by Ralph Dennis
Wilt willed himself into a limpness. He heard Joe’s breathing but it was far away. He heard voices, Joe and Charlie talking, something about the canteen. Then he was in the deep darkness where he didn’t feel the pain.
He awoke when Joe’s hand touched his shoulder. “It’s in place.”
“Where’s the canteen?”
“Here. I filled it in the house.”
Wilt stood. He seemed fresh, rested. “I need a dark poncho.”
“I’ve got one in the trunk of the cruiser.”
“Go get it.”
While he waited for Joe to return, he entered the house and checked the cutdown 12 gauge. He jacked out the three shells. He picked them up from the floor and cleaned them. He inserted them in the magazine. He carried the cutdown to the chair and found King’s gym bag. There were six more home loads in the bag. He inserted a fourth shell in the shotgun and dropped the other five spare in his pocket.
Ready. He walked outside. Joe shook out the poncho. Wilt put it on and snapped the sides. He hung the long leather loop on the canteen over his shoulder and across his chest.
“First light I want the lines of men to move into the woods from three sides. I want Thorpe driven in this direction.”
“Where’ll you be?”
“You and Charlie and another man, if you can find one, will guard this side. I’ll be at center ground.”
“The hell you say.”
“I thought I’d surprise him. I thought I’d play some Jungle Jim games.”
“Why?”
“I want him driven toward me. I don’t want him to know I’m there.”
“All night in there?”
“That’s the game,” Wilt said.
They walked around the house and stopped next to the back porch. The wood was straight ahead. Wilt lowered his voice to a whisper. “Keep a good watch. If he realizes I’m in there, he’ll try to bypass me during the night and come out this way.”
Wilt moved to the edge of the thick wood. Joe saw him. Then another step and he was gone. There was a rustle of brush and no sound at all.
“Crazy,” Joe whispered to himself. “I work for a fucking crazy man.”
By one a.m., Wilt reached what he estimated to be the center spot of the twenty-acre wood plot. He made his calculation by judging the relative distance between the lights at the Plowden house behind him and the lights of the estate on the other side of the wood.
It took him over an hour to reach that center point. It was slow going. And he was careful. He never moved more than a few feet at a time. After each movement, he stopped and listened. He planned as he went: no straight lines, no predictable jog left and then right and left again. He wanted nothing that would allow Thorpe to set an ambush on the assumption he would be at Point B at such and such a time.
He heard no sound of movement ahead of him. His main concern was not to move past Thorpe and let him get behind him. If he let that happen, he was chilled meat on the butcher block. But, careful as he was, he wouldn’t know for sure until first light when the “beaters” uncorked their pinch movement from three sides. If he didn’t then hear Thorpe moving ahead of the “beaters,” if he didn’t see Thorpe, he would know that the man had gone to ground and let Wilt pass him. If that happened, Wilt would have to turn and protect his back. His attention would be divided, his concentration shattered.
Wilt allowed himself to trot the last hundred yards. The ice rain increased in density and the crash of the ice on the fallen leaves and the undergrowth covered all the sound he made.
At least, he hoped so.
If he couldn’t hear Thorpe, there was a better than even chance that Thorpe couldn’t hear him either.
By the luminous dial of his old military watch, he saw that it was still five hours, give or take a few minutes, until first light. He was there, in place, and still alive.
He tried to think like Raymond Thorpe. He believed Thorpe, no matter how crazy he was, would expect the sensible approach from the law.
A sensible man remained warm and comfortable. He didn’t follow a dangerous man off into a dark wood five hours before daybreak. Instead, he settled into an available bed and said, wake me half an hour before the sun’s up.
He wouldn’t be expecting Wilt to come at him like this.
Wilt chose a thick oak at the edge of a small clearing. The clearing spread before him in the direction of the section of the wood where he thought Thorpe was. He eased himself into a seated position with the oak trunk as a back rest. He reached behind him and scooped away rotting leaves and limb fragments.
He was comfortable.
At least as comfortable as he could be under the circumstances. Hip aching. Chilled to the bone, even under the poncho. Feet like blocks of soaked wood. Face numb from the cold. The ice rain pelting him like a thousand ice splinters.
Surprise. That was the element he wanted, that he’d bargained a comfortable warm morning for. At first light the beaters would drive Raymond Thorpe into a spot right under Wilt’s gun. Maybe not at this tree. Thorpe’s movement would alert him. He’d slide laterally, with the time the warning gave, and prepare himself.
When that happened, if it happened, he would learn a hard and important truth about himself. He would find out if he was really a lawman. Faced with Thorpe, would he give the proper warning? Would he try to take Thorpe alive? Would he deliver Thorpe to the courts for justice, no matter that there was no punishment on the books that could come close to setting a balance for the destruction he’d caused and the pain he’d handed out?
Or, that moment, that instant, would he swallow the police and freeze and blow Thorpe apart in a fury that was much closer to the old Testament sense of justice?
He didn’t have an answer.
Stay Alert.
Wilt lifted his head and let the ice rain beat against his face. He could not allow himself to become accustomed to the discomfort either. He would use the weather so that he didn’t fall into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
At four-ten the ice rain ended. A harsh, blade-edged wind whistled through the woods. He shivered against the wind and felt the muscle warmth inside his shirt.
Wilt took six aspirin and washed them down with gulps from the canteen.
At five, the minute hand straight up, he got to his feet and prepared himself. He couldn’t stamp his feet to get the blood moving. He settled for wiggling his toes around in his soaked shoes.
He was as ready as he’d ever be. An hour to wait. Unless Thorpe decided he was cornered and wanted to slip back toward the guest house road before daylight made him vulnerable.
Waiting …
In the grayness of first light, Wilt began to think Joe Croft had gone home to bed and forgotten about the operation. But a few moments later, he heard the faint flutter in the distance. It grew louder and louder until it became the looping beat of a helicopter that flew in low out of the sun.
The helicopter was, by the markings, from the Air National Guard. It swept in low, barely above the tree tops and it passed directly above Wilt before it wheeled and angled away. It was so low that Wilt could read the numbers on the underside of the fuselage.
As the copter made a second run, Wilt saw the reclining figure of a man in the open hatchway. An automatic rifle was in this man’s hands, pointed downward, and he wore the retaining harness.
Wilt knew that the pilot and the rifleman didn’t know him from Thorpe. So, on both passes, he lowered his head and pressed against the oak tree until he was a part of it. He didn’t want to be shot at and he didn’t want the copter to point out his position to Thorpe.
The helicopter overflight was a good touch. That was the fancy trimming. Now to the meat of it. Where the hell was …?
As the helicopter moved away, as the clatter and beat dimmed, he heard the push off start. There was noise, voices and shouting, the equivalent of the tiger beaters who used sticks on metal tops and pans.
Maybe there was hope for that boy, J
oe, after all.
Shotgun at the ready. Shell chambered. When the time came, he would have to distinguish between the two levels of noise. The careless noise created by the three lines of men who were pinching in and the secretive, muffled, almost silent footfall of Thorpe.
Unless Thorpe panicked.
That was what Wilt hoped for. He wanted Thorpe to break and run. If he ran, the warning would reach Wilt five or ten seconds before Thorpe was there.
Five or ten seconds would be enough.
Ten minutes passed. Wilt put a shoulder against the oak trunk. He wanted sun and warmth. Even in daylight he couldn’t find a bit of sun.
The consolation was that the same need for sun and warmth that racked him with trembling and shivering also wracked Raymond Thorpe.
Wilt waited. He eased his breath, he controlled his heart rate.
His head jerked up when he heard the sound that didn’t fit. First it was a scratching nearby. That was followed almost immediately by a soggy noise like someone squeezing water from a washcloth.
Where? He turned his head and heard the same sounds again.
There, toward the sun.
He lowered himself to one knee. He put part of the oak between him and the sun. He squinted into the brightness.
There was no third repetition of the sounds.
Thorpe, he knew it was Thorpe, had made one mistake and knew it and he’d checked himself. He wouldn’t make the same mistake if he could avoid it.
Wilt thought of what he knew about Thorpe. That he had grown up in West Virginia. Had he learned the woods there before he moved on to the big city? Had he hunted and tracked? Did he have his face smeared with blood and lose a shirttail when he killed his first deer?
A core of silence in the middle of the noise created by the beaters. Wilt knew it was a man. A man who waited as he waited. A man who scented the wind. A man of cunning who heard the trap closing behind him on three sides and had to wonder what was waiting for him on the fourth side, where the guest house and the road were.
The cunning part of Thorpe had to suspect a trap. The operation was standard and straightforward except for the fourth side which hadn’t moved at all.
Wilt could almost hear Thorpe mumbling, “What the hell is …?”
Wilt’s hip began to throb. A few aspirin might help. He knew he couldn’t risk it. So far there’d been no accidental noises. Also, he couldn’t lower the cutdown for even a brief time. Thorpe might make his move at any moment. He’d have to go one way of the other: toward one of the lines pinching in or toward the guest house road and into what might be the mouth of a trap. It was a trap, Thorpe would think, or somehow the law had screwed up.
The longer Thorpe waited the more his options were shaved down. The three lines of men moved closer and closer. Thorpe might not know it, but the choice was being made for him. The known was behind him, on three sides. Ahead of him was the unknown. In the end, willed or against his will, Thorpe would have to take his first step into the mouth of the trap.
Turn to face the known or run toward the unknown. Thorpe’s choice. It was so limited that it was hardly a choice at all.
Wilt took in a slow, deep breath.
He knew when it came it would be sudden.
Another five minutes passed. Wilt didn’t have to check his watch. His body clock ticked off the time for him.
About a hundred feet away, Raymond Thorpe stepped onto the fringe of the clearing and stopped. He was in the sun and the light for a brief time. The way he looked, he’d had a rough night in the wood. He hadn’t been dressed for it. His trousers and shoes were soaked. The trenchcoat that was buttoned to the neck and belted was filthy with mud and wood’s trash.
Wilt opened his mouth to give the order to freeze. He closed his mouth as Thorpe took one step back and vanished in the shadows of the bleak day.
Blood surged in Wilt. Thorpe had committed himself and stepped into the mouth of the trap. He’d tried the spring on the trap with that one step forward and hadn’t seen it or felt it.
Ready. The cutdown lined up.
When Raymond Thorpe came, it was so sudden and unexpected that Wilt wasn’t prepared at all. He realized that his reflexes weren’t what they’d been a few years back.
Thorpe sprinted from the cover and his long-legged stride ate up fifty feet in a burst like that of a world class runner. At the beginning the angle was oblique, toward Wilt but shaded away. After those fifty feet, Thorpe swerved and came directly toward Wilt.
Wilt shouted, “Police … freeze …”
Thorpe’s right hand blurred as it moved from his hip. Wilt saw the blue steel and the long barrel. His instant guess was that it was a Dan Wesson .357 with a six-inch barrel. There was a blast from the steel finger and the first round struck the oak trunk just above Wilt’s shoulder. Damp wood sprayed into Wilt’s face. The second round slapped the wet dirt a couple of feet past Wilt.
Wilt ducked when the damp wood struck his face. He lifted his head again and tried to turn the cutdown into a firing position. He almost had Thorpe in frame when Thorpe changed directions and put the oak between himself and Wilt. The hip restricted Wilt. He lost a valuable second in the struggle to turn around. Just as he was ready to fire, Thorpe reached the edge of the clearing and dived into the underbrush. The growth there closed over him.
Wilt stood. He moved so that the tree was between him and the point where Thorpe had disappeared. He waited for new sounds. A noise that would tell him that Thorpe was up and running. It came: a muffled pad-pad. Wilt pushed away from the oak and charged after him. He angled away and entered the undergrowth a good ten yards beyond the point where he’d last seen Thorpe.
His hip dragging now. His breathing ragged. The back of his throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow. He’d run a few steps and stop, listening for the pad-pad that told him Thorpe was still running.
He’d covered about a hundred yards when he stopped a final time and didn’t hear the running. With a shock, he realized that the trap had turned back against him. Somewhere ahead Thorpe waited for him.
He planted his feet firmly. He used the time to ease the rasp of his breathing.
All right, you asshole, if you don’t move, I don’t move. We’ll stay here all day and all night and all week if we have to …
No, he wouldn’t wait a week.
Wilt calculated where Thorpe had entered the undergrowth and the line he’d taken from there. He put that with the last place he’d heard the pad-pad of Thorpe’s running.
Right there.
He held the cutdown at his hip and fired one round into the underbrush. The buckshot shredded everything in front of him. Even before that sound died, he swung the cutdown about ten degrees to the right and squeezed off a second round.
Complete silence followed the twin shotgun blasts. Even the men in the three advancing lines were quiet.
Wilt dug two of the spare handloaded shells from his pocket. His hands were suddenly very steady. He blew on the shells to make sure they were clean. Then he lowered the hand and turned the shells. He got the shells ready to insert in the shotgun’s magazine.
His head remained up. He thumbed one shell into the slot. He was about to position the second shell when Raymond Thorpe jumped from the brush. He was thirty yards away and running for his life when Wilt saw him.
“Thorpe …”
Wilt lowered the cutdown to his hip. He tracked Thorpe and had him centered.
Thorpe looked around him. A wild look was on his face. He had let panic take over when he realized he was outgunned. But he hadn’t given up. Even on the run he lifted his right arm and pointed the blue steel barrel at Wilt.
Wilt pulled trigger. The blast hit Thorpe in the side and he was in full stride when he seemed to be thrown high into the air. By some strength of will he continued to hold the .357. As he struck the ground, the barrel began to turn and tilt toward Wilt.
Wilt didn’t hesitate. It was no joke being killed by a dying man. He dipped the angl
e of the shotgun and pulled the trigger again. The impact of the buckshot slammed Thorpe to the ground.
Approaching, Wilt kept the cutdown at the ready. He stopped a few feet away and lowered the shotgun. Thorpe was a bloody mess. The .357 was still close to Thorpe’s right hand. Wilt stepped forward and kicked it away.
Thorpe had taken the first blast in the left side. The second round had hit him high, in the upper chest and the neck.
It had made mush of his neck and chin.
Wilt turned away and yelled as loud as he could. “Come on in. It’s over.”
He was seated twenty yards away from the body, head down, looking half asleep, when Joe Croft and Billy Egan reached him.
Egan stopped to have his look at the body. Joe rushed past him and stood over Wilt. “You hit? You all right?”
Wilt lifted his head and blinked at him. “Right as rain.”
Joe put an arm around him and helped him to his feet. He took the cutdown from his hands and passed it to Egan. Egan took one arm and they walked him between them in the direction of the guest house.
Billy Egan leaned toward Wilt. “Damned good job, Sheriff.”
Wilt coughed. He didn’t have any words left.
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
Three days passed before Wilt returned to his office. He’d spent those three days in Diane’s bed.
The brave Sheriff who’d gone hand-to-hand with a child molester and murderer was front page news for one day. The next day it was the subject of a short follow-up article on page three. The day Wilt returned to work, it wasn’t news at all.
That suited him just fine.
Wilt settled in his chair and did paperwork. There was something relaxing and reassuring about falling back into the old drudgery. After a couple of hours, Susie buzzed him. Federal Marshal Bottoms, she said, was on his way back to his office.
Bottoms opened the door and stood framed in the doorway. The swelling had gone down, the nose looked about normal size, but his right eye was black and his left eye was a pale blue. A crust of scab had formed on his bottom lip where the stitches were.
