RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King Read online

  Picking up speed she ran through a switchback and climbed another steep hill, enough to break a sweat before the road leveled off through the trees.

  A band of frigid air brought goose bumps to her flesh. She cleared the forest, passing by a herd of grazing cattle. Some stopped chewing long enough to see what she was doing. Then she turned back, shoes dropping metrically on the stretch of sparkling asphalt, an acrid smell of fertilizer hanging in the trees. And forty minutes later she arrived at her motel room door.

  She grabbed clothes from her suitcase, turned the television on and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later there was knock at the door.

  She pulled a top over her jeans and looked through the peephole. It was Marty holding a greasy white bag and two coffees.

  “Come in,” she said, returning to the bathroom.

  He crossed the room and put the bag on a dresser, removing the lids from two Styrofoam cups.

  “Got Bear Claws,” he called. “The kind you eat.”

  “More hillbilly humor,” Judy said dryly into the mirror.

  “I wouldn’t have expected you to be running. Not with those blisters on your feet.”

  She finished cleaning the counter and discarded the wet towels. “I bought gauze at the gas station and wrapped my ankles.” She walked back into the room. “Went better than I expected.”

  “Where’d you run?” Marty asked.

  “Up behind the billboard.” She pointed.

  “Joey Gilbert’s place,” he said. “Big dairy farm.”

  “Yeah. Well I don’t think Gilbert’s cows have ever seen a jogger before.”

  A news anchor on the television was talking about the Mountain State Butcher.

  “I saw your picture in the paper last night when I got into town –” She stopped to listen. “He was right here last year? In this county?”

  Marty shut off the TV. “A boy found a woman’s head in a lake on top of the mountain. She was reported missing last November. She’d been running in a road race a couple towns away.”

  “And that was the case that started the ball rolling.”

  He nodded. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Nothing boring about this place.”

  Judy was silent for a moment. “You know, I want to thank you for dinner once again,” she said. “It was nice talking like that. I haven’t talked to anyone about myself in a very long time.”

  “Hey, didn’t I do most of the talking?” Marty said.

  “Not all of it.” Judy was still thinking about her father’s poem. Last night she had Googled the author, Christina Rosetti, and downloaded the whole of it.

  Chapter 13

  Canaan Mountain, West Virginia

  It was a spectacular morning on the Canaan Mountain: blue skies and sunshine and plenty of cool dry air. Jessie Spangler could feel the sweat evaporate on her skin as the tires of her bicycle left the earth, rising from the natural ramp of Little Bend where she wiggled her handlebars back and forth, bracing for the tire strike, but unnecessarily – for how smoothly the coil-over shocks let her down.

  This fucking machine was Nirvana!

  Nine pounds of frame climbing the hills like an antelope; Fifth Element Suspension bearing her weight like ligaments and tendons on wheels. She carved turns at breakneck speed, dodged the stones and heavy roots, jumped old tree stumps like she was on a pogo stick. When she met the Middle Ridge Trail, she sliced around a corner in a power slide and headed toward the summit.

  The bike had been delivered to her door last week with a birthday note from her new boyfriend. They were supposed to spend the day together, but he was stuck in Dallas for the weekend, attending meetings. At three hundred dollars a pound of bike, it was about the best present she could think of, and every minute she wasn’t stunned by its performance she was imagining exotic ways of returning the favor.

  Her turbo Saab, with license plates VA LAW, was parked behind the Quail Creek Lodge. After her ride and a steamy hot shower she planned eighteen holes of golf, followed by a sauna and then lobster for one on the deck overlooking Blackwater River. She had left her cellphone in the room with no intention of checking it until Sunday morning. Her law office in Fairfax Virginia was closed for the weekend and clients could leave messages.

  She smiled, remembering trying not to eavesdrop on her colleagues’ whispered remarks this morning: ‘She’s an incredibly physical woman with an incredibly sexy body,’ she heard them say. And she had felt quite self-conscious in her two-piece spandex as she lifted her bike off the car-rack, knowing they were all peeking at her through the windows.

  It was noon when she checked her diamond Omega at the apex of the trail, ate a granola bar and dabbed Chap Stick on her lips. Then she mounted the frame and cut a figure eight before starting down the mountain.

  The descent was fast, and cool on the skin. She leaned forward, her long legs pumping as she swept through the first of the turns, bike gripping the earth like a physical extension of her body.

  She roostered up a grade and crested a long sloping chute. From the top it looked like a tunnel carved through the trees. She rode with her head low, hearing a waterfall splashing to her right, leaves brushing bare arms and the amazing titanium suspension mopping up her landings like a sponge. She feathered the brakes and flexed her arms, was about to stand on the pedals when she caught movement in the heavy foliage. She turned her head for a millisecond toward a kaleidoscope of leaves and looking back saw a pair of cold black eyes.

  The millisecond turned into a second and a second was too long. Her shoulder grazed a tree, ricocheted her toward a rock, the tires left the ground and she went airborne. The last thing she remembered seeing was that pair of black eyes.

  Marty and Judy crossed the Corporal Edmond Bridge looking down upon the town of Quills Landing. The far side of the river was strewn with rusting appliances and graffiti-sprayed rocks. Sudsy waste-water lapped along the shoreline where dozens of docks and warehouses looked about to collapse.

  On the far side of the bridge, the road split in two; signs for Quills Landing and the interstate on the right, Mountain Road and Pentecostal Church on the left. He turned past the church and continued up the mountainside toward Kettle Hollow.

  Twenty minutes later the now familiar community appeared.

  Hattie’s store was locked again, but smoke was spiraling from the trailer chimney and a pair of cotton work gloves lay on the front step next to a pan stained by elderberries.

  “Marty Wayne!” a woman’s voice called out from inside.

  A pair of dog paws hit the screen and a tall slender woman appeared. She opened the door and a Bassett Hound charged between Judy’s legs.

  Her first impression was of a seventy-year-old woman, but then she looked at the woman’s hands and amended the number to eighty, though Hattie for any number of years was a striking woman.

  “Hattie, this is Judy Wells. She’s with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington DC. Judy this is Hattie Wilson.”

  The older woman, her hands stained black from cleaning berries, stood back and looked Judy over. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Come on in.” She held the door, waiting for the hound to follow. “Sorry about the mess. I just finished shelling berries.” She stuck her hands in a sink then dried them on a towel. “I saw you all racing up the mountain yesterday morning. Going up to see that airplane?”

  Purple froth steamed on a pot of boiling water, and the sweet smell of berries lay heavy on the air.

  “How’d you know?” Marty asked.

  “Mail lady,” she said. “She came with papers early afternoon.”

  “We stopped here ourselves, but no one was around.”

  “Closed up and walked to Sulfur Creek to see Connie Liddell. She broke her hip last month. Can’t walk or fix herself anything to eat. Here, here,” she ushered them toward a threadbare couch. “Sit down.”

  “What do you hear about Mary Saxe?” Marty asked.

  “Nothing at all.” She lo
oked at him gravely. “Willem still goes up there looking most days.”

  “They’ve got her description all over the country,” Marty said.

  Hattie put her hands on her hips. “Well I for one don’t expect to hear from her anytime soon.”

  “I hope you’re wrong, Hattie.”

  The old woman shrugged and sat in the rocker opposite them. “Hope I am too.”

  “The airplane that went down,” he said changing the subject. “Someone got to it before we did. They took drugs away from it, Hattie. Cocaine.”

  She made a face. “A couple of the teenagers headed up there yesterday afternoon. They probably followed your tracks in, but you were already there and gone by then. Haven’t heard anything else about it.”

  He took the leather pouch from his pocket. “You ever see anything like this before?”

  She reached for it, kneaded the soft leather in her hands, turned it over and traced the crosses with her finger. Then she poured the contents onto her apron.

  “A buckeye, Marty. You know what this is? People used to carry them for luck. My mother taught us to rub one in the palm of our hands and make a wish.” She smiled at the recollection.

  “And this,” she said, holding up a jagged brown leaf, “is Jimson Weed. Don’t eat this,” she told Judy. “Make you crazy.” She pointed at her ear and made circles with her finger. “The parsnip-like thing here, Dock Root, you take for the stomach cramps and these green leaves with the tiny yellow roots are called goldenseal, used for infection.” She looked at a small smooth stone, then set it aside, cupped one of the dark berries in her hand and shook her head. “I don’t know the others.”

  She put them back in the bag and handed it to Marty. Then she turned to Judy. “Plants and roots are used for about everything up here, mostly cooking, but you’d be surprised how many drugstore medicines are made from them. My momma used to tell me if I didn’t learn cooking and cures I’d never get a husband.” She smiled and sighed. “Guess she was right.”

  Marty stood. “If you hear anything at all –”

  “You’ll be the first to know,” she said.

  “Can I buy a jar of your honey?” Judy asked, pulling some bills from her jeans.

  “Take one from the porch, dear.” Hattie shooed her away.

  Judy left a five-dollar bill on the kitchen counter and the two stepped outside. She grabbed a jar on the way to the truck, got in and fastened her seatbelt. She twisted off the lid, scooped some honey with her finger and licked it off. “Want?” she extended the jar toward Marty.

  He shook his head, put the Jeep in gear and started down the mountain road. When he turned he caught her smiling, long hair whipping out of the open passenger window and thought she looked amazing.

  “Need to stop at the doc’s and see what’s become of the autopsy. We could get a pizza afterward and take it up to my Uncle Toby’s. He can be quite the clown, but it’s a good excuse to show you where I live and who knows, he may be able to tell us something more about the bag. Unless you have other plans.”

  Judy smiled then shook her head. “Nope, no plans,” she said softly.

  “Good,” Marty said.

  Chapter 14

  Marion, West Virginia

  The doctor’s office was a three-story lavender Victorian in the center of town, the only house like it on town square. In the back was a ramp to a loading dock and a set of double steel doors. They parked beneath it and took the sidewalk to the front of the house. Entering under a tinkling bell they walked the length of a creaky wooden hallway. The house smelled of disinfectant and as they passed an empty waiting room Judy could make out the lilting strains of classical music coming through the cast iron heating vents. At the end of the hall a set of stairs descended to the basement. Marty went first then Judy gripped the handrail. Midway to the bottom she saw a crucifix on the wall and the familiar spiritual portrait of footsteps in the sand.

  Marty turned at the bottom of the stairs, stopped at a door with a peephole and knocked twice. The door opened and a man in a plaid shirt and khaki pants beckoned them in.

  The walls were pale yellow and a stained glass window let in the only exterior light. Bright fluorescents crossed the ceiling and a large modern exhaust fan purred in the background. A flat screen television on one wall was tuned to a news station, no sound.

  The pilot’s body lay on a stainless steel table with gutters and drains. The doctor returned to it with instruments in hand, leaning over as they closed the door. Judy could smell burnt bone from the Striker Saw as he cut away the ribs to examine the organs in the chest cavity.

  Marty made a face. “Didn’t leave much to work with. Heard you’ve been busy.”

  “The Surgeon General announced an epidemic of swine flu. Everyone’s sure that they have it now.” Using forceps he removed something that looked like glass and placed it in a tray.

  “Sam told me the schools are sending fliers home to the parents.” He looked closer. “Anything obvious about the pilot?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Contents of his pockets are on the counter. All but the wallet, which you already have.” He stepped on a floor pedal and used a hose to rinse blood from an arm. “See the track marks?” He pointed with a bloodstained glove.

  Marty nodded.

  “Was he alive when the plane went down?” Judy asked.

  The doctor looked at Judy.

  “Agent Wells, Drug Enforcement Agency,” Marty explained.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the doctor said, looking back at the body. “He was alive until that steering column went through his chest.” He drew an incision with the scalpel and used a pair of clippers to snip something away. “You thought otherwise?”

  Judy shrugged, leaning to inspect the pilot’s ear. There was a hole, but no earring. Tan-line on the wrist, but no watch.

  “The plane was carrying cocaine.”

  “Well, I think this guy managed to kill himself,” the doctor said. “We’ll run lab tests, but around here it’s usually pilot error.” He tossed the instrument in a stainless steel pan. “These mountains are littered with old planes.” He scratched his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “You haven’t heard from any next of kin?”

  Marty shook his head, eyes fixed to the television screen. He walked around the table and stood beneath it. “Mind if I turn this up, Doc?”

  Judy looked at his face then at the television as he found the volume. “… hundreds of volunteers have joined officials on the Canaan Mountain in the search for Washington based attorney Jessie Spangler. State police officials say an FBI task force charged with identifying the so-called Mountain State Butcher have been made aware of the woman’s disappearance and are sending a representative to the scene. They caution, however, that it is too early to jump to conclusions, and rule out nothing as the search continues. Family members who have gathered at the Quail Creek Lodge hold out hope that their daughter is still alive. She is in perfect health according to her father and able to withstand the rigors of weather and terrain. The family pledges to remain here until the hour of her return. Meanwhile the state attorney general has announced a press conference at the lodge later this evening. Very sad story, Jessie,” she said to the anchor. “And disturbing.” The anchor shook her head. “We wish the best for the Spangler family, of course. Anyone with information can call the number on your screen or go to Mountain four dot com and don’t forget to check updates on your web browser. Meanwhile, business owners who border the Appalachian Trail are watching revenues plummet in an already dismal economy. Some foresee closures if summer sales don’t improve. One motel owner putting it bluntly saying that high season was his bread and butter. If he doesn’t turn a profit by Labor Day he won’t be in business next year.” The report segued to an east coast map and a West Virginia weatherman.

  Marty muted the volume.

  “Two in two weeks.” The doctor leaned over the body and rubbed a spot on the dead man’s neck.

  “Two?” Judy asked.r />
  “Teenager,” the doctor said. “She went missing up on the mountain where you found this one.”

  “The Butcher article I read in The Post didn’t mention her,” Judy said.

  “Wasn’t news,” Marty said distantly. “She was a runaway.”

  Marty stared at the muted screen for a moment. “Gotta go, Doc,” he said, taking a step toward the door.

  “Send him to County General till you find the family?” the doc asked.

  “That’ll do,” Marty said, pushing the door open.

  Judy could tell he was affected by the news of the missing woman.

  She looked at the crucifix and portrait on their way back up the stairs. She had seen the identical arrangement on a wall in a chapel in the bowels of George Washington Hospital Center. Tom wasn’t around the day of the autopsy. She knew she wasn’t wanted there either. No one was going to let her see her daughter or even tell her what they knew. She just didn’t want her little girl to be in the hospital alone. She just wanted to keep on keeping that promise.

  But the medical examiner broke the rules and came to find her after the autopsy.

  Hearing that your child died of SIDS was like hearing the cruelest joke in the world. It was an acronym, a shrug, even worse than no explanation at all.

  “Can you give me half an hour in the office,” Marty asked. “I just want to call a friend about the Canaan Mountain.”

  “Sure,” Judy said.

  “We’ll do pizza afterward?”

  “If you still want.”

  Marty nodded. “Absolutely. It’s your last night in town.”

  Chapter 15

  Quills Landing, West Virginia

  The steps up to the old pawnshop creaked under Rolfe’s weight. He ducked under a row of guitars and passed by stacks of old tires and wheels. Two elderly men smoked cigarettes in a corner, playing cards on a small table by a cold woodstove. One of them looked up, scratched his whiskers and looked back down.