He had almost mastered the art of walking silently on the forest floor. His night vision, after several hours outdoors, helped him see the occasional pinecone that might make him stumble. He felt like an Indian guide, at one with the woods. He had never felt this way before. He padded toward the tent, his ears attuned to the slightest noise from within. There was none.
All the patrols in the world wouldn’t keep him from doing what he had to do. Or keep him from making his escape afterward. He was smarter than the police, smarter than Penny and Gary. In the future, when people put him down, he would have the secret satisfaction of knowing what he had done here tonight.
He could see well enough to avoid the rope that stretched from the top corner of the tent, diagonally down to where it was fastened to one of the stakes that held the tent in place. He went carefully past the stake to the tent and lowered himself to his knees. He would have to crawl through the opening in the triangular front of the tent.
The lack of space within was a blessing, because he wouldn’t have any trouble finding his prey. One thing he didn’t know was which one of them slept on the right and which one on the left. He should learn that information with the first stroke of the knife. He wanted to dispatch Gary first.
Alfred reached forward and touched the canvas material, feeling for the vertical zipper he knew was there from the time he had gone into their tent at Crater Lake. His fingers moved silently until he found the zipper handle. The zipper separated the two flaps of the front of the tent-forming two triangles within the larger triangle.
The zipper was zipped, of course, and so were the two horizontal zippers, one for each of the flaps. He paused, listening. All was quiet inside the tent. The noise of a zipper might wake them. He would have to work fast. It would take two hands to undo one zipper. He didn’t have time to undo both the vertical and horizontal zippers. He would undo the vertical zipper and then go in.
He carefully placed the knife on the ground where he could instantly locate it. He grasped the handle of the zipper with his right hand and held the tent material just below it with his left hand, to keep it from snagging as he unzipped it.
He took a deep but silent breath and yanked the zipper upward. It went halfway up and stuck. He quickly moved his left hand up, grasping the two flaps of the tent just below where the zipper was stuck. He yanked the zipper again with his right hand. This time it went almost to the top of the tent.
He didn’t have time to raise it any further. He grabbed the knife and parted the unzipped triangles of canvas with his arms by simulating a breaststroke. He hit a vertical tent post as he did so. He dove through the gap into the interior, knocking the post over and bringing the tent down on top of him. He landed on his left hand and tried to raise the knife with his right.
His knife hand hit the top of the tent, which now covered him like a blanket, making it difficult for him to wield the weapon. He made a few clumsy thrusts with it until he realized that something else was wrong. Gary and Penny hadn’t moved or made a sound. He couldn’t feel their bodies beneath him, and his knife wasn’t hitting anything but the sleeping bag, the tent floor, and the ground underneath.
It dawned on Alfred that they weren’t inside the tent. He stopped slashing and felt all over the sleeping bag. It was empty. He put down the knife, fumbled in his jacket pocket, and pulled out the flashlight. He had been going to use it to make sure they were dead. He turned it on now and shone it around the collapsed tent as well as he could. This only verified what he already knew.
“Why is that car sitting there by itself?” Penny pointed to a campsite with a car parked at the entrance. Even in the dark she could see that there were no other signs of camping activity on the site: no tent and nothing sitting on the picnic table. The car looked out of place.
Gary shone his flashlight at the car. “That’s a Ford Falcon.”
“A blue Ford Falcon. Is that the license plate of the car Alfred stole?” Her carefree feeling of a moment ago was replaced by a tightening of her gut.
Gary dug into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. He shone the flashlight on the paper and read the information written there out loud. Then he shone the light on the license plate of the car. It was a Montana plate.
“It’s not the same.”
“Shine the light inside.”
They walked up to the car. Gary shone his flashlight through the window into the front seat. Penny saw several brochures and maps sitting on the seat, along with a bag of chips.
“What about the back?”
Gary shone the light through the back window. All she could see there was a hat, something like a cowboy hat.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said. “There’s no camping equipment in the car. In fact, there’s almost nothing in the car.”
“It does look suspicious.”
“I’m not going back to the tent.” The thought of being inside that cramped space in the dark, without knowing who was prowling around outside, engulfed her with a feeling of claustrophobia.
“But what can we do?”
“We’ve got to call Detective Landon.”
“It’s night. He won’t be working.”
“Somebody will be working. He said to call anytime.”
Penny looked pleadingly at Gary, but she couldn’t see his face very well. He was silent for a moment. She knew she’d never be able to sleep in the tent.
“There’s a phone booth at the campground office,” Gary said. “We can call from there.”
Penny clung to Gary’s hand as they walked toward the entrance to the campground. He wouldn’t let them be hurt. Her imagination magnified every sound they heard. When a bear crossed the road in front of them, she was grateful that it wasn’t something worse.
Gary made the collect call. Penny listened as he explained the situation to whomever was on duty. He talked for about five minutes. Before he hung up, he agreed several times with whatever the other person was saying.
“What does he want us to do?” Penny asked, not waiting for Gary to speak.
“He agrees that the situation is suspicious. He’s coordinating with local law enforcement to get somebody out here. He said under no circumstances should we return to our campsite. We have to wait here. He’s going to get us a ride to Grant Village. We’ll stay in the hotel there.”
“What about our car?”
“He said not to move the car. If it is Alfred, we don’t want to do anything that might alert him to the fact that we know he’s here. We’re supposed to stay at the entrance to the campground until our ride comes.”
“And try to keep warm.”
“And try to keep warm. I’ll race you to that pine tree.”
“Forget it. Just sit on that bench and snuggle with me.”
Alfred backed out of the tent and stood up. What had been a trim-looking tent collapsed completely and became a disorganized pile of canvas. Was this a trap? Was that why someone had come by and shone a flashlight into the campsite at intervals? They must have found his car. He couldn’t return to it. What should he do?
He shouldn’t be walking through the campground alone at midnight. If whoever was looking for him was still prowling around, they might spot him. He had to hide somewhere until morning, when he could blend in with the other campers. But where?
Certainly not at this campsite. He had to walk somewhere, being careful to hide if a car came along. He had already hidden among the trees for a couple of hours. He was cold and angry. He didn’t want to get caught before he completed his mission. If that meant hiding for the rest of the night, he would do it.
He could take the VW and get out of here. No, that car was too conspicuous. He couldn’t steal a car from the campground, with all the campers around, even if he could get it started. He would figure out what to do in the morning.