“A balaclava,” I say.
“Right. One time, when he thought I was sleeping, he raised it to drink, and I saw a beard. Oh, and he wore winter coveralls. What’s the word? The things you guys wear on the sleds?”
“A snowmobile suit?” I ask.
“Yes. He wore a snowmobile suit.”
THIRTY-SIX
The next morning, Dalton and I are out at dawn, hiking to see Silas Cox, the guy who’d given Jacob the creeps with his bondage fantasies. Jacob said Cox is one of the more settled guys out here, meaning he has a permanent residence and tends to stick to it. That residence is about ten kilometers from Rockton, which we need to do on foot—it’s too far off-trail to take the horses or snowmobiles. It doesn’t take long for me to realize I really need to get working on my snowshoe skills. Or convince Dalton we need cross-country skis. The forest here is dense enough that it’s not like we’re trudging through three feet of snow, but it’s still slow going.
As we walk, I tell Dalton about my meeting with Val.
“Yeah, I imagine she’d be having a rough time of it,” he says. “I hadn’t given that much thought. Whether or not one of her attackers is the same guy, she’ll be wondering how close she came to ending up like Nicole—or Robyn and Victoria. Maybe see if she has a weapon. I’m not giving her a gun, but a baseball bat might make her feel safer.”
“There’s something else,” I say. “We had some weird back-and-forth in regards to your role in her disappearance.”
His brows shoot up. “My role? I told her not to go on patrol. Hell, I forbade it. Council overrode me.”
“She did say you didn’t want her going.”
“Right.” He catches my look and groans. “Is this that shit about me treating her different because she’s a woman? I told her I don’t let anyone go into the woods that soon after they arrive. It was weeks before I let Will on patrol, and no one came better equipped to handle himself in a bad situation. The problem was that he wasn’t accustomed to that situation. The forest.”
He walks a few more steps, grumbling under his breath. “I never know what to do with that shit. I can say gender has nothing to do with it. I can give examples to prove my point. But with someone like Val, I just can’t win.”
“You can’t. I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, it’s not you.”
“It’s her?”
“No, it’s every man who did push her back because she’s a woman. You’re just the poor guy who has to deal with the accumulated hostility and prejudice. But in this case, you were right not to want her going into the forest. Look what happened. Your concern was justified. Then you responded appropriately, taking all measures to find her. So why was she acting weird about it?”
“Weird how?”
“She brought you into the narrative, and when I asked if you or your actions had any bearing on what happened, she said no. Repeatedly no. But in a way that said yes, if you know what I mean.”
“Holding something back.”
“Right.”
He exhales. “Fuck. I…” Another exhale. “I have no idea, Casey. I really don’t. I told her not to go. I wasn’t with the patrol party. She’s not claiming that anyone lured her from the path. She saw her attackers—and they weren’t me. She’s not questioning the steps I took to find her, which—if anything—were over and above because she’s the council rep and she already didn’t like me. I was up all night with the search party. Even the damned council thought I was allocating too many resources to finding her.”
“You say she didn’t like you before that.”
“Yeah, but it was mostly just the sense that she thought I was some dumb redneck, too young to be sheriff. Dismissing me rather than outright hating my guts, like she does now.”
“When did that change?”
He walks in silence, thinking. “After she got back. Not right away. At first, she was grateful. She apologized to me. Told me I’d been right to want her to stay out of the forest and thanked me for putting so much effort into finding her when it was her own stupid mistake. I said everyone underestimates the danger out here, and it’s so easy to get turned around in the forest. Everything seemed fine. And then it wasn’t.”
“When did it go wrong?”
“Maybe a week or two after that? I remember she’d taken a few days off, and we still seemed to be okay, and then she started making excuses for skipping our meetings—they were daily back then, me giving reports. I figured it was trauma. Isabel agreed. We decided to give her space, but it only just got worse after that. I never tried figuring out what changed her mind about me. I just thought…” He shrugs. “I thought it was me. Our styles clash, I was too rough around the edges, she wasn’t accustomed to men like me. Whatever the reason, I sure as hell wasn’t going to change to make her comfortable.”
“It wasn’t you,” I say. “Something more happened. After she got back.”
“I see that now. I just wish I had a clue what it was.”
* * *
As we walk, I ask Dalton more about the relationship between Rockton and the “locals.” I know the basics, of course, but now’s the time to hammer those down to specifics—before I meet Cox and say anything I shouldn’t.
The issue, of course, is that Rockton might be hidden from the air, but on the ground, it’s not exactly shielded by an invisibility barrier. Well, it kind of is, given the architecture. Sutherland passed out fifty meters from town without realizing how close he was.