The Watcher

A Lt. Hastings Mystery

Collin Wilcox

This book is dedicated to

Bill and Bruni Pronzini …

Him because he helps me

untangle my own plots,

Her because she’s so nice

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

One

I PUSHED OPEN THE door marked AIRPORT SECURITY and found myself facing a girl I’d never seen before.

“Is Walter in?” I gestured to an inner door labeled WALTER FRAZER, CHIEF OF SECURITY.

“Not at the moment, sir.” She reluctantly touched her typewriter’s “off” button. She was a thin girl with a narrow face and a small, petulant mouth. The purple jersey of her blouse was drawn taut across pubescent breasts. Her complexion was acne-blotched. “Can I help you?”

I took the leather badge folder from my pocket and showed her my shield. “I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings, San Francisco Homicide. I’m here to meet someone arriving from Detroit. Instead of checking my gun with the deputy at the metal detector, I thought I’d rather leave it with Mr. Frazer.”

“Well, Mr. Frazer won’t be back for at least a half-hour, I’m afraid.” She spoke with prim, perverse satisfaction, as if she enjoyed inflicting this small disappointment on me. “Why don’t you meet your friend at the scanner?”

“Because,” I answered deliberately, “it’s my son I’m meeting. And I want to meet him at the gate. Not the scanner.”

“Oh. Well.” Her pale eyes blinked. “Well, if you want me to, I guess I could keep your gun for you.”

“No, thanks. I’ll try the deputy. Tell Walter that I said hello.”

“Yes, I will.” She nodded, then frowned as she added, “Sir.” The effort had cost her more than the single syllable was worth.

As I walked down the long broad slope of the concourse leading to American Gate 6, I checked my watch. The time was twenty minutes after noon. Darrell’s plane was arriving at twelve-thirty. I chose a seat facing the gate, and unfolded the newspaper I’d gotten from a machine. Over the top of the paper I saw a towheaded boy looking at me with large, solemn eyes. I’d seen him at the scanner, when I’d surrendered my revolver and cuffs and badge to the deputy. Since that moment those solemn eyes had constantly followed me. I smiled at him, nodded, then raised the paper between us.

In less than ten minutes, Darrell would come through the gate. He would be taller than he’d been when I’d last seen him. He’d be heavier, too. At age fourteen, a year made a big difference. Next year, he’d told me on the phone, he hoped to go out for football.

In spite of my advice—in spite of the surgeon’s scars on both my knees—he hoped to go out for football.

Or, more like it, because of my advice.

Darrell had been two years old when I’d left Detroit. When my cab had pulled up at the front door and sounded its horn, he’d started to sob. Carolyn had picked him up in her arms and held him with his face buried in the hollow of her shoulder. Released from the look in his eyes, I’d picked up my suitcase and left the house without a word. As the cab pulled away from the curb, I’d seen the curtains part in Claudia’s room upstairs. She’d refused to say goodbye to me—refused to open her bedroom door. Claudia had been four years old. For more than a year, she would not talk to me when I called.

Of the two children, Claudia was the tough one.

Darrell was the vulnerable one—the one who would always be searching.

At that moment, Darrell’s 747 was doubtless on its final approach to San Francisco. The FASTEN SEATBELTS sign would be switched on, and the NO SMOKING sign.

What was Darrell thinking, strapped in his seat? Did his thoughts match my own? Did we share the same hopes for our next two weeks together—the same hopes, and the same misgivings?

Was he remembering Disneyland, last summer? We’d checked into the Disneyland Hotel, and ridden the monorail to Disneyland. I’d bought two books of “A” tickets—the best, most expensive pleasure packet.

But the tickets had promised more than they delivered. The laughter of others had accented the awkward, lengthening silences between us. The ingeniously designed fun machines had mocked us. I especially remembered the time we’d spent waiting our turn for the submarine ride. We’d been confined by a system of back-switched chromium rails that duplicated exactly the herding pens used by the Chicago stockyards. We’d had nothing to say to each other—but we couldn’t escape each other. Whenever our glances touched we smiled perfunctorily, then looked quickly away. Darrell had been almost fourteen then. Now he was almost fifteen …

“Ladies and gentlemen, American Airlines Flight 230 from Detroit is arriving at Gate 6, and passengers will soon be deplaning. Thank you very much.”

I folded my newspaper and got to my feet. Across the aisle, the towheaded boy was still staring at me. Already, the first passengers were emerging from Gate 6. I stepped forward, hesitated, then decided to leave my newspaper on a table. I wanted both hands free. A squat man wearing a double-knit blue suit and an orange tie was coming out of the gate, followed by a beautiful girl wearing fashion-faded Levis and a skintight beige sweater. The jeans clung brazenly to the contours of her hips and crotch; the sweater outlined perfectly proportioned breasts. A Qantas flight bag swung jauntily at her side. Unable to deny myself a rear view, I turned as she passed me—then shifted my gaze back to the passenger gate. Darrell was walking slowly toward me, smiling gravely. He wore a blazer and a soft white shirt. His shoes were brightly shined; his dark hair was earlobe long, freshly combed. He carried a white plastic shopping bag in one hand and a cased fishing rod in the other.

This summer, I’d told him, we would try fishing.

Hand outstretched, I stepped toward him.

“Hi. How was the flight?”

“It was great. Just great.” He shifted the shopping bag awkwardly from his right hand to his left, with the fishing rod clamped under his arm. We shook hands. His grip was tentative, his hand was quickly withdrawn. His eyes met mine briefly, then quickly fell away. The top of his head came almost to my eyebrows. He’d grown. Next summer he’d be my height, or taller.

“Have you got your baggage checks?” Now we were walking side by side up the incline that led past the metal detector.

“Yes. Do you want them?”

“No, that’s all right. Just a minute”—I pointed to the deputy—“I’ve got to get my things.”

Surreptitiously, the deputy handed over my revolver, my cuffs and my badge.

“That’s a gun that looks like it’s seen a lot,” the deputy said cheerfully. He was an overweight black man with a broad, easy smile and quick eyes.

“It has. Thanks.” I clipped on the holstered revolver and looped the cuffs over my belt, at the same time slipping the badge folder into my inside pocket.

“How come they didn’t let you take your gun?” Darrell asked.

I smiled. “They wouldn’t let the President on an airplane with a gun.” We were walking again. Ahead, I saw the girl in the beige sweater kissing a squat, swarthy man. It was a long, intimate kiss; his hands moved confidently down from the small of her back to the first swell of her buttocks.

“What about the President’s bodyguards, though? What about their guns?”

“The problem wouldn’t come up, because the President doesn’t travel on commercial flights. He travels on Air Force One. His own plane.”

“How about his children, though?” he insisted. “Don’t they have their own guards, if they go on regular flights?”

“Yes,” I answered slowly. “Yes, they do, as a matter of fact.” I glanced at him. Was he seeking information—or a contest? Was this a friendly discussion, or the opening gambit in a tough new game—a man-to-man disputation aimed at finally making me pay for taking that taxi, so long ago?

Briefly he met my gaze. His eyes revealed nothing—neither malice nor friendship.

“I suppose,” I said, “that if the President’s children travel—if they go by commercial airliner—then their bodyguards get permission to carry guns. The Secret Service would arrange it with the airline security people.”

Satisfied, he nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

Ahead, the passengers of American Flight 230 were already clustered around the baggage carrousel, watching the chute for the first suitcases.

“Here—” I gestured. “Let’s go this way.” He followed me down the curve of the carrousel, and we stood side by side against the knee-high barrier. With a low grumble, the interlocking metal sections began to move. A black plastic suitcase emerged and slid down toward the barrier. As Darrell turned toward the chute, I had my first chance to assess him.

Over the years, approaching manhood, he’d come to look more like me. His thick brown hair grew low on a broad forehead. His eyes were hazel, set wide beneath full, level brows. His nose was short and broad-bridged; his chin was slightly cleft. His mouth was small, with the upper lip extended over the lower. It was a vulnerable mouth, still unformed. The eyes, too, were vulnerable, moving uncertainly now as he watched for his luggage. He was a big, solidly built boy, but his wide shoulders were slightly hunched as he stood beside me. His stance was tentative, narrowly braced.

Was he unsure of himself—or of our next two weeks together?

Was he remembering last summer?

“There”—he pointed—“there’s my backpack.” He handed me the cased fishing rod, braced himself and swung a big orange nylon backpack effortlessly over the carrousel barrier. He moved easily, economically. Properly coached, he’d do well on the football field—if he could hit hard enough.

He propped the backpack on the carrousel and reached for a big brown valise. This time, he grunted when he heaved. But the valise cleared the barrier cleanly.

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.” He shrugged into the backpack and held out his hand for the fishing rod.

“This way, then.” I lifted the heavy valise and pointed toward an exit. “The car’s in the garage.”

“When’re we leaving for vacation?”

“I don’t think we can leave until Friday. I have to be in court on Thursday afternoon. But if we leave by Friday noon, we’ll be all right. It’s only a four-hour drive.” We’d reached the movable sidewalk that led to the parking garage. Gratefully, I lowered the valise to the black rubber matting that carried us along.

“Where’re we going for vacation, anyhow? All you said was ‘just fishing.’ ”

“A friend of mine has a cabin in Lake County, about a hundred fifty miles north of here. Her family’s had the cabin for years, and my friend guarantees that we’ll catch our limit, every time out.” I hesitated, then decided to say, “I want you to meet her. Her name is Ann Haywood. We’re … good friends.”

He glanced at me, but said nothing. Had I told him about Ann? I couldn’t remember.

“How about some seafood tonight?” I asked as I swung the valise to another movable sidewalk. “Feel like some Crab Chappino?”

“I don’t like seafood much.”

“How about Italian food, then? Spaghetti. There’s a place just a few blocks from my place. Best spaghetti in town.”

“All right.” It was a diffident response. His mouth was pursed, subtly pouting. He was disappointed. Already, he was disappointed.

“Is there something you’d rather have than spaghetti?” I asked. “How about Chinese food?”

He shook his head. “Spaghetti’s fine,” he answered shortly. “Besides, I don’t like Chinese food, either.”

Two

“HOW’D YOU LIKE THE spaghetti?” As I said it, I gestured for Darrell to turn right at the next corner. I was surprised that he’d forgotten the way we’d come, walking to the restaurant.

“It was okay.”

“Tomorrow night, maybe we can go to a movie.”

“Okay.”

“What kind of movies do you like?”

He shrugged. “Anything but love stories, I guess.”

I smiled. “I can remember that feeling. It’ll pass.”

“That’s what Mom says.”

I hesitated, then decided to ask, “Do you and your mother ever talk about … love?”

“No.” There was a flat note of finality in his voice. The meaning was clear. He didn’t want to talk about love with me, either.

He was almost fifteen years old, and we’d never discussed sex. I’d dutifully tried to introduce the subject two summers ago. But he’d shut me off then, too—with the same cryptic monosyllable.

“How about tomorrow during the day?” I asked. “Is there anything you’d like to do? Anywhere you’d like to go?”

“Not especially. Except that—” He paused.

“Except what?”

“Except maybe I could get some more fishing stuff.”

“All right. Fine. How much money do you need?” I reached for my wallet.

“That’s okay. Mom gave me fifty dollars before I left.”

In spite of myself, I grimaced. I’d married an heiress. From the first, her money had been a problem. It was still a problem.

For half a block, we walked in silence. We were going north on Laguna, still two blocks from my apartment. It was a low-crime area, as safe as any in the city. But, still, I glanced over my shoulder as I walked. Less than a week ago, less than a mile from here, a patrolman had been shot from ambush as he walked his beat—just because he was a cop. Lately there’d been other attacks.

“If you’d like,” I said, “I’ll have a car drive you to a sporting-goods store tomorrow.”

“A police car, you mean?” Interest sparked the question. It was the first time today that he’d spoken with even a hint of animation.

“Sure. Take your choice: a black-and-white car, or a cruiser.”

“What’s a cruiser?”

“An unmarked car. For detectives.”

“A cruiser,” he answered promptly.

“It’s a deal. I’ve got to leave the house early in the morning, before eight. But about ten I’ll have a cruiser stop by for you. Then later you can come down to Headquarters.”

Whenever he visited me, he always came down to Headquarters. When he’d been ten years old, Pete Friedman, then my superior officer, had showed him how handcuffs operated, then airily told Darrell to keep the cuffs, taken from a hoodlum the day before. Darrell had been ecstatic. But less than a week after he returned to Detroit, the cuffs had been stolen from Darrell’s locker at school. Carolyn had asked me not to send another pair. The implication had been plain: she disapproved of policemen and the tools of their trade. For Darrell, she wanted something better.

“I saw you on TV,” Darrell said suddenly. “About two months ago. It was about those doctors and lawyers who were murdered.”

Making a conscious effort to keep my reply laconically level—suppressing the pleasure I felt—I said, “And a merchant, too. And almost a chief. The police chief.”

“They said you solved it single-handed. It was on the six o’clock news.”

His remark, too, was laconic. Did he feel as uninterested as he sounded? Or was he making a companion effort to mine, concealing the pride he felt?

Why?

Why were we manfully suppressing pleasure and pride as we walked side by side, together?

“Did your mother see me on TV?” It was a quick, involuntary question, ironically asked.

Why?

Why?

“No, she didn’t see you.” The note of finality had returned to his voice. And again we were walking in silence. I gestured for another turn. It was the last corner; my apartment building was in the exact center of the block, eight doors away.

A black-and-white patrol car was parked in front of my building.

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered.

“What?”

I pointed to the car. “They want to talk to me, I’m afraid.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know.” My response was terse and irritable. Friedman and I had agreed that I would take no new cases. Nothing must jeopardize my vacation. For two more days—Wednesday and Thursday—Darrell could amuse himself in the city, even though he had no friends here. By Friday, though, we must leave. San Francisco offered Darrell little. Except me.

As we approached the black-and-white car, the driver swung open his door and stepped out on the sidewalk. He was a young, thin-faced patrolman. His uniform hat looked too large for his head, and his collar was puckered around a scrawny neck. His tie was askew, and his revolver was slung at an awkward, unconvincing angle.

“Lieutenant Hastings?” It was an overture more than a question.

“Yes.”

“I’m Hardy Towne, from Central Station, Lieutenant. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“What’s the problem, Towne?”

“It looks like there was a prowler on your premises, Lieutenant.”

“What?”

Towne’s Adam’s apple bobbed—once, twice. “Well, that’s the report we got, anyhow. Sir.”

At my side, Darrell muttered something that sounded like “Jeeze.” Finally, his interest was aroused.

“What’re the particulars?” I asked crisply. Instinctively, I’d assumed the role of the superior questioning a subordinate.

“Well,” Towne began, “we got a report of someone trying to enter the rear of your building.” He gestured toward a service doorway. “If you can open that, sir, I can tell you how it came down.”

I turned to Darrell. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

Quickly, he shook his head. Already he was moving toward the service entrance. Obscurely pleased, I unlocked the door and switched on two bare bulbs that illuminated a long alleyway leading along the building’s garage area to a small rear courtyard. The building contained four two-bedroom apartments on the two upper floors, and a four-car garage on the ground floor. Behind the garage were storage cubicles, a utility room and refuse containers. Two small doors opened off the alleyway. The first door led to the tenants’ storage area. The second door opened on the utility room.

Leading the way along the building to the small rear courtyard, Towne pointed to a cyclone fence on the rear property line. The woven wire gate set into the fence was secured by an oversize padlock.

“What happened, apparently, was that he parked on Francisco, and walked down the alley. He opened the gate, and came into this passageway here. So I figure he could’ve gone up the back stairs and tried to get in through the back door.” Again Towne pointed, this time to the semi-enclosed stairs that led to the two rear apartments: mine and another tenant’s.

In the dim light, I examined the padlock. Immediately, Towne moved to my side and snapped on his flashlight. Darrell stepped to my other side. The padlock was closed. There were no jimmy marks.

“If he came through this gate, he had a key.”

“Yessir.”

“Is that what happened, do you think?”

“Well, so far there’s only one witness. She’s a teen-age girl, on the other side of the alley. She was taking out the garbage.” Towne gestured with the flashlight, playing the beam across the rear of the neighboring building. “She saw him just as he was entering the courtyard—here.”

“Why did she think he was a prowler? He could’ve been one of the tenants.”

“He was acting suspiciously, she said. Like he didn’t belong here. So she called us.”

“How long did it take you to respond?”

“About three minutes, sir.”

“Did she see the prowler again?”

“No. She figures that he left while she was phoning—assuming that he didn’t effect entry into the building.”

“If he left the way he came,” I said thoughtfully, “he didn’t stay long.”

“I know.”

I was staring down at the huge padlock. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d be able to get past that lock, but not be able to effect entry.”

“The other apartment’s back door is locked and barred, sir,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Is … ah … yours?”

“I hope so,” I answered drily. I took his flashlight and moved to the storage room, playing the beam around me as I walked. I took out my keys, opened the door and switched on the overhead light. The room was partitioned by slatted two-by-fours, divided into four huge floor-to-ceiling cubicles. Each cubicle was secured by two padlocks, each one locked. In my locker, at least, nothing was disturbed.

“Wait here.” Quickly, I ascended the rear stairs and tried my back door with a key. The door was bolted from the inside. I saw no jimmy marks, nothing suspicious. I returned to the courtyard and handed Towne his flashlight.

“I think it was a false alarm,” I said. “The landlord could’ve sent someone over to check on a possible gas leak. That happened not too long ago. But if I find anything disturbed upstairs, I’ll call Central Station. Have you got a description of the subject?”

Towne shrugged. “The usual. Medium height, medium weight male. Age undetermined. He was dressed in a jacket and a stocking cap, the witness said. And she thought he had a slight limp.”

“No other witnesses?”

“No, sir. Not so far. But we might get something from the regular sector car. This isn’t our sector. We just responded to the call.”

“Okay, Towne, that’s all. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” He hesitated, then said, “I guess you don’t remember me, but I helped you out a couple of months ago on that murder-extortion case, when you had a suspect cornered in that construction site near the Tenderloin. I … ah … was one of the ones that chased him. I was on the Tenderloin Detail—on foot. It was dark, and you probably didn’t see my face. So I … ah … thought I should tell you. In case you didn’t recognize me, I mean.”

I smiled. “Were you the one that passed me like a shot when I was chasing him?”

“Well … I ran track for Balboa, Lieutenant. I was an all-city miler.”

“I believe you, Towne. Nice to see you again.”

“The … ah … the reason I mentioned it”—he shifted his gangle-limbed body clumsily—“I … thought that, if you ever needed someone to try out in Homicide, I … well … I got a captain’s citation for chasing that suspect.” Now his Adam’s apple was bobbing convulsively, out of control. But he still stared me earnestly in the eye as he spoke.

“I’ll keep it in mind, Towne. And thanks again.” I gestured for him to precede us through the passageway, and waved him away.

Unlocking the door to my apartment, I stepped inside. Nothing was disturbed. All the windows were locked, and my “security drawer” behind the kitchen cabinet was untouched. Watching me conclude the search, Darrell was plainly let down.

“Nothing, huh?”

“Nothing.” I gestured toward the refrigerator. “Do you want some milk and cookies?” Last summer, he’d gone through a half-gallon of milk each day of his visit, plus a pound of oatmeal cookies.

“No thanks.” He yawned, glancing at the kitchen clock. The time was nine-thirty. “I’m sleepy. Maybe I’ve got jet lag or something.”

I smiled regretfully and went with him to the spare bedroom. I showed him two empty drawers in the bureau, and switched on the light in the closet. Then I got a set of visitors’ towels from the linen closet, and hung them in the bathroom. From the hallway, I said good night.

Three

AS I GLANCED BALEFULLY at the clock, I scooped up the contents of my “in” basket and squared off the inch-thick stack of papers on the desk before me. The time was almost noon. All morning, I’d been fighting my “in” basket. In exactly two days—by Friday noon—I hoped to leave town with Darrell. But last night there’d been two homicides in San Francisco. In the Tenderloin, a dead hooker had been found propped up behind the steering wheel of a gold-and-black Cadillac. In Hunter’s Point, a middle-aged woman had clubbed her husband with a cast-iron skillet while he dozed in front of the TV. With the exception of Friedman, who was coordinating the investigations, and Canelli, who’d volunteered to drive Darrell downtown to shop for fishing lures, everyone in the Detail was out in the field. So every few moments my phone had been ringing—and the papers kept collecting.

I was staring at a voucher requesting authorization from Homicide for a hundred twenty-six hours of extra stakeout time. Gritting my teeth, I picked up the phone and dialed.

“Allocations,” a voice answered. “Patrolman Norris.”

“This is Lieutenant Hastings. Let me talk to Lieutenant Reilly.”

“Yessir.”

A moment later Reilly came on the line. “Now, listen, Frank,” he began. “I know what you’re going to say. But before you—”

“Sid, if you think that I’m going to let you stick me with all the stakeout time on that Carter thing, you’re just plain crazy. That was a Narcotics case, and you know it. They were three days into the stakeout before the body turned up. And furthermore they—”

“Two days,” he interrupted wearily. “But that’s not the point. The point is that—”

“The point is that I’m getting screwed. I—Christ—I’m just not going to sit still for this, Sid. I might as well tell you right now. I’m not going to—”

“That body was three days old, Frank. Maybe four. Ask the coroner if you don’t believe me.”

“I don’t care whether it was three months old. I’m not going to get charged with that time just because Narco is way over budget.”

“All right. I’ll see what the captain says about a fifty-fifty split. Jesus.”

“That’s a little better.”

“I thought you were on vacation.”

“Is that why Narco tried to stick Homicide? Because they thought I’d be gone?”

He chuckled. “God, no. That’d leave them with Friedman. Have you ever tried to stick Friedman with even a lunch check, let alone a—”

My other line buzzed.

“I’ve got to go, Sid. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Especially to Narco. And have a good vacation.”

“Thanks again.” I pushed the phone’s blinking Lucite button. “Hastings.”

“This is Canelli, Lieutenant. I thought I should tell you that me and your kid—your son—we’re here. At the Hall, I mean. We just got back.”

“Did Darrell get what he wanted?” I scrawled 50-50 Split with Narco across the voucher and dropped it into my “out” basket.

“I guess so. I waited in the car. Do you want me to give him a tour? I mean, is it all right with you?”

“It’s all right with me, Canelli.”

“I thought I’d show him Communications, and then maybe take him down to the lab.”

“Fine. Come back here about one o’clock, and the three of us can have lunch. On me.”

“Oh. Well … fine, Lieutenant.” He coughed uncomfortably. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it, Canelli.” Smiling, I hung up the phone and turned again to the stack of reports and vouchers. The invitation for lunch, I knew, would literally cause Canelli to sweat—before, during and after the meal. Whenever he was in the presence of a superior officer, Canelli sweated. At age twenty-eight, he was the newest, youngest member of the Homicide Detail. I’d chosen him because he neither looked nor acted nor thought like a cop. At only five foot eight, he was a swarthy, suety two hundred pounds. His eyes were a soft, guileless brown; his expression was perpetually puzzled. Canelli was the only cop I’d ever known who could get his feelings hurt.

I was initialing an interrogation report when a knock sounded on my door: two sharp, authoritative raps. I knew that tattoo. Pete Friedman, my senior co-lieutenant, had come down the hallway to confer with me. His timing, as usual, was bad.

“Come in.” Pointedly, I began leafing through another interrogation report, this one more than ten pages long. Friedman closed the door, crossed to my visitor’s chair and sank down with his customary grateful sigh. It was a ritual sigh, signifying Friedman’s longstanding contention that my visitor’s chair was the only one in the Department that could suitably accommodate his imposing bulk, rumored to exceed two hundred fifty pounds.

“How’re you doing?” As he asked the question, Friedman began another of his rituals, unwrapping a cigar, then rummaging through his pockets for matches. Inevitably, the process involved considerable shifting from one ham to the other, accompanied by constant grunting. Then with the cigar lit, he invariably sailed his still-smoking match into my wastebasket, ignoring the ashtray that I always pushed toward him.

“I’m snowed under,” I answered. I initialed the outsize report, promising myself to get it out of the files when I got back from vacation, and read it. “I’m running out of time.”

“How’s Darrell’s visit going?”

“So far, so good.” I okayed an expense voucher, this one authorizing repair of a cruiser’s right front fender, dented in hot pursuit. The cruiser was mine.

“If you want to,” Friedman said, “the two of you can come over for dinner tonight. I have a couple of Chaplin movies, and my number-two son has agreed to favor us with his presence.”

I looked up. “Thanks, Pete. But I just talked to Ann. She’s invited us tonight.”

Friedman nodded judicious approval. “That’s a better move. If my projections are correct—if you and Ann get married, that is—then you’ve got to get Darrell and Ann together. But don’t tell Darrell you’re in love with the lady until he falls into your trap and admits that he likes her, too.” He drew on his cigar, then said, “How about tomorrow night? Thursday. I can’t guarantee my kid’s presence. But the food will be just as good.”

I shook my head. “We’ll be packing Thursday. We’re going to leave Friday afternoon.” I glanced at the stack of papers. “With luck.”

“There, ah—” He cleared his throat. “There could be a problem.”

Something in his voice made me look up again. “A problem?”

Whose problem? Mine?

“Yeah,” he answered. He spoke with his usual easy dispassion. But behind the monosyllable I could hear a tightness—an unaccustomed tension. Friedman was worried.

He drew a long, reluctant breath. Then, examining the tip of his cigar, he began to speak. “A few minutes ago the Chief called me in. He deputized me to tell you something. The fink.”

“For Christ’s sake, tell me what?”

“It seems,” he said, “that Chief Dwyer got an anonymous phone call about an hour ago, in which the caller said that he could prove you’d taken a bribe.” As he spoke, his deceptively lazy-lidded eyes remained on his cigar. His broad, bland face revealed nothing—as usual. Friedman had always reminded me of a complacent bullfrog. Now, slowly, he raised his gaze to meet mine. “Needless to say, no one thinks you’re guilty. The point is, though, that bribery charges have to go through channels. Automatically. And it takes time. I told Dwyer that you had to get away Friday on vacation. He was sympathetic. Or at least he was as sympathetic as he ever gets. But—” Friedman moved the cigar in a small, eloquently helpless arc.

It had never happened to me before. I’d been kicked, gouged, punched and shot at—many times. But I’d never been accused of taking a bribe.

I capped my ball-point pen and placed it on the squared-off stack of papers before me. As I pushed my chair back from the desk, I glanced at the clock. The time was twenty minutes after twelve. In forty minutes, Darrell and Canelli would be knocking on my door, ready for lunch.

“What’re the details?” I asked quietly.

“They’re about what you’d expect. A voice—a man’s voice—got through to the Chief’s secretary, and gave her the story first. She decided to pass the guy on to Dwyer. But, first, she forewarned Dwyer, and he recorded the call. The voice said—” Friedman fished a crumpled slip of paper from a lower vest pocket. The movement dislodged his cigar’s inch-long ash, which bounced off an already-smudged lapel and fell to the floor in front of my desk. Automatically, I went through the fruitless ritual of pushing the ashtray toward him—at the same time sighing loudly.

“The voice said,” Friedman continued, “ ‘I gave Lieutenant Hastings a thousand-dollar payoff for a favor he did me. The money is in a brown paper sack, in the basement of his apartment house. It’s in used twenties, tens and fives, according to his instructions.’ ”

Last night’s prowler—

Certainly, it was last night’s prowler.

In a few sentences, I described the incident. Before I’d finished, Friedman was already on the phone to Communications, requesting that Towne, from Central, and both the officers assigned to my sector be ordered to report to either one of us, in person or by radio. Then Friedman cradled the phone and heaved himself to his feet.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where?”

“To your apartment building, dummy.”

Four

“SLOW DOWN, FOR GOD’S sake.” Friedman braced himself against the dashboard. “What’s the hurry?”

“I’m having lunch with Canelli and Darrell at one o’clock.”

“Well, call in and leave word that you’ll be late.”

“I’ve already left a note.”

“Then slow down. What you’re doing is just taking out your frustrations on a dumb machine.”

“You’ve got a theory for everything, you know that?”

“Now you’re taking your frustrations out on me.”

Perversely, I cut the next corner at a reckless angle—then slowed down.

“Better.” He settled himself more comfortably. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“The probabilities are,” he said, “that there’s no thousand dollars in your basement. Fifty, yes. Even a hundred. But a thousand”—he shook his head—“that’s a lot of money, just to set somebody up. People who’re smart enough to acquire a spare thousand dollars aren’t dumb enough to waste it out of spite.”

I muttered an obscenity as a truck moved up on my left to box me in behind a bus. Then, speaking slowly, I said, “I’ve been thinking about that—about the thousand dollars, and what kind of a person would lay out that much money.”

“And?”

“And there’s only one person I can think of, with a big enough grudge against me. And what’s more, he’s got a limp.”

“A limp?”

“Towne, last night, said that a witness thought the subject might’ve been limping.”

“Who’ve you got in mind?”

“Charles Keller.”

“It rings a vague bell.”

“Do you remember Jason Keller—that eighteen-year-old homosexual creep who murdered another homosexual in a sadomasochistic love ritual? It happened about two years ago, on Howard Street.”

“Who could forget that one,” Friedman answered drily. “It had everything—all the adjectives. And most of the adverbs, too, come to think about it.”

“Well, Jason Keller got sent to San Quentin. He only lasted a year before he got fatally knifed in a love triangle thing.” I turned left into Lombard Street. My apartment was less than a half-mile away.

“And it ruined the father’s life,” Friedman said. “I seem to remember now. The kid went to ‘Q’ and the father started drinking. So the mother threw the father out of the house. Whereupon the father lost his job. Right?”

“Right.”

“And, naturally, Keller blamed all his misfortunes on you. The usual procedure.”

“Right again.”

“I remember now. He came up to the Hall one time with his lawyer, to charge you with contributing to the death of his son. You were in Los Angeles at the time, and I handled them—more or less. The lawyer was as wild-eyed as Keller.”

“Which is pretty wild-eyed.”

“Wasn’t there an automobile accident?”

I nodded. “Drunk driving, about six months ago. Keller rammed another car at an intersection. Which, incidentally, accounts for Keller’s limp. The other driver—a sixteen-year-old girl—was paralyzed for life. Keller was acquitted on criminal charges, because of a technicality. But he’s being sued by the girl’s family for the moon.”

“Does he have any assets?”

As I turned the last corner, I nodded. “At one time Keller was a very successful electronics engineer.”

“The eccentric genius type.”

“That’s it. He was always unstable, according to his wife. But he had talent, no question. When he was younger, he took out a patent on a certain kind of semi-conductor that’s still being used. So he has an income from that patent.”

“Accounting for the thousand dollars in small bills, maybe.”

Grimly, I nodded.

“Has he ever tried to hassle you? Except for that episode with his lawyer, at the Hall?”

“It wasn’t exactly a hassle,” I answered. “But it was eerie as hell. After his accident, he was in the hospital for a month. Which was probably the time, looking back, that he really went off the deep end. He called me and asked me if I’d come by the hospital to see him. I did. It was a mistake.”

“What happened?”

“He was in the orthopedic ward. As soon as he saw me, he smiled. And I remember thinking, like a fool, that maybe he’d turned the corner—gotten himself straightened out. But then, Jesus, he started talking. He spoke in a very low voice, so no one else could hear him. And all the time he talked, his eyes glittered. That’s what I remember most—those goddam eyes.”

“You’re a real spellbinder, Frank,” he said with mild sarcasm. “Did he also clutch at you with a clawlike hand?”

“He only spoke for a few seconds,” I continued, ignoring the interruption. “He just said that before he died, he’d see me dead.”

“Were those his actual words?”

“Yes.”

“But there were no witnesses.”

“No.”

For a long, thoughtful moment Friedman didn’t speak. Then: “I don’t like the sound of this. When I talked to him, I thought he was just a harmless nut. But I’m changing my mind. He could be trouble.”

Not replying, I parked in the driveway of my apartment house and beckoned Friedman to follow me as I unlocked the service door and walked down the passageway beside the garage, retracing the route I’d taken last night. I opened the padlock of my storage locker, swung the slatted door wide and stepped into the cramped cubicle. A tug on a pullchain switched on the bare bulb overhead. We stood crowded together between a stack of suitcases and a jumble of sporting equipment. Most of the equipment was broken—discarded mementos of other visits from my children, in other summers past.

A brown paper sack was stuffed between a scarred skateboard and a pair of red water skis.

“Careful of prints,” Friedman warned.

Holding it beneath the bare light bulb, I opened the sack with thumb and forefinger. Two packets of used bills were inside, secured by thick rubber bands.

“There’s a note,” Friedman said. As I held the sack open, he withdrew a crumpled sheet of ordinary typing paper, folded and refolded. In the exact center of the page I saw a single neatly typed line:

Thank you for your cooperation.

Five

I WATCHED CHIEF DWYER glance at the Xerox copy of the note, then disdainfully drop it on his desk.

“There’s no question,” Dwyer said, “that Internal Affairs will give you a clean bill of health. Absolutely none. Even if they discount your record—which they won’t—there’s Towne’s report, last night. It came in before the fact—before the phone call this morning. That’s definitely in your favor.” He spoke with crisp, decisive authority. At age sixty, clear-eyed and silver-haired, Dwyer personified the urbanely successful self-made man: an Irish bureaucrat who’d never been caught on the losing side of either a departmental Captain’s shakeup or—later—a bloodletting at City Hall. To complement his thick, beautifully barbered grey hair, Dwyer wore custom-tailored grey suits. His shoes always gleamed, his tie was always impeccably knotted. Habitually he carried his head high, displaying a decisively cleft chin and a wide, mobile mouth. Dwyer moved like a man who constantly expected to be photographed.

Seated beside me on Dwyer’s long leather sofa, Friedman said, “The information I got this afternoon is even more in Frank’s favor.”

“What information is that?” Dwyer spoke carefully, without inflection. As he looked at Friedman, his eyes were expressionless.

“First,” Friedman said, “Towne turned up another witness who saw the subject—limping slightly—as he left Frank’s apartment building and went back the way he’d come. And besides that, a third witness remembered seeing the subject get into a white 1970 Chevrolet with a badly dented driver’s door. Furthermore, the sector car verified the presence of the Chevrolet at that location. So an hour ago I sent a man out to check Charles Keller’s car. Which, sure enough, is a white 1970 Chevrolet. With a badly dented driver’s door.”

“Of course,” Dwyer said cautiously, “we have to consider how Internal Affairs is going to look at this.” He turned to face me directly. His blue eyes crinkled with easily counterfeited compassion. “I’m afraid the first thing they’re going to ask is whether this information was developed before the fact or after the fact.”

I was aware that Friedman was hunching his shoulders as he leaned forward on the expensive leather sofa. I knew that mannerism. Even without seeing Friedman’s face, I could tell that he was angry.

“They’re going to claim that my information was rigged in Frank’s favor. Is that what you mean?”

As Dwyer turned to Friedman, the blue eyes chilled. The crinkles around the eyes had changed to a pattern of regretful disapproval.

“I mean,” Dwyer said, “that the information we received before I got the phone call this morning has got to be more valuable to Frank than anything we develop later. It’s only logical.”

I heard Friedman draw a deep, dangerous breath. I spoke quickly: “The problem is, sir, that I’m going on vacation Friday. I’m going with my son, who’s come out from Detroit for two weeks. It’s”—I waited until I could catch those bureaucratic blue eyes squarely—“it’s the only time I’ll have with him. All year.”

“What Frank’s saying,” Friedman interposed, “is that he’s not worried about the inquiry. He’s worried about the time it’ll take.”

Behind his massive walnut desk, Dwyer’s handsome head nodded unctuously. At the same time, his hand strayed to a sheaf of reports on the blotter before him. I noticed a diamond ring on Dwyer’s little finger. I’d never seen it before. Was the ring new—a gift from his recently acquired wife, whose family was reputed to own a square block of downtown Sacramento?

“Let me think about it,” Dwyer said. “And meanwhile, let’s see what happens tomorrow.” As he lifted the first report, his diamond caught the light from an antique desk lamp. He began to read the report.

In unison, Friedman and I rose to our feet. And, in unison, we left the office without speaking.

In the hallway, furiously silent, Friedman walked directly to the coffee machine located in an alcove near the elevators. It was Friedman’s belief that, in the Hall, true privacy could be found only at the coffee machine or in the bathroom. I watched him insert the necessary coins, hand me a cup of black coffee and take a cup for himself—double sugar, double cream. His eyes were snapping angrily.

“There are times,” he said, “when I wish I’d stuck with it, down in Hollywood. There’re worse things in life than being a bit player. Even a fat bit player—which I wasn’t, in Hollywood. I was skinny.”

Sipping my coffee, I listened to him go on.

“It would be different,” he said, “if you hadn’t volunteered, less than two months ago, to risk your neck in order to save Dwyer’s ass, when that so-called Masked Man was out to kill him.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” I said.

“How do you mean?” Noisily, he drank half his coffee in one long, exasperated gulp.

“Dwyer was scared. He was afraid he was going to die, and it showed. He let his guard slip, and I saw it happen.”

“So, to restore his self-respect—to even the half-ass score—he’s going to lay back and see you get screwed out of the only time you have during the year with your kid. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Friedman hurled his empty coffee cup toward the trash receptacle—missing by more than a foot. “You’re probably right,” he muttered. “You’re probably exactly, goddam precisely right. That’s the way his mind works. Also, I’ve never—never—known Dwyer to stand by a subordinate. Not if it means the slightest risk to that handsome hide of his does he go to bat for anyone. Never.”

“Well,” I answered, throwing my cup in the trash can, then stooping to retrieve Friedman’s, “I’m leaving town Friday afternoon, no matter what. Even if it means a suspension, I’m leaving.”

“It won’t mean a suspension,” Friedman grated. “Believe it.”

“I hope you’re right.” We were walking together toward the elevators.

“There’re two things that have to be done,” Friedman said. “Immediately.”

“What’s that?” I pressed the third-floor button.

“First, we’ve got to make sure—absolutely sure—that the reporters don’t get hold of this. If it gets in the papers, and Dwyer starts worrying about his image, we’re screwed.”

“What’s the other thing?” I beckoned him into the elevator.

“The other thing is that we’ve got to get Keller down here, and let those witnesses take a look at him—especially the second witness, an ex-Navy officer. Towne says that’s the one who saw the subject’s face while he was under a streetlight.”

“We can’t haul Keller down here just on suspicion.”

“I think we can. Not on suspicion, maybe. But I think we can get him down here. All we’ve got to do is make him think he’s got you in trouble.”

“How’re we going to do that?”

“I’ll contact him, and tell him that we’ve got reason to suspect that you’ve been caught dirty—that you’re suspected of several infractions. I’ll say that I’m conducting a confidential investigation on behalf of the Department. Since he lodged a complaint about you some time ago, I’ll say, we want his testimony.” As he stepped off the elevator, Friedman spread his hands. “What could be more logical?”

“Except that you’re in Homicide, not Internal Affairs.”

“Keller doesn’t know that.”

“He might find out, though.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Friedman asked, pushing open the door to our waiting room. I walked through the door behind him, and for a moment we stood together, absently nodding in unison to a uniformed man who sat in one corner of the waiting room. He was handcuffed to a homicide suspect. The suspect was staring at me with calm, impassive malice.

“No,” I answered finally, “I don’t have a better idea. I’ve got a request, though.”

“What’s that?”

“If you get Keller down here tomorrow, and if we don’t get a positive identification, I want to talk to him.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“I don’t know whether it’s wise or not,” I answered. “But I do know that if I talk to him, I’ll know whether he’s the one who’s trying to set me up.”

“Maybe so,” Friedman said dubiously. “But personally, I think you’d be taking a risk.” As he spoke, a homicide inspector, just returned from the field, was gesturing to Friedman, pointing to a telephone receiver held in his other hand.

“Duty calls,” Friedman said. “It’s four o’clock. Why don’t you get Darrell and go home? Otherwise, sure as hell, you’re going to start taking some of these calls.”

“Well, I—”

“Go ahead”—he shoved me toward the door—“don’t worry. Leave Keller to me. If I can’t get him any other way, I’ll frame him. Leave the reporters to me, too. They all owe me favors. And tonight, kiss Ann on the forehead for me. Chastely.”

Six

“I’M SORRY I DIDN’T have more time with you today,” I said. “I … had a couple of problems.”

“That’s okay.” As we drove, Darrell had been looking out the window toward the bay. Now he pointed to a gleaming white cruise liner just passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Behind the liner, the sun had dropped below a bank of offshore fog. Lying low on the dark blue of the horizon, the fog bank was tinted a delicate golden yellow by the sinking sun. In another hour, I knew, the color would deepen to a spectacular molten orange.

“That’d make a good picture,” he said. “Especially in color. I wish I had my camera with me.”

“Do you take many pictures?” I asked. Three years ago, for Christmas, I’d bought him an Instamatic camera, his first “real” camera. Until now, he’d never mentioned whether or not he used it.

“I’ve been taking about ten pictures a day,” he answered. “Mom bought me a Minolta about a week before I left. For a vacation present. It cost two hundred dollars.”

“Oh.”

We drove a long, slow block in silence. We were within a half-mile of Ann’s house, and already a few minutes late for dinner. I still hadn’t told Darrell about Ann—about my feeling for her.

I cleared my throat and said, “I … ah … met Ann—Mrs. Haywood—about six months ago. Her oldest boy was a witness in a homicide case. He’s sixteen—Dan. Her younger son is Billy. He’s almost twelve. So you’re—” Again I cleared my throat as I glanced at him. “So you’re just about in between them. Your age, I mean.”

As soon as I said it, I knew it had been a mistake. I’d wedged him between the two Haywood sons, with no way out.

“She’s a schoolteacher, you said.” It was a flat statement, subtly accusatory.

“Right. She teaches the fourth grade. She’s … ah … divorced.”

“Will they come to the cabin while we’re there?” Darrell asked.

“No. We’ll have the place to ourselves.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” I drove in silence for another block before I ventured: “Did I tell you—mention to you—that Ann and I … spend a lot of time together?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s why I wanted you to be sure and meet her. Tonight, I mean.”

No response.

It had been another mistake. Friedman had been right. I should have waited until Darrell knew her before I tried to tell him about Ann and me.

“Also,” I said finally, “we have to find out things about the cabin. So Ann invited us to dinner.”

“What kind of things?”

“Oh—” I lifted my hand from the steering wheel in a vague gesture. “We have to know how to unlock the place, for instance, and how to turn the water on. Things like that.”

“Oh.”

We’d driven another block in labored silence before he suddenly said, “Canelli’s funny, sort of. But I like him.”

He was changing the subject. Trying to save the situation.

I smiled at him. “I do, too, when I think about it. Like him, I mean.”

“Is he your driver? Is that his job?”

“Well, yes and no. He’s not just a chauffeur. He’s a detective. But he drives for me, yes.”

“He doesn’t act like a detective.”

“That’s true. He doesn’t think like a detective, either.”

“I know.” Another pause. Then: “Has Canelli ever—shot anyone?”

I turned into Ann’s block. “Yes,” I answered slowly. “Yes, he’s shot someone.” I pulled into a parking place and switched off the engine. Then I turned to him. I was thinking of Canelli, standing over the body of a man who’d been wearing only one shoe when he’d attacked Canelli with a bayonet. We’d never found the other shoe.

Darrell’s expression was pensive as he stared through the windshield; his brows were drawn together in a thoughtful frown.

“It’s not like on TV, I guess. Shooting someone, I mean.”

“Nothing’s ever like it is on TV. Especially shooting someone. Because, usually, they’re shooting at you. Which means that you’re scared. That’s what they don’t show on TV. They don’t show how scared you get.”

“Sometimes they do.”

“Not often.”

“Canelli told me that it’s like cowboys and Indians. You chase someone, and you get excited. So you forget about it, he said. About being afraid, I mean.” As he spoke, he turned to face me. Now he was frowning. He was trying to probe the nature of fear—and of heroism, the flip side of fear.

He was a serious, reflective boy. He’d always been serious—always quiet.

Like me?

I nodded tentatively. “Canelli’s right—but he’s wrong, too. Sometimes, in the heat of a chase, you get carried away. But then, afterward, you get the shakes.” I hesitated, then decided to say, “Or else you mess your pants. The TV doesn’t talk about that, either.”

“Do you get the shakes?” he asked. “Afterward?”

“Yes, Darrell, I do. Everyone does. Whether or not they admit it. They—”

“Hey, Frank. Hi.” It was Billy’s voice, Ann’s younger son. Turning, I saw him zooming toward us on his new motocross bike. Billy was the ebullient one. Constantly, he interrupted at the wrong time. Like now.

Reluctantly, I rolled down the window. “Hi, Billy.” I waited until he braked to a flamboyant stop, hooking one freckled hand on the window frame beside me. “This is Darrell, Billy. My son.”

“More pie, Darrell?” Ann smiled as she pushed the platter toward him.

“Well, okay. Thanks.”

“I’ll let you cut your own slice.”

“Okay.”

I saw him frown as he picked up his knife and gravely positioned the platter on the table before him. Across the table, Billy watched closely as Darrell began cutting a polite-size slice. Beside Darrell, projecting a teen-ager’s aura of detached boredom, Dan pointedly ignored both Darrell and his younger brother. Already, Dan had taken two phone calls during dinner, at least one of them from a girl. Obviously, as soon as he could, he’d leave for the evening.

I looked down the length of the table at Ann. She was drinking her after-dinner coffee, gazing at me over the gold-striped rim of her cup. For the dinner tonight, she’d used her best china, her mother’s Haviland. The flatware was silver; the stemware was crystal. The message was clear. This evening, with Darrell and me, was a special event.

Sipping my own coffee, I smiled at her. Before the evening was over, I would hold her close to me and thank her. At the thought, I realized that I was sexually aroused. It had been more than a week since we’d made love. It would be another two weeks before we could be together again. I would miss the pixy lilt in her grey eyes, and the murmur of her drowsy voice in the bedroom darkness.

Literally, I’d known from the first moment I saw Ann that, for me, she was something special. Beneath her quiet, serious manner I’d sensed a certain excitement: a boldness in love, uncloyed by guile or false modesty. I’d been right. From the first, we’d fitted each other perfectly. Yet, when I was with her, I felt myself withdrawing. It was an involuntary withdrawal, the result of some deep need to protect myself. I could sense its origins. My divorce had left me defeated. Another commitment would risk another defeat—risk the loss of whatever peace I’d found for myself during my past twelve years, alone.

I’d soon realized that, for Ann, the risk was the same—the risk, and the fear. So we’d made a wordless bargain. We took each other a day and a night at a time, glad for what we found. Before my father had deserted his family, he’d been fond of repeating a favorite axiom: expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Finally, I was taking his advice.

“Pass the pie,” Billy said.

“That’s your third slice.” Dan slid the platter toward his brother.

“Well, I don’t have pimples,” Billy retorted. “I can eat anything I want, and I won’t get any pimples.”

“That’s because you aren’t old enough to have pimples.” Dan spoke with long-suffering resignation.

“Zits, he calls them,” Billy said, speaking to me. “That’s what he calls pimples. Zits. His friends, too.”

“Oh, God.” Dan raised his eyes to the ceiling.

Suppressing a smile, Ann turned to Darrell. “Your father says you’re a fisherman.”

With his mouth full, Darrell first nodded, then shrugged. Finally, swallowing, he said. “I guess so.”

“If you go up Cache Creek about five miles north of our cabin,” Ann said, “you’ll find good fishing.”

“Is there trout?” Darrell asked.

She shook her head. “No, the water in Lake County is too warm for trout, and Cache Creek runs too slowly. But there’s bass. Lots of bass.”

“I caught three bass in about three minutes,” Billy said. “And we had them for dinner that night, one each. And Dan tried for about an hour, and all he caught was a red horse.”

“What’s a red horse?” I asked.

“It’s a sucker,” Billy announced. “They’re full of bones. And they feed on the bottom. That’s why they’re called suckers. They’re all Dan ever catches. Just suckers.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Dan’s eyes returned to the ceiling. “Sweet Jesus.”

Still speaking to Darrell, Ann said, “There’s one thing you have to be very, very careful about, especially when you’re fishing. And that’s snakes.”

“What kind of snakes?”

“Rattlesnakes,” she answered. “Lots of them.” She turned to me. “Really. Lake County—especially Long Valley—is filled with rattlesnakes.”

“I’m glad you told us,” I answered drily.

“You also have to be careful of deer hunters,” she said. “I didn’t think about it until just now, but last Saturday was the opening day of deer season in Lake County. Which means that, especially on weekends, the woods are filled with maniacs who’ll shoot anything that moves. Anything.”

I smiled. “In my business, you learn to duck.”

“Really, Frank—I’m serious. They drink, too. They ride around in Jeeps, with their rifles and their red hats and coolers filled with beer. They’re like boys, playing war. Except that they kill things. They …”

“I was almost bit by rattlesnakes,” Billy interrupted, his eyes large and lively. “Twice, I was almost bit.” He crammed a huge piece of pie in his mouth.

“No fooling?” Darrell asked, turning to face Billy. It was their first spontaneous exchange.

“No fooling. Twice. And one of them was five feet long. My dad killed it, and I’ve got the skin in my room over my bed. With the rattles. We tacked it on a board, and put it in the sun to dry. And the rattles are on the board, too. Twelve of them.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure. Come on.” Billy suddenly pushed back his chair, grating its legs on the polished oak floor.

“May I be excused?” Darrell asked Ann. Looking at him, I blinked. I couldn’t remember his ever asking permission to leave the table.

She nodded. “Yes, you may.” She watched the two boys go down the hall, and agreed that Dan could make a phone call, provided he helped clear the dishes later.

“More coffee?” she asked.

“Not now. It was a wonderful dinner, Ann. I appreciate it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Were you exaggerating, about the rattlesnakes?”

She shook her head. “Certainly not. Be sure Darrell is careful.”

“Have you ever actually seen a rattlesnake?”

Speaking with slow, deliberate emphasis, she said, “That cabin has been in my family since I was a little girl. I’ve seen”—she paused, eyes thoughtfully wandering away as she calculated—“I’ve seen, I’d say, fifty rattlesnakes. I’ve killed three. And all three of them were right around the cabin. So, you see, I’m not exaggerating.”

“How do you kill them?”

“A shovel is best. Or big rocks. Or a shotgun. A rifle or pistol are no good.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to hit them in the head. If you don’t—if you hit them in the body—you’ll never kill them.”

I smiled. “Never?”

She nodded emphatically. “Absolutely. The old adage is true: snakes don’t die till sundown. I’ve seen them cut in two, and seen the heart still beating hours later. Also, the head is always dangerous. Even if it’s severed from the body, the head’ll still bite. It’s reflex.”

“Jesus.”

“What you’ve got to do,” she said, “is first of all immobilize the snake. One whack with a shovel will do that, if you break its back. Then you keep whacking, until you cut it in two. Then you cut off the head. And then comes the most important part of all.” She paused, looking at me expectantly. Privately, I smiled. It was a schoolteacher’s trick, compelling the student’s closer attention.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You’ve got to bury the head.”

“Bury the head?”

She nodded slowly, solemnly. It was another schoolmarm’s mannerism. She was preparing to drive the point home.

“Why’re you grinning?”

“I’m grinning at you—giving me a lesson. Next you’ll be asking me to take a test on what I’ve learned.”

“Well, it’s true. You’ve got to bury the head.”

“So it won’t bite someone?”

“Of course,” she answered primly, lifting her chin and sitting a little straighter in her chair. I’d never been able to poke fun at Ann. Her ex-husband, a society psychiatrist, had tried systematically to destroy her sense of self-esteem, usually with savagely barbed humor. Even after two years away from him, she still couldn’t laugh at herself.

“Suppose you don’t have a shovel. How do you cut the head off?”

“With a knife,” she answered. “You have to step on it, just behind the head. Then you cut the head off.” She shuddered. “That’s the really grisly part, if you have to step on it. Because the body keeps writhing. The first one I ever killed, the body wrapped itself around my leg.”

“I think,” I replied, “that, first of all, I’m going to avoid them. But if I stone one to death, I’m not going to bury the head.”

“It’s your civic duty.”

“I do my civic duty all year long. It’s my trade, remember? Besides, you’ve got me spooked.”

“Good. That was the purpose.”

“Any other rattlesnake tips?”

“If you get bitten, the most important thing is to stay quiet—stay calm. And you shouldn’t cut the fang bites. If you can, cool the leg. Immerse it in water, and keep it cool until you get to a doctor. But you must stay calm. And you’ve got to—” She was looking at me suspiciously. “There’s that grin again.”

“How do you stay calm when you’ve just been bitten by a rattlesnake?”

“I said quiet. Don’t move.”

“You said calm.”

“Well, I didn’t mean it.”

“Now that I know how to kill a snake, and how to save myself after it bites me if I don’t kill it, how do I avoid it?”

“You walk in the sunshine in the summer, and in the shade when it’s cool,” she answered promptly. “And you don’t step on sticks, especially near streams and river banks. And most of all, if it’s summer, you watch where you walk at night.”

“At night?”

Again she nodded primly. This time, I didn’t smile. “If it’s hot during the day, snakes hunt at night. They’re coldblooded, you know. They’ve got to regulate their own body temperature. If they were to be exposed to hot sun for even an hour, they’d die. So, during the summer—especially if it’s hot—they hunt for food at night. Either at night, or else early in the morning or late in the evenings.”

“What happens to them in the winter?”

“They hibernate, silly. Didn’t you ever take natural history?”

“Probably.”

“Are you sure you don’t want more coffee?”

“I’m sure. I’ve decided that one cup after dinner is enough for me.”

She glanced at the hallway, in the direction the two boys had gone. “I like Darrell,” she said softly. “He’s serious. Like you.”

“I’m glad you like him.”

“He likes you, too.”

I looked at her down the length of the table. We were seated at the head and foot, like parents presiding over a family dinner. All during the meal, I’d been conscious of reverberations from other places, other times. She felt it, too. I could see the shadow of wistful memory deep in her eyes.

“You’re worried about something,” she said finally. “Is it Darrell? This visit? Is that it?”

“No. It’s … something else.”

I’d never discussed my business with her. I’d always believed that talking about trouble makes it worse.

“You’ll feel better Friday,” she said. “There’s nothing better than rolling down the highway, on vacation, with everything behind you.”

The thousand dollars in the brown paper bag—the anonymous phone call—the Internal Affairs inquiry. Could I leave it all behind?

I pushed my chair back. “Maybe we should say good night, Ann. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

She rose, and we walked slowly toward each other, down the length of the table. Wordlessly we came together, and for a moment, as we held each other close, I could feel the poignancy in our embrace. For a few hours, we’d almost been a family.

Seven

“ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH the term ‘pits’?” Friedman asked, slumping down in my visitor’s chair.

“Pits?”

“It’s an expression the kids use. Derived from armpits. If something is the pits, it’s the shits.”

“If you say so.”

“Well,” Friedman said, “witnesses are the pits. Especially establishment-type witnesses, with the most to lose. They think.”

I put my pencil down on the desk before me and pushed myself back in my chair. “What you’re saying is that our witnesses didn’t make Keller. Is that it?”

Friedman regretfully sighed. “That’s it. They—”

My phone rang. Impatiently, I picked up the receiver.

“This is Canelli, Lieutenant.”

“What is it, Canelli?”

“Well, Lieutenant Friedman sent me out here to your neighborhood to see if I couldn’t find some other witnesses, or something. Which, so far, I haven’t been able to find, I’m sorry to say. But, anyhow, I was thinking that—”

“Listen, Canelli, get to the point, will you?”

“Oh, sure, Lieutenant. Sorry. I know how busy you are, getting ready to leave town tomorrow and everything.” I raised my eyes to the ceiling, slowly shaking my head. Smiling, Friedman said sotto-voce: “It must be Canelli, building the suspense.”

I nodded.

“… so I was thinking,” Canelli said, “that maybe I should ring your bell and pick up your kid. Your son. I could bring him down to the Hall, if he’s up, and maybe show him the pistol range, or something. We talked about that yesterday. Going to the range, I mean.”

“Good idea, Canelli. Thanks. Why don’t you come to my office before you go to the range? Maybe I can go with you.”

“Okay, Lieutenant. Fine. Sorry I bothered you.”

“That’s all right, Canelli. I appreciate the thought.”

“I like your kid. Darrell, I mean. He’s a lot like you, the way he doesn’t say much unless he’s got something to say. And he even looks like you, too.”

“Thanks again, Canelli. Goodbye.” I hung up the phone and turned to face Friedman. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“I was saying that our witnesses are the pits. The teen-age girl across the alley from your building didn’t change her story, but it wasn’t much of a story to begin with. Just a shadowy figure with maybe a limp. The one we needed was the goddam ex-Naval officer—the one who said yesterday that he saw the subject’s face. And, sure enough, today he wouldn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. But he didn’t say yes, either.”

“Did you lean on him?”

“As much as I could. But this is one of those overblown taxpaying types who knows all his privileges by heart, and has friends at City Hall and drives a Cadillac. Obviously, when he had a chance to think about it, he decided that he didn’t want to get involved. It’s the same old crap. He’s afraid he might get his tires slashed.”

“Where’s Keller now?”

“He’s in the waiting room. The two witnesses, so-called, have gone.”

“I want to talk to Keller.” Purposefully, I stood up behind my desk.

“Yeah. Well—” Friedman heaved himself reluctantly to his feet. “I figured you would. And, as bad luck would have it, Keller wants to talk to you.”

“Bad luck?”

Friedman stood between me and my office door. His eyes were serious. “I don’t want to see you overmatched, Frank. And that’s exactly what could happen, if you mess with Keller. What you’re doing is exactly what a lawyer does when he refuses to hire another lawyer to defend him. He’s got a fool for a client. You’ve got a fool for a victim. You.”

“When I’ve talked to him, I’ll know whether he put that money in the basement.”

“How will you know?”

“By his reactions. I know this guy. I know how he thinks. Once I’m satisfied one way or the other, I’ll give him to you.” I stepped forward. Friedman refused to move.

“What is it with you and Keller?” he asked quietly. “What’s this two-step you’re doing with him?”

“Listen, Pete, don’t try to—”

“You visited him in the hospital—which was stupid. Now you want to interrogate him—which is stupid. Why?” Plainly, he had no intention of stepping aside until I answered. Beneath his steady gaze, I felt my own gaze falter, then fall uncertainly away.

“The truth is,” I said, “that I’ve never been totally convinced that Keller’s kid was guilty. The investigation got away from me. An assistant D.A. was determined to clean up those gay bath houses down on Folsom Street, and Jason Keller’s case was made to order for him. I think the assistant D.A. was a little gay himself. Maybe that’s why he was so hot to nail the Keller kid. Anyhow, that’s what I always figured.”

“So you felt sorry for Keller.”

“Something like that.”

“You felt a little guilty, maybe, when the kid got killed in prison.”

I shrugged.

“Long before you made sergeant, let alone lieutenant,” Friedman said, “you should’ve figured out that guilt feelings are for civilians. Not cops.”

“I’m not arguing with you. I’m simply telling you that I—”

“You should also have figured out that, whether or not his kid took a wrong fall, this guy Keller is bad news. Very, very bad news. Not only is he crazy”—Friedman held up a thick forefinger—“but he’s also smart.” A second finger joined the first. “And, even worse”—the third finger came up—“he’s got the money to finance his little war with you. That’s three strikes.”

“I’ve got two for you.” I put my forefinger in front of his face. “First, we aren’t sure Keller is our suspect. And second”—I waggled two fingers—“he’s just one man. One skinny, middle-aged man.”

“If that’s your rebuttal,” Friedman answered, “then frankly I think you’re way out in left field on this one.” His voice was tight, dead level. His eyes were narrowed. Friedman and I had been bickering for years. But we’d almost never had a serious argument. This one, I realized, could be serious.

Speaking in the same hard, uncompromising voice, he continued: “If you were in charge of this case—if you weren’t personally involved—you’d play the percentages, just like I’m doing. You’d approach the investigation professionally, in other words. So you’d have to figure that Keller had both motive and opportunity. You’d also figure that he has the money—the thousand dollars. When you consider the limp, then you’ve got maybe a thirty-percent make. Then you add in the car. You’d realize that the odds against finding that particular car with that particular dented door by random chance are something like five hundred thousand to one. So, if it were my investigation, I’d figure the car makes it maybe seventy percent certain that Keller was at your place Tuesday night. I’m not saying the D. A. would call it evidence, or take the case to court. But I am saying that as a good, competent cop you’d figure that, yes, Keller was a bonafide suspect.”

He drew a long, truculent breath before returning to the attack: “So much for your first argument. As for the second argument, you should know that one man can be more of a problem than two or three, simply because there’s no one to inform. Also, if the one man is a nut, he’s got nothing to lose. Which is why nuts are so goddam dangerous.”

“Oh, Jesus”—I waved a hand in grudging agreement—“I’m not arguing with all that, Pete. I’m just—” I broke off, uncertain how I’d intended to finish the thought.

“You’re stubborn,” he grumbled. But now the tension in his voice had softened. The moment’s threat of serious disagreement was behind us.

Shrugging, I conceded his point. Yes, I was stubborn.

“I can’t change your mind, huh?”

“No.”

Exasperated, Friedman shook his head as he turned away. “As the kids say, you’re too much.” He opened the door. “I’ll send him in. When you’re finished with him—or, more like it, when he’s finished with you—I want to see him. Put him back in the waiting room.”

I sat down behind my desk and flipped the switch that activated the hidden microphone of my tape recorder. I couldn’t use the tape for evidence, but I wanted a record of the conversation.

Almost immediately, the door opened and Keller strode into my office. He was thinner than I remembered him; he probably weighed less than a hundred fifty pounds. His face was emaciated: parchment-dry skin stretched taut over bones that outlined a death’s head. His eyes were sunk deep into dark-rimmed sockets. His lips were drawn in a tortured grimace, revealing teeth tightly clenched. His hair was sparse and greying, untrimmed and uncombed. His head was held at a stiff, unnatural angle on a drawn, corded neck. He was dressed in a nondescript sports coat, wrinkled trousers and a soiled white shirt without a tie. His shoes were scuffed; his oversize jacket hung open to reveal a shirt stained brown down the front. His pale cheeks were smudged by a grey-stubbled beard, about three days old. Hanging from sleeves that flapped on arms without substance, his hands were blue-veined and bony, clutching the air as he spoke.

“It’s finally happened, hasn’t it? They’ve finally found out about you.” His eyes, alive with hatred, burned deep into mine. His voice was low and indistinct, a sibilant whisper that pulsed in the small office like demons muttering in darkness. I remembered that soft, hoarse voice, excoriating me in the dimness of his hospital ward. Then and now, he was choking on his own hate.

“Sit down, Keller.” I gestured. “And close the door.” I was applying the first principle of interrogation, conditioning the suspect to obey small, seemingly insignificant commands.

Still with his eyes locked to mine, he reached behind him, found the door’s knob and swung the door. It closed with a sharp click. Something in the controlled precision of the gesture unnerved me.

Friedman had been right. The victim was a fool.

“I’ll stand,” he said. “Just like you stood—with your hand on the Bible, swearing to tell the truth.”

“I did tell the truth, Keller. You know it, and I know it. And the jury knew it, too.”

In my own ears, the statement had a dull, unconvincingly dogged rhythm.

“They wanted someone to send to jail,” he said. “That’s why they were in the courtroom, to send him to jail. And you were there to lie.”

“That’s not true, Keller. I—”

“You took the weakest one you could find. You got in your car, and you drove down Folsom Street, and you found someone. You put him in prison and took the money they gave you. Then you had him killed, to conceal your lies. Because you knew that as long as he lived he was a danger to you.”

“Listen, Keller”—I rose to my feet, facing him across my desk—“Your son was guilty as charged. So he went to prison. That’s the whole story.”

But I could still hear the unconvincing note plain in my own voice. I knew why. I knew that, at bottom, I didn’t believe Jason Keller had been guilty.

“Don’t you count death, Lieutenant?” He asked the question with sly, malevolent satisfaction, as if he’d successfully tricked me. “The story ended when they killed him, not when he went to prison. They got their orders, and they killed him. That’s the whole story.”

“It had nothing to do with me, Keller. I—I’m sorry it happened. But I don’t know the particulars, and I’m not responsible. And, furthermore, if you’re implying that he was killed as part of some kind of a plot, then, frankly, you’re suffering from delusions. They’ve got a name for that. It’s called paranoia.”

Stretched in its death’s-head leer, his mouth writhed. “Don’t patronize me with big words, Lieutenant. I’ve got three degrees. Which is probably three more than you have.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m not patronizing you, Keller. Just the opposite. I’m trying to make you see that you’re being irrational. Common sense should tell you that, for one thing, your son wasn’t important enough to be the object of an elaborate frame-up. It’s just that simple.”

His eyes blazed. “Would you like to know how they killed Jason?” His voice was very soft.

“No. But I would like to know—”

“They cornered him in the shower room. There were three of them. One of them had a nail. It was a twenty-penny nail, according to the coroner’s report. He’d stolen it from the carpentry shop the day before. He sharpened the first inch until it was sharp as a razor, with two edges, and a needle point. He wrapped the rest of it with tape, for a handle. He wrapped the sharpened part, too. He wrapped that in cloth, so he could conceal the nail in his rectum. Because, in the shower room, they were checked for weapons. The murderer’s name was Frank, too. Did you know that, Lieutenant? Did you know that his name was the same as yours?”

Realizing that I might learn more if I listened to him instead of opposing him, I sat down behind my desk, gesturing for him to tell the story.

“Frank Bates,” he breathed, “age twenty-three. He’s a convicted murderer. He had two men with him. They crowded Jason into a corner. It was a big, white-tiled room with a drain in the center. I saw the pictures. I saw the shower room before the murder, and I saw it after. In one picture, everything was white. In the other picture, everything was white and red. The red was Jason’s blood, spattered on the walls and running down the drain in the center. And there …” Momentarily, his manic eyes lost focus. His demon’s grin froze. “And there was a picture of Jason, too. But he was dead, in the picture. And dead bodies all look alike. They’re just a mound of flesh and hair, flattened on the bottom. They …” Blinking, he broke off. Suddenly his eyes were anguished: a father’s eyes, remembering. I looked away. Friedman had said it: guilt was for civilians. Guilt, and sympathy—a policeman couldn’t afford to feel either one.

Keller was speaking again: “The two men held him while Frank Bates used the nail. They’d planned it very carefully. In the trial, it came out that they’d practiced with a sackful of rags, in the kitchen. Bates criss-crossed Jason’s stomach with the nail until his intestines came out. Because the nail could only cut an inch deep. So it was necessary to cut and cut and cut—sixty-eight times, the coroner said. And then, according to Bates’ plan, he intended to take the tape off the nail, and put the nail down the drain. Then the three of them would swallow the tape, in equal parts. And then the three of them would take a shower, to wash off the blood. And then—” He broke off. Again, the blazing eyes helplessly lost focus. The tightly drawn lips began to tremble, still stretched across his clenched teeth.

“Listen, Keller, there’s no point in getting yourself—”

“And then, they’d all walk out of the shower room. That was the plan. Except that a guard came in. And they were caught. They—”

“They were caught,” I interrupted, “and they went to trial and they all drew life sentences. Isn’t that true?”

Standing with his long, knob-knuckled fingers working spasmodically, still with eyes gone blank, he couldn’t hear me.

“They were caught,” I repeated, speaking slowly and distinctly, “and they were found guilty. They’ll never leave prison. If the death sentence is reinstated, they’ll die. So you can’t say justice wasn’t done. You can’t say it was a setup, either. No one told Bates what to do. He was one man—one kook, with two sick friends. It happens all the time in prison. Every day. Spontaneously. For no rational reason. No reason at all.”

“The three of them weren’t sick,” he mumbled. “They were already dead. That’s why they were chosen. They were the instruments. Your instruments.”

“Jesus—” Exasperated, I slammed the flat of my hand down hard on the desk. “Nobody chose them, Keller. Bates was—” I hesitated. “He was in love with your son, and Jason was giving him a hard time. So Bates decided to waste him. That happens all the time, too—in prison, and sometimes out of prison. It doesn’t make sense, but it happens. And it’s tough, if it happens to you. I can sympathize with you. That’s why you’re here, in this office. That’s why I saw you in the hospital—because I was sorry for you. I’m still sorry for what’s happened to you. But, for God’s sake, if you’re going to blame someone, blame Bates. Look at the facts.”

As I’d been speaking, his eyes slowly came back into bright, manic focus.

“I’m not blaming Bates,” he said softly. “I’m blaming you. Just you.”

“And so, night before last, you tried to set me up. Then, yesterday, you phoned Chief Dwyer. Right?” I spoke harshly. I’d wasted enough time with this sick, vicious man—enough time, and enough energy. Yet somewhere deep inside, I was unaccountably trembling. Was it fear? Or was it just exhaustion, the result of a kind of psychic drain I always experienced when I interrogated psychotics?

“Are you recording this?” he asked suddenly.

Startled, I looked at him. “What?”

“I’m an electronics engineer,” he said. “And I think you’re recording this.”

“If I am,” I said, “it’s just for information. Not for evidence. In your trial, it won’t be used against you.”

“My trial?” Asking the question, his mouth twisted into a grotesquely patronizing smile.

I nodded. “We’ve got you placed in my building Tuesday night, Keller,” I lied. “We know you’re trying to set me up on a bribery charge. We’ve got you cold on at least three felony counts.”

He began to shake his narrow, bony head in a slow, measured arc, revealing alternate profiles each time he turned his head. In his scrawny neck, Keller’s Adam’s apple bulged like a malignant growth. In his eyes, a mocking complacency smoldered.

“No, you haven’t got me cold, Lieutenant.” He was staring at me again. “I’ve—got—you—cold.”

“You planted that money. And made the call. Didn’t you?” I spoke very quietly, very deliberately.

Just as deliberately, he slowly, silently nodded. It was an admission I’d never be able to prove—an admission, and a threat. Keller would never give up. The thought frightened me.

I rose to my feet. “I’ve done everything I can for you, Keller—for you, and your son. You don’t believe that, I know. But it’s true. Now, though, you’ve used up all your credit. If you’re not careful, you’re going to jail. If you keep on with this, I’ll see to it myself. Do you understand? I’ll do whatever’s necessary to put you away.”

Once more he nodded, still taunting me with his madly dancing eyes. This was the game he’d come to play. And the rules were his, not mine—the rules, and the opening advantage.

“All right”—I pointed to the door—“you can go now. Get out.”

“I’m supposed to wait for Lieutenant Friedman.”

“Wait for him outside, in the waiting room.” Again, I pointed.

Without a word, he turned and left the office. Swearing to myself, I picked up the phone and angrily dialed Friedman’s interoffice number. “He’s all yours,” I said. “He’s in the waiting room.”

“How’d it go?”

“He did it, all right. There’s no doubt.”

“So what now?”

“So he’s all yours. I’m leaving town tomorrow. The hell with him. And the hell with Dwyer, too, if he tries to keep me from leaving.”

“Tough talk.”

“That’s right,” I answered. “Tough talk. Are you going to talk to Keller?”

“Yeah. Pass him in, will you? I promised Communications I wouldn’t leave the office. We might have a shootout coming up.”

“Anyone I know?”

“You know the good guys,” he answered tersely, “but not the bad guys.”

“Why bother with Keller if you’re busy? He’ll keep.”

“I’m not busy,” he said patiently. “I’m merely waiting for Communications. That’s what police work is all about, Lieutenant. It’s a waiting game. Like war.”

“What’re you going to ask Keller?”

“I’m going to try a few curves on him,” Friedman said airily. “None of which I’m going to tell you about. The less you know, I figure, the more you’ll enjoy your vacation.”

“You’re probably right. I’ll pass him in.” I hung up the phone and crossed my office to open the outer door.

On the far side of the waiting room, seated three in a row, I saw Canelli, Darrell—and Keller. It was a shock, seeing my son sitting beside a man who hated me so irrationally—who would harm me if he could.

Darrell and Canelli were deep in conversation, turned toward each other. Sitting in his chair as if he were poised to spring, Keller was watching me with his terrible eyes.

As I approached them, Darrell and Canelli both rose.

“Hi, Dad,” Darrell said. “Canelli’s going to take me to the shooting range. I can watch him qualify, he says.” Darrell spoke with quick, unguarded exuberance. It was, I knew, a spontaneous response to Canelli’s often childlike simplicity. The two had become friends.

“Go into my office,” I answered shortly. “Both of you. I’ll be with you in a minute.” As I said it, I saw the animation fade from Darrell’s eyes. Later, perhaps, I could explain.

I waited for my office door to close behind them, then motioned for Keller to get to his feet. With Keller beside me, I walked to the uniformed officer on duty at the desk.

“He’s to see Lieutenant Friedman,” I said. “Right now. He’s expected.” Nodding, the patrolman got to his feet, gesturing Keller to a seat beside his desk. Keller was now his responsibility.

As I turned away, Keller raised a hand toward me. It was a parting gesture—a gesture of derisive benediction.

“Your son looks like you, Lieutenant.” He spoke with quiet malice. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “He looks just like you.”

I took a half-step toward him, involuntarily clenching my fists—then turned away, without speaking.

Eight

I SWITCHED OFF THE engine and turned to face Ann. The time was almost midnight; we were parked directly in front of her house. Behind the half-drawn drapes of her living room I saw a phosphorescent TV glow flicker as a figure moved in front of the window. Her sons were watching a late movie. In my own home, two hours ago, I’d left Darrell in his room, also watching TV. On impulse, I’d called Ann, saying that I wanted to see her before I left for Lake County. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew that I’d done the right thing. She’d watched for my car, and come outside as soon as I pulled up in front of her building. With her hair loose around her shoulders, wearing sneakers, jeans and a light sweater, she’d looked like a young girl as she’d slipped into the car beside me. I’d intended to take her to a nearby bar, for a farewell drink. But when she kissed me, I decided instead to drive down to the bay and park. Again, it had been the right thing to do.

Now, in the dim glow from a streetlight, I saw her smile.

“I think I was eighteen, the last time I parked with a boy. Do they still call it heavy petting?”

“I think it’s called making out.”

“No. Making out is when you actually have intercourse.”

“I guess you’re right.”

Her smile widened as she murmured, “Anyhow, we almost qualified.”

I touched her throat at the V of her sweater, then moved my hand gently down, caressing her. I saw her eyes soften, and felt her body respond to my touch. Then her smile widened, warmly mischievous. She raised a forefinger, pressing firmly against the tip of my nose.

“When you were eighteen,” she said, “you would’ve been hazardous to my virtue.”

I chuckled. “Don’t be too sure. My childhood was very sheltered.”

“I’m not talking about your childhood. Eighteen, I said.”

“The same thing applies. I was a slow starter.”

“I don’t believe you. I remember how it was, with high-school football heroes. I can distinctly remember stalking a boy named Clancy Walker for months. He didn’t even glance at me. Not once. He was all-city guard.”

“That only shows that all linemen are thick-headed.”

“Did girls follow you? Did you notice them loitering around, trying to be casual but hoping, really, that you’d walk them to your next class?”

“You don’t expect me to deny it, do you?”

“In college, too? Did you see them following you around in college?”

“In college, too. Naturally.”

“I don’t believe you. Do you know why?”

“No. Why?”

“Because,” she said, “you’re not a vain man. And it takes a lot of vanity for a man to notice a girl’s after him. I think they were following you, all right. But I don’t think you even saw them.”

“What makes you think I’m not vain?”

“Because,” she answered, “whenever Dan or Billy mention they’ve seen your name in the papers, you always change the subject.”

“They’re boys. We were talking about girls.”

“Have you got a comb?”

Silently, I handed her my comb. As she combed her thick tawny hair with slow, deliberate strokes, her eyes held mine with a soft, playful intimacy. Her mouth was curved in a quiet smile. I’d always liked to watch her comb her hair—liked to share this little ritual, somehow so gravely feminine. As the moments lengthened, I saw the special lilt fade slowly from her eyes. Now her expression was pensive.

Her voice was low in the silence: “Did you meet your wife in college?” It was a quick, seemingly casual question—but carefully asked.

Momentarily I hesitated, reluctant to answer. We almost never talked about the past—about her husband, or my wife. Yet I sensed why she wanted to know. These last few hours we’d spent together had evoked something special between us—something that, to be confirmed, must be sealed with a confidence shared.

“I met her two years after I graduated,” I said, looking away as I spoke. “I played with the Detroit Lions. That’s how I met her. I was in Detroit, I mean. Playing ball.”

With a final, chin-raised twist of her head, she finished with the comb. She carefully pulled hair from the teeth, and passed the comb to me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

For a long moment we looked at each other. She was waiting for me to go on—hoping I’d continue, without being urged. I could see the questions in her eyes—questions she would never put to me directly.

Once more looking away, I spoke slowly, regretfully. “We never should’ve gotten married. It’s that simple. I’d never done anything but play a game for money, so I never had to decide who I was. And Carolyn—my wife—was a socialite. She was rich, and she was beautiful. So she’d never had to decide either. But we made a handsome couple. We knew, because we read it in the gossip columns. So we got married, and her father gave us a Lincoln Continental for a wedding present, and the key to a house. Later, when I couldn’t play football any more, he gave me a job. I had a corner office and a secretary with a B.A. in Economics. But I didn’t have anything to do.” As I spoke, I could hear my voice hardening. I could feel bitterness rising like bile.

“The worst part of getting divorced,” she answered, “is the realization that you can sum up your whole marriage in just a few sentences.” She spoke very softly. “It’s so—so pat. So damn easy. It’s like describing something that happened to a stranger.”

“Yes.” I looked at her. She was staring past me, lost in saddened memory. I studied her profile: the rounded curve of her forehead, the angle of her small, straight nose, the determined chin beneath a firm, self-sufficient mouth. After the first time we’d made love, I’d propped myself on my elbow beside her and watched her as she slept, her profile outlined against the soft rectangular glow from the sliding glass doors that opened on my small bedroom balcony. In my memory, away from her, I could recall her profile perfectly.

But did I know her? Did she know me?

Would it ever happen that, someday, our story could be summed up in a few pat sentences?

She was turning to face me, and when I saw her eyes I realized that, momentarily, her thoughts matched mine.

Slowly, with grave affection, she kissed me.

“Good night, Frank. Enjoy the cabin, you and Darrell.”

I held her close, then let her go. I watched her walk to her door, turn the lock and swing the door open. She stood briefly in the doorway, waving to me. Then she stepped quickly inside.

Nine

“THERE IT IS”—I pointed—“Long Valley Road.” I flipped my turn indicator, slowing the car. Behind us, a recreational vehicle loomed in my rearview mirror like a huge aluminum box, following too close. Cautiously eying the van, I braked for the left turn.

“How far do we go on this road?” I asked.

Darrell unfolded the map Ann had drawn for us. “Seven-point-eight miles. Then we turn to the right.”

I glanced at the odometer. “The mileage is two-point-three now, so …” I frowned, then decided to say, “You figure it out.”

He took a pencil from the glove compartment and began marking numbers on one corner of the map. Finally: “Ten-point-one, it would be.”

“Ten-point-one,” I repeated, glancing at my watch. The time was almost seven-thirty, and already the shadows were lengthening. We hadn’t finished packing until almost noon. Hamburgers at a crowded McDonald’s had taken almost an hour, and we’d lost another two hours at Napa, buying gas, food, camping supplies, film and, finally, ice-cream cones. A four-hour drive from San Francisco had turned out to be seven and a half hours, and we hadn’t yet arrived at Ann’s cabin, still almost ten miles away. Now, driving at reduced speed along back roads, we wouldn’t arrive until eight o’clock, with less than an hour of daylight left in which to get settled. On the back of her map, Ann had listed what had to be done: fill the kerosene lamps, fill the white gas stove, pump enough water from an outside well to last until morning and—finally—“check the outhouse for T.P.” After that was accomplished, we could cook dinner: baked beans from a can, steaks and corn on the cob—assuming I could get the “tricky” stove to function. Then it would be necessary to reclaim the cabin—and the beds—from mice, Ann had warned. But the real problem, she’d continued solemnly, was rattlesnakes. Because the snakes ate the mice. So, every morning, we were to hang our sleeping bags outside, upside down …

“Look.” Darrell was pointing down a long, gentle slope that stretched to a small stream on our right. “Deer.”

Following his gesture, I saw a doe and three fawns. The four deer were going single file toward the stream that flowed beside the road. They were walking with high, delicate steps through the underbrush.

“Have you ever seen deer before?” As I said it, I glanced in my rearview mirror. With Keller on my mind, I’d been watching my backtrail for a white Chevrolet—especially now, traveling this narrow county road, where he would be exposed. But, behind us, the road was deserted.

“Sure, I’ve seen deer,” Darrell answered. “At Camp Tawonga, we saw deer almost every morning.” There was a faint note of vexation in his voice, as if I’d suggested some deficiency in his experience. Earlier in the day, first packing and then, later, buying supplies, he’d been communicative, plainly excited by the prospect of the trip. He’d talked especially of fishing—of catching enough fish for all of our dinners. But since leaving Napa he’d hardly spoken. For the past several miles, sitting silently beside him, I’d tried to remember whether I’d said anything to offend him—whether, unconsciously, I’d criticized Carolyn. I’d discovered, years ago, that Darrell wouldn’t listen to any criticism of his mother, however veiled—however justified. He was right, I realized—which made me wrong. I only hoped that he was even-handed listening to Carolyn’s inevitable attacks on me.

On the road ahead, a jeepload of hunters rounded a curve and came toward us. Each man held a rifle. Glancing at the carelessly pointed weapons and at two of the men sitting with legs dangling over the jeep’s side like children on a holiday, I thought of Ann’s comment: boys, playing war. One of the men, riding behind the driver, gestured toward the four deer. Instantly, the driver braked, stopping on the pavement. As we passed them, I saw the driver lift a pint of whiskey to his mouth. He was a big man with burly shoulders and a huge, bulging stomach. He wore a red cap and a cartridge belt slung diagonally across his white, hairless chest. I wondered whether he knew that drinking in or around an automobile was a misdemeanor—or whether he cared.

“What kind’ve guns have they got?” Darrell asked.

I looked back over my shoulder. “I don’t know exactly. But they look powerful. Too powerful, for terrain like this.”

Darrell twisted in his seat, watching the hunters until the jeep disappeared around a curve. Then he asked, “Have you ever shot a rifle?”

From the particular tentative tone of the question, I knew that he was really asking whether I’d ever used a rifle in the line of duty.

“No,” I answered. “Rifles are very seldom used in police work. And, when they are used, they’re always fired by specially trained men.”

“Why?”

“Because a rifle has enormous power. So you’ve got to be very sure that you’re going to hit what you’re aiming at. You’ve got to be sure of your background, too. Otherwise, someone’s in for trouble.”

“What about pistols, though? They’re powerful, aren’t they? What about a .357 Magnum? Canelli said one of them could go through a car.”

“A pistol is designed for stopping power at close range,” I answered. “A pistol cartridge has a large bullet, compared to its powder charge. A rifle is just the opposite. It’s got a relatively small bullet propelled by a huge powder charge. So a rifle has three or four times the range of a pistol.”

“What’s ‘range’ mean?” Darrell asked.

“It means the distance at which the weapon can kill someone,” I answered quietly.

“Oh.”

We rode for a half-mile in silence. The road was narrowing; its asphalt surface was rough and uneven. The terrain was changing, too, the farther we went north into Long Valley. Tall oak and pine trees grew close beside the road, blocking out the evening sun. The odometer read seven. We’d gone almost five miles on the county road.

“You know a lot about guns,” Darrell said. He spoke casually. It was a comment, not a compliment.

“Guns are my business.”

Another silence, until finally he said, “Mom won’t let me have a gun. She won’t even let me buy one with my own money.”

I hesitated, then decided to say, “She’s probably right, Darrell. Guns are dangerous. Thousands—millions—of people would be alive right now, if it weren’t for guns.”

“Not you, though.”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t have a gun.”

“I don’t use a gun from choice, though. I use one for self-protection, because everyone else can get a gun. Anyone in San Francisco with two hundred dollars can go down to the Tenderloin and buy a gun, no questions asked. That’s why I carry a gun.”

“In England, Mom says, the police don’t carry guns.”

“That’s true. Or, anyhow, mostly true. But England is a lot more civilized country than America. It’s a sad commentary, but it’s true. And America is getting worse, not better. In San Francisco, in the last ten years, the homicide rate has doubled.”

“Maybe it’s TV.”

I shook my head, “A lot of people blame TV. But if you’ve read your history, you know there’s always been violence. In the eighteen hundreds, everyone carried a weapon. There might not’ve been as much meaningless crime as we have today, but there was a lot of robbery, and a lot more just plain assaults. It was the way they settled things then. If you read a biography of Lincoln, for instance, you’ll see that fights and knifings and shootings happened constantly. They were a way of life. You couldn’t take a stagecoach without worrying about getting robbed. And if you were the wrong color—or even if you weren’t—you could get lynched. We criticize some Arab countries for cutting off a thief’s hand. But a hundred years ago, we lynched people for stealing a few head of cattle, or a horse.”

“Canelli says the trouble is that people are unhappy. So then they start taking heroin. And then they’ve got to rob people so they can buy heroin.”

I smiled. “That sounds like Canelli.”

“Is he wrong?”

“No, he’s not wrong, especially. He’s probably right. Except that people have been trying to figure out how to be happy for a long, long while.”

“Canelli says there’s no more”—momentarily he hesitated—“no more family life. That’s why people are unhappy, he says. Because of all the—” His hesitation was plainly painful. “All the divorce and everything.”

“I can’t argue with that,” I said quietly.

After another silence—another uncomfortable two miles—Darrell offered: “Canelli is a pretty good shot. He scored eighty out of a hundred yesterday, shooting.”

Recalling the scene in the reception room the day before, with Keller seated next to Darrell, I said, “Do you remember that older man who was sitting beside you when you and Canelli were waiting for me yesterday?”

“The skinny one, with the real pale face and the funny eyes?”

“That’s the one. Did he talk to you?”

“He only said something about policemen and police stations. He was mumbling, sort of, to himself. Like he was crazy, or something.”

“He didn’t talk to you, though. Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Darrell answered. “He was just talking to himself, like I said.”

“What’d he say? Do you remember anything particular?” As I spoke, I glanced at the odometer. We were within a half-mile of the last turnoff.

“No. But Canelli and me, we were talking about fishing, so I didn’t pay any attention. Canelli was telling me how he catches catfish. Him and Gracie. She’s his girlfriend. You just use bread dough, Canelli says.”

I pointed to Ann’s map, lying on the seat between us. “What do we do now?”

He picked up the map. “We turn right on a graveled road and we go for six tenths of a mile. And then we’re there.”

Nodding, I slowed the car. The odometer read exactly ten miles. Ahead I saw a break in the trees and the beginning of the graveled road. At the same moment, an orange pickup truck rounded the curve, coming toward us. As the truck approached, I saw two lever-action Winchester carbines in a rack across the cab’s rear window. Two men were inside the cab, both wearing Stetsons. As I signaled for my turn, the truck began to slow. The driver was adjusting his speed to match mine, so that we would inch past each other at the intersection. Inside the cab I saw two impassive, weatherbeaten faces. Both men were staring at me with expressionless eyes. I nodded, half smiled and made my turn. In the mirror, I saw the strange truck slowly disappear behind the screen of trees that lined the road.

“Those men look like they’re mad at us,” Darrell said.

“They’re probably local ranchers. Ann warned me about them. They’re on the lookout for hunters and trespassers, probably. And hippies, too. Ann says that during the past several years hippies have discovered Long Valley. They find an empty cabin, and break in and stay for a week or two. Then they’ll move on.”

“I know. That happens in Michigan. A neighbor of ours—Doctor Ralston—found eight people living in their summer cabin. They really wrecked the place.”

“Did he call the sheriff?”

“No. He shot at them.”

“What?”

“He did, no fooling.” For the first time in hours, I heard animation in his voice. “He had a shotgun with him, and he took it out of the car and shot at them. But all he hit was a big picture window, he said. It cost four hundred dollars.”

“That’s what happens when people take the law into their own hands. He should’ve gone for the sheriff.”

“Are they supposed to carry guns like that?”

“Your friend?”

“No. Those men in the orange truck.”

I nodded. “As long as they don’t conceal it, they can carry a gun.”

“Even a pistol?”

“If it isn’t concealed, yes.”

“Could they carry one in San Francisco, even?”

“Even in San Francisco—technically. If you carry it in plain sight, in a holster, you aren’t breaking the law—provided that you’ve got a permit to own the gun. In practice, though, you wouldn’t get very far carrying a gun on your hip.”

As I spoke, I checked the odometer. We’d come almost five tenths of a mile down the narrow, rutted gravel road. According to the map, we’d almost arrived at Ann’s driveway, marked by a gate made of rough redwood timber. She’d told me how to unfasten the latch. Her family had discovered, she’d said, that a chain and padlock were targets for vandalism—a challenge, apparently.

“There’s the gate”—Darrell pointed—“but why’s it open?”

“Open?” I looked up. A narrow dirt driveway disappeared in thick-growing trees and underbrush. The gate was open wide. I drove through and got out of the car. As I’d feared, twilight was deepening to darkness among the trees that surrounded us; we’d be hard pressed to finish our chores before complete darkness descended. I swung the gate shut and checked the latch. There was no sign of jimmying, but the concealed spike Ann had described was missing, allowing the gate to swing freely open when the latch was tripped. Someone had solved the mechanical riddle. Had it been pranksters? Squatters? Hunters, perhaps?

I stood beside the car for a moment, looking around us. From the direction of the county road, a half-mile away, I heard the faint sound of a car. From overhead came the distant muttering of an invisible airplane. In the nearby underbrush, I heard the scurrying of an animal. Otherwise, the silence was complete. I could see nothing stirring, either on the narrow access road or down Ann’s dirt driveway.

“What’s wrong?” Darrell was asking.

“Someone discovered how to open the gate.” I slipped behind the steering wheel and put the car in gear.

We were moving slowly down the driveway. At the first turn, I saw the cabin: brown-shingled and redwood-trimmed, situated in a sizable clearing.

In the large window that fronted on the driveway, I saw the soft, orange-yellow glow of a kerosene lamp.

Ten

“HEY.” DARRELL POINTED. “LOOK. There’s someone in there.”

“I know.”

“Who is it, anyhow?”

“Someone in Ann’s family, maybe. Someone who doesn’t know we’re coming.”

But Ann’s only surviving relative was a brother who lived in Connecticut.

“You mean we won’t be able to use the cabin?” Disappointment was plain in Darrell’s voice.

“We’ll use it,” I answered. “It may take a little persuasion, but we’ll use it.” In the clearing now, I turned into a graveled parking area and switched off the engine. Inside the cabin, I saw a figure move between the lamplight and the curtained window. Darkness was coming faster now; the trees surrounding the clearing were black against the deepening blue of the sky.

“What’re we going to do?” Darrell asked.

“Let’s just sit for a minute, and see if they come out.” Automatically, I was applying police procedure: an officer must never surrender the advantage of cover.

“It’ll be dark in a minute. All the way dark.” Darrell’s voice was hushed. Glancing aside, I saw him looking at the cabin. His eyes were large and somber, and he swallowed nervously—once, twice. I returned my gaze to the cabin. From our angle I could see the front of the cabin and one side. The large window was set in the front, close beside the door. A smaller window was set in the side wall. The smaller window was dark. The large window, lighted, was draped with cottage-style curtains that covered only the bottom two thirds of the window. As I watched, I saw another shadow move across the curtains, but nothing was visible through the clear glass above the curtain rod. Was someone ducking down to avoid being seen? I couldn’t be sure. Did he—or they—know we were outside? Almost certainly, they did.

It was possible that they were frightened—that they thought we were intruders, come to harm them. But still, they themselves were on the premises illegally—unless they had permission from Ann’s brother, an unlikely prospect.

The seconds lengthened into one minute, then into two. I thought of my revolver and handcuffs, packed in a duffle bag and locked in the car’s trunk. Normally, on duty and off, I carried my gun and cuffs. But the summer temperature was in the nineties; I was wearing only a light shirt and khaki trousers. For that reason—convenience—I’d packed the gun and cuffs instead of wearing them. But there was another reason. During these two weeks, I wanted to feel like a father, not a cop.

I opened my door. At the same time, Darrell’s hand moved hesitantly toward the handle of his own door.

“I’ll go have a look,” I said, swinging the door open. Then: “Why don’t you stay here?”

“I’ll come.” It was something he’d forced himself to say. But, still, he’d said it.

“There’s no need. I’ll go see what they say.”

“Well—okay.”

“Stay in the car.” In my voice, I heard a note of command.

“Okay.”

As I walked toward the cabin, I thought again of my gun: a .38 Colt Cobra with a two-inch barrel. I’d worn the gun for twelve years. At first, when I’d been a patrolman, I’d only carried the Cobra when I’d been off-duty, concealed. Later, after I’d made detective, I’d carried it constantly, day and night. After twelve years, the gun had become an extension of my body—and of myself. In twelve years, I’d never faced danger without that reassuring weight on my hip.

The cabin’s porch creaked and sagged under my weight. The door rattled when I knocked.

Inside, I heard soft, furtive sounds: a scurry of movement, and urgent voices whispering. Suddenly I sensed that this was the beginning of a desperate ritual that, over the past twelve years, had become an inexorable part of my job—and of my life. First came the official knock, then the moment of shocked, guilty silence from beyond the door, often followed by the sounds of flight—followed, in turn, by the sounds of a door splintering, and policemen shouting.

As I unconsciously stepped back, balancing myself, I heard a male voice say “Who’s out there?”

“My name is Frank Hastings. Open the door.”

“What’d you want?”

“I want to talk to you. Open the door.” Now I moved forward, hand extended toward the doorknob. At the same moment, the door swung open. I was facing a broadly built, thick-necked youth. He wore only beltless blue jeans slung so low on his stocky hips that I could see the top of his pubic hair. His shoulder-length hair was a dark, dirty blond, tangled and greasy. His face was darkened by a two-day stubble of beard. A tattooed dragon was coiled around his left bicep. Like his torso, his face was broad and muscle-bunched. His eyes were barely visible beneath heavy brows. His jaw was heavy, his large mouth was slack and sullen. It was a closed, hostile face. His age, I judged, was about twenty-two. A slim, dark-haired girl stood just behind him. Framed on either side by the straight, severe line of hair, her sallow face was angular, tense and tightly drawn. Peering around the man’s shoulder, her dark eyes glittered in the dim golden light of the kerosene lamp. The girl looked ill—or spaced out, or both. Her mouth was twitching, as if she were muttering angrily to herself. She looked unpredictable—and dangerous.

“What’s your name?” As I asked the question, I stared at the man, hard. It was a policeman’s ploy. In a confrontation, you must take the initiative—exert the authority of the law. And demanding a name—a means of identification—is the best first step.

I saw his eyes blink balefully—saw the slack mouth tighten. “My name’s Marsh. Billy Marsh. Who the hell’re you?”

“Do you know the owners of this cabin?”

Again he blinked, this time uncertainly. But the big fists remained truculently hip-propped. Across his broad, hair-matted chest, muscles tightened. The red-and-blue dragon was in motion.

“Sure, we know the owner,” he said. “What’d you think, anyhow?”

“Who’s the owner, then?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“It’s my business,” I said, speaking slowly, “because the owner is a very good friend of mine. And I—we—are here with the owner’s permission.” As I spoke, I looked beyond the hulking man and the girl with the feverish eyes. The living room was a shambles, littered with food, clothing, bottles and blankets. They’d put a double mattress on the floor. For the first time, I saw a third person—a girl, stretched out on the mattress. She’d pulled a dirty blue blanket across her torso and hips. Underneath the blanket, she was obviously naked. She was propped on one elbow, staring at me. Her face was a pale triangle beneath a tangle of thick blond hair. Her generously shaped mouth was moving uncertainly, alternately pursed in an adolescent pout, then twisted in a silent curse. She probably wasn’t more than eighteen. Her bare shoulders were provocatively shaped; her legs were slim, elegantly long. If her hair had been combed, and her face had been washed, and her eyes had been bright, she would have been pretty, even beautiful. But her face was dirty and her complexion was bad. Her grimy fingernails were broken. Her eyes were dull, smudged by teen-age disaffection and despair—and doubtless the drugs that followed.

The three of them, I knew, could be trouble.

Again looking Marsh hard in the eye, I slowly reached toward my hip pocket for my billfold. I saw his eyes flicker, following the movement. They were streetfighter’s eyes, wary and shrewd. With the wallet in my hand, still moving with cautious deliberation, I showed him my shield.

“My name is Lieutenant Frank Hastings, San Francisco Police Department. And I’m telling you—ordering you—to vacate these premises. Now. Right now.”

His mouth twisted in a loose, leering grin. I knew that grin. I’d seen it on a thousand street corners, in a hundred holding cells.

“Badges are cheap,” he said. “A friend of mine bought one for ten dollars once—a real one. And, besides, this isn’t San Francisco. And this isn’t your cabin, either. You already said it wasn’t.”

As Marsh spoke, the dark-haired girl moved out from behind him. She wore a ragged, oversize workshirt that ended halfway down her naked thighs. Her feet were bare. In her right hand she held a switchblade knife, open. She held the knife low and steady—a knife fighter, ready to cut. With her left hand she brushed the long, witch’s hair from her face. Now her eyes shone with bright, avid expectation. Provoked, she would come for me—for the fun of it.

I nipped my wallet shut and used my left hand to return it to my hip pocket. With my right hand, slowly, I pointed to the knife.

“That’s illegal, miss. Dangerous, too.” She didn’t answer. Gripping the knife, her knuckles whitened. She took a half-step toward me. Without taking his eyes from mine, Marsh moved to his right, giving her room. The man and the girl were crouching, ready to move together. On the mattress, the blond girl’s tongue was rapidly circling her half-parted lips. She was giggling.

Standing with my hands loose at my sides, I spoke in a quiet, conversational voice, looking directly at Marsh: “I’m going to give the three of you a chance you don’t deserve, Billy. I’m going to let you leave here, no questions asked. I’m going to forget that”—I pointed to the knife—“for about ten minutes, I’m going to forget it. But after that, Billy, it’s your ass. Do you understand?”

“Aw, Jesus—” He shook his head, mocking me with a crude imitation of wide-eyed, slack-jawed fear. “Jesus, I’m scared.” He put up his hands, palms toward me, burlesquing a gesture of pleading pacification. “I’m really scared. I see you got your whole police force out there. All one of him. How old is he, anyhow? Twelve?”

Involuntarily, I looked over my shoulder. Plainly uncertain, Darrell was standing beside my car. He’d disregarded my order to stay out of sight. There was just enough light left to expose him as a youngster.

Angrily, I turned on Marsh. “Listen, you degenerate son of a bitch. I’m going back to my car, and I’m going to start unpacking my gear. And by the time I finish unpacking, you’d better be ready to get out of here. Because that’s where you’re going—out of here.”

Immediately I whirled, facing Darrell. I was walking toward him—fast. As I walked, I strained to see his face in the fading light. If they tried to rush me, I would hear their footsteps. If they tried to sneak up on me, Darrel would react. I heard nothing, saw nothing in Darrell’s face. Second by second—yard by yard—I was escaping Marsh’s fists and the girl’s knife. Now the car was ten yards away. Five. Wide-eyed, Darrell was standing beside the left front fender. He reached out, as if to help me.

“Get in the car,” I hissed. “Now.”

Quickly, I stooped to snatch the ignition keys through the open window. As I did, Darrell slipped into the car, in the front seat.

“Roll up the windows and lock the doors,” I said. “And stay inside. No matter what happens, stay inside. And this time, do it, dammit. Do as you’re told.”

I caught a glimpse of his wounded expression. I opened my mouth to say something to him. But through the windshield, I saw Billy Marsh and the dark-haired girl standing together on the front porch, staring in our direction. The blond girl stood in the open doorway behind them, her naked body limned in the soft lantern light. I could hear their voices but not their words. The dark-haired girl held her knife, with the blade pointed toward me. Crouched over the knife, her body was taut, as if some invisible restraint was all that kept her from attacking me.

“Remember,” I said, “Roll up the windows and lock the doors.” With the keys in my hand, I moved to the rear of the car, and the trunk. But as I tried to fit the key to the trunk’s lock, I dropped my key ring in the black shadow of the car. Across the clearing, I saw Marsh and the dark-haired girl step off the porch, advancing toward us. Something heavy dangled from Marsh’s hand like a thick, limp snake. It was a length of heavy chain. Could they see me, crouched behind the car? I didn’t know. The light was almost gone, but the sky was still a dark, twilight blue. I groped for the keys in the gravel, finally found them. The two intruders were closer now, halfway between the cabin and the car. Again I began fumbling with the keys in the trunk lock. I heard Marsh mutter something, heard the girl reply. Her voice was gleeful: a teen-ager, tittering. Something struck the car—the chain, clanging against the right front fender, on Darrell’s side. They were—

The key slipped into the lock, twisted. The trunk lid came up, spring loaded. Inside, the light was burned out. For months, I’d meant to replace it. In the abyss of the trunk I could see nothing.

“Hey, man. We decided you’re the one that’s going, not us. So let’s move it, eh?” Again the chain clanged against the car. My fingers touched the canvas of my duffle bag. Two zippers met in the center of the bag, secured by a small padlock. With the gun inside, I’d locked the bag. In the darkness of the trunk, I couldn’t fit a key to the padlock. I gripped the padlock, pulling with all my strength. The lock held firm. I braced myself, taking a fresh grip. Once more, I heaved. Fabric ripped; the padlock came free. In my right shoulder, I felt a stab of pain. I’d torn a muscle. The holstered revolver was at the bottom of the bag, and the cuffs. With both hands, I searched blindly through clothing, towels, cartons and plastic containers.

“Hey, here he is.” It was the girl’s voice, suddenly close beside me. “He’s right here, Billy. Right back here.” I saw her head outlined against the dark sky. I heard the muted sound of Marsh’s bare feet shuffling as he came toward me.

My fingers touched the gun. Instantly, rage surged through me like a shuddering convulsion. I held the holster with my left hand, used my right hand to pull the pistol free. I slammed down the trunk lid and sprang clear of the car. They stood on either side of the trunk, Marsh on the left side, the girl on the right. Crouching, they were advancing on me—slowly, cautiously. I pointed my gun at the ground between us, tightening my finger on the trigger. I felt the hammer rising.

But with the hammer about to fall, I slackened pressure on the trigger. The shot would frighten Darrel. Panicked, he might leave the car, endangering himself.

I raised the revolver, aimed at Marsh.

“This is a gun,” I breathed. “It’s a .38, you son of a bitch. And if you twitch, either one of you, it’ll be your last twitch. I promise you.” I pointed the gun at the girl, then again at Marsh.

“I don’t see any gun,” the girl said. Still holding the knife, she was coming toward me.

“I see it,” Marsh said. “I see it, Angie. Wait. Be cool.” He spoke quietly—a pro, calmly calculating the odds.

“Yeah, Angie.” I turned on her, at the same time backing away from them, to give myself room. At close range, the chain and knife could kill me—first me, then Darrell. “Yeah, it’s a gun, Angie. And it’s pointed right at your gut. And unless you drop that knife—now—you’ll die. Right here. Right now. I’ve done it for lots of others, and I’ll do it for you. Because that’s my kid inside the car. My son. And that means the two of you are going to die if you don’t do what I tell you.” As I spoke, I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. Blood roared in my ears. My voice, I knew, was too high, half hysterical. I was frightened, and fear shrilled in my voice. I’d never before faced danger quite like this—not alone, not surrounded by silence and shadows. Not with my son threatened. “Drop it,” I shouted.

The knife fell to the ground.

“Now back off. Get against the trunk. Move.”

With ominous deliberation, she was backing away from me. I turned the gun on Marsh.

“Now you, Marsh. Drop the chain. Step back, against the car.”

Clinking musically, the chain fell to the ground between us. At the sound, I felt my knees slacken, then begin to tremble. I knew that feeling. It was relief, the sudden, sickening backwash of fear. Sometimes it attacked the throat, closing off speech. Sometimes it attacked the bowels.

“He is a cop,” Marsh said. “He wasn’t jiving, after all.” He moved with easy, slack-shouldered insolence, casually leaning against my car. Win or lose, this was the game Billy Marsh lived to play. The girl, too.

“Now I want you to go back in that cabin,” I said, “and I want you to pack up. You’ve got five minutes. Exactly five minutes.”

“But where we going to go, man?” Marsh asked. He spoke in a soft, crooning whine. He would try to ingratiate himself now. Until he could catch me off-guard, he would ingratiate himself. “Where we going to go, without wheels?”

“That’s your problem. You came without wheels. Go without wheels.” As I spoke, I picked up the chain and whirled it into the nearby trees. The knife followed.

“No, man. Our wheels are—” He broke off.

“Your wheels are what?”

“Our wheels are gone. That’s what I’m telling you.” The whine was back in his voice. “They’re gone. We’re stranded.”

“Then I feel sorry for you, Marsh. Because that means you’ll have to take what you can and go. You’ll have to leave the rest. Squatters take a chance. You took a chance. You lost. Now move.”

For a moment both the man and the girl stood motionless, wordlessly weighing their chances against me—and the gun. I stepped a single pace closer to Marsh. Speaking very quietly so Darrell wouldn’t hear, I said, “If you don’t move—right now—I’m going to blow off your kneecap. Your right kneecap. For the rest of your life, your right leg will be stiff. Permanently.” As I spoke, I began to cock the gun. With my thumb drawing it back, the hammer made two small, precise clicks. I lined up the gun on his knee. The silence was broken only by the sound of uneven breathing—my breathing, and theirs. In the distance, an animal wailed.

I heard Marsh laugh: a harsh, dry sound in the darkness. I saw him turn and begin shambling toward the cottage. He was walking very slowly, to show he wasn’t afraid of me. The girl walked with him. In the cabin’s open doorway, I could still see the blond girl, naked in the lantern light. Waywardly, I wondered whether Darrell had ever seen a naked girl.

Easing off the hammer, I stood beside the car, watching them. Now they were standing on the porch. I saw Marsh gesture toward the doorway. A moment later, the door closed behind them.

Could they have a gun? Should I have gone inside, to guard them as they packed?

No. If I were confined with them, they might find a chance to rush me. It was better to take my chances outside, with the darkness for protection. If they had a gun—one gun—the odds would be no worse than even.

I walked to Darrell’s door, and rapped on the window. “Okay. It’s all over.”

Slowly, the window came down. “Can I get out?” His voice was low—chastened.

“Come on.” I stepped back, making room for the door to swing open. I realized that I was speaking curtly, as if I were talking to one of my subordinates.

We stood staring at the cabin. The car door was standing open; the interior light was on. I reached behind Darrell and pushed the door closed.

“Who are they, anyhow?” he asked.

“They’re drifters, squatters who broke into Ann’s cabin, and they’ve been living there.”

“Would they have—” He swallowed. “Would they have hurt you? That one—the lady—she had a knife.”

“If I hadn’t had the gun,” I answered, “we wouldn’t’ve stayed. I would’ve gotten in the car and taken off. So they wouldn’t’ve hurt us. Either way, they wouldn’t’ve hurt us.”

“Will they go? Are they leaving?”

“Yes, they’re leaving.” I realized that I still held my holster in my left hand, with the revolver in my right. I slipped the revolver into the holster, and clipped the gun to my belt. The weight was familiar: a secure, weary feeling. I was a cop again. It had been a short vacation.

Darrell watched me as I settled the gun on my hip. “You were sure mad at them,” he said suddenly. “You were sure swearing.”

In the darkness, I ruefully smiled. “It goes with the job, I’m afraid. Swearing, I mean. Swearing, and being a cop. When it’s all coming down—when everyone’s pointing guns, or fighting, or running—then there’s always an unbelievable amount of foul language.”

“Maybe it’s because everyone’s scared.”

I looked at him. “You’re right. When men are scared, they make noise. They swear.”

“It’s the same with kids, too.”

As we’d been talking, our voices had sunk lower. We were standing close together, staring at the cabin. It was, I realized, the first time since Darrell’s arrival that we’d talked to each other—really talked. Fear could accomplish that, too: make men friends, sometimes in seconds.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I offered. “About staying in the car, I mean. I didn’t want you outside, where they could grab you.”

“That’s okay.”

“There wasn’t time to explain. And besides … I was scared. So I started yelling.”

“You sure didn’t act scared.”

“Good. That’s what they were supposed to think—that I wasn’t scared. But the problem is, they didn’t act like they were scared, either.”

“I know.” His voice was hushed. He was looking toward the cabin as he spoke. His lips were parted, as if he were listening for some dim, distant sound. Then: “They really liked it, what was happening. You could tell.”

I felt a sudden, unaccountable rush of pleasure. He was thinking—using his head. Even in danger, he’d been calm enough to assess his antagonists—calculate his chances. “You’re right. You’re exactly right. And that’s what makes them dangerous. Nobody who’s normal wants to fight—to get hurt maybe. But people like that, they look for trouble—for pain, even. It’s how they get their kicks. That, and drugs.”

“Are they on drugs?”

“I think so.” I drew a deep, reluctant breath. It was time to go to work: “Now, listen, Darrell. I’m going to go and hurry them up. They’re taking too long.”

“But what if—” In the brightening moonlight, I saw him swallow. “What if they’ve got guns?”

“If they had guns, they would’ve used them, instead of a knife and a chain.”

“Yeah.” It was a dubious rejoinder.

“And, besides, I’ve got to make sure they aren’t wrecking Ann’s cabin. For all we know, they could be deciding, right now, to burn the cabin and escape out the back. Animals like that, anything’s possible. And I—we—can’t take the chance.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“So what I want you to do,” I said, “is what you did before—get back in the car, and stay put. No matter what happens, stay put.”

He turned to face me. “But what if they hurt you?”

“As long as I’ve got the gun, they aren’t going to hurt me. Remember, this is my business. I’m a cop. I’ve done this hundreds of times.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Even if they do give me some trouble,” I said, “it’s best that you stay in the car. Even if I go down, stay in the car—at least until you’re sure they’ve gone. Can you drive?”

“No.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have a CB radio. We could get the sheriff or somebody.”

Again I felt sudden pleasure. “It’s a good idea, but it wouldn’t work. For the police, CB is nothing but a big nuisance. Now, come on.” I opened the door. “Get inside, and stay put. We’ve got to cook dinner yet, and get settled.”

“Okay.”

The cabin was about a hundred feet away, across the wide clearing. Except for two large oak trees, there was no cover between the car and the cabin. I began walking slowly, making directly for the front porch. Inside, I saw Marsh’s head moving, disembodied above the living-room curtain. Then Angie appeared, then the blond girl. The three of them were facing each other, talking. Angie was waving her hands angrily. Marsh was stolidly shaking his head. The blonde was looking from one to the other, plainly confused.

I was halfway to the cabin, making a direct frontal approach. Suddenly I saw Angie disappear, then the blonde. Finally Marsh, too, was gone. The living room was deserted; no shadows moved across the big curtained window. They were in the back of the house.

Possibly to escape.

Drawing my revolver, I moved to my right, walking cautiously on the crunching gravel. Now I was within twenty feet of the cabin—ten feet—five.

Ahead, from the right side of the building, I heard a voice through an open window—the only window on that side. It was a girl’s voice, complaining: “But we can’t just leave. Not walking. Jesus, all I got is tennis shoes, for God’s sake.”

Making an indistinguishable reply, Marsh’s voice rasped at her.

“Yeah, well, screw you, too. Me, I’m waiting for Cha Cha. I’m not going out in no woods with tennis shoes. Not with those rattlesnakes, I’m not.”

It was the girl who’d been lying on the mattress, I realized—the blonde. It couldn’t be Angie—not this sullen, whining voice.

Cha Cha …

Who was Cha Cha?

Where was Cha Cha?

Standing close beside the small window, I looked back toward the car. I saw Darrell’s head move. I scanned the tree shadows on either side of the clearing. Nothing stirred.

Bending double, I moved beneath the window. I was on grass now; my steps were soundless. From the window above, I heard angry, urgent voices. Did they know I was outside? Had they seen me coming? Without cover, I’d been vulnerable, crossing the clearing from my car to the cabin.

Safely beyond the window, I went to the cabin’s rear corner. After a last long, searching look at the clearing, I stepped around the corner. I saw a small door stoop with windows on either side, both illuminated. I shifted the gun to my left hand, and moved to the back door, cautiously trying the knob. The knob turned freely; the door was unlocked.

“Hey!” It was the girl’s voice, from inside.

Instantly, I shouldered the door open. Across a small kitchen, the blond girl stood staring down at my revolver. Her eyes were wide; she was momentarily immobile. She wore a soiled white T-shirt and blue jeans. With one hand, she gripped a wooden counter top. The other hand was raised against me, as if to fend off a bullet.

“Hey, don’t! Please, man. We’re going. Don’t, man.”

“All right, then. Do it. Leave. Now.” As I advanced an angry two steps, she backed toward an inside door, still with her hand raised.

“We’re going!” Her glance fled toward a small refrigerator. “But I got to—” Her voice trailed off.

“You’ve got to do nothing. You’re going. Now.”

Marsh stood in the doorway beside her. He, too, was eying the gun. But his look registered calculation, not fear. He wanted the gun—wanted me. He carried a rolled-up sleeping bag.

I glanced around the kitchen, littered with bottles and cans. “I should make you clean up this mess.”

Marsh lifted his heavy shoulders, shrugging. “We’ll clean it up. Why not?” His voice was sly, falsely ingratiating; his eyes were veiled. He dropped the sleeping bag on the floor and moved toward me. As she watched him, I saw the girl’s eyes widen.

“Forget it.” I jerked the revolver. “Get your things and get out of here. You’re lucky I’m letting you take anything. I should just throw you out.”

“Aw, man”—Marsh stooped, picking up the sleeping bag—“you wouldn’t do that, now, would you?” His voice was still cloyed with the same phoney, jeering note of conciliation, but his eyes were watchful. Still clutching the sleeping bag, he moved a half-step closer. If he could reach me, he’d kill me.

“Get out.” Suddenly furious, I snatched an empty wine bottle from a table and threw it against the wall between them. The girl screamed. Marsh smiled.

“Police brutality,” he said softly.

“All right, Marsh—” I cocked the revolver. “We talked about your kneecap. So you know what’s coming.” I lowered the barrel, taking careful aim. “You’re a trespasser, and you came for me. So say goodbye to your knee.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Suddenly the girl moved, flinging herself past Marsh and through the doorway. “Jesus, forget it, Billy. It’s not worth it. Let’s split.”

“Forget what, Marsh?” I asked. “What’s on your mind? What’s she talking about?”

“Nothing’s on my mind,” he said. “Nothing but you, and how I’d like to take you on, without that gun in your hand.” His eyes were flat, his voice malicious. Whatever devious game he’d been playing was suddenly over. Once more, he wanted to fight.

“Outside, Marsh.” I followed him cautiously into the living room, where the two girls stood near the front door. A large backpack was propped against the wall. A canvas duffle bag was slung over Angie’s shoulder. They were traveling light. Either that, or they hadn’t stayed long.

“When did you get here?” I asked.

“Yesterday,” the blond girl answered.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Cara,” she answered. “Cara Holloway.” Her green eyes momentarily appraised me, sexually speculative. In the tight jeans, with the T-shirt taut across her breasts and her blond hair long and loose around her shoulders, she was a tousled, provocative beauty. I’d seen girls like Cara under the city’s streetlights, taking whatever came along. With their beauty, they destroyed themselves.

“If you’re smart, Cara, you’ll get rid of these two. Take a bath and go home. They’re headed for a lot of trouble. You aren’t. Not yet. But it’s not far away.”

The green eyes flattened, then fell. She picked up a bundle of blankets and a plastic shopping bag, then opened the front door. With the backpack slung over one shoulder, Angie followed. She’d put on a pair of tattered jeans and heavy-soled work shoes. Carrying his sleeping bag and a cheap suitcase, Marsh was the last one through the door.

“Walk single file, right down to the driveway,” I ordered. “Keep to your right, away from my car.”

“He’s worried about his kid.” Marsh chuckled malevolently. “Am I right, fuzz?”

“You’re right,” I answered. “I don’t want animals like you anywhere near him.”

I heard Angie snort, heard her say something to Cara. Both girls snickered.

“When you get to the road,” I said, “keep right on going. Don’t come back here. Because if I hear anything move tonight, or see anything, I’m going to start shooting—”

Through the sound of my own words, I heard another sound—an engine. In the next moment I saw headlights through the trees. A car was turning into Ann’s driveway.

Their wheels had returned.

Instinctively, I moved to the left, toward my car. “Keep going,” I said. “Just keep going. Stay in single file. This doesn’t change a thing. Nothing.” As I said it, the headlights swung into the driveway’s last turn. Their glare fell suddenly across the clearing, blinding me.

“Cha Cha!” Marsh shouted. “Get the gun. Get the goddam shotgun.” Then Marsh broke to his right, disappearing in the sudden shadows beyond the swath of headlight glare. Angie moved with him. Only Cara remained motionless, frozen. I heard brakes squeal, heard wheels slide on gravel. As the car slowed to a stop, the headlights still held me helpless.

I raised my revolver, firing once at the sound of Marsh’s voice as he screamed; “Shoot the bastard, Cha Cha. He’s got the stuff. Shoot him. Shoot both of them. He can’t see you. Shoot.”

Running in a crouch to my left, I shouted, “Get down, Darrell. Get below the windows.” An instant later, I was on my knees in the shadow of my car’s front end. I was safe—but helpless. I couldn’t leave Darrell. I couldn’t break for the trees—couldn’t maneuver, to attack from the darkness. I heard a confusion of shouts, and doors slamming. Then, distinctly, I heard Billy Marsh say, “Give me the shotgun, you chickenshit bastard. Give it to me.” As he spoke, the car’s engine roared. It was the loud, ragged clatter of an old, sick engine. Again wheels churned on gravel. Again the headlights began to swing—finally releasing me from their inexorable glare. Behind the moving lights, I saw the dim boxlike shape of a small van, light-colored, white or cream. As it continued to move, gathering speed, a rear door flew open.

“Duck, Darrell!” I shouted. “Get down!”

I saw a bright orange blossom of flame, heard a shotgun crash—once, twice. Shot rattled against my car—one burst, two. Then nothing.

Already, the van had made the first turn in the driveway. Now its lights shone intermittently between the trees. Its old, clattering engine-note was already fading. Instinctively, I raised my pistol—then lowered it. I’d already wasted one shot; only four live cartridges remained in the gun. And I’d left my box of extra cartridges at home, concealed in my shirt drawer.

“Are you all right, Darrell?”

“Yeah,” came the reply, muffled. Then, louder: “Yeah. I’m okay.”

I knew that he hadn’t been harmed. In the time it had taken Marsh to get the shotgun and open the rear door, the van had gone far enough to put the shotgun beyond lethal range. By accident or design, Cha Cha could have saved Darrell injury.

“Should I get out?” Darrell asked.

“Yes,” I answered, returning my gun to its holster. “Yes, get out.” As I moved to his side of the car, I felt my knees trembling. My throat was dry, my stomach was rumbling. Suddenly I was hungry. Getting out of the car, Darrell was moving slowly, cautiously. Now he stood beside the car, looking somberly in the direction of the county road. He was swallowing rapidly. His throat, too, was dry.

“Come on.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s find the flashlight and get this stuff inside—and then get something to eat, for God’s sake.”

It was, I realized, the first time I’d touched him since our quick perfunctory handshake at the airport, four long days ago.

For a moment we stood silently together, still with my hand on his shoulder. Then, without speaking, we moved toward the rear of the car.

Eleven

I TOSSED AN EMPTY spaghetti can into the plastic garbage container and closed the lid. Across the kitchen, Darrell was emptying brown paper bags of our food, arranging the contents on the wooden counter beside the sink.

“Where should I put this stuff?” he asked.

“How about one of those cupboards?” I pointed to three cabinets on the wall over a sideboard. “There’s probably less chance of mice, up high. And check for droppings before you leave the food inside. Also, let’s put as much as possible in the refrigerator. Because of the mice. Put the bread and cookies in—things like that.”

“How does the refrigerator run, without electricity?”

“On gas. Bottled gas. That’s one thing our friends did for us. They got the refrigerator started.”

“Do you think they’ll be back?”

“No, they won’t be back. They’ll find someplace else to squat. And eventually they’ll get into trouble with the law, and get picked up. That’s their way of life.”

“That man—Billy Marsh. He’s sure tough.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “He’s tough, all right. Tough, and sick.”

“Sick?”

“In the head.”

“Oh.” With a carton of milk in his hand, he opened the refrigerator. “Hey, they left some stuff in here.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Some bacon and eggs and a loaf of bread.”

“Let’s keep the eggs and throw the rest of it out. I don’t want to eat anything they touched.”

“Okay.” He put the milk in the refrigerator and withdrew a half-loaf of bread and a package of bacon, almost intact. He pried off the tight-fitting lid of the garbage container and threw the bread and bacon inside. Then: “Hey, there’s some other stuff, too. Some sugar, or salt.”

I smiled. “Which is it? Sugar or salt?”

“I don’t know. There’s only a little. It was in the package of bacon. Underneath.” He reached down inside the garbage container. Straightening, he extended his hand, palm up. He held a small plastic packet, folded into a neat oblong and secured by a rubber band. “Should I throw it away?”

Reluctantly, I held out my hand. “Give it to me.” I took the packet to the formica-topped kitchen table and opened it carefully. I put a moistened forefinger to the sparkling white crystals and gingerly touched the forefinger to my tongue-tip. The taste was unmistakable.

“What is it?” Darrell asked. He’d come to stand beside me. Now he moistened his own forefinger, reaching for the packet.

“No—” I put my hand on his arm. “No, don’t taste it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s cocaine.”

“Cocaine? No fooling?”

“No fooling,” I answered. “That’s what was bothering them all along.” I pointed to the small packet. “There must be ten thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine there. Maybe more.”

In the bunk above me, I heard Darrell shift in his sleeping bag, then sigh deeply. Was he still awake? I couldn’t be sure. Was he worried, frightened? Again, I couldn’t be sure. The time, I knew, was almost midnight. It had been ten o’clock before we’d eaten and cleaned the cabin and put our things away and finally arranged our sleeping bags. During that time, even though Darrell had questioned me about the cocaine and wondered worriedly aloud whether the intruders might come back for it, I’d deliberately avoided the subject. I’d probably made a mistake not taking him into my confidence—not admitting that, yes, I was worried, too. The discovery of the cocaine had changed everything. We were in danger now. I knew it, and so did Darrell. Because Billy Marsh would be back. He’d be back for the cocaine—and for me. And he’d bring the shotgun. All during the evening, eating and preparing for bed, I’d cautioned Darrell to stay away from the windows, even though I’d drawn the curtains. Until we’d finally blown out the kerosene lamps and slipped into our sleeping bags, I’d worn my gun at my belt—expecting, every second, that Billy would come crashing through a window.

Yet I hadn’t expressed my fears to Darrell.

I hadn’t confided to him that, logically, we should leave, pack up and escape. I’d been guilty of the same fault I’d found in Darrell. All day long, driving up from the city, I’d hoped that he would talk to me—really talk to me.

Yet now, this evening, it was I who hadn’t talked—really talked. Was it because I didn’t want to admit that I felt frightened—isolated, unsure? I didn’t know, couldn’t be sure. For years, I’d dealt with psychopathic punks like Billy Marsh. They’d never frightened me, never beaten me.

But I’d always had the advantage—in manpower and firepower and communications. I’d never been outnumbered and outgunned, cut off from all hope of help.

Cut off, at least, as long as we stayed in the cabin.

But, still, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to admit to my son that we must run from Billy Marsh. Because the admission would be a defeat I couldn’t afford—a debasement of my life.

“Are you still awake?” I asked softly.

For a moment he didn’t answer. Then: “Yes.”

“You’d better go to sleep. I’ll stay awake for a while. Just to make sure everything’s all right.”

“Okay.” I heard him yawn. “Good night.”

“Good night, Darrell.”

“Good night,” he repeated.

In less than a minute he was asleep, snoring lightly. I got out of my sleeping bag and stood for a moment beside the double bunk, looking down at Darrell. He lay with his head turned toward me. His lips were slightly parted, his eyes were moving beneath his eyelids. REM’s, the scientists called it—rapid eye movements. It meant that he was dreaming. In the dim light, I saw him swallow, saw his lips move. The contours of his face were softened by sleep. Awake, Darrell’s expression was normally closed. It was, I knew, a teen-age attempt at self-preservation, trying to mask the terrible vulnerabilities and aching fears of adolescence. But now, sleeping, his face was a boy’s: innocent, trusting.

For a last long moment I stood looking at him. Then, slowly, I bent double, drawing on my shoes and taking my revolver from the floor beside my bunk. I walked into the kitchen and tested the back door. Next, I went to the front room, where I stood five feet behind the large front window, looking out over the top of the curtains. From this position, without being seen, I could command a view of the entire clearing in front of the cabin. If they came by car, I’d see them. If they came on foot, through the woods, I might hear them. I’d decided to stand guard until 2 A.M. If they hadn’t come by then, the odds might favor me. At two o’clock, I’d decided, I would go to sleep on the couch in the living room.

At the thought, I yawned.

I stepped to the window and cautiously drew back the muslin curtains. The clearing beyond the window was illuminated by light from a moon that was almost full. I placed a straightback chair so that I could look out through the gap in the curtain. Because of the angle, seated, I couldn’t see the ground nearer than a hundred feet from the cabin. So, conceivably, they could come through the woods from either side and then crawl the last hundred feet. If they did, they could get to the front porch without being seen. But it was an unlikely possibility. Billy Marsh wouldn’t crawl. Whatever else he did, he wouldn’t crawl.

Again, I yawned. I was back on stakeout, doing what a cop hates most: endlessly watching and waiting, fighting boredom and loneliness while he wonders whether he’ll measure up during the final seconds, when it all comes down.

I moved the chair a foot closer to the window—and momentarily tensed when a floorboard creaked under my weight. I’d raised the large window a few inches, and from outside I could clearly hear the sounds of the night: animals crying, insects chirping. Occasionally I heard cars passing on the county road. Most of the cars came from the south, the direction of the state highway and the nearest town. On a Friday night, the residents of Long Valley would be returning from movies, or bars, or country-style dances and parties. The deer hunters, on the first night of their weekend, would be returning from the nearest liquor store. Even though the county road was less than a quarter-mile away, I couldn’t see the cars’ passing headlights—probably because, approaching the cabin, we’d come up a low rise, then dropped down behind it. Cars traveling along the county road were concealed behind the rise.

I shifted in the uncomfortable chair, yawned again and put my revolver on the floor beside me. I wore blue jeans and a short-sleeved sports shirt. Lying in the lower bunk, planning my strategy, I’d considered blackening my face and forearms. Because if they came, I must go outside and meet them; I couldn’t let them get as far as the house. I could still do it—still take some water outside, mix it with dirt, and blacken my skin. But somehow the precaution seemed undignified, or theatrical—or both. What had Ann said, describing the deer hunters so contemptuously? Boys, playing war, she’d said. That’s how it would feel, blackening myself—like a boy playing a foolish game.

Had I ever done it—played at war when I was a boy? I could hardly remember. During the last few years of my life, I’d somehow lost contact with most of my memories from childhood. I could remember scenes from my earliest years, and something from my adolescence. But the years between five and fifteen were fading fast. I’d always remembered the time I’d gone to kindergarten with a sling on my arm, and the time my father had given me a dime for an ice-cream cone—provided I had the courage to go into the ice-cream parlor and ask for it. Other moments from my first years were vividly inscribed in memory: a fight with a boy named Carl, and my mother mixing cake batter, and the dying agony of a neighbor’s dog, hit by a car.

But after those first years, the void began—and extended into my fourteenth year, when I’d come home from high school to find my mother sitting in the living room, staring down at a piece of paper she held crumpled in her lap. It was a letter from my father, scrawled in his untidy hand on a letterhead from his real estate office. Silently, with eyes streaming, my mother had handed me the letter. In just four short sentences, my father said that he was leaving her to be with a girl named Judith Winters. He hoped we’d be all right; he’d send us money—if he could. He loved both of us. He hoped we’d understand.

Three years later, in my senior year of high school, I’d been summoned to the principal’s office. I’d been wearing my letter sweater with four stripes and two stars. My mother had been alone in the office. The day before, she said, my father had died of a heart attack in Dallas. He’d been driving, and the car had gone off the road, rolled over and burned. Identification had been difficult.

In three years, we’d gotten three letters from him. Every Christmas, he sent me a check for twenty dollars. Sometimes he forgot my birthday.

I shifted on the uncomfortable chair, blinking the night back into focus. From the county road, from the south, I heard a motorcycle coming, fast. It was a noisy two-cycle engine, probably a dirt bike. The moon was past the center of the sky, sinking toward the dark line of trees on the western horizon. When it dropped behind the trees, the cabin would grow darker. To whose advantage—mine, or theirs? How would …

A car was coming, this one from the north, going toward town. In the silence, the engine was loud: a ragged, uneven clatter. I was leaning forward in the chair, straining to hear. Now the sound of the engine was slackening; the car was slowing, stopping—then starting again.

Through the trees, I saw a glow of headlights, then nothing. They’d turned into the graveled road leading to Ann’s driveway, then switched off their headlights. Now they were coming slowly down the driveway toward the cabin. Even though the engine was idling, its characteristic clattering note was unmistakable. It was Cha Cha’s van. They’d come for the cocaine.

I was at the front door, then outside, crouched on the porch. Quickly, I covered the distance to my own car, dropping to the ground behind it. I breathed deeply—then held my breath, listening. They were closer now, almost to the clearing. As I watched, the square shape of the van emerged from the shadows. With its loud engine and dim, boxlike shape, it could have been a combat vehicle, cautiously probing an enemy position. I left the shelter of my car and moved toward the line of trees that bordered the clearing. I was careful to keep my car between me and the van. In the moonlit clearing now, the van suddenly turned to the right, toward me. Crouching lower, I froze. I was still twenty feet from the trees. If they switched on the headlights, they’d discover me. And if I ran, even in darkness, they’d see the movement. I could only remain as I was: crouched down like an animal at bay. But now the van was backing up, turning sharply. Finally it moved forward again, this time heading back toward the road. Still with its engine idling, the van disappeared among the trees, going back down the driveway. But only for a few yards. I heard brakes squeak, heard the noisy engine die. Doors opened—and didn’t close. They’d positioned the van for a quick getaway. Now they were climbing out; I could hear hushed voices, and the sound of footsteps crunching on gravel.

I covered the remaining distance to the trees in a few long, silent strides. Immediately, underbrush tore at my trousers; branches stung my face. My footsteps crackled on dry leaves and snapping twigs. In the silence, the sound was deadly. Backing away, I was again in the clearing, skirting the trees as I moved toward the intruders. I must be near the driveway when they entered the clearing. I must be able to step in behind them, close enough to kill them if they tried to kill me. On the walnut grip of my revolver, my palm was slick with sweat. Suddenly the gun felt light in my hand—light and ineffectual, with only four live cartridges in the chamber. Four bullets—four enemies. The odds were impossible.

I stumbled over a fallen log—and touched off a sudden sharp, dry whirring: a vicious, deadly sound. I was frozen where I stood, held by a deep, primitive fear. It was a rattlesnake. I’d never before heard the sound. But I knew. Instinctively, I knew. Eyes staring in the darkness, I strained to see the snake. It was impossible; I didn’t know where to look. The sound of its rattling surrounded me. As I stood still, incapable of movement, I saw the four figures emerge from the driveway.

Had they heard the rattling? Would they turn toward the sound—toward me?

No. They were walking forward in an uneven line, making directly for the cabin. Angie was closest to me, a knife in her hand. Marsh was beside her, carrying a double-barreled shotgun. Cara was next, her hands not visible behind Marsh. The last one—Cha Cha—was on the far end. He carried a machete, or a bayonet. They’d spread out in a rough skirmish line. From Angie to Cha Cha, the distance was about twenty-five feet.

Close beside me—still surrounding me—the lethal whirring continued. Was the snake coiled, ready to strike? Was it in front of me, or behind me—to the left, or the right? I didn’t know, couldn’t decide. I couldn’t make myself move.

Don’t step on sticks, Ann had warned.

Making no effort to conceal themselves, the four intruders were steadily advancing on the cabin. They were almost in the center of the clearing now, still four abreast. Over the noise of the snake, I could hear the scuffing of their footsteps on the gravel. They made no effort at concealment or stealth. With a courage that was either real or drug-induced, they were making a direct frontal assault.

In another few moments they would be too far away, out of effective pistol range. I must move—must close the distance between us. Now.

I stepped forward one pace—then another. My body ached, braced against the touch of my foot on the wild, writhing body of the snake. Another step—and another.

And suddenly the whirring stopped. I was free.

I was stalking them. Taking two strides for one of theirs, I was quickly closing the distance between us. Another few feet, and I’d be in range. I saw Marsh turn his head to the left, heard him speak. Cha Cha nodded. Walking between them, Cara giggled. In Cha Cha’s hand, the machete gleamed in the moonlight. Cara, I saw, carried a knife.

I raised my pistol, aimed at the gravel between us—and fired.

“Freeze.”

The word sounded strange—hollow and desperate, lost in darkness and space.

I had three shots left.

“Freeze, goddammit! Don’t turn around. Freeze.”

But Marsh was turning—swinging the shotgun toward me in a slow, deliberate arc. I’d known he would do it. His whole life was behind the smooth, inexorable movement of the shotgun. I raised my revolver. In the darkness, the sights were invisible. The revolver’s two-inch barrel was on line with his thighs. I squeezed the trigger. The kicking pistol momentarily blocked out the target. But I heard a soft, angry exhalation, saw the long double barrel falter. Marsh began to mutter low, earnest obscenities.

I’d hit him. Thank God, I’d hit him.

“Drop the goddam gun!” It was my voice, screaming. “Drop it, or the next one goes in your chest.”

In agonizing slow motion, the shotgun’s muzzle began to lower. Less than half its deadly arc remained before I would have been its target—before I would have shot to kill.

“All right, Marsh. I warned you. Now here it is—in the chest.”

With a sudden movement, he hurled the gun away from him. It was a furiously petulant gesture—a child in a tantrum. Still softly muttering obscenities, he was holding his thigh with both hands. The bullet had struck muscle, not bone. He could walk. Limping, he could walk. My knees were shaking. My stomach heaved.

“Now the knives,” I said. “And the goddam machete. Drop them. Then get in your van and get out of here. And don’t come back.” I heard my voice cracking, ineffectually shrill. It was the sudden, shrieking release after fear.

Murmuring and swearing, they began their slow, ragged progress back to the van. The girls supported Marsh, one on either side. Cha Cha was ahead of them, almost to the border of trees. I moved to pick up the two knives and the machete.

I heard Billy Marsh say, “The mistake you’re making, pig, is letting us go. Because we’re coming back. Sure as you’re breathing, we’re coming back.”

Twelve

IT WAS ONE-THIRTY in the morning when I returned to the cabin. For the next hour, with the shotgun across my knees, I sat in the chair before the window, on guard. Then, no longer able to keep my eyes open, I got into my sleeping bag. For the rest of the night I slept in fitful snatches. I didn’t think they’d return—not without the shotgun. And not without Billy Marsh, obviously their leader. During my periods of wakefulness, listening for alien sounds, I made my plans. Tomorrow, we’d drive into town. I’d go to the local sheriff, identify myself and tell my story. I’d turn over the cocaine and get a receipt for it. Then I’d find a sporting goods store, where I’d buy a box of .38s and a box of twelve-gauge buckshot shells. After that, we would return to the cabin. If Darrell wanted to do it, we’d finish our vacation as planned. Except that now I’d be forced to take my revolver wherever I went. I’d take the shotgun in the trunk of the car. At night, I’d sleep with the shotgun on the floor beside my bed, cocked.

When I looked through the bedroom window and saw dawn breaking the next morning, I felt we were safe. Immediately, I sank into a deep, exhausted sleep. I woke suddenly, overcome by a sense of suffocating disorientation. I didn’t know where I was or what threatened me. For an instant I lay helpless, terrified by a presence I couldn’t see—fearful of something I couldn’t define. In the next instant, memory returned. I flung my hand over the side of my bunk. My groping fingers found the cold metal of the shotgun.

But something was still wrong. Terribly wrong. I looked up. Above me, there was no sag in Darrell’s bunk. My son was gone.

“Darrell!” Clumsily I groped for my sleeping bag’s zipper.

“Yeah?” From the kitchen, I heard the clink of crockery.

I let my head sink back on the pillow, momentarily surrendering to the luxury of relief. I heard Darrell’s footsteps approaching. Dressed in jeans and a plaid cotton shirt, he stood in the bedroom doorway. Sunshine came through the window, falling in a bright rectangle at his feet. It would be a beautiful day.

“Boy, you were sure sleeping. And snoring, too. You woke me up.”

I smiled ironically. “I had a big night.”

I said it without thinking—without having decided whether I should tell him what had happened last night. Then I realized that, having said it, I’d already made the decision. And, besides, the shotgun was in plain view.

Apparently Darrell hadn’t noticed the gun when he first got out of bed. But now, his eyes widened as he looked down at it.

“Did they—” He swallowed. Then, in a hushed voice he finished the question: “Did they come back?”

I unzipped my sleeping bag and swung my legs over the side of the bunk. “They came back about midnight. Maybe a little later.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, I picked up the shotgun and broke the breech. I took out the shells, closed the gun and tested the safety. Then I snapped both triggers. Apparently the gun was in good working order. I replaced the shells, closed the breech and set the safety.

“Don’t fool with this,” I said. “It’s loaded.”

“But what happened?” His voice rose a single plaintive note. It was an echo of impatient childhood pique.

“They came after the cocaine. But they weren’t very smart about it. I went outside and got behind them.” I hesitated, then decided to say, “I had to shoot Billy Marsh in the leg.” As I spoke, I remembered the dry, deadly whirring of the snake. Until that moment, incredibly, I’d forgotten the terrible fear I’d felt, standing motionless in the darkness as the rattling seemed to surround me.

Again, Darrell swallowed. “In the leg?” Now his eyes traveled to my holstered revolver, lying on the floor.

“He’s not hurt badly.” I stood up and propped the shotgun in a corner. Then I clipped the revolver to my belt.

“How about some breakfast?” I said. “I’ll tell you about it while we eat.”

I was washing the breakfast dishes while Darrell was filling two buckets with water from the pump. Through the kitchen window I could see him industriously working the handle of the old-fashioned cast-iron pump. He’d set the bucket on the ground beneath the pump, and some of the water was overshooting the pail.

“Hook the bucket on the faucet,” I called. “That’s what the bump on the faucet is for. You won’t waste water.”

He bent to lift the bucket—then straightened, empty-handed. He was looking intently in the direction of the driveway. Instinctively, I loosened my revolver in its holster as I went out through the back door. Three strides took me to the rear corner of the house; I looked around the corner.

Cara, the blond girl, was walking across the clearing toward the cabin. Her hands were empty. Her tight-fitting jeans and soiled T-shirt concealed nothing—and revealed everything. She walked with laggard, reluctant steps.

As I moved around the corner, I spoke quietly to Darrell: “Go inside. Get the shotgun. Go to the front door and open it. Stand just inside the door, holding the shotgun. Stand so she can see you. But remember—don’t put your fingers on the trigger. And especially don’t touch the safety catch. If there’s any trouble, slam the front door and lock it. Then go to the kitchen. I’ll come in through the kitchen door.”

He responded instantly—smoothly, competently, without the telltale jerkiness that reveals fear. I nodded to myself, watching him move. I was proud of him.

I waited until he was inside the cabin, then I began walking toward Cara. When she saw me, she immediately stopped walking and stood in the approximate center of the clearing. Carefully scanning the perimeter of the clearing, I advanced to the front corner of the cabin.

Could they have sent her as a decoy, to lure me to a preplanned position? Had they gotten another weapon—a rifle, perhaps?

“Come toward me.” As I spoke, I heard the front door open. Cara flinched as she looked toward the porch. Darrell had done his job.

“Keep coming.” I advanced a few steps, clearing the corner of the cabin. She stopped five or six feet from me. Her eyes moved nervously from me to the front door, then back to me.

“He’s got a shotgun,” she said. “Your kid.”

“And he can use it, too,” I lied. “He’s been shooting since he was six years old.”

As if to placate me, she slowly nodded, moving a tentative step closer.

“That’s far enough,” I said. “What’s it all about?”

“They sent me. They made me come.”

“I figured that. Why?”

“We …” Awkwardly, she gestured. She stood with her knees together, slightly pigeontoed. Squinting in the bright morning light, she seemed younger than she’d appeared last night, more vulnerable.

Or was she acting?

Last night, with a knife in her hand, she’d giggled as she advanced through the darkness toward the cabin. Had she been playing at a game last night—a different game than she was playing now?

I thought again of Ann’s description of the deer hunters playing war games—and of myself, last night, wondering whether I was playing the same game, for the same reasons.

Whatever Cara’s game, I know that it was clouded with post-adolescent fantasies, and drugs.

“We left something behind,” she said, “and we’ve got to have it back.”

“Where’re your friends?”

She moved her head toward the road. “Back there”—it was another awkward movement—“on the road.”

Good. They didn’t have weapons, then—didn’t intend to attack us. At least not now.

“Are they waiting for you?”

“Uh-huh.”

I allowed a moment to pass as I stared at her, watching her eyes drop uncertainly and her feet shuffle in the dirt. She’d combed her hair, and she might’ve washed her face. As she took a deep, uneasy breath, the soiled T-shirt drew taut across her breasts. She was a beautiful, tawny-haired animal. But she was corrupted. Like someone already possessed by the night, she was diminished by the bright sunshine in which she stood. The pale skin of her face was blotched by drugs and bad nutrition. Her eyes were furtive, as if she couldn’t bear the scrutiny of morning light.

I spoke slowly, deliberately: “I’ve got your cocaine,” I said. “In a few minutes, I’ll be taking it into town, to the sheriff. I’ll be traveling with my revolver and the shotgun. I’d advise you to be off the road when I leave. Because I’ll blast you if I see you. I’ll shoot out your tires. Then I’ll send the sheriff back for you.”

“But, Jesus—” Impulsively, she moved toward me. Pleading, her washed-out eyes sought mine. She raised her hands, as if to touch me. “Jesus, you don’t understand. That stuff, it’s Billy’s. And Billy, he’s like a wild man. He told me to get the stuff, when we were getting out of here last night. But I couldn’t get it, because you came in. But Billy, he blames me for losing the stuff. So if I don’t get the stuff back, he says, it’s my ass. And he means it, too. It’s my ass, for sure.” She spoke fervently, in a hushed voice. She was badly frightened.

“How’s Billy’s leg?” I asked.

“It’s starting to swell up. That’s what’s making him wild—that and the missing stuff.”

“Tell him to get to a doctor. Forget about the stuff. As far as he’s concerned, the stuff is gone.”

“But it’s my ass, I tell you.” Her voice broke on a high, hopeless note. “He’ll ruin me if I come back without the stuff. He already told me what he’ll do to me.” As she spoke, she began to shake her head, blinking. Then, as if she’d suddenly remembered some forgotten lines, she recited, “Listen, Billy says to tell you that you can keep half the stuff. We can split it, Billy says. You and me. Right now. Right here. Billy says it’s all right. No crap.”

“Sorry.”

“But, Jesus, you don’t understand. Billy’s going to get that stuff back. No matter how he has to do it, he’s going to get it back. Billy don’t give a shit. Once Billy makes up his mind, he don’t give a shit. He’ll either get the stuff back, or he’ll kill you.”

“In another day, all Billy’s going to think about is that leg of his. Tell him that.”

“I’m not going to get to tell Billy anything if I don’t have that stuff with me. I’m not going to be able to talk. Or move. Or do anything else.”

I considered what she’d said, watching her closely. Was she telling the truth? Would I be responsible for her getting beaten up, even killed? It was possible.

“If you like,” I said, “you can stay here. You can come into town with us, and I’ll turn you over to the sheriff.”

“The sheriff?” Once more, she blinked—this time as if she were unable to comprehend what I’d said.

“It’s the safest place for you, if you’re really worried about Billy. I’ll make a deal with the sheriff.”

“A deal?” Still she seemed puzzled.

“You’ve never been arrested, have you?”

Impatiently, she shook her head, at the same time glancing uneasily over her shoulder. In that moment, I decided that she wasn’t acting. To save her skin, she needed the cocaine.

“I’ll press minor charges,” I explained. “Breaking and entering, instead of assault on a police officer. They’ll detain you for a few days, and then they’ll drop the charges. You’ll be free. And by that time Billy will be gone.”

Sadly, she shook her head. “But you don’t understand.”

“I don’t?”

“No. See …” She took another step closer. I retreated a corresponding step, holding up a hand against her. I’d once been knifed by a fifteen-year-old girl with china-blue eyes and cornsilk hair.

“See, I’m with Billy. I’m his lady. Don’t you see?” Anxiously, she scanned my face.

I snorted, “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“And you’re Billy’s lady. Even if he threatens to beat you up, you’re still his lady. Is that what you’re saying?”

She nodded. Her eyes were guilelessly round.

“What I should do,” I said, “is take you into custody, for your own goddam good. You’re just a child. You shouldn’t be allowed out alone.”

I knew why I was suddenly so angry at her. It was because her vulnerability—her essential innocence—was the same as Darrell’s. They were both children, struggling.

Should I take her into town? For Cara, it might be the only hope. There could be an advantage for me, too. If Billy Marsh decided to make one last try for the cocaine, I’d have one of his crew. On the way to town, I could handcuff her.

I stepped forward. She backed away.

“Keep your fucking hands off me.” Sudden hatred blazed in her pale eyes. Her mouth twisted as she began spewing obscenities.

I chuckled. She’d been acting, then. It had all been a performance. And a skilled performance, at that. She’d almost conned me.

“Go back to your little friends, Cara. Tell them to split. Otherwise, I’ll blast your van. I’m leaving in five minutes, no more. If I see you, you’re screwed. Tell them.”

She took a last moment to call me every filthy name I’d ever heard, then turned away and began stalking across the clearing. In the tight-fitting jeans, her thighs and buttocks were superb.

Thirteen

AS MY CAR APPROACHED the tree-blinded intersection of the graveled road and the hard-top county road, I braked to a cautious stop and looked in both directions. There was no sign of the van. I’d put Darrell in the rear seat, with instructions to drop to the floor if there was trouble. The shotgun was propped beside me, its long double barrel coming almost even with the top of the passenger seat. My revolver was on the cushion beside me, unholstered.

I put the car in gear and was about to turn left across the county road when a pickup truck rounded the first curve to my right, coming toward me. As I braked, I recognized the same orange truck I’d encountered last evening—and the same figures inside, with their big-brimmed hats. The two Winchesters were in the rack across the cab’s rear window. Impatiently, I waited for the slow-moving truck to pass so that I could complete my turn and get under way. Sitting in a motionless car, surrounded by thick-growing trees and underbrush, Darrell and I were perfect targets for anyone hidden close-by.

Then I realized that the driver was slowing, as he’d done yesterday. He would creep past the intersection, insolently scrutinizing us. As he’d done yesterday.

“That’s the same truck we saw last night,” Darrell said.

“I know.”

With less than a hundred feet separating us, the driver suddenly swung across the road and came to a stop directly in front of me, blocking my path. At first I felt annoyed, then resigned, finally a little relieved. With witnesses on the scene, and armed witnesses at that, we were safer than we’d been only moments before.

I watched the door swing open. Moving with calculated deliberation, the driver stepped down to the pavement. When I saw him top to toe, I smiled to myself. He was a caricature of a Westerner’s idea of a Westerner, from his carefully crushed brown Stetson to his faded Levis to his dusty black high-heeled boots.

Completing the caricature, he wore a big-bore single-action revolver low on his right hip.

“Look at that big old gun,” Darrell said. “Wow!”

“A real cowboy,” I murmured.

“That’s for sure.”

I decided not to get out of my car. I didn’t like to have my way blocked. And I didn’t like grown men who dressed like cowboys and wore revolvers with eight-inch barrels and didn’t smile.

He nodded curtly to me, and I nodded curtly in return. He stopped about three feet from my window and stood with his booted feet braced wide apart, staring down at me. He was a spare, sinewy man. His face was seamed and browned by outdoor work. His nose was beaked, his cheekbones high and prominent. His mouth was drawn into a thin, uncompromising line. Beneath sun-bleached eyebrows, shaded by the Stetson, his small grey eyes were expressionless. It was a fair imitation of a gunfighter’s face.

“You coming from the Haywood place?” he asked.

“That’s right. I’m a friend of the Haywoods. We’re living there for a week.”

He nodded indifferently, as if he’d already discounted my explanation. He was staring into my car. For a moment, I didn’t realize what he was looking at so intently. Then I remembered the shotgun—and my revolver.

“You hunters?” he asked.

I hesitated. I didn’t like being questioned by strangers either.

“My name is Frank Hastings,” I said, meeting his cold, bleak stare. “This is my son Darrell. Who’re you?”

For a hostile moment he didn’t reply as he stared hard at Darrell, then at me. Finally he decided to say, “Virgil Cassiday.” He pointed to the shotgun. “There’s nothing in season around here for shotguns. Nothing at all.”

I countered with a question—and an implied explanation: “Have you seen four people, two men and two women, in an old white van with a noisy engine? They’ve been in the area for two or three days.”

He thought about it before he, too, countered with a question: “They friends of yours, those four? You meeting them or something?”

“They’re no friends of mine.” As I spoke, I saw the man in the truck lift a microphone to his mouth. Naturally, Virgil Cassiday and his friends would have CB radio. “They were squatting at the Haywood cabin,” I answered. “They gave us a lot of trouble last night. Incidentally, where’s the nearest sheriff’s office?”

“The county seat is in Lakeport.”

“That’s fifty miles from here. Isn’t there anything closer? A substation?”

“More like sixty to Lakeport, I’d say.” It was obvious that the thought grimly pleased him.

“Listen, Mr. Cassiday”—I reached in my pocket and withdrew my shield case—“I’m a police officer, a detective—from San Francisco. This is my son. And we’d appreciate some cooperation.”

His expression didn’t change as he looked at my shield. To Virgil Cassiday, obviously, all city folk were objects of contempt, regardless of their occupation.

“That explains the snubnose, I guess,” he said grudgingly, “but it doesn’t explain the shotgun.”

“As a matter of fact, I took that shotgun away from the punks in the white van. That’s what I’m trying to tell you—that they’re armed, and they’re dangerous. Now, I take it that you’re keeping an eye out for people who can cause you trouble. If that’s the case, I’m on your side. So you’ll be doing us both a favor if you tell me where I can find the nearest sheriff’s substation. There’s got to be one closer than Lakeport.”

Still, Cassiday wasn’t ready to help. “I got a report of shots fired around here last night,” he said accusingly.

I gritted my teeth. “There were shots fired. And when I find someone from the sheriff’s office, I’ll tell him about it.” I gestured to his truck. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be going.”

“You weren’t shining last night, were you?”

“What?” I let anger show in the question.

“Shining deer. Using a light to make them stand still, and then shooting them. That’s illegal, shining deer.”

“I’m not a deer hunter. I don’t believe in deer hunting. I’m a law officer, on vacation. Which is what I want to do: have a vacation. Now move your truck.” I put my car in gear, then decided to add, “Please.”

He didn’t budge. He simply stared at me. I took up the challenge and stared back. Suddenly he turned sharply away, his high-heeled boots grinding in the gravel.

“You can try Clearlake Highlands,” he said over his shoulder. “That’s fifteen miles, about.”

Clearlake Highlands was a typical tourist town, a random scattering of buildings arranged haphazardly along the eastern shore of Clear Lake, the largest natural lake in California. Garish signs lined the single main street like a succession of backstage scenery flats: Miniature Golf—Motel—Bait—Motel—Liquor—Motel—Ride ’Em—Motel—The Wagon Wheel—Motel. The traffic, too, was typical: camper vans, motorcycles, ordinary cars, a profusion of dusty pickups and several deer hunters’ jeeps. The sky was clear, the sun hot. Even beside the lake, at ten o’clock in the morning, the temperature was almost ninety. Clear Lake was a vast, placid blue, dotted with occasional sails and traced with the graceful white plumes that follow water skiers.

Ahead, I saw a SPORTING GOODS sign. I parked, went inside and bought the twelve-gauge buckshot shells and the .38 cartridges—after showing identification. From the clerk, I learned that the sheriff’s substation was five doors away, on the same side of the street. The clerk volunteered that, with luck, I’d find an assistant deputy. The regular deputy, he explained, was out of town, attending the funeral of his mother.

I thanked the clerk, and Darrell and I walked to the small storefront building that had been converted into a sheriff’s substation. Using paste-on gold letters, someone had done a poor job of printing L.C.S.D. on the big plate-glass window. Inside, behind a formica counter, I saw an overweight deputy lolling belly-up in a metal swivel chair. With his right hand, he held a phone to his ear. With the little finger of his left hand he was delicately probing his left ear. As we pushed open the door, the deputy carefully examined the tip of his little finger, then reinserted it in his ear. He nodded once to me, then swiveled his chair until he’d turned his back on me.

“I’ll tell you, Ced,” he drawled into the phone, “it’s the shits. I mean, I can guarantee you, for sure, that the minute I hang up this phone, it’ll start ringing. I mean the very second. And I can tell you, for sure, what they’ll be saying. ‘A hunter shot my cow,’ they’ll be saying. And ‘There’s some Hell’s Angels dragging the road in front of my place,’ and ‘My snot-nosed kid’s got a fishhook stuck through his finger,’ and on and on and on.” Each imitation was done in an identical nasal twang. Except for its higher pitch, the twang was indistinguishable from the deputy’s normal speaking voice.

“If you don’t count the Fourth,” the deputy continued, “or Labor Day, or opening day for those goddam hunters, then this is about the worst weekend of the year, because it’s only a week from opening day. And so Hagger goes to a funeral. I mean, Jesus, the funeral isn’t until Tuesday. I know that for a fact. And it’s only two hundred miles from here, where the funeral’s at. So I wish you’d tell me, Ced, why the hell Hagger had to leave today. I mean, I wish you’d tell me.”

Again examining the tip of his little finger, the deputy listened for a moment, shaking his head and sighing. Now he stroked his large, balding head. His complexion was ginger: a fringe of light reddish hair, a freckled face, a large, wet-lipped mouth. His eyes were a mild, moist blue; his eyebrows were sandy tufted. Even though his tie was loosened, his jowls almost concealed his collar. When I looked at him closely, I realized that he was only in his early thirties. But his heavy, dispirited manner suggested a man in his fifties. He probably weighed three hundred pounds.

“All right, Ced. Be good, now. See you, boy.” He hung up the phone and took a moment to paw aimlessly through the papers that littered his steel-topped desk. It was, I knew, a ploy. He wanted me to realize that he was a busy man. Finally, sighing deeply, he swiveled to face me.

“Yessir,” he drawled. “What can we do for you?”

I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to turn over the cocaine to him—not without a third officer present. So, instead, I simply identified myself and told my story, leaving out the cocaine. I also omitted the intruders’ second visit, and Billy Marsh’s wound. As I talked, the deputy repeatedly shook his head, clicking his teeth, still sighing deeply. He didn’t get up from his chair.

When I finished, he reached for a pad of paper on the desk, at the same time searching in a drawer for a pencil.

“These goddam hippies,” he said plaintively. “I tell you, they’re a bigger problem than the goddam hunters and the goddam cycle riders all put together. I imagine it’s the same in San Francisco, eh?”

“Not really,” I answered shortly.

“That’s right,” he said, finally finding a pencil. “You got the niggers. Which, thank God, we don’t have. I mean, not really. Fact is, the ones we get here—the niggers—they’re a whole lot better than the goddam white tourists, if you want the truth. There’s others don’t say so, but I do. I’m not predjudiced, see. I go by what people do, not the color of their skins. And I can tell you, the niggers we get here, they’re—”

His phone rang. Again turning his back to me, he took almost five minutes to copy down the details of a minor traffic accident, and another five minutes to relay the information to the state police, with embellishments. Finally he swiveled to face me.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s like I said, this goddam—” His phone rang.

“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned. “Listen, give me the license number. I’ll give it to the state police. That’s all I can do, anyhow.”

With the phone ringing incessantly, I explained that I didn’t have a license number, only a description. While he was taking a complaint that apparently involved a fight between a fry cook and a waitress, I left the storefront sheriff’s office, quietly closing the door. The deputy didn’t turn around.

“He’s sure not much of a policeman,” Darrell said as we got into our car. “And he’s fat as a hog, too.”

“You’re right.” Staring at the plate-glass window with its badly aligned paste-on letters, I spoke absently. Did I want to drive another forty-five miles to the county seat—ninety miles round trip, possibly to encounter more frustration?

Should I turn the cocaine over to the State Police? Their nearest barracks, I knew, was in Napa, sixty miles south, toward San Francisco.

I stared at the glove compartment, where the cocaine was hidden, folded in a roadmap. I could turn the cocaine in when I returned to San Francisco. I’d be breaking the law—but only a little. And aside from that slight risk, I’d lose nothing. It was obvious that I could expect no protection from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department.

“What’re we going to do?” Darrell asked.

I pointed to a nearby phone booth. “I’m going to go over there and give the State Police a description of the van and its occupants, and make an official complaint. Then I’m going to phone San Francisco, and tell Lieutenant Friedman to put the pressure on the State Police from his end. I’m also going to request that someone from San Francisco check the emergency hospitals in the area, on the chance that Billy Marsh got treatment. And then”—I pointed to a bait shop, across the street—“we’re going to get some worms, and we’re going to catch enough fish for dinner.”

Fourteen

I WATCHED THE BOBBER quiver—dip—suddenly disappear. I jerked the rod, felt a live, thumping underwater weight drag at the line—then nothing. The hook, I knew, was bare.

“Goddammit,” I muttered.

“You jerked it too soon,” Darrell whispered. “You got to let him take it first.”

In an hour, Darrell had caught three fish. I’d caught nothing.

“Where’d you learn to fish?” I asked.

“I learned two summers ago, when we went up to Walton Lake. Don taught me.”

Don—for almost ten years Carolyn’s husband, Darrell’s stepfather.

She’d divorced me to marry Don. She’d never admitted it. We’d never spoken about it. But I knew. A month before Carolyn told me that she wanted a divorce, I’d watched Carolyn and Don dancing together. We’d been at the country club that Carolyn’s father had helped to found. I’d seen Carolyn’s long, graceful fingers caress the back of his neck. Her fingernails had been painted an iridescent silver. Her eyes had been closed. The band had been playing a slow, sensuous version of “Night Train.”

“Is Don a good fisherman?” I asked the question quietly, tentatively. I didn’t want to know the answer. But I couldn’t keep myself from asking.

“Pretty good.” It was a diffident answer. Darrell and I never talked about Don. But my daughter, two years older than Darrell, had once told me that Darrell and Don couldn’t get along.

Yet Don had taught him to fish. It was a traditional father-and-son exchange, a ritual part of the American pioneer mystique. The father taught the son to hunt and fish and shoot and plow a straight furrow.

I turned my attention to the bobber, motionless in the water. We were fishing in Cache Creek, the stream that Ann had recommended. Darrell was sitting on the grassy bank. I was sitting on a fallen log, with the shotgun propped beside me. We’d been fishing for more than two hours, mostly in silence. But when we did talk, the conversation had been easy, unforced. We’d spoken very little about the events of last night. After I’d called both Friedman and the State Police, I’d felt reassured—in contact, once more, with the men and machines of law enforcement. Friedman had been amused, hearing that I’d encountered city-style hoodlums the first day of my vacation. The State Police had promised to put a special patrol on Long Valley Road. They’d also given me the location of the nearest phone to Ann’s cabin—it was Virgil Cassiday’s ranch.

I yawned—and felt an overwhelming need for sleep. Altogether, last night, I hadn’t slept more than a few hours. When we returned to the cabin, I decided, I’d sleep for an hour before dinner. Maybe two hours.

As I watched the bobber, half hypnotized by the movement of the water, fatigue overtook me with the suddenness of an anesthetic. My right shoulder ached where I’d torn a muscle ripping open the duffle bag. My whole body felt abused. I slid to the ground and used the log as a backrest, letting my eyes close. It was another tableau from American folklore: the father sleeping while the son fished, wide-eyed and alert.

How many father-and-son rituals had I missed during the last twelve years? I’d never know. On every Sunday of those twelve years, at five o’clock my time, eight o’clock Detroit time, I’d called Claudia and Darrell. Carolyn had always been good about stage-managing the phone calls when the children were very small and had nothing to say. Later, whenever one of the children wasn’t there at eight o’clock, she’d been good at making explanations. And dutifully she’d sent me copies of report cards, and class pictures and programs and, later, prom invitations.

She’d always been good about the amenities—the “social mucilage,” as she called it. Before we were married, she’d ordered two sizes of personalized stationery for us: notepaper, and full-size sheets, with matching envelopes. The thick, creamy paper had been deeply embossed with our names and the address of the four-bedroom house Carolyn’s father had given us for a wedding present. It had been an imitation Tudor: used brick and stucco trimmed in rough-cut timber and studded with fake spikes. I’d never felt at home in the house. And I’d always resented how much Carolyn’s father had felt at home there. The first time he’d dropped in, unannounced, he’d poured himself a drink and, uninvited, sank down in front of our oversize fireplace with a deep, proprietary sigh. The fireplace, he’d announced, had cost him four thousand dollars over the contractor’s bid. But, he’d continued, it was worth every penny. He’d always wanted an oversize fireplace.

It was while I was listening to him that I first realized our marriage had probably been a mistake.

Yet her father had always liked me. Characteristically, he knew exactly why. It was, he said, because I excelled at the same games he’d never been able to play: the hard-contact sports. Uncharacteristically, he volunteered the reason for his failure: he couldn’t bear the thought of getting hurt. He invariably introduced me as his “All-American son-in-law, the Lions’ best-running back.” He’d never accepted the fact that, as long as I’d played for the Lions, I’d never been better than second-string. In the pros, I just couldn’t hit hard enough—and they hit too hard. I flinched. My problem, I’d realized, was essentially the same as my father-in-law’s. We’d both flinched. The difference was that he’d flinched too soon. I’d flinched too late.

When an operation on my knee finally ended my career, I’d half expected Carolyn’s father to turn his back on me. Instead, he’d immediately given me a job with his company. He still slapped me on the shoulder, still called me his All-American son-in-law. The job was in “P.R.” Translation: I met important clients at the airport, and saw to their comforts and pleasures during their stay in Detroit. Almost invariably, the client’s first request was for a drink. The second was for a girl. So I drank with them, and arranged for their girls. I began to hate the job—and hate myself. And hate Carolyn, and hate her father. I began to hate Detroit, too. The city became a vast, dirty symbol of defeat.

To ease the ache, I began to drink more than my job required. Within a year, I couldn’t get through the day without liquor. When Carolyn told me she wanted a divorce, I was grateful that she didn’t mention my drinking.

Privately, I was also grateful that she’d asked for the divorce. It was, I knew, my only chance to escape certain ruin. If I could get out of Detroit—get back to San Francisco, where I was born—I might be able to save myself.

It had worked—barely worked.

I spent the first part of the next year fruitlessly looking for a job in San Francisco—and drinking. I spent the last half of the year in the police academy. I graduated to become the oldest rookie in my division. I was secretly ashamed of myself. So I drank. Then, one evening in April, my commanding officer knocked on the door of my apartment. He was there, he said, because we’d known each other since childhood. He’d gotten me into the academy, and finally on the force. Standing in the center of my living room, he gave me a choice: either quit drinking or resign. The speech had taken less than a minute. But it was enough. I quit.

I’d often wondered whether Carolyn knew she’d done me the favor of my life—that she’d done for me what I’d never have done for myself when she decided divorce was the only way out for us.

And I wondered whether we’d ever talk about it.

I opened my eyes. My bobber still floated on the water. Darrell was stretched out on the riverbank, propped on one elbow. His eyes were heavy.

“Want to call it a day?” I asked.

He raised one shoulder, shrugging. “In a little while, I guess.”

“You’ve got more patience than I have.”

“I caught more fish than you did.”

“So you’re having more fun. Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen”—I sat up straighter, rubbing my eyes—“do you want to stay in Lake County? Considering everything that’s happened?”

Again, he gave an abbreviated shrug. “I’d just as soon.” He thought about it a moment, staring at his bobber. Then, turning to me, he said, “You don’t think they’ll be back, do you?”

“No, I don’t. But that’s just a guess.”

“I don’t think they’ll be back either.”

“Then you want to stay. Is that it?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe tomorrow we can make arrangements to rent a couple of horses for the week. Ann told me about a farmer who lives ten miles up Long Valley from the cabin. He has four riding horses, she said.”

“For the whole week, you mean? Just for us?” Asking the question, his eyes brightened.

“We can try.”

“Hey, that’d be neat.”

“Have you ever done any horseback riding?”

“I went with Don once, on a vacation.”

Don again—canceling out yet another first father-and-son experience.

On a sudden irresistible impulse, I asked, “How do you and Don get along?”

Immediately, his eyes were veiled, his expression closed. As he returned his attention to his bobber, he mumbled, “All right, I guess.”

For a moment, I let silence lengthen between us while I absently massaged my aching shoulder. But then, driven by the memories that had intruded as I lay back against the log with my eyes closed, I found myself saying, “For a long time, whenever I’ve seen you, I’ve thought that—” I hesitated, uncertain how to go on. Then I took a deep breath and began blindly talking, hoping the words would come: “I’ve thought that I should tell you—should try to tell you—why I left Detroit. I—I don’t think I’ve ever told you, have I? Or even tried to.”

He didn’t answer—didn’t look at me. He swallowed, then the muscles of his face suddenly twitched, as if he’d experienced a brief spasm of pain.

“When your mother and I—any two people—when they decide to get a divorce,” I said haltingly, “it’s always a fifty-fifty proposition. I mean, it might seem, sometimes, that one person is more to blame than the other. It’s usually one person, for instance, who wants the divorce, even though both people are really at fault. And that’s what happened with your mother and me. She was the one who wanted the divorce. She wanted it for—” I broke off. I realized that I was shaking my head in a slow, helpless arc. As I talked, I’d dropped my eyes to the water. Darrell was also staring at the water. One from the other, sitting side by side, we were apart. But now I was committed. I must keep on with it.

“Your mother wanted the divorce for … her own reasons. I’ve never known—really known—what her reasons were. Maybe she didn’t know, either. I’ve discovered that people usually don’t know why they do things. They always think they know, but they usually don’t. Which doesn’t make what they do wrong …” My throat closed, choking off the rest. I waited until I could safely go on. Then, speaking more slowly: “And your mother wasn’t wrong about the divorce. Because I’d—” Again I broke off, this time searching for the words. “I’d lost my way, and your mother knew it. All my life, I’d played football. Your mother and I got married while I was playing for the Lions. I don’t think, when we got married, that either of us knew who we really were. That might not make much sense to you now—but someday it will, maybe.” I paused, drawing a deep breath. “Anyhow, the only way I could judge myself was by how well I played ball. So, when I couldn’t play any more and your grandfather gave me a job in his factory, I—I came unglued. I didn’t know who I was or where I wanted to go. And I started … to make a fool of myself. At least, it felt like I was making a fool of myself. For one thing, I started drinking too much so that I wouldn’t have to face what was happening to me. And I got angry with your mother. I was really mad at myself. But it was easier to get mad at her …” Again the words stopped. This time, I didn’t bother to clear my throat. Instead, I just stared at the water. I’d said everything I’d wanted to say. It was finished.

I felt Darrell stirring—heard him clear his own throat. Finally: “Mom always says you were a real good football player. And Grandpa does, too. He’s got pictures of you.”

“That’s nice of them. I mean it.”

“And I …” There was a long, separate silence. Then: “I’ve got some pictures of you, too. A lot of them. I’ve got them all in a big scrapbook.”

Helplessly, I shook my head. Suddenly I felt exhausted, incapable of speaking or thinking or even feeling anything more. He’d done it: reached out with words.

“Oh, Jesus,” I murmured indistinctly. “That’s great. That’s—great.”

We sat together for long, silent moments. But now it was a shared silence, not a separate one. When I felt I could trust myself to speak, still without looking at Darrell, I said, “I’m pooped. Why don’t we go home and clean the fish?”

“Okay,” he answered. “I’m pooped, too.”

Fifteen

AS I SLOWED FOR the small graveled road that led to Ann’s driveway, I saw a four-wheel-drive Scout coming toward us. Four deer hunters were crowded together inside, and a deer was tied across the car’s roof. A rivulet of blood ran down the Scout’s dusty windshield. I pulled to the shoulder of the road and stopped to let them pass. As they crept by, two of the hunters saluted us with beer cans, gleefully grinning.

“They sure look happy about it,” Darrell said.

“About what?” I put the car in gear.

“About killing that deer.”

Contemptuously, I grunted. Then I asked, “Have you ever done any shooting?”

“No. I told you Mom hates guns. She even made Don sell his gun.”

This ritual of manhood would be mine—Darrell’s, and mine.

“Would you like to do some shooting?” I asked.

“Oh, boy. Sure.”

We’d reached Ann’s gate. Darrell got out of the car and held the gate while I drove through. I’d gotten a large spike in town, which Darrell used to secure the gate, according to Ann’s instructions. I parked the car where I’d parked last night, and we began unloading the food and supplies we’d bought in town. We put the brown paper sacks on the ground beside the car, and I propped the shotgun against the bumper. I locked the car, and slipped the box of .38s into my hip pocket.

A large supply of firewood, more than five feet high, was stacked at the edge of the clearing, midway between the car and the cabin.

“Leave the groceries where they are,” I said. “Let’s do some shooting.”

“Okay.” He’d tried to sound casual. But excitement was plain in his voice—and in his eyes.

I walked to the woodpile, selected a wrist-size log and propped it against the wood. Then I paced off twenty-five feet, turned to face the woodpile and motioned for Darrell to join me. As he approached, I drew my revolver.

“Did Canelli tell you how a revolver operates, when the two of you went to the police range?”

“No, not really.”

“Then we’ll take it from the beginning.” I swung the cylinder out, and showed him the loaded cartridges. Then I pushed the plunger, ejecting the shells into my palm. I handed him the empty gun. “Hold that in your left hand, with the cylinder out.”

Awkwardly, he took the gun.

“Now take these in your right hand.” I handed him the cartridges. “Those are .38s, which is the standard bullet for self-defense. There’re five of them. Put them in the gun.”

Carefully, he slipped the cartridges into the cylinder.

“Now give me the gun. With the cylinder out.” I held it for him to see. “There are six chambers, but you only load five cartridges. That’s so the hammer will always rest on either an empty chamber or an expended shell.” I pointed to the hammer.

“But you waste a bullet that way.”

“True. But you might save yourself a leg. Even if you hit the hammer with a rock, there’s no way the gun can fire accidentally. See?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nodded.

I showed him how to close the gun so that the empty chamber was aligned with the hammer. Then I extended the gun toward the woodpile, chest high. “Now it’s ready to fire. There are two ways to fire a revolver—either single action, or double action. Single action, you draw back the hammer with your thumb. That cocks the piece. Then you pull the trigger. That’s the more accurate way to shoot. Double action, you just pull the trigger. I’ll show you.” I ejected the shells, then demonstrated five clicks single action and five clicks double action. With every click I aimed at the woodpile.

“You’ll notice,” I said, “that I’m not pointing this gun anywhere but in the direction in which I want to fire. Whether or not a gun is loaded, you always treat it like it’s loaded. Right?”

“Right.”

I handed him the revolver. He did as I’d done, aiming at the woodpile while I told him how to align the sights on the target. Finally I gave him the five cartridges. I told him to fire the five shots, single action, at a small piece of wood.

“And remember,” I said, “you don’t point the muzzle anywhere but at the target. Even when you’re loading it.”

With painstaking care he loaded the gun, closed the cylinder and sighted on the target. He drew back the hammer, held his breath—and fired.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“Don’t lower the gun,” I ordered. “Keep it in firing position while you cock it. Shoot five times. Then take a sixth shot, to make sure all rounds are expended. Don’t lower the gun until you hear a click.”

The fifth shot struck the log.

“Hey. Wow!”

“Take the last click before you lower the piece,” I said. “Then unload it. Then, carrying the gun open, with the cylinder out, you can inspect the target.” Unconsciously, I was speaking like a shooting instructor, teaching a class of rookies.

Excited, but elaborately cautious, he did as he was told. With the empty revolver in his hand, he walked quickly to the woodpile. He bent over the log he’d hit—and then sprang back, almost tripping himself.

“Dad!”

In the same instant, I heard the sound that had terrified me last night: the dry, malevolent whirring.

“Dad! It’s a snake. Right there—” With the revolver clutched in his left hand, still with the cylinder open, Darrell pointed with his right hand toward the far end of the woodpile.

And then I saw it: an evil grey-and-brown body lying uncoiled beside a fallen limb. The large, flat head was raised from the ground, facing Darrell. The tail was also raised. The tip of the tail was a blur.

The snake looked like the limb it lay beside—the markings were almost identical.

“Back up,” I said quietly. “But keep your eye on him. Don’t panic. He’s six feet away from you, and he can’t hurt you unless he’s coiled. I’ll get the shotgun.” Keeping my eyes on the snake I got the shotgun, released the safety and walked cautiously toward Darrell, until finally I stood beside him. During the whole time, except for swinging his head constantly between Darrell and me, the snake hadn’t moved. The rattling had continued at the same high, nerve-shredding pitch.

“Let’s move back a foot or so,” I said, making my voice level and calm. “I’ll get a better shot pattern.” I stepped back, raised the long-barreled shotgun, sighted at the snake’s head—and fired.

The head disappeared, replaced by a dusty, blood-spattered crater in the ground. The hole was about six inches in diameter, approximately the spread I’d calculated. The body was wildly writhing. But the rattling, thank God, had stopped.

And, thank God, I wouldn’t have to cut off the head and bury it.

“Wheew—eee!” It was an exuberant sound of pure boyish glee. As I set the safety and lowered the shotgun, I realized that the snake had provided Darrell with a moment he’d never forget. And one I’d never forget, either.

“We gotta skin him,” Darrell was chortling. “We gotta skin him, and I’m going to take the skin home and hang it up in my room. Right over my bed. I’m going to do just like Billy Haywood did.”

I blew out the kerosene lamp and slipped into my sleeping bag.

“I hope there’s enough salt on that snakeskin,” Darrell said.

“It’ll be all right in the refrigerator till morning. Then we’ll drive into town and get some tacks—and some more salt. Then we’ll find a board, and we’ll stretch the skin on the board and tack it down. Then we’ll salt it again, and put it in the sun to dry.”

“How’d you find out so much about drying skins?”

“I was a Boy Scout.”

“No fooling? You learned it in the Boy Scouts?”

“No fooling.”

In the short silence that followed, I heard him yawn. Then: “We’ve got to see about those horses tomorrow, too.”

“We’ll go into town first, and get the tacks and the salt. After that we’ll see about the horses.”

“Yeah. Right.” Another yawn.

“We’d better go to sleep. It’s almost eleven.”

“Can I shoot again tomorrow?”

“Sure. As a matter of fact, I’ll get some more shells in town. Maybe we can make a marksman out of you.”

“I don’t think you should tell Mom, though. She’d be mad.”

“It’s a deal. Good night, Darrell.”

“Can I try shooting the shotgun, too?”

“You’ll have a black-and-blue shoulder.” As I spoke, I touched my own shoulder. It had already been aching from the torn muscle. The kick of the shotgun hadn’t helped.

“That’s okay, I don’t mind. Can I?”

“If you want to, sure. Maybe we can find some tin cans. I’ll throw them up for you.”

“I’ll throw them up for you, too.”

To myself, I smiled. “All right. But I’ll tell you right now, I’m a terrible wing shot. And, besides, we’ll be using buckshot. That makes it harder.”

“Is that what you call it when you shoot birds? A wing shot?”

“Birds or clay pigeons.” I yawned. “Listen, I’ve got to go to sleep. I’m dead tired.”

“Okay. I’ll let you sleep in the morning.” He paused, then added: “I’ll keep a lookout in the morning, too. In case those creeps come back.”

Again, as I let my eyes close, I smiled. He was anxious to play the role of our guard, my protector.

The two experiences—Billy Marsh and the rattlesnake—had served a purpose. They had forged something new in our relationship.

I awoke to the same feeling of terrified disassociation that had stifled me that morning. Wildly, I searched the darkened room with wide eyes until I recognized my surroundings.

I allowed my eyes to close—then slowly come open. Had I heard a sound?

Had something creaked—scratched—softly scuffed across the hallway floor outside the bedroom door?

As I reached for my revolver, I looked at my wristwatch. The time was eleven-thirty. I’d only been asleep for a half-hour. From the upper bunk, I could hear Darrell’s breathing: heavy, regular, sleep-slowed.

Cautiously, I unzipped my sleeping bag and swung my legs to the floor. With the revolver ready, I faced the door, listening. In town, I’d bought three ordinary screen-door hooks: one for the bedroom door, two for the window screen. If anyone tried to enter the bedroom, the hooks would rattle and wake me. It was all the edge I’d needed. Three hooks had made me feel secure enough to sleep.

But why, then, was I awake?

Was it nerves—or something else?

I got to my feet and padded noiselessly to the door. Now the hook worked against me: I might not be able to free the door without making a noise. Placing my ear against the door panel I held my breath, listening. Was someone moving in the hallway? I couldn’t be sure.

Exhaling, I crossed to the window. Standing well back in the room, I strained to see something moving in the darkness outside. Nothing stirred. Except for the distant lament of an animal, there was no sound.

Quickly, I slipped on my jeans and shoes. I stepped to the window, placed my revolver on the sill and unlatched the two hooks. Earlier in the evening I’d made sure that the window screen was free in its frame. I tapped the screen, caught it as it fell and lowered it to the ground. A moment later I was outside, crouched in the deep shadows beside the cabin. I remained motionless while I slowly scanned the perimeter of the clearing for a sign of movement.

Cautiously, one slow step at a time, I began moving to my right, toward the front of the cabin. Keeping close to the walls, I would make a circle. If I discovered nothing, I’d go back through the window. It was possible that the intruders had made a noise, hopeful of drawing me outside—so they could get inside. It was a chance I must take.

Almost to the front corner, I thought of the shotgun, propped in a corner of the bedroom—and of Darrell, asleep. I looked back at the bedroom window—and saw a flicker of movement in the clearing behind the kitchen. Bending double, I retraced my steps. At the rear corner of the cabin I straightened, holding my revolver ready. Then, moving my head an inch at a time, I looked around the corner.

At first, I could see nothing. But a moment later I saw a figure standing motionless, just at the edge of the clearing. The pump was on a line between us, almost concealing the form. Instinctively, I knew it was a man. He was in the shadow of a large pine tree. Across his chest, at the port arms position, he carried a gun—a rifle, or a shotgun.

It couldn’t be Billy Marsh—not with his wound. So it must be Cha Cha.

He’d bought a gun—or stolen one from a careless hunter. Did the girls, too, have guns? Were they deployed around the cabin, hidden among the trees?

Now I felt vulnerable, exposed. Bitterly, I realized that I’d made a terrible error in judgment. I’d assumed that Billy Marsh, the brawler, was their leader. My tactics were aimed at countering Billy’s straight-ahead style.

But Cha Cha, all along, could have been the leader—cool, calm, calculating. Deadly.

Because this figure, still standing perfectly motionless, was clearly acting on calculation. He was watching—waiting.

Waiting for what?

With my back pressed flat against the cabin wall, I again scanned the fringe of trees surrounding the clearing, forcing myself to take the time necessary to methodically search each tree, each bush, each shadow. I could see as far as my car, but not as far as the spot where their van had entered the clearing last night. If the girls were in the woods, they, too, were watching—waiting.

Suddenly I felt that the girls weren’t there. Not Angie, the giggling, unpredictable, half-psychotic knife fighter. Not Cara, susceptible to pressure, erratic.

Now I felt that Cha Cha was my only antagonist. I turned back to him—just in time to see him moving slowly, cautiously to his right, toward the front of the cabin. He was keeping just clear of the trees that bordered the clearing. He’d discovered what I’d discovered last night: that stealth was impossible walking among the fallen branches that littered the ground under the trees. I waited until he was almost cut off from my sight by the rear cabin wall. Then I ran lightly along the back wall, to the far corner. I stopped and stuck my head out just far enough to see him.

He was still walking stealthily but steadily, making for the front of the clearing, and the driveway.

Was he leaving—giving it up?

He—or they—hadn’t tried to enter the cabin, hadn’t tried to get the cocaine, hidden in the bedroom. Tonight, their tactics were different. The movements of this silent figure were different, too: more controlled, more purposeful, yet …

It was then I realized that the figure was limping.

Billy Marsh would limp.

Billy Marsh, or Charles Keller.

I stepped away from the cabin wall, straining for a better look. I watched the intruder walk to the driveway, stop, then briefly turn back toward the cabin. Still with the long barrel of his weapon held across his chest, he stood for a final moment, staring back at the cabin. Then he turned and disappeared into the deep shadows of the driveway.

I stood motionless, still listening, still straining to see into the darkness. If it was Billy or Cha Cha, I’d soon hear the unmistakable clatter of the van’s engine. Forcing myself, I slowly, deliberately counted off the seconds. It was a fundamental of police procedure. Under stress, time couldn’t be accurately estimated. Seconds became minutes, and a minute was an eternity.

When I’d counted to a hundred forty-five, I heard the faint sound of an engine starting. But it was a quiet, smooth-running engine—not the engine I’d heard last night.

When I added it up—the single figure, the improbability of Billy or Cha Cha possessing a long weapon, the different-sounding engine—I realized that the intruder probably wasn’t one of last night’s four.

Which left Charles Keller.

Keller, or a random stranger: a man who limped slightly when he walked and risked the woods at night and moved with slow, ominous purpose.

Sixteen

I FELT MY BED move, felt a touch on my shoulder. I stiffened, opened my eyes—then relaxed. Fully dressed, Darrell was standing beside my bunk. His toes almost touched my holstered revolver, lying on the floor.

“You said you’d let me sleep,” I groaned. “Besides, it’s Sunday.”

“Well, I was thinking about that snakeskin, and the salt and everything. And the horses. And maybe fishing, too. Besides, it’s nine o’clock.”

“All right.” I let my eyes close. “Just a couple more minutes.”

“Was everything … you know, all right, last night?”

I’d already decided what I was going to say: “No problems. I slept straight through.”

“Want me to make the eggs?” he asked. “So we can get going?”

“All right, that’s fair.” I opened my eyes just in time to see him turn away, headed for the kitchen. His movements were animated, his eyes were alive. I smiled.

Before we’d gone a half-mile down the country road, driving into town, I saw Virgil Cassiday’s orange pickup in my rearview mirror. I heard a succession of bleats from his horn.

Deliberately, I drove for another hundred yards before I pulled to the side of the road and stopped. In the mirror, I watched Cassiday swing down from his truck and come toward me. As he walked, stiff-legged in his high-heeled boots, he tipped the broad brim of his hat lower over his eyes.

“He sure looks mean,” Darrell said. “I bet he is mean.”

“And I bet you’re right.” I got out of my car and walked to meet Cassiday. He stood on the dry, dusty shoulder of the road, one work-knobbed hand resting on the butt of his big single-action revolver. As before, Cassiday’s partner stayed behind in the pickup.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

Cassiday took a moment to look me over, head to toe, then back again. As he looked, he settled his boots in the gravel. With his hand still on the scarred walnut gun butt, eyes slitted and mouth tense, he looked like he might challenge me to draw. I felt my lips twitch, suppressing a smile.

Finally: “Highway Patrol came by about an hour ago,” he allowed. “Man named Hollister. He told me to check in on you. He’s a good man. Good, but a little green. He’s only twenty-six, twenty-seven.”

Again, my lips twitched. Cassiday, I hoped, would take it as a smile of friendship.

“What’d he have to say?” I asked.

“Said he was looking for that white van. The one you talked about, too. He asked me if I saw it.”

“Did you see it?”

Cassiday shook his head. “Not since yesterday I didn’t see it. Not since I talked to you.” He frowned at me for a moment, then asked, “What’re they wanted for, anyhow, those four hippies?”

“They’re wanted for breaking and entering, burglary, assault on a police officer and possession of narcotics.”

“Huh.” In spite of himself, Cassiday was obviously impressed.

“The last time I saw them,” I said, “was late Friday night. Very late. Have you seen the van since then?”

“I checked on the radio,” Cassiday answered. “And someone down the valley, toward town, they thought they saw the van parked. Early, they said. Beside the road. But that’s the last I heard of them.”

“You’ve got quite a CB network, I gather.”

“Mister”—he drew a heavy sigh—“what with the goddam hippies, and the goddam hunters, and the goddam tourists hereabouts, we need every man and every radio we can get.”

“And every gun, too.” I gestured to his revolver.

“Yeah,” he answered truculently. “Yeah, every gun, too. If I told you the property damage they cause around these parts, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Did you happen to see a car near here between eleven-thirty and twelve last night?” I asked. “It was probably parked either on this road or on the access road that leads to the Haywood driveway.”

“Not myself, I didn’t.” He took a careful moment to look me over before he decided to say, “I can check around, though, if you want me to.”

Surprised, I said, “I’d appreciate it. Thanks.”

Cassiday turned on his heel and returned to his pickup. He went to the passenger’s side and talked with his partner. I saw the second man speak into the CB microphone. Two, three minutes passed. Inside my car, I saw Darrell fidgeting, turned in his seat to face me. I raised my palm to him, for patience. Finally Cassiday returned.

“There’s a fellow named Rawlings, lives up the valley about eight miles,” Cassiday drawled. “He was coming back from town just about then—just before midnight. And he said he saw a car coming out of that access road. Rawlings thought maybe it was someone shining deer, so he stopped and checked him out. Turned out the fella had a rifle, all right, but he claimed he wasn’t a hunter. And he didn’t have any spotlight or anything, that Rawlings could see. And he wasn’t dressed like a hunter. So Rawlings figured he was just passing through. Maybe visiting you folks, Rawlings figured.”

Visiting us …

“Can I talk to Rawlings?” I asked.

Cassiday hesitated, as if I were a meddlesome civilian making a nuisance request of the authorities. Then reluctantly said, “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt.” He regarded me for a stern moment before he gestured me to follow him to the orange truck.

Minutes later, I was straining to hear Rawlings as he told what had happened last night. The account was an exact duplicate of Cassiday’s.

“Can you describe this man?” I said into the microphone. “How old was he, would you say?”

Static-blurred, Rawlings replied, “Oh, maybe fifty. Kind of a small fella, I’d say. Grey-haired. With a small, pinched-up looking face.”

“He wasn’t wearing a hat, then.”

“Right. No hat.”

“What about the car? Did you get the license number, by any chance?”

“No. But I know what kind it was. It was about a ’sixty-nine or ’seventy Chevy, I’d say. A white sedan. And it had a bashed-up driver’s door. Real bashed up.”

“Are you sure of that description?”

“Yessir, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, Rawlings. Thanks very much. Over and out.” I handed the microphone to Cassiday. Silently cursing, I stood beside the truck, staring at nothing.

Charles Keller. Somehow, he’d followed me. Me, and Darrell.

“You know that fella?” Cassiday asked.

“I know him.” I considered a moment, then said: “He’s a convicted felon,” I lied. “He’s apparently traced me from San Francisco, and I have reason to suspect that he might try to”—I paused—“to harm me,” I finished quietly. “So if you see him, I’d appreciate it if you’d come by the Haywood place and tell me. Put him under surveillance, if you can. Don’t try to apprehend him, though. Just observe him, and report to me. Clear?”

In spite of himself, listening to my clipped orders, Cassiday’s eyes gleamed. He nodded so sharply that it altered the carefully adjusted angle of his broad-brimmed hat.

“Yessir,” he said, gripping his gun butt hard. “Yessir, that’s clear. That’s a big, clear ten-four.”

Seventeen

I PULLED INTO A parking place in the Safeway lot, and reached in my pocket for a dollar bill.

“Get a pound of salt and a box of tacks,” I said. “And if you want to, get yourself a Coke or something.” I pointed to a nearby Texaco station. “I’m going to go over there and make a phone call.”

“Who’re you going to call?” Darrell asked.

Until I’d satisfied myself that Keller was actually in the area, I’d decided against telling Darrell what I’d learned from Rawlings. For Darrell and me—for our relationship—the Billy Marsh incident had been a net gain. A Keller incident could be a loss.

“I’m going to call Lieutenant Friedman again,” I said. “I want to find out whether the highway patrol has picked up those four.”

Darrell nodded, and opened his door. “You want a Coke, too?”

“No, thanks.”

I walked to the gas station and phoned Friedman at home, collect.

“This,” he said, “is going to cost you. One, two lunches, at least.”

“Listen,” I said, “do you happen to know whether Charles Keller is under surveillance?”

“No,” Friedman answered. “Why?”

As concisely as I could, I told him what had happened last night, and what I suspected. “It all fits,” I finished. “The description, the limp, the car—everything.”

“How could he have followed you? Weren’t you looking in the mirror, for God’s sake?”

“Of course I was. But he’s an electronics engineer. He could’ve bugged my car. If he went to the trouble of entering my apartment building to set me up, bugging my car would’ve been nothing. And he could’ve known that Darrell and I were going away. That’s what’s worrying me—Darrell.”

Typically, Friedman offered a dry quip: “You’re having an action-packed vacation.”

I didn’t reply.

“I don’t like the sound of this, Frank.” Friedman said, serious now. “It could be coincidence. It probably is coincidence. Usually that’s the way these things come down. But why take a chance? If I were you, I’d come back to the city. It sounds like you’d be safer.”

“I can’t go back,” I answered. “I might go to another spot—a motel, maybe, in the area. But I can’t go back to San Francisco.”

“Why not?”

“Because Darrell’s having a good time. We’re having a good time. Together.”

“Then go to a motel.”

“Maybe I will.”

“What’d you want me to do?”

“It’s Sunday, I realize, and I hate to ask you. But would you mind checking Keller out? If I know that he’s in San Francisco, I’ll feel a lot better.”

“No problem. Where can I call you?”

“You can’t. But I’ll call you.”

“Better give me a few hours. Several hours, in fact. He might not be at home, but he might still be in the city. We don’t want to go off half-cocked.”

“I might not call you until tomorrow, at Headquarters. I promised Darrell I’d rent some horses. It’d be a fifty-mile round trip, to the nearest pay phone.”

“How about a neighbor?”

Grimacing, I thought of Virgil Cassiday. “I’ll see. But don’t worry if I don’t call you until tomorrow.”

“Roger. Remember now—take care of yourself. You’re a city boy alone in the wilds. It sounds like you could be getting into a rough game, up there.”

“So far, I’m a winner. By the way, did the Highway Patrol find that van?”

“Negative. I called them an hour ago to check.”

“All right. I’d better hang up. This is costing money.”

“It’s costing a lunch.”

“Okay. A lunch. Thanks, Pete. Thanks a lot.”

“You’re welcome.”

Drinking a Dr. Pepper from the can, Darrell was waiting for me in the car. I slid in behind the steering wheel and sat silently for a moment, staring straight ahead.

Was it coincidence, as Friedman had suggested?

If I hadn’t been expecting trouble, I’d never have discovered the figure with the gun. Unobserved, he would have skirted the cabin, continued to his car and gone on his way—just as he’d done. No action of mine had changed his plans. He hadn’t seen me. Of that, I was certain.

The most obvious explanation was that the man was a hunter, illegally shining deer. I hadn’t seen a flashlight. Neither had Rawlings. But the man could have carried one concealed in his pocket. If he was shining deer, he was committing a crime. He wouldn’t admit it to Rawlings.

It was the dented white Chevrolet that made the difference. Rawlings’ vague description of the man fitted Keller—but could have fitted thousands of other men, too. It was the car—and the slight limp—that tilted the odds against me.

Yet the figure had done nothing terribly suspicious. He’d just skirted the cabin and disappeared down the driveway. A thousand innocent explanations could account for his actions. Ann’s property wasn’t entirely fenced. Therefore, the stranger might not have even realized he was trespassing. As for the limp, it had been so slight that at first I hadn’t been aware of it.

“What’d Lieutenant Friedman say?” Darrell was asking. “Did the State Police find the van?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” He drank from the Dr. Pepper can while I tried to sort out the puzzle. I was thinking that, after all, the worst Keller had done was try to frame me for taking a bribe. He had no history of violence. He was eccentric. He could be half-crazed. But Keller was a talker. And the talkers, I’d discovered, weren’t as dangerous as the silent ones—the brooders. Keller still hoped to see me indicted for bribery. Why should he consider violence? So far, the game was going his way.

“Are we going to see the guy with the horses?” Darrell asked. “Are we going to do that first, or stretch the snakeskin first?”

I reached for the ignition key. “Let’s see about the horses. The snakeskin can keep for another few hours.”

“What’s the man’s name? The farmer with the horses?”

“Falvey,” I answered. “But don’t call him a farmer. Out here, a farmer is a rancher. Even if he’s a farmer.”

We followed Falvey into a large, decrepit barn. Walking ahead through dried manure, he stopped before a big box stall. The boards of the stall had been patched and re-patched—and still showed gaps. The top board was gnawed and splintered to half its original size.

“This here’s Apache,” Falvey said. “She’d be good for the boy. She’s gentle, and she don’t spook.” Falvey turned to stare appraisingly at us, looking from one to the other. He was a short, truculent man with a barrel chest, thick arms and stubby legs. His bull neck was ridged with muscle, like a Prussian general’s. Sparse iron-grey hair circled his bald head. He wore a stained T-shirt with HERE COMES TROUBLE printed across the chest—a birthday present, he’d explained.

“Neither one’ve you have done any riding,” Falvey said. “That right?”

“We’ve ridden a few times,” I said. “But we’re not very good.”

“Well, I’ll take you out once, so’s the horses can get used to you. But I can’t do it after that. And I can’t be responsible if anything happens. You understand that.” Now his stare was accusing—plainly contemptuous. It was obvious that Falvey shared Cassiday’s opinion of city folk.

“And also,” he continued, “you can’t ride today.”

“How come?” Darrell blurted.

“Because,” Falvey said curtly, “it’s Sunday. And those goddam deer hunters, they’ll shoot at anything that moves—especially anything on four legs. Tomorrow, we can go out. Not today.”

“Does that apply to next weekend?” I asked.

Falvey rubbed a stubbled chin, considering. Finally he shrugged. “We’ll have to see. This is the second week of deer season. Usually the third weekend isn’t so bad. We’ll just have to see.”

“It would make a difference in the price.”

“Not the way I figure it,” Falvey answered promptly. “I was figuring fifty dollars a week apiece, for five days. That’s ten dollars a day for each horse. And I was figuring fifty dollars in advance. Fifty dollars now, and fifty on Friday. Then maybe, if everything goes all right, and you aren’t saddle-sore and the horses aren’t all run ragged, as sometimes happens, we can talk about the weekend. That’s when we see how many of those goddam hunters show up.”

I glanced at Darrell—and saw his eyes shining as he stared at Apache. I reached for my wallet.

“Your play,” I said, discarding an eight of diamonds.

Darrell was gazing at his snakeskin, mounted on a board and propped against the wall. After we’d returned to the cabin, we’d spent more than an hour driving up and down Long Valley, searching for a board long enough and wide enough to accommodate the skin. Finally, in a field, we’d found a weathered piece of barnwood, perfect for our purpose. We’d taken the board back to the cabin, ready to salt the skin and mount it—only to discover that we didn’t have a hammer. The edge of a tire iron had served, after a fashion. Finally, by dinnertime, the job was finished. Now, with the dishes done, we were playing rummy by the light of two kerosene lamps. “If I had a cowboy hat,” Darrell said, still staring at the snake-skin, “I could make it into a hatband.”

“Don’t you want to play rummy anymore?”

“Sure.” He picked up the eight of diamonds, and discarded the deuce of spades.

“If we go to town tomorrow,” I said, “we should get some glue. We can glue the rattles under the skin.”

“We’ve got to go ride the horses tomorrow, though.”

“All right.” I drew a card from the pack.

“When I get home, I’m going to get my wood-burning set and I’m going to burn in the date yesterday.” Taking a card from the pack, Darrell frowned. “I hope I can find my wood-burning stuff. I think maybe I loaned it to someone. Then I’m going to—”

On the table beside me, the kerosene lamp exploded. In the same instant, I heard the sharp crack of a rifle. Across the room, a window shattered. Orange flames covered the table.

“Hey!” Darrell’s voice was a high, surprised squeak, then a scream—“Hey!”

“Blow out the other lamp!” I shouted. “Then get on the floor. Stay on the floor.” I sprang for a large rag rug. Grasping it by one corner, I flailed at the fire. The blazing tablecloth exploded as the rug struck it. Burning kerosene flowed under the table, licking at the table legs. Fire was pooling on the floor. Wildly swearing, I grasped a leg and heaved the table across the room.

“Crawl into the bedroom!” I yelled. “Get the shotgun! Crawl back!” Again and again, I beat at the fire. Bits of burning tablecloth flew around me like swarming insects. I struck at the flaming kerosene on the bare wood floor, running in rivulets toward the walls—toward the window curtains. Through the smoke, I saw Darrell crawling into the hallway. I leaped for the curtains, tore them free, threw them into a far corner. Every moment, I expected another shot—and another, and another. I heard myself screaming obscenities. My throat was raw; my arms ached from swinging the weight of the rug. In the center of the room, the fire blazed too high to reach, but the rivulets surrounding it were burning lower. I attacked the rivulets. Darrell was crawling into the room, dragging the shotgun behind him across the floor. In the orange glow of the fire, his eyes were streaming.

“Lemme help!” he screamed.

“Keep down!” I panted. I couldn’t say any more—couldn’t fill my lungs full enough to speak. I was almost finished.

“I’m going to help you!” He left the shotgun beside the fireplace, leaped to his feet and darted through the door to the hallway. The last of the flaming rivulets were out, but the pool of fire remained in the center of the room, roaring higher than my head. In seconds, the ceiling would catch fire. Dragging the bedroom rug behind him, Darrell was beside me. I could hardly lift my own rug; the strength in my arms was gone. I couldn’t breathe; I could only gasp helplessly. Darrell grasped the bedroom rug, pivoting with arms wide and body straining—like a bullfighter flaring a monstrous cape. He flung the rug full on the flames—and smothered the fire.

“Put yours on top, too!” he yelled.

With the last strength in my arms, I did as he said.

Suddenly the smoke-choked room was dark.

“Jesus Christ.” I sank to my knees. Head hanging, I struggled for breath.

“Are you all right?” He was kneeling beside me. I felt his hand touch my shoulder.

“I’m—I’m—” I gasped—coughed—gasped again. “I’m all right. You?”

“Yeah. Is it—who is it?”

“I don’t know. But I’m afraid it’s—” I choked. “I’m afraid it’s Keller. Charles Keller. The man you and Canelli saw, in the waiting room.”

“With the crazy eyes? Him?”

“I think so.”

“But why?”

“I’ll tell you later. We’ve got to decide what to do.” I coughed. My eyes were tearing as I stared at the smoking rugs. If the rugs caught fire, we couldn’t fight it.

“How much water is in the kitchen?” With my throat finally clear, I spoke in a low, horse whisper.

“About half a pailful, I think.”

“Get it. Keep low. Throw it on those rugs. Get the milk, too, out of the refrigerator. Anything. But remember, keep low. He’s got a gun. A rifle.”

Darrell nodded. Bending double, he darted into the hallway. I crept to the shotgun, broke it, checked the chambers. I snapped the breech closed and set the safety. Then, crouching, I made my way to the window. One of the four big panes was broken out. Gratefully, I breathed cool, fresh air. Behind me, I heard liquid slosh.

Speaking very softly, I said, “You keep your eye on the fire. Get a sleeping bag to smother it if it starts.”

“I don’t think it’ll start.”

“Don’t take any chances,” I said sharply. “Do as I tell you.” I was straining to see outside—unsuccessfully. I could see nothing but dark tree shapes and the shadows cast by a dim half-moon. I could hear nothing but crickets. Standing away from the window, I tried to calculate where the shot had come from. Then I realized that it was futile. During the minutes we’d fought the fire, Keller would have moved.

Because, certainly, it was Keller.

I should have known—should have taken precautions when it was still possible. When I’d talked to Rawlings, I should have known.

I was kneeling beside the window, with the stock of the shotgun resting on the floor. Momentarily I closed my eyes, touching my forehead to the cool metal of the gun’s big double barrels.

How had it happened? What incredible combination of calculation and chance had conspired to threaten us in this remote, dangerous place?

Listening to Darrell tell Canelli of our vacation plans, could Keller have discovered our destination, then hired or enticed Billy Marsh to threaten us?

No.

Marsh’s presence had been accidental—statistically predictable. For every hundred people who walked alone in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, a given number got mugged. For every hundred empty cabins, a given number were ripped off. Billy Marsh was simply part of that equation. Nothing more.

Keller’s presence, though, was no accident. Somehow he’d followed me the whole time either physically or electronically. Last night, he’d deliberately awakened me, then disappeared into the darkness. It had been a warning, part of a planned escalation. Tonight, he’d hit the lamp with a single shot. The message was clear: he could have killed me—or Darrell—as easily as he’d shattered the lamp.

“Dad?” From behind me, Darrell’s voice was hushed.

“Yes?”

“What’re we going to do?”

“We’re going to get out of here.”

“When?”

I didn’t reply. Darkness, I realized, might offer the best chance of escape. Keller had a rifle. In daylight, far beyond the range of our pistol or shotgun, he could pick us off. His rifle had the range, and Keller had the skill.

For us, daylight would be deadly.

But darkness, too, was dangerous. We couldn’t use the car. In the few seconds it would take to start the engine, we’d be perfect targets. Crouching below the windows wouldn’t help. A rifle could easily penetrate the car doors. So if we chose the darkness we must also choose the woods—with crackling branches. And snakes. And the near certainty of being lost.

“When?” Darrell repeated. His voice was ragged, unsteady. He could be slipping into delayed shock. On my knees, I turned away from the window and sat flat on the floor, with my back against the wall. I was facing my son. I couldn’t see his expression, but I could sense uncertainty and fear in his stance. He was on the far side of the two rugs. The fire was no longer smoldering. Only the smell of the smoke and the stench of the kerosene remained. He’d been right: there was no further danger from the fire.

I felt so depleted that for a moment I couldn’t risk speaking. Then I managed to say: “You were pretty good with that fire. You were pretty damn good.”

I realized that I sounded like a Hemingway character. And it seemed as if I might begin giggling uncontrollably.

“So were you,” Darrell answered somberly. “You were pretty good, too.”

Now I let myself guffaw, releasing the giggling pressure. I’d done it before: narrowly avoided hysterics.

“Come over here.” I gestured to the floor beside me. “Keep out of line with the window.”

Silently, he obeyed. He sat with his legs splayed straight out in front of him. We could have been exhausted members of the same losing team, sitting side by side on a gymnasium floor, taking time out together.

“What’re we going to do?” he repeated. Then: “Is he trying to kill us?”

“Not tonight, he isn’t trying to kill us. Not really. But tomorrow”—I cleared my throat, coughed, spat on the charred floor—“tomorrow, it could be different. Or else he could just be trying to scare us. It could all be a game—just a game, for him.” I shook my head, and felt it bob through a loose, unintentional extra arc. I let my chin sink until it almost touched my chest. “I don’t know, Darrell—I just don’t know. And I’m too tired to think clearly, if you want the truth.” With great effort, I raised my eyes to look at him. “I couldn’t have lifted that goddam rug one more time. It weighed a ton. If you hadn’t done what you did, this whole place would be on fire. Right this minute. We could be out in the woods. And God knows what would’ve happened then.”

He was staring straight ahead. Solemnly, he said, “You did most of it, though. I just did the last part.”

I smiled wryly. “If you say so.”

“But what’re we going to do tomorrow?” he asked. In the question I could hear a vestige of childhood insistence: the particular pique that a child feels when an adult fails to answer his questions.

“I don’t know.” I coughed. “But we’ve got to take one thing at a time. For now, we’re safe. He’s not going to come in after us. If he does, we’ve got two guns. And both our guns are suited for close-range work. His isn’t.”

“It’s good you showed me how to shoot.” I could hear a note of self-importance in his voice—self-importance, and a hint of “Let’s pretend.” It was another echo from childhood. Every boy imagines himself a hero cop. For Darrell, fantasy had become reality tonight. He’d acted a man’s part. Tomorrow, the final chapter of the fantasy could find him with a gun in his hand—a real gun, not a toy.

Wearily, I nodded. “Yes. It’s good I taught you.”

Eighteen

BARRICADED IN THE BEDROOM, trusting the three flimsy hooks, I slept soundly until five o’clock the next morning. When I awakened, the sky to the east was already opalescent. Dawn would come in another half-hour.

I’d lain awake until one o’clock, trying to make my plans. At first, I’d considered gambling on the possibility that someone, either Virgil Cassiday or the State Police, would visit the cabin during the day. But there was no reason for the police to come—not unless they’d found Billy Marsh, which was unlikely. And unless Cassiday had something to “report,” he wouldn’t appear, either. So the odds of being rescued during the day by a third party were much less than fifty-fifty, I calculated. And I couldn’t face the prospect of another night in the cabin.

Then I’d considered hunting the hunter during daylight: leaving Darrell inside the cabin with the revolver while I slipped into the woods with the shotgun, looking for our attacker. But the shotgun had an effective range of only fifty yards, compared to a rifle’s two or three hundred yards. A .38 pistol was effective up to a hundred yards. But beyond fifty feet my short-barreled revolver couldn’t be aimed accurately. So, hunting the hunter, I’d be hopelessly out-gunned. And unless I kept the cabin constantly in sight I’d risk the chance that Keller could get to Darrell.

The third possibility seemed the only reasonable plan. At dawn, I would go out through the bedroom window and make a quick, cautious circuit of the cabin. If I didn’t draw fire, and didn’t see anything suspicious, I’d go back inside, wake Darrell and station him in the living room with the pistol, covering me. Carrying the shotgun, I’d go out through the front door, fast. I’d get in the car. Lying on the seat, I’d drive to the porch and swing the car’s passenger door open. Darrell would tumble into the car, and I’d gun the engine. Whatever happened after that, we’d be a moving target.

It seemed a reasonable plan. The chances were even, I calculated, that Keller had done all he’d intended to do. Last night he’d terrified me—defeated me. By now, he was probably back in San Francisco.

Probably?

Or possibly?

The difference, I knew, could be a matter of life or death.

I slipped on trousers and shoes, checked my revolver and went out through the bedroom window. Moving at a fast walk, half crouched, I made a circuit of the cabin. In the strengthening light, I saw nothing. In the predawn hush, I heard nothing. Even the crickets were silent. Only a few birds were singing. A heavy dew had fallen, and the wet grass soaked my trouser legs.

I reentered the bedroom and shook Darrell sharply. Harshly whispering, I explained the plan. Within moments, his sleep-clouded eyes had cleared.

“What about all our stuff, though?” he asked, putting on his pants and shoes. “And my snakeskin, too. What about that?”

“We’ll get help and come back. Here.” I handed him my revolver. “Do you remember everything I told you about using this?”

“Sure.” With obvious self-conscious pride his fingers closed around the walnut butt. For a moment I gripped Darrell’s shoulder, hard. We stared at each other, sharing a small, significant ceremony. Then I took up the shotgun, and we moved together through the living room. Cautiously, I swung the front door open. Outside, the sky was already lighter than it had been only minutes before.

“Don’t show more than one eye,” I cautioned. “Don’t take any chances. I don’t think he’s out there. But we can’t be sure.”

“Should I cock the gun?”

“No. If you see something, cock it. Not before, though.” Once more, I looked him hard in the eye. “Is this all right with you? Can you do it? Can you pull the trigger, if you have to do it?”

Holding my gaze he nodded slowly. His mouth was set in a firm line, his eyes were steady. Standing with the revolver in his hand, he looked as if he could do it.

“All right, here I go. Leave the door partly open so you can get out fast.” I took a final moment to scan the clearing. Then, slipping off the shotgun’s safety, I went out through the front door—fast.

Bent double, with the shotgun in my left hand and my keys in my right hand, I ran for the car. The distance was almost a hundred feet. As I ran, jinxing from right to left, fleeting moments from the football field flashed in my mind. At the driver’s door, on my knees, I thrust the key in the lock, twisted, pulled the door open. Setting the safety, I tossed the shotgun into the car, on the floor in front. Then I slipped inside, lying on the driver’s seat. I used my hand to depress the accelerator, priming the engine. I put the key in the ignition and twisted.

Nothing.

Savagely, I twisted the key again.

The engine was dead.

I lifted my head above the dashboard, looking toward the cabin. Had something moved, at the far corner? The corner was in shadow; the dim, predawn light was uncertain. I shifted my gaze to the cabin door, trying to see Darrell.

Another flicker of movement. And then, slowly, an alien shape emerged from the cabin’s far corner.

It was a deer—a doe. For a moment she stood motionless, facing me. Then, in a brown flash of movement, she disappeared into the trees.

I tried the starter again, then saw something I’d missed, moments before. The hood of the car was loose, ajar by a half-inch. Swearing, I left the safety of the car and threw up the hood. The ignition wires were gone.

As I stood staring down into the engine compartment, I heard a close-by sound. Instantly I crouched behind the car—and only then remembered that I didn’t have the shotgun. I held my breath, listening. The sound had come from the direction of the driveway. It could have been a human sound—a voice. Should I get the shotgun? Or should I stay as I was, listening? I was safe. I strained to see into the half-dark woods.

And then I heard it again: a soft, low moan.

It was Keller.

It had to be Keller.

Perhaps in the darkness last night, a snake had bitten him.

I straightened quickly. Circling the car’s safe side, I reached the open driver’s door. Using the door as a shield, I withdrew the big double-barreled shotgun, and slipped off the safety.

The odds were changing.

Protected by the door, I remained motionless, looking and listening. I hoped that, behind me, Darrell understood what was happening. Certainly my actions were clear: I’d discovered something; I was investigating. And, thank God, I’d ordered him to stay inside the cabin, covering me. No matter what I did, he was to stay inside until I came for him.

A full minute must have passed. Then I heard it again: a soft, breathless moan, from the direction of the driveway. It was hardly more than a sigh. But it was a human sound—an exhausted, desperate plea for help.

A trick?

But why? If he was close enough for me to hear the sound he made, he could have killed me.

I stayed crouched in the approved police position: facing the danger, with only my head and gun barrel showing. Against a high-powered rifle, though, especially at close range, the car door would offer no protection. I’d once seen a 30-06 bullet go through both doors of a car and kill a civilian on the far side.

But Keller might not be able to shoot.

The third time I heard a moan, I thought I saw movement through the trees. The distance was about seventy-five feet. At this range, a shotgun was deadlier than a rifle.

The odds would never be better.

I rechecked the shotgun’s safety, straightened, then moved to my left, leaving the protection of the car’s door. With eyes fixed on the spot where I’d seen something move, carrying the gun in firing position, I advanced. My fingers were on the two curved triggers, ready. In the long, dew-soaked grass, my footsteps were soundless. Slowly, step by step, the distance between us shortened. At the edge of the clearing I turned to my right, toward the driveway. Now a screen of thick-growing brush cut off my view—but protected me, too.

I drew a deep breath, then stepped beyond the brush, into the open.

Two blue-jeaned legs lay close beside the driveway. A small bush with bright red berries concealed the figure’s torso and head. But, through the foliage, I saw something the color of flax: long blond hair, trailing on the ground.

Cara.

I stepped in among the trees, concealing myself. A dozen twig-snapping strides took me to the girl. She lay on her back. Her face was a bruised, bloody mess. Her split lips revealed broken teeth. Both blackened eyes were swollen shut. The tangled blond hair was streaked with dried blood. She’d been lying there for hours. All night, probably.

I set the safety, propped the shotgun in the crotch of a low tree and knelt beside the girl. Her shirt was ripped open. No blood showed on her torso. But, beneath her breasts, her stomach was badly bruised. When I touched her on the shoulder, her whole body convulsed. But it was a weak convulsion.

“Cara.” I shook her gently.

“Ah … ah.” I saw her eyes move through swollen slits. “Ah—God.”

“Who did it? A grey-haired man?”

Painfully, her split lips formed words: “Billy. Angie. Cha, Cha, too.”

“Why?”

“They—”

From behind me came the crack of a rifle shot. I threw myself flat beside the girl. The shotgun was in my hands, ready. I’d twisted as I fell, to face the sound. But, even as I made the quick, instinctive moves, I realized that the shot had come from some middle distance—from the direction of the cabin, but beyond it. Behind it. “Jesus Christ.” I leaped to my feet and broke through the screen of trees. I was sprinting across the clearing. Through the cabin door, still half open, I could see no sign of life.

Nineteen

I TOOK THE PORCH in two strides and hit the door with my shoulder, hard. It flew open—revealing an empty living room. The hallway was empty, and the bedroom, too. The window screen was intact; nothing in the bedroom had been disturbed. I stood momentarily motionless beside the bed. My heart was hammering wildly. Bright, erratic prisms of yellow light moved before my eyes. My breath came in deep, wracking sobs. I was helplessly aware that the transparent yellow light-shapes were obscuring my vision—that, in the next instant, consciousness could blacken around the edges, and I would faint. Muttering something that might have been a prayer, I quickly lowered my head. Slowly, the bright prisms were fading. Stumbling, I began moving toward the door. I was in the hallway again. I turned to my right, toward the kitchen.

And saw the back door standing open.

I stood for another long, helpless moment. Then, staggering, I ran into the bedroom. I ripped open my duffle bag and fumbled for the box of shotgun shells. I stuffed two handfuls of shells in my pockets. I stumbled back into the kitchen, and out through the door. Sunlight was touching the treetops; dawn had come. I stood just beyond the door, desperately looking for some sign of Darrell—some hope.

Then, plainly marked in the dewy grass, I saw two sets of footprints. They led from the back door straight to the fringe of the woods on the east edge of the clearing. Instantly I plunged ahead, my own footprints mingling with theirs. Moments later, I was among the trees. Here, the trail of footprints disappeared in the twigs and leaves underfoot. But blindly I went forward. Caution no longer mattered.

Only the sound of the rifle shot mattered.

The sound, and the reason.

Branches tore at my clothing, raked my face, caught the gun barrel. I fought the underbrush. I didn’t know what direction they’d taken through the trees—so I continued directly east. It was my only hope, to keep to the same line Keller had first taken. Ahead, through the trees, I saw another wide, grassy clearing. Within minutes the dew would begin to dry on the grass. The prints would disappear.

Would I still find two sets of footprints ahead?

Or only one set, after the shot?

Without hesitation, I entered the second clearing. Still on the same line, going steadily east across the clearing, I saw footprints.

Two sets of footprints.

Still two.

I forced myself to slow from a ragged run to a fast walk. For whatever lay ahead, I mustn’t be exhausted. Walking now, I was halfway across the clearing when I saw a length of leather lying on the grass. It was Darrell’s belt. Darrell had left the belt to mark the trail.

Darrell?

Or Keller?

Had the shot been meant to attract my attention? Had Keller left the belt for the same reason—to keep me on their trail?

It would have been impossible for Darrell to take the belt off secretly and drop it without Keller’s knowledge.

Keller, then, had marked their trail.

For what purpose?

At the far edge of the second clearing I drew up. The trees before me were thicker: scrub oak and low-growing pine, almost impenetrable. Had they continued straight east, or turned in another direction? How could I know? What was Keller’s plan—his real plan? Was his purpose harassment? Or murder?

From ahead, through the trees, I heard a faint voice.

I began flailing at branches and brambles with the shotgun barrel, fighting my way toward the sound. Caution meant nothing. If Keller wanted me, he could have me. If Darrell was the bait, I’d be the prey. The ground was littered with fallen trees; thick-growing branches slashed at my face and arms. As I thrashed my way through, I relived moments from long-forgotten football games, fighting for inches up the center, through savagely churning arms and legs and helmets hard as steel. Fearful that I’d fall and the gun would discharge, I stopped beside a fallen tree trunk to set the safety. Ahead, through a break in the trees, I saw another grassy clearing. I climbed over the fallen tree, struggled another fifty feet through branches and brambles and finally came to the edge of the clearing. I stopped again, this time to listen.

For long moments, with my heart hammering and blood roaring in my ears, I could hear nothing.

Then, once again, I heard a voice—louder, closer.

It was Darrell’s voice. He was sobbing.

When I stepped into the clearing, I saw him. He was lying in tall grass about a hundred yards from where I stood, in the center of the clearing. I could just see his head above the grass.

“Darrell!”

His head jerked as he twisted toward me, supporting himself on his elbows.

“Dad!” The cry was both joyful and tearful—hopeful and fearful. “Dad. A snake. I got bit. On my leg.”

Swearing, I plunged forward. As I ran, I tried to remember Ann’s words: Keep calm. Keep quiet.

I’d been amused, listening to her.

“Dad. Be careful. He’s here—over there. Keller. He—”

A rifle cracked—once, twice.

Instantly, I fell to the ground. My head was turned to face the sound of firing. The shot had come from the right. He was somewhere among the trees. Cautiously, I brought up the shotgun, ready to fire. If he was within shotgun range, it was my advantage. Then I saw it: a rifle barrel reflecting the light. He was behind a large fallen log at the far end of the clearing. The distance was more than a hundred yards: routine range for a rifle, impossible for a shotgun.

Another sharp, vicious crack. Grass ripped close beside me. He was shooting to kill. He’d left Darrell lying in the open, the bait. And he was trying to kill me.

The grass surrounding me was almost a foot high. With my cheek pressed flat to the ground, heels down, I was probably invisible to him. But he knew my position. Two or three more shots, placed in a pattern, and he would hit me. I couldn’t escape by crawling. If I stayed motionless, the grass might conceal me. But not if I moved.

I drew up my legs, digging in with my toes. I gripped the shotgun hard, with the stock braced on the ground. Then, levering myself to my feet, I was running straight for Darrell. I heard one shot, then another. Altogether, he’d fired five shots. He might have to reload. Above the grass, eyes wide with terror, Darrell watched me close the distance between us. But I couldn’t stop—couldn’t help him.

“Stay there,” I panted. “Put your head down. Stay put. I’m going after him. It’s all I can do.”

My feet thudded into the ground a bare foot from Darrell. I saw him roll on his back, to follow me with his eyes. His face was wet with tears.

“Stay down, Darrell. Keep your head down. I love you.”

As I called hoarsely to him, I heard another shot. Dirt spurted a foot in front of me; the bullet screamed away, ricocheting. Trees were just ahead—trees, and safety. Moments later I crashed through underbrush and fell to the ground beside a huge pine tree. For a moment I lay motionless, unable to move. Then I struggled to my knees, crouching behind the pine’s trunk, facing Keller. My throat was burning, my chest heaved convulsively. My breath came in short, strangled sobs. I knew I must remain motionless until I could breathe normally. I must be quiet. I must stay hidden.

I must live.

Kill Keller, and live.

Propped on the shotgun, I knelt with my head hopelessly hanging, fighting for breath. Now I turned my head to the right, and saw the spot where I knew Darrell was lying.

If Keller had wanted to, he could have killed Darrell. He could still kill Darrell.

The thought made it impossible for me to remain motionless. I came unsteadily to my feet, then moved to my left, away from the clearing. For me—for Darrell—there was only one chance. I must somehow get Keller within shotgun range, while I avoided his rifle. So I must stay in the woods. Loaded with buckshot, the shotgun had a maximum effective range of seventy-five yards—and a lethal range of only fifty yards. Keller’s rifle could kill at two or three hundred yards.

But, at fifty yards, a buckshot pattern was three feet in diameter. Keller’s shot pattern was less than a half-inch. In open country, the advantage was his. Among the trees, the advantage might be mine.

Slowly, steadily, I advanced through scattered trees and light underbrush. Now, suddenly, my breathing was normal. I blinked, clearing my eyes of exhaustion’s tears. It seemed like a miracle.

Like salvation.

I began angling to my right, toward the edge of the clearing. I must keep Keller’s log in sight—and hope he hadn’t moved. Then I must move toward him, with trees always between us. If he was still behind the log, and saw me, he would fire. If I presented an uncertain target, he would miss. When the range was less than fifty yards, I could return the fire—and kill him.

Because killing, ultimately, was my business. I carried a badge, for proof.

Now the range was more than a hundred yards.

But, step by step, walking among the trees, I was closing the distance between us. Now I must provoke him—tempt him to fire, so I could verify his position. I moved to my right, walking on the edge of the clearing. When I saw him raise his rifle, I’d drop to the ground and roll to my left, behind a tree or bush.

Eighty yards.

Seventy.

Behind the fallen log, nothing stirred. Had he left the log—taken up a new position when I dove into the woods? It would have been sound strategy.

Sixty yards.

When he showed himself I would drop to the ground, aim, fire. Quickly, I glanced over my shoulder, toward the place where I knew Darrell lay. I could see the top of his head above the grass, nothing more.

Keep calm. Keep quiet.

But Darrell’s heart was hammering—just as mine was hammering. Blood was pulsing fast through his body, carrying the venom into his heart, his brain.

Fifty yards.

Now the advantage was mine.

With my gaze fixed again on Keller’s log, I moved to my left, into the trees. I would begin a circle, to come into position behind him. I would—

“Dad!”

I threw myself to the ground as bark flew from an oak tree above me. I was rolling in leaves and dirt as two more shots cracked.

“He’s across the clearing. Where we came from.”

Crouched behind the oak tree, I brushed dirt from my face, my eyes. I looked across the clearing. Light glinted on a rifle barrel close beside a large pine.

Range, a hundred yards. More, maybe.

He’d fired three shots.

Two shots were left. Or three. No more—unless I gave him a chance to re-load.

I was leaping from behind the oak tree. I was running across the clearing, zigzagging as I ran. I did it out of instinct—out of wild, blind hate. And I did it because of Darrell—because he must have help.

Seventy-five yards.

I heard one shot. Two. I was still running, unhurt.

Fifty yards—or less. Beside the pine tree, I saw Keller fall to his knees. His rifle rested with the barrel across his thigh, the stock on the ground. The breech was open. He was slipping one cartridge into the magazine. Two cartridges.

Twenty yards.

With a smooth, precise movement of his hand, Keller was closing the bolt.

Ten yards.

I stopped, steadied myself, raised the shotgun to my shoulder. Over the big double barrels, I saw Keller’s rifle come up. The small gold bead between the shotgun’s barrels steadied on Keller’s chest. His rifle was almost on line. The shotgun roared; the barrels kicked up, momentarily obscuring the target. Then the barrels came down.

At ten yards, the buckshot pattern was about a foot across: a circle of bright red blood and blasted cloth and shredded skin centered on Keller’s chest.

I didn’t wait to see him fall.

Twenty

DARRELL WAS ON HIS knees when I got to him. His face was white. He was staring past me, toward the spot where Keller had fallen. Darrell’s eyes were fixed. Against the pallor of his skin, his lips were a vivid red.

I knelt beside him, taking his head in my hands. “Don’t look, Darrell. Please don’t look.”

His body was rigid; his neck was corded. His head resisted the gentle pressure of my hands as I tried to turn him toward me. I moved awkwardly on my knees, to put myself between Darrell and Keller’s body.

“Darrell. Please.”

His vivid lips slowly parted. “Is he—dead?”

“He was trying to kill me.”

Wonderingly, his eyes sought mine. His skin was pale as death. Perspiration covered his face. It was a sure sign of shock. His voice was a low, halting monotone: “He wouldn’t let me move from here. He said he’d shoot me if I moved. He said I had to stay here until you came. And the snake was here, too. After it bit me, the snake stayed here. I could hear it rattling.”

“Darrell”—I dropped my hands to his shoulders—“Darrell, I want you to lie down. I want you to lie down flat on your back.”

It was as if his limbs were locked with rigor mortis. He was staring at me like someone silently seeking the answer to some terrible question.

Was it the shock of seeing Keller die?

Or was it the venom, killing him?

“Darrell, I want you to lie down.” I began to push on his shoulders. For another long, limb-stiffened moment he resisted me. Then I felt his shoulders trembling. His mouth began to quiver. He was blinking rapidly, fighting sudden tears.

“Dad. I—I’m scared.”

I hugged him close to me as his body went limp in my arms. “Lie down now. Just lie down.” Over and over, helplessly, I was repeating the same words in a low, choked voice. It was a lost, desperate lullaby. I supported him as a mother supports her baby, with one of my hands gently cradling his head. He let me lay him full length on the grass. His eyes were streaming—and so were mine.

“Where’s the bite?” I asked.

“On my ankle,” he said. “My right ankle.” He spoke thickly, as if he were falling asleep. His eyes were half closed. I lifted his right pantleg. Just above the bulge of the ankle bone I saw two angry red dots, a little less than an inch apart. The ankle was inflamed, beginning to swell.

I’d dropped the shotgun on the ground beside me. As I picked up the gun and broke the breech I said, “I’ve got five or six extra shells. I’m going to shoot them off, as a signal. If that doesn’t work, then I’m going to have to leave you here, while I go for help.”

“No.” Weakly, he shook his head.

“I can’t carry you, Darrell. You’re too heavy, and we’re too far from the road. And you can’t walk. You’ve got to stay quiet. That’s the most important thing of all—to stay quiet.”

He didn’t answer. I’d just slid two live shells into the breech and was snapping the gun shut when I heard the sound of an engine. A moment later a red jeep appeared at the furthest end of the clearing. The driver was Virgil Cassiday.

I broke the shotgun, ejected the two live shells and stood with the stock of the empty shotgun resting on the ground. I wondered what Cassiday would think, seeing me crying.

“I bet I’ve seen a dozen people snake-bit,” Cassiday said. “Maybe two dozen. I’m fifty-four years old, and I’ve lived in Long Valley all my life. But I never seen anyone die from snakebite. I saw them pretty sick, and there was one little girl, a few years back, that lost her leg up to the knee. But that was because she ran when she got bit. You can’t do that, you know. You can’t run, when you get bit.”

We were in a small, stark waiting room. There were only two doors, one marked EXIT, the other marked EMERGENCY. We’d been sitting side by side on an uncomfortable green plastic sofa for more than an hour. During most of the time, Cassiday had been talking: a droning, drawling monologue concerned with ranching, snakes, hunters, tourists, guns and the killing of men and animals. He sat with his booted legs thrust straight out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. His brown Stetson was tilted aggressively over his eyes. His strong forearms were folded across his chest. Two crossed American flags were tattooed on either forearm.

“The reason I come looking for you,” he said, “was that when I heard all that shooting on a Monday morning, I knew damn well something smelled rotten. But you were lucky I happened to be down by the river, just the same. I was checking on my goddam pump, that’s been giving me nothing but trouble lately. Because if I hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t’ve come, probably.”

I mumbled that I was glad he’d come—that I could never repay him.

“Hell, that’s what it’s all about,” Cassiday answered. “Helping folks, I mean. Up here, we got to look out for the other guy. There’s no such a thing as radio-dispatched police cars cruising around up here, you know. Speaking of which, Rawlings called to say they found your gun. Your snubnose. Did I tell you?”

“No, you didn’t tell me. Thanks. Thanks very much. I would hate to’ve lost it.”

As Cassiday continued to talk, this time about his CB radio network, I let my eyes close. I wondered how the little girl was getting through life, with only one leg. Had her friends avoided her—taunted her, even? Would she marry, have children? Did she have an artificial leg?

“… a criminal?” Cassiday was asking, half turning to me as he spoke.

“What?”

“Was he a criminal, that Keller fella?”

Slowly, I shook my head. “Not really. He was crazy. But he wasn’t a criminal.”

“How about that girl? The one that got all beat up? You going to prefer charges?”

A half-hour ago, they’d taken Cara into the emergency room. From her gurney, she’d smiled at me. Like Darrell, she’d been pale and weak, badly frightened.

“No,” I answered, “I’m not going to prefer charges.”

The door marked EMERGENCY opened. A young man with a large red mustache and bushy red sideburns stood in the doorway. His eyebrows, too, were red and bushy. He wore a pale green jacket and white trousers. A stethoscope hung around his neck. As he stared at me, his expression was grave.

“Mr. Hastings?”

I discovered that I was having difficulty getting to my feet. Suddenly I remembered the moment, fifteen years ago, when a white-haired doctor with lively blue eyes had shaken my hand, clapped me heartily on the shoulder and said, “It’s a boy.”

Finally I stood erect, facing this young man with so much red hair growing on his face.

“Yes.”

“Come with me, will you?” He held the door for me, then preceded me down a wide white corridor. We passed a rack of oxygen tanks and a blood-spattered gurney. At a door marked “Ward A” the young doctor finally turned to face me squarely. His expression was still grave.

“He’s in there, Mr. Hastings.” A pause. Then: “There’s no problem. He should stay overnight, for observation. But I’m sure he’ll be able to go home tomorrow.”

For a moment I couldn’t answer. My knees were trembling. Now I began to shiver, as if I were very cold. My entire body was helplessly quivering. I reached out to brace myself against the wall.

“Are you married, Doctor?”

Surprised, he shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

“I didn’t think so. Because, if you were married, and if you had a child, you wouldn’t have put me through the last thirty or forty seconds, wondering whether my son was alive or dead—and how many legs he had.”

I brushed past him, pushed open the door and found Darrell propped up in bed. White curtains surrounded his bed on three sides. I pulled the fourth curtain closed before I turned to face him. I realized that I couldn’t speak.

For a moment we looked at each other. Then, together, we smiled.

“They’re never going to believe it, until I show them those old fang marks,” Darrell said. His eyes were shining. His face glowed. “Paul and Rickey and Charlie and all those other guys, they’ll never believe it. But then I’ll show them those old fang marks. And then, when they see that old snakeskin hanging over my bed, they’re going to turn green. In Michigan, they don’t even have any rattlesnakes.”

I began laughing—and discovered that I couldn’t stop.

Twenty-one

I PUSHED OPEN THE door marked AIRPORT SECURITY. Seated behind the desk was the same secretary with whom I’d argued Tuesday, trying to drop off my revolver. The encounter started the same—but ended differently. Minutes later Darrell and I were standing together at American Gate 6. We’d been delayed in traffic, coming to the airport. Passengers were already boarding Flight 82 for Detroit.

Darrell and I stood silently, facing each other as travelers moved impatiently around us. In my mind, I’d rehearsed this moment a dozen times driving to the airport. Now I reached out and shook his hand as I said, “I guess it was a vacation you won’t forget for a while.” I was satisfied with the pitch of my voice: easy, but not too casual. The words, too, had sounded right: man to man, not adult to child.

But his answering smile was tentative. During the past few minutes, leaving Security and approaching the boarding gate, I’d sensed a tightening in Darrell’s manner. As our time together came down to minutes, his speech had become diffident, suddenly strained.

Would we part as we’d met, trying not to be strangers?

After everything that happened?

I realized that, suddenly, I had nothing more to say to him. I could only hold his hand a little tighter.

Then I saw his eyes quicken. He was, I knew, remembering something that had happened to us in Lake County. Suddenly he was smiling—widely, warmly.

“Boy, I’ll never forget that old lamp exploding. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that fire.”

Answering his, my smile was widening, too. “I know.”

A moment of silence followed. I realized that he was deciding how to say something more. Finally, with a trace of embarrassment, he said, “You were really okay, Dad. Up there, I mean. In the woods. I—ah—just wanted to tell you.”

“You were okay, too,” I answered. Gripping his hand harder, I added, “And that’s not just a proud parent talking. That’s a cop talking, too.”

“Some cop.”

“Thanks.”

For a moment we stood silently together, smiling. Then he turned and walked through the boarding gate. He was limping slightly.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1978 by Collin Wilcox

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-4716-5

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Copyright