And then this delusion vanished.
He could fight it no longer. He lost all conception of the controls and it was the pedal on the right upon which he stamped his huge foot in an effort to stop the skid. He covered his eyes, howled a plea for help and kept his foot to the floorboard as the car disappeared into a low stand of juniper and began turning over and over and over.
23
You’ve got this thing to do ahead of you…
Owen Atcheson remembered his platoon lieutenant looking steel-eyed and crazed from hits of local funny-dust but sounding calm as a college professor. “You’ve got this thing ahead of you, and you’ve got to go out and meet it…”
Owen and three other Marines more often than not rolled their eyes at this pep talk. But, inspired by it nonetheless, they then clipped on their gear and blackened their faces and disappeared into the jungle to cut the throats of thin soldiers or murder politicians with silenced pistols or rig gelignite and C4 satchel charges.
Owen thought of those times now-as he stood on the ridge of a hill, looking at the antique Cadillac that sat upright, its roof half-staved in and windows spidered with fractures, one parking lamp the only light that had survived the crash. He opened the cylinder of his gun. He’d owned revolvers all his life and, fastidious about safety, had always kept the chamber under the hammer empty. He now loaded a sixth shell into the gun and swung the cylinder closed. He started toward the car. The incline was steep and Owen needed one hand to steady himself as he climbed down to a low hedge.
He felt a stunning exhilaration and told himself that he shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. The thrill diminished when he recalled that Hrubek was armed and saw that there was no way to approach the car under cover. It had crashed through a line of juniper and tumbled for thirty feet into the center of a grassy clearing.
The rain wasn’t heavy and the wind was subdued; his approach would be noisy. And Hrubek-assuming his injuries hadn’t prevented him from doing so-had also had plenty of time to establish a defensive position. Owen considered tactics for a moment then decided not to bother with a cautious approach. He clutched the gun hard, inhaled long then ran at top speed, ready to aim and shoot from a tumbling position. As he sped across the grass, a primitive howl bubbled in his throat and he suppressed the urge to let this grow into the Marines’ battle cry.
He charged the car straight on and slid into the grass like a runner stealing home, ending up behind the rear bumper. The muddy leaves scattered by his run settled around him and he looked about frantically. The rear windshield was less obscured than the others but he still was unable to tell if Hrubek was inside. He crouched, using the trunk as cover, and looked behind the car.
Nothing.
He moved toward the rear door…
Underneath!
Owen dropped to his stomach with a grunt and aimed the gun under the car. A shattered pipe hung like an arm and startled him but Hrubek wasn’t hiding there. He stood and breathed deeply several times then switched his gun to his left hand and yanked the car’s right rear door open.
Empty. The Cadillac held no evidence of Michael Hrubek other than a smell of animallike musk and sweat and fragments of shattered animal skulls-like the one Hrubek had left on the woman’s lap in the house in Cloverton. The keys were in the ignition.
Owen stood and looked around him. The spongy leaves had left no footprints and there was no sign of blood or other trail. Owen stepped behind the Cadillac and turned his back to it as he scanned the vast forest, damp and gray and dark. His heart fell. He knew how hard it was to track on wet leaves and through dark woods. And after an accident this bad Hrubek might be disoriented or stunned and could wander pointlessly in any direction. He might-
The trunk!
Owen cocked the gun and spun on his heels, aiming at the broad dented plain of metal-a perfect hiding place. The trunk was secured by a keyhole button but-since the Caddie was an older car-it did not automatically lock. Owen approached. He touched the cold chrome latch, pushed it in. The mechanism snapped open. He pulled the lid up and leapt back.
The spacious trunk had ample room for someone as large as Michael Hrubek. But it did not in fact contain him.
Owen turned toward the forest and in a crouch ran to the closest opening in the tall fence of brush and trees. In an instant he was swallowed up by the cold darkness around him. He shone his shielded flashlight on the ground in a slow U pattern. After ten minutes he found two of Hrubek’s boot prints. They led deeper into the forest. He smelled pine in the damp air. The psycho might have headed out of the deciduous trees and Owen would find a clear trail in pine needles. He had proceeded only thirty feet when he heard a thud and a snap nearby-a careless footstep, it seemed.
He aimed his pistol toward the sound.
Owen gauged his footsteps perfectly and placed them on foliage-free ground, making no noise as he moved. He crouched, pistol in front of him, and stepped onto the bed of fragrant needles.
The man was sitting on a fallen tree trunk and massaging his outstretched leg, as if taking a break on a Sunday-afternoon hike.
“Looks like we just missed him,” the lanky man in a New York Mets cap said to Owen, looking up without a trace of surprise in his face. “So you’re the other bounty hunter. Guess we got a few things to talk about.”
The woman was thirty-six years old and had lived in this prim little bungalow all her life, the past six of those years, after her mother’s death, alone. She hadn’t seen her father since the day the old man got his other daughter pregnant, was arrested for it and taken away. One week after the trial the sister too moved away.
The woman’s life consisted of filling cartons with electronic circuit boards that did something she had no desire to understand, of lunch with one or two fellow workers, sewing, and-for entertainment-church and the newspaper on the day of rest, and television on the other six.
The house was an island of caution and simplicity in a grassy clearing carved out of what had been one of the oldest forests in the Northeast. The half acre of grass was almost a perfect circle and was marred only by a rusted hull of a pickup that would never go anywhere under its own power and a doorless refrigerator her father had been meaning to cart to the dump one Saturday morning ten years ago when he chose instead to pay a visit to his daughter’s bedroom.
Blonde, thin and fragile, the woman had a plain face and a good figure though on the rare occasions when she and a few girlfriends went to the rocky beach at Indian Leap or the riverside at Klamath Falls, she would wear a high-necked swimsuit that she’d bought mail-order so she wouldn’t have to try it on in a store. She dated some-mostly men she met at church-though she rarely enjoyed the outings and had recently started to think of herself, with some comfort, as a spinster.
Tonight she’d just finished preparing a bedtime snack of Jell-O with mandarin oranges and a cup of hot milk, when she heard the noise in the yard. She walked to the window and saw nothing other than blowing leaves and rain then returned to the maple dining table.
She sat down, said grace and put her napkin in her lap then lifted a spoonful of Jell-O as she opened TV Guide.
The knocking on the front door seemed to shake the whole house. The spoon fell to the table and the gelatin-cube wobbled off her lap then escaped onto the floor. She stood abruptly and shouted, “Yes, who is it?”
“I’m hurt. I had an accident. Can you help me?”
It was a man’s voice.
She hesitated, walked to the front door, hesitated again then opened it as far as the chain allowed. The big fellow was bent over, clutching his arm. He seemed like a working man.