He is thinking more clearly now, but is horrified by pictures that come to him of Dr. Eve Winters being raped, shoved off, she was a class person, beautiful, with breeding and a good turn of phrase. He remembers how she had a sense of eternity on the West Coast Trail. He remembers how she didn’t sneer down at him, how she preferred him to the condo developer, Coolidge.
And what was he doing out at two in the morning? On a hot prowl of his own? Faloon remembers how he was rubbernecking at Dr. Winters, trying to come on.
The Owl is in danger of being poked in the eye twice by the fickle finger of fate. He was already done once for a serious beef he didn’t commit, and he isn’t about to test the accuracy of the justice system this time. He’s not going to stick around on a gamble that the heat has another target, that they’re on to Coolidge already, or some wrong character she picked up at the pub, a drifter. Which might have happened if she didn’t follow Faloon’s advice to strike up with Claudette.
Near the bottom of the stairs, he almost runs into Hattie Mills coming out of her gallery in a hurry, but she doesn’t give him much of a look and dashes past. The disguise works with others too, on the boardwalk, where there’s a buzz, people standing outside their shops, conversing.
Fortunately, the water taxi has just tied up at one of the lodges, but when he heads that way he suddenly staggers to a stop. Getting off is someone he knows too well, Claudette St. John, with two friends, all talking loudly about the murder. As she glances at him, he turns his face, but no damage is done, she ignores him.
He gets into the outboard, hiding under his rain cape, as the women race off. Now he’s feeling hope, once he gets across the water he’s on the road out, though he has more sense than to try for his beat-up Impala, parked behind the motel. He’ll flag a ride, a middle-aged lady hitchhiker who’s just done the West Coast Trail stands a chance of getting to Nanaimo today, maybe in time for the last Vancouver ferry.
It’s sprinkling again as the boat furrows slowly to the government dock. He wonders if he should call Beauchamp from a pay phone to tell him of his unhappy predicament, but remembers he retired from the courts to be a gentleman farmer.
He tries to piece together the likely chain of events: this morning, the developer awakes to find his moneybelt half as heavy as it should be, and wonders if it’s an April Fool’s joke in bad taste. On conferring with his colleagues, he learns they also suffered losses. The RCMP race over here, question the Galloways and their staff, and the names come up of the two extra guests for dinner. For some inexplicable reason, the feet look for Dr. Winters first instead of honing in on the prime suspect.
The boat collides softly with the bumpers on the dock, and Faloon puffs up the hill past the Bamfield Trails Motel and the smattering of shops, and gains the road to Pachena Bay, a click and a half away-that’s where he intends to start hitching, as if he’s just come off the trail.
His feet are soon sore-he is not used to these boots, they are stiff with lack of use. There’s not much traffic, none going his way except for one barrelling logging truck, working overtime on a Saturday. Then he hears the siren, and it’s an RCMP four-wheel running hot, tearing up the mud and gravel. Cold-looking faces stare at him from the windows, but the vehicle speeds on.
He is limping as he takes in a spectacular view of Pachena Bay, a flat beach a half-mile long at the foot of a long Pacific funnel. Pachena is also the northern terminus of the West Coast Trail, or what is called Shipwreck Trail for the many wooden vessels lost on the rocks out there, but the Owl’s only interest right now is the old logging road that will get him to the safety of a city. He detours through the shore shrubbery to the beach, where he gets a long view up the road as it bends east into the mountains. There, to his dismay, he sees a roadblock. A cruiser straddles the highway, a couple of uniforms checking out a campervan for possible escaping perpetrators.
Faloon retreats to the refuge of a makeshift shelter some hippies must have built from driftwood. Here he stares out at the deserted beach, at the churning clouds breaking apart above the ocean, and then he sets out, slogging through the understory of third-growth timber and clumps of bracken and salal. When he finally ventures near the road again, his feet are killing him. But a warming sun has broken through, and he is maybe half a mile beyond the roadblock.
He begins to thumb, and as luck would have it, the first vehicle stops-it’s a Crown Zellerbach crew cab, a bearded, burly sixty-something driving, a foreman probably, a bull of the woods.
Faloon climbs in and says in a husky voice, just breathing the words, “Thanks you. I speaks not good English.” He throws his pack behind the seat, beside a chainsaw and tools and a six-pack of Canadian.
The driver pulls back onto the road. “You just come off the trail? Where you from?”
“Der Nederland. Gertrude.”
Folks around here call him Grizzly, he says, and Faloon can see why. He carries on about how he’s a yard supervisor, and he’s going to Lake Cowichan. Faloon says, “Thanks you.” He means it, Cowichan is a fair-sized town with a bus station.
Faloon is hoping his poor English will discourage conversation, but Grizzly needs to talk, explaining-slowly, so Gertrude can follow-how he doesn’t normally pick up hitchhikers because of company policy, but a lady by herself could be in danger here. “You talk to police at roadblock?” He is speaking Tarzan English so Gertrude can understand.
“Yah, very bad happening.”
He nods. “They say the killer did many other crimes. His name is Faloon, small man but strong like a cougar. He is crazy.” He wiggles an index finger at his head. “Psycho sex fiend.”
The Owl sits rigidly as Grizzly describes in this basic English what he would do to Faloon if he had his way, slime like him should be castrated before some slippery lawyer gets him off on a technicality. But after an hour of not receiving much response, Grizzly peters out, enabling the Owl to relax a little as he pretends to sleep.
They follow rivers along the way, raging in the spring, they pass by tree farms and clear-cuts, the sun pulling mists from ditches and road pools. The Owl is starting to see hope rising too. He could slip over to Vancouver, hide himself in the bowels of the east side, maybe call a good mouth who doesn’t sell out clients. He will inquire if the horsemen found someone else’s prints or DNA, and if not he will seek greener pastures. Again comes an image of that fine-looking woman in death, but he quickly blots it out.
Though his eyes are closed, he senses Grizzly reaching behind for something, hears the hiss of beer as a cap is unscrewed, a gurgle, a belch. Thankfully this old bull, with his dangerous views on castration, doesn’t have great powers of observation, and the Owl is gaining in optimism.
So far, this has been a miracle escape, right out of a war movie, he crossed the enemy lines and he’s already planning for the future. He’ll try for a couple of quick scores in Vancouver and elsewhere, enough to get out of the country. Europe probably or some enlightened land where the cops suck up to tourists, maybe Greece or Turkey or Lebanon, where he emigrated from as a child.
On the other side of the Nitinat bridge, Grizzly pulls off, asking the Owl to excuse him, he has to relieve himself. The sight of water gushing over rocks and waterfalls forces Faloon to recognize the same compelling urge, and he climbs from the passenger side and goes behind a tree.
Tired, consumed by worry, he forgets he’s Gertrude Heeredam, and instead of squatting, he pulls out his oscar while standing, letting go a hot arcing stream. He is not quite finished when he glances up and sees Grizzly staring at him from behind a salmonberry bush across the road, his mouth agape, an expression that turns to rage as Faloon hurriedly tucks in.
Fearing an episode of curbside justice, Faloon sprints to the idling crew cab, clambers behind the wheel, locks the driver’s door, shifts, spits rocks. But now Grizzly is right on him, at the side of the truck, and he feels a lurch as he vaults into the back.