“It’s time,” she said. “You have to plant the note before we leave for the cabin, or none of this is going to work.”
“Right now?” Walter said, rubbing sleep from his dry eyes.
“Yes,” Nina said. “Right now. Remember, there is no prearranged drop spot, so it doesn’t matter where you leave the note. Just make it look like you’re trying to be secretive. Make sure you go slow, and be obvious enough to be easily followed.”
He sat up and noticed that Abby, bless her, had made tea for everyone. He helped himself to a steaming cup as he slipped his feet into his shoes.
“All right,” he said, shuffling toward the front door. “Right now. I just hope this works.”
* * *
Allan watched from across the street as the curly haired hippie in the baggy tweed jacket left Miss Nina Sharp’s house alone, and headed west. He hesitated, just for a moment, then followed. Of the three, this was the one who interested him the most. The one to whom he’d felt the closest that night at Reiden Lake. The one he planned to kill last.
The hippie was clearly up to something. He was anxious, constantly scanning the street and jumping every time a car passed, but Allan wasn’t worried that he would be spotted. He lingered nearly a block behind, blending into the crowd. They passed a busy hamburger stand, a beauty parlor, and a head shop, around a series of seemingly random corners, and then doubling back.
But Allan was a seasoned hunter, and couldn’t be shaken that easily.
Then the hippie suddenly dashed across the street and down a narrow alley. Allan followed at a safe distance, leisurely and unruffled as if he had all the time in the world to get to his destination. He strolled slowly past the mouth of the alley, peering casually down its length.
The hippie had his back turned to Allan, and seemed to be counting barred windows as he walked very slowly down the alleyway. When he arrived under the seventh window, he stopped, crouched down and slipped something under a concrete block. Then he stood and continued on until he was out the other end.
Allan waited a few beats before entering the alley himself, then made his way over to the seventh window. He lifted the concrete block and spotted a folded note and a wrinkled map.
He unfolded the note. Read it. Smiled.
Things just got a whole lot more interesting.
29
Walter was still so tired that he wound up falling asleep in the back seat of the rented tan Buick LeSabre, before they even made it out of San Francisco. When he woke they were on a narrow winding road, passing through deep, green woods. It felt almost like time travel, as if he’d fallen asleep in 1974 and awakened in pre-colonial times, before the intrusion of European industry into the primeval forests of America.
The day was sunny, the windows were down, and the sharp, piney scent of the clean crisp air was uplifting and refreshing. He found he could almost forget about all the pain and death and madness.
Almost.
Nina turned off the main road and onto a bumpy, unpaved dirt track that bounced Walter around like popcorn in the back seat. He clung to the back of Bell’s seat, peering anxiously over his shoulder. The brightly painted bus carrying the members of the band was no longer following them.
“Are you sure this is the right road?” he asked.
“We can’t very well park right in front of the cabin,” Nina said. “The killer would see the car and know someone was inside. Even though he wouldn’t recognize the rental, the cabin still has to look empty. So we’ll ditch the car down below, and walk up.”
“What about Roscoe and the band?”
“They’re headed straight up to the lodge up on the top of the ridge,” Nina said. “Once we have the killer bound and sedated, we’ll contact them via the walkie-talkies and have them join us for the gate-opening trip.”
Nina pulled the big beast of a car into a weedy turnout in front of the burnt-out husk of some kind of structure. She killed the engine, and the three of them just sat there quietly for a minute, listening to oblivious birds and the soothing shush of wind in pine branches. It seemed so strange to Walter that the world around them just kept on keeping on, everything ordinary and normal, as if they weren’t about to commit this unthinkable offense against the very fabric of reality.
He rolled up the window and got out of the car, slinging the duffle bag full of supplies over one shoulder.
The walk up to the cabin was steep and roundabout, zigzagging back and forth along the safest, most stable ground. Nina took the determined lead, with Bell right behind her and Walter bringing up the rear. The bag on his shoulder was growing impossibly heavy by the time they reached the low, sloping back yard.
It was less like the old-fashioned log cabin Walter had pictured in his mind, and more like a small, rustic house. It was long and narrow, with a mossy stone chimney, weathered, grayish siding and a tall, A-frame roof.
They followed Nina around to the front door, which she opened with a large, old-fashioned key.
Inside, it was dim and dusty, furnished with minimal, utilitarian furniture that included a pair of tough plaid chairs set next to an oversized fireplace, and a hand-hewn wooden table. There was a really hideous lamp made from antlers, but Nina stopped Walter from flipping the switch to turn it on.
“Leave it,” she said, taking a small flashlight from her purse and thumbing it to life.
The curtains were closed, so the light was dim. The weak yellow illumination from the flashlight made the interior of the cabin seem more gloomy, rather than less. Dust spun and danced in the beam as Nina crouched down in front of the fireplace and pried up the third flagstone from the left.
When it finally came loose in her hand, she blew away the dust and replaced the stone loosely and slightly crooked.
“So,” Bell said. “He comes in through the door...”
“Right,” Nina said. “He comes in through the door and goes right for the fireplace. We should wait there.” She pointed to a dark doorway. “In the bedroom. When we hear him come in...”
“I grab him from behind,” Bell said.
“And I’ll put the rag with the chloroform over his mouth and nose,” Walter said.
“Then I cuff him and bind his legs together with duct tape,” Nina said.
“While I prepare and administer the sedative,” Bell finished.
“What’s through there?” Walter asked, gesturing to a second dark arched doorway.
“Kitchen and back door,” Nina replied.
“So that’s that,” Walter said. “We are as ready as we can be. All we have to do now is wait.”
30
Waiting, however, turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated. With no real idea of when the killer would arrive, and no way to watch for his arrival without exposing that they were there, the three of them were forced to sit in the bedroom, away from any windows, and try to remain on alert for what soon started to feel like an eternity.
For the first hour, none of them could relax enough to do anything but sit and stare distractedly at each other. Nina on the bed, Bell in an old rocker, and Walter sitting on an old leather trunk with a musty moth-eaten blanket folded to form a meager cushion. They jumped at every sound, the settling of the cabin or the creaking of a tree branch outside.
By the second hour, Nina was flipping through old issues of Field & Stream magazine that she had found on the bedside table, while Bell and Walter were playing chess on a pocket set Bell had brought. They were so distracted by listening to the sounds of the cabin that they kept forgetting whose turn it was.
By hour three, Nina lay on the bed with an arm flung over her eyes, though judging from her breathing and body position, Walter didn’t think she was actually asleep. He and Bell had finally given up on chess after three stalemates. Bell had read through all the Field & Stream issues and had resorted to searching for the hidden pictures on the back of a copy of Highlights magazine for children.