Keith looked around the kitchen, noting its cleanliness and orderliness. He opened the refrigerator and saw that it was nearly empty, which was probably not the way it usually was. Clearly, the Baxters were gone and were not coming back for some time.
He opened the basement door and went down the stairs. He found the den and turned on the lights. A few dozen animal heads were mounted on the walls, and he noted the gun rack that could hold twelve rifles or shotguns. It was completely empty.
He went upstairs again and glanced into the dining room and living room, again noting how clean and tidy everything was. He opened the coat closet in the foyer and saw that there was only one man's civilian trench coat and one police uniform topcoat and two ladies overcoats. All the casual and cold weather outerwear was missing.
Keith went upstairs and glanced into a boy's bedroom and a girl's bedroom, then into a room that was a home office. He went into the office and rummaged around, pulled some Rolodex cards, then left. He found the master bedroom and opened the two closets. Again, only dress clothes hung on the poles, and whatever casual and outdoor clothes and footwear there may have been were gone. In Cliff Baxter's closet were four neat police uniforms — two summer and two winter, along with the accessory shoes, hats, and belts. The bureau drawers were pulled open, and most of the underwear was gone. Keith had a pretty good idea where they had gone, and by the looks of what they'd taken, Baxter intended to be away a long time, perhaps forever. Most important — if her missing clothes were a true indication, it appeared that Annie was alive and that he intended to keep her alive.
Keith went into the master bathroom and saw that the medicine cabinet was open. There was a bloody towel on the sink, blood in the washbasin, and on the counter were a box of gauze, a bandage roll, and a bottle of iodine. On the floor was Baxter's tan uniform, the trousers stained with dried blood.
An inch or so to the left or right, Keith thought, maybe a half inch deeper, and he'd have severed the femoral. Better yet, if he'd reached Toledo Airport an hour earlier, they'd be in Washington now. And if he hadn't gone with Adair to Washington on Thursday, he and Annie would be in Rome by now. And so on and so forth. It didn't do any good to dwell on the bad timing; the important thing was that he and Annie were alive and fate had given them one more chance to be together.
He picked up Baxter's bloody trousers from the floor and went back into the master bedroom. Like most of the house, it had sort of a country look — oak furniture, hooked rugs, chintz curtains, and dried flowers. It struck him that Annie, despite her bad marriage, or perhaps because of it, had taken a great deal of time and trouble with the house, the small details, the touches of hominess and warmth. He supposed she did it out of pride, or out of a need to present a normal setting for her children or her friends and family, but also out of a longing for a life and a marriage that in some small way reflected the surroundings she'd created of home and hearth, peace and caring. Keith, for some reason, found it all very sad and troubling.
There was no great need to be here, he knew, and the risk probably outweighed whatever information he could gather. But he knew he had to come here, to be a voyeur and peek into the lives of Cliff and Annie Baxter, two people who, more than any others, had so profoundly changed and influenced his life.
Cliff Baxter, who as a schoolmate had never been invited into the Landry home, had very recently broken into it and, in some way, Keith reflected, that violation was more flagrant than Baxter's burning of the house, or even what had happened in the motel room. Keith had no intention of burning the Baxter house down, because it was filled with Annie's things and her children's things. But he felt that he had to leave behind some evidence of his presence, some mark of contempt — though not, he thought, for Cliff Baxter to see, because Keith had decided that Baxter would never see this house again. But he wanted to do something for himself, and for the record.
Keith examined his handiwork in the living room. Sitting in the wing-back chair was Baxter's bloody uniform, stuffed with towels and linens, and protruding from the neck of the uniform shirt was the stuffed head of a wolf.
Keith told himself he wasn't crazy, that the blow to the head had not affected his judgment. But neither was he the same man he had been before Cliff Baxter came crashing through the door of the motel room. Keith stared at the wolf head atop the uniform. The white teeth and the glassy eyes mesmerized him for a moment, and he knew that to kill that thing, he would have to become that thing. Clearly, his better angels had been chased away, and he felt the dark wolf rising again in his heart.
"You get what you needed?" Chuck asked.
"Yes."
"Off to Lima?"
"A few more stops first."
Keith directed him out to the commercial strip and into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. Keith took sixty dollars out of his pocket and handed it to Chuck. "Take this for now."
"That's okay, John. I know you're good for it."
Keith put the money on the dashboard. "You just never know, Chuck. Go get yourself something to eat. You have some change?"
"Sure." Chuck handed him a pocketful of loose change, and Keith got out and went to the phone booth, while Chuck went into the convenience store. Keith took one of the Rolodex cards out of his pocket and dialed. He wasn't feeling appreciably better physically, but mentally he was much better, sure she was alive, though not letting himself think of what she was going through.
"Hello?"
"Terry, it's me."
"Oh, my God! Keith, Keith, where are you?"
"I'm on the road. Where is Annie?"
"I don't know. They came back to Spencerville, she called me and said they were going away to spend time together and talk it out. She said they were going to Florida."
Keith knew they hadn't packed for Florida. "How did she sound?"
"It was all a lie. Damn him, he probably had a gun to her head. That bastard. I called the police here in Chatham, but they said they can't do a thing without proof, and I should call Spencerville..."
"I know. Terry, listen, I'm going to find her and bring her back. Tell me where you think they really went."
"Grey Lake."
"I think so, too. Did she give you any clue on the phone?"
There was a silence, then Terry said, "Yeah, she said something... something about driving through Atlanta on the way, and afterward I remembered that Atlanta is also the name of the county seat in Montmorency County in Michigan on the way to Grey Lake. I think that's where they really went, but I called up there a few times and only got the answering machine. So I don't know..."
"Okay. I think that's it."
"Larry wants to drive up there..."
"No. Baxter is armed and dangerous. I'll take care of it through the local police up there."
"The police won't do anything, Keith. She's his wife. That's what they keep telling me."
"I'll take care of it."
"What happened? I thought you were about to get on a plane?"
"It's a long story, but basically we were stopped by the police."
"Damn!"
"Right. But she was all right when they took her away."
"I don't think she's all right now. My father has been hounding the state police, and he's gotten a lawyer, but... I can't believe that bastard could just kidnap her..."
"When did she call you?"
"Monday night, about six. She said she changed her mind about going with you and that she and Cliff were home and they'd spent the day together at home, packed, and were about to drive to Florida. She said she'd called the kids at school and told them everything was fine, and that she and their father were going on vacation. But I called her kids after I heard from her, and they said they never heard from their mother — it was their father who called early in the morning. So then I called Annie back, but the damn call rang at police headquarters, and I asked them what the hell was going on, and they said the Baxter calls were being automatically forwarded... so then my father went to the police station, and they told him Cliff and Annie went to Florida. It's all a lot of bull."