Short- and long-range planning were suddenly interrupted. Through Tommy’s eyes peering through the bushes that masked the cave entrance, the mind thing saw two bobbing lights coming; through Tommy’s ears it heard the excited baying of a hound on a scent, and recognized the dog’s voice as that of Buck, Tommy’s father’s dog.
Immediately he realized what had happened. Tommy’s father had been much more worried than Tommy could have realized. (Probably Charlotte had told the whole truth—Tommy’s leaving her without his clothes would have been more puzzling and frightening than if he had wandered off clothed.) And Tommy had thought (or rather, Tommy’s mind would have thought if Tommy himself had been the one using it) that they might come to look for him tomorrow but not tonight, after dark. Tommy’s mind simply hadn’t thought at all of the possibility of Buck’s being used to track him down.
But now they were coming, two men and the dog. One of the men would be Tommy’s father, the other probably Charlotte’s father.
And the dog would lead them straight to the cave!
He had to distract them, lead them away. Even if it cost him his present host, he couldn’t let attention be drawn to the cave. They were less than a hundred yards away and were heading straight for it, the dog following Tommy’s trail.
Tommy, or Tommy’s body, jumped up and ran around the bushes and toward the approaching lanterns. He ran until he was within the circle of light of the first one and then stopped. Buck barked joyously and strained at the leash to run to him. Gus Hoffman shouted, “Tommy! What the hell—?”
Too near the cave. He turned and started to run again, diagonally away from the cave. He heard them start after him, still calling. “Tommy! Tommy, stop!” He heard Garner say, “Slip the dog’s leash. Buck can catch him.” And his father’s reply, “Sure, and run with him. We’d just lose both of them.”
He couldn’t run in a straight line because he had to keep to open areas where the moonlight would let him see. Occasionally, while they were still close enough to follow him by sight, they could take short cuts through shadow because of their lanterns, but he could run much faster and was soon outdistancing them. Then he was definitely out of their sight and knew they’d have to let Buck do the trailing again and follow his roundabout course; that would slow them down still more.
He was able to rest a moment then, to catch his breath, and when he started again it was at a fast trot instead of a sprint. He knew where he was going now, and he began to circle to take himself back to his starting point.
And from there to the place, only a very short distance away, where he had perceived the artifact (he knew now what it was, a jackknife) before the two humans had come along the path.
It was in deep grass, and in shadow. Tommy’s sense of sight didn’t help at all now, and he had to have Tommy’s hands grope and feel. It was awkward, but he knew where it was, within inches, and finally Tommy’s fingers closed over it and picked it up.
He broke one of Tommy’s thumbnails trying to open the half-length rusted blade, but finally he got it open with the other nail.
Without hesitation Tommy slashed one of his wrists, changed the knife to his other hand, and slashed the other wrist. Both cuts were deep, almost to the bone, and blood, spurted freely. He didn’t lie down, but within a minute loss of blood blacked him out and he fell heavily.
He was dead when the two men and the dog reached him. And the mind of the mind thing was safely back within itself, buried under nine inches of sand in the cave.
CHAPTER FIVE
It had been a bad night for Gus Hoffman.
He had waited with the body while Jed Garner had gone back for help. While he waited he dressed Tommy’s body in the clothes Garner had been carrying. Not because he had any intention of lying to the sheriff about how they had found Tommy, but because it just didn’t seem decent for the body to be taken in naked.
Garner went straight home. After reaching the road he passed three other farms before he came to his own, but he wanted Charlotte to be the first to know and didn’t want to tell her over a phone. She took the news more quietly than he had dared to hope, mostly because she was ready for it; she had felt instinctively from the moment she’d had to start home alone that she’d never see Tommy alive again.
Then Garner phoned the sheriff at Wilcox, the county seat, twenty miles away. The sheriff came in an ambulance to carry the body into town and, so the body could be examined quickly, he brought the coroner with him. Garner took them to the spot, and the four men, taking turns, carried Tommy out of the woods on a stretcher. Buck stayed with the party until the engine of the ambulance started; then he bolted home across the fields.
At the mortuary in Bartlesville the coroner examined the body while the sheriff talked to Hoffman and Garner. The coroner joined them to report that there was no doubt about the cause of death—loss of blood from the slashed wrists—and that the only other marks on the body were briar scratches on the legs and cuts and bruises on the bottoms of the feet. He was willing to do an autopsy if the sheriff requested it but said he didn’t see what an autopsy could possibly bring out that wasn’t already obvious.
The sheriff had gone along with that, but he said he thought an inquest should be held. There’d be no doubt about the verdict, suicide while of unsound mind, but he hoped something might be brought out that would help clear up the mystery of the reason for sudden and violent insanity in a boy who had never shown the slightest symptom even of instability. Also there was a minor mystery in the suicide weapon, the rusty, broken pocketknife. Hoffman was positive that it had never been Tommy’s. And both Hoffman and Garner swore that when they had seen Tommy briefly before he ran away from them he could not possibly have been carrying anything; his hands had been open at his sides. He must have picked up the knife where he had used it, but how could he have known it was there, or found it in the dark?
“All right,” the sheriff said, “we’ll set the inquest for two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. That okay with everybody?”
Hoffman and Garner nodded, but the coroner asked, “Why so soon, Hank?”
“Had this in mind, Doc. Something just might come out at the inquest that might change our minds about an autopsy. Of course if there is an autopsy, the sooner the better. We’ll have the inquest right here at the mortuary, good a place as any here, and there’s no use moving it over to Wilcox. And, Gus, right after the inquest you can go ahead and make funeral arrangements. As soon as convenient if there’s not going to be an autopsy—and I doubt if there will be. Who was Tommy’s doctor? Doc Gruen?”
“Yeah,” Hoffman said. “Not that Tommy saw him often. He was pretty healthy.”
“We’ll put him on the stand anyway. And maybe some of Tommy’s teachers—but I’ll check with them first, see if they ever noticed anything unusual that ought to go in the record. No use calling them if they haven’t.”
He turned to Garner. “Uh—Jed. Charlotte’ll have to testify. I’ll go as easy on her as I can, but it’ll have to be brought out that Tommy was naked when he went off. To show he was—uh—off his rocker even then and didn’t leave her for any sane reason like being mad at her, and then go off his rocker after. But what I’m getting at is—I can clear the court, except for the coroner’s jury, while we take her testimony. Want me to?”