Wilderness

by Robert B. Parker

  "Ready, Lieutenant?"

  Vincent nodded.

  "Newman bought a Springfield '03 bolt-action with a scope and a box of.30/06 ammunition. Told the clerk he wanted it for competition."

  "Hmm-um."

  "Then I went over the BPL and looked Newman up in Who's Who and Contemporary Authors. No mention of competitive shooting. I called his publisher and asked them if they knew anything about Newman shooting competitively. Said I was doing a story on writers who shoot and hunt for a Chicago magazine. Woman in the PR department said he gave no indication on his author's biog sheet of competitive shooting.

  No mention of hunting or woodsman ship or anything remotely like it.

  Said she'd heard him say at lunch he wasn't an outdoorsman. Ridiculed people who were, she said."

  "Hmm-um."

  "So why's he want the long-range rifle with the scope? I mean, your Springfield '03 isn't the first gun you think of when you go to buy a rifle."

  "They were sniper guns in Korea," Vincent said.

  "Too long ago for me, Murray. I'll have to trust your word on that." "They were," Vincent said. "Bolt-action, a lot slower than the Mi's for rapid firing, but for sniping they were perfect. You don't need rapid fire for sniping, and they had good range and didn't jam."

  "So why does Newman want a sniper rifle? If you wanted something for protection, that's not what you'd get. You'd get a shotgun or a carbine, something like that."

  "Right. It's not a common hunting weapon either. Not with the scope." "Clerk in the gun shop says he made a point of the scope and the range."

  "Man buys a sniper gun," Vincent said, "probably wants to snipe."

  "Croft put the notebook away in his coat pocket and leaned back in the straight chair and put his hands behind his head and looked at Vincent.

  "You think he wants to shoot Karl?"

  "You got a better guess?"

  "You think he's got the balls?"

  "No, but maybe I'm wrong. It's too big a coincidence. Guy sees Karl do murder. Guy goes to testify. Guy gets frightened off. Guy buys sniper rifle." Vincent spread his hands out, palms up. "What else?"

  "He might have the balls," Croft said. "He asked what I'd do if my family were threatened. I told him I wasn't sure. I'd have to be in the spot." "I know what I'd do," Vincent said.

  "I told him that too," Croft said.

  "What'd you tell him I'd do?" "I said you'd blow the guy away."

  Vincent nodded.

  "Maybe he's going to. It's the way a guy like him would go. Long distance so you don't get blood on your jogging shoes."

  "He's not a bad guy, Murray," Croft said. "He didn't like getting scared off. It bothered him."

  "It should."

  "Murray, not everyone is like you. You been doing this, how long, twenty-something years?"

  "Twenty-six," Vincent said.

  "You're used to guys with guns. You don't have any nerves. This guy's a writer. Biggest showdown he's had in twenty-six years is whether his serve hit the net or not, you know? He might have the balls."

  "I hope so."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Nothing."

  "Murray, we have some reason to think that a man might commit murder."

  "Nothing," Vincent said.

  "Yeah, okay, I won't get hysterical if Adolph Karl gets aced. He can use it. So can the Commonwealth. But what about Newman? He gets mixed up with Karl, a guy like that, they'll mangle him."

  "Maybe, and maybe we'll catch them at it. Then we'll have Karl."

  "You are a cold bastard, if you'll pardon my saying so, Lieutenant, sir."

  "Newman could have given this to us. He didn't. He wants to do it himself, he takes his chances. If he gets Karl, that's good for us, and him. He gets blown up trying, maybe we can make Karl on that. We don't lose either way."

  "Suppose he's lucky and gets Karl. Then what? We put him in the house of blue lights for the rest of his life?"

  "Maybe we don't," Vincent said.

  "One good turn deserves another?" Croft's face was tight.

  "Something like that, Bobby. We can't lose on this one."

  "Yeah, well, I take the Commonwealth's money," Croft said, "I do the Commonwealth's work." He got up and left.

  CHAPTER 15.

  "So why did you take the watch and wallet," Janet Newman asked.

  "Make it look like robbery," Newman answered.

  She nodded. "The big one," she said. "Do you think you killed him?"

  Hood shook his head.

  "I wish you had," she said. "I remember him looking at me."

  Newman felt his insides tighten like a fist.

  "It's too bad they spotted us, though," Hood said. "It will make things tougher."

  "I think it was a mistake to go down that alley," Newman said.

  Hood shrugged.

  "We didn't learn anything useful," Newman said.

  "Couldn't know till we went and looked," Hood said. "It's important to know." "Why?" Newman said. "Why is it so important? I think we're taking a lot of risks following Karl around."

  "There's risks in anything worth doing, Aaron," Hood said.

  They were at the kitchen table in what had become a near nightly ritual. Janet would make sandwiches or a pasta. Newman and Hood would bring home some beer and wine. They would sit at the kitchen table in the summer evenings and talk of stalking Adolph Karl.

  "You can't do this in complete safety, Aaron," Janet said.

  "It's a matter of degree," Newman said. "What Chris said sounds good but it doesn't mean anything."

  "You know it does, Aaron. I've read your books, you understand that."

  "No, I don't. Not this way. It's like you want to take risks."

  "Risks are part of it," Hood said. "If it's worth doing."

  "You act like the risks make it worth doing." Janet said, "What do you think we ought to do, Aaron?"

  "I think we ought to shoot him as quick as we can and get this over." Hood smiled. "We agree, Aaron. I think that too, but you need intelligence. You need to know the enemy before you can make a move, and we haven't gathered enough to figure out how to hit him and get this done with."

  Newman ate a forkful of pasta with a basil-and-oil pesto sauce. He drank some beer.

  "I think you ought to try to get him in the woods," Janet said.

  Hood said, "Woods?"

  Janet nodded. "He's got a summer place up in Fryeburg, Maine. I looked it up on the map. It's southwestern Maine, near the New Hampshire border. According to an article in the Herald American, April 18, 1976…" "She's a scholar," Newman said.

  Janet went on: "He's a real hunter and fisherman and goes to his place in Fryeburg whenever he can." "Do you know the address?" Hood said.

  "I drove up there this morning. It's about two and a half hours, and I looked him up in the phone book."

  "You cut class?" Newman said.

  "Yep."

  "I wished you'd waited. We could have driven up together and maybe had lunch on the way back and had a nice time."

  Janet didn't answer.

  "Maybe that's the end to work from," Hood said. "Maybe we should go up there and wait for him to come." "Fryeburg's awfully small," Janet said. "It would be easy to be noticed."

  Newman opened another beer.

  Hood said, "We could keep watching him here. I assume if he heads up to hunt and fish we could tell. Rods, gun cases, waders, that sort of thing being loaded into the car." Newman said, "I'm going up to bed. You folks work this out and let me know."

  They both watched in silence as he walked out of the kitchen and up the back stairs.

  Janet shook her head.

  "He feels bad," Hood said. "He thinks he didn't react well in the alley today."

  "He worries an awful lot about things like that," Janet said. "And then he waits for me to make him feel better. And I don't know what the hell to do."

  "Nothing to do, I guess. Just let him know you love him. He'll work it through. He's a good man." />
  "I know. But he's a complicated man and one with ferocious passions.

  Sometimes I feel…" She shook her head again.

  "How do you feel?"

  "Inadequate to his passions. And that makes me mad. There's a lot of pulling and shoving in our life. And now this. It will be awful for us both if he can't do this."

  "If he can't he'll be dead. Maybe all of us. You can't forget that, Janet."

  "I know."

  "Do you really know? It's easy to forget it sitting here in the kitchen. But we're involved in a very serious undertaking. And if we do it wrong we may be dead." "I don't forget," Janet said. "I also don't forget what happened to me." Her face was bright as she said it.

  "Yeah." Hood smiled briefly. "I guess you don't." He got up and headed for the back door. "I'll come over in the morning when he's feeling better and see if we can work out some kind of plan," he said.

  "Good night, Chris."

  Hood left. Janet cleaned up the kitchen and turned off the lights and went upstairs. In the bathroom she put up her hair and washed off her makeup and put on her night cream.

  When she came into the bedroom he was still awake, lying in bed leaning against a propped pillow, watching the Red Sox game on television with the sound off and listening to the play-by-play on the radio. He didn't say anything as she got into bed and turned off the light on her side.

  "Night," she said.

  "Night." "Are you mad at me?" she said.

  "No."

  "Then why do you sound it?"

  "I'm watching the game."

  "Oh."

  She was quiet.

  "I didn't do well this afternoon," he said.

  "Chris says you just need experience."

  "You ever wonder how that would make me feel?"

  "Being scared, you mean?"

  "Yeah, being scared. You ever think, maybe, "Gee the poor guy must be really down and feeling bad, how can I make him feel better?" You ever have any thoughts like that?"

  "I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

  "Jesus Christ. It's not ' to." Don't you have any instincts, any fucking heart? Can't you see I'm hurting? Don't you have any impulse to help me. To put your arms around me and say

  "I love you. I don't care what you do, I love you'?" "Aaron," she said. And stopped. And took a deep breath. It shook in a slight vibrato as it went in. "Aaron, grow up."

  "What's that mean? Only little kids need love and compassion?"

  "I love you. But if you feel bad about yourself and how you acted I can't fix that. You have to fix that."

  "While I'm fixing it, it might help to know you're caring about me."

  "Aaron, I've lived with you for twenty-three years. Doesn't that suggest I care about you?"

  "Sure, you care about me, but not like I care about you. You don't look forward to coming home and seeing me. You don't get a thrill when I walk through the door. You don't get a thrill from touching me."

  "And don't you resent it," Janet said. "Don't you take every opportunity to make me feel guilty that I don't feel like you do. Is there only one way to love? Does everyone have to love the way you do or be not loving?"

  "How can you love someone and not feel as I do?" he said.

  "One can. One does. The trouble with you is that you're over-invested. You dwell on me too much. Every encounter. Every event. Every exchange of words or ideas is charged as if it were a moment of high passion."

  "True. I care only about you. I care only for your approval or disapproval. I have achieved an autonomy in my life that only you violate. Only you and the girls, and the girls are growing and going away. Now it's all turned on you. And you're turning out. You're doing committee work and loving it in there in your asshole department with all the asshole academics pretending to care about Chaucer and Andrew Marvell when all they really want is tenure and promotion."

  "Aaron…"

  "I know it's hard. I know you feel the pressure. I try and change. I try and love you less." His voice thickened. "But think what I lose if I love you less. The central meaning of my life. At forty-six I have to change it?" "Goddamn," she said.

  He turned his face away from her.

  "We have long periods where it's fine," she said. "What happened?"

  He shrugged. His back turned.

  "It's Karl," she said. "This thing with Karl is eating us both."

  He was silent.

  "What is it, about Karl?"

  "What do you mean, what is it? The so nova bitch has two goons violate my home and leave my wife tied up nude for me to find. What the hell do you think it is?"

  "It's not anger," she said. "You're scared."

  "Of course I'm scared. We're trying to kill a professional thug with bodyguards. Only a fool wouldn't be scared." "No," she said. "That's true, but that's not it. You're scared you'll fail. That you won't be able to act like a man should, you would say, when someone has manhandled his wife and, your phrase, '' his home."

  He didn't say anything.

  "That's not an unreasonable feeling," she said.

  He was silent and motionless, his back to her. The ball game continued.

  "I don't blame you for feeling that way."

  "Will you, please, for once in your life, just, please, shut the fuck up."

  CHAPTER 16.

  "Nice house," Steiger said.

  Angie, in a sleeveless lime-green linen dress, tucked her legs under her on the seat of the rented Plymouth and looked at Aaron Newman's two-hundred-year-old house.

  "It looks old," she said.

  Steiger nodded. "Let's cruise around back," he said. "See what it looks like."

  Angie nodded. Steiger put the Plymouth in drive and went around the block. They parked on the street behind Newman's house.

  "What town is this?" Angie said.

  "Smithfield," Steiger said.

  "We ever settle down, I'd like to live like this," Angie said. Her hands were folded in her lap. Steiger's right hand covered both of hers. Neither seemed aware of touching. It was a gesture so fundamental and one that had been made so often that it was unconscious.

  "Yeah," Steiger said. "I wonder if he's got an alarm system. Lot of these houses do. Tied into the police."

  "Any way you can tell?"

  Steiger smiled at her. "I could break in at night and see if the cops come." She shook her head. "No good," she said.

  "True. I'll see about hitting him outside. If it's no good, I'll go in during the day and do it."

  "Anyone else there?"

  "Wife, I'm told. She works during the day. We'll come out tomorrow and take a look. Then, depending what I see, I'll figure the best time to hit him."

  "I hope you don't have to kill the wife too."

  Steiger shrugged. "Don't see why I'd need to, I do it right."

  "I wonder if they love each other like we do," Angie said.

  "Most people don't," Steiger said.

  "I know," she said.

  Steiger slipped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. He drove around the block and parked two houses up from Newman's. Steiger reached over and took a road map out of the glove compartment and spread it open on Angie's lap.

  "Anyone comes along, they'll think we're lost."

  Angie nodded. "You're not going to do anything today, are you?"

  "With you here? Have I ever?"

  "No. I know. You wouldn't. It was a dumb question."

  "Not dumb. You were worried. You had a right to ask. You're never dumb."

  A red and white Ford Bronco came down the driveway of Newman's home and turned right onto Main Street. Steiger started the Plymouth.

  "That him?" Angie said.

  "Yes. In the passenger seat." He drove down Main Street behind the Bronco. When it turned up onto Route 128 he followed.

  At the wheel of the Bronco, Hood said to Newman, "We may as well be watching Karl's place while we figure this out." The Bronco went over a small bump in the road and the long guns, wrapped in a bla
nket, rattled on the floor behind the back seat.

  Newman nodded. "Might as well," he said.

  "I think Janet's right," Hood said. "The more I think of it, the more I like it. If we can get him isolated up in the woods, we'll have him off his turf and on mine. We'll have no cops to worry about, nobody to see us. We can lay up somewhere and pick him off with the Springfield."

  "Why don't we go up there and wait, then?" Newman said. "The more we hang around Karl and his house and his business, the more risk we run of blowing this." The lines that ran from the corners of his nostrils to the edges of his mouth were deep. His eyes looked heavy-lidded.

  "I think you're probably right," Hood said. "Let's give it this day to make sure nothing new develops. Then we can go up country and begin to set up."

  "Sure."

  "I figure," Hood said, "we can rent some kind of cabin or something up there. We'll do it in my name, just in case Karl's keeping an eye on real estate transactions or something."

  "Why would he do that?" Newman said.

  "Can't tell. These guys are funny sometimes. Might want to keep track of his neighbors-can't be sure. Besides, someone might recognize your name-you're sort of famous, you know-and talk about it in front of Karl or one of his men." "Yeah," Newman said, "you're probably right."

  "I am," Hood said.

  "But maybe you better use a false name too. I mean, if we do hit him up there we'd want to leave promptly, wouldn't we, and not be connected with the area in any way."

  "Good," Hood said, "good idea. I wasn't thinking. We'll do it that way. I'll take care of that." He exited Route 128 for Route 95 North.

  "In fact," Hood said, "why not do it now? Why not drive up there now and take a look around and maybe set up a cabin or something?"

  "Better than sitting around waiting for Karl to spot us. Or the giant," Newman said. "He knows our faces. He'll remember us next time."

  Steiger turned off onto Route 95 behind them. "If they keep going straight for very long I'm going to drop them," he said to Angie. "I don't feel like driving to New Hampshire, or Maine, or wherever the fuck they're going."

  Angie leaned her head against his arm. "Okay by me, I'm getting hungry anyway."