"Let's get to the part that upset you," I reminded her.
Brenda sighed. "Well, there we are. It's damp, and the place is really grungy. I'm poking around looking for some sign of those two thumb, three finger prints we've heard about when all of a sudden it really starts to rain. Percy baby throws down the tailgate and crawls up under the shelter of the cap. Within minutes it's pouring, and I crawl up there with him. All of a sudden, Percy, the fat little druggist, is Percy, the fat little sex maniac. He's clawing, biting, breathing heavy, tearing at my clothes. The little bastard tried to rape me. So I coldcocked him, a fistful of Brenda Cashman knuckles right to his fat chops. I never hit a man that hard before. He went down like a sack of rocks." There was the look of universal woman triumphant in her snapping eyes.
"Let me guess the rest. You crawled out in the rain, back in the cab of the truck, drove him back to town and left him in front of his store with no apology, right?"
"Wrong. I couldn't find the damn keys. Finally I got desperate, walked out and left him there."
"You walked all the way back into town?"
Brenda nodded. "That's how I got soaked to the bone."
Outside of the fact that Percy had come unglued and tried to put the make on Brenda, my new partner had come up with some solid information. In the long run, it could be more valuable info than I had been able to put together in my efforts. When I was certain I wouldn't break out laughing at the slightly bizarre picture of the woman sitting on my bed, I started filling her in on what I had learned. When I came to the part about caves, she perked up.
"Kramer said there were caves all around this area. In fact, he showed me where one was located."
"Think you could find it?"
"I could if I ever went back there again — which I'm not willing to do." There was the definite tinge of offended female belligerence in her voice.
I stood looking out the window at the dismal gray day. For the moment, it had quit raining. I measured my voice and started slowly. "We've got to go out there. I don't want to raise any more flags about what we're really interested in and the fact that you know where the Carson incident took place is a big plus." I paused for effect. "So what do you say? Let's go out and take another look at it."
The pep talk was greeted with stony silence. I continued to stare out the window and prepared to renew my plea. Finally I turned around. B.C. had curled herself up in a fetal position in the middle of my bed and was sound asleep.
By late afternoon, Brenda was up again and had somehow managed to locate and pour herself into dry clothes. I coaxed her into the Z and conned her into showing me the Carson place. We drove through town, past Percy's drugstore and out to the western edge of the village. There we turned left toward the lake-front and drove about 500 yards back down a narrow lane to a small unbridged stream. I did a little estimating of ground clearance and decided we had better go the rest of the way on foot. Brenda was apprehensive about it, but she pulled the slicker up tighter around her throat and trudged on. I heard only one small, and for her, insignificant grouse. "Why the hell couldn't we have waited till the weather was better?"
We crossed the shallow rockbed stream, worked our way up the slope of the bank, rounded the curve in the lane and headed for the clearing at the water's edge. The clearing was supposedly the place where the thing had decimated Carson's horse and Brenda had decimated good old Percy. Suddenly she let out a shriek and pointed to the far side of the clearing; Percy's truck was still there.
"Oh," she moaned, "don't tell me I did more to him than just punch out his lights."
"Hell, he probably came to and couldn't find his keys either." I laughed, but the laugh, was half-hearted at best and pretty much stripped of sincerity. I was concerned. I checked my watch and worked the time backwards. Percy had been there far too long for somebody who had taken a simple shot to the chops, especially from no more than a 110-pounder.
My mind was doing a flip-flop on me. I suppose she could have hurt him — that had to be a possibility — but I reasoned that was damned unlikely. More than likely, since his truck was still there, he was trying to cope with his wounded ego and construct some kind of face-saving story to tell the boys back at the drugstore.
I told Brenda to stay where she was and went over to the truck to check it out. I had a vision of a half-pissed, very nervous little man leaping out of the back of his pickup, tire iron in hand, swinging wildly. I didn't want Brenda to get in the way if I had to beat a hasty retreat.
I did a double take when I discovered the truck was empty.
While I carefully formulated any number of plausible, rational and completely logical reasons for Percy to have left his truck behind, I wasn't sure I would have bought any of them. In truth, in the glaring light of a sunny, no nonsense day, all of my current hypothetical reasons for the man's absence would have sounded pretty idiotic. On the other hand, it probably didn't matter much.
It was obvious Brenda wouldn't buy any of them anyway.
The setting was straight out of a low budget horror film. The rain had stopped for the moment, but a raw wind was whipping in off the bay and the temperature had dropped several degrees since we had left the motel. Despite the wind, the cloud deck had dropped another couple of hundred feet, and I had the uneasy feeling that the clouds were low enough for me to reach up and wring the moisture out of them.
B.C.'s description had been fairly accurate. Several small trees had been uprooted, and there were some decidedly nasty gouges in the earth as though some rather large creature had tried to claw holes in the surface. For an area of about 50 feet in diameter, the ground appeared to be charred. I couldn't find a single surviving blade of grass.
The area where Carson's mare had been killed was actually a small hollow with rock-studded hills swelling up on three sides and the fourth sloping away to the rocky beach of the bay. Further west, I would estimate no more than a quarter of a mile, there were a number of jagged outcroppings, columnar rock formations that jutted some 40 or 50 feet in the air. The bases of the formations were guarded by dense clusters of rock pine and white birch. In the gray shadows of the rainy late afternoon, it was impossible to make out any detail.
Over the course of the years, I've been witness to and part of any number of bizarre situations, so I consider myself adaptable, but I was really becoming uncomfortable with this one. The Z was a couple of hundred yards back up the trail and headed the wrong way. If we had to beat a hasty retreat, I didn't have the slightest idea how I would get it turned around and headed in the other direction. On balance, any escape effort was reduced to running like hell, and I didn't know how fast our so-called creature could run either.
Brenda, at this point, wasn't much help. She had worked her way over to Percy's truck to verify my disquieting news. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and she was shivering.
"I know you're in no mood to answer questions, but did Percy show you where any of the caves were actually located?"
She managed to get one hand out from under the slicker and gesture toward the rock formation to the west. "Up there," she mumbled. I had the feeling she wasn't all that certain. The shiver was too much in evidence; she wasn't thinking clearly.
I had about decided to save any further investigation for future periods of broad daylight. A little less chill wind, a little less grayness and a whole lot more sunshine would do a great deal to defuse my suddenly overactive imagination. Common sense was telling me that I had better get B.C. back to the car. Percy Kramer and his pickup truck were on their own. I had already begun to rationalize alternative courses of action — and hunting up Jake Madden to tell him where Percy and his truck were made the most sense to me.