by Farris, John
In the village he found the theater dark; the evening show had let out at ten. For that matter the downtown area was nearly deserted, with only two places of business open. They were both taprooms, one at each end of the main street.
There was a phone booth at the Gulf station two blocks north of the courthouse, so he got back on his scooter and went popping around the corner. By his chronometer it was ten minutes of eleven. Exactly half an hour since Craig had put Amy in the trunk of his car. In Doremus's mind there was a vivid chilling image: Craig aimlessly driving and driving on the back roads of Shades County, driving long past the moment when Amy would take the last breath of foul trunk air and die. He discovered he was shaking, his bones ached. He gritted his teeth and parked the scooter next to the lighted phone booth and dialed Helen Connelly's number.
After he'd listened to a dozen rings he began sweating coldly.
On the eighteenth ring Peggy answered, yawning at the same time. "H'lo."
"Peggy, this is Doremus."
"It is?" she said doubtfully.
"Yes. I'm back in The Shades now. Could I talk to your mother, please?"
"OK," Peggy said, and Doremus heard the receiver bump as she put it down on the table. "Mother! Doremus wants to talk to you!"
Doremus leaned against one side of the booth, his eyes watering from strain. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for his Polaroid sunglasses and put Peggy anymore. Fear struck at the back of his neck, spread a swift paralysis down his spine.
"Peggy," he shouted into the receiver. "Peggy, do you hear me?"
Rigidly he waited another half minute; then, with a shock of relief, he heard her on the other end of the wire.
"I don't think she's here," Peggy said, uncertainly.
"Go to the door," he said, trying to keep his voice from betraying anxiety. "Look out and see if your mother's wagon is parked by the street."
"I can see from here," Peggy said. "It's gone. Where did Mother go, Doremus?"
"I . . . I don't think she went very far. Look, honey, do me a favor right now. I want you to go into the office as soon as you hang up and lock the door behind you. Make sure you lock the door, now. Wait there. Wait until Sheriff Mills comes. He'll be there in just a few minutes, and he'll call to you loud enough for you to hear. But don't . . . don't let anybody else in the house. Do you understand? Not even Craig. Stay in the office with the door locked. Even if you hear Craig calling you, don't go out."
"Why?"
"It's important, Peg. I'll explain later, when I see you. That'll be soon. In the meantime, promise me you'll wait in the office for the sheriff?"
"Yes," Peggy said, as if she thought it was all rather silly. "Good-bye."
As soon as he had hung up Doremus retrieved the CB radio from his Cushman. "Mills!"
"This is Mills. What's up?"
"Where are you now?"
"Headed south on 22. We'll be at the gravel pit in about another four minutes."
"Can you turn around and get over to the Connellys'? I just talked to Peggy. She's alone there. Apparently Helen left her sleeping in her room and went off in a hurry somewhere; the ranch wagon is gone."
"Turn us around, Chuck," the sheriff said in an aside to his deputy. To Doremus he said, "Where do you suppose she went?"
"I don't know. She must have been convinced it was urgent; otherwise she wouldn't have left Peggy like that—particularly after I warned her. I think Craig got her out of the house."
"You suppose he's after the kid instead of Helen?" Dimly Doremus heard the screeching of tires as the deputy made a looping turn.
"He might be. I told Peggy to lock herself into the first-floor office and not open up for anybody but you. Holler loud when you hit the front porch."
"We can pick you up at 22 and White Church."
"No, I'm going to try to track Helen down."
"On that scooter? Let me get Bryant and McLemore over to you. Where you calling from?"
Doremus rubbed his forehead in agitation. "I've had a lot of sour hunches in the last three-quarters of an hour. I'd made up my mind that Craig was just driving around in a daze. I don't believe it now. He knows exactly what he's doing; he's working according to a timetable and so far everything's clicking nicely for him. Here's the last of my hunches, and God help the Connellys if I'm wrong. Craig isn't interested in Peggy, it's Helen he wants. He's lured her to a dark and private place where he plans to kill her."
"What place?"
"Two choices. He's had a fondness for the burned-out house where he and his brother lived; he's taken Peter there before. According to his logic it might be the ideal setting to complete his cycle of revenge. It would take me half an hour to get there on my scooter though. Bryant and McLemore can make it in half the time."
"I'll contact them. Where are you headed?"
"Up Ben Lomond. Craig might have done the most predictable thing of all—driven straight home and called Helen from there. I know approximately where his house is, what it looks like. I can get up there in ten minutes."
"We'll be right behind you," Mills promised.
"Let me try it alone. He may be watching for a car and before you could get close he'd kill her, if he hasn't already. But a man on a motor scooter without lights isn't that easy to see, and he'll never hear me in this wind. Give me . . . half an hour. I think I can surprise him."
There were few houses on Ben Lomond Mountain, because the solitary switchback road that went two and a quarter miles to the primitive little state park at the summit was paved only with gravel and subject to both slides and washouts. Those who lived there used up a new car on the steeps and binds of the road roughly at the rate of one every ten months. They were forced to pump most of their water up the side of the mountain or collect rainwater in cisterns. But the majority of the houses were elaborate, and the owners were repaid for their trouble and the expense of building in such isolation by staggering views of the Ozark plateau and the national forests in the area.
Craig had been living for the better part of two years in a house he rented from a man named Dillbeck, who had been both a governor and a United States senator until an upset victory by a well-heeled Republican had retired him from public office at the age of fifty-five. He had scarcely moved into his retirement house, which had taken. months to build, when he was offered a choice assignment as an ambassador at large by his old buddy the President. Consequently he hadn't set foot in the state for over a year.
The house occupied a teetering acre fifty feet from the upward swing of the road. There was a stretch of redwood fence with white brick posts by the road. You turned in off the gravel onto a stretch of blacktop, passed through heavy solid gates. The drive was like a big comma wedged between the house and a side of the mountain that went almost straight up, with outcroppings of limestone. All the level space behind the modern California-style house was paved, and there was room for three cars to maneuver. The subtly pitched roof of the house, surfaced with white crushed stone, rose only a few feet above the asphalt, and the long white brick wall was without windows. The way into the house was through a door in another redwood fence, this one six feet high.
Helen drove haltingly through the gates and into the parking area, unnerved as always by the drive up, unnerved by the telephone call, the Michael call that had prompted her to grab her purse and coat and run from the house unthinkingly. She wondered now why she hadn't tried to contact the sheriff first— but there hadn't seemed to be any time at all. She had been afraid for Craig's life. His car was there, facing the road. She pulled up behind it, got out. The wind tore at her hair, deafened her. She took three unsteady steps toward the house, head down. She didn't realize she had left the headlights of the car turned on.
The wind slackened suddenly and it was like being released from the drag of a rope. She threw out a hand, bracing herself against the rough wall of the house. Then the wind whipsawed her again. She Stumbled on to the high door in the fence, wondering how Craig could live up here, with the constant wind
scream.
Craig, she thought, tingling, half-panicked. She fought with the wind-guarded door, propped it open, stepped inside. Here it was quieter. She glanced at the curtained window wall that extended almost the length of the house. No lights were visible.
"Craig!"
There were two flights of steps, one ascending to a long roofed gallery, the other descending. She looked out over the tiered Japanese garden, at shaky rare evergreens, tall swaying trees, squat, tormented-looking trees. Lighted, the garden had a stylized beauty. But it was dark now, except for the recurring moon. Shadows leaped against the wall at her back.
"Where are you, Craig?"
The wind slowed; almost beside her she heard a childish giggling and she turned her head sharply.
A boy in cowboy clothes was standing there: big, red Stetson-type hat tied under his chin, an imitation-leather vest with a shiny star pinned to it, imitation-fur chaps. He was pointing a silvery revolver at her.
He giggled again, and snapped off three rapid shots from the cap pistol. Helen nearly fell off the rock path to the iron stairs below. When she recovered he was gone: he had jumped nimbly from the ledge to a terrace of the garden. She could not find him in the tossing shadows. And then she had a glimpse of his red hat as he peered out at her from behind a square-trimmed shrub.
"Come here," she made herself say. "I want you to . . . Who are you?" She knew who it must be, but she couldn't think of a name. Not Michael though. Certainly not Michael. Her relief was distinct, warming. This was a real boy, playing a boy's game, he was not Michael.
But Michael had called her.
Helen started down to the first level of the garden, began walking to her left, toward the place where she had seen him. She was holding her hands to her ears, trying to shut out the incessant wind. She saw him again.
Popping up one level down, from the shadows of a plumelike waving tree that grew twenty feet tall.
"Come here . . . please come here! I want to talk to you! Where's Craig?" She stopped and looked hopefully at the house. But it was completely dark. Why? she wondered. A hard wave of fear almost toppled her.
"Boy," she shouted, and his name came to her tongue. "Peter! Quit playing now. I have to talk to you."
There was a lull; she heard the popping of the cap gun. Turning quickly, she saw him run from one place of concealment to another.
Helen followed. She was in the midst of the garden now, surrounded by all the carefully nurtured oddities foreign to the soil of Missouri. Above the wind a few stars glimmered undisturbed. She went on, searching carefully.
Out of the tail of her eyes she saw something move on the gallery of the house. Helen stared, trying to make out what it was. . . . A dog? But a dog wouldn't move so awkwardly. She was drawn closer to the gallery. Behind her the little boy giggled; she was absorbed and horrified by the creeping shape on the gallery and didn't bother to turn around.
"Craig?" Helen said, once again. The thing stopped. Helen walked to within a few feet of the gallery, but she still couldn't see what it was. Then she realized that it must be Craig, on all fours.
He's hurt, she thought, and started for the stairs.
Behind her there was a throaty, drawn-out shriek. The sound he was making numbed her as thoroughly as an electric shock. It seemed to take all of a minute for her to look around, to look up at him.
He was standing, fully visible against the dark-gray and star-shot sky. Helen saw that he wore almost no clothes, but nothing else could really surprise her because he was still shrieking. Her tongue felt bolted to the roof of her mouth and her heart was like a tight little sack of broken glass. Vaguely she recognized the fierce and terrifying cries. She had heard them in a good many western movies just before the Indians swooped down and slaughtered all of the homesteaders. Unconsciously her mouth curled in an expression very like a smile, but she felt no laughter.
With ceremonial slowness Craig raised his right hand, raised it high. He was holding a thick-bladed knife almost ten inches long.
He came down then, with a step and a leap and another whoop, and crouched within five feet of her. She saw, more or less clearly, the dark stripings of paint on his naked chest and face. Her vision blurred momentarily, and then she focused on the hunting knife. As astounded as she was, Helen felt a definite fearful shriveling inside.
Enough, she wanted to say. Don't anymore. Stop now. It isn't funny anymore. And even as she was thinking this she realized with a horrid certainty that it wasn't a joke. He was going to kill her.
Doremus had come through the gates in a boil of black smoke and seen Helen's car, with headlights blazing, parked behind the Chevelle. His ears throbbed from the howl of wind and the racket of the failing scooter engine. He pulled up beside Craig's car, out the kickstand down with his foot and went for the trunk of the Chevelle. It wasn't locked.
Amy lay cramped inside, jackknifed, her back to him. There were streaks that could have been blood or grease in her blonde hair. He found it difficult to free her because he was afraid to exert much force. He got one hand under a shoulder and another under her thighs and tugged gently, then turned her and lifted her out. Amy's head fell back and he looked at her besmirched, oddly flat-looking face. He could not tell if she had suffocated there in the trunk. Her skin was cool to the touch.
He heard Helen scream, somewhere.
Dem took two quick steps, wrenched open one of the doors of the Chevelle and laid Amy inside on the seat, face up. He closed the door, stepped back, drew the Colt automatic from his waistband and looked the house over. At first he couldn't see a way in. He heard Helen screaming again and then a series of flat cracking sounds, like undernourished firecrackers, or
Cap pistol? he thought, and ran toward the fence. When he was on top of it he saw the outline of the door.
There seemed to be no one in the garden, but as he tried to orient himself the wind let up and the trees fell to quaking lightly; shadows froze. Then he could see them all, Peter in his cowboy suit and Craig—apparently—in his birthday suit. They were at the bottom of the sheltered garden, close to a low retaining wall of rock. Helen had fallen and she was trying to rise from her knees. She sobbed hysterically. Craig stood two or three feet behind her, hands at his sides: Doremus thought he heard a high-pitched and excited child's voice. Peter was farther away, on a tier above them, cap pistol in hand.
As Doremus watched, the knife in Craig's hand flashed up and he bent over his Aunt Helen. She looked back, screamed again. Instinctively Doremus raised his Colt, sighting. Then two things happened, quickly, confusingly. The wind tugged at his outstretched hand, spoiling his aim, and Peter, who had been motionless and absorbed, moved into the line of fire.
Doremus screamed, "Get out of there! Peter, move!"
Even as he said it Peter hurtled from the tier he had been standing on and landed, like a trained monkey, on Craig's back. Craig was staggered, but the knife slashed down and Helen pitched forward on her face. From where he was standing Doremus could not see if Craig had hit her with the blade. He began to run, recklessly, down the shallow garden steps.
"Mike," Craig said, in his childish voice, "get off, Mike! Let me finish!" He lunged to his feet, brushing the boy off his back; he made a quick move with his knife hand in the direction of the prostrate woman. But just as quickly Peter grabbed him around the legs, held him back. Craig tried to kick free. Peter was sobbing.
"Don't!" Peter said. "Don't hurt! Don't don't don't."
Craig lifted his head and saw Doremus coming. With a violent kick he sent Peter flying against the rock wall and dashed in the direction of the house. As soon as Craig detached himself from Peter, Doremus risked a shot, snapping it, but Craig was quick and the bullet went behind him.
Doremus continued on to the bottom of the garden and the paved walk there, knelt beside Helen. She was unconscious. He lifted her by one shoulder, saw the dark, oozing wound, high, two or three inches from the base of her neck. Peter sat rubbing his head slowly, in a da
zed way.
"From now on you're the sheriff," Doremus said to him, handing over the cap pistol Peter had dropped. He looked up and saw Craig midway on the gallery, running hard, bent over. Doremus lifted the Colt, led him, squeezed off a shot that nicked concrete ahead of the nearly naked man. He put another one into the redwood fence an instant after Craig opened the high door and escaped.
Doremus followed, missed a step, fell hard on the rough stone, tearing the knee out of his hunting pants, lacerating the palm of one hand. He scrambled up, unnecessarily furious with himself for having missed two chancy shots with an unfamiliar handgun. He tried running but had to adjust to a fast limping walk.
When he was still ten feet from the fence he heard the engine of the Chevelle turn over, roar loudly, heard the tires laying down rubber as Craig gunned away with the brakes on. Doremus wondered bleakly what he had been thinking about, putting Amy in that car. It had seemed like a good idea, but he should have taken the trouble to pull the keys from the ignition first.
The Chevelle tires were still peeling on the blacktop when another set of tires yelped and the night split open as two cars collided, ripping each other fender to fender. Doremus reached the open door in the gate as Enoch Mills's car came lurching into view, one headlight glaring angrily. They had met at the driveway gates, where there was room for only a car and a half. Craig's Chevelle had veered several feet to the right, knocked down one of the brick posts and torn up several feet of valuable fencing before coming to a complete stop. For a few moments, in the wind lull, there was no sound but the hiss of escaping steam from the radiator of the sheriff's car; then the mashed door on the driver's side opened with a deadly grinding noise and the deputy named Chuck stepped out uncertainly, clutching his left arm below the elbow. He took two weaving steps, dropped to his knees, rolled slowly over, one cheek resting on the cold asphalt.
Doremus limped to the other side of the wrecked Pontiac, opened the door. Enoch Mills had pulled himself off the padded dash. There was a trace of blood on his mouth, and his lower lip appeared to be split. He shook his head a couple of times, sorrowfully, looked at Doremus.
