An hour after sunup he drove the Olds out of the barn and ran it very cautiously across the yard into the woods along the pioneer track he’d cut. He went down the steep grade in low gear standing on the brake, taking it as slow as he could; it bottomed a few times but not alarmingly. When he got into the bigger trees he had to do a great deal of backing and filling in places but after half an hour he’d got it down through the trees to the end. He parked it there and piled brush around it. Then he walked down to the county road and prowled for twenty minutes to make sure there was no piece of the Olds that might flash a telltale reflection to a passerby on the road.
He checked out the yard and closed in the top of the pioneer track with broken trees to conceal its existence. After that he went to bed.
Thirty-six hours later he finished the book. He put the manuscript in the false bottom of the suitcase and cached the case in the Olds together with a bottle of water, several cans of food and a can opener. Everything he’d need with him was either in the Olds or on his person. Now it was just a matter of finding out how quick they were-Cutter and the FBI.
He could leave now. Nothing kept him here. But it was time for the game to come alive and he wanted them to have the warm smell of him.
Now he hoped they wouldn’t take long. If Cutter had been more of a gut player he’d worry about that; Cutter could see the clues he’d left and Cutter would realize their meaning. Kendig didn’t leave clues unless he’d meant to. Cutter would have to recognize the invitation for what it was. A gut gambler might decide to pass it up; decline the invitation, take Kendig’s neuroses into account, let him rot right where he was-anticipating entrapment but never seeing it happen. Time was Kendig’s enemy: he couldn’t sit and wait, he’d get bored with it and boredom was his essential weakness. Cutter knew that but Cutter had time pressures on him too and neither Cutter’s own personality nor the circumstances would allow him to sit still even though it might have been the smartest way to handle it. No: Cutter would come after him.
The telephone rang.
It had rung a few times since he’d moved in. Did he want to subscribe? Did he want home milk delivery? Did he want a charge-a-plate? There hadn’t been any of those in the past ten days. He’d made no calls out. He’d had the phone connected only as a convenience to Cutter.
Now on the fourth ring he picked it up. “Hello?”
Scratchy silence on the line and then a dull click. He cradled it and smiled. That had to be the FBI; if it had been Cutter he’d have played it better: sorry wrong number or would you care to contribute.
He put a short piece of pipe in his pocket and left the lights burning and walked out of the house.
— 15 -
The place was thirty miles out of town. Ross’s odometer showed twenty-nine and a half when Cutter said, “This’ll do. Pull over.”
He slid it over against the wooded embankment and switched off. The two FBI cars parked in tandem behind them. Cutter stepped out and spread the topographical map across the trunk of the car and played his flashlight on it. The eight FBI agents walked forward and crowded around.
Cutter said, “Ross and I and four of you will walk it from here-sound travels in these hills, he’ll hear the cars coming. You four give us forty minutes, then drive in. This car and your first cruiser you drive him into the farm. The second cruiser waits down at the foot of his driveway with two men in it.” He put his finger on the map. “The Scudder farm. Pay attention to these contour lines-that driveway’s damned steep.”
Greiff said, “Any chance he’d have it booby-trapped?”
“No. He’s not a killer. There may be telltales.”
“He’s not a killer-what is he then?”
“We want him. That’s all you need to know.”
Greiff wasn’t used to being talked to that way; it showed on his middle-aged face. He was the District Director out of Atlanta and he had the habit of command.
A car came down the road, an old one jouncing on its springs. It slowed to a crawl and the three men inside it gave Cutter’s party a xenophobic scrutiny. One of the FBI men slid his hand under his jacket. The, old car moved on. Greiff said, “They’ll figure us for revenuers-never mind.”
Ross was looking at the map again. He saw how the farm tilted, how the driveway corkscrewed up from the road. If it was like the other places they’d passed it would be crowded pretty close by the forest.
Cutter said, “He’s expecting us. All right, he won’t be in the house. He’ll be out in the woods watching.” Cutter’s finger moved along the lines of the map. “We won’t walk all the way to the yard. We’ll cut off the driveway and fan out through the trees. Three of us-I’ll take you two-move left. Ross and these two move right. Everybody keeps his flare pistol charged and ready. We’ll work our way through the woods and bracket the place. For God’s sake don’t go crashing around-keep your eye on where you’re walking and don’t blunder into any dead trees. Now if you spot him fire a flare. If you don’t just settle down and wait.”
Cutter turned to Greiff. “It’ll take us about forty minutes to get positioned. Give us that long and then start up. The last car waits at the foot of the driveway on the main road. The other two go right up the driveway like you’ve got business there. Don’t crawl but don’t rush it. Keep your lights on bright. Drive right up into the yard and turn the cars around so you can pull out fast if you’ve got to. Then get out the bullhorn and challenge the house. Don’t go charging it, just give him a shout-talk to him about tear gas, show your shotguns.”
“Then what?”
“He’ll have some diversion set up. A fire bomb in the barn or something. Don’t stick your necks out and don’t fall for it. Just yell at him. He’ll make a move. It won’t be from the house. One of us in the trees ought to be in earshot when he does-we’ll light him up like Times Square with flares. Then we box him and throw down on him. Got it? All right-come on, let’s walk.”
There was a good chance he’d be long gone. He’d had more than a half hour since Greiff had tested the phone. But Cutter had insisted he’d be there waiting for them. “He didn’t set this up with all that care just to leave us with a cold trail. You’ve got to understand this is a game to him. He wants to see our faces.”
“I wish I was as sure of that as you are. Those chapters I read didn’t look like kiddy time to me.”
“They’re not. They had to be the genuine article, hot enough to scorch a lot of big people. Otherwise we wouldn’t be playing his game.”
They’d nailed him on the phone call to Ives actually but the Southworth Bond paper had brought them close and they’d have made him on that alone; the phone call had just speeded it up. He’d bought two hundred sheets of it in Chatsworth and then he’d bought a ream in Birmingham. Chatsworth was less than a hundred miles from here. But the phone call to Ives in New York had been placed from Adairsville and there were only nine phones in town, one in a pay booth between the gas station and the country store. The storekeeper knew Mr. Hannaway, recognized the composite Identikit portrait and said Mr. Hannaway had bought a big stock of groceries three days ago. The kid at the gas station described Mr. Hannaway’s Pontiac and remembered filling it and the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. The kingpin in town was a back-porch country lawyer who owned the lumberyard and auto repair yard, and probably a distillery and half a dozen county politicians, and sidelined in real estate; he’d rented the Scudder farm to Mr. Hannaway and had received a second month’s rent in advance just six days ago. Ross had been pleased with their detective work until Cutter told him Kendig had planned it that way.
They walked up the driveway slowly, spread out. Ross’s ankle snagged something and he heard a distant tinkle-a cowbell, he thought; he listened for it again but it didn’t repeat. They moved ever more slowly, keeping close to the trees on either side of the rutted drive. Lamplight winked vaguely through the trees. The moon was hazed with a thin cloud cover but there was light enough to see where you were going. The flare pistol in his hand was slippery with his sweat; he shifted it to his left hand and wiped his palm on his trousers.