Now I was ready for another search of the place, a slow and methodical one this time. I started with the first bedroom, as I had before, looking for something, anything, that would give me a lead to the identity and whereabouts of the whisperer. And I found something, out on the rear porch-the last area I searched. It wasn’t anything definite, but it was more than I had expected to find. And I had started past investigations with much less.
Studded on the front of the water heater, just above the control panel, was a little metal plate with words stamped into it: RITE-WAY PLUMBING AND HEATING, 187 SLUICEBOX LANE, SONORA, CA. The heater didn’t look to be more than seven or eight years old; plumbing contractors usually keep records dating back that far. If Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating was still in business-big if, these days-the people there could probably tell me who owned the cabin, or at least who had owned it when the water heater was installed.
The plate gave me something else, too: confirmation of my guess about the general location of this place. Sonora was a town in the central Mother Lode, east of Stockton. Too low in the Sierra foothills to be getting this much snow, which meant that the cabin was situated at a higher elevation; but it still had to be close enough to Sonora to warrant a contractor from there being called in to do its plumbing. Somewhere off Highway 108, maybe… no, too populated up that way, too many ski resorts, until you got up as far as Pinecrest. There was another state road, I couldn’t remember the number, to the north of Sonora, out of Angels Camp; its upper reaches were closed in the winter, but the lower sections around Murphys and Arnold ought to be passable except when the snowfall was unusually heavy. And that area was sparsely populated at this time of year.
It was near dusk by this time and I realized I was hungry. An hour ago, the thought of food would have made me gag; now I craved something to eat. I made myself go back into the cell, open cans, put water on to heat, mix the last of the Spam with a can of spaghetti and put that on to heat. When the food was ready I took it and a cup of tea over to the bed, put another log on the fire, and sat in the heat to sip and chew and swallow. Before I was finished, darkness closed around the cabin, blackout-thick. The fireglow created weird, restive shadows in the room that made me think of demons and hungry things creeping, made me edgy enough to get up and turn on the lamp. Afraid of the dark, afraid of firelight. Just two of the things he’d done to me… two of the more minor things.
After a while I took off coat, blanket, filthy sport jacket, and cardboard insulation, and lay down on the bed with the comforter over me. I wasn’t sleepy; the edginess was still inside me. I lay watching the fire, with thoughts running around and around in my head, running into each other and caroming off until a pressure built up and started a pounding in my temples. I got up and paced for a while. Remembered I hadn’t done my nightly exercises-no sense abandoning the program now-and went through an hour’s worth of calisthenics, working up a good sweat in the heat from the fire. I felt better then, calmer, calm enough to turn off the lamp before I got back into the bed.
My thoughts were sharper now, less chaotic. Some of them: What if he decides to come back again tonight? Not much chance of it, with the weather being what it is and all the snow on the ground… but suppose he managed it? He’d see the fireglow, he’d know I was free-would he come in after me or would he run? And if he ran, suppose it was far enough so that I might never find him? No, he couldn’t run that far. I’ll find him no matter where he is, where he goes. Let him come tonight. Let him come tomorrow night or any other night between now and the day I find him, let him discover I’ve escaped. Better that way, much better. Let him know I’m free, let him know I’m after him, let him live with fear for a while…
Eventually I tried to direct my mind away from him, to focus on Kerry and Eberhardt and going home again, but he kept getting in the way. He was like a parasite growing inside me, some kind of poisonous fungus that had to be destroyed before I could even begin to think about resuming my old way of life.
First things first. Tomorrow first, escape first. I wasn’t out of the woods yet… ha! I wasn’t, for a fact. It was probably better than a mile to the nearest neighbor, more miles to the nearest town, and at that I couldn’t just walk up to somebody’s door, looking and smelling as I did. I’d be turned away, or somebody would insist on calling a doctor or the authorities. Contact with a law-enforcement agency was the last thing I wanted right now-word to get out that I was alive and of my ordeal. Avoid people, except in case of an emergency, until I got myself cleaned up and presentable again-that was a priority item. There would be a way to manage it. There are ways to do just about anything if you’re determined enough.
And after the outside of me was spruced up so that I didn’t frighten women and little children? Visit the neighbors then, find out if any of them knew anything? No. It would take too much time, and chances were it wouldn’t get me anywhere. Most mountain cabins are deserted in winter; and people who do choose to live in one year-round like their privacy and aren’t always acquainted with their neighbors, especially if the neighbors are summer residents and haven’t occupied a place in more than a year. Even if somebody could supply a name it was doubtful he’d have a current address to go with it, or any idea of where the owner could be found.
Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating was my best bet, at least for starters. If it turned out to be a dead end, then I could come back up here, wherever here actually was, and begin canvassing other homes in the area.
One way or another, I would find out who the whisperer was and then I would find him.
And then I would kill him.
Bad night.
Dreams, ugly and distorted and mercifully unclear. I woke up once sweating and believing I was still shackled to the wall, and something like a wail came out of me before I groped at my left ankle, felt nothing there, separated illusion from reality. Another time I came awake thinking I had heard something, thinking he’d come back, he was there in the cabin with me. I jumped out of bed and caught up a piece of cordwood and prowled the rooms for ten minutes, listening to night sounds and the cry of the wind. Nobody here but me. I ached when I finally accepted that: I couldn’t put an end to it here and now, in the very same execution chamber he had built for me.
Bad night, yes, but I had had so many bad nights. And it didn’t really matter anyway.
All that mattered was that I was free.
The Second Day
Eight-thirty A.M.
Cold and gray again today. More snow had fallen during the night-there was a layer of fresh, ice-filmed powder over everything-and there would probably be more flurries before the day was finished. Dry out there now, though, and not much wind.
I turned away from the window, restless and impatient to be on my way, to put distance between myself and this place. But there were preparations to be made first. And I wanted the temperature to rise a little higher, to take the knife edge off the chill of night and early morning.
I put water on to boil for tea, opened the last two cans of chili and emptied them into the saucepan, and set that on the other burner to heat. I had no appetite but it would be foolish to go out into that snowy wilderness without fueling up beforehand.
The snowshoes caught my eye. I went and got them, sat on the bed to see how they fitted on my feet-something I should have done yesterday. The foot straps on both were all right, but on one the things that evidently fastened around the ankles were badly frayed; one good tug and they would break. Was there something among the clutter on the rear porch that I could use to replace or reinforce them?