Runyon programmed the Crooked Creek Road address into the Ford’s GPS. Five point eight miles north of Six Pines, zero point four off the main valley road. Shouldn’t take him more than ten minutes to get there.
Crooked Creek Road lived up to its name: a narrow, twisty lane that followed the watercourse up into the hills. In the purple dusk, the Ford’s headlights picked out two unpaved driveways before a third loomed ahead on his left and the GPS unit told him he’d reached his destination. He put the side window down, slowing, as he neared the drive. It angled in across a short wooden bridge, on the other side of which was a closed gate in a chain-link fence that stretched out into the trees along both sides of the creek. A half moon was coming up, and in its pale light he could make out a house and two or three outbuildings on a flattish section of ground inside. From out here, all of the structures appeared dark—no lights anywhere.
He drove uphill until he came to another property, turned around in the driveway there, rolled back down to Balfour’s, and turned in so that the headlights illuminated the gate and some of the property beyond. Leaving the engine running, he stepped out into a night breeze that now held a mountain chill.
The two gate halves were padlocked together. No intercom device that would allow you to announce yourself from out here. Runyon peered through the opening between the two upright bars. The house was small, plain, well maintained. The largest and closest outbuilding, set at an angle to the left, was almost as large and probably housed Balfour’s workshop. The other, smaller buildings were shadow shapes outlined against the pine woods that walled off the rear of the property. There was a stake-bed truck slanted in near the workshop, but the open-ended carport along one side of the house was empty.
Somewhere out back, a dog had begun yammering, deep-throated barks that had an echoing effect in the light-splashed darkness. Tied up, because between yaps, even at this distance, he could hear the dog lunging at the end of the chain or rope or whatever was holding it back there. If Balfour was in the house, the animal racket and the bright headlight beams should have alerted him by now. But the front door stayed shut, the windows and porch light stayed dark.
Runyon turned to look at his watch in the headlight glare. Nine-twenty. No choice now but to hold off until morning. He couldn’t just sit out on the road and wait; no telling how long it would be before Balfour came home, if he wasn’t already forted up in there. Hanging around a stranger’s property after dark was a fool’s gambit anyway, unless you had damn good cause or a desire to spook the subject. And he had neither.
20
PETE BALFOUR
The road around the east end of Eagle Rock Lake was in lousy shape—ruts, potholes, crumbled edges. Leave it to the goddamn county. Not that he gave a crap what the county did or didn’t do, not anymore. Off on his right as he jounced along, the lake looked like the big oil slick they’d had down in the Gulf—smooth and shiny black, skimmed here and there with reflections of moonlight. It was a mile and a half wide, maybe a mile long, supposed to be a lot of fish in it on account of it was fed by a bunch of mountain streams. Couldn’t prove it by him. His sport wasn’t fishing, it was hunting.
Going hunting tonight. Big-game hunting—Verriker hunting.
Balfour could feel the weight of the revolver in his jacket pocket. Charter 2000 Off Duty .38 special, two-inch barrel. Serial number filed off like on all the guns in his collection. Had it for years, couldn’t be traced back to him—not that that mattered anymore. Perfect piece for this kind of hunt.
He was pretty juiced now that he was close to settling the score with Neddy boy, but he’d of been more juiced if he wasn’t so pissed at that tourist woman. He’d swabbed the cut under his right eye with iodine, but it still burned like hell. Missed sticking them twisted-together tacks through his eye by about two inches. Bitch. Lunging at him like a freaking ninja soon as he opened the shed door, surprised the hell out of him, he’d just managed to get his head snapped back in time. She’d worked herself out of the duct tape in there, okay, he’d figured she might, she’d had plenty of time, but what he hadn’t figured on was her getting her hands on something she could use as a weapon to attack him. Where the hell had those tacks come from? For sure not the old TV set she’d pulled down on the floor.
Two inches higher, and he wouldn’t be out here with Verriker in his sights. He’d be back at the house or on his way to the hospital—Pete One-Eye. Or maybe Pete Dead.
Well, he’d make her pay for it. Just like he’d make the rest of them pay for what they’d done to him.
The truck bounced around a bend past a long limestone shelf. And in the distance, then, he could see lights through the trees at the edge of the lake. That’d be the Ramsey cabin. He’d been over this road before on other hunting trips, seen the cabin squatting down there with its little T-dock poking out into the water.
So Verriker hadn’t gone to bed yet. He’d hoped the bugger would be sound asleep, all the lights off, so he could slip on up to the cabin and maybe a door or window’d be unlocked and he could surprise Verriker in the sack. But now what he’d do, he’d just knock on the door and when Verriker opened it, stick the .38 in his face, look him square in the eye, and tell him why he should of died along with Alice. Then laugh the way he’d been laughed at that night in the Buckhorn, let Verriker know before he blew him away that the last big joke was on him and it was Pete Balfour who was getting the last laugh.
Better not drive any farther. The pickup’s engine was quiet, the muffler in good shape, but sounds carried a long way at night in country like this. He looked for a place to park the truck, found one in the trees on the inland side. He hadn’t seen any other cars since he’d turned in, but that didn’t mean somebody wouldn’t come along. There were only a few cabins and cottages out here, spaced wide apart, but at least half had people in them this time of year. He’d seen other lights on the way in, could make out a few now glimmering over on the south shore.
He walked along the edge of the road, ready to jump off into the trees at the first sight of headlights. But the road and the night stayed dark, except for the cabin lights winking ahead. Moonlight let him see so he didn’t stumble over something. Took him six, seven minutes to get near the turnoff to the cabin. Then he angled down through the pines, moving slow and quiet in the underbrush, until he could see the front of the cabin.
Verriker’s Dodge van was parked there, dirty white in the moonshine. Yeah, but it had company. Jeep Cherokee sitting there, too—Joe Ramsey’s Jeep.
Shit!
Verriker was supposed to be alone in the cabin, licking his wounds. What was Ramsey doing here?
Balfour edged down farther through the trees, until he was about fifty yards from the cabin. From there, he could see a light in a screened-in rear porch, and that somebody was standing on the dock looking out over the lake. Verriker? Ramsey? The red eye of a cigarette glowed sudden in the dark. Hell, it wasn’t neither of them. Verriker didn’t smoke, Ramsey’d made a big deal about quitting a couple of years back … but Ramsey’s scrawny wife, Connie, lit up every chance she had. Well, it was no big surprise she’d come out here with her old man—mother hen type, make sure poor Ned baby was okay, change his diapers for him.
Cold in among the pines with a night wind blowing in off the lake. He pulled the collar of his jacket up and stuffed his hands in the pockets, watching. The cold got to Connie Ramsey, too. She finished her smoke, tossed the butt into the lake, turned back toward the cabin. Damn woman waddled like a duck when she walked.
The screen door slammed, and when the porch light went out, Balfour moved up toward the front again. Stood there waiting for the Ramseys to come out and get in their Jeep and drive the hell away so he could finish the hunt. He could already feel it bubbling up inside him, taste it sweet like candy on the back of his tongue.
Only they didn’t come out.
Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. What was taking them so long?
A light come on behind one of the windo
ws on this side, probably a bedroom. Then the front room lights and the bedroom light went out. And the whole damn cabin was dark. Dark!
What the hell?
Took Balfour a few seconds to get it, and when he did, the rage went boiling through him like hot oil. The Ramseys weren’t going home, they were spending the night here. That bitch Connie’s doing, didn’t want poor Neddy Boy to be alone, and gutless pussy-whipped Joe Ramsey had let her have her way like he always did.
Another monkey wrench in the plans. The tourist woman twice, the explosion not getting Verriker, now this. And none of it Pete Balfour’s fault, none of it he could’ve seen ahead of time. As if it wasn’t just Asshole Valley that was out to get him, but the whole damn world, everything and everybody working against him, laughing at him, letting him think he was in control and then spinning him around and around like a bug on a pin.
He leaned against a tree trunk, shaking with fury. Blood pounded in his ears. The cut under his eye burned like fire. Inside his head, the voices started up again, saying the same like always, over and over, over and over. Biggest asshole I know, maybe the biggest one in these parts. I bet somebody’d nominate you for mayor, I bet you’d win hands down. Pete Balfour, the first mayor of Asshole Valley … mayor of Asshole Valley … mayor of Asshole Valley …
An urge came over him to bust into the cabin, blow all three of them away, wham! wham! wham! Almost gave in to it. Yanked the .38 out, shoved off the tree, and took a couple of steps toward the cabin. But then he come to his senses. He stopped, breathing hard, and pretty soon the thunder in his ears eased, the voices faded into a low mutter. He put the revolver away, wiped cold sweat off his forehead.
Too much risk. He might be able to take all three of them out, but then again, he might not. For all he knew, Verriker or Ramsey had a piece, too, and would use it to shoot him before he finished the job. And even if he did get them all, they’d be missed come tomorrow and somebody’d drive out and find the bodies. If it’d just been Verriker, no problem, because he’d of made it look like a suicide, like poor Ned couldn’t deal with losing his precious Alice and took the quick way out—that’d been the plan. But three bodies … plain murder, the kind that could raise a stink and maybe throw a monkey wrench into his other plan, the big one. He had to be careful. He had to have all of tomorrow to himself, no hassles, because of all he had to do to set things up just right. He wasn’t gonna let anything screw that up.
But what about Verriker? Still had to watch him die, still had to have his last laugh. Tomorrow night maybe, depending on what time he got back from Stockton, and whether or not the Ramseys stayed over again. If that didn’t work out, well, then he’d come out here and do it early Friday morning. Bring the Sterling semi-auto with him, make sure he had plenty of firepower in case the Ramseys were still hanging around. Wouldn’t make no difference then how many dead bodies there were in that cabin. No difference at all.
Better get on home, get a good night’s sleep. Big day tomorrow. He pumped both middle fingers at the dark cabin, then turned and headed back through the trees to the road.
21
Balfour. Pete Balfour.
Was he the one?
Best lead yet, thanks to Runyon, but only because of his connection with the Verrikers; there was nothing to tie him directly to the logging road or Kerry’s disappearance, nothing we could take to Broxmeyer, or direct to the county sheriff, or act on ourselves. Two things we could do. One was to have Tamara run a deep backgrounder on Balfour; I called her after Runyon came back with his news and we’d talked over the situation, and she was on it right away. The other thing was for Jake and me to talk to the man, see if we could squeeze anything out of him.
Tamara worked fast, called back in a little more than an hour. Nothing much, no red flags except for an arrest six years ago on a spousal battery charge. But Balfour’s ex-wife had dropped the charge the next day. Two other brushes with the law: a DUI three years ago and a charge of poaching deer out of season, fines and probation on both. There’d also been two complaints against his construction business, one by a private individual for overcharges on a house remodel, the other by the owners of a restaurant in one of the hamlets at the north end of the valley for use of inferior building materials; the second complaint got him a modest fine by the county licensing board. Those were the only blemishes on his record. Lived alone, no dependents, paid his bills more or less on time. Probably worthy of the mayor tag, but being an asshole didn’t necessarily make him a felon.
But God, I wanted it to be him. I ached for it to be him. If it wasn’t, then we were as much in the dark as before.
I’d been able to sleep some while Runyon was making his rounds—sheer exhaustion had knocked me out for a while—but I didn’t get much more that night. Fits and starts, the dozes interrupted by running dreams and one nightmare that woke me up in a cold sweat but I couldn’t remember afterward. I was in fair shape come dawn, my tank partially refilled. I’d be okay for part of the day, but if it went on like the last two, full of frustration and overexposure to the sweltering heat, I was not sure how long I could hold up.
I was up and dressed at five-thirty, a few minutes ahead of Runyon. As much as I wanted to head out to Balfour’s place right away, I knew it was too early. It wouldn’t matter whether or not he was up at this hour if his front gate was still locked. In that case, with no communication device, the only ways to let him know we wanted to talk to him were a phone call or blasts on the car horn. Guilty or innocent, he’d either refuse to see us or be closed off and hostile if he did. We had to handle this right. If Balfour was the man, Kerry’s life depended on it.
I made coffee, toast, boiled a couple eggs—disposing of time, not because I had any appetite. Runyon didn’t seem to have much, either, but we both choked the food down for sustenance. Not talking much; we’d hashed it all out the night before. He looked a lot more clear-eyed and rested than I did. Plenty of stamina in him, and why not? He was twenty years younger, in better physical shape, and he had no abiding personal stake in this—the woman he loved was not in the hands of Christ knew what brand of maniac.
No, that wasn’t fair. The woman Jake had loved as desperately as I loved Kerry was already dead, the victim of a different kind of horror.
We left the house a few minutes before seven, Runyon driving again. I sat leaning forward, tense, as we wound up Crooked Creek Road to Balfour’s property. And when we got there … gate in the chain-link fence closed, padlocked.
Runyon parked in the driveway and I got out, crossed a short platform bridge, and went up to peer through the gate. House, barn/workshop, another outbuilding at the rear whose roofline I could just make out between the other two. There was no chimney smoke or other sign of life in or around the buildings.
Jake came up beside me. “Looks deserted.”
“Yeah.”
The dog had started barking and snarling somewhere behind the house. From the noise it was making, Jake’s guess of a guard dog, big and vicious, was the right one. I’d had a run-in with another animal like that, a kill-trained Rottweiler, only a few months ago and it had come close, very close, to ripping my throat out. I had no desire for a repeat of that incident. But I’d stand up against this one, too, if it came to that.
I said, “Was that stake-bed truck parked over there last night?”
“Same place.”
“And the carport was empty?”
“As empty as it is now. Up and gone early, maybe.”
“Or he didn’t come home at all last night.”
Neither of us put voice to the possibility that Balfour had closed up shop and left the valley for the holiday weekend.
Silent drive into Six Pines. The Green Valley Café was open, and busy with breakfast trade. I scanned the room, but none of the customers was the ugly little guy I’d seen on Sunday. I shook my head at Jake, led the way to where a couple of stools stood vacant at the counter. When the plump blond waitress got around to us, I asked her if sh
e knew Pete Balfour.
“Oh, yeah, I know him.”
“He been in this morning?”
“No. Usually is, but not today so far.”
“Any idea where we can find him?”
“Fairgrounds, probably. Supposed to be finishing up a remodel job in time for the Fourth.”
We drove down there, through the open front gates to where the construction work was going on at a row of concession booths behind the grandstand. Two vehicles parked next to a metal storage shed, two men working—a sixtyish, gray-haired Latino and a young guy with red hair under a turned-around Giants baseball cap. There was no sign of Pete Balfour.
We approached the Latino, who stopped hammering a section of countertop into place inside one of the booths. He wore a sweat-stained, blue chambray workshirt with the name Eladio Perez home-stitched over one pocket. I asked him if Balfour had come to work today.
“Sí. Yes. Very early.”
“But he’s not here now?”
“He go out to buy something he needs.”
“So he’ll be back pretty soon.”
“Pretty soon.”
Runyon asked, “Were you working here on Monday afternoon?”
“Monday afternoon, sí. Every day.”
“Was your boss here, too?”
Frown lines crosshatched Perez’s forehead. Trying to remember.
I said, “The day the house blew up on Skyview Drive.”
“Oh, Monday. Yes.”
“Was Balfour here that afternoon?”
“No. He leave early that day.”
“How early? What time?”
“After lunch. One o’clock.”
“And he didn’t come back?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he went?”
Hellbox (Nameless Detective) Page 15
