He stood for a few seconds after he stepped out, checking his surroundings. Tall shrubs and trees hid the near neighbor’s property; only the roofline of the house there was visible. More trees at the rear, beyond an expanse of lawn, created a thick screen. It was as if he were standing in a pocket, with the street the only open end. Okay. But he still felt conspicuous as he went around to unlock the trunk and raise the lid.
One thing about a Lexus, it had a wide, deep trunk. He moved the tools and other items, pushing them all against the inner wall. Then he shook out and spread his Cal Poly blanket over the cleared space.
To the porch door, inside to what was left of Rakubian trussed up in the black body bags — not a man anymore, just so much trash to be taken away and disposed of. He bent to work his hands under the bundle, dipped his knees, lifted. Not as heavy as he’d expected: Rakubian hadn’t been a big man except in his own eyes. The slick feel of the bags, the deadweight, brought his gorge up again; he swallowed it down. Check the street. Clear. When he stepped outside he did it too quickly and stumbled, nearly dropped his burden. Careful! But then, in his haste and revulsion, he lowered the body too soon when he reached the open trunk; it struck the edge with a loose thumping sound and flopped in crooked, one end caught on the locking mechanism. The head... the head was still hanging out. He shoved and tugged and finally got all of the bundle inside, curled and bent like an inverted S.
Jesus!
He backed off, sweating in the cold, and turned again to the porch door. And froze. Car on the street, gliding by in the thickening fog. The driver didn’t glance his way — or did he? He couldn’t be sure.
Only a few more things to do. Get the bag containing the waste towels and statuette, pitch it into the trunk. Roll up the bloodstained rug, tie it with a piece of twine, wedge it in on top of the corpse. Close the lid, test the lock. Into the house for one last walk-through to reassure himself that he hadn’t overlooked anything and to test the dead-bolt lock on the front door. Back to the porch, use his handkerchief to wipe the inside doorknob and push-button lock. Set the lock, wipe the outer knob, pull the door shut, test it.
Into the car, start the engine.
Drive.
Don’t think, just drive.
9
Saturday Evening
The ride across the city to the Golden Gate Bridge: splintered, freakish, as if he were making it dead drunk. Little flashes of awareness — somebody honking at him because he was going too slow on Nineteenth Avenue, another car cutting him off inside the park, the murkiness of the tunnel under the Presidio, the lighted line of tollbooths and the wall of fog obscuring the bridge towers. Followed by blank periods, lost time during which he functioned in an unconscious state. It was not until he was halfway across the bridge, poking along in the slow lane, that he came jolting back to himself to stay. The gaps in his recent memory frightened him. What if he’d hit a pedestrian, had some other kind of accident? Concentrate, Hollis. Get off the road if you can’t drive without blanking out.
He was all right after that. Too aware, if anything: the white lane markings, the noisy traffic, the big shopping malls and strip malls and housing tracts flanking the freeway, the fogbanks giving way to cloudy blue once he reached the foot of Waldo Grade — all of it too sharply detailed, too bright, too loud, as though his sense perceptions had been cranked up to the maximum.
Despite the urgency in him, he could not make himself drive past fifty. Every time the speedometer edged above that mark, his foot eased up on the accelerator. Slow, slow... lines of cars whizzing by. None of the other drivers paid any attention to him, but he still felt nakedly exposed. As if the car bore external signs of the trunk’s contents.
The trip seemed interminable. Corte Madera, San Rafael, Terra Linda, the Napa-Vallejo cutoff, Novato... each creeping by. Maximum fifty all the way. The sun slid down behind the hills west of Novato, light began to fade out of the sky. It would be near dusk by the time he reached Los Alegres; full dark when he finished the long climb through the hills to the Chesterton site. Burial by flashlight. Bad enough in the daytime, but in the dark... ghoul’s work.
I must be crazy, he thought. Cassie was right — I must’ve been crazy all along.
Paloma County line. And finally, finally, Los Alegres. He took the first exit, Main Street, get off the damn freeway. Long loop along the river and beneath the highway overpass into town. Right on D Street, across the drawbridge, out Lakeville past the industrial parks and housing tracts and onto Crater Road. Headlights on now, boring into the gathering darkness. Oncoming beams reflecting off the windshield, jabbing his eyes with bright splinters. Stop and go, stop and go, and the Paloma Mountains did not seem to be getting any closer, seemed instead to be moving farther away. Optical illusion: stress, the light, the dark.
What am I going to say to Eric? Letting himself think about it now, for the first time. Come right out and tell him I know? Hint around, prod him into confessing what happened? Or pretend that nothing happened? A thing like this... there’s no right way to handle it. Father and son, conspirators no matter what either of us says or does. No, wait, suppose his conscience gets the best of him and he decides to turn himself in? Taught him the difference between right and wrong, my own damn moral code turned upside-down. Can’t let that happen—
Sudden flickering light in the car.
Red and white pulsing light.
His gaze jerked upward to the mirror. Frosty prickles on his neck and back, body going rigid, hands in a death grip on the wheel. Behind him, close... rooftop pulsars throwing out red and white, red and white.
Police!
A wildness surged through him. He came close, very close, to jamming his foot down on the accelerator, turning himself into a fugitive in the single twitch of a muscle. Don’t panic! Like a shriek in his mind.
He jerked his foot off the gas pedal, onto the brake. Easy, tap it, that’s right. Tap it again, ease over to the side of the road. The police car did the same. He shoved the shift lever into Park, his breath rasping in his throat. Slide the window down — inhale, exhale, slow and deep. Don’t say or do anything to give himself away. The old man: Cops are like dogs, let ’em see fear and they’ll jump all over you.
Footfalls, flashlight beam slanting past; shape outside the window moving closer, swinging the light, bending down. In the reflected glare the cop’s face was young, not much more than twenty-five, his expression neither friendly nor hostile. Neutral voice to match: “Evening.”
“Good—” The word caught in Hollis’s throat; he coughed and got the answer out on the second try. “Good evening, Officer.” His voice sounded all right, the strain an undercurrent too faint to be discernible. “Did I do something wrong?”
“That stop sign back there. You ran it.”
Stupid! “I didn’t see it. I guess... I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“License and registration, please.”
He removed the license from his wallet, handed it over. No choice then but to open the glove box. He leaned over, trying desperately to remember if he’d wrapped the Woodsman in the chamois cloth earlier. The flash ray followed his movements. Even if he had wrapped it, and the light picked up the shape and made the cop wonder—
Open. The bulb light inside showed him that the gun was wrapped and that he’d shoved it back deep; the flash beam didn’t reach it, because the cop didn’t say anything. He let out the breath he’d been holding, fumbled up the registration, quickly shut and locked the compartment again.