Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

J. F. Freedman is the author of five very successful novels published by Viking, Dutton, and NAL, but he has never before had a short story published in a national magazine. This short fiction debut comes at around the time the paperback of his most recent novel, Above the Law, is due to appear in bookstores. EQMM extends a warm welcome to a writer we hope will devote more time to short stories in coming years.

1

They got up. It was dark out. They went down to the kitchen in their sock-covered feet, carrying their boots so they wouldn’t make any noise. In the kitchen they made themselves breakfast. Bacon, fried eggs, toast, coffee. It was going to be a long day and it would be cold out. Then they made their lunch, thick roast beef and Swiss cheese sandwiches on rye bread. They wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper and stuck them in a paper bag. They put in some Snickers and Hershey bars, too. They filled their thermoses with hot coffee and screwed the lids on tight. The older one had a hip flask that had been their father’s. He filled it with whiskey and stuck it in his back pocket. A nip to ward off the cold, not enough to fog their aim.

The official hunting season was short this year. Too much game had been taken over the past few years and the Forestry Service wanted to maintain sizeable herds, so they’d cut the schedule in half. In two more days, there would be no more legal hunting until the following year. Which meant hardly anyone would be venturing deep into the hills until summer, when the area would be an attraction for hardy hikers.

The short deer season didn’t matter to them. They weren’t hunting for meat. The hunter’s freezer was already stocked. He’d taken two does earlier in the season; he had plenty of venison. This was a predator hunt, which required a special license that cost several hundred dollars. For that fee, the hunter was allowed to take a single predator from the cull list. The list this year included mountain lion, bobcat, wolverine, and for the first time in seventy years, wolf. Wolf packs had been reintroduced into the area a decade ago, and the relocation had been so successful that a very limited hunt had been approved this year.

Thirty licenses had been sold statewide. They had bought one of them.

The predator season was one week long. If a licensee didn’t bag an animal, he lost his money. It was an expensive crapshoot for experienced and determined hunters.

They had cleaned their rifles the night before. The rifles were old and reliable. They had hunted with them many times over the years, but this would be their first and last hunt of the season together.

They had less than a dozen bullets for the day, whatever was left over in the box from last year. More than enough ammunition for the prize they were going after. They didn’t know for sure if they’d find the trophy they were seeking, but if they did, one shot should be enough. They were both good marksmen. When they got a target in their sights, they didn’t miss. Their scopes had been calibrated at the beginning of the season. They were dead-center perfect.

They finished getting dressed. Heavy wool pants over poly longjohns, wool shirts, bulky-knit sweaters. Fleece-lined canvas jackets that came down to their thighs for warmth, and to cut the wet wind or rain, if it came to that. It wasn’t supposed to rain. They would be uncomfortable enough, waiting out there, without having to get rained on. But if it did rain, they would stick it out. They were intent on bagging a trophy, and if you had to get wet or cold, that was the price you paid.

It wasn’t that far to where they were going hunting, less than sixty miles. They would get there at daybreak, giving them time to set up and get comfortable (as comfortable as they could get considering it was winter and there was snow and ice on the ground and the temperature would be around freezing all day).

It was pitch-dark out when they left the house. The new moon, a fingernail crescent, was obscured by clouds; The driveway sloped down to the street and they coasted the truck down with the lights off, not turning the ignition on until they were at the bottom. The engine caught with a low rumble and the driver backed out into the street, saving his headlights until they were pointed away from the house.

As they pulled away, the driver looked back over his shoulder towards the house. They had left the light on in the kitchen; as the truck trundled down the slick narrow blacktop he saw a second light go on upstairs, in a bedroom window. He thought he saw a shadow in the window, a reflection from the light inside, but he wasn’t sure.

They drove to their destination at a leisurely pace, parked their truck in a secluded area, hiked into the mountains, and set up on a small bluff with a good view to the narrow, mostly overgrown trail below. If their intended prize came, it would almost certainly come down this trail. The woods were too thick on either side to get through. If their target showed up, they would have a clear shot.

They hadn’t seen any other footprints since shortly after they’d left the car and headed up the trail. They hadn’t stayed on the trail long; they didn’t want to leave footprints of their own. They had circled around the long way to get to this view spot; it had taken an extra hour of hard going through gnarly woods, but they hadn’t left any trace of having come this way. And they made sure they were downwind from the direction they figured anything would come.

The advantage of the extra work was that they were in an area few others would traverse. There were closer-in, easier-to-get-to places if all you wanted was a run-of-the-mill deer. If something showed all the way up here they would have the kill to themselves. And it would be worth it.

They had good reason to believe their target would show up, that sooner or later he would come down this trail. The lead hunter had come upon his tracks a few days before, when he was out looking to see where the best place to bag his trophy might be. The tracks had been large and fresh, and the way they imprinted the soft ground indicated an animal unworried about being some hunter’s target. This was a mature specimen, who had survived for a long time out here and knew his way around. It was a male, there was no question in their minds. The size, weight, and spacing of the tracks were too large for a female. The head and pelt would be huge, a prize trophy. The kind a sportsman waits a lifetime for.

The sun rose up, hanging low on the horizon for a long time before starting to climb, a pale milky gray-yellow. It was wintertime, the sun would be low and weak all day, and it would set early. They sat patiently, huddled up against the wind that wasn’t blowing hard but was a steady, bone-chilling force.

Around eleven o’clock they each ate half a sandwich and a candy bar. They folded up the wrappings and jammed them in their pockets. They were good hunters, good sportsmen. Anything they brought in, they carried out; and they swept their footprints with pine boughs when they left. Tomorrow somebody could come through here and not know a human being had been anywhere near these parts.

The coffee, still hot in the thermoses, helped ward off the cold. So did the postprandial nip of whiskey. They didn’t have to worry about their reflexes going mushy from the whiskey; the cold kept them sharp.

There wasn’t much sound: the wind in the barren trees, leafless and black against the colorless sky. The heavy pines sagged from recent frost. No birdsong. A cracking of branches from small animals running under the dead leaf cover, and a few times the sound of an icicle breaking off and crashing to the ground.

The younger one, who had ridden shotgun on the drive out, checked his watch and turned to his brother. “Is your animal going to show?” he asked. “Seems if he was going to come this way, he should’ve done so by now.”

The other, the man whose house they had started out from, who had driven away and looked over his shoulder and seen the shadow in the window, shrugged his shoulder. “Hope so. Be a long hike if it turns out to be nothing to show for it.” He pointed down below them, where there was evidence of fresh animal activity, deer, rabbit, other game. “He hunts here. He knows this is where his dinner will be.” He looked off towards the horizon. “That’s if he’s hungry. There’s no guarantees. It ain’t like punching a clock.” He looked off again. “If he shows now, it’ll be closer to sundown, likely, or not at all. That’s how they hunt.”

The other nodded in agreement. That’s how animals like this hunted.

At two-thirty they polished off the rest of the food they’d brought. An hour left, then they’d have to head back before they lost the light.

Off in the distance, coming up the trail towards them, they heard the sounds of footfalls. Something big. The pace was steady, unhurried.

The two men stood straight, exchanging a glance. They readied their rifles, cocking a bullet into the chamber of each one.

“The first shot’s mine,” the host reminded his partner. “If I miss, or just wound him, then you take him down.”

The second man nodded his understanding and agreement. That had been their plan, from the time they had first discussed this trip.

The sounds were coming closer. Their prey hadn’t cottoned to their presence. As it ambled around the last bend in the trail before the clearing, about a hundred yards down-trail below them, the lead hunter raised his rifle and squinted into his high-powered sight.

The second man squinted into his sight as well, to see how big it was, if their hard work and long patience had been worth it. “Shit!” he exclaimed softly, his breath a small cloudpuff. “There he is, just like you said he’d be. How could you know he would come this way?”

“I followed him, before the season started.” He could feel the hairs tingling on the back of his neck, on his arms under the layers of clothing. “We’re all creatures of habit, man and beast.”

The animal stopped for a moment, looking around, seeming to sniff the air. Through the scope, the hunter could see what appeared to be a quizzical expression drift across the eyes. Had he heard something? He couldn’t see the hunters, they were covered. And the wind was in the wrong direction for smell.

After a moment, satisfied there was no harm impending, he continued up the trail in their direction.

The hunter had his target in his sights. It was a big head, a beautiful head. Proud, noble, imperious. It would be the best trophy he had ever bagged, or ever would. The hard work getting up here, the planning for it, it had all been worth it.

Rifle fire exploded the silence. Through his sight, the hunter saw his bullet explode in his target’s neck, right behind the head.

The target went down where he stood, dead instantaneously, frozen forever in the moment of its dying. A pure and beautiful kill.

They scurried down the embankment. The lead hunter calmly walked over to the dead thing at his feet. The body was warm, exuding heat-aura.

“Good shot. Good, clean kill.”

“Thanks.”

They slit the animal’s neck with one clean cut, holding the body up so the blood didn’t drip onto it, the dark blood running out onto the hard ground. After the blood had all run out, they gutted the body, keeping the head and a small, prime section of pelt.

He had come for a trophy, and now he had it. The rest — bones, innards, flesh, organs — they would leave for the buzzards and the wild dogs and coyotes that roamed these hills, that were especially voracious in winter, when food was scarce. In less than a week, there would be nothing left but a clean-picked pile of bones.

The trophy, head and rolled-up pelt, went into a large Ziploc freezer bag they’d brought for such a purpose. The hunter cinched the bag up tight.

They made their way down the trail, passing no other hunters on their way. It was late; anyone who had been out hunting in this area would have gone in by now. The shooter didn’t expect that anyone else had been here. There had been no other shots, and theirs had been the only vehicle in the out-of-the-way parking lot.

The dying sun, a reddish-purple mirror image of the one that had risen with them in the morning, was spreading its last spiderlike tentacles across the far western hills as they reached their car. The hunter opened the trunk and placed the freezer bag into a large Igloo cooler he’d brought for this purpose. The ice inside the cooler was still frozen; the temperature had never gotten above freezing all day. They packed the ice around the head, to keep it fresh.

There were a couple of swallows of whiskey left in the flask. They shared it as they drove back to the house. The hunter’s brother, who had flown a thousand miles to be here for this, looked over and smiled, his teeth bright in the reflection of the oncoming headlights.

“A good day’s work,” he commented.

The driver’s look was fixed out the windshield, down the road. “We got what we came for.”

2

They drove the truck up the driveway, parked in the garage, and went into the house through the hallway that connected the house to the garage and served as a laundry/mud room. The door leading into the house proper was open a crack. Dinner was cooking; they could smell it. Some kind of chicken stew.

“Is that you, Jeff?” A woman’s voice called out from the kitchen.

The one who had the kill called back from the mud room where they were still stripping off their muddy boots and peeling off the layers of sweaters, shirts, and long underwear. “Yeah, it’s us.” He wiped his face down with a towel. Driving home in the car with the heater on had raised a sweat. “Were you expecting someone?”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know.”

“I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t the bogyman.”

“I’m not the bogyman.”

“Dinner’ll be about half an hour.”

“We’ll shower up first.”

They padded across the family-room floor in their socks. They had stripped off most of the layers of clothing they’d been wearing and carried the rumpled, soggy shirts and sweaters in their arms. The woman, Jeff’s wife, came out of the kitchen. She was wearing bunny slippers, around-the-house jeans, her husband’s baggy Washington Redskins sweatshirt.

The man stopped at the bottom of the stairs. His brother kept going up to take a shower.

“How was it?” she asked.

“Cold. Cold as hell.”

“How’d you do?” She hadn’t seen them drive up.

“We did okay.”

“You got that big trophy you were hoping for?”

“We like to froze our asses off. But we did okay.” He paused. “It’s out in the truck, under the camper shell. You can go take a look at it if you want.”

She shuddered. “No, thanks.” She hated hunting. She never would look at anything he had killed.

“Suit yourself.” He shifted his clothing in his arms. He was wearing suspenders on his wool britches that hung low around his knees from where he’d pulled them off his shoulders when he was getting undressed. He was a big man, sinewy in his muscles, not turning to fat much yet. He still had all his hair. Of course, he wasn’t forty, not for a few months yet. The hair thing could still change.

“Are you cold now?”

“I’m warming up.”

“Do you want a bath? I could draw you a hot bath.”

“Naw, shower’ll do.”

“Dinner’ll be ready in about a half-hour.”

She went back into the kitchen. He trudged upstairs, feeling the weight of the heavy wool clothes on his arms.

He took a long shower; the needles of scalding water on his pale skin felt good. He stood under the water for a long time until he turned lobster-pink. It took awhile to feel clean and warm again, but after he had toweled off and put clean clothes on and had come down to join his brother in the family room for a highball before dinner, with the Sunday night football game droning on in the background, he was back to normal.

Dinner was chicken and dumplings, succotash, winter squash, salad. She had made apple brown betty for dessert. It was keeping warm in the oven.

“I figured you’d be hungry, out there in the cold and wet wind all day.”

“You figured right.” He forked in the food, his arm a machine with a hand and fork attached to the end of it.

“This is really good, Becky.” Bobby, his brother, smiled at her across the table. He was the younger by two years, and had always been nicer than his older brother. More eager to please.

“Thanks, Bobby.”

“Great, hon.” Her husband spoke through a mouthful of food.

“I’m glad you like it.”

She carried the dishes to the sink and let them soak in hot soapy water. The men sat in the family room in front of the television set, watching the game. She brought them each a bowl of apple brown betty with a dollop of Breyer’s vanilla ice cream on top.

She went upstairs and came down ten minutes later. She was dressed up. A clean blouse, fresh-pressed jeans, low-heel boots. A tan brocaded alpaca sweater her sister had given her for Christmas two years ago.

“I’m going out now,” she said. “I don’t know how late we’ll be, so don’t bother waiting up for me.”

“What’s tonight?”

“Knitting.” She held up her knitting bag. Balls of yarn and needles stuck out the top.

She was out more nights a week than she was in. Her knitting group, her book group, her bridge game. Volunteer Red Cross stuff. He couldn’t keep track of all her comings and goings. He didn’t bother trying. She did her thing, he did his. Once in a while they did something together.

“See you later.” He spooned up a mouthful of the hot dessert.

She pulled on her down-filled car coat. “See you.”

His brother called it a night when the football game was over. His flight home left early in the morning and he was bushed from the whipping they’d taken from the elements. “See you in the morning,” he said as he pushed up from the couch.

“Yeah. What time do you want to leave for the airport?” The airport was normally about a thirty-minute drive, but if the roads iced up overnight it could be slow going.

“The plane’s at seven-fifteen.”

“We’d better leave at six. You carrying on your luggage?”

“Yes.”

“Six, then. I’ll have coffee brewing.”

“Sounds good.” His brother started up the stairs to the guest bedroom.

“Hey, listen.” He hesitated. “Thanks.”

“You’re my brother. It had to be done.”

He fixed himself another drink, a weak one, and went out to the garage. He got the rifles out of the truck, cleaned and oiled them at his workbench. Then he took the cooler out from where he had placed it under the camper shell and lifted out the heavy trophy head and skin, which were still in the Ziploc bag. Using one of his sharp fileting knives, he separated the head from the pelt. He placed the head back into the Ziploc bag and put it in the large floor freezer in the corner of the garage. The skin went into a second bag. He moved some stuff around so they would fit on the bottom, then covered them up with frozen packages. The trophies, especially the head, weren’t going anywhere for a while, and he wanted to keep them fresh.

He came back into the house and locked the guns up. On the television screen the X-Files was coming on. It was a rerun, but he watched it anyway. Halfway through, at the commercial break, he heard the winching sound of the garage door opening. Then he heard the sound of his wife’s car slowly coming up the slick driveway and pulling into the garage.

A moment later she came in. “Bobby turn in already?” Her face was red and chapped.

“Yeah. He’s not used to this weather.” He looked over at her. “Been outside?”

Her hand went to her face, her fingertips touching one raw cheekbone. “I took a walk. Down by the river. I’ve been inside all day, I was going stir-crazy.”

“It wasn’t too cold?”

“I came home when I got too cold.” She changed the subject. “You’re taking him to the airport?”

He nodded. “We’re leaving early. I’ll try not to wake you up.”

“I don’t mind. I want to say goodbye to him.”

“I’ll wake you up before we leave.”

She hung her coat up in the hall closet.

“You’re home early,” he observed.

She gave a little shrug. “Only a couple of the girls showed up. We ran out of things to say.” She looked at the television set. The commercials were still running. “What’re you watching?”

“Mulder and Scully.”

“Is it any good?”

“I’ve already seen this one. It’s okay. Not too gory.”

She paused, as if deciding whether or not to sit down with him on the couch. “I have a call to make. Before it’s too late.” She went into the kitchen, out of his line of sight. He heard her punching in some numbers. There was a long wait. Then she hung up.

3

He pulled an hour of overtime, which was good money, time and a half, so he didn’t get home until close on seven. He was the foreman, he didn’t go home until everyone else did. He’d been there his whole adult life, except for a stint in the Navy. If he ever upped and quit they wouldn’t know what to do. He didn’t say that — his boss did. He wasn’t one to brag on himself. He let his work speak for itself.

She had dinner all ready, Swiss steak with some fancy kind of potatoes and a green vegetable and salad. Pillsbury rolls. There was some of the apple brown betty left over from the night before for dessert. Even though she worked — she was the secretary to the principal at the high school, the hours weren’t bad and she had summers and holidays off, and the money was pretty good, it definitely came in handy — she fed him a real meal every night, not some freezer food thrown in the microwave. They didn’t have any children of their own — that freed her up.

“Work late?” she asked. She set his food down in front of him.

He’d washed up, had a light Jim Beam on the rocks, looked over his mail. Bills. He took Sports Illustrated and National Geographic. Neither magazine came on Monday.

“I should’ve called,” he apologized. “It was a last-minute thing. We had to get an order out.”

“No big deal.” She hovered at the edge of the table. Watching him eat her cooking was one of the most pleasurable things she got from him. He appreciated a well-cooked meal, even if he didn’t express his feelings as much as she would have liked.

He glanced up, “Aren’t you eating?”

“I already did. I got hungry.”

“It’s good.”

“Thanks.” She glanced at her watch, a practiced nonchalance. “I’d better get going.”

“What’s tonight?”

“Book club.” Her ‘book club,’ half a dozen women like herself, met once a week, Monday nights.

“What’re you reading?”

“We’re starting a new Amy Tan book.”

“Any good?”

“We’re just starting it. I’ve only read one chapter. I’ll let you know if it’s any good. Probably not your taste.” She pulled on her car coat. “You don’t have to wait up. The brown betty’s in the fridge. You might want to zap it for a minute.”

“Okay. Have fun.”

“Thanks. See you.”

“See you.”

He listened for the whirr of the garage door automatically opening, the sound of her car engine turning over, the tire squeal going down the driveway. He rinsed his plates in the sink, took out the bowl of pudding from the refrigerator, gave it thirty seconds in the microwave, and squirted Reddi-Wip on the top, since he and his brother had finished the ice cream the night before.

He watched headline news on CNN, eating the warm dessert while standing up in front of the set. Then he rinsed the dessert bowl out and went out through the mud room into the garage.

He felt a dry-cold rush as he opened the freezer door. Pushing aside a variety of frozen packages, he lifted the trophy head out, holding it up so he could see it in the one-bulb light.

It was frozen solid. He rapped on it with his knuckles. Solid, like a brick. You could crack somebody’s skull with this sucker, he thought. He remembered that old Alfred Hitchcock Presents he’d seen one time on Nick at Nite, “Lamb to the Slaughter,” it was called, the one where the woman killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooked it up and served it to the police inspector who was investigating the death.

His trophy head would really look good mounted, up on the wall.

There was no hurry for that. It was keeping good right here. He put it back into the freezer, covered it up, and went back into the house.

He was watching the Discovery channel, a show about lions hunting zebras in Africa, when he heard the garage door mechanism. The door opened and shut. A moment later his wife was in the room, glancing at the television set with more than her usual cursory interest. She wasn’t much for watching television; she had her many activities that kept her busy.

He looked up. “Must’ve been a short book,” he commented. He liked shows like this, wildlife documentaries. He would love someday to go big-game hunting in Africa, but there wasn’t hardly any left anymore, and besides, you had to be a millionaire to do that stuff, which he wasn’t.

“Nobody was really into it,” she told him. She pulled the book out of her large purse, held it up for him to see. The cover looked like a dish from a Chinese restaurant. “I’ll read it myself when I have some spare time.”

“When do you ever have any spare time?”

“Sometimes I have a hard time getting to sleep.”

He looked over at her. “I should try to fix that.”

She blushed. “Well... that might work.” She glanced at her watch, that studied nonchalant look he knew. “Is this a good show?” she asked, looking at the set again. She shrugged out of her coat.

“I like it. You might not. We could watch something else.”

“What else is on?”

“I don’t know. Probably some sitcoms or something. I know you don’t want to watch sports.”

“I don’t mind, if you want to.” She checked the watch on her wrist again. “Let me make one phone call.”

“Take your time.”

She went into the kitchen, around the corner where he couldn’t see her. He heard the pinging sound of her fingers on the telephone touch-pads.

A moment later she came back into the room and sat down next to him on the couch. “Is there anything funny on tonight?” she asked, looking at the wildlife show he was watching. “Some dumb comedy?”

“There’s always that.” He picked up the clicker and ran through a bunch of channels until Seinfeld came on.

“I’ve seen this a few times,” she said as she recognized some of the people in the cast. “This is pretty good.”

“Yeah, it is.” He liked Seinfeld.

They sat together, watching. After a moment she moved closer to him, so that they were touching.

She didn’t go out the next night. Tuesday was her bridge night, but two of the women had come down with the flu, so the group cancelled.

They stayed home together, watched some television, and went to bed early.

They made love for the first time in more than two months.

4

The following night she did go out. She stayed out a long time. He was still up when she came home. Usually he was in bed when she was out late, but this time he wasn’t.

“How come you’re up?” she asked, startled at seeing him. She wasn’t expecting him to be up. Seeing him sitting in front of the television set, she turned away from him.

“I was watching a movie. Then I thought, why not wait up for you?”

She turned her face to him. “That was nice.”

She had been crying. Whenever she cried her eyes got puffy and stayed that way for hours. Even if she washed her face and put ice cubes or cucumber slices on her eyes, they were still puffy. Frog eyes, she called them.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s... there was this one kid...”

Wednesday night was Red Cross volunteer night. She would go to local old-age homes, or to the Children’s Hospital, two towns over. A lot of the kids in the hospital were dying from different terminal diseases. The volunteers would read to the kids, play games with them, do whatever they could to cheer them up a little. Some of the kids came from homes hundreds of miles away, and rarely saw their families. Some of the kids had no families, their parents were crackheads or junkies or criminals who had lost their child long ago.

“That must be hard.”

She nodded. “I really don’t feel very good. I’m going up to bed.”

He made sure all the doors were locked and the alarm system was on, turned off the lights, and followed her to bed. They didn’t make love, but he held her comfortingly in his arms.

5

She didn’t look good. She lost some weight, her complexion was pallid. Three nights running now she’d stayed home. She hadn’t stayed home three nights running for over a year. And the few nights she had gone out, she’d come home much earlier than normal.

He had been out. Bowling. The one night in the week he went out.

She was watching television. It was like they had changed places, reversed roles; him out, her home. He fixed himself a 7&7. “Want one?” he asked her.

She started to say no, then changed her mind. “A short one. Thank you.”

He fixed her drink and came in and sat down next to her. “How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Okay.” She shrugged, took a sip.

“You look kind of peaked,” he said.

“There’s a ton of flu going around. Half the school has it.”

He knocked back some of his drink. “Take a lot of vitamin C.”

“That’s a good idea. I will.”

He turned to her. “Have you ever run across a fellow named Wally Lombardo? He’s got an office-supply business, the school probably buys office supplies from him.”

She brought her drink down, placed it on the coffee table in front of her. She thought for a moment. “Yes, I think I have.”

“Good-looking guy? Big head of curly black hair?”

“I know who you’re talking about.”

“Some of the fellows that know him say he’s slept with half the women in town.”

She was looking at the television screen.

“He’s apparently been hot and heavy with some married woman the past year. Clandestine motel trysts, that kind of stuff.”

She picked up her drink and brought it to her mouth. “What about him?”

“He’s been missing for about a week. The rumor is he and this married woman ran off together.” He paused. “Do you know Frank Destefino?”

She nodded. “I know Frank.”

“He and Wally are buddies. Frank doesn’t know who this married woman is Wally’s supposedly having the affair with, but he knows there is someone. Frank was saying that people were starting to get worried about Wally. They were talking about calling the police. Have them go over to his place, see what’s going on there. A bachelor like that, no attachments, he could have a heart attack or a stroke, nobody would know about it for weeks.”

“Go to his place?”

“To see if he’s in there dead.”

“He isn’t dead.”

He turned to her. “How would you know?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense. If somebody was dead in their apartment for a week, wouldn’t somebody know? The landlord or the mailman or somebody. It would smell, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded. “Unless the heat wasn’t on. In weather like this, if the heat isn’t on, a body could freeze up for months.”

She finished her drink. “I’m going to bed.”

“You should. You don’t look good.” He watched her stand up. “I think the police are going to go over there tomorrow morning. If he isn’t there, they might at least find out where he is.” He stood up, heading for the kitchen and a refill on his drink. “Or who the mystery woman is. She might could give them a lead, if they could find out who she is.”

6

She was sautéeing chicken-fried steak at the stove when she heard him come in. Chicken-fried steak was one of his favorite dishes. He always came in the same way, one determined foot in front of the other. Solid, dependable. No frills, no nonsense. He was like that in every aspect of his life. A meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. It made life dull sometimes, which was why she had another life outside the marriage, but who he was also gave her a strong feeling of security, of being taken care of. He would always be there for her. But it wasn’t as exciting a life as she wanted to have.

“Smells good.”

“Thanks. It won’t be long.”

He washed his hands at the sink and fixed himself a drink. “The police went over to the apartment.” He sipped his drink, leafed through the day’s mail that was stacked on the counter. Bills. And Sports Illustrated. He’d read it after dinner.

She turned the steaks in the pan, adding a dash of tabasco for flavor. The potatoes had been mashed. They were warming in the oven. She had made a Caesar salad as well.

“It was empty. Completely cleaned out.”

Her hand holding the pounded steak by a fork stopped in midair. “What are you talking about?”

“Wally Lombardo’s apartment. The office-supply guy I told you was missing.”

“What about him?” She stirred in a teaspoon more of flour to thicken the gravy a tad.

“His apartment is empty. Stripped bare. He moved out.” He drank some of his bourbon. “And here’s the strange thing. He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

She moved the steaks around in the fry pan. “That is strange.”

“Frank told me this,” he said. “He’s as baffled as anyone.”

“I can imagine.”

“You’d think if someone was leaving town they’d tell their friends. I’ll bet he told that married woman.”

“Maybe. You never know.” She took the bowl of warming mashed potatoes out of the oven and set it on the counter, poured a little of the cream gravy over it from the skillet, and added in some butter, mashing the mixture together with a fork. Then she shook some pepper on top and mixed that in.

“His landlord told the police that Bekin’s was by, emptied the place out. Everything’s in storage.”

The table had been set. She placed two portions of chicken-fried steak and a large dollop of mashed potatoes on his plate, one piece of meat and a smaller amount of potatoes on her own. She put salad into the bowls.

He helped her carry the dishes to the table. “This smells great, honey.”

“You’re a pleasure to cook for.”

They sat down. He began attacking his food. “Frank thinks Wally may have been involved in some strange shenanigans lately,” he said. “He might have been in trouble with the law and decided to make tracks.”

“You hear rumors like that whenever somebody goes away,” she said. She took a bite of the meat. It tasted good, but she didn’t have much of an appetite.

He bit into a piece of his own steak. “There’s rumors about everything,” he agreed. “Mostly that’s all they are. Rumors.”

7

The following week he had another piece of news about the man who had disappeared. “He was in trouble with the law, all right.”

They were in the bedroom, folding laundry. He was a good laundry-folder; his creases were razor-sharp.

“Who?”

“Wally Lombardo. The fellow who emptied out his apartment and didn’t leave a forwarding address. The post office is returning all his mail to sender.”

“In trouble with the law?” She refolded a dish towel that she hadn’t got quite right.

“For all kinds of stuff. It seems like he was running scams on a whole bunch of people.”

She nodded. “Does anybody care?” she asked after a minute.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Since he didn’t have a family and worked his own one-man business.” He folded a pair of her underpants. He liked the way they felt in his hands.

“Do you want to go to a movie tonight?” she asked.

“Don’t you have your knitting group tonight? Or what is it, the book club?”

“I’d rather go out with you.” She hadn’t been going to any of her groups hardly at all for the past several weeks.

He smiled at her. “You’ve got a date.”

The movie wasn’t that great, but they had a good time out together anyway. He liked getting out with her, they needed to do it more often. She had a good time, too.

After the movie they stopped in a nice quiet bar and each had a glass of wine. Then they went home and made love. He made sure she climaxed before he did.

8

Spring was a long time coming, almost to the end of April, but when it did it burst forth in riotous bloom in the mountains. People started hiking the trails, even the tough, almost-impenetrable ones that were covered over with a winter’s worth of heavy undergrowth.

The hikers, a hardy middle-aged Scandinavian couple who had trekked all over Europe and the Himalayas and didn’t find this terrain too forbidding, came across the traps alongside the trail. There were three of them, big ones, with big steel teeth. Whoever had set them had known what he was doing. He had gone to a lot of work, coming in here and setting the traps.

The gnawed-off foot of a large wolf was still caught in the jaws of one of them. The other two were empty. The animal or animals that had sprung them had gotten away unharmed, unlike their less-fortunate brother.

Trapping was illegal, of course. The forest rangers confiscated the traps. If they ever found out who had set them, the son of a bitch would never hunt in these mountains again.

Besides the traps, there was a pile of bones off to one side. They had been polished by the elements and the scavengers that had picked them clean.

They were human bones; that was easy to figure out. Maybe they belonged to the man who had set the illegal traps. If they did, whatever had happened to him was poetic justice, of a rough form.

Maybe the wolves that had escaped being trapped had attacked and killed him. This many months later it would be impossible to tell who the poacher was.

Particularly since the head was missing.

9

She had showered, washed her hair, put on one of her sexiest dresses, and iced a bottle of champagne.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, taking it all in. He had come home right after work — she had called and told him she had a surprise for him. “You look pretty,” he added.

She did look pretty. She had been looking pretty for the past couple of months.

“Thanks. I feel pretty.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. Then she popped the bottle of champagne and poured two glasses. She handed one to him.

He looked at her, wondering.

“I’m pregnant.”

He felt his breath catch in his chest.

“Is that all right with you?” She had never been able to get pregnant. For a long time now they had stopped trying.

“It’s wonderful.” He raised his glass. “To us.”

They clinked glasses. “To the three of us.”

10

He stood at the place on the trail where he and his brother had taken their trophy. The traps were gone now. The bones, too, had been cleared away. They had been taken to the state forensic lab for analysis. Without a head, and without any fingerprints, since all the flesh had been chewed off, there was no way of making an identification of who the remains belonged to.

The bones would be cremated and buried in a common, unmarked grave.

He took the photographs out of the Manila envelope he had brought with him, the photographs he had taken over the course of several months. He looked at each in turn, carefully, remembering how he had felt when he had originally taken them, and before that, when he had first found out.

It had been a gut-wrenching feeling. A feeling of emptiness, of almost utter despair.

Now there was no feeling. That was in a different lifetime.

He dug a small firepit in the moist spring earth. Spreading the photos in the depression, he poured enough lighter fluid on them to insure that they would burn easily. Then he lit the match to them.

The pictures burned slowly, the ends curling as the flame grew towards the center. The smoke drifted up into the sky.

When the photographs had burned completely, he covered the depression with dirt and smoothed it over with his boot. Then he walked away down the trail.

He had done his hunting here. He wouldn’t come to this place again.

11

She went to bed early. She tired easily now that she was pregnant.

He sat outside in the dark, on the edge of the back deck he’d added on two years ago. It was a warm evening. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His feet were bare. He felt the grass under his feet when he stretched them out over the edge of the deck. It was a well-made deck. He’d done all the work himself, in his spare time.

He finished his beer and went inside. He tossed the bottle into the recycling bin in the kitchen and went through the mud room into the garage.

The open freezer gave off a dry-ice smell. He lifted the various packages, including those of the venison he had taken in deer season. This weekend he’d thaw one of the packages out and they’d have a barbecue. He’d make venison burgers.

Pushing some other packages aside, he reached down to the bottom of the large freezer and pulled out the Ziploc bag. The contents of the bag had formed an unclear opaqueness; you couldn’t see inside it from the outside.

He unzipped the bag and lifted out the contents.

He had been coming out to the freezer all winter and spring, at least once a week. Taking out his prize and looking at it, handling it, exposing it to the air. Too many times, that was obvious now.

The trophy head was going bad. Pretty soon he’d have to throw it away.