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The couple Sam found hiking along a path that was slowly vanishing beneath a layer of snow were burdened with cloth sacks filled with split logs. The woman was slight in build, swaddled in several layers of wool—jacket, hat, scarf, leggings. Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red from the cold. He was tempted to offer her a seat in his car; he could crank up the heat and thaw her out more efficiently than a wood-burning stove. But he’d left his car by the cabin where Cali’s parents lived. Besides, this woman might be insulted if he implied that a car was more comfortable than a rustic shack with no furnace.
Something told him that these people didn’t want to be rescued.
Cali didn’t want to be rescued, either. The self-sufficient culture of the commune still flourished inside her. These folks solved their own problems—or else ignored them. Sam knew it irked Cali that she’d had to turn to the police for help tracking down her vile emailer.
The man didn’t look quite as cold as the woman, but he was equally scruffy, with long hair and a beard so thick, it probably warmed his neck more effectively than a scarf like the woman’s would have. The couple seemed friendly enough until Sam identified himself as a police officer. After that, their expressions turned wary.
“Howard’s been around,” the man said. “He comes and goes. He was here over the holidays.”
“This weather,” the woman said, shaking her head. “He ought to stay down in Florida. If I had a home in Florida, I sure wouldn’t come to Vermont in the winter.”
“She’s always cold,” the man said, wrapping his free arm around the woman.
“Do you know Cali Bowen?” Sam asked them.
“She isn’t around much,” the man said. “We know her sister and her parents, though.”
“Does anyone around here hate her?” Sam asked.
“Why do you want to know?” the man asked. “Isn’t that kind of personal?”
“Just a vibe I picked up,” Sam said.
“Nobody hates her,” the man told him.
“People just wish she hadn’t broken away,” the woman said.
“But they don’t hate her,” the man insisted.
It was like a cult, Sam realized. He wondered if Cali’s parents might send her threatening emails, hoping to frighten her into returning to the commune.
The prurient nature of the emails argued against that possibility. Would parents actually send their own daughter such graphic, sexually aggressive notes? A genuine sicko would, but Sam hadn’t gotten a vibe from Cali that her parents were sickos.
Then again, who knew? As a member of the NYPD, Sam had encountered more than his share of whack-jobs, including plenty no one would ever have suspected of being crazy.
“Do Cali’s parents own a computer?” He hadn’t seen one in their house, but they might have one in their bedroom.
The man snorted. “Amy and Steve? They only just got a cell phone last year.”
“Cell phones are expensive,” the woman said. “Lots of people here don’t have them.”
“Amy and Steve don’t like modern things. None of us do. Why are you asking us these questions?”
“It’s part of an investigation,” Sam answered honestly. “I’m sorry if I seem nosy.”
“There’s a computer in the main building that anyone can use,” the woman informed Sam. “I’ve never seen Amy or Steve use it.”
Cali’s parents could have gotten help from someone to send the emails for them. The emails had been traced to a server in New Hampshire, but if Cali’s parents or anyone else on the commune had solicited a partner in crime, they could have found one who was tech-savvy enough to know how to forward emails through a distant server. Or a partner in crime who could drive one of those rusty old trucks down to Portsmouth to send the emails.
That explanation didn’t feel right to Sam. He trusted his gut, and his gut told him these commune folks, however nutty they might be, were not behind the emails. He knew better than to discount any possibility, though.
“Are Howard Ellington’s parents around? I’d like to talk to them if—”
“There you are,” Cali’s voice drifted down the path to him.
He turned and saw her striding along the path. She joined him and the couple, and they eyed her curiously. “California,” the woman greeted her. “This policeman is asking us lots of questions.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Cali said, glaring at Sam. “Do you need some help with the firewood?”
“No, we’ve got it.” The man nodded at Cali, and then he and the woman turned and resumed their trudge down the path.
Sam returned Cali’s frown. “I was having a nice chat with those people until you came along.”
“The Pandas,” Cali identified them. “Their last name was something normal—Smith or Johnson, something like that—but when they moved here they decided to change it to Panda because pandas are cute. Why are you telling everyone you’re a cop? They don’t like cops here.”
“I noticed.” He shook his head. “I can’t question these people without identifying myself. It wouldn’t be ethical.”
His explanation seemed to mollify her slightly. “I thought I’d find you searching my parents’ cabin when I escaped my mother’s clutches.”
“There wasn’t much to search.” He studied Cali’s expression, hoping her anger with him wouldn’t last. He shouldn’t care. She could be angry or not; he was only doing his job. But he wanted, if not her approval, at least her understanding. He wanted her to appreciate that he was trying to help her.
Even if, like the rest of these loony-tunes, she didn’t want to be helped.
Her anger mellowed into what appeared to be low-grade sorrow. He hoped it was directed at her mother, not at him. The last thing he wanted to do was make her unhappy.
Even when she wasn’t smiling, she was beautiful. The cold that had turned the Panda woman’s nose cherry-red added a healthy blush to Cali’s cheeks. The snowflakes landing on her pale, gently waving hair glistened like diamonds as they melted.
“Can we leave?” she asked. “I want to go home.”
He tore his gaze from her and surveyed their surroundings. Tall, straight pine trees bordered the field, which held several cabins. The snow blanketing the field was a few inches deep, but the commune’s residents had shoveled paths so the cabins were reachable.
One of those cabins housed the Ellingtons. “I need to talk to Howard’s parents first,” he said, resisting the urge to apologize to Cali. He hadn’t invited her to take this trip with him. He wasn’t going to let her influence how he did his job. If she wanted to leave, she’d just have to wait until he was ready.
She conceded with a sigh, and pointed down one of the paths. “That’s the Ellingtons’ house,” she said.
When they reached the cabin she’d indicated, Sam knocked on the door. After a moment, a thin woman with salt-and-pepper hair drizzling down her back in a froth of curls opened it. “Cali?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Just checking up on Howard,” Cali answered. “Is he around?”
“He’s down in Florida. I thought you knew.”
“I know he moved there. I was just wondering if he might be up here visiting.”
The woman glanced at Sam.
“He’s a police officer,” Cali said for him, sounding resigned. “From Brogan’s Point, where I live. He had some questions for Howard.”
The woman scowled and turned back to Cali, effectively cutting Sam out of the conversation. “Howard’s gone. Like you,” she said curtly.
“Was he here recently?” Cali asked.
“Over the holidays. You’d think he would want to spend new year’s with that woman in Florida, but who knows? He should’ve stayed with you, Cali. You’re the only girl he ever loved.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense,” Cali said too quickly, as if she didn’t want to consider the possibility that Howard still carried a torch for her. “He told me he and Melissa are in love.”
“People in love spend New Year’s together. Around here, the way folks screw around with each other, you could tell who’s in love with who by who they spent New Year’s with.”
That was an interesting twist. Apparently the commune dwellers were into free love, too, or whatever it was called these days. Open relationships. Friends with benefits. Polyamory. Swinging.
Howard’s mother glanced at her watch—a large-faced timepiece on a thick leather strap around her wrist—and scowled. “I’ve got a load of laundry up at the main building,” she said. “If I hear from Howard, I’ll tell him you stopped by.” She glowered at Sam. Was she going to tell Howard that he’d stopped by, too?
“That’s all right,” Cali said. “He and I keep in touch.”
“He should’ve stayed with you,” the woman said, then closed the door.
Cali and Sam stood silently on the rickety porch for a moment. “Nicely handled,” Sam said, only slightly sarcastic. “Do you want my job?”
“She wouldn’t have talked to you.”
“Obviously.” Howard’s mother was as opinionated as Cali’s: cops were evil, and Cali and Howard should have stayed together.
He couldn’t definitively cross Howard off his list, but he felt a kind of sympathy for the guy. Not because Howard might have loved Cali—a possibility Sam could comprehend without any difficulty—but because these people must have pressured him the same way they pressured Cali.
Not everyone responded to pressure the way she did. Some people cracked under it. Cali emerged from it stronger, brighter, a lump of coal transformed into a diamond. Not only did Sam now know where she’d come from, but he also knew how tough she was, to have emerged from this strange environment with strength and confidence and grace.
He shouldn’t have let her accompany him here today. She’d been helpful—more than helpful, really, getting Howard’s mother to talk—but he still faced a two-plus hour drive back to Brogan’s Point with her, and all he could think of was that he wanted this wimpy precipitation to turn into a major blizzard so they’d be forced to take shelter, spending the night somewhere far from home, together. An inn with only one available room, one available bed. Or even a chain motel along the highway. Sam didn’t care, as long as they didn’t wind up in separate rooms.
He wanted to kiss her. A snowflake had landed on her lower lip, and it melted into a bead of water that taunted him. He wanted to lick it off, to drink her in. He wanted to examine Howard’s mother’s claim that you could tell who was in love by whom they spent the holiday with. If he and Cali got snowed in somewhere tonight, Sam would declare the day a holiday, for sure.
But they weren’t going to get snowed in, not unless the storm grew a lot more intense. And Sam wasn’t going to sleep with Cali because he was a professional, doing a job.
Departing from the Ellington cabin, they traipsed down the path to the sprawling structure with the wind chimes and the Yin-Yang symbol above the door. That door, like all the other doors they’d encountered here, was unlocked. They entered the building.
In a large kitchen to the left of the entry, several women were busy stirring huge vats of food that contained an abundance of onions, if the smell rising from the pots was anything to go by. A table long enough to seat at least twenty people bisected the room. Sam asked a couple of the cooks if they’d seen Howard recently. One cook said she’d never met Howard. Another cook said Howard came and went. No one had anything definitive to offer Sam. He was tempted to suggest that they pull their hair into pony-tails or wear nets or hats when they cooked, but he wasn’t there doing inspections for the health department, so he kept his opinion to himself.
In another room, a large fire crackled in a fireplace, and children of assorted sizes and ages filled the room with activity and noise. Some children knelt on the floor, hunched over workbooks or sheets of paper, crayons clutched in their hands as they colored pictures. Some ran in circles. Two children who appeared to be about eight stood at a chalkboard, writing sentences. All of them—male and female—had long hair. Barbers apparently weren’t part of the commune’s staff.
“Is this their idea of home schooling?” Sam whispered to Cali as they observed the chaos.
“I’m guessing this is free time,” she said.
A round-faced woman whose hair hung from her scalp in two long braids entered the room and meandered over to them. “Are you in charge here?” Sam asked, eyeing the romping children and the roaring fire. A free-standing screen formed a flimsy barrier in front of the hearth. One of the kids racing in circles could easily knock it over and get burned, or ignite the building.
The woman looked no older than her late teens. “No one’s in charge here,” she said placidly. “We’re all equal.” She shifted her attention to Cali. “You look like someone who used to live here.”
“I did use to live here.”
“I was a little kid. You were that girl who went to college, right? Everyone talked about you after you left.”
Sam’s gaze remained on the fireplace. If the girl was in charge, she was overwhelmingly outnumbered by the rambunctious children. “When there’s a fire blazing like that, the kids shouldn’t be left unattended,” he said. “Is there someone who can help you out here?”
“We all help each other out,” the woman with the braids said. She might as well have been reading from a script; the words slid off her tongue, as flat as stale soda.
“You can go to college, too,” Cali said. “If you go to one of the state schools, it isn’t too expensive. I qualified for lots of financial aid. You would, too, if you wanted to go.”
The woman gazed around the room at the children running amok. “I can’t. They need me here.” She turned back to Cali. “They need you, too. But I guess that’s their problem. Our problem,” she corrected herself. “You followed your spirit. That’s what we’re all supposed to do, isn’t it?”
Cali exchanged a look with Sam. This girl was not a suspect. She seemed, in her own dazed way, to view Cali as some sort of idol. The one who got away. The one who’d followed her spirit right out of this place and into the world.
Cali led Sam to a small room at the back of the house. It held a wall of shelves stacked two-deep with books and a small desk with a computer. “That’s it,” she said. “Where Howard and I learned what we needed to know while the other kids were creating bedlam in the main room.”
“Same computer? It must be an antique.” The monitor looked relatively new, at least, a sleek rectangle. The tower was beige plastic and could have been a decade old.
A rack beside it held a bunch of CD’s. Sam checked them out. Standard software, nothing exciting but most of it reasonably recent. He tapped the keyboard to rouse the computer from sleep mode, then used the mouse to click on Gmail. It didn’t automatically log in. He assumed several people had accounts.
Cali’s nasty emails hadn’t come from a Gmail account. They’d come from some obscure email source. “John Doe,” whoever he might be, was probably more technologically adept than anyone living here. If Sam had a warrant, he could have seized the computer and had Maya back at the police station analyze its hard drive to see if anyone had been forwarding emails to a server in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But no judge would issue a warrant based on what little Sam had to go on.
Hell, he wouldn’t issue himself a warrant. He had nothing.
“Let’s go,” he said. “This place is nuts.”
Cali smiled. “You don’t like it here?”
“The only good thing I can say about this place is that it produced you,” he said, then turned and walked out of the room before he blurted out something even more personal. Something about how beautiful Cali was, and how smart, and how strong. How balanced, even when she wasn’t standing on her head.
