Robert B. Parker

by Wilderness

  33

  When Newman woke up he could smell food. He felt the sudden tingle of saliva in his mouth at the thought of it. The room was warm and half lit with the moving gleam of the fire. He sat up. His right thigh hurt where Karl had kneed him, trying for the groin. His neck was sore. His forearms and the high muscles behind his shoulders were sore. He swung his feet to the floor.

  Across the room by the fire, in a chair, he saw Janet. She wore no clothes. She sipped very small sips from a large glass full of ice and bourbon. She held the glass with both hands and didn’t sip often. She looked at him as he sat up.

  He said, “Hello.”

  She said, “Hello.”

  He said, “You don’t seem to be wearing any clothes.”

  She said, “I washed our stuff and took a shower. There was nothing to put on.”

  He said, “I smell food.”

  She said, “I put some beans in the oven, and there’s steak.”

  “Haven’t you eaten?”

  “I had some beans. I waited to eat the steak with you.”

  He still sat on the couch, looking at her. “You don’t usually sit around with your clothes off,” he said.

  “There’s beer in the refrigerator,” she said. “You want any?”

  He said, “Yes.”

  She said, “I’ll get it for you, but take a shower first. You smell like a porcupine.”

  “How the hell do you know what a porcupine smells like?”

  She giggled. “It smells just like you,” she said. “That’s how I know.”

  “For crissake,” he said, “you’re half zonked.” There was pleasure in his voice.

  “Go take your shower, porcupine breath,” she said.

  “You’re sitting around bare-ass and half zonked.”

  “There’s a towel on the kitchen floor,” she said and took another tiny sip of bourbon.

  The soap stung the scratches on his face, but he washed his face carefully anyway, rubbing the lather into the scratches to get them clean. The wounded arm stung but he washed that too, tightening against the pain. He washed and rinsed and lathered and rinsed again and shampooed his hair twice. There was no toothbrush but he rubbed his teeth with salt on the ball of his forefinger and rinsed his mouth in the shower’s stream, gargling and spitting. When he got out of the shower and toweled off he looked at himself in the mirror. He was much slimmer. The roll of fat around his middle was gone. His stomach lay flat between his hip bones. Great diet, he thought. A few days in the wilderness and all baby fat is gone.

  He hung the towel on the back of the bathroom door and walked to the living room. She handed him a beer. He popped open the can and drank a sip. It was cold and it felt clean as it coursed through him. He hadn’t had a drink for days. Janet got the first-aid kit and rebandaged his arm. Then she sat back in her chair with the big lowball glass held in both hands, clinking the ice and looking into the fire. It was night. The fire was the only light in the room. She sipped the bourbon. He drank from his can of beer. A spark popped from the fire out onto the hearth, and sputtered and faded out.

  She looked up at him across the rim of the glass. He sipped the rest of the beer and put the can on the mantel. She put the half-drunk glass of bourbon on the floor and stood up. They both stood still five feet apart. She swayed very slightly.

  “I don’t want you to think this means more than it does,” she said. She took two steps toward him and put her arms around his neck and raised her face to his. Her mouth was slightly open. Her lips were wet from bourbon and ice and it made them shiny. He put his arms around her waist, his hands one on top of the other in the small of her back.

  “This doesn’t mean that I’m going to be different,” she said. Her speech slurred very slightly. He pressed her against him and put his head down and kissed her open mouth. Under his lips it opened wider. Her body arched back, her arms tightened around his neck. He put his tongue into her mouth. She touched the tip of it with hers and opened her mouth wider. Her body loosened and relaxed, she went limp against his arms, pulling him toward the floor with her weight. Her arms fell away and she seemed boneless. He raised his head slightly to look at her. She lay back against his arms, limp, her mouth open, her eyes half closed. Her breathing was short and shallow. She ran the tip of her tongue along the inner edge of her lower lip. Carefully he eased her to the floor. She was without volition. When she was on the floor she let her legs fall open, her hands nearly by her sides, looking up at him still with half-closed eyes. Her breath was even shorter and there was a faint sound to it, a murmur. He rested on his right elbow beside her, lying on his side, close to her. She turned her head toward him but made no other movement. He kissed her again. Her mouth was loose. He put his left hand against her cheek and moved it down along her neck to her breast. He moved his hand on her breast. He rubbed the nipple softly with the ball of his forefinger. The murmur in her breath became a soft groan. She shifted slightly and closed her eyes entirely, her hands still lying motionless beside her, palms up, fingers slightly curled. He put his mouth to her breast. She tipped her head back slightly and put her right hand up and rested it gently on the back of his head. She groaned softly. He moved his left hand down her body across her stomach. She arched her pelvis up at him and pushed his head more firmly against her breast. He slipped his right hand beneath her shoulders and moved his left hand between her thighs. She groaned more loudly. She moved her legs farther apart. Both her arms were around him now, and they remained in that balance between tension and lassitude as the glow from the fire softened their movements and warmed them. In a while she shifted and helped him as he slid between her legs. She said, “Yes,” once and raised her head and shoulders slightly to kiss him as their bodies moved in intuitive union.

  When it was over and they were spent she looked up at him in the rose-tinged semidarkness and said, “I love you very much.”

  “I love you,” he said. There were tears on his face. Then he put his face down beside hers and they lay still on the floor in front of the fire with their arms around each other, still pressed together. A log shifted as the center burned through and the two halves slowly settled toward the center.

  “Don’t expect too much next time,” she said. Her eyes were closed and she lay with her head resting on his right arm.

  “I’ll take what I can get,” he said. His voice was hoarse.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him without moving her head. Then she said, “The floor is quite hard.”

  “True.”

  “Let’s get up and eat.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get dressed before we eat, though. I’m freezing my ass off.”

  The clothes were still warm from the dryer when they put them on. His shirt had gone overboard with the knapsack. He wore the vest over his bare upper body. She sipped her bourbon while she set the table in front of the fire. He forked the half-thawed steak onto the swing-out grill in the fireplace. It began to sizzle almost at once as the flame touched it. The coals were thick on the firebed now, and the fireplace was very hot. She brought him another can of beer. He drank from it. She put the casserole of beans on a hot pad on the table. They were bubbling softly. She put out the rye bread, some ketchup, some pickles, two dinner plates, knives and forks. He turned the steak on the grill, feeling the heat blistering his hand as he did. She finished setting the table and sat in one of the chairs and sipped her bourbon. The steak sizzled for three more minutes on the grill and then he put it on a plate and brought it to the table. He cut it in two pieces with his pocket knife, gave one half to her, and put the other half on his own plate. Then he sat down and they ate.

  They ate in silence. The food occupied them completely. And as they ate it they thought of when they had eaten a granola bar for dinner.

  “It’s lovely to eat,” she said.

  He put some ketchup on his beans. “Yes,” he said. “One of the great meals.”

  They finished eating and wiped the plate clean with the
last of the bread. He went to the kitchen and brought out coffee in thick china mugs with pictures of vegetables on them.

  “What do we do now?” Janet said.

  Newman sipped the coffee. “We drive Chris’s car home, time it to arrive at night, put it in his garage in the dark, go home to our house, and take up our lives again. There’s nothing to connect us. The rent’s paid in advance on this place. When the week’s up, we’re gone. The owner will think nothing of it. Before we leave tomorrow I’ll wipe the place for fingerprints.”

  “Everywhere? That’s a big order.” She sipped at her coffee, holding the mug at chin level and breathing in the steam.

  “No, just refrigerator, chrome sink-handles, bathroom and toilet handles, that stuff. They can’t pick anything up off fabric and floors and stuff.”

  “How do you know about fingerprints?”

  “It stands to reason,” he said. “It’s got to be something smooth that the oils of the fingertips will leave a trace on, right?”

  She shook her head. “I have no idea about fingerprints,” she said. “I’ll have to trust you. How’s the arm? It looked clean when I bandaged it.”

  “Seems pretty good. I looked at it in the shower. I don’t see any infection. It’s not swollen or very red. We’ll keep an eye on it. If it gets worse I’ll go to some suburban hospital emergency room and give a phony name. Happens all the time.”

  “And how in hell do you know that?”

  “I asked Teddy Schroeder. He interned in the emergency room at United Hospital. I was doing a book where the question came up. He says that’s no sweat. They report it to the police but it’s routine, and they don’t ask for ID or anything.”

  She smiled. “You do know things. The shelter in the woods. I know you’ve never built a shelter before.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve carpentered. I have built a lot of things. There’s logic to things. You build one thing you learn the logic of building. How else would you make a shelter there?”

  “I don’t know. But it worked. You made it work.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “How do you feel?” she said.

  “Physically? Or emotionally?”

  “Both,” she said. “You’ve had to do an awful thing and it was terrible and frightening and you did all of it. How does it make you feel?”

  He drank some of his coffee. “Strong,” he said. “Strong and close-knit, and not very much thinking. You know. I don’t want to think very much. I want to work on intuition and feeling and eat what tastes good and drink what’s cold and do a lot of screwing and sleeping and wearing clean clothes.”

  They were quiet, drinking coffee, looking at the fire.

  “I couldn’t have gone into the woods without you,” he said. “And I could never have gotten out.”

  “We went together,” she said. “And came out the same way.”

  “More together,” he said. “Much more together.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t start expecting too much.”

  He smiled at her, the smile widening across his face as if it would distort. Even in the dimness of the firelight his eyes gleamed.

  “I don’t expect anything,” he said. “I take what comes. And we make do.”

  Epilogue

  It was two weeks before Thanksgiving and the wound in Newman’s arm was only a smooth red scar when Vincent and Croft came to call. They came in a dark blue Chevrolet with a whip antenna but no other markings and parked under Newman’s ancient maple tree in the early evening.

  Croft rang the bell and Newman answered. His face was blank when he saw the two policemen, and he said, “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

  Croft said, “We’d like to come in and talk for a few minutes.”

  Vincent said, “We’re not here to arrest you.”

  Newman said, “That’s good. Come in. We’re having dinner. Would you be willing to sit and have a drink or something with us while we finish?”

  Vincent said, “Sure.”

  Janet Newman, still dressed from work in a black pantsuit with vest, and black boots with high spike heels, was eating linguine with clam sauce at the kitchen table across from Newman’s now empty place. There was a bottle of Graves and two glasses. Janet sipped some wine, put the glass down, and smiled at them.

  “This is my wife, Janet,” Newman said. “These are state policemen. Corporal Croft and Lieutenant Vincent.”

  Janet smiled more brightly and said, “How do you do. Can we get you some wine or coffee? Piece of pie? Have you eaten?”

  “We’ve eaten,” Vincent said, “thank you. I’d be happy to have a drink though. Bobby?”

  Croft said, “Yeah, me too. I’ll take a beer if you’ve got one.”

  “Scotch,” Vincent said. “Neat. No ice, nothing.”

  Newman got them each a drink. Croft declined a glass. They sat at the kitchen table.

  “Remember Adolph Karl?” Croft said.

  “The guy I identified and changed my mind?” Newman said.

  “The very one,” Croft said. Vincent sipped his Scotch carefully and tipped his head back slightly to savor it as he swallowed. “Good Scotch,” he said.

  “He’s dead,” Croft said. “Somebody apparently drowned him in a lake in Maine.”

  Newman ate some pasta and drank half a glass of wine.

  “I assume you’re not very unhappy,” Newman said. “As I recall, you didn’t think well of him.”

  “He was a scum bag,” Croft said. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  “I hear worse from him every day,” Janet said. She smiled at Croft.

  “Thing is, somebody seems to have wiped out practically his whole social circle, up there in Maine. A ranger in the National Forest up there found them scattered all around. His two sons, his bodyguard, and one of his associates, all gunned down here and there.”

  Newman nodded. He ate some salad.

  “Nobody’s hysterical with grief,” Croft said. He drank from the beer can. “They were all maggots and whoever burned them did the world a favor. Interesting thing was, another guy got killed up there, guy named Hood. Chris Hood. Know him?”

  “Of course. He lives right back of us.”

  “Yeah,” Croft said. “That sort of got our attention.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the coincidence. Here you think Karl did a murder and then you think he didn’t, then a guy who lives right next to you gets killed in the same woods with Karl.” Croft drank more beer. He put the can down and belched softly. “ ’Scuse me,” he said.

  Vincent took another small sip of Scotch.

  Newman had finished eating. He sipped his wine.

  Janet Newman was still eating. She speared a mushroom slice from her salad bowl and put it in her mouth.

  Vincent said to Newman, “You’ve lost some weight haven’t you?”

  “Yes, about twenty pounds.”

  “Look good,” Vincent said.

  “That’s terrible about Chris,” Janet said. “We were quite good friends.”

  “But you haven’t seen him in the last month or so, have you,” Croft said.

  “No,” Janet said. “I assumed he’d gone hunting. He does that often in season.”

  “Season just opened,” Croft said.

  Janet shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t hunt. I just know it’s in the fall sometime.”

  Croft grinned. “Hell, I didn’t know it either,” he said. “I just checked it with the Maine cops myself.”

  Newman said, “Want another beer?”

  “Sure,” Croft said. Newman got it from the refrigerator.

  “How’s your Scotch, Lieutenant?”

  “Fine.”

  Newman began to remove the dinner dishes and put them into the dishwasher. Janet finished her salad.

  The two policemen were quiet for a moment.

  Newman leaned his hips against the kitchen counter and said, “What do you guys want?”

  Croft looked at Vincent.<
br />
  Vincent smiled and sipped more Scotch. “We want to try out a hypothesis on you,” he said. “Suppose there was a man who witnessed a murder and identified the killer.”

  Vincent paused and raised his glass and looked at the overhead light shining through the Scotch.

  “And suppose then the killer leaned on this guy, or his wife, or both, and made the guy change his story. How’s the guy feel, Bobby?”

  “Lousy,” Croft said. “He feels like he’s been pushed around and made a coward, humiliated probably.”

  “Right. So what’s he do? If he tells us, the killer will come down on him like hail on a flower, right?”

  Croft said, “Right.”

  “So he decides to shoot the killer. That gets revenge. Takes care of his humiliation, keeps the killer from making good whatever threats he might have made, and, a plus, is sort of executing him for his crime. You know? Not just cold-blooded murder, but a kind of justice. You follow me so far?”

  Newman nodded.

  “You, ma’am?”

  “Yes, of course,” Janet said.

  “But of course there’s some problems. The guy’s no pistolero, for one thing. And he’s gotta do it so neither the cops nor the robbers know or even suspect.”

  “Especially the robbers,” Croft said. “Cause they’ll shoot him on suspicion.”

  “Right,” Vincent said. “So this guy has to get some help and he has to find a way of doing things so no one will know.”

  “Especially the robbers,” Croft said.

  “Right,” Vincent said. “Now say this guy has a friend who’s a real hard-ass, excuse me, ma’am. Guy’s been in the Rangers and he’s had a lot of combat and he’s tough enough anyway to hunt bear with a willow switch. Suppose this guy goes to his hard-ass friend and explains his problem and his friend says, hell, let’s do them in, I’ll help.”