Rescue

enough to raid whatever larder might have been left in the camp. I restarted the fire and went outside to look around while it caught.
    The camp was in a small clearing, the navy blue GMC Sonoma parked in sight. I tried not to think about walking from the back of it to the cabin the night before. Instead I circled the building, nothing more to the place than a scaffold from which I guessed a deer would be hung while the hunter dressed it.
    I followed a narrow path behind the camp until I came to the dry well. There was a thick, wooden cover on it, maybe three feet by three feet, which would take some lifting, but that was just fine.
    I walked back to the camp and found my gloves. Then I went to the pickup again. The keys were in the ignition, my wallet, identification holder, and the Church papers on the passenger seat. In the back was the sleeping bag I’d lain on, forest green on the outside with a red liner showing elk leaping over rocks. I rolled up the bag and carried it under my arm.
    Inside the camp itself, the fire was coming back nicely. I dragged Severn’s body by the heels away from the browning blood, which looked shiny and sticky on the floor. Getting him into the bag, I zipped it closed before swinging Severn over my shoulder. He was lighter than I would have guessed.
    Carrying him back to the dry well, I tried to think of what I could do about the blood in the camp and couldn’t think of much. I’d seen a broom but not a water source, and no amount of scrubbing was going to do anything about the soak-through and staining.
    At the dry well, I lifted the cover off with my gloved hands. I couldn’t see down past ten feet from the mouth, so I dropped a small stone in the center. I’d counted to “five/one thousand“ before it clinked at the bottom.
    I slid Severn’s sleeping bag and body in after the stone. There were some whispers and squeaks as the bag brushed the sides of the well on the way down. The thump, when it came, was dull, the well deep enough that no cloud of dust came up. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would have sounded sincere, so I just put the cover back in place.
    Inside the camp again, I fed the burlap hood, bits of broken chair, and tape into the woodstove, adding more logs so the stuff would burn as completely as possible. I thought about burning the floorboards to destroy the blood, but I wasn’t sure I could keep the fire contained without water, and besides, it was one thing to vandalize the place, another to burn holes in it. Or burn it down, the much heavier smoke bringing the helpful or even just the curious. With luck, the people who owned the camp wouldn’t return for years or want to know how their floor got stained when they did.
    I wiped off everything else I’d touched without gloves on, then walked out to the truck. It started up and proved itself over the half mile or so of rocky track to a dirt road. I went right first, but the road gave out in front of two large, fallen trees that had a lot of undergrowth behind them. Turning around, I continued another three miles before hitting pavement, then another four miles before a road sign appeared with a state route number on it. The next intersection had junction signs for the same road that went through Elton. Following it, I got near enough to the town center to orient myself, then drove out again, finding the falling barn and Severn’s trailer. I could just see my car, still at the turnout.
    Parking the pickup in the driveway, I took the keys from the ignition. Walking around the back, it didn’t seem as though anybody else had been by. I opened the sprung back door and climbed inside. Severn’s wallet and key chain went on the kitchen counter, me barely remembering to take out each of the cards I’d handled and wipe them clean of any prints. Then I went to the bathroom and got his brick of money. I thought about taking all the Church of the Lord Vigilant literature, but decided it would leave even more of a gap in his shelf arrangement, a gap someone who knew him might spot even faster.
    Then I walked back to the Prelude, got in, and let my breathing calm down while I thought things through again. Nothing more I could see doing.
    I started up and drove south toward the Massachusetts line. I made myself get fifty miles from Elton before stopping for breakfast, which amounted to choking down an English muffin and some tea.

11

    D riving back into Boston , I laid out a way to cover my tracks and