The odds on that were very slim, but I figured it'd help him stay awake.
Sally and I sat on the right side of the hood of Borman's car, as he crept up the drive with only his parking lights on. That way, we could be deposited without any sound of closing doors.
A minute later, she and I were standing in the cold rain, watching the receding red glow of Borman's brake lights as he backed down the drive.
“Hope nobody sees that,” said Sally.
“Not likely,” I said. There were a lot of lights on in the house. Nobody looking our way from a lighted room would be able to see anything. “Let's go this way.”
I led us to the left of the gate pillars, following the shoulder-high wall. As long as the house was lit, it was going to be easy to find the wall. Our landmark.
We went about twenty yards, to where the wall blended into the slope, and the line of trees became the demarcation between the Hunley property and the State of Iowa. It was easier to see than I had anticipated, because the house was so brightly lit. I ducked down and signaled Sally to follow me under a couple of big spruce trees. It was fairly dry under there, and it kept us out of the wind.
I knelt down, and opened the big plastic case that contained the night vision scope.
“This isn't so bad,” she whispered.
“No, better than I thought.” I fumbled a bit, got it by the big handle, and felt for the switch. I peered into the eyepiece, and was in a very brightly lit world of green hues. I swept the area, quickly. We were about fifty yards from the house, on the southwest corner. I could see pretty clearly to the opposite tree line behind the house, although the lights on the lower floor tended to overpower the scope. I looked to my right, back the way we had come. Clear. To my left, I could see about fifteen feet before the trees and undergrowth blocked the view. Behind us, it was even thicker. Good cover. I hit the zoom button, and everything got twice as big. Cool. That was a handy feature, but it was a two-edged sword. If you zoomed, your field of view was so small; you'd miss a lot of stuff. The secret was to use the zoom feature only when necessary.
I shut the night scope off, and put it back in the box, careful not to engage any latches that might make noise.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Good. Now let me tell you this… ” and I explained the elevator shaft to the mine to her.
“You mean,” she said, after I was done, “Peale could just pop up any time?”
“Yeah, sorta.”
“Jesus Christ, Houseman.”
“Don't get too worried. Just check around once in a while, that's all.”
“Just where is this elevator shaft?”
“Well, now that's a good question.” I grinned in the dark. “Somewhere to our right, I think, and a lot closer to the bluff.”
“You think?” she hissed.
“It's in with some of the old Kommune foundations. Not sure just where.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don't know why you're worried,” I said. “You've got the garlic.” I got a discreet kick for that one.
For the next twenty-five minutes, nothing changed except the occasional occupant moving from room to room in the house. I found we could recognize them, sometimes, if they lingered in front of a window. I saw Huck, and Melissa, for sure. Otherwise, it was just cold and damp, with constant dripping as the rain filtered down through the trees.
Sally seemed to devote most of her time to looking toward our right.
Then lights started going off in the house. The parlor and dining room lights went first, then most of the lights in the kitchen. I could see Kevin at one point, very clearly, in the glazed main door. He just stood and stared out the door for a while, then disappeared from view.
“Sally?”
“What?”
“Use the night scope, and check the whole area for a minute. Especially to the right. Make sure we aren't missing anything.”
“Oooh. Okay.”
After about a minute, she said, “Nothing.”
We waited some more. Finally, she said, “Do you really think he might come here?” “I don't want to take the chance that he will,” I said. Twenty minutes later, Sally spoke. “I thought I saw something.”
“Where?”
“Over there.”
That did me a lot of good. I could hear her fumbling for the night scope. “Just a sec… ”
“Where?”
“Look toward the back door, then keep going to the right. About halfway to the tree line, I thought I saw something move… ”
I looked. I saw nothing. Then I heard the click of the night scope being turned on.
“Jesus Christ!” I'd never heard somebody yell in a whisper before.
“What?”
“There's somebody out there!”
“Give me the scope.”
“Just a minute… ”
“Just give me the goddamned scope!” I hissed.
“Jeeez,” she said, but handed it over, reluctantly. I was about to ask her where this somebody was, when I saw him. He was keeping low, and moving around the house from the back to the front, staying under the first floor windows, and apparently going to the front door.
“He looks like he's headed to the front door,” I said.
I watched for a moment. The rain had let up a bit, but he was still difficult to make out. There was something about the way he walked that struck me as familiar.
“Call Borman,” I whispered, “and alert him.” Coming from the direction of the rear of the house, our intruder would have come up from the east, or bluff side.
Not from Borman's direction. I wanted Borman to be aware that he might have to move in a hurry.
Sally keyed the mike on her walkie-talkie, and said, “Eight? Eight?”
Either she'd had her receiver volume turned up earlier, or she'd bumped the dial when she took it out of the case. Either way, there was a loud scratching sound from her radio, and Borman clearly said “Eight… ” in what I thought was a booming voice. I must have jumped a foot.
Sally was quick. Very. She had the volume back down before he finished with “… go ahead.”
The man I was watching turned, and cocked his head. He might have heard the radio, but probably not clearly. He listened for a few seconds, and then turned back toward the house. But in that few seconds, I hit the zoom button, and I made him.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“What, what?” said Sally. Over in her direction, I could hear Borman's voice, barely audible now, calling us.
“Answer him, tell him to stand by, we have movement.”
She did.
“I made our man out there,” I said.
“Peale?”
“William Chester.”
THIRTY-ONE
Wednesday, October 11, 2000
23:30
“The vampire hunter?” asked Sally.
“Yep.” He was holding very still, as I looked. There was no doubt. I could see bulges on his back and down one side, that looked like that pack he'd had earlier, and something else I couldn't quite make out. But it was him, all right. I watched him move toward the porch, creep up the steps, and then crouch down using a pillar as cover, and peer into the house through the glazed doors. He froze there. After a minute, I handed the night scope to Sally.
“Look at the front porch, behind the right-hand pillar.”
Without the benefit of the scope, the night was suddenly much darker.
“Oh, yeah. I see him.” After a second, she said, “Carl, ya think, I mean, since he hunts vampires, you know… ”
“That he's got one now?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“Naw. I think he's still looking.” I tried to sound convincing, but I was thinking on another track altogether. I was hurriedly going back through all the evidence regarding Dan Peale. Could he and Chester be the same person? They were close to the same height, if the data on Peale was correct. They could be of an age. He'd appeared just as we were getting into Peale, and that had been a remarkable coincidence even at the time.
“What's he doing?” I whispered to Sally.