Shirts and pants were piled on the shelves, cans of food, tools. There was a shelf of books, including catalogues from Sears and Montgomery Ward. Cooley looked at the titles. "Grimm's Fairy Tales." "Wild Life of the Pacific Northwest." "Camping and Woodcraft."
On the broad shelf behind the camp chair there was a kerosene lamp, a half-finished wood carving, a stack of papers. Cooley picked up the top sheet and looked at it in the beam of the flashlight. It was an airletter with a foreign stamp, addressed to "J. Hawkins, Route 1, Dog City, Oregon, U.S.A." He turned it over. "Dear Pen Pal! I am well, how are you? Here in Lucerne the weather is fine. Soon I will to go on my vacation trip in Austria."
Cooley put the letter down. He moved the camp chair to the side of the room, took out his revolver and pushed the safety off, turned off the flashlight and sat down to wait.
Jerry was sitting behind a cluster of vine maple stems with his back against a tree and the Enfield in his lap. His butt was cold, and there was a rock or a root under him whichever way he shifted. He looked at his wristwatch; he had been here almost an hour.
Brush crackled a few yards away, and when he looked up he saw the kid climbing the tree with some kind of parcel in his hand. Jerry rolled over to one knee and stood up, but a twig cracked under his foot and the kid looked around. He was just hanging there, one leg and one arm up, looking down over his shoulder with a frightened expression. Jerry had to make up his mind in a hurry, because in another second it might be too late. He got the bead in the notch of the peep-sight, centered on the kid's back just under the shoulderblade, squeezed the trigger. He saw the kid go over, arms and legs flying, and heard him hit with a solid thump at the base of the tree. He scrambled over there. The kid was lying on his back, blood all over the front of his shirt, but his eyes were open and focused; he was alive. Hell! said Jerry to himself, but there was no other way on God's earth now, and he aimed the rifle again. A piercing pain struck him in the chest, and he felt himself floating away light as a leaf on a dark wind.
Chapter Five
Cooley heard the shot, swore, and butted his way out of the tree house. He saw the kid at the base of the tree, but had only a glance to spare him, because Jerry was lying on the slope a few yards away, spread-eagled on the ground, jerking and twitching like a rag doll on a string. Cooley got down the tree as fast as he could and knelt beside him. Jerry's eyes were rolled back in their sockets; his skin was turning blue. The jerking of his limbs stopped with a final shudder. His face turned darker until it was indigo blue, the color of ink, color of venous blood. His pants-leg was wet, and there was a fecal smell. Cooley had seen dead men before, and knew better, but he unbuttoned Jerry's shirt and put his hand on his chest.
After a minute he stood up and looked at the kid. Blood was pulsing out through the wet spot on his shirt and there was more of it spattered over the brush behind him. His eyes were closed, mouth open. His skin was yellowish-white. Not dead yet, but soon.
"Jesus Christ." said Cooley, and hit the tree with his fist. He sat down and put his head in his hands; warm tears were leaking out of his eyes. What the hell was he going to do now, leave both bodies there and just walk away? Pretend he didn't know a thing about it? That would be too much of a coincidence. What a hell of a time for a heart attack. They might not find the bodies here for years, maybe never, but he couldn't count on that. Then there was Steve Logan, the mailman -- would he keep his mouth shut?
He took a deep breath and stood up. He leaned over and got his revolver from the ground where he had dropped it, put it away in the holster. He knelt beside Jerry's body again, buttoned up his shirt. He reached into Jerry's jacket, found the Police Special, flicked the safety off, and stood up. Supporting his wrist with his other hand, he aimed straight down at Jerry's chest and pulled the trigger. The body jumped once more. Cooley turned away, hiccuping. When he could see straight again, he went to the boy's body and dipped up some blood on his finger. He smeared the blood carefully on the ragged little hole in Jerry's shirt and on the chest underneath. He wiped his finger on the dirt and leaves at the base of the tree, then put the safety back on the revolver and wiped it all over with the tail of his shirt. Holding the gun by the barrel, he put it carefully into the boy's left hand, then his right, closing the index finger over the trigger, thumb on the frame. He wiped the barrel again, nudged the safety off, and dropped the gun beside the boy. Blood was still welling from the kid's chest, but more slowly.
Cooley walked out of the woods, got into his car and drove to the nearest farmhouse to telephone. The Memorial Hospital sent an ambulance and four men with stretchers. When they got to the tree house a little after two, Jerry's body was still there but the kid's wasn't: there was nothing under the tree but a roll of magazines tied up with string, and a splatter of blood in the brush. One of the men knelt over Jerry's body. "He's dead."
"Well, leave him there for the sheriff. Help me find the other one, would you?"
The four of them and Cooley hunted up and down the slope, but they didn't find a thing, not even a drop of blood on a leaf to show which way the kid had gone.
Cooley went back to the farmhouse again to telephone. Old Mrs. Gambrell, who owned the place, was quite excited; Cooley had to put one hand over his ear because she kept saying in a loud voice, "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" He called the sheriff's office and was told that they had already been notified by the hospital and the sheriff was on his way out. Cooley hung up and called the state police. He described the missing boy and said, "I need some road blocks, west and east of Dog River and south on route thirty-five." The duty officer said he would see what he could do.
Cooley, fretting, went back to the county road and waited until Sheriff Beach turned up. Beach was a tall, pale-eyed man in his early fifties, running a little to fat. He nodded to Cooley when he got out of his car. "Is it Jerry?" he asked. "How'd it happen?"
"Kid was living in a tree house in the woods. We staked it out -- he shot Jerry. Jerry shot him, too, but he got away."
"Uh-huh. How'd you know the kid was there?"
"Got a tip from Steve Logan."
"Uh-huh," said Beach. When they got to the tree house, Beach gave it one curious glance and then hunkered down beside Jerry's body. He looked at the bullet wound. "Shot in the heart."
"That's right."
"And where were you?"
"Up in the tree house, waiting for the kid."
"'Bout what time was that?"
"Little after one."
"Uh-huh. So you heard the shot, come down and the kid was gone?"
"No, he was laying there too, shot, and I thought he was dead. But when I come back from phoning, he was gone."
Beach took several photographs of the body, then turned. The revolver lay beside the splatter of blood in the bushes: a short-barreled Smith & Wesson, blued steel, with a brown grip. It was an old gun; the bluing was partly worn off around the cylinder. "And that's where the kid was?" said Beach. "Jerry shoots him, he falls right there, drops his gun. Now, where's Jerry's gun?"
Cooley looked around. "I never thought," he said. "Jesus, this is an awful thing."
They found the rifle suspended muzzle down in a stand of young vine maple two yards away. "Looks like he must have throwed his arms up when he got hit," Beach said. He photographed the rifle without touching it, then took several more pictures of the revolver where it lay.
"Let's see if I've got this straight," he said. "Jerry's here, hiding in the brush." He stood beside the sprawled body. "Kid comes up over there -- you be the kid, Tom."