The Shack, Page 5

  call came in to Dalton from Wikowsky. Her team had caught a break. About ten miles from the junction where they had separated, an old unnamed road left the 4260 and headed straight north for almost two miles. It was barely visible and deeply potted. They would either have missed it entirely or ignored it, except that one of the trackers had flashed his floodlight off a hubcap less than fifty feet from the main road. Out of curiosity he retrieved it, and under the covering of road dust found it splattered with specks of green paint. The hubcap had probably been lost when the truck had tussled with one of the many deep potholes strewn in that direction.

  Tommy’s group immediately turned back the way they had come. Mack didn’t want to let himself begin to hope that perhaps, by some miracle, Missy might still be alive, especially when everything he knew told him otherwise. Twenty minutes later, another call from Wikowsky; this time to tell them they had found the truck. Choppers and search planes would never have seen it from the sky, covered as it was under a carefully built lean-to of limbs and brush.

  It took Mack’s crew almost three hours to reach the first team and by then it was all over. The dogs had done the rest, uncovering a descending game trail that led more than a mile into a small hidden valley. There they found a rundown little shack near the edge of a pristine lake barely half a mile across, fed by a cascading creek a hundred yards away. A century or so earlier this had probably been a settler’s home. It had two good-size rooms; enough to house a small family. Since that time, it had most likely served as an occasional hunter’s or poacher’s cabin.

  By the time Mack and his friends arrived, the sky was beginning to show the grays of predawn. A base camp had been set up well away from the battered little cabin in order to preserve the crime scene. The moment Wikowsky’s group had found the place, dog trackers had been sent out in different directions to try and locate a scent. Occasionally, the baying indicated that they had found something, only to have it disappear again. Now they were all returning to regroup and plan the day’s strategy.

  Special Agent Samantha Wikowsky was sitting at a card table doing some map-work and drinking a large dripping bottle of water when Mack walked up. She offered him a grim smile, which he didn’t return, and an extra bottle, which he accepted. Her eyes were sad and tender but her words were all business.

  “Hey, Mack.” She hesitated. “Why don’t you pull up a chair?”

  Mack didn’t want to sit down. He needed to do something to stop his stomach from churning. Sensing trouble, he stood and waited for her to continue.

  “Mack, we found something, but it’s not good news.”

  He fumbled for the right words. “Did you find Missy?” It was the question that he didn’t want to hear the answer to, but desperately needed to know.

  “No, we didn’t find her.” Sam paused and started to stand up. “But, I do need you to come and identify something we found down in that old shack. I need to know if it was-” she caught herself, but it was too late, “I mean, if it is hers.”

  His gaze went to the ground. He again felt a million years old, almost wishing he could somehow turn himself into a big unfeeling rock.

  “Oh, Mack, I’m so sorry,” Sam apologized, standing up. “Look, we can do this later if you like. I just thought…”

  He couldn’t look at her and even found it difficult to come up with words that he could speak without falling apart. He could feel the dam about to burst again. “Let’s do it now,” he mumbled softly. “I want to know everything there is to know.”

  Wikowsky must have signaled the others because, although Mack didn’t hear anything, he suddenly felt Emil and Tommy each take one of his arms as they turned and followed the special agent down the short path to the shack. Three grown men, arms locked in some special grace of solidarity, walking together, each one toward his own worst nightmare.

  A member of the forensic team opened the door of the shack to let them in. Generator-powered lighting illuminated every part of the main room. Shelving lined the walls, an old table, a few chairs, and an old sofa that someone had hauled in with no little effort. Mack immediately saw what he had come to identify and, turning, crumpled into the arms of his two friends and began to weep uncontrollably. On the floor by the fireplace lay Missy’s torn and blood-soaked red dress.

  For Mack, the next few days and weeks became an emotion-numbing blur of interviews with law enforcement and the press, followed by a memorial service for Missy with a small empty coffin and an endless sea of faces, all sad as they paraded by, no one knowing what to say. Sometime during the weeks that followed, Mack began the slow and painful merging back into everyday life.

  The Little Ladykiller, it seemed, was credited with taking his fifth victim, Melissa Anne Phillips. As was true in the other four cases, authorities never recovered Missy’s body, even though search teams had scoured the forest around the shack for days after its discovery. As in every other instance, the killer had left no fingerprints and no DNA. He’d left no useful evidence anywhere, only the pin. It was as if the man were a ghost.

  At some point in the process, Mack attempted to emerge from his own pain and grief, at least with his family. They had lost a sister and daughter, but it would be wrong for them to lose a father and husband as well. Although no one involved was left unmarked by the tragedy, Kate seemed to have been affected the most, disappearing into a shell, like a turtle protecting its soft underbelly from anything potentially dangerous. It seemed that she would only poke her head out when she felt fully safe, which was becoming less and less often. Mack and Nan both worried increasingly about her, but couldn’t seem to find the right words to penetrate the fortress she was building around her heart. Attempts at conversation would turn into one-way monologues, with sounds bouncing off her stone visage. It was as if something had died inside her, and now was slowly infecting her from the inside, spilling out occasionally in bitter words or emotionless silence.

  Josh fared much better, due in part to the long-distance relationship he had kept up with Amber. Email and the telephone gave him an outlet for his pain and she had given him the time and space to grieve. He was also preparing to graduate from high school with all the distractions that his senior year provided.

  The Great Sadness had descended and in differing degrees cloaked everyone whose lives had touched Missy’s. Mack and Nan weathered the storm of loss together with reasonable success, and in some ways were closer for it. Nan had made it clear from the start, and repeatedly, that she did not blame Mack in any way for what happened. Understandably, it took Mack much longer to let himself off the hook, even a little bit.

  It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair. If only he had decided not to take the kids on that trip; if only he had said no when they asked to use the canoe; if only he had left the day before, if only, if only, if only. And then to have it all end with nothing. The fact that he was unable to bury Missy’s body magnified his failure as her daddy. That she was still out there somewhere alone in the forest haunted him every day. Now, three and a half years later, Missy was officially presumed to have been murdered. Life would never be normal again, not that any time is really ever normal. It would be so empty without his Missy.

  The tragedy had also increased the rift in Mack’s own relationship with God, but he ignored this growing sense of separation. Instead, he tried to embrace a stoic, unfeeling faith, and even though Mack found some comfort and peace in that, it didn’t stop the nightmares where his feet were stuck in the mud and his soundless screams could not save his precious Missy. The bad dreams were becoming less frequent, and laughter and moments of joy were slowly returning, but he felt guilty about these.

  So when Mack received the note from Papa telling him to meet him back at the shack, it was no small event. Does God even write notes? And why the shack-the icon of his deepest pain? Certainly God would have better places to meet with him. A dark thought even crossed his mind that the killer could be
taunting him, or luring him away to leave the rest of his family unprotected. Maybe it was all just a cruel hoax. But then why was it signed Papa?

  Try as he might, Mack could not escape the desperate possibility that the note just might be from God after all, even if the thought of God passing notes did not fit well with his theological training. In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners’ access to God was mediated and controlled by the intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?

  The more Mack thought about it, the more confused and irritated he became. Who sent the damn note? Whether it was God or the killer or some prankster, what did it matter? Whichever way he looked at it, it felt like he was being toyed with. And anyway, what good was following God at all? Look where it got him.

  But in spite of his anger and depression, Mack knew that he needed some answers. He realized he was stuck, and Sunday prayers and hymns weren’t cutting it anymore, if they ever really had. Cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of the people he knew, except maybe Nan. But she was special. God might really love her. She wasn’t a screw-up like him. He was sick of God and God’s religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn’t seem to make any real difference or affect any real changes. Yes, Mack wanted more, and he was about to get much more than he bargained for.

  5 GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER

  We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That

  is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgment as to invalidate

  evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called

  truth could ever be arrived at by such means.

  – Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam

  There are times when you choose to believe something that would normally be considered absolutely irrational. It doesn’t mean that it is actually irrational, but it surely is not rational. Perhaps there is suprarationality: reason beyond the normal definitions of fact or data-based logic; something that only makes sense if you can see a bigger picture of reality. Maybe that is where faith fits in.

  Mack wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but at some time in his heart and mind during the days following his tiff with the icy driveway, he became convinced that there were three plausible explanations for the note. It was either from God, as absurd as that sounded, a cruel joke, or something more sinister from Missy’s killer. Regardless, the note dominated his thoughts every waking minute and his dreams at night.

  Secretly, he began to make plans to travel to the shack the following weekend. At first he told no one, not even Nan. He had no reasonable defense in any exchange that would result after such a disclosure, and he was afraid that he might get locked up and the key thrown away. Anyway, he rationalized such a conversation would only bring more pain with no resolution. “I am keeping it to myself for Nan ’s sake,” he told himself. Besides, acknowledging the note would mean admitting that he had kept secrets from her; secrets he still justified in his own mind. Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy.

  Convinced of the rightness of his impending journey, Mack began to consider ways to get the family away from home for the weekend without rousing any suspicions. There was the slim possibility that the killer was trying to lure him out of town, leaving the family unprotected, and that was not acceptable. But he was stumped. Nan was too perceptive for him to show his hand in any way, and doing so would just lead to questions that he was not ready to answer.

  Fortunately for Mack, it was Nan herself who proffered a solution. She had been toying with the idea of visiting her sister and family up in the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington. Her brother-in-law was a child psychologist, and Nan thought that getting his insights on Kate’s increasingly antisocial behavior might be very helpful, especially since neither she nor Mack were having any success getting through to her. When she brought up the possibility of the trip, Mack was almost too eager in his response.

  “Of course you are going,” was his reaction when Nan told him. That was not the reply she had anticipated, and she gave him a quizzical look. “I mean,” he floundered, “I think that’s a great idea. I will miss you all, of course, but I think I can survive alone for a couple days, and I have lots to do anyway.” She shrugged it off, perhaps grateful that the path for her to leave had opened so easily.

  “I just think it would be good for Kate, especially, to get away for a few days,” she added, and he nodded in agreement.

  A quick call to Nan ’s sister and their trip was set. The house soon became a whirlwind of activity. Josh and Kate were both delighted; this would extend their spring break for a week. They loved visiting their cousins and were an easy sell on the whole idea, not that they really had any choice in the matter.

  On the sly, Mack called up Willie and, while trying rather unsuccessfully to not divulge too much information, asked if he could borrow his friend’s four-wheel drive Jeep. Since Nan was taking the van, he needed something better than his own little car to negotiate the pitted roads in the Reserve, which would most likely still be buried in winter’s grip. Mack’s odd request predictably started a barrage of questions from Willie, questions that Mack tried to answer as evasively as he could. When Willie bluntly asked if Mack’s intention was a trip to the shack, Mack told him that while he could not answer his questions at that moment, he would explain fully when Willie came over in the morning to exchange vehicles.

  Late Thursday afternoon, Mack saw Nan, Kate, and Josh off with hugs and kisses all around, and then he slowly began his own preparations for the long drive to northeastern Oregon -to the place of his nightmares. He reasoned that he wouldn’t need much if God had sent the invitation, but just in case, he loaded up a cooler with much more than enough for the miles he would be traveling and then added a sleeping bag, some candles, matches, and a number of other survival items. There was no doubt the possibility that he had turned into a complete idiot or was the butt of some ugly prank, but he would then be free to just drive away. A knock at the door startled Mack from his concentration, and he could see that it was Willie. Their conversation must have been sufficiently perplexing to warrant an early visit. Mack was just relieved that Nan had already left.

  “I’m in here, Willie. In the kitchen,” Mack called out.

  A moment later, Willie poked his head around the hall corner and shook his head looking at the mess that Mack had made. He leaned against the door-jamb and crossed his arms. “Well, I brought the Jeep and it’s full of gas, but I am not handing over the keys until you tell me what exactly is going on.”

  Mack continued piling things into a couple bags for the trip. He knew it was no use lying to his friend, and he needed the Jeep. “I’m going back to the shack, Willie.”

  “Well I figured that much out already. What I want to know is why you even want to go back there, especially at this time of year. I don’t know if my old Jeep’ll even keep us on the roads up there. But just in case, I put some chains in the back if we need them.”

  Without looking at him, Mack walked to the office, pried the lid off the small tin box, and took out the note. Reentering the kitchen, he handed it to Willie. His friend unfolded the paper and read silently. “Jeez, what kind of loony kook would write you something like this? And who is this Papa?”

  “Well, you know, Papa- Nan ’s favorite name for God.” Mack shrugged, not sure what else to say. He took back the note and slid it into his shirt pocket.

  “Wait, you aren’t thinking this is really from God, are yo
u?”

  Mack stopped and turned to face him. He had just about finished packing anyway. “Willie, I’m not sure what to think about this. I mean, at first I thought it was just a hoax and it made me angry and sick to my stomach. Maybe I’m just losing it. I know it sounds crazy, but somehow I feel strangely drawn to find out for sure. I gotta go, Willie, or it’ll drive me nuts forever.”

  “Have you thought of the possibility that this might be the killer? What if he’s luring you back for some reason?”

  “Of course I’ve thought of that. Part of me won’t be disappointed if it is. I have a score to settle with him,” he said grimly and paused. “But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either. I’m not thinking the killer would sign this note Papa. You’d have to really know our family to come up with that.”

  Willie was perplexed.

  Mack continued, “And no one who knows us that well would ever send a note like this. I’m thinking only God would… maybe.”

  “But God doesn’t do stuff like that. At least I’ve never heard of him sending someone a note. Not that he couldn’t, but, you know what I mean. And why would he want you to return to the shack, anyway? I can’t think of a worse place…” The silence that hung between them grew awkward.

  Mack leaned back against the counter and stared a hole through the floor before speaking. “I’m not sure, Willie. I guess part of me would like to believe that God would care enough about me to send a note. I’m so confused, even after all this time. I just don’t know what to think and it isn’t getting better. I feel like we’re losing Kate and that’s killing me. Maybe what happened to Missy is God’s judgment for what I did to my own dad. I just don’t know.” He looked up into the face of a man who cared more about him than anyone he knew, except Nan. “All I know is that I need to go back.”

  There was silence between them before Willie spoke again. “So, when do we leave?”

  Mack was touched by his friend’s willingness to jump into his insanity. “Thanks buddy, but I really need to do this alone.”

  “I thought you’d say that,” Willie responded as he turned and walked out of the room. He returned a few moments later with a pistol and a box of shells in his hands. He gently laid them on the counter. “I figured I wouldn’t be able to talk you out of going, so I thought you might need this. I believe you know how to use it.”

  Mack looked at the gun. He knew Willie meant well and was trying to help. “Willie, I can’t. It’s been thirty years since I last touched a gun and I don’t intend to now. If I learned anything back then, it was that using violence to solve a problem always landed me in a worse problem.”

  “But what if it is Missy’s killer? What if he’s waiting for you up there? What are you going to do then?”

  He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Willie. I’ll take my chances, I guess.”

  “But you’ll be defenseless. There’s no telling what he has in mind, or in hand. Just take it, Mack.” Willie slid the pistol and shells across the counter toward him. “You don’t have to use it.”

  Mack looked down at the gun and after some deliberation reached slowly for it and the shells, putting them carefully in his pocket. “Okay, just in case.” He then turned to pick up some of his equipment and, arms loaded, headed out toward the Jeep. Willie grabbed the large duffle bag remaining, finding it heavier than he had anticipated, and grunted as he hoisted it.

  “Jeez, Mack, if you think God is going to be up there, why all the supplies?”

  Mack smiled rather sadly “I just thought I’d cover my bases. You know, be prepared for whatever happens… or doesn’t.”

  They made their way out of the house to the driveway where the Jeep sat. Willie pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them to Mack.

  “So,” Willie broke the silence, “where is everybody, and what did Nan think of you heading out for the shack? I can’t imagine she was real pleased.”

  “Nan and the kids are visiting her sister up in the Islands, and… I didn’t tell her,” Mack confessed.

  Willie was obviously surprised. “What! You never keep secrets from her. I can’t believe you lied to her!”

  “I didn’t lie to her,” Mack objected.

  “Well excuse me for splitting hairs,” Willie snapped back. “Okay, you didn’t lie to her because you didn’t tell her the whole truth. Oh yeah, she’s going to understand that all right.” He rolled his eyes.

  Mack ignored the outburst and walked back to the house and into his office. There, he found the spare set of keys for his car and home and, hesitating for just a moment, picked up the small tin box. He then headed back out toward Willie.

  “So, what do you think he looks like?” chuckled Willie as he approached.

  “Who?” asked Mack.

  “God, of course. What do you think he’ll look like, if he even bothers to show up, I mean? Boy, I can just see you scaring the living daylights out of some poor hiker-asking him if he’s God and then demanding answers ’n all.”

  Mack grinned at the thought. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a really bright light, or a burning bush. I’ve always sort of pictured him as a really big grandpa with a long white flowing beard, sort of like Gandalf in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.”

  He shrugged and handed Willie his keys and they exchanged a brief hug. Willie climbed into Mack’s car and rolled down the driver’s window.

  “Well, if he does show, say hi for me,” Willie said with a smile. “Tell him I have a few questions of my own. And Mack, try not to piss him off.” They both laughed. “Seriously,” Willie continued, “I am concerned for you, buddy. I wish I was going with you, or Nan, or someone. I hope you find everything you need up there. I will be saying a prayer or two for you.”

  “Thanks Willie. I love you too.” He waved as Willie backed out of the driveway. Mack knew that his friend would keep his word. He probably could use all the prayers he could get.

  He watched until Willie was around the corner and out of sight, then slipped the note from his shirt pocket, read it one more time, and then placed it into the little tin box, which he deposited on the passenger seat amongst some of the other gear stacked there. Locking the doors, he headed back into the house and a sleepless night.

  Well before dawn on Friday, Mack was already out of town and traveling down I-84. Nan had called the night before from her sister’s to let him know that they had made it safe and sound, and he didn’t expect to get another call until at least Sunday. By that time he would probably be on his way back, if he wasn’t home already. He forwarded the house phone to his cell, just in case, not that he would have any reception once he was into the Reserve.

  He retraced the same path they had taken three and a half years before, with a few minor changes: not as many potty breaks and he sailed by Multnomah Falls without looking. He had pushed away any thoughts of the place since Missy’s disappearance, sequestering his emotions securely in the padlocked basement of his own heart.

  On the long stretch up the Gorge, Mack felt a creeping panic begin to penetrate his consciousness. He had tried to avoid thinking about what he was doing and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, but like grass pushing through concrete, the repressed feelings and fears somehow began to poke through. His eyes darkened and his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he fought the temptation at every off-ramp to turn around and go home. He knew he was driving straight into the center of his pain, the vortex of The Great Sadness that had so diminished his sense of being alive. Flashes of visual memory and stabbing instants of blistering fury now came in waves, attended by the taste of bile and blood in his mouth.

  He finally reached La Grande, where he gassed up, and then took Highway 82 out to Joseph. He was half tempted to stop and look in on Tommy but decided against it. The fewer people who thought he was a raving lunatic the better. Instead, he topped off his tank and headed out.

  Traffic was light, and the Imnaha and smaller roads were remarkably clear and dry for this time of year, much
warmer than he had expected. But it seemed that the farther he drove, the slower he traveled, as if the shack were somehow repelling his approach. The Jeep crossed the snowline as he climbed the last couple of miles to the trail that would take him down to the shack. Above the