Kilduff had the overcoat off now, and he closed the gap between himself and Drexel to twenty yards ... fifteen ... ten. They were on a wide expanse of neighboring lawn, on a cushiony surface dotted with rain ponds that glistened dancing silver highlights in the scintillation from the fanning, clinging flames. Kilduff overtook Drexel and threw the overcoat around him, the screams piercing his skin like long sharp needles, and pulled him down onto the wet grass. He held the overcoat around him, trying to smother the flames, his hands locked together at Drexel’s belt, feeling the heat scorch his body through the heavy cloth. And then they were rolling over and over through the cold, wet grass and Kilduff was able to gain his knees beside Drexel, smelling the stench of burned hair and burned flesh, and vomit came up into his throat and gagged him. He pulled the overcoat back, and the flames had given way to rising puffs of blackly acrid smoke; but Kilduff kept rolling him back and forth on the puddled grass for a long, long time.
When he finally stopped, he could hear screaming again, from close behind him, and he knew it was the girl in the raincoat. He shut his eyes and opened them again and looked down at the charred, smoking body, looked down at it long enough to confirm what he already knew —that the man was Larry Drexel—and then he turned away and let the vomit come boiling out of his throat.
Light flooded over him as he rose to wipe his mouth, and a frightened woman’s voice said, “I’ve called the police and the fire department—is that Mr. Drexel, is he dead?—oh dear Lord, I saw him running on fire...”
“Shut off that light,” Kilduff said. “Shut it the hell off.”
The light went off, and there was the sound of a door slamming. Kilduff got his arm under Drexel’s head and lifted it up; with his other hand he found one of the wrists, still hot, and probed for a pulsebeat. He couldn’t find one, and he thought that Drexel was dead; but then he realized the two terrible black-white things which had once been eyes were staring at him and somehow seeing him, somehow recognizing him, and the black gashed thing which had once been a mouth was working around a protruding tongue. Dry, brittle sounds came out, the sounds of twigs snapping in the darkness of a forest, and after that there were words, unrecognizable at first, but Kilduff put his ear very close to Drexel’s mouth and he could understand some of them.
“Helgerman . . . listen . . . Helgerman . . . ”
Kilduff wanted to vomit again. He wanted the girl behind him to stop screaming. He wanted to turn and run, get away from there, far, far away. But he said, “Don’t try to talk, Larry,” in a voice that was strangely gentle, strangely calm. “Don’t try to talk.”
But Drexel’s mouth continued to work, and the brittle sounds that became words reached Kilduff’s ears again. “Helgerman . . . dead . . . long-time dead.”
And the brittle sounds ceased, and there was a single, barely audible, undeniably final exhalation of breath, and the blackened lump of flesh which had been Larry Drexel died shuddering in Kilduff’s arms.
Orange Thursday
14
Thursday morning, 3:45 A.M.
Twin Peaks lay quiet and empty under an enveloping shroud of high, drifting fog and thinly cold rain-mist. The steep, winding expanse of Caveat Way was very dark, with only a single, pale-aureoled street lamp burning a half block from where the seemingly empty Ford Mustang was parked between two other cars.
But in the shadowed driver’s seat, slumped down beneath the wheel until his eyes were on a level with the sill of the closed window, the limping man sat nervously waiting. On the seat beside him lay the American Tourister briefcase, the catches unfastened, the .44 Ruger Magnum resting just inside the joined halves. His eyes were watchful, probing now and then the silhouetted darkness which blanketed the glass entranceway to Orange’s apartment building diagonally across the street.
He remained absolutely motionless, save for a soft, quick, nervous drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. As he waited, he let his mind drift briefly to the recent events in Los Gatos.
He hadn’t seen the actual immolation of Green, but the sweeping wall of fire flashing toward him had been enough; Green had not survived the holocaust. As for his own escape, he had accomplished that without incident. It had taken him only a matter of seconds to clear the stone-and-mortar wall at the rear of the patio and to make his way quickly down the bank to the creek bed. No one had seen him, he was certain of that. The dead-end street had still been as dark and deserted as when he had left it, and the cross-street was likewise void of traffic when he took the rented Mustang onto it moments later. He had debated driving around to San Amaron Drive to see first-hand what had happened, but had decided against that almost immediately; there was no use inviting unnecessary risk.
So it had all gone very nicely.
Now there was only the problem of Orange.
As he had driven back toward San Francisco, the limping man had considered his original plan. He did not care for the fact that Orange lived in an apartment in a well-populated area; not at all like Green, who lived in a residential neighborhood that afforded such safety factors as the swallowing darkness of the creek bed and the walled-in patio and the dead-end street. Reaching Orange in the sanctity of his apartment building, in the limiting surroundings of San Francisco itself, would be dimcult—perhaps even foolhardy.
But Orange had to die—tonight, no later than dawn if at all possible.
He had considered the choices, the potentialities, and that fact was irrefutable. The proximity of Orange to Yellow and Green demanded the urgency, for there was no way of knowing if Orange knew of Yellow’s death—he wouldn’t know of Green’s as yet—or of the deaths of Blue and Red and Gray. There was no way of determining if Orange suspected strongly or even mildly that he, too, was a target. The idea would certainly have occurred to him if he was aware of the facts. And if he did suspect anything amiss, there was no way, either, of determining what he would do when he learned of Green’s death.
Would he run?
Would he hide, arm himself, wait it out?
Would he go to the police?
If he ran, or if he hid, he could be found again; but that would take time. It would take time, too, if Orange tried to wait him out—something that couldn’t be accomplished. If Orange went to the police, it was possible that things would be much worse; it wasn’t likely that that would be the case because Orange couldn’t be certain of what was happening, even though he might suspect, and because of his complicity in the robbery eleven years ago. It would be a last resort, a panic move, but you couldn’t get inside a man’s mind to find out his breaking point. And if Orange did go to the police, and a thorough investigation was instigated, there was the possibility of discovery, always that possibility.
Another thing which had been a strong influence on the limping man’s decision was the factor of time. He was tired of waiting—he had waited long enough, much too long—and there was only one man left now, one out of six. He wanted it to end, wanted it to be done now, finished, over with.
So to protect himself, and to appease himself, he had to kill Orange tonight—even if it meant using the Magnum instead of more fitting and ingenious ways, instead of striking swiftly, silently, blindly as he had with the others—at all costs.