"Maybe we oughta check her out," Harlan persisted.
Madden suddenly looked exasperated. "Hell's fire, this ain't no witch hunt. Use your head, Harlan. No old lady is goin' around eatin' goats and horses, cuttin' up kids and butcherin' the local druggist."
"Well, I been here less than two days, and I can think of a newcomer to these parts."
Harlan looked at me open-mouthed. "Who?"
"What about this kid Kelto that works for Bert and Polly Johnson down at the motel?"
Jake looked at me out of the corner of his eye. It was one of those "why the hell didn't I think of that" kind of looks. "Now, there's one for you," he muttered.
"Jake," I interrupted, "how did you learn about those two kids that were found down behind the motel this morning?"
"Couple of fishermen that have been stayin' at the motel reported it. They went out about midnight, came in about dawn, saw that the car was still sittin' there and that the kids were still in it."
"I was out behind that motel last night," I admitted. "After we left you at the diner, we went back to the motel, sat out in front for a while, and when Brenda went in to go to bed, I went to the office, walked through the motel, out the back door and saw the car with the couple in it sitting out on the point. That's when this Kelto kid shows up."
Jake wearily took the notebook out of his shirt pocket, wet his pencil with the tip of his tongue and scribbled a fast note. Even though I couldn't see the entry, I knew the one they called Kelto had just bubbled to the top of Jake's concern list.
"Well," Harlan drawled, "we better do somethin', and we better be doin' it fast." He turned to Jake. "Think maybe we oughta see how many guys we call round up and start combin' that stretch of beach from the motel on down past the pier on out to the Carson place?"
"Does that include the cave area?" I asked.
"Most of 'em," Jake grunted. "There's only a couple down on George Daniels's place."
"Why are you askin' about the caves?" Caleb inquired.
I shrugged. "Call it a gut feeling."
What about it, Jake? Think we oughta make a sweep through that area?" Harlan asked.
The big man drained the last of his coffee and nodded. "Don't think we have much choice," he admitted. "We can't just stand around while this thing wipes out the whole damn village. I'll call Lieutenant Langley over at the Waverly post in the mornin' and see if he can send us some help. Then I'll call an open village meeting for two o'clock tomorrow afternoon and tell the folks what we need to do."
I looked over at Brenda. She was watching Madden, and there was a different kind of look on her face. Maybe haunted is the word I'm searching for.
Outside again, the earlier chill wind had died off, the rains had ceased, and the cloud deck was lying right on the surface of the bay. A heavy, smothering cloak of fog had settled over Chambers Bay. We were standing on the curb in front of Madden's office, and I knew the silver Z was parked at an angle not more than 20 feet away — yet I couldn't see it.
Caleb and Harlan said good night, and within seconds both were swallowed up by the fog. Brenda was standing next to me with the blanket still wrapped around her, shivering.
"Think you can find your way back to the motel in this soup?" Jake grunted.
"Shouldn't be all that difficult." Even as I said it, I knew there wasn't a great deal of conviction in my voice.
"I'll be happy to run you out there," Jake offered.
I took a long look at Brenda, who was the next best thing to a basket case, and decided to take the big man up on his offer. We crawled into his four-by-four, and Madden inched us out and onto the highway. Twice I checked and twice I confirmed that we were clipping along at less than seven miles per hour. As far as I could tell, the village, the streets, the road, even the diner looked deserted.
The choking blanket of misty greyness had closed in and captured us, bending Jake's yellow fog beams back up at us in a nightmarish swirl. Brenda laid her head on my shoulder, and I could hear her sob softly in the darkness.
Somehow, Jake knew when we were there. He pulled off into the motel parking lot, and I could hear the grating sound of wet gravel crunching under the tires. Even though I knew we couldn't be more than 30 or 40 feet from the entrance to the motel office, I couldn't see a thing; it was like being dropped off on another planet. The neon signs, both the one out at the road and the small one over the office door, were completely obliterated. The combination of mist, drizzle and fog confused everything — direction, distance, even my equilibrium.
I coaxed the sleeping B.C. down out of the cab of the truck, put my arm around her and headed in what I hoped was the direction of the motel. I kept looking back to see if Jake was still there. He was fading, and finally he too was gone.
The cold, heavy dampness of the fog can do strange things to men's minds. Images often materialize — of things that aren't there. Ghosts appear and just as suddenly are gone, leaving us to deal with the question of their return. Fog always catapults me back to the reality of those long and lonely nights. Then there was the reality of the bitter, mind-numbing Cold. Now it was a clinging dampness, summoning up a chill that permeated to the very marrow of the bone. Fog, I have often thought, makes us question the existence of our tomorrows.
When my foot made contact with something solid, I prayed it was the step up to the sidewalk in front of the units. Good old number eight was my sanctuary. It was all too easy to remember that somewhere out there in the fog, someone or something was lurking that killed for no apparent reason. When I turned around, Jake was now completely lost from sight.
I took out my lighter, felt along the wall until I found a door and then traced across the surface until my fingers found the raised plastic numeral; it was a six. A still shivering Brenda was little more than an ill-defined image shuffling along in the grayhess in front of me.
By the time we got to good old number eight and I managed to get the door open, Brenda had completely given up. She slumped up against the wall and protested that she couldn't go any further.
It took some fancy footwork, but I managed to maneuver between the two rooms and set her down on her bed. She did the rest on her own. Rolling to one side, then curling her legs up and under her, she twisted herself up into a tight little ball, and I covered her up.
Back in my own room, I turned on the light on my dresser and began to peel out of my damp clothing. I was again berating myself for leaving my prized survival kit in the Z. Twice in one day was proof that I was getting careless. I whipped out a blank file card and scratched out the word KIT in big bold letters with a felt tip. Cosmo was right; senility is a bitch.
Everything I needed was stowed in that damn kit behind the driver's seat in the Z. The momentary reflection on the kit set me to thinking about the antique Mauser that Papa Coop had given me the night we celebrated selling my first novel. It was intended to be a trophy. Instead, it had become the cornerstone of my now famous survival kit. The Mauser had swung the argument in my favor more than once.
A hot shower had the effect of partially invigorating me, and I meandered out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around me. I glanced at my watch. It was almost midnight, too late to catch the news and too early to turn in. I decided that a quick review of the file cards would be just the thing to slide me off into another dimension.
It had been a busy day, and I had accumulated quite a stack. If I ever intended to construct any kind of a story out of all this, I had to spend the time giving the cards some semblance of order. I laid them on the dresser top, reached for the half empty bottle of Black and White, glanced in the mirror and saw him.