by Sue Henry
“We’re all going?”
“Looks like we’d better.”
As he headed for the phone, Linda called them to the table, so he made the call short, reaching Timmons at home, where he abandoned his own dinner to share what he had learned in the lab before leaving for the day.
“It’s the same pair of boots, all right. Couple of nicks and scratches match up perfectly.”
“No doubt?”
“None. But if they fit, I can’t quite see how he made the prints with that odd pressure point.”
“Trying to make it look like someone else wore them?”
“Maybe. Or someone else did wear them.”
“Who?”
“How could I know? That’s your department, friend. I just draw the pictures. You have to decide what they mean.”
Shaking his head, Alex hurried to join the other three for dinner, where for at least half an hour, he forgot the boots and focused on enjoying his meal.
The Aces Wild occupied the ground floor of a square, nondescript two-story building that had been built near the railroad tracks in the center of Palmer when the town was young. Age had not improved its unattractive appearance, nor did the collection of motorcycles parked in front. The walls were predominantly a dirty yellow-brown that had flaked away around corners, doors, and windows to reveal a colorful history of the varied decorative inspirations of its past owners, none of which had lasted long. Once a retail store of some kind, it had originally had large plate-glass windows on either side of the front door. Plywood had been used to cover them, and then coated with the same ugly paint that insulted the walls.
As the three troopers approached, the door swung open and two men sauntered through it. The beefier of the two was dressed in black jeans, heavy boots, and a leather vest over a grungy T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off to expose his well-muscled and tattooed arms, one of which was wrapped around the shoulders of his companion, an anorexic youth in a studded leather jacket with hands crammed into the pockets. He did not appear pleased with his present company, but hunched his shoulders and allowed himself to be dragged along by the larger man, pale, greasy hair hanging lifelessly from under a filthy orange bandanna that encircled his head.
“You’re late,” the biker groused. “You’d better have my goddamn stuff.”
“Aw-w, Mike—come on. It was a fat weekend. Gimme a break, okay?”
The biker looked up, caught sight of the three men walking toward them, scowled, and studied them through narrowed eyes before yanking the youth off in the opposite direction, a derogatory “Pork” floating back, just loud enough to be heard.
“Don’t bother,” Jensen told Becker, who had taken a step in their direction, his attention attracted by what appeared to be a drug deal in progress. “It’s not going to happen while we’re here.”
He opened the door and they walked into the controlled chaos of egotistical male one-upsmanship. Somewhere in the crowd of mostly men and a few scattered women a jukebox was blaring heavy metal music. Two pool tables were in use at the front of the room, with several quarters lining the rail of each, challenges for the winners of games in progress. Another noisy bunch was gathered to watch and make rude comments as a tall man with a drink in one hand used the other to skillfully toss darts at a board on the side wall.
“Gotcha now, Shorts. He’s wailin’.”
“Damn fuckin’ wizard on the triples.”
The board was situated so that anyone heading for, or coming from, the restrooms—creatively labeled HOGS and SOWS—must pass directly through the line of fire.
A television set above the U-shaped bar in the rear was tuned to the Monday Night Football game, watched by most of the drinkers that filled the tall stools around it, though Jensen wondered how they could hear the commentary over their vociferous efforts to encourage whichever team they favored, combined with the rest of the noise in the place.
Unable to make himself heard to Caswell and Becker above the din, he jerked his head in a direction away from the hazardous game of darts and led the way around the bar to an open space, where a pair of distracted barmaids in jeans and tight, low-necked Tshirts were busily coming and going with trays of mixed drinks and pitchers of beer. When the space was momentarily unoccupied, he stepped up and leaned across, put his elbows on the bar, and waited to catch the eye of the dark-haired woman who was working hard in the well to keep a steady supply of liquor flowing into glasses, fill pitchers, and pluck the tops from beer bottles.
“Hey,” a frustrated whine at his elbow. “Move it and wait your turn. You’re in my way.”
Looking down at the young woman with a tray who faced him, he smiled vaguely, as if he didn’t understand, then turned back to watch Collins, and waited.
“Doncha hear so good? You’re in the…”
Mary Lou Collins swung around to see what was causing the problem and her eyes met Jensen’s. Like a video that had been paused, catching a performer in mid-action, she froze, staring at him with immediate recognition. A look of irritation and dislike swept across her face, replacing the harried smile she had been giving someone at the bar the moment before. Glancing at Becker and Caswell behind him, she took two strides that brought her to a point directly opposite him, face to face, and curled a lip.
“Well, well. My old pal, Jensen. What the hell are you doing in my bar, cop?”
“I want a word with you, Mary Lou.”
“Just like that? You got anything says I have to talk to you?”
“That’s not the way it works, and you know it. You can give me a few minutes here, in your office, or we run on down to mine. Your choice.”
“Fuckin’ bastard. What do you want, anyhow?”
“Watch your mouth. I’ll tell you what I want when you come outside with us.”
Resentful and angry, she first attempted to stare him down. He watched her mind work shrewdly behind the wrath in her eyes, as she reached the conclusion that it wouldn’t be worth the effort to refuse—that only humiliation in front of the very people she worked hard to manipulate lay in that direction.
Even angry, she was, indeed, an exceptionally attractive woman. Her thick, dark hair hung below her waist in waves, commanding attention. The expression on her face, however, was anything but engaging.
Spinning around, she beckoned imperiously to an older man, who, on his knees, was refilling the cooler with bottles of Budweiser from a carton on the floor, and barked an order.
“Fill in for me, Buck. I’ll be back in a couple.”
A fat-faced rowdy on the barstool beside Jensen suddenly nudged him with a shoulder and looked up in distaste.
“You want I should get rid of this guy for you, Mary Lou?”
She didn’t take her eyes off Jensen.
“No, thanks, Rick. I can handle it.”
Raising the hinged section of the bar that doubled as setup space for the barmaids, she slipped through the opening and stalked toward a door in the rear.
The troopers followed close behind her into the alley that ran behind the building, where she whirled and confronted them again, angrily.
“All right. Now…what?”
“How’s it going, Mary Lou?” Jensen asked her quietly.
“None of your fuckin’ damn business how it’s going. What do you want?”
“Well, I understand you’ve got a friend who’s gone missing for a few days.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Spike is what I’m talking about. Where is he, Mary Lou?”
Stubbornness filled her narrowed eyes as she half smiled without humor and cocked her head to one side.
“Who?”
Alex shook his head. “Don’t bother. We know you’re sharing living space with Jones and that your roommate’s been missing for a week or more. Where is he?”
“How should I know?”
Taking a cigarette from a package she had brought with her from the bar, she lit it with a match from a book tucked under its cello
phane and blew smoke laconically in his direction. Then she tossed her luxurious dark hair back over her shoulders and glanced at Becker, who was following her part of the conversation with interest.
“Hi, honey.”
Embarrassed, he took a step back, which provoked a sardonic smile as she returned her attention to Jensen.
“You know,” he told her.
“Prove it. He was gone when I got home from here a week ago Friday. Haven’t seen him since. Why? You got some special reason to be looking for him?”
There was a stillness and a strange, attentive satisfaction in her expression that alerted Jensen and worried him.
“Reason enough. Give it up, Mary Lou. What else?”
She allowed her animosity to show again, glared at him in defiance, tossed the cigarette to the dirt, and ground it out with a vicious twist of her foot. A tattooed line of blue and red flowers encircled her slender ankle.
“You got nothing, pig. I don’t know where he is, and wouldn’t tell you if I had him stashed behind the bar—which I don’t. Now I’m going back to work. Any problem with that?”
Turning contemptuously, she wrenched open the door and disappeared, with a flounce of her dark hair, back into the Aces.
Jensen shook his head in resignation and disgust as Caswell moved to follow her.
“Let her go. She knows exactly where Jones is, but we’re not going to get a thing out of her. I think we’d better get a fast trace going on her boyfriend. I don’t like the feel of this.”
22
Jessie lay silently in the thorny thicket of devil’s club and salmonberry runners, listening intently. The rustle and moan of the wind in the trees and the crash of the surf were all she could hear, but she knew that somewhere in the fury of sound and motion the stalker would be searching for her, focused on recapturing her, not willing to lose his prey. Where the hell was he?
She tensed at an unexpected sharp screech, but it was only the inanimate protest of one tree trunk rubbing against another somewhere on the hill above. Had she left evidence of her fall down the slope, marks on the ground? Would he see and recognize them, and track her to this hiding place? She waited, holding Tank close, hand on his muzzle. He squirmed, attempting to free himself.
“No. Stay,” she whispered, and the wriggling stopped. Thank God it wasn’t one of the Darryls, who would have assumed she was playing a game and continued to struggle against her.
The rain rat-a-tat-tatted in large drops on her rain gear, a sound that, from inside, seemed loud as a drumroll—a giveaway—but she hoped it would not be any louder to someone else than the rest of the storm’s cacophony against leaves or the metal roof of the shed on the hill. There was nothing else to hear. Water collected, overbalanced, and poured off one the broad leaves of the devil’s club onto her head, but she dared not move away from it or put on the sou’wester, without losing her already limited ability to hear. Water ran down her face and dripped off her chin.
Suddenly there was a thrashing in the brush on the hill. Peering carefully through a small opening between the leaves, she caught a glimpse of a dark figure standing perhaps twenty feet above, looking carefully across the meadow that lay beyond her to the west. Deep in Tank’s chest, under her arm, she felt a vibration, the beginning of a hostile growl.
“Sh-h-h,” she hissed in his ear, and the growl subsided.
Her hair. Could he possibly spot her light hair in the thick foliage?
Careful not to shake the foliage, with one hand she slowly pulled the dark sou’wester onto her head over her dripping hair, then laid her face down on her arm, against the wet sleeve of her waterproof coat, to conceal its pale color, and waited, barely breathing. Nothing happened. For a long, tense period of perhaps five minutes she waited, frozen, before venturing a quick look. The figure was not visible where she had seen it, but where had he gone?
There was no way to tell. She lay back down, holding Tank, who tucked his nose inside her coat. Either the bastard was still looking and would find her, or he had given up and gone back to Rudy. She hated to think of the kind old man as a captive of this brutal, malicious stranger. There was nothing more she could do either way, so she did nothing, moved nothing, thought of nothing—remained as still as a part of the hillside and made her mind a blank, became a pair of ears and a heart hammering in her throat and chest, and waited—for a very long time.
A trickle of rain running down the hill pooled against the dam of her coat sleeve and spilled cold water onto her wrist, its small additional discomfort bringing Jessie back to life. Peering up cautiously through the brush, she saw no one. Nothing moved. Would he have waited this long in such weather? She hoped not, but he had exhibited exceptional patience before.
Tank shifted against her, still alert. Slowly, vigilantly, she reached up to move one of the large, flat leaves aside for a better look. Nothing. The hillside above was empty, but what if he was hiding, too, and still waiting—watching for her to come out? She would have to chance it—couldn’t stay where she was.
With infinite care, she rose slowly, cautiously parting the broad leaves for an even better look. Nothing. She got to her feet, wincing at the chilled ache of her body. Intentionally or not, this guy was causing her some serious physical pain. There was no sign of anyone on the ridge above her. Turning slowly in a circle, she examined everything in sight. No one. Now to get away, as far as possible, as quickly and surreptitiously as she could.
The back of one cold hand felt on fire, pincushioned with needlelike thorns from the devil’s club through which she had fallen. A knee and one elbow—pounded against something in her tumble down the hill—protested with pain as she flexed them. Wiping the rain from her face, she noticed blood on her benumbed hand and discovered a deep scratch on one cheek. The tape on the bridge of her nose seemed intact, but her two injured fingers throbbed more than the rest of her and she hoped they had not been rebroken.
What should she do? Where should she go? The most important thing was to make sure she was not caught off guard again and taken prisoner by this person, whoever he was. He? Was it a he? The voice had been mid-range and sounded like a man, hadn’t it? But not so terribly low that it couldn’t have been a woman, she thought. Well, she would assume it was a man until she found out. But now she had to find a place to hole up where he would not find her, where she could not be surprised. Where?
The A-frame was clearly out of the question. He had almost certainly caught up with Rudy there, or on his way to the beach house for breakfast. And what about Rudy? Had he been caught? Was there anything she could do to gain his release? Not now. Not before she settled herself in some protected spot where she could think clearly and plan. Perhaps then she could find out how and where he was, assess the situation, and formulate some effective strategy to rescue him.
Jessie did not stand still as she contemplated her predicament, but made her way out of the thicket of thorns as fast as she could and, drifting quietly north, slipped into the denser woodland away from the shed and beach house, taking Tank with her. It immediately grew darker as trees closed in on all sides, but there was some small shelter from the rain that continued to fall in torrents. With care, warily observing everything around them, they progressed up and beyond the hillside and into the wilder part of the forest. The going was somewhat easier in the shelter of the trees, where there was less brush and the miserable, aptly-named devil’s club.
She paused in a small open space to pick out as many of the thorns in her hand as she could, though some had broken off, leaving sharp bits beneath the skin that would soon begin to fester painfully. At the same time she examined her elbow and knee and found no breaks in the skin. She could ignore them for now, since there were more important things to claim her attention and, tender or not, they seemed to work adequately. Their discomfort and the growing pain in her broken fingers reminded her that all the pain pills the doctor had prescribed, along with her own bottle of Advil, were still in the beach house, unreachable. To
o bad, but she’d have traded them all for the cell phone.
A crash and a thump ahead startled her and brought her to her knees on the damp spruce needles that covered the earth and helped to muffle the sounds of her passage. She froze, acid terror rising in her throat. A dead limb, soaked with water, had fallen from a tree, striking a rotten stump on its way to the ground. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Jessie consciously thrust her fears from her mind and went on up the hill, evaluating her alternatives, feeling more confident now that she was away from the beach house and its open ground.
In all likelihood, she was more familiar with Niqa, its layout and resources, than her stalker. She had been there often, walked most of the habitable areas and some of the wilderness that surrounded them. This would give her an edge. What else could she think of that would add to her advantage?
She wished again for the cell phone and shotgun she had left in her hurried escape from the beach house. Both were now in the hands of the stalker, but perhaps he would think the shotgun was her only weapon, not realizing she also had the handgun. He was no fool, however, so she doubted he would assume anything. She did not like the idea that he had two guns—the shotgun and the one of his own that she had seen before she ran. There was also the knife he had held at Rudy’s throat. Damn. Poor Rudy. She could do him no immediate good, so she purposely shifted her thoughts away from the old man. Later, when it was possible, she had to think of something.
In the buildings at the other cove, as well as Millie’s beach house, there were all kinds of things that could help her. Food was one thing she must have to keep up her strength, especially outdoors in this kind of weather. She realized that, having missed breakfast in her wait for Rudy, she was hungry, and thirsty as well.
Stopping for a moment, she tipped her head back and let rain fall into her open mouth, but this was unsatisfactorily slow. Looking around, she spotted a tiny pool caught in the half-fold of a devil’s club leaf. Delicately, she tipped the leaf and let the single swallow of water run into her mouth. Several more were sufficient for the moment, but she knew she should find something that would hold enough water to carry with her from one of the creeks.
