The Cabin on Souder Hill Read online

  “Pink,” she called. She went down the hall to the bathroom, but it was empty. She could see his bedroom door was closed. “Pink, are you awake?” she waited a moment, then rapped lightly on the door. “Pink, are you awake? I need some help with something.”

  Knowing how stubborn Pink could be and actually having to deal with it were two different things. Lulu had never had children of her own, and she didn’t know how Mattie had managed with Pink all those years. She twisted the doorknob and pushed it open. “Pink, are you awake?” She walked to the bed, to the roll of blankets. He wasn’t there.

  Burrito followed as Lulu walked to the back porch and surveyed the yard, the trees at the edge of her property, the mountains painting a bluish-gray backdrop to her view. She checked with a couple of her neighbors, but no one knew anything.

  Standing in the front yard, Lulu let her eyes rove the gravel driveway leading up to her place, the field just beyond her front gate, the flashing lights turning off the county road heading her way. It was then she heard the sirens. Two cars. She watched as they came closer.

  She picked up Burrito. The dog licked her cheek, her neck, wriggling in her arms.

  “Pink, where have you gone?”

  Chapter 45

  “Well ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Pink said, getting into Claire’s car. “I thought you’d never come get me. Hell, Lulu told me she didn’t know where you were. I told her I just saw you a few days ago, but that old woman’s crazier than a woodpecker with a neck brace.

  Pink looked over at Claire, placing his hand on her shoulder. Claire’s sour expression gave him a start. Claire turned onto the county road, heading for the highway.

  “Pink, I ain’t seen you in almost five years,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “What?” Pink said. “We just watched that crazy damn video last week, the one where those fishermen all drown in a hurricane.”

  “The Perfect Storm?” Claire said. “Is that the movie you’re talking about? I can’t even remember when I watched that. Hell, Pink, what did they do to you in that damn hospital? I heard you’d gone bonkers, but shit . . . I’m worried for you.”

  “You telling me we didn’t see that damn movie last week?” Pink said. “Well, which one was it then?”

  Claire pulled the car into a deserted gravel parking lot off the highway.

  “Pink, baby,” she said. “We didn’t watch any movie last week, or last month, or last year! I haven’t seen you since . . . you know . . . Isabelle.”

  Pink searched his pockets for the pills the hospital had given him until he realized he’d left them in the bathroom at Lulu’s. He needed them now. The tingling had come back, like he was hooked up to some low voltage car battery. He hated the disorientation, the vertigo.

  “Pink, you okay?” Claire said. “You don’t look so good, baby.”

  Pink threw open the door and stepped out into the fresh air. He took his eyes to the mountains beyond, to the leaves on the trees, the sky, things familiar and able to bring him back to the world. He filled his lungs with fresh air. Even so, he still felt like he might get sick.

  A hawk flew above him, its shrill call echoing through the valley below. Pink felt a hand on his back. “I’ve never seen you like this, Pink,“ Claire said. “Come on, I know where we can go. It’s not safe here.”

  In twenty minutes they were sitting near an old gravel boat ramp, the lake calm and beautiful beyond the windshield. Pink had dozed off. Sleep had always been a hobby for him, but since he’d been in the hospital it had become a full-time job. A drip of water woke him.

  Claire was crying, holding Pink to her chest, staring out at the water. Pink sat up, but she never turned to look at him. He reached across the seat and took her hand in his. “What’s this?” he asked, referring to her wedding ring. “I thought you pawned this after you left Kenny.”

  Claire shot him a confused look and started crying harder, her head slumped toward the steering wheel. “Pink, don’t do this to me.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about. “Claire, remember that night at Burtran Lake after your crazy husband, Kenny, made us jump off that damn bridge. Remember how we stayed warm that night, how we made love in the front—”

  Claire pushed his hand away. “How could you even suggest such a thing, Pink. You’re my damn brother. What we did was a sin against nature, against all things holy. We’re gonna burn in hell for what we did.”

  Pink had no way to relate to this newfound narrative. Why did everyone, even Claire, think they were siblings? It made no sense. Pink started to get out of the car when Claire snagged his wrist.

  “Pink, we’ve got a problem,” she said, her eyes marshaled by fear.

  “What the hell, Claire?” Pink drew back from her, but she dug her nails into his skin.

  “Look, Pink, you need to listen closely. I hope for both our sakes you can do that.”

  Claire’s makeup ran from her left eye like a muddy creek. Pink pulled the door closed. He wasn’t sure how much of this he could take. Something in his head had gone off-plumb and was spinning haphazardly, making him dizzy.

  Claire spun the wedding ring on her finger. “I married Elmer a couple of years ago,” she started.

  “Bogan?” Pink said. “You . . . married Bogan? How could you . . . when . . . ?”

  “Pink, this will go a lot easier if you just let me talk.”

  Pink wasn’t sure he could do that.

  “Anyway, after you left . . .” she said, putting her hand to his lips to thwart his interruption. “After you left, I went back to Kenny. I was so messed up and I had no one to talk to about what had happened. Then when Kenny drove himself off that mountain all drunk and coked up, I nearly fell apart. I was so alone. Elmer came to the house to give me the news about Kenny. He came day after day, bringing me food, cooking dinner for me. I fell in love with him, Pink. He was the only thing in my life that made sense.”

  “Well then you’re about the luckiest damn person in the world,” Pink said. “Cause nothing makes a bit of damn sense in my life. But Bogan, Claire? Don’t you remember how we always made jokes about him?”

  “He’s a good man, Pink. Good and kind . . . and he loves me so much. I’m pregnant with our first child.”

  Pink looked at her stomach and saw no signs of life there.

  “It’s only two months, Pink. But that’s not what we’re talking about here,” she said. “Anyway, several months after Kenny’s accident, I thought I might like to try getting a job. Elmer said there was an opening at the sheriff’s office, and we weren’t sure how that would work out, him being a deputy and me a . . . well . . . assistant, I guess. But I took it. Eventually we told Louden about our relationship, and he didn’t seem to care that we were seeing each other and all.”

  Pink couldn’t understand how she could see anything in Elmer. They were different as a beaver and boll weevil. “I was in Louden’s office the other day and I didn’t see you there.”

  “Yeah, I know. Elmer called me from the squad car and told me they were bringing you into the station,” she said. “I . . . I didn’t want to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Too many bad memories . . . you know, with Isabelle and all. Then there was all the talk about . . . you know, incest and all, and all the looks at the damn grocery store. And Kenny, he rode me all the time about fucking my own brother. He’d try to use it against me. He’d say, ‘Well, hell, Claire, why not try some anal? Christ, you slept with your own damn brother. I’d think you’d be up for some experimentation.’ The way Kenny talked to me was just . . . cruel. But Elmer didn’t care about any of the talk and rumors and bullshit.”

  Claire wiped her eyes, and Pink felt like he was caught up in one of them reality shows he hated so much.

  “But when the call came in today that they found a sk
eleton up at your old place, I knew there was going to be trouble.”

  “What?” Pink said. “A damn skeleton? Well, I’ll be damned.” What was even more disturbing than the thought of a skeleton at his old cabin was the look of fear on Claire’s face.

  “Pink, you said they’d never find her.”

  Pink jerked back like he’d been slapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t do this, Pink! You know what I’m talking about. Isabelle’s body. You said you put it where no one would ever find it! Well they did . . . and . . .”

  “This is crazy shit . . . Claire . . . what is everybody drinking around here? Lulu told me the same damn thing. I never killed Isabelle . . . and I never did anything with her body!”

  Claire’s face registered shock, then disbelief. “You really don’t remember, do you?” she said.

  “No, that’s what I been trying to tell you, for Christ’s sake. This is all apeshit crazy talk. I never killed Isabelle!”

  Claire paused a moment before she spoke. “I know you didn’t, Pink. I did. You just said you’d hide the body.”

  Pink felt himself swirling on some lopsided axis, as if it could spin right off into the lake. “What do you mean you killed Isabelle? Why? I don’t understand any of this.” Pink said.

  Claire tried to explain about the night Isabelle had called her into the bedroom, yelling at her about sleeping with Pink, about Pink’s birth and Ida, how they were siblings.

  “It crushed me hearing her say those things,” Claire said. “I was so ashamed. Then Isabelle lit into me again, commenced to calling me a whore and a tramp, and she said, ‘If Pink turns you into a family woman, you’ll give birth to a bastard double-cousin. Then where will you be?’ And, Pink, I was so hurt and so angry, and Isabelle sat there with her damn sickly eyes and that smug face, judging me, demeaning me . . . and . . . and all the while she knew, Pink, she knew and never said a word . . . never said a word about you being my brother . . . just let me carry on and I . . . I just lost control . . . I went into her room after she fell asleep with her potions and her oils and her high-brow-better-than-anyone-else bullshit, and I pushed that damn pillow into her ugly face until she stopped moving.”

  Claire fell against the steering wheel crying, pounding the dashboard with her fist. Pink tried to console her, but she wasn’t the same person he had been with only a week earlier. After several minutes, Claire regained composure. She sniffled and looked at Pink, her eyes so red Pink couldn’t find the color there anymore. “You came back to the house that night,” she said, sniffling, wiping her nose. “I have no idea why. The next morning when I woke up, Isabelle’s body was gone. Some of that is still a blur, but a couple of days after that, you told me to call Louden and tell him that Isabelle was missing. You told me to tell Louden that you and Isabelle had a huge row the night before, and that I hadn’t seen Isabelle since. I don’t know why you were so willing to take the blame for what I’d done, but I loved you for being there for me. And I’ve never forgotten.” She reached across and touched Pink’s cheek. Tears came again.

  Pink placed his hand over hers.

  “They’re coming for you now, Pink, and I don’t want you punished for what I done. So you need to go to the station with me, and we’ll tell them I killed Isabelle and hid her body at your cabin.”

  Pink was trying to parse all this information, all of it so foreign to his ears his mind was going cattywompus on him. He recalled everything Lulu had told him, all of it sounding like the rant of the criminally insane a few nights ago. Now he wasn’t so sure. Claire was convinced that these events had taken place. Maybe they had. Maybe Isabelle was dead. Was that her skeleton they’d found at his cabin? He thought about Michelle Stage, her troublesome questions about Isabelle. Her accusations about him killing Isabelle. Where had she gotten that notion? Things were adding up but made no sense. Something was off-kilter, that was for sure. But Claire’s fear was real and serious, and there was no doubt there.

  “That will never work, Claire. Nobody’s ever gonna believe you could haul Isabelle’s body to my cabin and bury it,” Pink said. “Besides, you don’t even know where I put her. Hell, if you don’t know that, they’re never gonna buy one word of your story.”

  “Elmer’ll tell me where they found the body, Pink. He’ll believe me.”

  “No, Claire. I’ll tell Elmer exactly where the body was found, before you even have a chance to ask him, and your story won’t amount to a hill of beans. And if you tell him you killed Isabelle, well, that’s just stupid—there’s no reason for both of us going down for her murder. They’ll arrest me anyway for—I don’t know what they call it—but for burying the body. I’d be an accomplice. Besides, Isabelle’s deception was eating her alive. Hell, you probably done her a favor,” Pink said, then kissed her cheek. “I love you, Cuddle Cakes.”

  “You know I still hate that name, don’t you?” Claire said, showing a faint smile and wiping her cheek.

  “I know,“ Pink said. Pink wasn’t sure about much of anything anymore, but one thing was sure—he loved her.

  “Pink, you can’t . . .”

  “Claire, now don’t grab the wrong end of the poker on this, I mean it. You let Louden and his boys try to hunt me down. Hell, I know Louden, he’s a terrible damn hunter—no instincts—he ain’t never gonna catch up to me.”

  Pink opened the door and got out of the car. “I mean it, Claire. You take care of that baby and keep your mouth shut. If you have guilt over Isabelle’s death, you’re just gonna have to bear it. Can you do that, Claire? Can you just bear it? For Elmer? For that baby inside you?”

  “Pink . . .”

  “Look, now, don’t do anything stupid. Promise me. You don’t want to ruin Elmer’s life, do you? And you sure as hell don’t want to ruin that baby’s life. If you need penance for what you done to Isabelle, then be the best damn mother you know how to be. That’s your penance, Claire.”

  Pink swung the door shut and loped off into the woods. Out of breath after only a few minutes, he stood on a small knoll overlooking Burtran Lake, his chest heaving, watching Claire’s car from behind some pines. After a few minutes, her car pulled away slowly, moving along the gravel road until it disappeared behind the trees.

  Chapter 46

  Reporters called day and night, some camping for hours on the sidewalk in front of Michelle’s home in Atlanta, hoping for an interview. A television anchorman reported that the skeletal remains had been found at the Stage’s cabin. The reporter then reiterated the story of Michelle’s disappearance only weeks earlier, openly speculating on a possible link between the two events.

  One evening after dinner, Cassie called Michelle to the living room. “Mom, come see this.”

  A CNN anchor was talking about Pink Souder, the story of his disappearance and the bones found on his property. The segment was accompanied by photos of Pink Souder, some old photos of his real estate office space in Ardenwood, as well as pictures of Isabelle Souder as a young, attractive woman.

  “A statewide search for Pink Souder continues after he fled the home of Lulu Martin, where he was rumored to have been convalescing after a nervous breakdown,” the announcer said. “Details are sketchy, but what we’ve learned is that police had driven to the house to arrest him, but when they arrived, he had already fled Mrs. Martin’s home. Authorities are combing the area aided by neighboring law enforcement. He is believed to be armed and dangerous. This is considered to be the region’s largest manhunt since the search for the abortion clinic bomber, Earl Borden.”

  Armed and dangerous. Michelle was seized by conflicting emotions. She realized Pink had killed Isabelle in one reality, based on everything Mattie had told her, yet the Pink Souder Michelle knew hadn’t killed or hurt anyone. That was the only Pink she knew. She pictured the path he had built in the trees for Isabelle, how Mattie spoke of them as kids, how much Pink must ha
ve loved Isabelle. And now Pink was running for his life, unaware of the crime he was being hunted for, unaware of the reality he now found himself in.

  Chapter 47

  Pink scrambled down the hill, pulling himself through the thick rhododendron. He dropped the shotgun when he slipped on the loose dirt. The gun slid down the culvert and into a shallow draw. “Oh, fuck it all to hell!”

  The sun was bright through the trees, and he figured it was close to noon. Even so, the day held a chill not uncommon for this time of year. He pulled the shotgun from the creek then scooped clear water to his mouth. He gulped down several palmfuls, then sat a moment, allowing his thoughts to ramble unimpeded over Lulu’s story and Claire’s account of things. There was much overlap, and Pink was fairly certain Lulu had actually pulled off something supernatural. But he couldn’t wrap his brain around any of it.

  “Crazy as a trapped bat, that old woman is,” he said to himself. The sound of barking hounds snapped him back to the present. He’d managed to stay ahead of Fisk for two days, but they’d found him now.

  It was Claire that most troubled him. What she lacked in brains she made up double in heart. Pink hoped she’d bought his bluff about Isabelle’s body and where it was buried. Pink had no idea where Isabelle was buried and until Lulu told him the story, he hadn’t even known she was supposed to be dead. He hoped Claire wouldn’t say anything to cast doubt about Pink’s guilt in Isabelle’s murder, hoping she’d keep her mouth shut. There was no way she could stand up to a Fisk interrogation. Fisk would ask her two questions, and she’d breakdown and confess to every murder that had ever happened in Ardenwood.

  “Uhhh, shit, Louden. The fucking dogs? You brought them dogs down on me?” Pink got up and started running again, but he knew he could never outpace the hounds. Fisk knew him too well, knew where Pink hunted, knew every cave and hollow tree, just like Pink. He’d lied to Claire about that as well. They’d hunted bear and boar together. They walked these woods all their lives. And Louden was one of the best damn trackers he’d ever met. Pink knew it was a death sentence with Louden tracking him, but he didn’t care anymore. Pink felt like he was wearing someone else’s life, and everything felt wrong and unfixable.