Hunting Delilah

by Anne Baines

  Sam hunched his shoulders, trying to relieve the tension building in them. He sensed that this was a terrible idea. Driving out to less populated areas meant fewer witnesses, less trouble. If Whitechapel had a weapon, well, he’d be far ahead of Sam in that respect. That the man had made zero attempts to lose him worried him even more.

  Sam leaned forward, judging the distance between them, and then looked around at the road. He could try a PIT maneuver, but if Whitechapel had a gun that would probably end poorly. And Sam admitted to himself he wasn’t even sure how to do one, having never done it himself. The PIT maneuver had gone out of the books years ago after the top brass kept complaining about replacing so many patrol vehicles.

  An orange glow on his dash caught his eye. The low-fuel light. Shit.

  Sam ran his hand through his hair and looked back up at the blue car. He had to do something, now. Running out of gas wouldn’t help him. PIT and confront, or let Whitechapel go.

  The hero in him yelled for action. Sam pounded a fist into the steering wheel and shook his head. If he got killed here, that wouldn’t help Delilah. It wouldn’t help anybody.

  “Fuck,” he said and turned his car away, circling back toward the last gas station he’d seen.

  At the pump, still amazed that people here weren’t allowed to pump their own gas, as the grizzly attendant had informed him, Sam leaned against his car and stared up at the moon.

  He was a detective, he could still work the crime. Whitechapel had come out of the bar Bennie Hill had told him to visit for information on his daughter. Whatever the killer had been doing or looking for there, it would provide a new starting place for Sam’s informal search.

  “When you’re looking for a killer,” Ronnie had always told him. “Always ask yourself, what was the bad guy up to?”

  “What were you doing there, Whitechapel?” Sam muttered.

  “Sir?” The attendant removed the nozzle as the machine clicked to a stop.

  “Sorry, thinking to myself.” He collected his receipt and then asked for directions back to south-east and the bar. Apparently Whitechapel had led them in a couple giant circles, because he wasn’t as far out from it as he’d thought.

  New plan. Go to the bar and see what he could figure out from there. Then maybe he’d call the police and see if he could pull a few strings to find out about the license plate. He considered calling them now, but he didn’t really have much other than suspicions. Guilt poked him as he thought of Ronnie. She’d want to know her killer was here, on the opposite coast.

  But the moment he told her that, if she even believed an identification made in a split second on a dark road, she’d be out here with the FBI in tow and that would be the end of Sam’s involvement. He’d get a pat on the head and a door hitting him in the ass on his way out.

  Sam turned onto the road and wished he had a cigarette. At least he was trying to help. It felt good to be doing something, to feel useful at all. Somewhere out there, beneath this eerie moon, was an injured woman running scared. Sam had to keep going.

  Fifty-four

  Halfway up the winding dirt and gravel road to the cabin, Delilah flicked off her headlights. The cold moon and her parking lights illuminated the landscape enough that she could see the darker edges of the road where the thick salal, ferns, and evergreen trees started.

  It was slow going. No car parked anywhere along the edge of the road. Good sign. She figured Ted wouldn’t drive right up to the cabin but probably approach carefully much the same way she herself was. Paranoid thinking, maybe. But he’d underestimated her, no way was she going to make the same sort of mistake.

  She inched her way around the final turn and the road dipped downward. The cabin stood a few hundred feet ahead, tucked into a clearing among the hills and rolling green second-growth forest.

  Nancy’s Honda Civic sat out in front on the large square of gravel that served as a parking lot. The porch lights were on and the front and back of the cabin were bright and welcoming. A light was on inside as well, though no shadows moved against it behind the drawn curtains. The side of the wrap-around porch was dimly lit by the windows and empty.

  Delilah let out a breath she’d been keeping in for miles. She’d beat him here. Somehow.

  She drove the Mustang up and parked beside Nancy’s car. She was only half out of the vehicle when Nancy burst from the front of the house and jerked to a stop as she saw Delilah and not Jake get out.

  Her eyes widened in the yellow porch light as she saw the gun.

  Shit, not the best way to begin.

  “Nancy,” Delilah said, stepping forward as the other woman backed up onto the porch. She kept the gun against her leg. “Jake sent me. You have to go, right now.”

  “Get away from me. Get away from my family.” Nancy’s voice was shrill, the whites of her eyes showing as she held up her hands as though to ward Delilah away.

  “Fuck, woman. Ted’s coming here. Here. Do you get that? You have to go.” Delilah advanced on her, following her into the cabin. Her left hand came up and slammed into the door as Nancy tried to use it to push her out again.

  “Where’s Jake? What do you mean that man is coming here? Jake said we’d be safe here.” Nancy lowered her voice after the first question and glanced behind to where Esther lay curled under a bright orange and brown wool blanket on the futon in the back of the cabin.

  Dark circles of exhaustion marred the little girl’s face, but she looked tiny and peaceful as she slept, her cupid’s-bow lips parted and a light flush to her cinnamon cheeks. Delilah’s heart twisted and deep inside something snapped and popped, like a joint suddenly dropping into place.

  “Nancy,” she said, keeping her voice low and soft. Delilah stepped forward and gripped Nancy’s arm, pulling on her red sweater to get her attention. She hoped that Nancy wouldn’t notice the flecks of dried blood on her fingers. “Take the Mustang. Take my, your daughter. You’ve got to get out of here. Please.”

  Maybe it was the please, maybe the look in her eyes. But the tension shifted in Nancy’s body and she slowly nodded.

  “Where,” she said. The she licked her lips and tried again. “Where do I go?”

  “Drive back toward the city. Check into a motel. Not,” she said, holding up a hand to forestall whatever Nancy was about to ask, “not under your name. If they quibble about that tell them you’re running from an abusive husband or something. Most people are sympathetic to that kind of thing. Don’t call anyone until tomorrow.”

  “No, I’m calling Jake as soon as we get into cell reception,” she said.

  It must have showed in Delilah’s face first because Nancy was already withdrawing and shaking her head even before she spoke. “I don’t think Jake’s going to answer,” she said.

  “Nononono.” Nancy backed away, tears running her mascara as they welled quick and heavy. “Is that his blood?” She waved her hand at Delilah’s stained jeans.

  Delilah glanced down. The streaks had turned brown and blackish on the drive. Fuck.

  “Nancy. Focus. Focus on Esther. You have to go. She’s right here. She needs you, Nancy.” Delilah repeated her name, using the cheap psychological trick to pull the woman back into the present situation.

  “Okay,” she said and wiped a hand over her face which just smeared her makeup worse. “This is your fault.”

  “I know,” Delilah said to her back as Nancy turned away and started gathering up things from the small table. “I’m going to take care of it.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I fucking know. Get Esther. Now.”

  They moved around in silence, Nancy not meeting her eyes. Delilah carried their bag out to the Mustang and held the door open while Nancy gently settled the sleepy Esther into the back seat and tucked the blanket back in around her thin body.

  “I need the Honda’s keys.” Delilah held out the keys to the Mustang.

  Nancy nodded and pulled them out of her purse, still not looking up. She looked like she wanted to
throw the keys onto the ground, but after a tense second she merely handed them off, taking the Mustang keys instead.

  “He’s never let me drive it,” Nancy said and finally glanced at Delilah.

  A pang of guilt followed the momentary elation that statement evoked in her. The Mustang was her car, after all. A gift to him. That Jake had kept it safe and cared for and only his meant something.

  Not anymore. Jake was probably gone. Esther was what mattered now.

  “Go, Nancy. Don’t stop for any reason. If you think someone is following you, find a police station. There should be plenty of gas left.”

  Nancy nodded and walked around the side of the Mustang. Her sweater looked like old blood in the moonlight. Delilah pushed away her morbid thoughts and watched as the car started up and drove away. She stood on the porch, staring into the darkness until the car’s lights no longer winked among the trees.

  Ted wasn’t here, yet. But he would be. He’d come soon and skulk about in the darkness like a puma.

  That thought reminded Delilah of something, something possibly important. She smiled. It didn’t touch her eyes.

  Fifty-five

  Boss Leventon, Jake’s father, had bought the cabin from an old black woman who’d led a major strike and advocated heavily for millworkers back long before Boss himself had been born. Fighting Jenny, she’d been called. Crazy Jenny in her later years. She’d built the cabin after her husband died and spent the rest of her years there until one of her grandsons finally dragged her to a nursing home and sold the place to Boss.

  Fighting Jenny had been super paranoid that the white man would come and take her away. She’d had an assortment of rifles, some going back to WWI era. And she’d had a bunch of bear traps, the old steel and iron kind with the huge jaws and heavy springs.

  Delilah looked around the cabin. So many memories hid here, lurking in the cedar and wood-smoke scent, in the lumpy futon, whispering down the little chimney like ghosts. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear Jake’s voice telling her about the place, about his plans for it. There was some decent land belonging to the property, flatter than a lot of the acres around here.

  Thinking about Jake, about his long, gentle fingers sliding over her skin, brought on a rush of tears and weakness. She shook it off. What she wanted now wasn’t inside the cabin anyway, if they were even still here.

  She grabbed a flashlight out of one of the kitchen drawers and walked out onto the back deck. Underneath the rear stairs she found what she wanted. Jake had even preserved the bear traps, folding the half dozen that hadn’t rusted out into a tarp.

  Her ears and eyes alert for any sign of movement around the cabin, Delilah dragged the tarp out. Her belly protested, nausea returning for a horrible moment. She breathed through it.

  The traps were brown with rust but in fairly good condition. They were the old kind, with a big pressure plate and rounded iron teeth designed to keep an animal in place. The springs were strong enough to snap bone.

  Delilah walked around the cabin, eyes searching out the darkness. She evaluated the best approaches to the place. If it were her, she’d park down the road and walk up along the grassy edge, staying out of sight of the cabin and off the gravel to prevent undo noise alerting the occupants. With the moon dipping toward the ocean, there was still too much light to put the traps in the road anyway.

  She decided on the grass in the dark beside the road, and a couple around in back, where the leafy salal had started to take over the minimal yard and would conceal the metal. She wouldn’t put it past Ted to circle around, thinking to get in through the back door.

  Starting at every rustle or imagined sound, Delilah managed to set five of the traps. It was harder than she remembered but the late summer grass grew deep along the edge of the road. Jake had taught her how to arm the traps and they’d taken turns finding large sticks to break in the trap.

  The chill, moonlit night was a million years away from those summer evenings. Delilah pushed away the ghosts of memory and walked back to the cabin. She was losing energy, the codeine long since wearing off. Her precautions would have to be good enough.

  She made herself drink a glass of water from the cistern, swishing the slightly earthy, cold liquid around in her mouth. Then she shut off the lights and powered down the little generator. The resulting stillness was oppressive.

  Walking out into the night helped. She took a deep breath and checked the Glock. All was ready. Delilah retreated into the shadow of the porch and leaned against the wall. Blue-silver light bathed the landscape and woke strange shadows that danced in the wind sauntering down the hills toward the sea.

  “Come on, Teddy,” she whispered. “I’m ready. Let’s end this.”

  Fifty-six

  After his mysterious follower cut away suddenly and disappeared from sight, Ted continued driving around. He wanted to be sure the stranger was gone before he headed out to find the little girl and his deceitful Delilah.

  He drove for another ten minutes, looping around a few blocks in a big figure eight. His tail didn’t reappear. Satisfied that the man must have gotten bored or called away for some reason, Ted picked up the map and got back on track, headed again for the river.

  It was like a treasure hunt. X marks the spot. He wasn’t sure what was at the end. A house, probably. With luck, Nancy and Esther and his sick little Delilah were all alone out there. But if they weren’t, well, that’s what the gun was for. He didn’t want to shoot any of the women. Bullets made such a mess and often killed a person entirely too quickly.

  There’d be no quick end for Delilah. She’d have to beg for it if she wanted the bliss of death, she’d have to acknowledge that Ted was the only one who could give her that release. And he would.

  When he was done with her, of course.

  The drive was too long. He had trouble staying near the speed limit as he headed toward the ocean, but the last thing he needed was to trip the radar of some bored State Trooper with a small penis complex.

  Finally he reached 101 and turned north, toward Neskowin. The town was one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stops along the highway. Ted did miss his turn-off and had to backtrack a couple miles, driving slowly. He leaned over his steering wheel and finally saw the askew, faded road sign that marked the beginning of Cold Creek Lane.

  There were a couple houses tucked back off the road in the trees, but no lights on. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, barely audible over the sound of his engine. The old logging road was unmarked, a dark gravel drive that turned and disappeared into the trees.

  Ted drove up it slowly, unsure where exactly his destination lay. The directions said one-point-two miles. He kept a close eye on the trip mileage counter and at point-six miles turned off his headlights, using the bright moon and his parking lights to guide himself along the road.

  At one-point-oh-nine miles, he pulled the car over to the edge, the tires crunching in the brush. Ted turned off the engine and got out. He stood for a long moment, listening. The night air danced through the trees, bringing on an earthy scent and a hint of rain, though the sky was clear. It smelled like autumn and Ted was chilly in just his shirt.

  He removed his hunting kit from the car, carrying it in his left hand. In his right he held the revolver he’d taken from the bar. Not knowing what was ahead, he decided it was better to be prepared for the worst.

  The road rose in a little bump and then dipped away, revealing a clearing ahead in the pocket valley below. The moon illuminated a cabin and shown on a car that looked almost black in the blue-silver light. He recognized it as a Honda Civic and smiled.

  Nancy and Esther were there, at least. He saw no other cars. The small house was dark, the wrap-around covered porch hidden in shadow and nothing moved in or around the cabin. Good. They were likely asleep.

  The wind was noisy enough that he didn’t worry about his careful steps in the underbrush being heard by anyone inside the home. His rustling movements blended into the backgrou
nd as he picked his way down the hill, staying out of the open area and just inside the overhanging trees.

  Ted’s foot hit something hard and he instinctively stepped back. He bent, feeling in the dark. Metal. Metal teeth, it felt like, though they were dull. He felt around the object and then shook his head.

  A bear trap. The kind he’d seen in old Western movies, with a plate and heavy springs. He’d have to tread carefully here.

  Then the full realization hit him and Ted’s smile widened. Delilah. His deceitful, sneaky little Delilah was behind this. She had to be. It was possible that this trap had been set months ago and forgotten, but Ted doubted it. A trap, here, right where a good sneak or stalker would approach the cabin? Her work, definitely.

  She was here, then. Here and still trying to fight him. His blood sang with lust, the angry ants in his belly starting their war dance. His groin tightened. She was close. So close. Soon he’d smell her soft, dark hair. Her real hair. No more disguises, no more lies between them. He’d teach her the truth of her sad life; carve it into her golden skin.

  Delilah. He almost said her name aloud. Instead he straightened up, carefully stepping around the trap. He’d head around the back and then they’d see how ready she was to receive him.

  Ted took another step, watching the cabin. The bullet cut through his bicep before he even heard the report of the gun.

  Fifty-seven

  Delilah had grown stiff and cold waiting in the dark. The slightest rustle of wind or shifting shadows no longer made her jump. Her eyes half-closed and her belly began its dull, protesting ache, reminding her that she wasn’t nearly healed just yet.

  Light winked in the trees, there for only a moment and then gone. She watched the hill, head cocked, listening intently. Just the wind.

  Delilah was still on full alert, but starting to think she’d imagined the light when a glint in the trees beside the yard caught her eye. She turned her head slowly, watching the treeline.