Maybe it had been best to drive a working man’s truck, looking sober and respectable. If he’d lifted a Lincoln, which he’d hoped to do, that would have been too flashy and noticeable. Regretfully, he decided that he would have to allow his efforts at a hitch-hiker’s hard luck story to go to waste.
There was a flea-bag motel outside the Templeton city limits. He checked in, using the name he found on the registration in the pocket of the truck: Martin Fewell. Sounded solid and dull. Probably that tough back in the pine woods had stolen the truck himself, for he hadn’t acted like a respectable citizen. They froze and let you slaughter them like sheep.
He was tired. He didn’t like to drive, and he heartily cursed Carrefours for letting that comfortable Olds go sour on them. But he had chosen to come on without his driver, and he couldn’t blame anyone but himself.
He lay on the chenille bedspread, still wearing his shoes, and turned on the TV. There was a news item about the murder in Louisiana, and to his horror he heard his name being mentioned. Fingerprints! He’d wiped everything, always. Compulsively!
They also mentioned Septien, but that was no comfort. Where had he left his prints? He had wiped the door handle, the dash, the seat cover, the outside of the doorframe. He always did that.
And then he thought of it. When he touched the hood. Someplace there, he had left a print he didn’t realize was on it. A hidden place...the latch under the hood? That had to be it!
He was going soft. His skill was slipping, and his knack was dulling with age and over-use. He had to get back on track, or he would be a goner. He shut off the tube and turned on his side. He must sleep now. His interior timer would wake him when the night was at the correct point in its progress. He knew he could rely on that, if nothing else.
Tonight would see him back on track. Tonight would turn his career around, for good and all. With that thought, he dozed off, secure in his control of the future.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Washington Shipp
Wash yawned, but he didn’t move. His youth spent hunting in the river bottoms had trained him well for stalking men. The shelter of the Chinese holly was thick, the glossy leaves forming a prickly barrier between him and the light that Frost had left burning in the utility room off the back porch. He didn’t want a rustle or a shiver of branches to betray his presence.
There had been no sign of anyone in the grounds, but that didn’t mean Duson might not be within arm’s reach of him. Wash had learned that in an even harsher school than prison. The forests along the Nichayac could be crawling with gators, moccasins, or cougars, and you never knew until it was too late. Worse than those were the illegal hunters, who would kill you without a thought or a backward glance.
He let out his breath silently and swiveled his eyes in their sockets, keeping a constant sweeping watch on the space around the back door of the Frost home. There was a feeling of tension in the air.
The mockingbird that had been going through his repertory in the tall sycamore beside the back porch was quiet now. Even the first timid peepers of spring had stilled their shrill voices, and there was only the sound of a light breeze whispering through the sharp-angled leaves of his sheltering holly.
Shipp had developed an instinct, back there in his youth, that had saved his life more than once. He knew, somehow and with some sense that wasn’t physical, when a poisonous snake was sharing his hiding place. He’d felt impending dangers many times, even though no sound betrayed them and not even his elders were warned of their presence. Now he felt there was someone on the other side of the holly. Someone’s ears strained at the night, trying to detect anything that didn’t fit into the picture. Someone’s breath was being controlled with great care, even as he was managing his own so as not to betray his presence.
He felt the tension in those other, invisible muscles. He understood on a primitive level the wariness and the caution of that other one, who even now thought he was stalking his prey.
Thinking of Lily Frost, of his own wife, safely at home with the boy, Wash eased his weight onto his left foot. The dried holly leaves, accumulating for years beneath the huge twists of branches, made no sound, for he brought the weight to bear slowly, steadily, and without the possibility of crunching. The branches swept softly past his shoulders, and there was no scrape of leaf against cloth.
As carefully as if he were about to face a cougar in the depths of the forest, he moved out of his nook and around the large bush. He expected at any moment to see the dark shape of his adversary.
There was a sudden blink of the dim light. A solid body had passed across its faint beam. Alarmed, he moved forward, his forty-five in hand, but the watcher was gone, vanished into the thick growth tangling the acreage around the house. Taking out his flash, the lawman examined the ground about the holly bush. There was a scuffed spot, as if big feet had rested in the same place for some time. There was a skid mark, where the quarry had taken off like a scalded cat. He sank back on his heels and stared thoughtfully into the multiple shadows of the trees. This was a man with the instincts of a cat. He knew, just as Wash knew, when there was an enemy at hand.
They had waited, one on either side of the stickery complex of holly, trying to find what it was that had set off their inner warnings. Almost at the same moment, they had decided to move.
Shipp shivered. He didn’t like feeling as if he were somehow akin to that dangerous creature shaped like a man. But he knew, deep inside, that he now understood Myron Duson far better than he had ever thought he might.
Sighing, he went to the back door and used the key Stony had left with him. He had to see if Duson had made it inside, though now he wondered if he had not interrupted the man before he could manage that.
Still, being thorough was his main attribute, and he went into the service porch and through into the kitchen.
That told him that his quarry had already been in the house, for the Frost kitchen was always both tidy and spotless. Now it showed signs of having been searched hastily, drawers pulled out, silverware disarranged, the papers on the work table shuffled and left scattered—Wash hoped intensely that neither of the Frosts had left any note concerning their intended destination. But Stony was no fool. He was pretty confident that had not happened. There was no point in going into the rest of the house. The man had been here. Now he was gone.
There was need to let Stony and Lily know, and to do that he would use a public phone on his way back to the office. Maybe that seemed paranoid, but when it came to Myron Duson, he felt nothing was too outrageous.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Myron Duson
His heart pounding, Duson rolled his waiting pickup out of the side road in which he had left it and switched on the engine. He had not thought he’d come back to it so quickly—and without accomplishing his goal. Getting into the house had been easy.
It was so big and rambling that searching it thoroughly was not feasible. It was clear that they were no longer living in the house, for he had checked the bedrooms upstairs, and they were empty. The kitchen desk had obviously been the center of business for the household, and among all the papers and ledgers there had been no indication of any intention to leave their home.
Damn that woman! She seemed to lead a charmed life. Why should someone be out at night, watching her house, when her attacker was supposed to be over in Louisiana, running away as fast as he could?
Duson was disturbed. He was not used to losing his cool and breaking his cover, as he had back there in the semi-darkness. That other man—he had known Duson was there. He was convinced of that. Yet Duson had not known until too late that there had been another man on the grounds at all. That, of course, meant the fellow shared the abilities Myron had used so successfully over the years. He knew when an enemy was near. He heard when there was no sound. He felt the presence of another through his pores and read his intentions unerringly.
So. If this man, police or deputy or whatever, had so much in common with Duson, he mu
st also have more. He would know that his quarry would come back to finish the job left incomplete. And he had known, that was clear.
It meant that the night’s exercise had been futile. The woman was not there at all. Moving her would make far more sense than staking out the place every night until someone returned. She and her gun-dealer lover or husband or whatever had gone away.
He felt a jolt inside, as the memory returned. That magazine in the old people’s house! It contained a story about a woman with the same name. Perhaps a relative?
All his instincts said, “Yes, a relative!” He had memorized the name and the town, simply because it was his habit to be thorough, to leave nothing undone. Duson chuckled, as the pickup jounced along a dirt track that intersected, a few miles along, a farm to market road. This would take him to a highway. In time and with some study of his highway maps, the route would lead to the farm of Alison Frost Vernier.
An old woman and a crippled gun dealer could never hope to protect that woman from him. The thought of finishing his task filled him with warmth, and he drove along humming, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel in a rhythmic accompaniment to his untuneful voice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Alison Frost Vernier
She had not realized how much she’d missed having family about her, Alison decided. After Louis died, she had flung herself into her work with total commitment, so as to avoid self-pity and loneliness, and that had worked very well. Still, there was nothing like having your own kin about you, even if they sometimes were irritating. Lily, for instance, was not what Alison liked to think of as a true Frost woman. The timidity, that shrinking from strangers must, her great-aunt thought, be a direct result of her flirtation with the drug culture. A simple attack by a burglar shouldn’t have had such a drastic effect.
More than anything else, she had heard about the ill effects of misuse of drugs; this persuaded her drugs were dangerous. All it would take was for a government to foster drug abuse among its citizens, and it could run them like robots, for they would be too afraid to resist.
The mere idea made her furious. To find her own niece so passive made her even more so. She was determined to bring Lily out of her present frame of mind if it required shock therapy.
Alison knew herself to have the capacity for that—Louis had often told her it was kind of God to make her so caring for people and animals, for otherwise she would have been too dangerous to live.
She mopped her forehead with the back of one wrist, pushing back the crisp white curls that insisted on straggling from beneath the net under which she confined them. The dogs milled about her feet, licking elbows, knees, and hands indiscriminately; that brought a smile, for she was a fool for her setters.
Lily and Stony were bringing in fresh hay for bedding behind the smaller of the two tractors. That boy looked better than he had when they arrived, Alison had to admit. He’d been pale and drawn then, but now his eyes were bright, and if his cheeks were not rosy, it was because his olive complexion didn’t flush.
“Where you want this load?” he called, his tone cheerful.
“Take it into the middle run and put it into the boxes there. That’s where the pregnant bitches have their litters. Then we’ll go to the house and cool off a bit. For spring, it’s getting mighty hot.” She finished feeding the group in her pen, checked to see that the others in the long line of dog runs had eaten well, and turned toward the house.
Maggie had iced tea and sandwiches ready, as usual. Alison ate an early light lunch, after her labors in the kennels, for she began her day before dawn. Stony and his sister, without her asking or even hinting, had adapted to her schedule and joined her every morning, helping her to do the chores. That allowed Cephus, who would otherwise have been doing such work, to mend fences or mow pastures or tend the few choice head of Angus cattle that were a part of the Vernier spread.
It was a wonderful arrangement. Having someone who understood and appreciated music and art, with whom to talk politics and international affairs, was even better. Her mealtimes had become stimulating instead of mere pauses to fuel her body.
She had decided, without daring as yet to mention it to her kin, that she wanted them to visit her more often. However, she felt that it might be selfish to ask them to spend more time with one who was, after all, the contemporary of their own grandfather. Today, however, she decided to risk it.
The table was set with the green glass dishes and goblets, and that told her Maggie had determined it to be summer, whether or not the calendar officially declared it. Alison plopped into her chair and grinned at Stony, who had turned up his glass of iced tea and drained it.
“You know, Aunt Allie, it’s wonderful to be outside doing things. I never knew how much I was missing. My folks seemed to think that because I was twisted I couldn’t do anything physical at all.”
Lily nodded. “And I was a girl, so they didn’t want me to do anything but girl things. I like active work a lot better. Martin...”—she paused, as if astonished that she had mentioned his name.
“Martin just dived in and did things and he never minded if I went right along with him. But he thought I ought to be just as enthusiastic about hurting people as I was about loading logs or running a cotton picker.”
Ah! That was a good sign. Alison poured more tea all around and said, “Your mother was raised to be a lady. Dratted nuisance, of course, and she deserved better. She had the makings of a real person, under all those layers of foolishness.”
She passed the platter of sandwiches, noting the glance that Lily turned toward her brother. “It’s not easy getting over a misguided childhood, but let me tell you it’s worth it.
“My own mother thought she was going to make a lady out of me. But I was a Frost, and my grandmother was still alive to show me what a person ought to be. She’d tackle a bear and give it the first two bites.”
Lily giggled, choked on a bite, and was thumped soundly on the back by Stony. The sound of their laughter filled Alison with a feeling of great well-being.
Maggie came soundlessly into the room and bent to whisper into her ear. The feeling of satisfaction popped like a bubble. Alison rose and followed Maggie out of the room to the telephone.
“Miz Vernier? This is Sheriff Shipp back in Nichayac County. I’m sorry to tell you, but Myron Duson was in Stony’s house last night. That doesn’t mean he found anything to guide him to you, but it won’t hurt to be on guard, do you think?”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” she said, her heart feeling cold in her chest. “We will keep an eye open and take precautions. Let us know if you learn anything more, will you?”
She returned to the table and took her place, and she knew her expression was telling Stony and Lily that trouble was in the wind.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Washington Shipp
Shipp made it back to his office in jig time. Amy was asleep on the cot in the back room, her cheeks rosy, her white hair rumpled. He shook her regretfully. She was old now, and needed her rest, but this was important.
“Get the Sheriff over in Calcasieu Parish, will you, Amy, just as soon as he’s in his office? I need to make a run over there and check out that murder site. I’m missing something, I know, and I need to stand in that bastard’s tracks and smell him out.”
“What time is it?” She yawned, reached up to push several huge hairpins back into the braided snails of hair that covered each of her ears.
“Four-oh-five,” he said.
The pot was plugged in, as usual, and he poured hot water into a Styrofoam cup and spooned in instant coffee. He was chilled to the bone, though the spring night was more damp than cold. Learning that his quarry had the same finely honed instincts he possessed was a worrying thing, and he thought that might have shaken him more than he knew.
Amy reached for the battered alarm clock sitting on the spindly chair beside the cot. “I’m setting it for six. You go home and get a little sleep, if you can, and as soon as I get wor
d I’ll call you at home,” she told him.
“If I were your wife, I’d scrag you, Wash. I don’t know how Jewel stands it. You’re not at home any more than a tomcat.”
He grinned at her, finishing his coffee. “But for very different reasons, Amy. Very different reasons.”
He switched off the overhead light and left her to what remained of the night, but he didn’t go home. Instead, he drove again to the Frost house, hidden behind its screen of hollies and crepe myrtles, crouching beneath its overgrown oaks and pines.
Using his torch, he moved around the silent building, examining the ground carefully for tracks. Duson had come in from the front and gone around to the kitchen door. Bold bastard! He must have hidden his car down the road, where a track led off into the woods, and walked back in the cover of the roadside undergrowth.
He went around the house on the north side, keeping close to the thick clumps of bridal wreath and camellias. Duson had emerged from the house not far from the holly under which Scott had hidden; he’d stood there for some time, still as a rock. The edges of his tracks weren’t blurred with movement, but the prints themselves were well sunk into the damp soil, showing that he had been there for a while.
Just as he had been himself, Wash thought, like two jungle animals, each sensing the presence of the other, listening, feeling outward with every perception they had, trying to get the jump, when the time came, on the enemy who was perceived but not seen. He shivered hard, feeling again that raw moment of awareness.
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