One Cold Night

grew up here. He said this place was special to him and he would share it with me. He said it was my turn to have what was due me. He said if I found you, I’d be saved, and it would be over.”
    “Your patient?” Like he was a doctor. Like that could be possible.
    “I was his therapist.” He laughed bitterly, and Lisa believed that, crazy as it sounded, he was telling the truth. “He convinced me to stop my medication so I could feel. He drew me a map, showed me how to get here, loaned me the house he rents near his family home.”
    She glanced at the filled-in mound, the other grave. “What for?”
    “He said he tried to find you for me, but he made a mistake. He said it was something I’d have to do myself if I wanted it done right. He told me that my only chance of being saved was to find you, and that when I got here with you, I would know what to do—”
    “Lunatic,” Lisa spit.
    “I thought we’d keep on going, maybe to Canada—”
    Lisa thought of the terrible day Becky Rothka disappeared on her way home from their school; how they were the same age and looked a lot alike.
    “Did he kidnap a girl named Becky?” she asked. “Did he think she was me? ”
    “I don’t know how much of what he says is real.”
    So why do you listen to him? she wanted to shout, but instead asked, “Is he here now?”
    “It wasn’t the plan,” he said, following Lisa’s anxious gaze as it traced the periphery of the woods, “but maybe. Someone dug that grave.”
    He began to weep and lifted his face in her direction, like he was the victim, like she had somehow cosmically hurt him and now she owed him something.
    “ Please help me,” he cried. “You could shoot me; it could be over. Please. ”
    She had never seen eyes that desperate before. A million thoughts and feelings rained through her body all at once in big, waxy slabs that couldn’t penetrate. She felt heavy and incompetent; deaf and dumb; dizzy. She did not know what to do.
    So this was her father.
    And she was his daughter.
    He was begging her to kill him.
    And in a way she really wanted to. She hated him. He had proven he was a dangerous man.
    She straightened her arm and it shook, she was holding the gun so tightly. The trigger under her finger felt stiff; to pull it would take tremendous effort. But she was strong; she could do it. She wanted to do it, but then again she didn’t.
    She heard crunching sounds in the woods.
    If that psycho Theo was here, she thought, and if he was about to join them in the clearing, he would kill her anyway — just like he had killed Becky last year — so she might as well do it. She could find out if revenge was sweet or rancid. She could do this forbidden thing — she could kill her own father — and immediately be freed of the act’s burdens.
    “How many bullets in this gun?” Her voice was a rough whisper, but he heard her loud and clear.
    “Six.”
    Enough for both of them — her father and Theo.
    But shoot someone? It was wrong.
    She had to decide. Someone was coming. Any moment, it would be too late.

Chapter 27
    Wednesday, 6:16 p.m.
    Dave followed Officer Braithwaite and John Childress into the woods. As soon as they pierced the overgrowth, Dave saw a scant, foot-beaten dirt path. Childress, in front, used his bare arms to push aside the brush; Braithwaite cringed at each backswipe of branches, but persevered. The deeper they went into the forest, the dimmer and quieter it became. Day was petering out, fading to twilight. Dave felt a chill at the back of his neck.
    And then he heard it: a voice looping over the treetops, seeming to cause a shiver in the orange-and-red haze of leaves. It was a high, strong voice that seemed to sail at top velocity. A frightened yet determined voice. It was Lisa.
    “Christ Almighty,” Childress sputtered.
    Dave broke into a run behind Braithwaite, who was racing now, the fabric of his uniform undulating over swiftly moving muscle. Sweat streamed down Dave’s face. The voice soared above them. As he pushed deeper into the woods, he listened for its source. Wasit getting louder or weaker? He couldn’t tell, with the sound of his own heaving breath pounding in his ears.
    He sprinted past Braithwaite, ignoring the high, thorny bramble that slapped against his skin. Childress moved at a good clip for an old man but Dave passed him too, his feet pounding the old path as he cut through the overgrowth with slashing arms.
    The voice was getting closer now, or he