I went down by the lake, where I would not have to look at the blanket-shrouded body of Lieutenant Dewers, and waited restlessly for them to let me go back to the resort. Inside I was still seething and strung tight. I hadn’t told Rideout about Dixon’s failure to put out state and federal warrants on Latimer; neither had Sam, as far as I knew. For the time being, that fact had gotten lost in the aftermath of Dewers’s violent death. I hoped it would stay lost until I could talk to Marian, try to get her husband on the phone — make my decision one way or the other.
The moral issue was only part of it now. The shotgun boobytrap and Dewers’s death had made it personal. Latimer had almost ended my life twice in two days, once inadvertently and once with premeditation. That shotgun charge had been intended for me, all right. I was supposed to be the one lying up there with his chest torn to bloody shreds. He’d hated me since our first meeting, and never mind that the reasons were irrational. Feared me, too, because of who and what I was. So he’d added me to his hit list. Figured I’d be the first to come snooping around his cottage when I found him and Chuck gone, and built his boobytrap accordingly. He’d almost guessed right, too; I’d come close to opening the front door myself earlier. Close.
The only reason I was still alive was luck and his psychosis. He’d had plenty of opportunity to take me out with a gun or knife or blunt instrument, but he preferred to do his killing at a distance, with detachment and methodical prearrangement and no threat to himself. The coward’s way. Nils Ostergaard must’ve been an unavoidable necessity. And it must’ve bothered the hell out of him when it was done.
I stared out at the lake, thinking that I hated Latimer right now more than he could possibly hate me. That I’d like nothing better than an active role in bringing him down before he harmed Pat or Chuck or anyone else; how good it would feel to get close enough to spit in his face. But that was as far as it went. There was no desire for violence in what I felt, just a cold determination that was every bit as personal as a blood vendetta. Violence all around me, aimed at me, but none of it had penetrated. I was like a chunk of stone inside a protective force field: it couldn’t hurt me or turn me into an instrument of violence myself. What I’d thought and felt out at Chuck’s Hole yesterday morning was not a situational reaction but an absolute truth. I was all through with killing or hurting any living thing, except as a last line of self-defense. It was simply not in me anymore to become an avenger, or even a shadow of one.
So I sat there and hated Latimer in my own way and waited for somebody to come and either question me some more or set me free. It wasn’t Rideout but a uniformed deputy who finally walked down, which told me even before he spoke that they were through with me for the time being. “Sheriff says for you to go on back to the resort,” he said. He didn’t offer to drive me; neither did anyone else. That was all right, too. Physical activity was what I needed at the moment, a way to work off some of the tension.
When I reached Judson’s I found things to be pretty quiet. Several cars were in evidence, a county cruiser with two officers inside blocking the road, but most of the residents and guests seemed to be jammed into the cafe. Three stood in front of the grocery half, one of them Fred Dyce; he glanced my way and then turned aside — embarrassed about last night, maybe, if he even remembered what’d happened. The quiet wouldn’t last long, I thought. Just until the media started showing up and the news about Latimer and the kidnapping and Dewers’s death got spread around. Then we’d have Carnival. That was as certain as death itself.
I went straight to the Judsons’ A-frame, and Rita opened up and let me in. Marian stood waiting in the living room, her face pale but otherwise composed.
“Have they finished with the bomb?” she asked.
“Not yet. Anything from Pat?”
“No, not since you left.”
“I’m going to try calling him. Then you and I need to talk.”
I shut myself in the kitchen, punched out the Dixons’ home number. Fifteen rings, no answer. I called the D.A.‘s office and talked briefly to one of the other A.D.A.s; Pat wasn’t there, hadn’t been there all day and hadn’t reported in since he’d put through the request for the Sacramento bomb squad.
Bad, as bad as I’d feared. But not hopeless yet.
What happened next was up to Marian.
I got her alone in the Judsons’ bedroom and laid it out for her. All of it, except for what had happened to Dewers; her defenses were fragile enough without that blow and its implications. At one point she sat heavily on the nearest twin bed, as if her legs had gone shaky on her. Otherwise she took it as well as anybody could. No tears, no emotional reaction of any kind. She just sat there, looking up at me out of wide, pained eyes.
“What are we going to do?” she said.
“Right now, the choice is yours.”
“Mine? I don’t understand.”
“There are two ways we can handle this,” I said. “You’ll have to choose which one, and quickly. Pat’s your husband, Chuck’s your son.”
“Yes,” she said. “All right.”
“The first way, I tell Sheriff Rideout everything I’ve just told you. We put everything in official hands, take ourselves out of it completely.”
“Isn’t that the right thing to do?”
“It’s the approved thing. I haven’t done it yet because it wasn’t my place. I don’t feel I can take the responsibility.”
“Thank you for that. Go on.”
“The authorities have manpower, resources, experience. But it takes time for them to mobilize, interact with one another, and the information that Latimer is at large with your son was given to them only a short while ago. At any time, now that word is out, an officer somewhere could spot Latimer’s car and do what’s necessary to free Chuck. If that happens, it’ll happen no matter what we do. More likely, Latimer will be able to get to where he’s going without interference, if he hasn’t already. In any case, official wheels are turning, and once they turn fast enough, whether or not we tell anybody about Pat, bunches of state cops and FBI agents are going to start showing up with questions and agendas.”
“You mean… here?”
“Here, yes, if this is where you are.”
“Are you telling me we won’t be able to leave?”
“It’s unlikely Rideout would let us go anywhere until the higher-ups arrive. That’s the way it’s done; the feds in particular want the nearest responsible relative in a kidnapping — you — to be close at hand in the event something happens. They’ll let you go home eventually, but not today unless Latimer and Chuck are found. You’ll have to spend the night here or in Quincy or maybe in Sacramento, wherever they decide is best, and you won’t have much privacy.”
“My God,” Marian said, “I don’t want that, I couldn’t stand that. I want to be at home if Pat or Chuck… that’s the only place where I can…” She seemed to realize she was starting to ramble. She bit her lower lip, hard, maybe hard enough to draw blood. Using the pain as a way to calm herself, I thought; it was something I’d done myself once or twice. When she spoke again, the frantic edge was gone from her voice. “What’s the other alternative?”
“We take a partial hands-on position for the time being. Don’t tell the sheriff anything — I go to him and ask permission to drive you back to the city. If nothing has come through on Latimer’s whereabouts, or any official requests to detain either of us, I think he’ll agree to it. As things stand now, he has no real reason to keep us here.”