Wolf at the Door: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  Wolf at the Door

  JD Salyers

  Published by Pinwheel Books, 2018.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  WOLF AT THE DOOR

  First edition. March 11, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 JD Salyers.

  Written by JD Salyers.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Wolf at the Door

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About Pinwheel Books

  SCAPEGOAT

  THE GOOD WIFE

  Wolf At The Door

  Chapter One

  Abel Welch walked along the riverbank, watching dead leaves swirl like blood in the fast moving water. The snowmelt was down to a trickle now, but it would start all over when the storm hit tonight. There wouldn’t be too much snow - when he was a boy he remembered snow drifts as tall as his head. These days they were lucky to get a foot, lucky to get six inches some years.

  Still, the news this morning said that this one might be the storm of the century, and they called for up to twenty-four inches. Not that they knew what they were talking about most of the time. But fat grey clouds were scudding across the sky and the wind had a bite to it, so maybe they weren’t so wrong. The afternoon would tell.

  He scanned the water with his eyes, grinning a little when he caught sight of Rick Fuller's pale dead body, bobbing farther downstream. As he watched, the body sank out of sight, then heaved up, splashing and spinning as it smacked against a boulder. It was pure lucky that Rick was dressed in dark clothes when Abel killed him, now, wasn’t it? With any luck, Rick would hit the bend in the river at speed and get twisted up in the brush that hung out over the water. There he'd stay until at least spring, because nobody came down this section of the river, not this time of year.

  The only people around lived in the place behind him, a beat-to-hell double wide house trailer where Rick lived - used to live - with his nurse wife Patty and their three maggots. Abel's stay was supposed to be temporary, and he assumed that now Rick was gone, it would be. Or maybe Patty would pack up the kids and head to her momma's over in Summersville. Maybe he would offer to keep house for her until she decided what to do with the place.

  As long as the kids didn't run up on their dead daddy while they were playing outside. Kids saw everything.

  Rick's soggy body dipped out of sight again, under the fast moving current. Abel called it good enough and turned to go into the house, favoring his knee as he climbed the bank.

  The cold seemed colder these days. It set his bones to aching in ways that made him want to crawl back to bed and stay there ‘til March.

  Of course, that might just be him, getting older.

  His work history pointed that way, anyway. His laboring days were mostly over, except for odd jobs he picked up here and there. Lately, he tried not to do anything more strenuous than traveling to the bank once a month and withdrawing his disability allowance. He didn't like not being able to hold it in his hands.

  His disability was a bad back and twinges in his knees. The twinges came from the last time he fell off a ladder. He’d been trying to replace a few shingles on the three-story auction barn that day, the one down in Randolph. Something spooked him, probably one of the bats that lived up there. He never saw what it was, just a dark shape that broke through one of the upper air vents and brushed his face. He swiped at it, which turned out to be a mistake. He'd half fallen, just enough to land wrong on the rungs and twist something out of whack

  The bad back was from thirty years of fighting livestock at that same auction house. Damned bulls were just big furry boulders, falling and trampling everything to get to a safety they would never find. The cows, too, and they were all too dumb to know it. By the time he got quit of that place, he hated animals.

  They didn't like him much, either. Part of his job, back then, was to take the sick and damaged animals out back of the auction house and shoot them in the head. Abel recognized the wary hatred in those dull, dark eyes whenever he'd do that. Afterward, he'd use the forklift to tip them over the cliff into the hollow below. That way they were out of the sight of the buyers or any inspectors that happened to be nosing around. If there was an animal hell, he figured he would get there one of these days. It was a steady job, but he was glad to be quit of it.

  At the top of the bank he paused to try kicking some of the mud off his boot soles, but most of it held, even when he stomped. He walked over to the rickety back steps and kicked harder, hurting his toe bad enough to cuss, but at least his boots were cleaner. Up here on the flat, away from the water, mud was only an inch deep, instead of three.

  Once he dreamed all those cows came back, trudging up out of that dark deep hole, strips of rotting hide and beef falling off their useless hocks. He could see the white stretch of tendons and the black red of dried blood where muscle once layered their bones. They were coming for him, in the dream, and every single one of 'em had a bold black hole between their eyes. Like the barrel of a gun or one of them laser beams, finding him out and coming ever his way.

  His Pap would have called him stupid, and this time at least, he would have been right. Abel didn't consider himself stupid, but dreams like that made him wonder if there was some odd thing in his brain. Mayhap there was, and maybe one day the odd thing would catch up with him like it had his own Pap, but it hadn't happened yet.

  Right now he was content to stay with the Fullers, who were half his age and dumber than most of those cows he'd put down. Of course, his stay with the river family was about to end, wasn't it? Sometime later today, a few hours from now, most likely. Around the time Patty got home from work and realized Rick was gone.

  He smiled at the water below his soppy Workman Barnbusters. The laces were loose, so the mud threatened to suck them off his feet with every step, but he still didn't bother tying them. He'd been wearing them for nearly six years, and they weren't too broke, except for the waterproofing wearing off and one heel trying to split loose from the leather. It wasn't ten years ago he would have worn through a pair every season, but those days were past, if he had anything to say about it.

  His only problem - well, besides the Fuller problem that would deal a hand later - was that the disability didn't quite stretch as far as he needed. The politicians promised more every election season, but he weren't holding his breath over that. Even with the kindness of the Fullers and the free food he picked up at the gimmee store, he needed folding money. For Beam and cigarettes, mostly. Patty Fuller, that nosy bitch, had told him his money would last a hell of a lot longer if he'd give 'em up, but she didn't understand. The Beam was for the pain, the smokes - and pot when he could get it - was for his nerves.

  It wasn't like he had health insurance. It wasn't like he worked at the hospital like her, either. He could have. Patty had brought home
applications a couple of times, saying they were in dire need of custodians, like that word meant something fancier than trash man. He might have done it, too, but every time he thought about it, a giant, solid wall rose up in his mind. It towered over every other thing that had ever happened to him, good or bad. It was a thick wall, too, one he couldn't see over and one he'd never be able to climb. When it rose up, he was just stopped dead in his Barnbusters, unable to take the next step. It was worrying, probably something he needed to see the doctor about. A...what were they called? A mental health specialist, which sounded to him like a fancy way to say trash man. A mental trash man, you could say.

  He grinned at that and fished two fingers into his coat pocket, pulling out a Marlboro from the softpack. He put it in his mouth and dug in again for the lighter. The smoke burned his throat and he liked that. He threw back his head and stared at the clouds again.

  Off somewhere on the mountain, he heard a few yips from a pack of coyotes that'd been hanging around lately. He looked up toward the peak, where it loomed black against the sky, and for a few moments he wished he still had his guns. Even a single one of his handguns would come in handy at times, living out here. It would have come in handy this morning, for sure. He grinned harder, raised a finger gun toward the tree line and pretended to blow a coyote away.

  Of course, Patty Fuller would never have let him live here if he'd owned arms. It was the first thing she asked him six months ago, when he'd come home with Rick from the Big Sip. Was he armed, and did he have a job?

  Damned woman questions. He'd told her the truth - no to both - and she told Rick he could stay. For a while. That was one of those tricky phrases that women used to keep control of the rules, now, wasn't it?

  For a while. Until I change my mind, she meant, and they all three knew it, standing there in her fancy double wide kitchen with the dishwasher and the fridge that had two doors and smudged glass shelves. If he hadn't been half-drunk and living in his truck at the time, he might have punched her in her skinny little face, told her to mind her man, and walked out.

  But the truck wasn't running and he was out of choices. That was always the way, wasn't it? When a woman saw you down, she just pushed harder. Patty did, for sure, and old Rick had the dull, haunted eyes and the balding head to show for it. She insisted he watch the kids when they weren't in school. She insisted he vacuum three times a week, and it was his job to take the Glads out to the trash barrel and burn them.

  Rick was a trash man, too. Abel wondered if he hadn't done his buddy a favor this morning, putting him out of his misery.

  This river house was a good place to do it, too. The double-wide sat nuzzled in along the river on fifty acres that Patty's dad had given her when he died, in a clearing that wasn't no bigger than a high school football field. It was connected to the rest of the world by a trail of a road cutting through a thousand acres of forest all around. The only neighbors in a few miles were the new folks at the top of the mountain. Ethan somebody...Galloway, that was it...and his wife. Their place was the only other house on this road and it was a lot nicer than this one – flat firm ground, plenty of sunshine up top. A nice chunk of land that wasn’t down in a hole of a valley like this place.

  Abel met Ethan Galloway once, when he was out walking on the road, and he wasn't impressed. They moved in from the city to play farmers, it seemed. His wife was a pretty thing. She reminded Abel of his own wife, back when she was alive. Long legs, strong-looking. Not one of those frail girls like Abel saw on TV, but slim and healthy. Quite the filly. He had remarked as much to Ethan, but the man's eyes had gone cold and he'd taken a step between the road and the house, just to make a point.

  Like Abel was going to sprint over there and take the woman for himself.

  Not a bad idea, but not worth fighting a man who looked and acted like he was in the prime of his life, either. Which Ethan did. He'd said he was in his forties, but it wouldn't take much to imagine him younger by a decade. He told Abel they had retired early and moved out here to enjoy life.

  Abel had laughed at that. “Me, too,” he'd said. “Retired early from the auction house.”

  Ethan had just accepted it, nodding that neat-clipped haircut and collared shirt. Dumbass.

  If it wasn't for Ethan, Abel might have taken a swipe at sweet little...what did Ethan say her name was? Winny or something? No...Quinn, that was it. Sounded exotic. He thought she'd be a fine one, once he made her understand that he wasn't no trash man. Not like Rick. Not like his Pap.

  Still, it didn't hurt to look at her now and then, did it? Abel felt the stirrings and suddenly that was a good idea. It would pass the time until Patty came home and he found out how she was going to react to her missing husband. He turned away from the river and the house and his buddy Rick, left the coyotes behind, and headed for the steep road that would take him up the mountain.

  Halfway across the mud pit that passed for a front yard, he stopped. Turned back toward the house and squinted, thinking. His mind was nagging at him, telling him to remember something. What was it?

  The blood? He’d killed Rick in the kitchen, but he hadn’t cleaned up yet. Time enough for that later. No, this was something else. Some little thing itching at the edge of his thoughts. It wasn’t about Rick. He didn’t think it was about the folks up the mountain, either.

  A picture flashed lightly through the fog of his thoughts. It was Patty, in her bedroom, telling him to get out or she would call Rick to escort him off the premises. Abel had laughed at her, and she had gone to the closet.

  Thinking about it, he grinned.

  She had pulled one of those little safe boxes down from the closet. It was gray and black, with buttons. She had stared him dead in the eye and said, “Don’t make me shoot you, old man.”

  That little incident told him two things – that Patty was not a woman to be trusted, and that she had a gun. The first one he already knew. The second...well, he didn’t think it would be too hard to get into that box if he wanted.

  He was pretty sure he wanted. In fact, he was kind of mad that he hadn’t remembered it before now. He turned back toward the house, after one long glance up the mountain.

  No hurry. He had time. With the storm rolling in, he didn’t think Ethan and Quinn would be going anywhere. Maybe two husbands needed to die today. He could see himself comforting poor little Quinn when her husband didn’t come home.

  Chapter Two

  Quinn Galloway opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling where it was banded with dim early morning daylight. Something felt wrong. She glanced toward the windows. The early morning light glowed brightly around the thick closed drapes, highlighting a strip down the center. The strip was blue and cold.

  She lay very still and tried to figure out why her skin was goose-pimpled and icy, in spite of the warm quilts piled high on top of her, and why tension curled in her belly like a snake. Her heart was banging hard against her ribs. She rubbed her chest. It hurt like she’d been holding her breath. The sheets were cool around her ankles.

  She could smell the odd mixture of fabric softener and oil from last night. Ethan had been cleaning his guns and placing them neatly into the locked cabinet in the corner. She glanced at it now, a hulking, shadow-shrouded thing in the far corner. She had objected at first, telling him that gun cabinets didn’t belong in her bedroom, but that was a rule she’d invented on the fly. The truth was, she didn’t like the idea of weapons so close to her head, filling up so much of her safe space. The bedroom wasn’t for cold steel and gunpowder – it was for soft linens and shelter.

  And to be honest, she didn’t like the way he caressed the metal when he performed this chore. She didn’t like the look on his face, the way he got so absorbed in the weapons that he sometimes didn’t even hear when she spoke to him. It was to be expected – he liked guns, but he hadn’t owned any back in Atlanta. Now that they were here, he had his excuse.

  Ethan, in his patient way, had suggested that the gun cabinet would look wor
se taking up a whole corner of the living room, and she had relented, knowing he was right. She still objected, but somewhere along the way she had stopped arguing about it. Choose your battles, her mother always told her, and she did. This was nothing but a minor skirmish in the grand scheme of things, not worth missiles or minefields.

  She lay very still and listened closely for any hint of what was off-kilter, but only heard the faint tick of ice on the walls of the cabin and the ominous creaks and groans of occasional wind gusts. The room was cold - the fire must be low in the living room.

  Eventually, after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling and listening, it dawned on her. The house was empty. She hated to do it, but she threw back her covers and sat on the edge of the bed. A shiver ran down her spine, and not just because the chill billowed around her bare knees. Ethan was gone.

  She could feel it in the weightless silence of the house, and her senses told her she was right - no smell of thick smoked bacon in the frying pan, no radio tuned to KAFE, The Morning Drink of Good Music! No movement, no soft whistling while he stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, waving his favorite red spatula and debating whether to make pancakes or eggs. No, he was gone.

  A snowstorm was rolling in, too, she remembered. The well-dressed and gleeful newscaster had chattered about it for nearly twenty minutes last night. What had she called it? Winter Storm Leo? It was expected to drop nearly two feet of snow on the area by midnight tonight, and another foot tomorrow.

  Quinn wasn't looking forward to it. As isolated as they were, nearly fifteen miles from small-town Randolph, VA, they knew to be prepared - and they were - but she still didn't like being cut off from the rest of the world. The thought of it made her nervous.

  She slipped off the bed, into her slippers and robe. On her way past the bureau she snagged a tortoise shell clip and collected her hair into a quick, loose bun. When she opened the bedroom door, the light spilling in from the bright kitchen at the other end of the hall made her wince.