaf stepped forward to say a few words about Ted and Audrey, and MaryAnne slowly came to realize just how important a part of the village her friends had been. There didn't seem to be an organization in town that one or the other of them hadn't been a member of, nor an individual anywhere who at one time or another had not received a helping hand from them.

"I don't think Ted Wilkenson ever met a man he didn't like," Tom Granger, who owned the town's single grocery store, began. "And I sure as hell never met a man who didn't like him. Or, anyway, an honest man who didn't like him," he quickly amended himself when a murmur about real estate developers ran through the crowd. The murmur turned into a ripple of laughter. "All right, he didn't like developers any more than they liked him!" The laughter grew, and Tom Granger flushed with embarrassment. "Oh, hell," Granger finished. "You know what I mean! Ted Wilkenson was the nicest son of a bitch I ever met, and that's all I have to say!" Flustered, he retreated into the crowd, and someone else stepped up. But before the man could even begin his speech, a voice called out from the crowd.

"Hey, Phil! Tell 'em about the time Ted took you and me hunting, and he wound up talking us out of shooting anything!"

One by one people began telling their stories, and slowly MaryAnne came to comprehend the closeness of the town, the value that each of these people had to one another, and the loss the town incurred whenever someone died. For these people, their neighbors were their family. It would be a long time before the wound caused by the deaths of Ted and Audrey Wilkenson would heal. They would be missed, and they would never be forgotten.

After an hour, the last of the memories had been shared, and the final prayer was begun.

And Joey Wilkenson's hand suddenly tightened in MaryAnne's, his fingers digging into her flesh. Startled, she looked down to see Joey staring off into the distance. Following his gaze, she saw nothing at first.

Then, barely visible in the trees at the edge of the graveyard, she thought she could distinguish the figure of a man.

A large, hulking man, with wild-looking hair and a full beard, whose clothes seemed not to fit him at all.

She looked again, straining her eyes to see him more clearly, but the figure was gone. Shaken, she wasn't quite sure she'd seen it at all.

A few minutes later the service was over, and MaryAnne led Joey back to the car that would return them to the ranch. Only when they were away from the cemetery did she finally question the boy about what she thought she'd seen.

"I think there was a man," Joey replied uncertainly. "I-I think he was watching me."

"Watching you?" MaryAnne asked, feeling a chill as she remembered Joey's words of a few hours ago, when he'd told Rick Martin about seeing a man in the pasture during the night. "Could it have been the man you saw last night, Joey?"

Joey was silent for a moment, but finally shook his head.

"I hardly saw him," he whispered. "I-I was thinking about Mom and Dad."

His eyes brimming with tears, he looked at MaryAnne worriedly. "But why would he be watching me?"

She slipped her arm protectively around the boy. "Maybe he wasn't," she tried to reassure him. "Maybe he was just someone who knew your parents and wanted to come and pay his respects." But the strange, fleeting image of the man stayed in her mind, and as the reception at the ranch went on through the afternoon, she began questioning people as to who the stranger might have been.

No one else, however, had even glimpsed the shadowed figure.

It was as if he hadn't been there at all.

MaryAnne went to bed early that night, worn out from the funeral and the reception that had followed. But sometime near midnight she woke up suddenly, feeling something was wrong.

Something that had nothing to do with the events that had drained her energy that day.

No, it was something else.

Something about the house.

She lay still in bed for a moment, listening. Nothing but the normal sounds of the night.

And yet the sense that all was not right wouldn't leave her. She got out of bed, slipped into her bathrobe, and left her room, leaving the door open so that the light by her bed would spill out into the hallway.

Moving to Alison's door, she listened for a moment, then opened it a crack and peeped inside.

Her daughter was asleep, sprawled on her back, her hair spread out on the pillow. Silently closing the door, she went on to Logan's room. Her son, curled up with a pillow in his arms, was also sound asleep.

Finally, she hesitated at Joey's door, then tapped soffly.

When there was no response-not even a whimper from Storm-she opened the door and looked inside.

Joey's bed covers were thrown back. The room was empty. "Oh, God,"

MaryAnne whispered softly, hurrying to the window to peer out into the night. She scanned the yard and the field, searching for any sign of the boy or the dog, but there was nothing. Then a movement caught her eye and she turned to look at the barn.

One of its great doors was open, swinging in the wind.

What was he doing out there? Hurrying downstairs, MaryAnne clutched the robe around her as she left the house through the kitchen door and trotted across to the barn. Inside, the horses were whinnying nervously, and Sheika, who had reappeared on the day after MaryAnne arrived, was stamping at the straw that littered her stall.

"Joey?" she called as she stepped through the open door.

"Joey, are you out here?"

She listened, and for a moment heard nothing, but then there was a low sound, unidentifiable, from the far end of the barn. One of the horses reared up, snorting loudly.

"Joey The sound from the far reaches of the barn swelled into a snarl, then something came charging out of the blackness toward her. Acting only on her reflexes, MaryAnne jerked back from the gaping darkness, slamming the door shut and dropping the bar into place just as the thing, whatever it was, hurled itself against the other side. Her heart pounding, she turned and fled back across the yard, slamming the kitchen door shut as soon as she was inside the'house.

What was it?

What had been in the barn?

It couldn't have been Joey-it couldn't have been! Surely he would have answered her when she called to him. And Storm wouldn't have attacked her.

Would he?

But it was impossible! If anything, the big shepherd was too friendly, constantly licking people and begging to be petted!

Her pulse slowly returning to normal, she quickly checked the living room and the den, praying that Joey might have come downstairs in the night and fallen' asleep on one of the sofas.

There was no sign of him.

Finally, she picked up the telephone on the table behind the stairs, and was about to dial the deputy's office when she heard the kitchen door open. For a moment she froze.

Was it possible that whatever had been in the barn was now in the house?

"J-Joey?" she stammered, her voice choking in her throat. A moment later Storm bounded out of the dining room, his tail wagging, and threw himself on her, his paws resting on her chest as he tried to lick her face. A second later Joey himself appeared, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt showing under his denim jacket. "Get down, Storm," MaryAnne protested, twisting away from the enthusiastic dog. "Joey, get him off me!"

"Sit, Storm," Joey commanded, and the dog instantly dropped to the floor, his tail curling around his feet, his eyes fastening on his master.

"Joey, where were you?" MaryAnne demanded, the fear of a few minutes before now giving way to annoyance.

"Do you know what time it is?" Joey's eyes darkened. "It's only about midnight. I couldn't sleep, so Storm and I went for a walk."

A walk?" MaryAnne echoed, Rick Martin's questions that morning loomed once more in her mind. "Joey, did you see someone again? Was it like last night?"

Joey shook his head. "I didn't see anything. I just wanted to go for a walk. What's wrong with that?"

MaryAnne felt disoriented. He was only thirteen, and it was the middle of the night, and God only knew what might be in the woods. Surely Audrey hadn't ap proved ofAnd then she was sure she understood.

Only that day, he had watched both his parents being buried.

What must it have been like for him?

She couldn't even begin to imagine.

This night, the finality of the funeral still fresh in his mind, must have been an endless agony for him. She should have sat up herself, with her door open and her light on, in case he needed her.

But he hadn't wanted to waken her, hadn't wanted to bother anyone with his grief, she thought, fighting back the sting of tears as sympathy for this slight, solemn-eyed child overwhelmed her. So he'd taken his dog and gone for a walk.

But what about the barn? What had he been doing in there? And why had Storm come at her like that, scaring her half to death?

"Didn't you hear me when I called you in the barn?"

she asked, her voice now devoid of any anger.

Joey's brows knit into a frown. "I wasn't in the barn.

We just went along by the creek for a while."

Now it was MaryAnne's turn to frown. "But I was just out there, Joey.

The barn door was open, and some-2' She hesitated, then decided which word to use. "Something was inside. It came at me!"

Joey stared at her. "Well, there isn't anything out there now," he said.

"I stopped to check on the horses just before we came in. Everything's fine."

With Storm at his heels, Joey bounded up the stairs.

MaryAnne heard his door close.

Nonplussed, she turned off the downstairs lights. The darkness and silence of the night once more closed around her.

But tonight, the peaceful countryside, the darkness and silence of the ranch, had abruptly taken on an ominous feeling, a feeling that made MaryAnne shiver although the night was wann, almost balmy.

It was a long time before she fell asleep. Twice she got up to peer out into the velvet darkness beyond the window.

Though she saw nothing, heard nothing, she still had the uneasy feeling that something-someone-was out there.

Out there watching, and waiting.