by John Saul
He came to the window and peered inside.
Immediately he let his body relax, for the man inside was sitting in a chair next to the lamp, his back to the window.
Jed stole closer, then finally stood up to his full height. In the bed, strapped down, he saw Judith Sheffield. Her eyes were closed, but Jed was certain she wasn’t asleep. Now she stirred and struggled to sit up, her eyes moving toward the window as if she sensed his presence there.
In response to her movement, the man in the chair stood up. He was a big man, much larger than Jed himself. Still, there would be two of them …
Satisfied, Jed faded back into the darkness. Within seconds he was back in the black shadows of the cottonwoods, whispering softly to Peter. A few moments later both of them moved out of the grove, this time making no effort to conceal their presence.
They approached the cabin quickly, Jed pressing his back to the wall next to the door. Peter stepped up to the door, knocked sharply, then rapped again, as if impatient at being kept waiting.
Peter heard movement inside the cabin. A moment later the door opened a couple of inches. A large man with black hair eyed Peter suspiciously, squinting at him.
“I’m Dr. Langston,” Peter said, loudly enough so he hoped Judith would be able to hear him, but not so loudly as to alert the man whose body blocked the door. He prayed his voice would not betray his nervousness. “Dr. Moreland wanted me to take a look at—” He hesitated, as if searching his memory. “Miss Sheffield, is it?”
The black-haired man’s eyes narrowed still more. “He didn’t call me,” he said doubtfully.
Peter thought quickly, then decided a good offense was his best defense. “Well, that’s not my problem, is it? And I didn’t drive all the way up here from Santa Fe just to turn around and start back.” He reached in his hip pocket, pulled out his wallet, then flipped it open to reveal an ID card from the institute. “Maybe you’d better give Moreland a call, if it’ll make you feel any better,” he suggested.
The big man’s eyes flicked to Peter’s ID, and his expression cleared as he remembered the scene earlier when Moreland had been there. He’d been furious, and it was possible he’d simply forgotten to mention the doctor. Still …
And then he saw the name on the card.
The Brandt Institute.
This guy hadn’t been sent by Moreland at all! He was a friend of Sheffield’s!
Peter saw the change in the big man’s eyes. Instantly, as the door started to close, he launched himself against it, and the man, startled by the sudden move, reflexively took a step backward to catch his balance as the door smashed into him.
Peter shoved again and the door flew open, but the man was already recovering, crouching as he prepared to hurl a fist. Peter spun aside, and at the same moment Jed burst into the room. The rusted carpet knife already in his hand, Jed slammed the door closed behind him, then hurled himself at the man.
Judith, her eyes wide open now, choked back a scream as Black-hair’s fist smashed into Jed. Jed fell back against the wall, but then Peter brandished the long screwdriver that had been concealed in his belt, now held tightly in his right hand. With no hesitation he hurled his whole weight at Black-hair, plunging the screwdriver into the man’s stomach. Black-hair, eyes bulging with the shock of the sudden attack, grasped at the handle of the screwdriver, but before he could begin to pull it free from his guts, Jed was behind him.
As Judith watched, horrified, Jed’s arm snaked around Black-hair’s neck and he sank the curved blade of the carpet knife deep into the flesh and sinews of his throat just below his left ear. With a fast jerk he ripped the man’s throat open, and blood began to spurt from his lacerated veins. His face twisting into a mask of fear and shock, Black-hair sank to his knees, his hands now grasping spasmodically at his neck. Then he toppled over and lay still.
Ignoring the dead man, Peter rushed to the bed and unfastened the straps that bound Judith to it. “Can you walk?” Peter asked.
Judith nodded, rubbing hard at the soreness in her ankles. She got off the bed and stood up, her head suddenly swimming. She lost her balance, falling heavily against Peter, who started to pick her up. She shook her head. “I can make it,” she said. “I was just dizzy for a second.”
Holding onto Peter’s arm, she started toward the door, ducking her head away so she wouldn’t have to look directly at the blood-sodden corpse of Black-hair, sprawled out next to the door. Jed, who had already jerked the screwdriver out of the dead man’s belly, held the door open, and Judith, with Peter right behind her, lurched out into the night. She paused for a moment, filling her lungs with fresh air, then looked around in vain for the car or truck she had expected to be waiting for them.
“Jed—” she began, but her words were stifled as Jed’s hand clamped over her mouth.
“Be quiet,” he whispered. “Just keep quiet, and follow me.”
He released her and darted toward the cottonwoods, Peter and Judith hurrying after him.
Just as they reached the shelter of the trees, headlights swept across the cabin, and then a car pulled up in front of it. But by the time Greg Moreland got out of his car and approached the bungalow’s door, the three people in the cottonwood grove had already begun moving up the canyon.
Greg Moreland rapped sharply on the door of the cabin, then tried the knob.
It was locked.
He knocked again, louder this time. “Walters!”
There was no answer. Suddenly he had a presentiment that something had gone terribly wrong. He strode over to one of the windows and peered inside.
The bed was empty, and on the floor, so close to the window he could only see part of it, was Lamar Walters’s body. But the part Greg could see—the wide-open, dead eyes, and the torn neck—told him as much as he needed to know. Cursing under his breath, he dashed to the main house, and burst in the front door.
Elsie Crampton, slouched on a chair with a romance novel open on the desk in front of her, looked up in surprise. As she recognized Greg, she got quickly to her feet. “Dr. Moreland,” she stammered. “What are—”
“Where is she?” he demanded, glaring furiously at her. “What the hell is going on around here?”
Elsie looked at him blankly. “Where’s who?”
“Sheffield, you idiot,” Moreland snarled. He wanted to smash his fist into the woman’s stupid, cowlike eyes. “She’s gone, and Walters is dead!”
Elsie gasped, her face paling. “But I was just out there,” she said. “I picked up the dinner trays, and everything was fine. It wasn’t more than five minutes ago, ten at the most.”
Moreland’s fury got the better of him then. His hand came up, slapping Elsie’s cheek so hard she reeled, then crumpled to the floor, sobbing. Moreland ignored her, snatching up the phone on the desk and dialing quickly. A moment later Paul Kendall’s voice came on the line.
“The Arnold kid’s in the canyon,” Moreland said, not bothering to identify himself. “Somehow he managed to kill Lamar Walters, and Judith Sheffield is gone.”
Kendall’s voice crackled over the line. “I’ll get some of Kruger’s men down there right away,” he said.
“Get the mouth of the canyon blocked,” Moreland told him. “But don’t take so many men that Kruger can’t get that antenna fixed. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He slammed the phone back on the hook, then, completely ignoring Elsie Crampton, left the house and sprinted back to his car.
Elsie, rubbing at her burning cheek, pulled herself to her feet and hobbled to the door. Her hip was hurting where it had slammed against the floor, and it was painful to walk. She leaned her weight against the doorjamb, her eyes narrowing angrily as Moreland’s car shot past a few seconds later.
This, she decided, was it.
She didn’t like this place—didn’t like it at all. In fact, she’d been thinking about getting out of here all evening, ever since they’d brought that nice woman in—the one who’d come to visit Mrs. Tucker. Elsie had seen h
er twice now—once when she’d taken the two dinner trays out to the cabin, and again when she’d picked them up a few minutes ago—and to her, Judith Sheffield hadn’t looked sick at all. She’d looked scared, and the man in the cabin had looked very much like the kind of tough that Elsie had once found attractive, until she learned, painfully, that men like that tended to talk with their fists instead of their mouths.
As Moreland’s taillights disappeared, she started toward her room at the back of the house. She’d just throw her things in her suitcase, and in ten minutes she’d be gone. To hell with the last couple of weeks’ pay—it just wasn’t worth it.
But then her mind shifted gears and she remembered what Moreland had said about that man in Cabin Five being dead. Her mind still working, she left the house and trudged slowly across the lawn, rubbing her sore hip as she went. Finally she came to Cabin Five, knocked at the door, then used her key to unlock it.
She stared at the body for a moment, frowning, her mind working. If she left now—just took off—they might try to blame the murder on her.
She puzzled at the problem for a moment, then smiled as she figured out what to do. She’d get herself off the hook, and get even with Moreland at the same time.
Leaving the cabin door standing open, Elsie hurried back to the main building and rummaged in the drawers of the desk until she found the thin Borrego telephone directory.
The number she was looking for was printed in large red type on the inside of the front cover. She dialed it, settling herself into the chair behind the desk.
“Borrego police department,” a bored-sounding voice said after the phone had rung several times.
Elsie smiled to herself. “My name is Elsie Crampton,” she said. “I work at The Cottonwoods. You know, up in Mordida Canyon?”
“Uh-huh,” the policeman said.
“Well, we’ve had some trouble,” Elsie went on. “One of our patients is missing, and the man who was attending her is dead.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am?” the man said, all traces of boredom suddenly gone. “What did you say your name is?”
Elsie patiently repeated her name. “The patient’s name is Sheffield,” she went on. “Judith Sheffield.”
In the Borrego police department Billy Clark stiffened. What the hell was one of the high school teachers doing up there? “You say she’s a patient there?” he asked, his voice reflecting his doubt.
Elsie briefly explained what had happened, then hung up the phone and went to her room to start packing.
She’d wait for the police, tell them everything she knew, and answer all their questions. By the time she left, Dr. Moreland would be in big trouble.
She wasn’t absolutely certain, but she had a vague idea that not reporting a crime to the police was some kind of crime itself.
And if the crime you didn’t report was murder …
She let the thought drift along, smiling happily. She’d teach Greg Moreland not to slap her around.
* * *
Judith slipped on a rock in the stream bed and stumbled, her ankle twisting painfully. Instantly, Jed’s hand grasped her arm, steadying her. She tested her weight on her ankle and winced, suppressing the yelp that rose in her throat.
“Are you all right?” Jed asked her.
Judith shook her head. “I—I’m sorry, but I have to sit down for a minute.”
Jed’s eyes bored into the darkness ahead. “A little farther,” he said. “There’s a big rock in the middle of the stream. You can sit down there.”
Judith considered arguing, but quickly thought better of it. When Greg’s men—and they were all certain that by now a search party had been formed—discovered they hadn’t gone toward the mouth of the canyon at all, they would bring dogs up to find their trail, which meant the stream was their only safety.
“Can you make it?” Jed asked, his voice low.
Judith nodded, leaning heavily on him as she hobbled through the water.
Twenty yards farther on they came to the rock and Judith gratefully lowered herself onto its flat surface. She lifted her foot out of the water and started to massage it.
Peter looked at her anxiously. “Is it broken?”
“I don’t think so,” Judith said, then prodded at it again. “In fact, I don’t think I even sprained it. It’s just a twist. I’ll be all right in a couple of minutes.” She fell silent for a few seconds, catching her breath. Since they’d left the cottonwood grove, no one had said much, each of them concentrating on putting as much distance between themselves and the sanitarium as they could. But now, as the pain in her ankle began to ease and she was certain they were not yet being followed, the other fear—which had been growing within her since her arrival at the sanitarium—came to the fore.
“They gave me a shot, Jed,” she said.
Jed nodded. “We figured on that.” He gazed back down the canyon and up. High up on the canyon’s rim he could see headlights. A crew was already working on the antenna, putting it back into operating condition. And when they did …
He slid off the rock, back into the stream. “We don’t have much time.”
Peter shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? Where can we go? Even if we can get out of the canyon, what good will it do? Once they get that antenna fixed—”
Judith stared at him through the darkness. “The antenna?” she asked, confused. “What does that have to do with it?”
His voice dulled by both his exhaustion and the certain knowledge that in the end, when the antenna was fixed, they would have failed, Peter explained to Judith how the tiny mechanisms were being triggered. “Jed cut the cables,” he finished. “But they’re up there now, fixing them.”
Judith’s eyes shifted upward, to the spot far down the canyon where a glow of lights created a bright splash in the darkness. “But there has to be something we can do,” she said. “Can’t we get up there?”
There was silence for a moment, then Jed spoke. “We don’t have to get up there,” he said. “There might be something else we can do.” His eyes met Judith’s. “Can you walk?”
Judith nodded, and as if to prove it to herself, she put her foot back in the water and stood up. A sharp spasm of pain shot up her leg, but it faded away a second or two later, and when she took a step, her limp was less pronounced than it had been just minutes ago.
They moved as quickly as they could, finally leaving the river when the bottom became too rocky for any of them to find a secure footing, and found a path that led along the riverbank, threading through the trees.
Ten minutes later they came to a dead stop. Twenty yards ahead of them the blank face of the dam rose up into the night, blocking their way.
Judith stared at the massive concrete structure, its surface looking almost glassily smooth in the moonlight. Then she heard Jed’s voice.
“This way,” he called out softly. He was moving quickly, heading off toward the north wall.
And then, finally, she realized where he was taking them.
Mounted in the concrete, starting about ten feet off the ground, were a series of metal bars—spaced about two feet apart—climbing up the face of the dam like a ladder. They ended at a small metal platform resembling a fire escape, a quarter of the way up.
“It’s an emergency ladder,” Jed explained. “We can climb up it, force that door, and get into the dam.”
Peter gazed up doubtfully. “If we can get to that first bar.”
“Take off your belt,” Jed told him, removing his own even as he spoke Peter hesitated, then did as he was told. Jed buckled the two belts together so they formed a loop more than two feet long. “Let’s get me up there first, then Peter,” he said.
Peter stood close to the dam and laced his fingers tightly together. A moment later Jed placed his foot in Peter’s hands, and while Peter stood rigid, his back against the dam itself, Jed straightened himself up, keeping his balance by resting part of his weight against the concrete.
“A little high
er,” Jed said, and Peter strained to raise the boy’s weight upward. “Got it,” Peter heard Jed say, and a moment later Jed’s weight lifted off him. Rubbing his hands, Peter stepped back and looked up.
Jed was hanging from the lowest rung. As Peter and Judith watched, he pulled himself up until his chin was level with the bar. Then, taking a deep breath, he let go of the bar with his right hand, which shot upward to grasp the second rung.
He repeated the action, and then managed to get his feet onto the bottom bar. “Easy,” he said. “Now toss me up the belts.”
Peter cupped his hands for Judith, while Jed waited, clinging to the second rung, the looped belt hanging down almost within reach. But Judith shook her head.
“You next,” she said. “Someone’s going to have to lift the last one, and I’m the lightest.”
Peter felt an urge to argue with her, but then realized argument would only waste time. Besides, she was right.
Judith cupped her hands, and Peter bounced tentatively for a moment, then launched himself upward.
He missed the rung by nearly a foot, but Jed had anticipated him, and Peter’s hand closed on the looped belts. He swung helplessly for a moment, but then, as Judith lifted and Jed pulled, he rose up until he could grasp the lowest rung. He hung there, then pulled himself up.
Jed’s hand closed on the collar of his jacket, and a moment later Peter too was clinging to the ladder. Jed gestured upward. “Go ahead,” he said. “I can handle Judith.” Peter hesitated, then followed Jed’s orders.
Jed crouched low on the bottom rung once again, his right hand gripping the one above. Stretching downward, he lowered the looped belts until they hovered just out of Judith’s reach.