Honeymoon for Three

by Alan Cook

  CHAPTER 20

  Midnight. This was the time he had agreed on with himself. The cautious part of him had argued that it would be better to wait until one or two in the morning, when absolutely nobody was awake, but he was too cold, too stiff, and too tired to wait any longer. The flashlight showed the hands of his watch coming together at the top of the dial. He stood up. It was time for action.

  With this decision, his adrenalin started to flow faster. Gone was the cold. Gone was the tired feeling. It also stimulated his bladder, so he peed against a tree. As his pants became wet from flying spray, he discovered a cardinal rule of outdoor life: don’t piss into the wind. Now his pants were more soiled than they had been already.

  He had been sitting in a grove of pine trees near their tent, staying away from the bears, getting up and moving from time to time to generate a little warmth in his body. During that period, no sound had come from the tent. They must be sleeping the sleep of the young and naïve. Soon they would sleep forever.

  A few cars had driven slowly past. Three had stopped and flashlights had been shone around the campsite from the cars—or maybe it was the same car each time. The trees surrounding Alfred blocked the light, keeping it from exposing him. He figured that a Park Service employee was checking to make sure Penny and Gary were all right. That meant people were looking for him. That was not good news.

  Alfred swung his arms in circles to make sure they were operational. He lifted his feet and silently marched in place. He drew the hunting knife from its sheath under his jacket and practiced wielding it with his right hand. Holding the knife gave him a confidence he wouldn’t have felt without it. It was better than a gun, more reliable, as well as quieter and more efficient.

  He had almost mastered the art of walking silently on the forest floor. His night vision, after several hours outdoors, helped him see the occasional pinecone that might make him stumble. He felt like an Indian guide, at one with the woods. He had never felt this way before. He padded toward the tent, his ears attuned to the slightest noise from within. There was none.

  All the patrols in the world wouldn’t keep him from doing what he had to do. Or keep him from making his escape afterward. He was smarter than the police, smarter than Penny and Gary. In the future, when people put him down, he would have the secret satisfaction of knowing what he had done here tonight.

  He could see well enough to avoid the rope that stretched from the top corner of the tent, diagonally down to where it was fastened to one of the stakes that held the tent in place. He went carefully past the stake to the tent and lowered himself to his knees. He would have to crawl through the opening in the triangular front of the tent.

  The lack of space within was a blessing, because he wouldn’t have any trouble finding his prey. One thing he didn’t know was which one of them slept on the right and which one on the left. He should learn that information with the first stroke of the knife. He wanted to dispatch Gary first.

  Alfred reached forward and touched the canvas material, feeling for the vertical zipper he knew was there from the time he had gone into their tent at Crater Lake. His fingers moved silently until he found the zipper handle. The zipper separated the two flaps of the front of the tent—forming two triangles within the larger triangle.

  The zipper was zipped, of course, and so were the two horizontal zippers, one for each of the flaps. He paused, listening. All was quiet inside the tent. The noise of a zipper might wake them. He would have to work fast. It would take two hands to undo one zipper. He didn’t have time to undo both the vertical and horizontal zippers. He would undo the vertical zipper and then go in.

  He carefully placed the knife on the ground where he could instantly locate it. He grasped the handle of the zipper with his right hand and held the tent material just below it with his left hand, to keep it from snagging as he unzipped it.

  He took a deep but silent breath and yanked the zipper upward. It went halfway up and stuck. He quickly moved his left hand up, grasping the two flaps of the tent just below where the zipper was stuck. He yanked the zipper again with his right hand. This time it went almost to the top of the tent.

  He didn’t have time to raise it any further. He grabbed the knife and parted the unzipped triangles of canvas with his arms by simulating a breaststroke. He hit a vertical tent post as he did so. He dove through the gap into the interior, knocking the post over and bringing the tent down on top of him. He landed on his left hand and tried to raise the knife with his right.

  His knife hand hit the top of the tent, which now covered him like a blanket, making it difficult for him to wield the weapon. He made a few clumsy thrusts with it until he realized that something else was wrong. Gary and Penny hadn’t moved or made a sound. He couldn’t feel their bodies beneath him, and his knife wasn’t hitting anything but the sleeping bag, the tent floor, and the ground underneath.

  It dawned on Alfred that they weren’t inside the tent. He stopped slashing and felt all over the sleeping bag. It was empty. He put down the knife, fumbled in his jacket pocket, and pulled out the flashlight. He had been going to use it to make sure they were dead. He turned it on now and shone it around the collapsed tent as well as he could. This only verified what he already knew.

  ***

  “Why is that car sitting there by itself?” Penny pointed to a campsite with a car parked at the entrance. Even in the dark she could see that there were no other signs of camping activity on the site: no tent and nothing sitting on the picnic table. The car looked out of place.

  Gary shone his flashlight at the car. “That’s a Ford Falcon.”

  “A blue Ford Falcon. Is that the license plate of the car Alfred stole?” Her carefree feeling of a moment ago was replaced by a tightening of her gut.

  Gary dug into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. He shone the flashlight on the paper and read the information written there out loud. Then he shone the light on the license plate of the car. It was a Montana plate.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Shine the light inside.”

  They walked up to the car. Gary shone his flashlight through the window into the front seat. Penny saw several brochures and maps sitting on the seat, along with a bag of chips.

  “What about the back?”

  Gary shone the light through the back window. All she could see there was a hat, something like a cowboy hat.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said. “There’s no camping equipment in the car. In fact, there’s almost nothing in the car.”

  “It does look suspicious.”

  “I’m not going back to the tent.” The thought of being inside that cramped space in the dark, without knowing who was prowling around outside, engulfed her with a feeling of claustrophobia.

  “But what can we do?”

  “We’ve got to call Detective Landon.”

  “It’s night. He won’t be working.”

  “Somebody will be working. He said to call anytime.”

  Penny looked pleadingly at Gary, but she couldn’t see his face very well. He was silent for a moment. She knew she’d never be able to sleep in the tent.

  “There’s a phone booth at the campground office,” Gary said. “We can call from there.”

  Penny clung to Gary’s hand as they walked toward the entrance to the campground. He wouldn’t let them be hurt. Her imagination magnified every sound they heard. When a bear crossed the road in front of them, she was grateful that it wasn’t something worse.

  Gary made the collect call. Penny listened as he explained the situation to whomever was on duty. He talked for about five minutes. Before he hung up, he agreed several times with whatever the other person was saying.

  “What does he want us to do?” Penny asked, not waiting for Gary to speak.

  “He agrees that the situation is suspicious. He’s coordinating with local law enforcement to get somebody out here. He said under no circumstances should we return to our campsi
te. We have to wait here. He’s going to get us a ride to Grant Village. We’ll stay in the hotel there.”

  “What about our car?”

  “He said not to move the car. If it is Alfred, we don’t want to do anything that might alert him to the fact that we know he’s here. We’re supposed to stay at the entrance to the campground until our ride comes.”

  “And try to keep warm.”

  “And try to keep warm. I’ll race you to that pine tree.”

  “Forget it. Just sit on that bench and snuggle with me.”

  ***

  Alfred backed out of the tent and stood up. What had been a trim-looking tent collapsed completely and became a disorganized pile of canvas. Was this a trap? Was that why someone had come by and shone a flashlight into the campsite at intervals? They must have found his car. He couldn’t return to it. What should he do?

  He shouldn’t be walking through the campground alone at midnight. If whoever was looking for him was still prowling around, they might spot him. He had to hide somewhere until morning, when he could blend in with the other campers. But where?

  Certainly not at this campsite. He had to walk somewhere, being careful to hide if a car came along. He had already hidden among the trees for a couple of hours. He was cold and angry. He didn’t want to get caught before he completed his mission. If that meant hiding for the rest of the night, he would do it.

  He could take the VW and get out of here. No, that car was too conspicuous. He couldn’t steal a car from the campground, with all the campers around, even if he could get it started. He would figure out what to do in the morning.

  He walked along the campground road until he had put some distance between himself and the campsite belonging to Penny and Gary. He wasn’t even worried about bears anymore. He finally decided he had gone far enough. He found a convenient grove of trees in an isolated area. He sat down in the middle of them, leaned his back against one, and tried to get comfortable and warm. It was a losing battle.

  CHAPTER 21

  Gary and Penny were having breakfast in the hotel in Grant Village when a National Park Service employee in uniform, complete with the arrowhead shoulder patch and Smokey the Bear felt hat, came up to their table and introduced himself.

  “I’m Roger Barth,” he said, shaking hands with them in turn. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Can you fill us in on what’s happening?” Gary asked.

  “I’ll tell you what I know. The Ford Falcon that you found was stolen. The plates have been switched with another car.”

  “Did you get Alfred?” Penny asked.

  “Not yet. But we have reason to believe he was active last night.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Well, sometime after midnight when we checked your campsite, we saw that the tent was down. So we got out and investigated.”

  “And?” Gary prompted when he paused.

  “Well, it appeared that somebody had gone inside the tent.”

  “A bear?”

  “It wasn’t a bear. Did you leave a hunting knife in your tent?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. And bears don’t use knives. Well, we found a knife inside the tent. We kept it for evidence, because there were slashes in the sleeping bag.”

  Penny gasped and gripped Gary’s hand.

  “So Alfred was there,” Gary said slowly. “And he tried to kill us. It’s a good thing—”

  “The prints on the knife will be matched with the prints on the stolen car and a car found abandoned in Montana. That’s what I’ve been told. I believe you have a contact in Montana—a Detective Landon?”

  “Yes,” Penny managed to say.

  “Stay in touch with him. He’ll be able to tell you the results of the fingerprint tests. Meanwhile, I’ll drive you back to your campsite. You’re not planning to stay here another night, are you?”

  “No,” Gary said. “We’re going on to the Tetons.”

  “Good.”

  “Where do you think Alfred is?” Penny asked. “Did he steal another car?”

  “There haven’t been any car thefts reported in or around Yellowstone. Of course, we’re on the lookout for him.”

  “Do you think he’s still in the campground?”

  “If so, he must have had a cold night.”

  That didn’t sound very comforting to Penny. They weren’t able to catch Alfred, even when they knew where he was, or at least where he had been. And Alfred was trying to kill them both. In spite of how much she was enjoying the beauty of Yellowstone, she was glad they were leaving.

  ***

  The cold woke Alfred about the time the first rays of the morning sun penetrated the grove of pine trees in which he was sitting. He had never felt this miserable in his life. His joints were so stiff he didn’t know whether he could move at all. He also wasn’t sure whether the resulting pain would be worth the effort. It might have been better if he had frozen to death during the night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that cold.

  The good news, if it could be called such, was that he had almost no feeling in his hands and feet. At least they didn’t hurt. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and started exploratory movements of his fingers. He rubbed his hands together. Eventually his fingers started to tingle and then to ache. As other muscles grudgingly came into play, he found that he couldn’t stand. He had to spend a while on his knees before enough blood reached his feet to allow him to rise to the vertical position favored by humans.

  He came out of the grove of trees and headed toward the nearest restroom, trying to look nonchalant, but his legs didn’t want to obey the instructions from his brain, and his gait was labored, as if he had a bad case of arthritis. He had read that walking on two legs was controlled falling. Not very comforting, but that’s certainly what he was doing now. The question was whether he could maintain control.

  A few other campers were up and headed in the same direction. He attempted to unfreeze his frozen facial muscles enough to smile at them and say good morning. Of course, there was no hot water, so his hands remained ice cold when he washed them. He stumbled out of the restroom and realized that he had no place to go. Along with no food and no transportation. He could walk to the restaurant and eat breakfast. But then what?

  He strolled at random along one of the primitive roads of the campground, trying to warm up and observing the early risers as they heated coffee on their Coleman stoves. He could use a cup of hot coffee right now. The hotter the better.

  A white Volkswagen camper with a customized bubble-top was parked at one of the campsites. It had a California license plate. A middle-aged woman tended a stove, which was set on the wooden picnic table. She was cooking bacon in a frying pan. Alfred’s taste buds started to work overtime. He’d better get to the restaurant.

  As he passed the camper, he saw a man crouched in front of the rear-mounted engine. The engine door was open, and he was fiddling with something on the engine itself. From his look of puzzlement, Alfred concluded that he probably didn’t know what he was doing.

  “Having a problem?” Alfred asked in what he hoped was a friendly voice. His vocal cords had thawed to the point where he could speak almost normally.

  “God damn engine has lost all its power,” the man said. “Never should have bought a Volkswagen. I had some work done a couple of days ago, before we came into the park. Haven’t been able to climb a hill at over twenty miles per hour since.”

  “I might be able to help you. Want me to have a look at it?”

  “Might as well. I sure as hell don’t know what the problem is.”

  The man got out of the way, and Alfred crouched in front of the engine. He actually did know a little about engines, because his father was a decent amateur mechanic and had taught him how to change the oil and do other simple tasks. He had never looked at a VW engine before.

  He didn’t want the man to notice his ineptness, so he said to him, “Why don’t you start ‘er up.”

  The man,
who had a two-day growth of beard and was wearing a cap with some sort of naval insignia on it, looked glad that he had something to do. He wasn’t big, but his movements exuded power through his jeans and flannel shirt. He strode to the cab, climbed in, and in a few seconds the engine was running.

  Running, but not running very well. It sounded rough, as if it were under duress. Alfred peered at it, wishing he actually knew what he was doing. When the man stuck his head out of the doorway and looked back at Alfred in a questioning manner, Alfred yelled at him, “Rev it up.”

  As the engine sped up, Alfred noticed something. There was a metal piece that moved and had a sort of hook on a spring attached to it, but the other end wasn’t attached to anything. Then he saw the eye it must go into. The problem might be a very simple one to resolve. He yelled at the man to shut off the engine. After the quiet returned, Alfred asked him whether he had a pair of pliers.

  The man produced them from the vehicle’s toolkit. An idea was forming in Alfred’s mind. He couldn’t let the man see what he was doing. He took the pliers and said to him, “Be ready to start it up again when I give you the signal.”

  The man returned to the cab. Alfred gripped the loose end of the spring with the pliers and fed it into the eye. Then he called for the man to start the engine. The difference was instantly noticeable. It sounded smoother. When it was revved up, it sounded even better. Alfred was sure that the problem was fixed. He was equally sure that he didn’t want to show the man what he had done.

  When the man shut off the engine and returned to the rear of the VW, Alfred said, “I think that fixed your problem. Do you want to take it for a test run?”

  “We’ll be leaving after breakfast. That will give us plenty of time to test it. Gotta be heading back home. Thanks for your help.”

  Alfred was glad he didn’t ask what the problem was. “You live in California?”

  “Northern California. Crescent City, near the Oregon border.”

  The woman who had been cooking breakfast had come over to stand beside her husband. She heard the part about the engine being fixed. She was plump, but she didn’t have a bad figure. A kindly face and short, nondescript hair of an uncertain drab color. Probably in her forties. She wore a sweatshirt that said, “I survived the big one.”