Had he left Roxbury by train, then? I had not seen anything remotely resembling a railroad depot, and I doubted seriously that a town as small as this one would have passenger service. Sands had not had a car, that had been confirmed by Jardine. Taxi? Possible. But even if Roxbury had some type of cab service, and I suspected that they did not, the cost seemed prohibitive. That left hitchhiking and/or a private vehicle of some kind.
I thought again of Nick Jackson. Was it possible that Jackson, who had been touring the Northwest with this WAC nurse, had drifted into California as far south as Roxbury-and that Sands had met him here, gone with him to Eugene for some reason? Possible, yes, but not probable; the coincidence of a chance meeting like that was a little too much to swallow. The more I thought about things, the more I was inclined to eliminate Jackson-he seemed too far removed from the core of the whole affair; but until I located Sands, I could not afford to cross him completely off the list.
I paid for my coffee and walked through the cold, lengthening shadows to State Street. I found the City Hall, a white clapboard building which had been freshly painted and had a set of wide wooden schoolhouse steps up to the double entrance doors. Inside, there was a short hallway with low counters on both sides. Behind the one on the left were a couple of desks and a large switchboard and two young guys in uniform listening to police calls; the counter on the right belonged to the City Water Department and had a sign midway along reading Pay Here. At the end of the hallway was a closed redwood door with Mayor’s Office etched on it in gold leaf.
One of the uniformed cops-the owner of a blond crew-cut and an officious manner- came over to the counter and asked if he could help me. I spread my wallet open so that he could read my identification, and he looked at it as if he could not quite believe what he saw. He read it again, looked at me, read it a third time. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘a private detective,’ with no inflection at all.
‘No kidding,’ the other cop said. He wore his black hair parted in the middle, like the kid in the old Our Gang comedies. He came over and read the identification, and then the two of them stood there staring at me. I thought: Oh Christ, we’re not going to play one of those seriocomic sketches now, are we? I had dealt with small-town law enforcement a couple of times before, and they were a breed unto their own: you never quite knew how things were going to go.
But it was all right this time. The blond cop said finally, ‘Well, hell, you kind of took us by surprise. The closest we get to private eyes up here is on the television.’
‘Sure, I understand.’
‘What can we do for you?’
I told him why I was in Roxbury, leaving out some of the non-relevant details. They were willing and talkative, but there was not much either of them could tell me. There had been no incidents of any kind involving a transient just prior to Christmas, and neither had ever heard of a man named Roy Sands. There were no trains that stopped in or about Roxbury, passenger or freight. There were no taxis operating in the village, and no one had sanction to hire out a private vehicle for the transportation of passengers. Hitchhiking was of course illegal, and the law was strictly enforced, especially within the city limits. There were no automobile-rental agencies or dealerships; you had to go to Eureka or Redding or Weaverville.
I had no other angles to ask them about; we had covered the spectrum of immediate possibilities. I thanked them for their time, asked them to make a note of Sands’ name and to contact me in San Francisco if anything developed that might shed some light on his disappearance; I gave the blond guy one of my business cards. Then we said good night and I left City Hall and wandered back to Main Street.
Now what? I asked myself. Canvass the town-cafés, bars, cigar stores, and the like? That seemed the only thing to do, eighty percent of investigative accomplishment being legwork; any cop, past or present, could tell you that. So I wasted an hour and a half patrolling both sides of Main, a little of State, a little of Portland Street on the opposite side. Fat zero.
It was after seven now, full dark, and I was hungry. There was a chuck-wagon grill near where I had parked my car, and I went in there and pondered over a rib steak, and a cold draft beer. The nagging prescience was still with me, and it was an irritating, frustrating thing because there was no reason for it, no way to explain it or dispel it. Was there something I had overlooked somewhere along the line? Was there something I had failed to consider? More rhetorical questions for which I had no immediate answers.
Another beer and a couple of cigarettes, and it was eight-thirty. I was very tired from too much driving, too much walking, too much thinking. I decided I would return to the Redwood Lodge and get some sleep; I did not want to have to drive back to San Francisco just yet-but in order to justify my remaining here, I had to have something to work on, a direction. Maybe a decent night’s rest and the cold light of morning would open up some potentiality of which I was unable to think tonight.
I took the car back to the motel. They had floodlights set up along the side of the road, illuminating the jungle of ferns fronting the office with soft yellow light; a large redwood sign above the office entrance told you the name of the place and that there was Vacancy. I drove past there, and along the graveled half-moon to where number five sat darkly among the gray-black shapes of the trees.
A chill wind blew through the densely grown vegetation, ruffling leaves, bending branches, making soft and lamenting sounds in the night. It was very dark back there, and I had the vague thought that they ought to have put some kind of floodlighting on the cabins, too, to circumvent accidents and customer complaints. I took the key out of my pocket and started up onto the small porch in front.
And he came out of the ebon shadows on the right, a huge man-form with one arm drawn back, footfalls sliding harshly on the foliated gravel, and hit me across the side of the head with a fist like a stone pestle.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bright white light fragmented behind my eyes, and I staggered backward, going down on my left side. I thought: Jesus-who? and tried to roll over, but he was there and swinging and the pestle slammed into me again, high on the cheekbone. I felt blood flowing warm down the side of my face.
He straddled me, spewing hot sour breath and flecks of spittle, beating at my face, scraping my scalp into the gravel again and again, bringing hot flaring pain and rage, wild rage, you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch, and I levered up at him with my hips, twisting, rolling, pulling free. I got up on my knees and he had his balance back and he hit me again, oh goddamn it, and there was more swimming pain, I could barely see him through a red haze of blood and fury.
I crawled away like a crab, gasping, spitting blood, choking on blood, and stumbled up, and he was rushing me, then, low in a crouch with his arms curled wide like a frigging Hollywood ape. I knew who it was in that moment, recognized the rubber mask even more grotesque and unreal now-it was Holly, Holly, and I tried to turn away but it was too late, he slammed into me and we went down, rolling, one of his hands trying to crush my genitals and the other clubbing at my face.
The night was alive in humming, buzzing, pounding noise, but it was all inside my head. I lifted an elbow in reflex and hit him in the face with it, heard him grunt, felt him stiffen, and hit him again, the bastard, hit him again, broke his nose, and the blood spurted down on me like warm, foul rain and I kept on hitting him, pitching him backward, pitching him off of me. He rolled to one side and shook his head bulllike, wanting to get up, and I went after him with the fury still flaming inside me, clasping both hands together and swinging them at his head like a baseball bat. But it was a glancing blow and he kicked at my ankle, falling away, and I was down flat again with him crying and grunting, scrabbling toward me.