Walking over the grounds at the murder site in Cloverton, Owen had noticed that two of the small barns near the house contained antique autos. He’d slipped inside and looked under the blue Wolf car covers to find an old ’50 Pontiac Chief, a Hudson, a purple Studebaker. In one building, a stall was empty, and the car cover was dropped in a heap on the floor-the only disorder in the entire barn. His inclination was to dismiss the possibility of Hrubek’s stealing such an obvious getaway car. But, remembering the bicycle, Owen yielded to his instincts and, after a search of the ground, he found recent tread marks of a heavy auto leading from the barn, down the driveway and then west on Route 236. Without a word to the Cloverton police he’d left the house and sped not to Boyleston but after the old car.
Now he climbed from the truck and walked back toward the Cadillac, the sound of his passage obscured by the steady rain and sharp slashes of wind. He paused and squinted into the night. Sixty, seventy feet away a large form stood with his back to Owen, urinating on a bush. The man’s bald head was tilted back as he looked up into the sky, staring at the rain. He seemed to be singing or chanting softly.
Owen crouched down, slipping his pistol from his belt. He considered what to do next. When it had seemed that Hrubek was heading for the house in Ridgeton, Owen had planned simply to follow him there and then slip into the house ahead of him. If the madman broke in, Owen would simply shoot him. Maybe he’d slip a knife or crowbar into the man’s hand-to make a tidier scene for the prosecutor. But now Hrubek had a car and it occurred to Owen that maybe Ridgeton wasn’t his destination after all. Maybe he really would turn south and make for Boyleston. Or simply keep going on 236 and drive to New York, or even further west.
Besides, here was his quarry, defenseless, unsuspecting, alone-an opportunity Owen might not have again, wherever Hrubek was ultimately headed.
He made his decision: better to take the man now.
But what about the Cadillac? He could leave his truck here, dump the body in the trunk of the old car then drive it to Ridgeton himself. Once there he’d lug the body inside the house and-
But, no, of course not. The blood. The.357 hollow points would cause a lot of damage. Some forensic technician was sure to examine the Cadillac’s trunk.
After a moment of debate Owen concluded that he’d simply leave the car here. Hrubek was crazy. He’d become scared of driving and had abandoned it, continuing on foot to Ridgeton. It occurred to him too that he probably shouldn’t kill Hrubek here-the coroner might be able to determine that he’d died an hour or so before Owen claimed he had.
He decided that he’d just immobilize Hrubek now-shoot him in the upper arm and in the leg. Owen would lug him into the back of the Cherokee and drive on to Ridgeton.
And there the patient would be found, in the Atchesons’ kitchen. Owen would be sitting in the living room, staring numbly out the window, staggered by the tragedy of it all-having fired two shots to try to stop him and finally a third, a lethal, bullet, when the big man would not heed Owen’s orders to halt.
The blood in the Cherokee? Well, that was a risk. But he’d park it behind the garage. There’d be no reason for any investigators to see it, let alone have a forensics team go through the truck.
He analyzed the plan in detail, deciding that, yes, it was chancy but the risks were acceptable.
Cocking the pistol he made his way closer to the looming shape of Hrubek, who’d now finished his business and was staring up at the turbulent sky, listening to the sharp hiss of the wind in the tips of the pine trees and letting the rain fall into his face.
Owen got no further than five steps toward his prey before he heard the distinctive double snap of a pump shotgun and saw the policeman aim the muzzle at his chest.
“On the ground, freeze!” the young man’s trembling voice called.
“What are you doing?” Owen cried.
“Freeze! Drop your gun! Drop that gun!”
Then Hrubek was running, a thick dark mass fleeing toward the Cadillac.
“I’m not going to tell you again!” the cop’s voice was high with panic.
“You fucking idiot,” Owen yelled, his temper flaring. He stepped toward the cop.
The trooper lifted the shotgun higher. Owen froze and dropped the Smith & Wesson. “Okay, okay!”
The sound of the Cadillac firing to life filled the clearing. As the car sped past them, the trooper glanced in shock at the sound. Owen easily shoved the shotgun muzzle to the side and drove his right fist into the side of the trooper’s face. The young man dropped like deadweight and Owen was on him in a minute, slugging the trooper again and again, anger exploding within him. Gasping, he finally managed to control himself and looked down at the bloody face of the unconscious cop.
“Fuck,” he spat bitterly.
The sudden crack sounded some yards behind him. It seemed like a gunshot and Owen dropped into a crouch, snatching up his pistol. He heard nothing else other than the wind and the drumming of the rain. The distant horizon lit up for a moment with huge sheets of lightning.
He turned back to the cop and handcuffed the man’s wrists behind his back. He then stripped off the regulation patent-leather belt and bound the officer’s feet. He stared in disgust for a moment, wondering if the trooper had gotten a good look at him. Probably not, he concluded. It was too dark; he himself hadn’t seen the cop’s face at all. He’d most likely figure that Hrubek himself had attacked him.
Owen ran back to his truck. He closed his eyes and slammed his fist on the hood. “No!” he shouted at the wet, breezy sky. “No!”
The left front tire was flat.
He bent down and noted that the bullet that had torn through the rubber was from a medium-caliber pistol. A.38 or 9mm probably. As he hurried to get the jack and spare, he realized that in all his plans for this evening this was something that he’d never considered-that Hrubek might be inclined to defend himself.
With a gun.
They stood side by side, holding long-handled shovels, and dug like oyster fishermen beneath the brown water for their crop of gravel. Their arms were in agony from filling and lugging the sandbags earlier in the evening and they could now lift only small scoops of the marble chips, which they then poured around the sunken tires of the car for traction.
Their hair now dark, their faces glossy with the rain, they lifted mound after mound of gravel and listened with some comfort to the murmuring of the car’s engine. From the radio drifted classical music, interrupted by occasional news broadcasts, which seemed to have no relation to reality. One FM announcer-sedated by the sound of his own voice-came on the air and reported that the storm front should hit the area in an hour or two.
“Jesus Christ,” Portia shouted over the pouring rain, “doesn’t he have a window?”
Apart from this, they worked silently.
This is mad, Lis thought, as the wind slung a gallon of rain into her face. Nuts.
Yet for some reason it felt oddly natural to be standing in calf-high water beside her sister, wielding these heavy oak-handled tools. There used to be a large garden on this part of the property-before Father decided to build the garage and had the earth plowed under. For several seasons the L’Auberget girls grew vegetables here. Lis supposed that they might have stood in these very spots, raking up weeds or whacking the firm black dirt with hoes. She remembered stapling seed packets to tongue depressors and sticking them into the earth where they’d planted the seeds the envelopes contained.
“That’ll show the plants what to look like, so they’ll know how to grow,” Lis had explained to Portia, who, being four, bought this logic momentarily. They’d laughed about it afterwards and for some years vegetable pinups had been a private joke between them.
Lis wondered now if Portia too recalled the garden. Maybe, if she did, she would take the memory as proof that going into business with her sister might not be as improbable as it seemed.