Page 11 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Eight

I make the call to Sheriff Smits. Gail is in shock, sitting on the sofa, her legs drawn up. When she realizes I’m on the telephone, she says, “I can do that,” but I pretend not to see her. I need to do this.

I can’t let her see how that dead rabbit affected me.

I’m shaking inside, a quivering, sobbing little girl who just found a squirrel in pieces and knows she can’t tell anyone, knows she needs to bury it before anyone thinks she would do such a thing.

Everyone knew she liked poking around dead things.

I could tell Gail what happened all those years ago, but what good would it do? She’d only be more determined to get me off this property, and it’s not as if the same person can be responsible. I need to shush that terrified child and deal with it.

I don’t even speak to Sheriff Smits. It’s an answering machine—an actual old-fashioned machine.

“Sheriff Smits,” I say. “It’s Sam Payne, up at the Payne place.

We arrived last night. Someone … left something on my front steps.

A prank, I think, but it’s a mutilated animal, so I wanted to report it.

I also think someone might be living in our shed.

The two could be connected, of course. If you get a chance, could you swing by?

My aunt and I would appreciate it.” I leave my phone number. Then I hang up.

Sheriff Smits arrives just over an hour later.

I meet him at the parking pullout before the road reaches our cottage.

Gail has a video-chat appointment, and honestly, I’m relieved to be doing this on my own.

Yesterday with Ben proved that she’s too ready to jump to my defense.

I don’t want the locals of Paynes Hollow thinking I need protection from them.

“Sheriff,” I say as I walk over, hand out. “Good to see you again.”

He shakes my hand. “I heard about your grandfather’s will. Hell of a thing. You and your mom deserve this place.”

“Thank you. I intend to get it. For both of us.”

“Good.”

He starts to say something else, but then someone climbs out of the passenger side.

“You met my daughter, Josie,” Smits says.

“That’s Deputy Josie,” she says with a smirk, tipping her wide-brimmed hat. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

Her father rolls his eyes affectionately. “She likes to act as if she’s just helping her old man out, and didn’t spend four years taking criminology in college.”

“Nice,” I say, extending my hand.

Smits snorts. “Nice would have been her accepting the job she was offered with the feds instead of coming back here to a post she could have gotten out of high school.”

“Ignore him,” Josie says. “My boss feels the need to make sure everyone knows how well-educated his deputy is, and my dad just likes to brag. Good to see you again, Sam. I was planning to check in later today, bring the welcome pie Mom baked.”

“Sorry to call you out,” I say.

“Not at all. I just wish you didn’t need to. Your message said someone left a dead animal on your doorstep.”

I nod and lead them over. “It’s under that,” I say, pointing at a garbage bag stretched on the ground, weighed down with rocks, after a turkey vulture swooped in. I put on gloves and reach down for the plastic. “It’s a rabbit.”

“Seems to be a bumper year for them,” Smits says. “We’ve had them all over the roads. There was a coyote cleanup early this spring, and that’s cut back on natural predators.”

He’s gently telling me that a dead rabbit outside my cottage isn’t unusual. I don’t comment. I just gently pull back the bag.

“Yikes,” Josie says, her hand flying over her nose and mouth. “That’s a mess.”

“Something tore that rabbit up good,” her dad says, hunkering down.

Something. Not someone. Between the turkey vultures and the impromptu covering, it’s no longer obvious how the body had been arranged. It just looks like a dead rabbit, which settles the butterflies in my gut but doesn’t help convince the sheriff.

I tell him what it had looked like.

“Huh,” he says.

“My aunt can confirm that,” I say. “We should have gotten a photo, but we weren’t exactly thinking about that.”

“I can imagine.” He rises from his crouch, rubs his mouth and looks around. “Well, it’s definitely not a natural death.”

You think? I bite my tongue and keep my expression neutral, but Josie gives a soft snort.

“Could have been predation,” he says. “You have a couple of bald eagle nests on your property. Nice to see them in the area again. They might rip a rabbit up like that. Maybe leave the pieces in a way that makes it seem like a deliberate arrangement.”

I open my mouth, but he beats me to it with, “Or it could have been deliberately arranged, as you said.”

I shove my hands in my pockets. “After what my father did, I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting any Paynes around.”

He tilts his hat back and scratches his forehead. “I think folks are good at understanding that one bad apple might spoil a barrel, but that doesn’t apply to people. All I’ve heard is sympathy for what you went through.” He looks at me. “No one blames you, Sam. At all.”

Guess he hasn’t spoken to Ben Vandergriff.

He turns to Josie. “I’d like you to swing by once a day, check on Sam and her aunt.”

“That’s not nec—” I begin.

“Got it,” she says. “At the very least, having the local police coming and going will make people think twice about harassing you. Or trespassing on the property. You said you thought someone was in your shed?”

“Someone was in there. Last night, I went to get a hatchet and saw him.”

Her head snaps up, as if I have her full attention. “Him? A man?”

“The size suggested a man. I heard a grunt and the shuffle of feet on the dirt floor, and then I saw a figure. I took off. I don’t know whether he chased me. I don’t think so.”

Smits mutters under his breath. “Useless son of a bitch.”

“Dad…” Josie’s voice warns that we can hear him.

“You know who it was?” I ask.

“No,” Smits says. “I mean your dam—your caretaker. Have you met him?”

“Uh, yeah. Ben Vandergriff. Austin’s…” I swallow. “Older brother.”

“That was your grandfather’s way of making amends, I guess. The kid should be grateful, but instead, he does a half-assed job, and now you have a squatter living in your shed.”

“Ben’s thirty years old, Dad,” Josie says. “He’s not a kid.”

“Then he should stop acting like one.” Smits exhales. “I know I sound awful, snapping about a young man who lost his brother, but that boy wields his family tragedy like a baseball bat, hitting anyone who comes into range.” He looks at me. “I hope he was decent to you.”

I go to say something neutral, but my expression must answer for me, because Smits shakes his head. “He was an ass, wasn’t he?”

“Dad…” Josie says. To me, she says, “Ben’s fine. His bark is much worse than his bite. The point right now is that you have someone living in your shed and you walked in on them at night.” She shivers. “I don’t think I could have stayed here after that.”

“I have my aunt, who has a gun.” I quickly add, “A legal handgun in a locked case.”

Josie taps her hip. “I’ve got a gun, too, and I still wouldn’t have stayed.”

“I’m not sure the man is living there. That’s just a guess.”

Her hard look says this isn’t the point, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing. Now that I know who she is, I keep seeing the little girl who tagged along and tried so hard to keep up. Having her giving me shit is adorable … which is not the reaction she wants.

I nod solemnly. “We just didn’t want to call the police our first night here.”

“And seem like a couple of nervous ladies from the city?” Josie shakes her head.

“Don’t think that. Please. If you’re concerned, call.

This isn’t the big city. Peak tourist season is past, and things have slowed right down.

No drowning scares. No campers reporting strange noises in the night.

No hikers who didn’t make their rendezvous. ”

“No false alarms from city folks,” Smits says.

“We are, however, fully trained officers,” Josie says.

“We can handle an intruder, and we should be the ones handling it. If you’re worried we’ll overreact, don’t be.

Out here, we know that whoever is in your shed is probably just a drifter passing through.

We’ll act accordingly. Now remind me where that shed is, and let’s take a look. ”

The shed is empty. We’re all in there with flashlights. Josie spent a couple of minutes fussing with the shed light switch, until her father grumbled again about Ben’s incompetency, and she abandoned it.

There’s no one in the shed. Nor is there any sign that someone has been squatting in there.

“I definitely saw someone,” I say. “I heard them and then I looked up and saw eyes and the outline of a figure in the dark.”

“You didn’t have a flashlight?” Smits asks.

My cheeks heat. “No. City-girl move, I know. I decided to have a bonfire, realized I needed wood, which meant I needed a hatchet … so I tramped out here without a flashlight. I have completely forgotten everything I knew about cottage life.”

“It’ll come back,” he says. “But yes, always have a flashlight. Even in the daytime, these woods can get dark.”

“As for wood,” Josie says, “there’s a place just down the road. The kids sell firewood at the end of the drive, but if you go to the house and ask, I’m sure they’ll cut you a deal on enough to get through the month.”

“Thanks. Gail will check it out. I’m pretty much stuck here.”

When she frowns, I lift my leg to show the ankle monitor. Then I realize how that might look—especially to cops—and hurry on. “It’s part of the will.”

“Your grandfather—” Josie begins, staring at the monitor. “That’s messed up.” She pulls back. “Sorry. He’s still your grandfather. I shouldn’t judge.”

“Oh, it’s plenty messed up,” I say. “But I am determined to win this last little game of his. My mom really needs—” I clear my throat. “Anyway, I can only leave the property for an hour, so I’m probably not going to take the chance.”

“You need anything, you call Josie,” Smits says.

“We’re fine. Gail isn’t under any restrictions. But yes, we will get that firewood, and we will start carrying flashlights—or at least make sure I always have my phone with its light.”

“About this fellow,” Smits says. “You said you looked up and saw his eyes. Any idea how tall he was?”

“Maybe six feet?”

“Eye color?”

I remember those eyes, dark and liquid, reflecting like an animal’s. I can’t say that. “It didn’t register. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just be sure to keep the shed locked, and tell the Vandergriff boy to do the same.”

I don’t say that the door seemed to have been locked. I probably should, for Ben’s sake, but I can’t give Smits any more reason to think I imagined it.

I’m sure that’s what he does think already. Just like he thinks the dead rabbit was killed by a predator. I really should have taken a picture. By the time he saw it, the poor creature was nothing but a jumble of guts and body parts. Had I found it like that, I’d never have called him.

Had I found it like that, I would never have flashed back to—

I wrap my arms around myself to stop my shaking.

I didn’t know what to expect from Sheriff Smits.

All I recall of him is a taciturn man who reminded me of a cowboy, rangy and rawboned, with his sheriff ’s Stetson.

Even that impression fades behind the overwhelming memory of him behind a table at the station, his elbows on it as he leans forward to get down to my level.

I’m shivering uncontrollably despite the summer heat, and Mom’s there with her arms around me as Smits asks me to tell him what I saw.

I suppose, looking back now, he’d been kind, gently and patiently walking me through my statement. To me, though, he’d been huge and terrifying.

Now he is again being kind and patient, but I know he’s humoring me. So I can’t admit the door was latched—and probably locked. In the daylight, I can see that there are no holes big enough for the intruder to have entered through. But I know what I saw, and I saw a person.

“Dad?” Josie says from across the shed.

He clears his throat meaningfully. She rolls her dark eyes. “I’m not calling you ‘Sheriff ’ in front of Sam. That’s for the tourists.”

He grumbles but walks over to where she’s bent, shining her flashlight beam on the dirt floor.

“Huh,” he says.

“A footprint,” she says as I come over. “Large enough to be a tall adult male.”

I crouch where she’s indicating, and see with relief that she’s not humoring me, pretending a smudge in the dirt could be a print. It’s a very clear footprint.

“It’s from a bare foot,” I say.

“Hmm,” Smits says.

Josie says, “Yeah, that’s not good. A boot could be Ben. A shoe could mean someone was poking around, looking for something to steal. Or just passing through, wanting a place for the night. A bare foot is more troubling.”

“But it is summer,” I say. “Bare feet aren’t that unusual. And he could have removed his shoes to sleep.”

She wags her flashlight at me. “Don’t downplay this. Yes, you make a good point, but we don’t want you presuming your intruder is just a hapless camper … and finding out otherwise.”

“I know. A lack of footwear could suggest mental issues. Gail is a social worker.”

“Ah. Good. That helps.” Josie straightens. “So someone was in here. Hopefully, they’re long gone, but you do need to speak to Ben.”

“Tell him to get off his ass and earn his pay,” Smits says.

“Dad…” Josie says.

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. That boy is paid very well to take care of this place, and what does he do? Lets two of the cottages rot and leaves the shed open for squatters.”

“I think the cottages rotting was my grandfather’s idea,” I say.

Josie passes me a grateful look. There’s clearly friction here, between Josie, her father, and Ben. Are Josie and Ben a couple? And her father disapproves?

“Maybe so,” Smits says. “But you still need to ride his ass and tell him to do his job. And don’t look at me that way, Jo. Every other kid in this dead-end town gets out as soon as they can, and he stays. Not a lick of ambition, that one.”

“I’m right here, Dad.”

His brows rise in question.

She continues, “Uh, your daughter? Who also stayed in this ‘dead-end town’?”

He waves a hand. “That’s different. You left and got your degree and chose to come back. You have a future. You’re just taking a breather while you figure out what you want to do.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Sure, that’s it. I’m just training for my big move to the city.”

“You are,” Smits says.

“Well, since I am in training, let me take photos of this.”