Chapter Eleven

I was still in the hallway the next morning when I heard a knock on my front door. I knew it wasn’t Ricky, because Ricky wouldn’t knock. I pushed myself off the floor and went and put the chain on, just to be sure. Half the time, we left our doors open in Black Wolf County, but I didn’t think I’d be doing that for a while. I opened the door a crack and saw Darrell on my front step.

His face was grave with worry. He knew.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” I replied in a low voice.

“Where’s Ricky?”

“I don’t know. I made him leave.”

“Come stay with me and the girls,” Darrell said.

“No. This is my house. I’m staying.”

“What do you need?”

“Half an hour,” I told him. “I need to shower and change, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s not what I meant. What do you need?”

“I need to work.”

“Rebecca, you’re in no shape for that.”

“Yes, I am. Give me half an hour, Darrell. I’m fine.”

He shook his head. “Well, in that case, how about I make coffee?”

I worked up a stubborn smile. I undid the chain and backed away, and I had to hold my dress up at the broken strap to keep it from falling. The morning air blew in and made me shiver again. It was still dark out, so I turned on the hallway light. Darrell came in, his eyes taking note of everything: the broken lamp, the blood on my foot, my revolver on the floor.

“Rebecca,” he murmured.

“Coffee,” I told him.

I went upstairs. I took a long, hot shower, feeling the sting of cuts and bruises, but the soap made me feel clean again. I washed my hair, which always turned it into a bird’s nest. When I was done, I brushed my teeth and put on my uniform, and I put my gun back in its holster. Just like that, I was a deputy.

The smell of fresh coffee drew me downstairs. I took it to go, in a Thermos, and brought it with me to Darrell’s cruiser outside. We hadn’t said anything more to each other. It was early, seven thirty in the morning on Monday, with the pink glow of the horizon struggling to push away the night. I sipped coffee and felt it revive me. Darrell didn’t start the engine. He studied me the way a father would.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

“I’m sure the gossip’s all over town.”

“I don’t listen to gossip.”

“Too bad. This one’s juicy.”

“Don’t joke, Rebecca. What’s going on?”

I could have given him the Reader’s Digest condensed version. Ajax came on to me, and I let him, and Ricky caught us, and he would have strangled me if I hadn’t gotten to my gun. What else was there to say?

“I’m getting a divorce,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Think you’ll change your mind?”

“No.”

Darrell started the engine. “Well, it’s about damn time.”

And that was that. That was all he had to say about it.

Of course, that was not that. Not even close. I wasn’t fool enough to think this was over. But I’d had a hot shower, and I had hot coffee, and for the moment, I didn’t want to think about anything else.

“Where are we going?” I asked Darrell, because instead of heading to the sheriff’s office, he steered out to the highway. We headed east into the rising sun.

“Norm called. He drove out to his trailer around five this morning. He was planning to get some sunrise photos near Sunflower Lake. But when he got there, he found a car parked outside. Somebody’s squatting there again.”

“Does he know who?”

“No. Given what’s going on, he figured we’d want to check it out. So he came back home and called me.”

Darrell kept driving. Ours was the only car on the road at that hour. As the sun got above the trees, we had to squint at the brightness. Norm’s trailer was almost an hour outside town, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t in Black Wolf County. The dirt road that led to where the trailer was parked ran along the border of the national forest land. Skiers, day hikers, fishermen, and photographers all parked along here and followed the trails through hundreds of square miles of woods, rivers, and lakes. I’d done it myself dozens of times. It was in this same stretch of woods where we’d gone camping when I was ten, and I’d come face-to-face with the beast.

We followed the dirt road for another eight or nine miles. The plows didn’t come this way often, so we skidded through rutted snow. Darrell knew where he was going. He parked before the trailer was visible, so as not to advertise our arrival. He angled the car so that no one could escape around us. We both got out and hiked between the trees in the morning stillness, and ahead of us, we saw Norm’s Airstream.

Just as Norm had said, a car was parked outside the trailer door. It was a yellow Cadillac with California plates.

“What the hell?” Darrell murmured.

We peered in the car windows, but we didn’t see anything to give us a clue about who owned it. There was a Rand McNally road atlas on the passenger seat.

I walked completely around the Airstream, which was familiar to me. The campsite was the same; the trees were the same. Norm hadn’t moved the trailer in six years. I felt a little queasy, remembering the blood inside that had turned the white walls red. I put my ear to the metal exterior and listened, but I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t know if that meant the trailer was empty, or if the owner of the Cadillac was asleep.

I made it back to Darrell and shook my head. “Nothing.”

He took the lead on the way to the trailer door. His hand was near his gun, close enough that he could unholster it quickly if needed. His other fingers curled into a fist, and he pounded on the door.

“Black Wolf County Sheriff! Open up!”

When there was no response, he repeated the warning. This time, we saw the Airstream shudder and heard heavy footsteps. Darrell and I waited cautiously on either side of the door, and finally, it opened outward.

A pudgy giant of a man in a velvet bathrobe smiled when he saw us.

“Hello, Deputy Curtis,” Ben Malloy said to Darrell in a booming voice. “I figured I’d see you around here sooner or later. Looks like it’s time for us to go Ursulina hunting again!”

*

I’d never actually talked to Ben Malloy before, but I’d seen him on television and around Black Wolf County, of course. He was our local celebrity, a native of Random who’d gone on to success in Hollywood. Not that he was Tom Selleck or Richard Chamberlain or anyone like that. He’d had a supporting role on a 1970s sci-fi series as an alien fighter pilot who could replicate himself at will. Ben was funny, and the character was popular, even though the show itself only lasted for a couple of seasons. When it ended, he’d spent a year trying to land a new show, but other than minor guest parts on The Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels, he didn’t have much luck.

Then came the murders of Kip and Racer, which brought the legend of the Ursulina to life right in Ben’s hometown. His documentary about the crime and the search for the beast became one of the highest-rated shows of the year on NBC, and shortly thereafter, Ben Malloy Discovers premiered in prime time. For the next three years, he explored crop circles, the Bermuda triangle, Amelia Earhart, UFOs, reincarnation, and a variety of other unsolved mysteries every Tuesday night. The Ursulina had made Ben a rich man.

“What are you doing here?” Darrell asked him.

Ben trotted down the steps of the trailer. He reached into the pocket of his bathrobe and pulled out a pipe, which he stoked with a match. His pipe was his calling card. He’d ended every episode of his television show by smoking a pipe in a dark, cobwebbed library as he offered a final theory on whatever mystery he’d explored that week.

“Are you kidding?” Ben replied, taking a first puff. “Another Ursulina attack! The beast returns! This is big news, Deputy.”

“I meant, what are you doing here? This trailer doesn’t belong to you, or did you somehow forget that?”

“Oh, yes, yes, I know, but Norm won’t mind. He’s a good guy. I would have called him, but I didn’t get into town until after midnight. I figured the whole county was asleep. It was too late to check in at the Fair Day resort, and honestly, I wanted to spend the night out here with the beast. Back where it all started! Back where he made his first kills! Let him smell me, let him know I was in town again. So I did a little nighttime filming here by the trailer with my Super 8.”

Ben had a fast, exaggerated way of talking, as if he was always reading from a script and the camera was never off.

“Filming?” Darrell asked with a sigh.

“Filming, yes, of course! Five minutes after my mother told me about the latest murder, I was on the phone to the bigwigs at NBC. They’re jazzed about a follow-up to the original documentary. Couldn’t be better timing. I’ve got a team on the way, and they should be here in a couple of days. I’m already setting up interviews, getting the publicity engine in gear. Actually, I’d love it if I could interview you, Deputy. Get an update on the search for the monster.”

“There’s no monster,” Darrell replied, “and I don’t do media interviews.”

“Yes, I know, I remember. That’s a shame. Still, you were a big help last time. Two hundred volunteers out in the woods day and night for an entire week! What an event that was! The winter makes it harder, but perhaps we can stage a reprise. Hmm? What do you say?”

“That will be up to the sheriff.”

“Of course. I’ll call Jerry. It’s still Jerry, right? Ajax hasn’t weaseled his way into the chair yet?”

“It’s still Jerry,” Darrell said.

“Excellent.” Ben’s lips clamped around the end of his pipe, and his cheerful brown eyes focused on me. “Now, who’s this smoky black-haired beauty, Darrell? Is she your partner? You’ve traded up! That last man who was with you looked like a dead walleye washed up on the beach.”

“I’m Deputy—” I began, but then I hesitated.

Who was I?

Was I still Deputy Todd? Or was I someone else? Where did I go from here?

“I’m Deputy Colder,” I went on, making my decision. And once I made a decision, I didn’t go back. “Rebecca Colder.”

“Colder, Colder, Colder. Your father is Harold Colder, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Truck driver?”

“Yes.”

“Solid man, Harold. Seems to me he and I spent some nights together at the 126 in days gone by, when I was just a sprout of twenty-one or so. I don’t recall you being much more than a toddler back then. Now look at you and those dark eyes. Doesn’t she have amazing eyes, Darrell?”

Darrell looked as if he were chewing on a steak that was mostly gristle. “I’ve got to call in to the station and let them know everything is clear out here. And tell Norm that you broke into his trailer.”

“Oh, yes, yes, do what you have to do. Rebecca and I will hold down the fort.”

Darrell headed for the cruiser. Ben Malloy put his hands on his hips and sucked in a loud breath of cold air through his clenched teeth. He was a tough man to dislike, but also an easy man to be annoyed by. He was very tall and heavyset, but he had the cherubic face of a little boy. His short hair was brown and wavy, and he had a nervous habit of constantly pushing it back from his forehead. For a big man, he had quick, graceful movements.

“So, Rebecca Colder,” Ben proclaimed. “Are you going to help me find the Ursulina?”

“My job is to help Darrell figure out who killed Gordon Brink,” I replied.

“One and the same! One and the same!”

“This is a criminal investigation, Mr. Malloy. Not a television show.”

“Ah, I can see Darrell trained you in his image. No nonsense. Always serious. I like that. Well, it may surprise you to know that I’m a serious man, too.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Extremely serious,” Ben assured me.

“Serious about what? Money?”

Ben took his pipe out of his mouth and reappraised me with a whimsical smirk. “Well, well, well, you’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

“Darrell’s smart. I just work hard.”

“Oh, you can pretend all you want, but I can see you’ve got a lot ticking behind those dark eyes. People shouldn’t mess with you, should they? Well, here’s the thing, Rebecca Colder. Yes, I’ve made a lot of money selling tall tales. I won’t deny it. Did ancient astronauts visit Earth and leave their technology behind with the Mayans and Egyptians? Between you and me, probably not. Is there really a curse on King Tut’s tomb? Doubtful. But the Ursulina story isn’t just about ratings or money to me.”

“No?”

“No indeed. You see, I grew up in Black Wolf County just like you, and I know a secret.”

“What’s that?”

Ben winked and lowered his voice. He leaned in close enough that I could smell pipe smoke on his breath. “The Ursulina isn’t a myth. It’s real. I’ve seen it.”