The Patch of the Odin Soldier, page 4
The two didn’t mix.
Cull was ruthless and inhumane, Testa and Pigmeo were soft-hearted; Cull was without the saving grace of emotional stability, while the odd couple was a maelstrom of conflicting ideals and isms carefully balanced by their infatuation with the rewards of the capitalistic process. He didn’t think Arturo had ever killed a man in his life; Cull, on the other hand, had no room left on his gun for any more notches.
A puzzlement, he thought as he finished, shaved, and dressed. And of course, a puzzlement I shall not involve myself with because I am still on vacation and no one will bother me again—though perhaps Testa might return for the cash he slipped into a money belt at his waist.
A check of the mirror to be sure he was presentable, and he strolled outside, took a deep breath of air that he thought should be bottled and sold for a fortune in New York, and headed for the general store.
Aunt May was on the porch, sweeping and humming Confederate Civil War tunes to herself, and he could hear Owen behind the building, singing as he slung an ax against a defenseless tree stump. Lincoln waved, and Aunt May paused long enough to give him a mock curtsy and hand him the bill, whose size made him blanch.
“The cabin,” she said.
“Ah.”
“That’s under the miscellaneous.”
“All right.” He checked the figure again. “You planning to replace it with a Hilton?”
“Materials are expensive these days, Mr. Blackthorne.”
“May,” he said, “you have a zillion trees right in your own backyard, for heaven’s sake.”
“Labor’s outta sight.”
“Owen works for free.”
She sighed and leaned heavily on the broom. “An old woman’s gotta plan for her retirement, y’know. Ain’t right I should make exceptions for customers, even if they are pretty.”
He smiled at the compliment, paid the bill in cash, and was rewarded with a brown paper bag in which, the woman said, she had packed a small lunch in case he wanted to stop on the way. He thanked her until he saw the lunch included on the tab, then shook his head and walked into the store, bought a suitcase and extra clothes, and left. Then he walked around to the back, where his rented car was parked. A word with Owen, who’d seen nothing unusual since dawn, and he tossed his belongings into the backseat, slid in behind the wheel, and fired the ignition.
“You be back?” Owen asked.
Lincoln shrugged. “Depends on when May finishes the hotel.”
The young man nodded sagely. “Gonna be a beaut when it’s done, mark my words.”
“I expect a plaque somewhere with my name on it as chief donor to the charity.”
Kintab laughed and stepped away as Lincoln gave him a salute and drove off slowly, trying not to kick up too much dust on the clothes hanging on the line, or on May, who was waving his money at him from the porch. He waved back, bumped onto the road, and headed east into the forest. A quick calculation had him into Bangor the following morning, on the plane to Boston by late afternoon, and home in New Jersey the day after that. He was in no hurry to return to work. What he wanted most now was a leisurely drive through some of the most beautiful country on the continent, a stay at a motel or two along the way, and more rich food than he knew was good for him.
A muffled thumping sound behind and under the car made him scowl and hurriedly check the gauges arrayed on either side of the steering wheel. Then he checked the road ahead for depressions and potholes, or rocks spilled onto the blacktop from the slopes on either side.
Wonderful, he thought as the thumping continued; I’ll break down in the middle of nowhere, it’ll take me a month to hitchhike to civilization, and I’ll bet a million bucks I’ll still never see a damned moose.
The road climbed easily, dropped sharply, swerved without guardrails on curves that overlooked pocket valleys almost picture postcard-perfect. There was no sign of tourists, or hunters, or even small towns. The silence was perfect, the air filled with the sharp scent of pine, and after the first hour the thumping stopped, and he slowed down, relieved there was nothing wrong and realizing he was in no hurry to get anywhere, much less an airport.
An unconscious touch of his hand to the money belt made him wonder a bit about the Viking statuette and what it meant, but he decided that Arturo would contact him soon enough once he reached home. This kind of money was not going to be a gift from the gods.
By noon the rugged mountains had degenerated into high hills, and there were increasingly distressing signs that other motorists were on the road with him; they passed him at twice the speed, they filled the verge with beer cans and bottles, and they glared and made unkind gestures when he refused to do more than the legal limit. It was a portent, he concluded, that not one of them was from Maine.
Shortly after one, he pulled over to a designated picnic area, which was little more than a widened clearing off the highway and four round redwood tables, and a trashcan with a picture of a moose on its side. He stretched the miles from his legs and arms, and sat on the nearest bench. In the bag were four thick sandwiches made from homebaked bread, and a Thermos of lemonade, and he made the most of the meal, humming to himself and listening to the birds until, just as he’d started the last sandwich, he heard one of the birds thumping. He looked up, thinking it might be a woodpecker. He looked around, thinking it might be a bear trying to knock down a tree.
Then he looked at the car and saw it rocking on its wheels.
Haunted, he thought
The thumping grew louder, and for a moment his heart paused—he was almost sure he heard a voice calling.
The thumping stopped, and the car came to rest, and he looked at the sandwich with gloom in his eyes.
“I am not going to open the trunk,” he insisted as he rose and pulled the keys from his hip pocket. “I am not going to do it because it is not a moose in there.”
A sniff, a brush of his hand through brown hair dropping over his forehead, and he walked over to the car, stood staring at the trunk, and felt like an idiot when he said, loudly, “Is anyone in there?”
A thump gave him the answer.
“Hell.”
A search of the ground found him a good-sized rock he hefted once or twice. Then he inserted the key, turned it, and flung up the lid as he jumped back.
“My god!” a woman said, squinting up at the light. “Are you deaf?”
“If I’m not being impertinent, who the hell are you?” he answered.
She shook her head to keep him silent for a moment, and climbed stiffly out, placed her hands in the small of her back and rocked side to side, groaning, then moaning into a brisk series of deep kneebends. A dozen jumping jacks. A half-dozen side kicks. Then she reached into the trunk, pulled out a knapsack and from it extracted a brush she ran through shoulder-length hair the deepest shade of honey.
Lincoln dropped the rock and watched her, watched how the material of her plaid shirt stretched over her torso while the material of her jeans did not stretch as much as flowed over her hips and legs. Her eyes, when she finally paused long enough to look at him and grin, were dark blue, her nose sharp, her mouth small and naturally red.
Well, he thought, if I can’t have a moose.
The sound of a large truck rumbled from around the near bend in the road.
“Who,” he said, “are you?”
“Molly Partridge,” she answered, offering her hand for him to shake.
The truck grew nearer.
“Okay. What were you doing in my trunk?”
“It’s a long story.”
“How long?”
She shrugged. “Depends on how much you want to hear.”
The truck lumbered around the bend. Lincoln looked up over the roof of the car and saw it—a milk tanker, its aluminum sides gleaming in the sun, the windshield blanked by the shadows of the trees whipping across it.
Molly turned when she saw she had lost his attention. “Big one,” she noted. “God, he must be doing—”
The truck reached the straightaway, corrected itself, and its engine roared as it barreled right for them.
“Hey!” the woman shouted.
But the driver didn’t listen. Instead, he plowed his high-grilled vehicle straight into the front of Lincoln’s rented car.
FIVE
Lincoln grabbed Molly’s arm and yanked her out of the way, both of them running nearly backward toward the tables, his free hand up to protect his face from the dirt and rocks showered onto them from the truck’s massive tires.
The car’s windows shattered instantly on impact, the hood folded and rose, and the vehicle itself was slammed backward, slewing side-on into the trees as the truck turned back to the road and roared off, its gears shrieking, the tanker swinging from side to side as the wheels sought and found purchase.
A moment later it was gone, the sound of its rumbling fading like distant thunder.
Molly dropped immediately onto a bench and began trembling, covering her face with her hands while Lincoln looked at the car, then walked to the road and looked west. He could smell gasoline, burnt rubber, and hot metal, and his nose wrinkled as he turned back and sat opposite the woman he had found in the trunk.
“You know the milkman?” he asked.
Her hands lowered, and she shook her head.
That, he figured, was about par for the course.
“It always happens, you know,” he said, more to the trees than to her. “Somebody always wants me to do something that I don’t want to do. Then they give the idea to someone else that I’m going to do it, and someone else who doesn’t want me to do it tries to see that I don’t do what I’m not doing. Which, quite naturally, makes me a little stupid because then I want to do it, even though in this case, I haven’t a clue as to what I’m supposed to do.”
Molly looked at him from behind a curtain of hair. “What?”
“It made perfect sense to me.” He watched her closely and saw she wasn’t as hurt as she was frightened. “And you don’t have any idea who that was?”
“I already said no.”
“Then would you tell me what you were doing in the trunk?”
They both looked over at the car, and suddenly she gasped at the realization that if Lincoln hadn’t opened the lid when he had, she’d now be a part of the twisted, smoking metal canted against a trio of stout, scorched pines.
Lincoln waited patiently until the reaction had passed before asking again for an explanation.
“I needed a ride to Bangor,” she said, blowing the hair out of her eyes.
“In a trunk?”
“I didn’t know if you picked up hitchhikers.”
“I don’t.”
“See?” Her smile was tremulous. “I figured that if I stowed away until you were on the road, you wouldn’t leave me out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Lincoln allowed as how that was probably true. “But how did you get in there in the first place, especially without any of the Kintabs seeing you?”
“I picked the lock.” She reached for her knapsack, rummaged a bit, and pulled out a small leather case. When she opened it he saw a mint condition set of locksmith tools. Softly, he whistled his admiration, and this time her smile was more confident. “I waited until just before dawn, then got in. I thought,” she said with a hint of accusation, “you’d want to get an early start.”
“I was tired.”
“I was cramped.”
His head tilted to one side, listening to the calls of the forest. He thought he heard the truck again. When Molly said nothing, however, he put it to an echo of the attack, and redirected his attention.
“How did you get out here? It’s not the most populated or popular place in the state.”
“I was hiking.”
His look was skeptical. “Out here?”
“I like Maine.”
A finger pointed at the toolcase. “You were hoping to open the secrets of Nature?”
“I like to be prepared,” she told him huffily. “And if you’re not going to give me a ride, I’ll just have to—”
The roaring.
They jerked around just as the milk tanker bellowed around the far bend, its chimney exhaust belching black smoke, its high chrome grille flaring darts of sunlight into their eyes.
Molly was already on her feet and heading for the trees, shouting for Lincoln to follow her before it was too late, but he only stood and waited, thinking the driver would have to brake soon or he’d smash himself and his vehicle into the nearest trunk. Besides, he wanted a look at whoever was trying to turn him into tire tracks.
He was wrong.
The moment the tanker hit the verge, the driver heaved the wheel over, and the tank began to slide, spewing dirt and rocks like missiles again, its rounded back end aiming at the tables, and at him.
But instead of running, Linc raced for the bucking cab, paying no heed to the explosive splintering of wood as the tank smashed into the tables and benches, sending the latter pinwheeling into the air, and the planks of the former into propellers that lashed at the foliage and showered the ground with branches. Something large thudded painfully against his back and nearly cost him his footing, but he leapt for the running board, one hand grabbing the outside mirror as the cab’s wheels caught the blacktop while the driver fought to bring the rest of the rig under control and move away from his charge.
The passenger-door window was darkly tinted, and when he yanked frantically on the handle he cursed when he found it was locked. But before he jumped free he managed to press his face to the glass and see a large man scowling at him. There were too many shadows and not enough time, yet he was able to note that the man was wearing a brightly colored flowered shirt that was tight on a chest too large to be real.
He pushed himself away as the tanker growled through its gears, landing in a roll on the weedy verge. By the time he had regained his feet, the truck was gone.
So was Molly Partridge.
He searched the nearby woodland for over an hour, calling, thinking at first she had been injured in her flight, then thinking she just might be too frightened to show herself until she was positive the danger was over. But the truck didn’t return, and neither did she, and he decided he wasn’t going to wait around for one or the other. A check of the totaled automobile found his suitcase reasonably intact, and after wrapping a cord of ground ivy around it, he started east again.
Within the next sixty minutes, eight vehicles passed him, and none even slowed down when he stuck out his thumb; the following thirty minutes saw ten more, but only one of them even hesitated before speeding up and coating him with dust. He supposed he didn’t look all that respectable, what with the dirt and sweat staining his clothes, the ivy-tied suitcase dangling from his hand, and his hair plastered to his skull by the warm afternoon sun; on the other hand, his smile was certainly friendly enough, and his face was anything but menacing, so what was wrong with these people that they wouldn’t assist a fellow human being in obvious unfortunate circumstances?
A fork in the road precipitated a silent debate, an imaginary toss of a coin, and a veering to the right
No one came by.
No one wanted to help him.
A sad commentary on contemporary life, he thought as he crested a hill and stopped. The suitcase had gained forty pounds in the last ten minutes, and he was tempted to check to see if Molly had hidden herself inside; his legs were stiffening, and there were invisible pebbles digging into his boots; and the plank fragment that had cracked across his back had left behind a bruise now threatening to make his spine permanently rigid.
He sighed, and looked at the incredibly steep slope ahead of him, at the boulder on the side of the road, and chose the latter to perch on and rest a while. It wasn’t easy getting to the top, but he made it, drew his knees to his chest and looked at his destination.
A small town on a broad river. Smokestacks from mills and factories. Though the colors of the houses he could see might have been bright, from here they had taken on a dingy cast, almost as though he were seeing them through a smoky twilight. He had no idea what the name of the place was, but he was sure that it was a town young people grew up in to leave, even if they had to use shoe leather to do it.
His legs parted a bit, and he looked down between his knees to the slope of the rock, and what he hadn’t seen before—that the hillside became a cliff immediately beyond his shadow, and the drop looked to be at least two hundred feet.
His stomach contracted, his brow felt sheathed with ice, and he backed slowly away. Heights, the acceptance thereof, and the consequences of falling off were not his forte; he did not fancy the feeling of sublime euphoria that overcame him when standing on the edge of a precipice—the feeling that he really could fly if he just leaned forward a little and let himself fall. He was, after all, immortal, and the trip to the bottom would be no more trouble than sailing on a down pillow.
Once on solid ground again, he checked the road, the position of the sun in the sky, and started down, his thighs instantly protesting the angle and the weight put on them so he wouldn’t roll to the flat below. His suitcase thumped against his leg, his head filled with a faint dizziness, and he was forced to stop several times to wipe the perspiration from his eyes.
Midway down he glanced over to his right and saw another road, one considerably less steep, and filled with traffic. His lips twisted in disgust. No wonder he hadn’t seen anyone here; they all used the other way. When he looked back, he saw that the hill he was descending was actually a narrow pillar of land that no one in his right mind would want to climb out of choice.
