“Can you hear me, Charlie One? Over,” a man’s voice whispered in his earpiece.
“I hear you just fine, Charlie Two. Over,” the man said.
“Just checking,” Charlie Two replied, and then added as an afterthought, “Over.”
Charlie Two had checked twenty minutes earlier and no doubt he would check again soon, as he had done all night at regular intervals.
Charlie One rolled his eyes and shifted a little against the branch that was supporting his back. He had built the tree house for his boys two summers previously and they had practically lived in it ever since. The day he had finished hammering planks and nailing timbers to the spruces in his backyard, though, he would not have believed that one winter night he would use the plain wooden structure to stalk a human being.
The idea had begun in the diner that afternoon and had taken hold very fast, as most ill-advised notions seem to, when the patrols of state troopers and sheriff’s deputies had spilled out onto Main Street. Ludlow was not their town and—as much as the efforts of the county and state law enforcement agencies were appreciated—Ludlow men were not going to sit idly by while someone else was protecting their families from a madman. Most men—and quite a few women—Charlie One knew owned a rifle, and even those who didn’t hunt knew how to point and shoot the thing if necessary.
It had been decided in half whispers, and by the time everyone had returned home a plan was in place: there would be lookouts in shifts until dawn, and if any person was seen creeping through the side streets in the middle of the night during the “shelter in place” they’d better be a trooper or have a darn good reason. No more than four, maybe six, officers had been left to keep an eye on Ludlow overnight and it was an inadequate number, even with the small knot of streets that radiated from the center of town.
The “volunteers”—as they had decided to call themselves—were only doing what any person in their right mind would do in a similar situation. Some of them—like Charlie Two—had never even gone deer hunting, and yet fate had seen fit to put them on the front line of a manhunt. That’s the way it goes, Charlie One reflected, and he rolled his shoulders to keep them from cramping in the cold. You step up or you get stepped over.
The wind had died down and the air was still; snow was on the way, and every breath was a frosty blade poking at his lungs. Cold nipped at his fingers, even though the man wore many layers of clothing and was wrapped in a sleeping bag, and he badly wished he could run around a little and warm up. The man had a thermos of black coffee and one of Swiss Miss hot chocolate, and he had pretty much gone through both already, which—he now realized—posed its own set of problems. He needed to wait until the next round of checks and then he would—what did his father used to say?—empty the tank.
A few minutes later his earpiece croaked to life, and one after the other, the voices of seven volunteers spread around the town confirmed that all was quiet and safe in their square of the grid. It had been George Goyer’s idea—being a pilot, of course—for everyone to have code names, in case anybody was listening who shouldn’t be. George lived out of town and thus was not on the volunteers’ roster, but the name thing had been his contribution—and it was a good one.
The man sniffed; his breath was warm and damp in the folds of the sleeping bag he had pulled up to cover his mouth. He was supposed to be a lookout but, unless he brought the night-vision goggles to his eyes, he saw little past his own gloved hands. His backyard was as pitch-black as those on either side of it, and the road was barely lit by the pallid glow coming from Main Street and the portable lights of the state troopers.
Charlie One clicked on the goggles and the world became a vivid green screen. He was glad his wife was fast asleep and the drapes were drawn—he could see they were drawn—because she wouldn’t have approved of what he was about to do. Call it the first line of defense, he told himself with a smirk as he rested his Ruger carbine on the floor of the tree house and gingerly stood up. He fumbled through the layers of sleeping bag and clothing and managed to unzip and relieve himself onto the ground below with a patter like rain on dry dirt. No, he thought, his wife would have definitely not approved, but it was probably the only fun he’d had in hours—being on a stakeout was not as much of a hoot as it had seemed in the diner.
Charlie One folded the sleeping bag tight around his shoulders and peered all around. It must be about three in the morning, and so far not so much as a squirrel had stirred. His neighbors’ yards were quiet, and the slice of road he could see was deserted. The troopers had walked around some, and he had seen their body armor and the clear WST insignia through his goggles. They had stayed put for a while, though, and nothing and no one had crossed his line of sight. What he really needed was chocolate or a few cookies, and his thoughts turned to the abundance of both in his kitchen cupboards only yards away. He should have thought about it before coming up, he chided himself. A lot of good they did in the cupboard. How or why he decided to move he wasn’t sure, but suddenly Charlie One was shrugging the sleeping bag off his back and climbing down the tree-house ladder with the rifle hanging by a strap over his shoulder and determination in his steps.
It was easy to cross the yard quietly with his goggles on. And he decided that he wouldn’t turn on the light, even when he was inside, as he wouldn’t need to—and, most important, it would be kind of cool to wear the goggles indoors.
He unlocked the back door with a key and crept into the kitchen. His wife kept a drawer full of spare plastic bags, and he picked one just the right size. He tiptoed to the cabinet and found what he was looking for: food supplies for the cold and hungry. Yes, it was mostly sugar and candy, but if a man was going to freeze his ass off for a noble reason he had the right to eat what he wanted. He added a couple of cans of soda for good measure and then snuck back out of the kitchen, locked the door, and made his way back to the tree house with a bagful of goodies. The tree house was a box with three walls and one open side—useful to keep an eye on the boys—topped by a peaked roof. Each wall had a window and the open side had a small platform that jutted out of the tree and held a narrow ladder and a railing. All in all, the man was very proud of it: kids should have tree houses, they should have adventures and campouts and the chance to get a little untamed. Come to think of it, grown-ups should too.
Charlie One stepped onto the ladder and his goggles bumped into a rung higher up, so he pushed them off his eyes to rest on top of his head and kept climbing. Soon there would be another check and he wanted to be in position.
The man picked up the sleeping bag off the floor and settled himself in his old spot. After a few minutes the voice of Charlie Seven started the round of checks and—as expected—all was well. A bird fluttered nearby and the branches swayed in the dark.
Charlie One didn’t know what to think: did he want the shooter to be hanging around town for them or the troopers to catch? Would he have preferred for the man to have left, become somebody else’s problem, and possibly murder elsewhere, in another small town just like Ludlow? The man gazed above the trees and above the mountains, where the stars shone in a stream like a river of silver dust. You didn’t get a sky like that in the big towns.
It wasn’t a reassuring thought, but the truth was that if the man who had shot Ty Edwards was still around, they’d have a much better chance of catching him in Ludlow. At least they knew he was there. If he left, he could have gone anywhere and started all over again, and those poor bastards would be just as defenseless as Ty had been. Chief Sangster had kept his mouth real zipped up about the investigation, but it was fairly clear from where Charlie One stood: only a nutjob shoots into a crowd. Unless, of course, the whole thing had been political, in which case—
“I’ve got something,” a voice hollered in his earpiece. “This is Charlie Five. I’ve got something.”
The man stiffened. His whole focus shifted to the thin voice coming from the west of town. He clicked the goggles back into place and squinted into the green darkness. His heart started going rabbit-fast, and every detail appeared to stand out: the mulchy scent of dead leaves all around him, his own perspiration under the thermals.
“What is it?” somebody else said.
“Someone’s moving, down in the street, real sneaky-like, and I could swear it was no trooper.”
“Which street and which direction?” one of the Charlies asked.
Charlie Five told them.
“Can you describe him?”
“No, he was moving too fast.”
“Was he armed?” Charlie One asked.
“I don’t know. Could have been. Didn’t see clearly enough.”
“Could be coming toward you, Four.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Where are you?”
“Standing by in my front room. I’m peeking through the drapes, but the road is clear.”
It occurred to Charlie One that most of the other volunteers were doing their volunteering from inside their warm homes, while he was out there looking over the neighborhood and peeing from a tree.
“Anything yet?” Five asked.
“Nope,” Four replied. “All clear.”
The man stood up and rested the butt of the rifle against his shoulder in the nook that seemed made for it.
“Got him!”
It was Four’s voice and the earpiece burst into a crackle of voices. Charlie One stood stock-still, his eyes trained on the part of town where he knew Charlie Four had just spotted their target. He couldn’t see him, of course. He was too far away, and yet it felt as if he could sense his movements through the dark, empty streets and across the deserted yards. He automatically cocked the bolt of the 10/22 and it sprang forward, ready to shoot.
“Where? Where is he?” Voices crossed and overlapped.
“Just cut across the alley. Running like the dickens, actually.”
If this creepy-crawly was heading toward Charlie Three, it meant he was moving away from the tree house. Charlie One’s heartbeat was so loud that the voices reaching him seemed to be filtered through it.
“We should call the chief,” somebody said, and someone else said they’d do it.
The man breathed in and out, in and out, and he waited. He waited for someone to say something, anything. From where he stood he could spot roofs peeking out from between the tops of the trees, and some stretches of ground. The green world he could see was motionless and utterly silent. He debated whether to climb down and join the others, whether they should all go toward Charlie Three and search every street and every yard that side of town.
“I called the chief. He was napping in his office. He’s on his way.”
“Three, do you see him?”
“No, no one came through here.”
“Shit.”
“Four, was he armed?”
“Couldn’t say, but I barely saw him. He sure was in a hurry.”
Fuck it, Charlie One said to himself and he climbed down the ladder as quickly as he could, swearing under his breath when he bumped the goggles, slipping on the rungs, and almost losing his balance on the icy ground. He straightened and made his way to the side gate. If they were going to trap the sucker, he was going to be right there.
“The chief said for everyone to stay right where we are.”
Shitshitshit. Charlie One froze with his hand on the gate. They’d gone behind the chief’s back with their little neighborhood watch project; nevertheless, the man was reluctant to out-and-out disobey the chief’s instructions.
“What’s going on?” Charlie Two murmured, as if their target could hear them.
“Don’t know. Just saw a couple of troopers running past,” someone replied.
Charlie One sighed. It was the troopers’ game now. Hesitant to go inside, turn on the lights, and wait to hear—like everyone else who hadn’t been keeping watch half the night—Charlie One decided to go back up to his sentry post and remain there until they heard, one way or the other.
There was no talk on the earpiece, and he could imagine six other men rooted where they stood—cold and tired and, sure, a little bit nervous, but mostly, secretly, so keyed up about the hunt that they could have gone on for hours.
Charlie One reached for the plastic bag, because all that excitement needed to be crowned with a cookie, and it was only when his hand didn’t find it where he had dropped it that he turned. Wearing the goggles that gave him a clear, green view of the inside of the tree house, Charlie One stared at the spot on the floor where he had left the plastic bag with its booty of candy and cookies. It wasn’t there. The man touched the bare wooden plank with his gloved hand, as if the bag had somehow become invisible. It wasn’t there.
What the heck? He leaned out of the platform and gaped at the ground below. Could he have accidentally pushed it off and made it fall all the way to the dirt? No, that was impossible. He would have heard it land and would have tripped on it when he had rushed down. How . . . ?
The man studied the floor of the tree house, as if it contained the meaning of life. And yet the one unassailable truth he found was that the bag was not there. He had left the platform for a couple of minutes, gone into his kitchen, come back, and put the bag on the floor by his feet. And now it was gone.
Something was warm and sticky on his skin under the layers and he felt a swooping in his gut, like falling off the ladder backward. He could see everything clearly with the goggles in place, like eerie daylight. You weren’t wearing the goggles when you climbed back up the ladder, remember that, brother? He wasn’t: he had pushed them up, because he kept banging them on the ladder as he climbed up. And when he had reached the top—the pitch-black top of the ladder, the deep murky gloom of the inside of the hut—he had turned with his back to the dark room and plopped himself down like a fool, and only when the alert had come through had he clicked the goggles back into place and . . . and there had been that awful smell of dead leaves and mulch and earth and sweat, and the rustle of the bird in the tree . . .
“Oh, man,” Charlie One said. “Oh, man.” He couldn’t say any more than that. His eyes searched the floor of the tree house and right there, under the back window, he spotted two muddy footprints. He had never gone near that window that night and, for sure, they were a man’s footprints, not a boy’s. Just outside the window the branches met and parted and curled and plunged all the way to the ground.
“Oh, man,” Charlie One repeated, and he didn’t know whether to stay or to run, to throw up or be gone. He didn’t know whether to tell, or to shut up about it forever. He had been looking at the stars, he had been looking at the damn stars.