CHAPTER 19

They had set out an hour after MaryAnne had brought Joey down from the bluff, as soon as Joey got dressed and Rick Martin had heard his strange story of waking up in a cabin high in the mountains. Joey had led the way up the trails that Rick himself had followed through the long night.

When they'd come to the place where Bill Sikes had been slain, Joey paused, staring at the spot where the corpse had lain, and where Tony Moleno-finally allowed to go home to bed-had stood guard when Joey passed just after dawn had begun to break. Bill Sikes's body was gone now, and the area, like the campsite at Coyote Creek a few days before, was being combed by the technicians from Boise, who this morning had redoubled their efforts, sealing everything they could find into plastic bags for analysis. Joey had said nothing as he gazed at the site, but finally turned away and started trudging again up the trail. Then, half an hour ago, he had veered off it and into the forest, sometimes following the narrow paths left by deer making their habitual rounds, more often than not winding his way through the trees.

Now they were high up, near the timberline, picking their way across the rubble of one of the glacial moraines. Rick shuddered as he tried to imagine anyone spending a winter up here, with the snow ten feet deep and the wind howling down from the mountains. He glanced at.Joey, and the boy seemed to read the deputy's doubts.

"We're almost there," Joey said. "There's a trail up a little further."

Fifty yards farther on, after they had slipped through a narrow gap between two immense boulders, the path developed, and a few moments later they emerged into a small clearing. At the far end, crouched against the rocky Mountainside, was the cabin.

Its two empty windows seemed to stare balefully at them, and its open door formed a gaping mouth. But from the rusted metal chimney that rose from the shanty's patchy roof, a tiny wisp of smoke still drifted. The home of a mountain man, Rick Martin thought, though in the ten years he'd been in Sugarloaf, he'd never so much as set eyes on one. Until he'd talked to MaryAnne Carpenter yesterday, he'd heard only the vaguest of rumors that one of the strange hermits might still be living high above the valley.

Yet here was exactly the kind of cabin one of them would inhabit.

"See?" Joey said. "I told you it was here!"

Drawing his pistol from its holster, and telling Joey to stay where he was, Rick started toward the sagging door. "Hello?" he called out.

"Anybody here?"

There was silence from the house, which, despite the telltale smoke from the chimmey, exuded an aura of emptiness.

At last Rick stepped up onto the porch and peered inside.

The inside of the cabin was as close to ruin as the outside, but it was obvious that despite the shack's condition, someone did, indeed, live here. "It's empty," Rick called to Joey. "I'm going to take a look."

Joey, still standing at the head of the trail, watched as the deputy disappeared into the shack, then he started across the clearing himself.

If he showed Rick Martin where he'd slept, he'd have to believe him!

Abruptly he stopped, the hair on the nape of his neck standing on end as goose bumps crawled across his skin.

He was no longer alone.

He glanced around, certain he would see someone@r something-behind him.

There was nothing.

He stood perfectly still, listening for a sound that would betray the unseen presence, but the silence of the morning was broken only by the whispering of the wind in the trees.

He sniffed at the air, as an animal might search for a scent.

Nothing.

And yet he could sense the presence close by-so close he felt he could almost touch it.

Just as it, unseen though it was, seemed to be touching him.

He hesitated, then turned away from the cabin and darted back toward the trailhead, where he took refuge among the trees, screened from the cabin by the underbrush that thrived in the shelter of the tall pines.

The presence was stronger.

He moved quickly through the dense undergrowth, guided by nothing more than a whisper inside his own mind that seemed to tell him which way to go. He had gone no more than fifty yards when he saw the figure crouched among the trees ahead, watching him.

Joey stopped, staring at the man. He was clad in clothing so worn it was almost colorless. His hair was long, and his unshaven face was composed of rough-hewn features.

Joey recognized him instantly. It was the same man who had been standing in the trees at his parents' funeral, watching him.

The man, he knew, who lived in the cabin.

Except for that one fleeting glimpse of him in the graveyard, Joey had no recollection of ever having seen the man before, his memory of two days ago wiped from his mind as completely as that of last night. Yet now, alone with him in the forest, a strange calmness came over him.

Without thinking, he began to walk toward the man, stopping only when he was a few feet away from him.

The man held out his hand. "It's all right, Joey," he whispered, his voice as rough as his coarse features. "You know me, don't you?"

. Joey hesitated, then slowly nodded, for inside him a conviction had already formed that he did, indeed, know this man, that somehow he was connected to him. He felt himself being drawn toward the rough countenance as though by some irresistible force.

"We're alike, Joey," the man whispered in his low voice.

"You and me are just alike. We've got the same blood, boy." His dark eyes never left Joey's face. "That's right,"

he whispered once again. "We're not like the others, Joey.

Not like anyone else. You understand me, Joey?"

Joey's brow knitted into a deep frown. The words had no meaning for him, but something in what the man had said struck a chord deep inside him, and unaware, he found himself nodding silently, his entire being focused on this stranger who seemed so familiar "You don't have to be afraid of me, Joey," the man whispered. "Come." As Joey drew closer, the man reached out to stroke the boy's cheek. The skin of his palm felt rough, but Joey made no move to pull away from the touch: his cheek, where the man's fingers grazed his skin, seemed electrified. Suddenly something inside Joey felt different from how he had ever felt in his life.

He no longer felt alone.

"Joey? Joey!"

Rick Martin's voice shattered the quiet of the moment, and Joey's eyes widened in alarm. The man's hand dropped away from Joey's cheek and his eyes narrowed. "Go back, Joey," he commanded, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"It's not time yet. "When it is, I'll come for you."

Laying his immense hands-his nails thick and long, curling like claws from the ends of his finger n Joey's shoulders, the man turned him around and nudged him, indicating that he was to go back the way he'd come.

Joey took a few tentative steps. When Rick Martin's call rang out again, he turned to glance back at the man whose first presence he had neither seen nor heard, but had nonetheless sensed.

The man was gone, and the spot where he had stood only a moment before was now empty.

There was no sign that he had ever been there at all.

Joey's eyes raced over the whole area, searching for some proof that the encounter had been real, and not just another trick his mind was playing on him.

But there was nothing, and finally Joey turned away as he heard his name being called yet again. "I'm coming!" he shouted. Breaking into a run, he hurried back to the clearing.

"Where were you?" Rick Martin demanded. He had pan icked at the realization that Joey was gone, and now his tone was gruff.

"I-I had to take a leak," Joey stammered. "I was right over there." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the for est.

"Well, don't do it again," Rick admonished him. "I promised your aunt I wouldn't let you out of my sight. I don't want you making a liar out of me, okay?"

Joey nodded, saying nothing of the man he had just seen in the forest, but listening carefully to every word Rick Martin spoke as the deputy laid plans to bring Frank Peters and his bloodhounds up to the cabin.

By nightfall, Martin was sure, the dogs would have tracked down the man who lived here.

"I'll be back to pick you up by three-thirty," MarYAnne told her children, pulling up in front of the school and leaning across Logan to open the far door of the Range Rover.

,,If I'm late, just wait for me. Don't take the bus. I don't want you walking anywhere by yourselves."

"Why do we have to go to school at all?" Logan began in a last ditch effort to be allowed to stay home that day.

Before he could go on, Alison interrupted him.

"Will you stop being a baby, Logan? Mom's got enough to Logan wheeled around to glare at Alison. "I'm not a baby! I'm ten years old."

"Then stop acting like you're four," Alison broke.in. She opened the back door and slid out. "Don't worry, Mom. I'll take care of him." She waved at her mother as the Range Rover pulled away from the curb, then turned to start up the wide walkway that led to the school's entrance.

"Are you going to stand there all day?" she called back over her shoulder. Logan, after one last, longing look after the Rover, started up the walk.

"If you'd just kept your big mouth shut, I could've talked her into letting us stay home," he groused.

Alison ignored her brother, and Logan, finally bowing to the inevitable, followed her up the walk. But he hadn't gone more than a few steps before he heard a voice calling to him. "Hey, Logan! Did you see him?"

Logan turned. Michael Stiffle's lips were twisted into an unpleasant grin, and his eyes were fixed mockingly on him.

"You didn't, did you?" Michael demanded.

"Who?" Logan countered.

"Bill Sikes!" someone yelled. A crowd quickly began to gather around Logan and his sister. "Did you guys get to see the body when they brought it down?"

Logan hesitated. All he'd seen this morning were some men coming out of the woods on the other side of the pasture. When they'd started toward the ambulance parked in the yard, his mother had made him stop watching.

Now, though, he struggled to remember every detail of the glimpse he'd gotten of the large bundle the men had been carrying. Could it really have been Bill Sikes's body? A shiver ran through him as he decided that it couldn't have been anything else. "Sure, I saw it," he told them. "It took four men to carry it, and it was all wrapped up in plastic."

"But did you see the body?" someone else asked.

"We didn't see anything!" Alison exclaimed before her brother could reply. Feeling slightly sick at her stomach, she took Logan's hand and started toward the door, hoping to get inside before anyone could ask anything else. But before they were even halfway up the steps, Mike Stiffle grabbed Logan's arm.

"Where's Joey?" he taunted. "Have they taken him away yet?"

Alison turned to glare at Michael, whose twin sister was right behind him, grinning knowingly at her. Sensing what was coming next, she pulled her brother away. "Come on, Logan," she said, dropping her voice so no one but her brother could hear her. "Let's go inside!" But even as she approached the doors, it began: "I bet Joey did it!" Michael Stiffle sang out. "I bet he killed Bill Sikes!"

"Joey's crazy!" someone else called.

"Yeah! Everybody knows that!"

Alison wheeled around. "Stop it!" she shouted. "Just stop it! None of you know anything!"

"We know Joey!" Michael Stiffle yelled back. "We know@' His words died on his lips as the door opened and Florence Wickman stepped out onto the porch, Ellen Brooks beside her.

"That will be enough!" the principal declared in the forceful voice she'd developed years earlier to seize control of just such situations as this. "Nobody knows what happened to Bill Sikes, and there will be no more talk like that." Her eyes fixed on Michael Stiffle. "Do you understand me?"

The boy stared at his feet, nodding silently.

"Then I suggest you all get ready for classes," Mrs. Wickman told them.

"And I don't want to hear any More out of any of you or hear talk about Joey Wilkenson! One of you, and you can count on spending the next month doing laps after school! I mean it! One month, no excuses!"

As the principals words sank in, the murmuring among her students died away. Satisfied that the situation was under control, she turned and went back into the building.

A few minutes later, though, when they were alone in Florence Wickman's office, Ellen Brooks spoke not only for herself, but for all the teachers she had talked to that morning.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. '@ only thing the kids are talking about today is what happened last night, and I can't blame them. Did you hear Sam Gilman this morning?"

"He should be ashamed of himself," Florence Wickman snapped. "And Milt Morgenstern, too. It's as if they want to cause a panic!" She sighed, lowering herself into the chair behind-her desk. "Still, I'm afraid Sam and Milt have a point. Until we know exactly what happened to Bill Sikes, the children should be scared. We should all be scared."

MaryAnne paced nervously in the kitchen as she waited for Joey and the deputy to return from the mountains. From the moment she'd let Joey go, she was certain she'd made a mistake. yet what choice had she had? As soon as Rick had begun talking to joey-just as he'd gotten dressed and settled down to try to eat something-she'd known where his questions were leading.

"Do you remember where the cabin is?" he'd asked.

"Could you find it again?" Joey had hesitated, then nodded, and MaryAnne had listened in horror as the deputy suggested they go back up into the mountains immediately. Finally Rick had drawn her aside. "I've got two murders on my hands-," he'd explained, "and a woman in desperate shape in the hospital down in Boise. If there is somebody living up there, I want to talk to whoever it is right away.

And if there isn't anyone there, or if there isn't a cabin at all . .."

He'd left the sentence dangling, but MaryAnne had instantly caught his meaning.

"Then what?" she demanded, her voice cold. "Surely you can't be thinking that Joey had anything to do with the killings! My God, what are you saying? He's only a child."

"I'm not saying anything," Rick Martin had insisted.

"But I have to follow up on this, and the only way I can do that is with Joey's help."

Still MaryAnne had hesitated, but in the end, when Joey himself had pleaded to be allowed to lead the deputy up to the cabin, she'd relented, although against her better judgment.

"You have to let me go," Joey had protested. "If everyone thinks I'm lying, then everyone will think ...they'll think Though Joey had been unable to say the words, his meaning was clear, and after Rick Martin had promised not to let the boy out of his sight, she'd finally given in. "But you'll watch him every minute! Agreed?"

He'd agreed, and she believed him. But every minute since they'd left had been torture, especially the endless hour and a half that had elapsed since she'd dropped Alison and Logan at school. She went to the window one more time, glanced out, and felt a great wave of relief as she saw Joey coming across the field, Rick Martin beside him.

Forcing herself not to run out to meet them, she waited by the door until they reached the house. When she looked anxiously at Rick, he was able to read her question as clearly as if she'd spoken it out loud.

"It's there," he said. "Right where he said it was, and exactly as he described it."

Some of the tension drained from MaryAnne's body. She slipped her arm protectively around Joey. "Was there anyone there?" she asked.

Martin shook his head. "Someone lives up there, though, but don't ask me how." He described the cabin to MaryAnne. "It looked like he was there not too long before we arrived," he finished a couple of minutes later.

"There was an empty coffee cup, still warm, and the fire had just been banked." He stretched, trying to ease the knots in his muscles, knowing he could push himself no further until he'd had at least an hour or two of sleep. "I'm calling Tony Moleno and sending him up with Frank Peters and the hounds. If the rain holds off, the dogs should be able to track the guy pretty easily."

MaryAnne started to say something, then changed her mind. "Joey? Why don't you go up to your room and change your clothes while I talk to Mr.

Martin?"

Joey gazed up at her, his eyes filled with suspicion. She was going to talk about him-he was sure of it! "Why can't I stay?" he demanded.

Reading the fear in his voice, MaryAnne smiled at him.

"Because I want you to put on clean clothes," she told him.

"We're going to go see your doctor and try to find out what's happening to you."

Joey's eyes widened. Was she going to make him go to a hospital? Was she going to send him away after all, even though she'd promised not to?

"But you said@' he began, but MaryAnne gently put her finger over his lips, silencing him.

"It's going to be all right, Joey. We're just going to go see your doctor, and maybe he can help you remember what happened last night. I promise you I'll be right there with you, and we'll come home afterward." As Joey still hesitated, she spoke again, her eyes fixing on his. "I promised to take care of you, Joey. I promised your parents when you were born, and I promised you this morning. I won't break that promise, Joey, I swear I won't."

Joey gazed up at her, seeing nothing in her face to make him think she might not be telling him the truth. But what if she wasn't? What if she sent him away to a hospital somewhere? Then, even as the question formed in his mind, he knew the answer.

I'll run away. If they send me to a hospital, I'll run away, and go up in the mountains and find the man. I'll find him, and he'll take care of me.

Satisfied with the answer that had come to him, he left the kitchen and started up the stairs to his room. When he was gone, MaryAnne turned back to Rick Martin.

"There's something I don't understand," she said. "If you think whoever lives in that cabin might have killed Bill Sikes, then why didn't he hurt Joey last night?"

It was exactly the question Rick Martin had been puzzling over for the last half hour as they had climbed back down the mountain.

It was a question for which he still had no answer.

Joey opened the door of his room and whistled at his dog, who was stretched out on the bed, his head resting on his forepaws. But instead of bounding off the bed to trot over and greet his master, Storm only whined softly, then slithered to the floor and disappeared under the bed. Frowning, Joey dropped down to his hands and knees, peering into the chasm between the box springs and the floor.

Storm snarled and retreated a few more inches.

Suddenly Joey understood.

The scent of the mountain man was on him.

"It's okay, Storm," he whispered. "You don't need to be afraid of him.

He wouldn't hurt me. He loves me, boy. He loves me."

Once again he reached out to the dog, but the shepherd's frightened whimper did not subside.

As the scent of the man who had laid his hand on Joey's face filled Storm's nostrils, his whole body began to tremble, and he shrank even farther away from the boy who had been his master his entire life.

A boy who, right now, he instinctively feared.