Runyon turned to look at his watch in the headlight glare. Nine-twenty. No choice now but to hold off until morning. He couldn’t just sit out on the road and wait; no telling how long it would be before Balfour came home, if he wasn’t already forted up in there. Hanging around a stranger’s property after dark was a fool’s gambit anyway, unless you had damn good cause or a desire to spook the subject. And he had neither.
20
PETE BALFOUR
The road around the east end of Eagle Rock Lake was in lousy shape-ruts, potholes, crumbled edges. Leave it to the goddamn county. Not that he gave a crap what the county did or didn’t do, not anymore. Off on his right as he jounced along, the lake looked like the big oil slick they’d had down in the Gulf-smooth and shiny black, skimmed here and there with reflections of moonlight. It was a mile and a half wide, maybe a mile long, supposed to be a lot of fish in it on account of it was fed by a bunch of mountain streams. Couldn’t prove it by him. His sport wasn’t fishing, it was hunting.
Going hunting tonight. Big-game hunting-Verriker hunting.
Balfour could feel the weight of the revolver in his jacket pocket. Charter 2000 Off Duty. 38 special, two-inch barrel. Serial number filed off like on all the guns in his collection. Had it for years, couldn’t be traced back to him-not that that mattered anymore. Perfect piece for this kind of hunt.
He was pretty juiced now that he was close to settling the score with Neddy boy, but he’d of been more juiced if he wasn’t so pissed at that tourist woman. He’d swabbed the cut under his right eye with iodine, but it still burned like hell. Missed sticking them twisted-together tacks through his eye by about two inches. Bitch. Lunging at him like a freaking ninja soon as he opened the shed door, surprised the hell out of him, he’d just managed to get his head snapped back in time. She’d worked herself out of the duct tape in there, okay, he’d figured she might, she’d had plenty of time, but what he hadn’t figured on was her getting her hands on something she could use as a weapon to attack him. Where the hell had those tacks come from? For sure not the old TV set she’d pulled down on the floor.
Two inches higher, and he wouldn’t be out here with Verriker in his sights. He’d be back at the house or on his way to the hospital-Pete One-Eye. Or maybe Pete Dead.
Well, he’d make her pay for it. Just like he’d make the rest of them pay for what they’d done to him.
The truck bounced around a bend past a long limestone shelf. And in the distance, then, he could see lights through the trees at the edge of the lake. That’d be the Ramsey cabin. He’d been over this road before on other hunting trips, seen the cabin squatting down there with its little T-dock poking out into the water.
So Verriker hadn’t gone to bed yet. He’d hoped the bugger would be sound asleep, all the lights off, so he could slip on up to the cabin and maybe a door or window’d be unlocked and he could surprise Verriker in the sack. But now what he’d do, he’d just knock on the door and when Verriker opened it, stick the. 38 in his face, look him square in the eye, and tell him why he should of died along with Alice. Then laugh the way he’d been laughed at that night in the Buckhorn, let Verriker know before he blew him away that the last big joke was on him and it was Pete Balfour who was getting the last laugh.
Better not drive any farther. The pickup’s engine was quiet, the muffler in good shape, but sounds carried a long way at night in country like this. He looked for a place to park the truck, found one in the trees on the inland side. He hadn’t seen any other cars since he’d turned in, but that didn’t mean somebody wouldn’t come along. There were only a few cabins and cottages out here, spaced wide apart, but at least half had people in them this time of year. He’d seen other lights on the way in, could make out a few now glimmering over on the south shore.
He walked along the edge of the road, ready to jump off into the trees at the first sight of headlights. But the road and the night stayed dark, except for the cabin lights winking ahead. Moonlight let him see so he didn’t stumble over something. Took him six, seven minutes to get near the turnoff to the cabin. Then he angled down through the pines, moving slow and quiet in the underbrush, until he could see the front of the cabin.
Verriker’s Dodge van was parked there, dirty white in the moonshine. Yeah, but it had company. Jeep Cherokee sitting there, too-Joe Ramsey’s Jeep.
Shit!
Verriker was supposed to be alone in the cabin, licking his wounds. What was Ramsey doing here?
Balfour edged down farther through the trees, until he was about fifty yards from the cabin. From there, he could see a light in a screened-in rear porch, and that somebody was standing on the dock looking out over the lake. Verriker? Ramsey? The red eye of a cigarette glowed sudden in the dark. Hell, it wasn’t neither of them. Verriker didn’t smoke, Ramsey’d made a big deal about quitting a couple of years back… but Ramsey’s scrawny wife, Connie, lit up every chance she had. Well, it was no big surprise she’d come out here with her old man-mother hen type, make sure poor Ned baby was okay, change his diapers for him.
Cold in among the pines with a night wind blowing in off the lake. He pulled the collar of his jacket up and stuffed his hands in the pockets, watching. The cold got to Connie Ramsey, too. She finished her smoke, tossed the butt into the lake, turned back toward the cabin. Damn woman waddled like a duck when she walked.
The screen door slammed, and when the porch light went out, Balfour moved up toward the front again. Stood there waiting for the Ramseys to come out and get in their Jeep and drive the hell away so he could finish the hunt. He could already feel it bubbling up inside him, taste it sweet like candy on the back of his tongue.
Only they didn’t come out.
Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. What was taking them so long?
A light come on behind one of the windows on this side, probably a bedroom. Then the front room lights and the bedroom light went out. And the whole damn cabin was dark. Dark!
What the hell?
Took Balfour a few seconds to get it, and when he did, the rage went boiling through him like hot oil. The Ramseys weren’t going home, they were spending the night here. That bitch Connie’s doing, didn’t want poor Neddy Boy to be alone, and gutless pussy-whipped Joe Ramsey had let her have her way like he always did.
Another monkey wrench in the plans. The tourist woman twice, the explosion not getting Verriker, now this. And none of it Pete Balfour’s fault, none of it he could’ve seen ahead of time. As if it wasn’t just Asshole Valley that was out to get him, but the whole damn world, everything and everybody working against him, laughing at him, letting him think he was in control and then spinning him around and around like a bug on a pin.
He leaned against a tree trunk, shaking with fury. Blood pounded in his ears. The cut under his eye burned like fire. Inside his head, the voices started up again, saying the same like always, over and over, over and over. Biggest asshole I know, maybe the biggest one in these parts. I bet somebody’d nominate you for mayor, I bet you’d win hands down. Pete Balfour, the first mayor of Asshole Valley… mayor of Asshole Valley… mayor of Asshole Valley…
An urge came over him to bust into the cabin, blow all three of them away, wham! wham! wham! Almost gave in to it. Yanked the. 38 out, shoved off the tree, and took a couple of steps toward the cabin. But then he come to his senses. He stopped, breathing hard, and pretty soon the thunder in his ears eased, the voices faded into a low mutter. He put the revolver away, wiped cold sweat off his forehead.