He’d given a lot of thought to what to add to Kathryn’s present. Something just for her; the pharmacist and their brat were incidental. The devices for Cotter and Turnbull and Dixon had been easy to arrange, but Kathryn was a different story. Had to be just right. He’d discarded half a hundred possibilities before he made his selections, and as soon as he thought of each, he knew it was perfect.
She’d taken everything from him; she’d gotten all the marbles. Okay, then, he’d give her two hundred more than she bargained for — two hundred cheap glass marbles from a toy store in Half Moon Bay, the kind that would fly apart in a million fragments from the force of the blast.
What else do you give an unfaithful bitch for her final sendoff? Why, a bagful of rancid bones, of course. Soup bones that would splinter and gouge and tear the same as the marbles.
Too bad he couldn’t tell her beforehand what she was getting. Too bad she’d never know. Always accusing him of not having a sense of humor. Well, this proved different, didn’t it? He had a terrific sense of humor, much better than hers.
Kathryn would get a bang out of her present, all right.
And then he’d have the last laugh.
tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...
Dixon drove too fast, twenty and twenty-five miles an hour faster than was safe on the twisty mountain road; braking hard on the curves, recklessly passing the two other cars he rushed up behind. And he bad to fight the urge to increase his speed even more. Any faster, and he was liable to wrap the station wagon around a tree, send it hurtling off the road into one of the canyons, and what good would he be to Marian and Chuck then?
What if he was already too late —
No. Don’t think it, it isn’t so.
Where in God’s name had Sago hidden the bomb? Boathouse or storage shed, one or the other — had to be. Both padlocks missing, he must’ve been looking for something in one that wasn’t there, and so he’d gone to the other. But what? Some kind of container for the boobytrap? And what would initiate it? Tripwire, triggering mechanism attached to a box lid, something else entirely? The can of pork and beans that had come flying off the shelf when he’d pulled on the bread board... a bomb could be initiated that way, too. Usually bomb type and packaging and initiating mechanisms followed a pattern, part of the bomber’s signature, but Sago had varied the first two, and that made the third problematical.
Marian, Chuck stay away from the boathouse, the storage shed.
Don’t be hurt — please don’t be hurt.
Four more miles to go. He felt cold and feverish at the same time, a prickling on his skin as though it had sprouted stubble, his insides so knotted up that even his bones seemed tight. A gritty sweat kept stinging his eyes; he blinked and rubbed constantly to clear his vision.
Leonard Sago. He remembered him now, all too well. Classic profile of a bomber: intelligent but skewed and illogical in his thought processes; sociopathic tendencies; and a paramilitary attitude toward life. Owned guns, including a couple of semi-automatic weapons; even had a subscription to Soldier of Fortune. Workaholic, too, to the point of exhaustion. Add all of that together, and you had a ticking bomb in human form. His wife’s infidelity had been the first trigger. But the boobytraps aimed at her lover were only a partial release; Sago had been capable of more and greater violence, a fact made evident by his attitude and behavior. They could have plea-bargained if he’d been willing to accept psychiatric help, but Sago refused to admit he had a problem, wouldn’t even let his attorney plead temporary insanity. No choice but to go after him hard, put him away where he couldn’t harm his wife or her boyfriend or an innocent bystander. Except that the prison time had been counterproductive, had made him worse instead of better. True psychopath now. Sharpened steel rods... good God! His hatred must be an inferno, all-consuming, for him to contrive a horror like that.
What horror did he contrive for me?
No, don’t even...
Wait, those other bombs...
Tripwire, sharpened rods. Glimmer of a connection, and of a connection to something else, but I can’t quite... Think, think!
Gone.
Dammit, how much farther? Two miles.
Please don’t be hurt.
Please.
tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...
Still no report on the radio about Dixon.
Didn’t mean anything; he just hadn’t opened his present yet. Or if he had, way up there in the Sierra foothills, the media hadn’t had time to get wind of it. Pretty soon now, either way. Pretty soon. Nothing to worry about.
The chief prosecutor wouldn’t get off the hook.
Ha! No, he sure wouldn’t. Chuckling, Sago paused in his work on Kathryn’s package to visualize what Dixon would look like after the blast. So much quieter, so much more bloody fetching than he had been in the courtroom. Strutting around during the trial like a rooster in a barnyard. Demanding that the jury convict Mr. Sago, demanding that Mr. Sago be given the maximum penalties as prescribed by law.
Well, Mr. Dixon, now I’m the one doing the demanding. I demand that you receive the maximum penalty for your crimes, as prescribed by Leonard Sago.
I demand that you be blown up, torn up, and spend eternity strutting your stuff in the Pit.
tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick... tick...
They were all right, still all right.
No explosion, no fire, everything lakeside normal and quiet in the heat-drowsy afternoon.
He saw that much from the top of Deer Hill, with a thrust of relief so acute it blew his breath out in a grunting sigh. But the relief lasted for only a few seconds. He still had to get down there, round up Marian and Chuck... they were still in harm’s way.
He barreled the station wagon through the hill’s snake turns, skidded onto the lake road. Their parking platform appeared ahead; he could just make out the cabin’s roof through the trees. He braked hard as he came up on the platform, cut the wheel too sharply, and almost lost control as the wagon bumped off the road onto the pine-needled boards; the front bumper cracked against the low back wall. He shut down the engine, tried to run as soon as he was out. But he’d been driving under such tension that the muscles in his legs and upper body were constricted. His right knee cramped as he came around behind the wagon toward the stairs. He would have fallen if the railing hadn’t been there to catch his outthrust hands.
He saw Chuck in his first quick scan below. The boy was standing in the open door to the boathouse, looking up at him, held there by the unexpected tire and engine noise and the bumper hitting the wall. When he recognized his father, he waved and turned to go inside.
“Chuck! No!”
Another wave, and he vanished.
Dixon flung himself down the stairs, hobbling until he reached solid ground, then running with speed as the cramped leg muscle unknotted. Chuck was doing something inside the boathouse: shifting sounds of metal on wood. The skiff — moving the skiff. The door seemed to rush at Dixon as if it and not he were being propelled; he caught its edge, levered his body around it and inside, squinting to see in the dim light.