"And I thought I was coming into a sleepy little town. Doctor kidnaps patient. Sounds like a TV miniseries."
"Poor Doc Rutledge. Ain't been the same since his wife died a few years back. He's a darn good doctor, though, from what I've heard. If I ever went to a doctor I jes might 'uv gone to him. So, what brings you here?"
"I… have a business appointment. This sure is a beautiful town."
"Thank you. We think so. Your appointment here in Belinda?"
"Actually, no," Ellen replied after pausing while deciding if any harm could come from trying to determine where Vinny Sutcher lived. "It's in a town called Tullis."
"Well, heck, that's jes the next town over. Parta Belinda more or less."
Ellen consulted a pad she took from her handbag.
"Deep Woods Road," she said, reading back the address they had gotten from the passenger manifests.
"Never heard of it," the waitress said.
"I have," called out one of the old men, who was sitting four or five booths away. "Take Main Street all the way inta Tullis. Then go rot through Tullis, left onta Oak, then 'bout two mile up inta the hills. You'll be lookin' fer a gravel road on the rot. I don't b'leive it's got no sign, but some a the mailboxes at the corner say Deep Woods on 'em."
"Thank you," Ellen called over.
"Belinda Road is jes the continuation of Main Street into Tullis," the waitress said. "Go right out the parkin' lot an' jes keep on goin'. You'll see a little sign for Tullis."
"Place don't deserve nothin' no bigger," the eavesdropper hollered.
His tablemate and the two ladies in the booth near them hooted and whooped at his humor.
Not surprisingly, given Ellen's experience with such diners, the meat loaf was commendable and the mashed potatoes and gravy appropriately decadent. She left a decent tip and walked out into the late afternoon sun. There were still almost two hours to go before she was to meet with Grimes. From the moment the old eavesdropper gave her directions to Deep Woods Road, she was obsessed — driven by her own anger and curiosity to want even a glimpse of Vinyl Sutcher. If he was as Grimes described, it was back to the drawing board and the other passenger names for her and Rudy. If Grimes's memory was off, if she could determine that Sutcher's cinder-block head featured a flat face and distinctive scar, she was on the verge of sweet, succulent revenge. She just needed to be careful and stay in the car. All she wanted now was one look at the man or at least the place where he lived.
With the same tiny voice that had lost the battle over Rudy's letter begging her to wait until her meeting with the police chief, Ellen eased the Taurus out of the parking lot and headed for Tullis and Deep Woods Road. The directions were fairly accurate, but the mileage was off on the low side. The far end of Tullis was nearly six miles away, and Oak Street snaked upward for three miles more before she spotted the cluster of ten or eleven mailboxes, several of which had "Deep Woods Road" painted on one side. One of the boxes had the number 100 in neat stick-ons, and beneath it the name SUTCHER. Maybe Grimes was right after all, she thought. This was hardly the place one would expect to find a world traveler, who had made at least four trips to an obscure country in West Africa over the past three years. But then, if she and Rudy were right, the trips, along with a dozen others, were strictly business.
Deep Woods Road, graded dirt and pebbles, coursed gently upward through a continuous arch of dense foliage. It was one car wide, with shallow drainage ditches on either side, and periodic spots to pull over so that an oncoming vehicle could pass. Ellen inched ahead, feeling a strange, almost perverse pleasure at operating on the edge of a situation she knew might be dangerous. Despite the mailboxes, there were no houses visible. Instead, there were dirt drives wending off into the forest on either side, most with a board nailed to a tree announcing the house number.
62… 70… 83…
Ellen slowed even more. Several dirt drives had no number. Was one of them to Sutcher's place?
90…
Her heart pounding, Ellen stopped and, using one of the unmarked drives, turned her car around. Then she carefully opened her door.
This is stupid, the tiny voice was saying. This is absolutely dumb.
She dropped the keys into the pocket of her slacks, shut the door softly, and cautiously made her way up the narrow road. Ahead the natural light was considerably brighter.
100.
The number, painted in black on a plain piece of pine board, was nailed head high on the trunk of a small birch. Just past the birch, the forest fell away, yielding to a clearing, beyond which was a spectacular vista — a broad valley streaked with rivers, stretching out to lush foothills and gray-blue mountains. In the center of the clearing was a new house, or an old one that had recently been extensively renovated — one story, modern, with large picture windows and mahogany-stained cedar siding. There were remnants of the construction still lying about. The lawn had not yet been laid, although the piping for an underground sprinkler system was piled up and ready to be installed. There was no garage, but to one side of the lawn-to-be was a gravel parking space large enough for two cars.
Despite her certainty that the property was empty, if not unoccupied, Ellen stayed in the relative safety of the forest for more than five minutes, watching. There was no movement.
Desperate now to glimpse the inside, she stepped from the shadows and moved toward the house, her pulse still hammering. The construction-in-progress notwithstanding, the place was clearly someone's home. Through the windows she could see that it was fully furnished in a manner that was quite masculine — thick leather couches and easy chairs, heavy unadorned end tables. Encouraged, Ellen pressed her face to the glass and peered more intently inside. There was a huge bull-elk head mounted above the mantel, and several shotguns hooked on the wall. She scanned the interior, looking for photographs. There were none. A window at a time, she worked her way around to the side of the house.
The panorama was truly magnificent, made even more so by the sun, now in descent toward the mountains. The house, while not built on a sheer drop, was set on the top of a steep slope. Ellen stepped to the edge. The slope was mostly dirt, weeds, and rocks, littered with boards, strapping, and chunks of concrete from the construction, left to be cleaned up when the place was finally landscaped. It was then she realized that the house wasn't one story as it appeared from the road, but two and possibly even three, the others having been hewn into the hillside. She took a few tentative steps down the hill and gasped. There were two stories of living space — the floor she had examined and another beneath it. Each featured a solid wall of tinted glass, running the entire length of the house. And underneath the lower story was a garage — also built into the hillside, and accessed by a narrow driveway that arced far out to her right, then undoubtedly upward to a spot not far from where she had parked.
In the garage was a large, black Jeep 4X4.
Ellen felt a sickening tightness in her chest at the sight of it.
"Well, now, what have we here?"
Vinyl Sutcher's booming voice was a spear through Ellen's heart. Startled beyond measure, she whirled, stumbled, and fell to one knee, landing on a jagged piece of concrete. She leapt to her feet, mindless of the pain, the tear in her slacks, and the circle of blood rapidly expanding around it. Sutcher was standing above her, twenty feet or so away, hands on hips, his huge, flat face grinning down at her.
"I knew it was you," Ellen said contemptuously.
"Get up here…I said, get the fuck up here!"
Ellen hesitated, then slowly did as he demanded. She had made a terrible, terrible mistake and now she was going to pay for it in pain, and then, sooner or later, with her life. If the slope behind her was just a little steeper, she might have ended it quickly right there, or at least have tried to pull him over with her. As things were, the driveway below would stop any fall. All she could do was stand there and face up to him.