Empty.
No sign of Chuck’s skiff or any other.
Ripples on my back as I poled closer for a better look at the beach. What marks remained there were not fresh; no craft and no people had been here this morning.
The shape of what Latimer was up to began to come clear then — and I damned myself again for not anticipating the possibility. Savagely I slashed at the water with the oar, slashed at the bank and the snarls of tree roots until I got the skiff turned around and moving downstream. The return trip seemed to take twice as long, even though the current helped carry me along. When I came into the sun glare on the lake, I was breathing hard and my head felt swollen, blood-heavy. The outboard fired instantly; I opened the throttle wide, heading southwest.
There were other boats out now. Somebody hailed me from one — Cantrell, I think — but I barely glanced his way. I sat bowed forward, staring at the line of cottages along the south shore. Buildings seldom look the same from lakeside as they do from a shore road, despite the fact that each was different enough from its neighbors. It was not until I’d come to within a hundred yards of the shoreline, running parallel to it, that I was able to pick out the green-shingled A-frame with the dogwood bushes along its west side.
A skiff was tied to the dock float, a piece of canvas thrown over it. The canvas failed to cover it completely; I could tell from forty yards off that it wasn’t the rented craft Strayhorn — Latimer — had been piloting last night. It was the Dixon boat. No question of that, either.
I came in too fast, banged the prow and the port side against the float end before I got the power shut all the way down. The skiff bounced off, nearly capsized. I had to come in again, cussing myself, and it was another couple of minutes until I was on the dock with the bow line tied off. No hurry, I told myself, you know there’s no hurry — but the urgency remained strong in me just the same. I ran along the dock, dragging the .38 out of my jacket, then up along the side of the A-frame and around to the front.
No Chrysler. Long gone by now.
I started toward the front door, but what the hell good would a check inside do me? Latimer wouldn’t have left anything useful behind, and enough time had been wasted already. I ran back to the dock, untied the skiff. The outboard cooperated again; I went on a beeline to Judson’s.
Marian stood waiting on the dock, as I’d expected she would be. Mack Judson was with her. They both hurried down as I powered in alongside the gas pumps, and Judson held the skiff steady as I clambered out. The tightness around his mouth told me he knew what was going on — as much as Marian knew, anyway. He had nothing to say, and that was good because after the one glance at him, I gave all my attention to her.
She was drawn about as tight as you can get, the way a cocked crossbow is drawn tight. I didn’t touch her; I was afraid that if I did it would trigger her in some way. Not into hysterics — she was not the type — but into some other reaction that I would not know how to cope with.
She said between her teeth, “Where’s Chuck?”
“Marian…”
“Where is he? Where’s my son?”
“I don’t know. He wasn’t at Chuck’s Hole.”
“Not at Latimer’s cottage, either. I saw you stop there before you came here.”
Latimer, she’d said. Not Strayhorn.
My expression must have told her what I was thinking. She said,
“I made Pat tell me, all of it. Latimer has Chuck, hasn’t he. Don’t lie to me. He has my son.”
“It looks that way. Your boat’s tied at his dock and his car’s gone.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, popped them open again. And made a fist and slugged me in the chest, hard enough to hurt. It was a gesture of rage and frustration, but not one directed at me personally, even if it was deserved that way. She needed to lash out at something, somebody, and I was handy; she hardly seemed aware that she’d done it. It would have been all right with me if she’d belted me again, knocked me flat on my ass and then added a few kicks for good measure.
Judson said, “I think I saw his car go by about six-fifteen, six-twenty. I was getting some firewood and I caught a quick glimpse. Didn’t notice if there was anybody in the car with him.”
I glanced at my watch. A few minutes past eight-thirty. “Little better than two hours ago,” I said, and thought but didn’t say: They could be in Nevada by now, anywhere within a hundred-and-fifty-mile radius.
“The law ought to be here any minute,” Judson said. “Sheriff Rideout can put out… what’s it called? All points bulletin?”
“There’s already one out on Latimer. We’ll need a two-state bulletin on the kidnapping, and the FBI has to be notified. Pat can get that done faster than the sheriff. He’s got to be told in any case.”
“Use the phone in my cabin. Rita’s there, she can look after Marian—”
“I don’t need looking after,” Marian said. She sounded better, back off the edge; the punch she’d thrown had taken some of the quivering tension out of her. “Where would he take Chuck?” she asked me.
“No idea.”
“Why did he take him? Why… kidnap…”
I had a couple of notions about that, but I was not about to get into them with her. I let her have a half-truth instead: “No telling what’s in the head of a man like Latimer.”
“If he hates Pat so much…” She let the rest of it trail off. I could feel the shudder that went through her. At least one of the notions had crossed her mind, too.
I had her arm now, and the three of us were moving off the dock. There was nobody else around. Except for Rita Judson we were the only ones who knew what was about to go down here, but that would change as soon as the sheriffs contingent showed up. They’d come in force; there was no other way for county law to respond to the presence of a suspected serial bomber, an armed boobytrap, and the imminent helicopter arrival of a bomb squad.
Judson said awkwardly, “The boy’ll be all right, Marian. You got to believe that. He’ll be back to you safe and sound.”
Hollow words, as heavy as stones dropped in the bright morning. Marian didn’t respond to them, and neither did I.
At the cabin Judson led us into the kitchen where their phone was. Rita tried to steer Marian into another room, but she wasn’t having any of that. She stayed close beside me, her fingers digging into my arm.
I asked her, “Pat say he’d be waiting at home?”
“Yes. For one of us to call about Chuck.”
She read the number off to me and I made the call. Dixon must have been sitting on the phone; his voice said “Yes?” a fraction of a second after the first circuit ring sounded. I explained the situation, straight and fast and in as emotionless a tone as I could muster.
Long silence. Coming to terms with it, I thought, getting himself in hand. When he finally spoke, his voice was hard, raspy. “If I have the chance,” he said, “I’ll make Latimer pay for this. I’ll make him pay in blood.”
“Pat—”
“I’m all right,” he said.
“You sure?”
“I’m all right. County sheriff get there yet?”
“Not yet. Any minute.”
“You haven’t called his office, notified them about the… about Chuck?”
“I just got back. You’re the first call.”
“Keep it that way. I’ll take care of it.”
“Two-state APB, and the FBI—”
“You don’t have to tell me what to do.”
“Easy, Pat.”
“Sure, easy. What kind of car is Latimer driving?”
“Ten-year-old Chrysler LeBaron. Tan, pretty beat up.”