One of the boys said, “There’s somebody out there in a rowboat.”
“He’ll hear you.”
“That’s all right. Maybe he’s got that Big Red, since you don’t have it.” And they went back to their reasonable bickering about the lure.
There were five dark houses before the next lit one. Out in the middle of the lake there’d been a little breeze-chop making wavelets that had slowed the boat some, but in closer to shore the water was almost completely flat, with only a slight ripple from the breeze, and the boat cut through it faster and more smoothly.
He recognized the boathouse first, even though this was the only time he’d seen it from this direction. But he knew it was the right house before he could see it clearly, and he rowed more cautiously, shipping the oars at last and letting the boat drift the short distance in to the boathouse.
The living room was lit, the bedroom was dark. He could see no one through the living-room windows. Light-spill on the side of the house told him the kitchen lights were on.
He took out the automatic from under his arm and held it in his right hand while with his left he maneuvered the boat around the front of the boathouse and along the wooden dock on the side. The shore was finished with a concrete patio, so he kept the boat from drifting all the way in; he didn’t want the clatter of aluminum on concrete.
The boat had its own frayed rope, one end tied to a ring at the prow. There were several rings set at intervals along the outer edge of the dock, and Parker put the automatic down on the dock while he made the boat fast. Then he picked up the gun again and stepped up cautiously onto the dock.
Was that movement on the porch? He stood on the dock, against the boathouse’s side wall, and watched and waited. Nothing happened, and then a figure—two figures—moved past the lit windows from left to right. The door between the living room and the porch opened and closed.
Parker waited. Nothing else happened. He had the vague impression of people moving in the living room, but the angle was wrong to make out what they were doing.
He moved out away from the boathouse wall and came cautiously in off the dock, moving at an angle that would take him eventually to the lightless bedroom. The tall skinny trees spaced around the lawn obscured his view of the house slightly without giving him any cover. He moved up through them, eyes scanning the house, automatic ready in his right hand.
The porch lights snapped on, and a second later the night erupted in rifle shots and screaming and the clatter of breaking glass. There was something on the porch in front of the bedroom door, Parker couldn’t see what; he crouched low and ran forward, now aiming more to the right, toward the living room.
Claire had said she’d bought a rifle.
The noise ended as abruptly as it had started: first the scream, then the glass, and finally the flurry of shots. None of the rifle fire seemed to have been aimed in Parker’s direction.
In the new silence, Parker moved along the edge of the screened-in porch toward the stoop and the screen door. Looking back to his left, he could see now what was in front of the bedroom door: a chair, facing the bedroom, with somebody sitting in it. Tied to it. Unconscious, or dead. The chair was turned away so that Parker couldn’t see who it was or anything else about him.
The porch lights were a nuisance, but the screaming had given him a greater sense of urgency. He went up the stoop, crouching, looking every way at once, and another scream sounded from the bedroom; louder, more shrill and hopeless than before.
Parker pushed at the screen door and the latch was on. He kicked the sole of his foot against the wood of the door just above the knob, and the door popped wide open, as though in invitation. He jumped through, looked to the right and ran left, toward the bedroom. He stopped behind the chair, looked over the shoulder of the thing sitting in it, and saw Claire sitting in the middle of the floor, clutching a rifle in both hands. Behind her, the hall door was barricaded with the dresser. To the left, the bathroom door had been locked, but had now been broken open, and two shaggy-looking men were standing just inside the doorway. One of them, moon-faced and grinning, started toward Claire as though he were a child and she a piece of candy. The other one, more hawklike, stood back with the small smile of the spectator on his mouth.
Parker lifted the hand with the automatic in it. The hawklike one saw the movement, saw him standing there, and yelled, “Manny! Back!”
Manny? Parker fired at him, but Manny was already turning and the bullet didn’t hit him right; it caught him in the upper left arm and knocked him sprawling on his face on the floor in front of the bed.
Claire had flung the rifle away and lunged for the side of the bed, to press herself against the floor there.
The hawklike one had suddenly developed a gun. He fired twice, both bullets going wide, and shouted, “Manny, for Christ’s sake, get up!”
It was tough, from outside the room, to get a good shot at either of them. Having already wounded Manny, Parker tried for the other one, but the shot missed, and after it the guy ducked back through the doorway. And Manny had gotten his feet under him; in a scrabbling lunge, half-run and half-crawl, he catapulted himself across the open space and through the bathroom door and out of sight.
Parker knocked over the chair with the dead man in it, to get it out of his way. The glass door was locked; he reached through the broken part and unlocked it, then slid it open and stepped inside.
Claire was still cowering on the floor beside the bed. Parker left her there for now, and followed the two men.
He was slowed down because he couldn’t go through any doorway or around any corner without first being sure they weren’t waiting for him on the other side. But when he got to the kitchen he saw the outside door standing open, and heard the roar of a car starting up. The kitchen was a mess, chairs overturned and slop everywhere; he saw it without thinking about it yet, and ran to the front door.
The light switch on the wall beside the door turned on two outside lights, an ornamental fixture beside the door and a floodlight mounted over the garage doors. Parker hit that switch on the way by, and where there had been darkness outside the doorway there was now the gravel driveway and two cars: a white Plymouth and a dark blue Corvette. They had been parked side by side in front of the door, the ’Vette nearest the house, and it was the ’Vette that was now in motion, backing fast and curving to put its taillights against the garage doors and point its nose down the driveway toward the road.
Parker got one shot at it while it was broadside to him over there, the driver shifting out of reverse. He didn’t bother to try for the driver, who was in any case crouched low in the seat and was a chancy target in this light. He shot the left front tire, and when the ’Vette surged forward, spraying gravel back onto the garage doors, Parker fired a second time and put out the left rear tire. The ’Vette slued badly, but kept moving. Parker ran forward three strides, turned sideways to the fleeing car, and tried to plant a bullet in the right rear tire, but apparently missed. As the ’Vette was grinding through the turn onto the road, swaying and bumping badly with both left tires out, Parker made a try for the gas tank, firing two shots into the car’s body. Then it was out of range of the floodlight, though for a few seconds longer he could still hear it.
He half-turned and ran to the garage to get out Claire’s Buick, but there were padlocks on the doors that hadn’t been there thirty-six hours ago.
The Plymouth? He went to it and opened it and the keys weren’t in the ignition. He hadn’t really expected them to be, but it was worth a try.
So they’d made it. For now.
Parker went back into the house, shutting the door behind himself and switching off the lights again. He kept the automatic in his hand and walked back through the bathroom into the bedroom.
Claire was sitting on the bed. She looked weary, but not hysterical. She lifted her head when he walked into the room, and said, “They got away?”
“For now. How are you?”
“
A nervous wreck. I’m glad you got here.”
He went over and stood in front of her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I came as fast as I could.”
“I know you did.” She patted his hand. “It was very scary, waiting. I’m going to have nightmares for a while.”
“Can you tell me about them? Can you talk yet?”
“Not till you get rid of that.” She moved her head slightly, without turning it, the gesture indicating the porch.
He glanced that way and saw the overturned chair with the body tied to it. He still hadn’t seen the face, still knew only that it was male and naked and dead and messy. He said, “Was that one of them?” Thinking there might have been a falling-out among them.
But she shook her head. She was looking straight ahead, at his belt buckle, as though she had to have a very tight rein on herself right now. She said, “Morris. From the robbery.”
“Morris? He came here with them?”
“I’ll tell you about it,” she said, and now there was more vibrato in her voice, more trembling. “But first you have to get rid of it. You have to.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll get rid of it.”
2
It was simplest, despite the chill in the air, to do the job naked. It was going to be messy, and this way there’d be no clothing to be cleaned afterward.
But first there were preparations to be made. Parker found Morris’ clothes in the kitchen, ripped and torn and bloodied and strewn around the floor. He searched them for the keys to the white Plymouth outside, then bundled them up and carried them around the outside of the house to leave them temporarily with the body. He took the long way so as not to carry the bundle past Claire, and saw through the shattered glass door that she was no longer in the bedroom. He could hear water running in the tub.
He drove the Plymouth around the lake, taking the opposite direction from that of the Corvette, which meant he would follow the loop of road around the lake without coming out on the main road, with all its citybound traffic.
He knew it was a risk, leaving the house again, but it was one he had to take. The two in the Corvette wouldn’t get very far with a pair of tires gone, so they’d still be in the neighborhood for a while, but it was unlikely they’d choose to come back to Claire’s house, knowing it was now occupied by a man with a gun.
He passed the house where he’d borrowed the rowboat; his Pontiac still sat quietly in the driveway. And about half a dozen houses beyond that, where he had noticed on the way in a family loading their car, there was now no car, and the house was in darkness. Parker turned the Plymouth in at that driveway, left it, and went around to the boathouse, which was locked. Wood near water doesn’t last long; it took two kicks to spring the screws loose holding the hasp, and the door sagged open.
The boat inside was a fiberglass outboard with a forty-horsepower Johnson motor. Parker raised the overhead door at the lake end of the boathouse, untied the motorboat from its three moorings, stepped in, and started the motor. He backed out through the wide doorway, turned the boat around, and headed at open throttle across the lake.
Fewer houses were lit now, and with the porch lights still glowing, it was easier to recognize Claire’s place. Parker eased the motorboat in toward shore, nestled it between the rowboat and the concrete, and tied it to another of the rings along the edge of the dock.
Claire was in the tub. She looked up when he came in, and her face seemed simultaneously drawn and puffy, a contradiction that made her look almost as though she’d been partying too much for several nights in a row. She said, “Is it gone yet?”
“Soon. You still want to stay here?”
She looked wary. “Why?”
“I shot out their tires, they’ll still be around the lake someplace. After I’m done here I’ll go look for them, but in the meantime they might come back. While I’m gone.”
“They won’t come back.” She sounded grim, but sure of herself.
“I don’t think so either. But they might. I wounded one of them.”
“That’s why they won’t come back. They’re cowards, you’ll see. They’ll hide in a hole someplace.”
“I think so, too. But just in case.”
“I’m too tired to go anywhere,” she said. “Too tired and too scared and too nervous. You were right before, I should have gone to a hotel. But now I can’t, I can’t do anything.”
“I’ll be as fast as I can.”
His first move was to switch off the bedroom and porch lights, and then to strip down. He stuffed his clothing in a pillowcase and took it down across the backyard and put it on the seat of the motorboat. Then he went back up to the darkened porch and put the chair back up on its legs and dragged it backward over to the door.
It was simplest to just push it through the doorway and let it bounce down the stoop. Then he dragged it across the lawn, detouring around tree trunks, and out over the wooden dock.
The rowboat was out perpendicular to the dock. Parker pulled it closer with the rope, then pulled on the side until it lay along the edge of the dock. He eased the chair backward until it was lying on its back on the dock, and then tipped it sideways off the edge and into the rowboat. It hit face down, which meant the body hit rather than the wooden chair, which muffled the sound.
Claire’s boathouse had a small-wattage bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. Parker switched it on and padded around the concrete edging, gathering up things to weight the body: a length of rusty chain, a broken piece of concrete block, an old metal pulley. He took them all back outside and fixed them around the chair and the body, then tied the rowboat to the rear of the motorboat, and got in the motorboat to tow it out to the middle of the lake.
The toughest part was getting the chair and the body out of the boat. The rowboat bounced and jounced, but wouldn’t tip over, and Parker finally had to climb into it and lift the chair over the side. But then it dropped down into the water at once, and disappeared.
The main thing was, if this area was going to be home base, it had to be kept clean. No sudden unsolved murders, no crime wave of any kind; crooked doings would show up around a rural section like this like a thumbtack under a coat of paint. Which was why replacing the divots took precedence over finding the two in the Corvette.
The rest went pretty fast now, after he sank the body. He towed the rowboat back to the house where he’d borrowed it, and used the bailing can from the motorboat to splash away the bloodstains Morris had left behind. Then he stepped into the cold water himself and scrubbed his body clean, and stood after that by the water’s edge while he put his clothes on again over his wet skin.
It was impossible to get the rowboat back into its original position without help from a second man; Parker dragged it close as he could, and left it there. Then he went back to steer the motorboat along to the left, close to shore, and return it to the boathouse he’d taken it from. The kicked-in door was simple vandalism, the normal kind of petty crime in this area and nothing to worry about.
Morris’ Plymouth was waiting in the driveway. Parker got in it and drove the long way back to Claire’s house, avoiding the highway.
Claire had a mop and a bucket and was doing the kitchen floor. She’d dressed in slacks and sweater and sandals, she’d tied her hair up in a cloth, and she had the fixed look of a woman who is going to make it by will power alone. The table and chairs had already been cleaned and set right, the dishwasher was buzzing, and the few stains that had been along one wall were gone.
Parker came in and said, “No trouble?”
“No trouble.” The rifle was lying on the kitchen table. Claire saw Parker looking at it, and she said, “Next time I’ll know what to do with that. I learn fast, when I have to.”
“It’s loaded again?”
“Of course.”
Parker sat down at the table, pushing the rifle slightly away. “Tell me about them now. Who they are, what their game is, what their connection is, anything they told you.�
��
“Morris told most of it. For my benefit, I think. He already knew who they were.”
“What was Morris doing here?”
“He was doing the same thing you were. He’d heard that your friend Keegan was looking for him, so he went to Keegan to find out why. He found this phone number there, so he came here to find out if you knew what was going on.”
“What about the other two?”
“One of them is named Manny Berridge. He’s—”
“Berridge?”
“You didn’t tell me about the man who was killed. He was supposed to do the robbery with you, wasn’t he?”
“That’s right. Manny’s his son?” That was the one Parker had wounded, the one called Manny.
“Grandson.” She went on to tell him what Morris had said, and he sat and listened to it, frowning at the rifle in front of him on the table.
When she was done, he said, “What about the other one? Jessup, you say? What’s his connection?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he’s just Manny’s friend. He’s the brains of the two, but Manny can be much meaner. He’s like an insane little child.”
“All right.” He got to his feet, pushing the chair back from the table.
She looked at him, her expression apprehensive. “You’re going after them? But they won’t bother us any more, will they?”
“Yes. They strike me as the kind to hold grudges. In the meantime, I want you to do something for me.”
She had finished with the mop, had emptied the bucket into the sink and put mop and bucket both away in the narrow closet in the corner. Now she’d started cleaning the sink. Holding the cleanser in her hand, she said, “What do you want me to do?”
Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel Page 14
