I left the light burning on the night table, just the way I’d found it. I walked into the living room, and maybe I should have tried the other doors, but I didn’t. When you’re making a search, it should be a careful one. That’s elementary police work. But I was searching for a key, so I left the closed doors closed, and I walked through the living room and into the office again.
I went directly to the desk, figuring Barter was most likely to keep his keys in it somewhere. I pulled open the top drawer.
Mike Barter kept a well-oiled .45, a few bills from a milk company, a letter from a linen supply outfit, a blotter, and a few broken pencils. He did not keep his keys in that top drawer. I spread a handkerchief on my open palm, picked up the .45, and sniffed the barrel. Whatever else Mike Barter had done, he had not recently fired the automatic. I put the gun back in the drawer, closed it, and was opening the second drawer when Blanche came into the cabin.
I swung around. ‘Where does Barter keep his keys?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’
‘No. Listen to me,’ she said.
‘Don’t give me the red paint story again, or—’
Her eyes blazed at me. For a second, she didn’t look seventeen any more. She looked as old as Methuselah, and her eyes held all the secrets of the universe. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, and there was a tight wire-thin edge to her voice. ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Get out of here. Forget Barter and forget that blood. Just get out.’
‘I’m getting into that cabin,’ I said.
‘You’re a fool,’ she answered.
I began digging through the second drawer. There were paper clips and stationery and more pencils, but no keys. I slammed the drawer shut. Blanche glanced swiftly toward the interior office door.
‘Phil,’ she said softly, ‘please... take my advice. Don’t bother with this. Get out. Please.’
‘Ann and I are staying right here until...’
I stopped.
‘Ann!’ I said, and I could feel everything inside me go cold. For two heartbeats I stood welded behind the desk. Then I turned and ran out past Blanche, and onto the gravel driveway, and then to cabin number 13. I ran up the steps. I didn’t knock. I simply threw open the door and flicked on the light.
The cabin was empty.
Chapter six
It was three o’clock in the morning.
I was at Sullivan’s Point in a state which was not my home state, in a cabin where I’d left a girl a little while ago.
The cabin was empty.
Ann was not in the bed.
The bed looked as if it had never been slept in.
There was no baggage in the open closet.
There was no purse on the dresser.
The white dress I’d hung in the closet was gone.
Ann’s shoes were not at the foot of the bed where I’d dropped them.
The cabin was empty and silent, and it screamed with its silence and its emptiness. I panicked. I stood there, and I panicked because I could only think of the over-coffee talk I’d had with Mr Grafton the morning before, and the assurance I’d given him that I would take care of his daughter. I could only think of that and the bloodstain on the floor of my own cabin, and so I panicked and I don’t know how many minutes rushed by before I got control of myself. I remember staring down at the .38 in my fist and then I remember running out of the cabin and shouting ‘Blanche!’ and getting no answer.
And then the car lights hit me in the face.
The car was a very old one, and it rattled into the court, swinging in a wide curve toward the office, its headlights knocking long tunnels into the darkness. I shielded my eyes from the glare, and then the car ground to a stop some ten feet from me, and Mike Barter climbed out. Whoever was driving the car did not move from behind the wheel.
‘What’s the matter?’ Barter asked, seeing the gun in my hand. ‘Something wrong?’
‘Where were you?’ I asked.
‘Why, over to Hez’s place. What’s the matter?’
‘Where’s the key to eleven?’
‘Why? Who wants to know?’
‘I do.’
There must have been more menace in my voice than I thought. Barter looked at me cautiously and then barely turned his head and said, ‘Hez? Hezekiah!’
There was movement on the front seat. I saw the fellow named Hezekiah slide from behind the wheel and then leap from the car. He was a big man, at least six-four and weighing all of two hundred and ten. He moved with an animal grace, though, first springing out of the car and then effortlessly striding over to where we stood.
‘Trouble, Mr Barter?’ he asked, and his voice rumbled up from somewhere deep inside a chest like a wine cellar.
‘No trouble, Hez,’ I said, ‘Stay right where you are. This gun has no friends.’
Hez stopped and looked at the gun. He had blue eyes, and they darted to Barter and then back to the .38 in my hand. His eyes were set in an angular face — sloping cheeks and flat surface planes and square tight lips — which looked like an exercise in geometry.
‘Get the key, Barter,’ I said.
‘I’ll get no such damn thing,’ he answered. ‘Happens there’s a guest in eleven.’
‘It’s the guest who interests me,’ I said.
‘Why don’t you mind your own business and go back to your cabin?’
‘Because the guest may be my business. It so happens I’m missing the girl I came in with.’
Barter looked at me, and then he looked at Hez, and then he looked at me again. Very quietly, he said, ‘What girl?’
‘The girl I—’
I stopped short. It was my turn to look at all the faces. Hez’s face was blank. Barter’s face was a cold mask. ‘Cut the comedy,’ I said tightly.
‘Your name’s Colby, ain’t it?’ Barter said. ‘You’re in twelve.’
‘You know damn well where I am, and you know the girl was in—’
‘You checked in alone,’ Barter said flatly.
It was quiet for a few seconds. I could hear the sound of the crickets, and the sound of the water lapping against the shore of the lake. Very calmly, very quietly, I said, ‘What’s the bit?’
‘You checked in alone,’ Barter repeated. ‘What you trying to pull here, anyway?’
‘Look, you son of a bitch,’ I said, ‘don’t give me any of that crap! I know I checked in with a girl, and you know I did, and if you don’t produce the key to eleven in about three seconds, I’m going to forget I’m a cop and start squeezing this trigger for all it’s worth.’
‘A cop?’ Barter asked. He glanced rapidly at Hez. ‘You’re a cop?’
‘Damn right, I am. One, Barter.’
‘How was I supposed to know your’re a cop?’
‘Two, Barter.’
‘I’ve got the key in my pocket,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you up to eleven, but you won’t find nothing there. You especially won’t find no girl, because you didn’t come with no girl. I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to pull.’
‘Make him show his badge, Mr Barter,’ Hez said.
‘Yeah, how ’bout that?’ Barter said.
I took out my wallet and flipped it open to the shield.
‘That ain’t worth nothing in this state,’ Barter said.
‘This gun is worth a lot in any state,’ I told him.
Barter looked at the .38. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you that cabin.’
I let Barter and Hez walk ahead of me to the cabin. Barter took I out a big ring of keys and inserted one into the lock. He threw open the door then, flicked on the light, and stood aside.
‘Inside,’ I said. ‘You, too, Hez.’
They went into eleven, and I went in behind them. I was afraid of what I might find, and relieved when I didn’t find it. There was no body on the floor. There was nobody in the cabin. But nobody.