I said slowly, "Shut your stupid, stinking face, mister. I'm getting goddamned tired of your eighth-grade humor."
His left hand came out of nowhere and slammed against my cheek; pain ricocheted inside my skull. I heard Lyn cry, "Stop it!" and then I was coming out of the chair with my manacled hands in front of me.
I was going to change that boy's appearance for him, but I saw the other one, near me, saw his big right fist wrapped around the gun in a holster at his hip. I was so mad that I almost went after Meadows anyway, but just in time I stopped. Meadows planted a big paw on my chest and shoved. My knees hit the chair behind me and I went down into it, and I didn't even try to get up. I was using all my energy to keep my pants on the seat. Meadows's face had hardened; he was no longer in a happy mood. But neither was I.
"Congratulations, Sergeant," I said. "Slapping a crazy man. I'll bet they promote cops in Raleigh for that. Hit me again, boy. Maybe in a couple of years they'll promote you to cretin."
I was smiling, with the best smile I had left in me, which was mostly fangs, and possibly Meadows thought he was being complimented by a suddenly cowed prisoner. He looked at Lyn, and for a couple of seconds conflicting emotions played on his face, but apparently curiosity won. "What'd he say?" he asked her.
I was surprised to see a small but obvious smile pulling at the corners of her lips. She had dimples that didn't show until her lips curved, I noticed. She glanced at me and said, "Cretin, Sergeant Meadows."
Laughter bubbled up in me, popped through my compressed lips. At the same time, Lyn, noticing my near strangulation, clapped one hand over her mouth—and Meadows suddenly realized that we were both laughing at him. His face got ugly, or rather uglier.
He could hardly slap her around, but he got back at her in his own way. He grinned at her slowly and deliberately looked her over from head to feet as her face flushed. Even in the stiff white uniform Lyn's figure was almost startling; it was easy to imagine how desirable she would look in a dress that pressed close to the lush curves of her body. Or in less. And that was obviously what Meadows was imagining.
He made it obvious. Meadows got off several crude cracks, the patrolman, Al, chiming in finally. Lyn's face flamed and she swallowed. There wasn't much I could do about it, but I started to tell them to knock it off, anyway. Then I stopped, thought a moment, and said instead, to nobody in particular, "I don't feel so good."
Both men swung their heads toward me. I pressed my eyes together, shook my head, and said, "Feel lousy." I looked at Meadows, trying to appear ill, and discovered that by continuing to look at him it was easy. "I mean it," I said slowly. "Feel like I'm going to pass out." I turned to Lyn. "You gave me a shot of something, didn't you?"
"Why, yes."
I winked at her and said, "I could use another shot; think it's wearing off."
Her brows pulled down. I looked at the sergeant. "I feel sick as hell, Meadows. Feel like I'm gonna throw up. If I do, I mean to aim at you."
For a moment I thought he was going to clobber me again, but he didn't.
I groaned. "Oh, boy, am I sick!"
Meadows's mouth twitched. Al said, "Ah, maybe we better put this nut in storage."
I groaned: "O-o-o-hhh-h! Urp! Oh-h-h."
"Well, hell," Meadows said. He grabbed my arm and yanked. I got to my feet, slumped against him, and groaned, looking squarely at him, my face contorted. He shrank away and said to Al, "Grab this bastard's other arm."
In a couple of seconds we started out, one of them on each side of me, hanging onto my biceps. As we went out the door, I twisted my head around and, while groaning softly, tossed a fast wink at Lyn. Oddly enough, she started to smile, and then we were weaving down the hall.
Chapter Ten
The air was cool outside and a fine drizzle of rain still fell. We went through the main entrance and walked in near darkness down the graveled drive toward the gate. Meadows said, "Listen, you bastard, get your feet under you or we'll bust you one and drag you out of here."
I'd been slumping as much as I could without falling down, but I stood straighter, weaving unsteadily, made some disgusting noises in my throat. Meadows swore.
Al said, "You want me to go out to the car and get Lester?"
"No. We both hang onto the nut."
I didn't have any real plan; I knew only that I meant to make a break before we got into Raleigh. I had to. Once a cell door clanged behind me, I might as well say good-by to the world for a while. But that remark of Al's about going to the car to "get Lester" jarred me. Two cops, even half-drunk ones, were bad enough, but three would reduce my chances nearly to zero. If I were going to make a break, it would have to be right now, immediately.
My pulse quickened, heartbeat getting heavier. Meadows was on my left, gripping my biceps tightly; Al held my other arm and his body was a bare two or three inches from mine. I waited until he started to bring his left leg forward, then I fell against him, sticking my right foot between his legs. He pitched toward the ground, swearing filthily.
Meadows's tight grip on my arm pulled him after me when I banged into Al, and as Al started toppling I got my feet planted solidly on the ground and spun my body farther to the right, grabbing my left palm in my other hand for leverage because I wanted all the strength I could get into this one.
It was beautiful. When I swung away from Meadows, his hands still clung to my biceps, drawing his arm after me, and when I spun back toward him with my elbow jutting toward his belly, there was nothing in the way to stop the blow or slow it down. The hard bony point of my elbow sliced into his gut with damn near all my weight behind it, sank deep, buried itself in his fat.
As stinking breath shot from his mouth and he bent forward, I raised my manacled hands high and slammed them down on his skull. The cuffs cracked against the back of his head as my knee slammed into his face, and Meadows was out, cold and completely, even while he hung momentarily in the air.
I started to spin around before Meadows hit the ground, but Al was already yelling. For a moment I couldn't see him in the darkness, could only hear his shouts, but then I spotted him outlined by light from the gate, getting up off the ground. If he'd jumped for me then, he'd probably have had me. But Al grabbed for his gun.
When his hand slapped metal, I was already in the air and about a foot from him. At least, my feet were that close to him; my head was a couple of yards farther back, because I was splayed out in the air sailing at him. Al was halfway up when I got him. I tried to kick his face but missed when he twisted his body and ducked, still yelling. My shoes landed against his shoulder, but his gun went off with what seemed a hell of a noise a moment before he fell sprawling again.
I'd gambled on getting him good, finishing him fast, and when I fell sliding, slamming into gravel beneath me, I wasn't even worrying about the horrible bruises and lacerations I'd have on my fanny because I knew the next blast from Al's gun should win the argument for him. But as I got to my feet, he was starting to scuttle on hands and knees away from me. Maybe he'd dropped the gun, maybe he was just clear out of his head, but one thing was sure: He was trying his damnedest to get away from the crazy man. And that made it easy.
Two fast steps took me to him; my left foot jarred against his exposed behind, twisting him over, and my right shoe made a dull, nasty sound when it landed. I didn't know exactly where it landed, but it was somewhere around his head, and it was on something solid, and it was enough.
"Meadows! Al! Hey, Meadows!" It was the other guy, the third cop out at the prowl car. I knelt by Meadows and fumbled through his pockets, clumsily with both hands, trying to find the keys to the damned cuffs. The cop outside yelled again and I heard his feet hit the sidewalk.
His name popped into my mind and I shouted to him, "Lester! We had to poop the bastard. Call it in." I didn't think it would stop him. It didn't, but it slowed him down. I could see him standing at the open gate, then he flicked on a flashlight and started toward me. My hands hit a key ring.
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sp; I jerked it out, stuffed it into my pocket, then turned and ran like hell. A beam of light swept over me and past; then it steadied on me, and a gun cracked. I heard the slug snap by my head, and my feet started spinning around so frenziedly it seemed there was a chance I'd catch up with the bullet—and I didn't even know where the hell I was going.
I was just going away, away from that guy who was shooting at me. I hadn't thought about my Cad or the rope I'd left dangling over the wall, but now I remembered the rope, at the back wall of Greenhaven, and that's where I was headed. Hell, I was going so fast I was already there. I didn't see any rope, but I kept running parallel to the wall, and in a moment I spotted it. I held my manacled hands ready in front of me and grabbed it, going so fast that I swung off the ground and up into the air, scraping my left side against cement, figuring at this speed I'd go clear up to heaven.
But I went only halfway up as high as I needed to get and then I scraped back down, still inside, swearing, very foul-mouthed and unstrung. A gun cracked again and a bullet splatted against cement near me. I jumped straight into the air and grabbed the line near the wall's top, then yanked and swung my legs, and went up on pure adrenalin. One foot hooked the wall's top and I rolled over it as the gun cracked again, but the slug missed and I flopped to the ground outside.
I flopped hard, and I hurt, but I made it to the Cad and found the keys in the ignition, where I'd left them, and in ten seconds I was going forty miles an hour down the street. Right after that the speedometer hit ninety, and stayed there.
The windshield wipers clicked monotonously as I drove through misting rain, the handcuffs off my wrists now. This was the same road on which I'd driven earlier tonight, following that other man—Wolfe. On the drive out to the fog-blanketed hill, I'd noticed on the right of the road, a hundred feet behind a shaggy, unkempt lawn, an old barn of a house with an adjacent garage, a for sale sign at the edge of the grass. And I had to hide.
In minutes there'd be police cars on this road, and on all the roads around here. All the cars from Raleigh, and cars from Los Angeles, too. This would be a big one, hot copy, a nice gruesome subject for shocked conversations. Not just a manhunt or search for a crazy man this time, but an all-out search for a homicidal maniac.
The two-story house loomed on my right and I switched off my lights, turned into the driveway. The whole place looked different than when I'd seen it before. Then, too, the house had been draped in a drizzle of rain and shrouded by darkness, but now the place looked bigger, somehow, its outlines sharper.
I stopped before the garage and got out of the car. Away from the sound of the Cad's motor I could hear, cutting through the patter of rain, the wail of sirens, two of them, one descending the scale as the other shrieked higher and higher. The garage door was padlocked, but its wood had been weakened by age and weather. When I put my shoulder against the door and shoved, the screws holding the padlock's hasp pulled easily from the rotten wood. Termites had probably infested both house and garage for years, and the whole place seemed dead, with termites eating through it, crawling through it like maggots in a dead man. Or maybe it only seemed that way to me because of what I was going to do.
I drove the Cad inside the garage and turned off the motor, unlocked the Cad's trunk, pawed around till I found what I wanted, then closed the garage door, pressed the rusted screws back into place.
A distant siren had been getting louder, and I saw headlights far up the road. From behind the garage I watched a police car scream past with its red spotlight glowing, then I turned and walked through mud, my feet slipping and sliding in it, carrying a flashlight and a shovel.
I could tell by my weariness and sudden need for sleep that whatever stimulant Lyn had given me was wearing off; I was tired, slow of movement. I stumbled and fell in the mud. For a moment I lay sprawled on my face, muscles quivering, then a siren whined on the road nearby and I forced myself to get up.
Finally, a dirt road was in front of me. In my near exhaustion I'd walked too far, passed the hill I'd been looking for. But I knew where I was; I'd followed Wolfe here through the rain. Behind me the hill slanted upward and I turned, started walking again. I felt sure Wolfe had been carrying a body, and I remembered he had carried it easily, though he was not a large man. The body must have been small, light; it might well have been the body of a woman.
I turned the flashlight's beam ahead of me and walked beneath trees over moist earth, and suddenly I was there. The beam of light filled the small clearing and I could see, a few yards ahead of me, the smooth and level surface of a grave. One small plot of ground about six feet long and two feet wide had the richly dark appearance of earth freshly turned and leveled, the soil all around it more firmly packed. The earth was wet, and though the rain had stopped, there was a steady murmuring patter of drops falling from leaves above me as I placed my flashlight on the ground, its beam falling on the spot where I would dig.
Exhaustion mixed with a growing nausea, and sweat oozed from my pores, then my shovel struck something soft and yielding, something buried shallowly in the ground, I dropped the shovel and sank to my knees, pawed with my hands at the moist earth.
It was a body, as I'd felt it would be. It was a woman's body, and I had expected that, too. Before brushing the concealing dirt away I paused, then pulled the light to the grave's edge so that it shone down into the hollow of earth where I knelt. I could barely move; my lids were heavy and my breath came raggedly through my open mouth. I hesitated a moment more, almost as though now that I was so close to knowing what was here I didn't want to see her face. Then I pawed at the dirt, thrust my hands beneath her shoulders, and pulled her toward me. In the harsh light slanting down upon her I saw clots of dirt slide from her features with a slow ugliness like flesh sloughing from bone.
And then I saw her face.
I shoved her violently from me, jerking my hands from her shoulders and letting her fall, my eyes wide and staring at her. She fell with a soft rustling sound, head twisting awkwardly to one side so that her dirt-filled eyes seemed to look at me. I must have knelt there without moving for a full minute, then I forced myself to think back to the moment when I'd followed Wolfe here before.
I had followed him. That must have happened. I closed my eyes, pressed my palms against them. I had followed Wolfe here. He had buried the body, gone back to Greenhaven. There I'd talked with Hunt, then with Wolfe. I had seen the strange nurse, and then Nurse Dixon. I had fired a bullet into Wolfe's brain, and next awakened with the police and lovely Lyn around me. After that I'd run, come here. And all the while the body Wolfe had buried had been lying here in the ground.
That was the way I remembered it; it was real and true in my mind. So I couldn't have seen the face I thought I'd just seen, not if I were sane. I'd made a mistake a minute ago, let my mind play tricks on me.
But when I opened my eyes again, everything was the same; it was still the same face.
Chapter Eleven
There was an open, level plain, its baked earth steaming in the sun and traced with jagged cracks. Dozens of tiny figures danced and whirled on the dry earth, their movements sending up swirling ribbons of dust. The figures were strange, with thin, spindly bodies and enormous heads. I could hear the grating of monotonous laughter from all their open mouths.
And I could see myself, with a grotesque, balloon-like head perched on a body of string. Mine was the only figure that was still; all the others raced around me. I could see them from where I stood on that plain, but also from another place, here outside and above it, seeing them all and myself as well.
The others ran around me, laughing, pointing at me, and all of them had faces that I knew: Lyn laughing and pointing and winking, Jo Perrine, Arthur Trammel shouting and praying and drooling, Olive Fairweather clutching her serape, Mrs. Gifford with her fat jiggling like jelly, and Felicity laughing and then crying and then laughing again.
All of them were there except Nurse Dixon. But I saw the entire picture through a hug
e transparent face that filled the sky, an ugly, bony face, cheekbones thrusting through tight-stretched skin, and a great black mole crawling over it like a soft round slug. It was a liquid face, shimmering and melting, forming and re-forming, always there before me.
I started to run, not to get away from the others, who followed and surrounded me, but to get away from that face. Then I felt my body roll, turn on the ground, and woke relieved to know that it had been a dream.
I awoke, sun overhead slanting down through branches of the trees above me and searing my face. I lay in the clearing, mud encrusted on me, body stiff and cramped. I moved, feeling the tug of stiff, still tired muscles, and knew that I had been dreaming, was not dreaming now, but the face was still before me. It melted and sagged and shimmered in front of my eyes. I could see stiff black hairs jutting from the ugly mole. The face seemed to balloon to preposterous size, then it shrank and, finally, it was still.
In that moment of waking, my mind wouldn't function, and for a long minute I stared at the face of Nurse Dixon. It was motionless now, not shimmering or transparent, but solid and real, and I could see the sharp blood-drained features, pointed chin, dirt-filled eyes. It was as though the sockets in her skull had been filled with mud that had hardened and dried.
I was on my stomach, head turned toward her. She lay propped against the side of the shallow grave, half out of it. One hand was pressed beneath her body, now rigid in death, almost as if she had been trying to climb free of the ground and had been frozen in the moment of escape.
Then came the memory of those last moments of consciousness, the memory of my confused thoughts when I'd seen Dixon's face. I'd thrust her from me, then, finally, grasped her shoulders again to stare uncomprehending at the lifeless features, left her resting half out of the grave while I crawled a few feet away. I'd known then that I had followed Wolfe here and listened while he buried her; and after that I'd seen her when she'd burst into his office at Greenhaven. A minute or two later I had killed Wolfe. I knew I had killed him. I'd known it as I succumbed to weariness and the need for sleep. I knew it now.
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