Nobody wanted me to investigate the murder of Heidi Telford, nobody except her father. I could have done as everyone else had. Told Bill Telford there was nothing new, told him I had other things to do. Do you know how many drunk drivers there are out there endangering our streets and highways, Mr. Telford? I was sorry his daughter was dead. Everybody was. But it wasn’t up to me to investigate my friends just because they happened to be in the area at the time the girl was killed. Just because they happened to like girls and girls liked them and things came easily to them and people protected them.

I thought about the grin on the Senator’s face as he looked back over his shoulder at us when he was dancing with his sister. So different from Jamie’s grin, and yet so much the same. Each was the grin of a man who could do anything he wanted and be praised for it. The Senator, at least, had earned his pass, but what had Jamie ever done to deserve a grin like that? Was that what I hated most? Was that why I was doing what I was doing? You have broken my heart … please go a-way!

I reached the bend in the trail, the turn where it angled away from the Loon and headed upstream on the Salmon. There was a hill on my left, but I paid no attention to it. I was only aware of it because I had to circumnavigate it. Go around the hill and enter that field of small blue spruces that had reminded me of a Christmas tree lot. There was water on the path ahead of me, the runoff from a trickle of a stream coming down from the hill. The trees to the left of the trail seemed slightly smaller, the ground slightly more sloped than to the right, where the field of spruces went all the way to a ridge and then dropped precipitously to the river. I was vaguely aware of all these things simply because there was water ahead of me on the trail and a part of my brain was wondering where it came from and why it seemed to gather where it did, and while I was wondering about the water and thinking about the Senator’s grin there was an enormous bite taken out of the ground near my foot and an almost simultaneous cracking sound.

How does one’s body know it’s being shot at before it even registers in the mind? All of a sudden I was diving into the spruces.

Something whizzed by my shoulder, whizzed through tree branches. Did it come at the same time as the second crack? It made no difference. I was already facedown. I was on my chest, crawling on my elbows, trying to get as deep into the little spruces as I could, cursing them for being so far apart, for having so much space between them. Spruce needles, rocks, sharp leaves, all dug into my skin as I sprint-crawled over the ground. None of it mattered because there was a third crack and I was absolutely certain I was never going to be able to get away. I was the only thing moving in a field the size of a football stadium, trying to get protection from skinny tree trunks and even skinnier branches. I needed to get back to my feet, I needed to run, I needed to zigzag, to get all the way to the ridge and then jump as far out as I possibly could.

I pushed to my hands and knees and took off with my legs driving and my upper body parallel to the ground. I made it to the first tree to my right, cut sharply to one on my left, cut back to the right, and then dove into the dirt and rolled. I was on my feet again, trying to outsmart the shooter as I went from side to side, using no pattern but what appeared in front of me as I ran, my heart pounding, my breath searing my lungs. I was yelling my name as I dove, tumbled, got up again. Except I wasn’t yelling. That wasn’t me. Somebody else was yelling. And coming after me. Coming hard and fast in my direction.

I looked toward the river. It was still thirty yards before I could get to the ridge, before I could jump, and I saw now how high that jump was going to be. I looked back. There was a flash of color, a ball of hair, and I realized it was McFetridge. Coming to kill me. He couldn’t run and shoot at the same time. Not accurately. So I made the dash. I didn’t bother going from tree to tree anymore, I just bolted to the ridge and launched myself off it in full stride.

I was probably less than a second in the air before I realized the mistake I had made.

8

.

“IGOTCHA, MAN. I GOTCHA.”

The voice was McFetridge’s. It was straining, but it was comforting, too. It kept saying the same thing over and over.

I opened my eyes. The trees above me were at a funny angle. They were growing out of my feet. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at their tops, from the bottoms up. Blood was in my head. But it wasn’t loose blood. Not wet blood. I blinked and listened to McFetridge cooing to me. I listened to him grunt, curse, reassure me all over again, and I realized I was upside down. I was on a steep slope and my head was lower than my feet. But where were my arms? Where were my hands? What was holding me?

I remembered now. I remembered jumping, seeing I wasn’t going to reach the water, trying to find a place to land. I had hit feetfirst and then pitched forward, head over heels. I had gone back into the air, seen the boulders below me as I flipped, and grabbed for whatever I could. And now I was lying upside down, not feeling anything in my limbs. Except I could feel my feet. I just didn’t want to move them because they were caught on something, holding me in place.

“Hang on there, buddy. I gotcha. I gotcha. I’m almost there.”

I could sense McFetridge more than I could see him. He seemed to be swinging from one handhold to another. I concentrated very hard on moving my left arm. It moved and I had a rush of exultation. I tried my right arm and it moved as well.

“I’m okay,” I said. I meant it only in terms of how bad I might have been, but it was enough.

McFetridge stopped his descent. I could hear him breathing hard. I could hear despair. Why despair? Because he hadn’t killed me right away? Or because I was broken?

How broken could I be? I could feel my arms. I could feel my feet. If I could feel my feet and I couldn’t move them, what did that mean? I began to hyperventilate. Noises were coming out of my chest. They weren’t noises I had ever made before. They weren’t noises I had ever heard any human being make before.

“It’s okay, buddy, I’m gonna get you.”

He was going to get me.

“You sonofabitch,” I said, because I was scared, because I did not want him to see how scared I was. “Come near me and I’ll fucking kill you.” I did not explain how I was going to do that and McFetridge wasn’t listening anyway.

“Wait, wait, wait, buddy, don’t move!”

But I wasn’t moving, was I? If I couldn’t move my legs that meant I couldn’t dig them into anything. Which meant I would slide. Plummet. Go headfirst into the boulders, ricochet into the water and get carried downstream. I lay very still for a moment, trying to get my thoughts under control.

“Look,” I said, “if I sit up, am I going to dislodge anything?”

“I got nothing to haul you up with,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer.

I tried again. “If I swing my legs around, am I going to be all right?”

“Do it slowly. Move them one at a time, just a little to your right. You’re on about a forty-five-degree pitch, Georgie.”

Except I couldn’t move my legs. Unless, possibly, I swung them from my hips. I pictured it in my mind. A right angle—forty-five degrees was half a right angle. I could swing my legs as a unit.

I groped with my left hand and found something long and thin and secure—a shoot off a tree root, in all likelihood—and I held it as hard as I could. I dug my right hand into the dirt and it gave way, sending a mini-avalanche of stones tumbling down toward the water, scaring me all over again, making me think the whole hillside was going to collapse beneath me.