Charles L. Grant, page 5
Stupid was one thing, which was what he was, taking Holgate’s juvenile bait; but really stupid was something else again.
He threw open the door and immediately slipped on the icy stoop, pitching over the two steps and landing on his knees on the gravel, spitting his rage at the snow. On his feet again, he ran as best he could, batting the flakes from his eyes, holding on to the building as he rounded the corner. Slower now so he wouldn’t fall, one hand brushing the wall as a potential brace, squinting at the spot where Holgate was last seen.
Into the light suddenly, his shadow swinging ahead of him toward the water. Wind slapped his back.
His ears began to sting.
He slipped again, to one knee, and took a moment to catch his breath and calm down.
They were watching him, he could feel them, but out here, the snow in dervishes around him, he couldn’t see very far and nearly tumbled into the creek when he reached it.
The man was gone.
Not this time, he thought angrily; not this time.
He shifted left, following the bank to a low walk-bridge of flat-topped stones he had laid down after he’d finished the waterfall. He could hear it now, some twenty yards upstream, and could see the rocks already capped in white. He hesitated. A slip, a slide, and he’d be ankle deep in freezing water. Frostbite. Pneumonia. He didn’t care. His arms out for balance, he shuffled across, kicking the snow away as he went, and ran back through the trees, ducking a branch that dumped snow on him anyway, using the boles to keep him on his feet. Wind pelted him with what felt like ice. He shook his head to clear his hair, and most of the snow dribbled down his collar, his neck, sluiced down his spine-He came to the birch a few minutes later and stood there, one hand on the trunk, shading his eyes with the other arm while he stared into the woods.
Nothing but hissing snow and dancing white.
“Bastard,” he said, steam from his mouth temporarily blinding him. “Bastard!” he yelled, shaking a fist, then turning abruptly when he remembered he had an audience. He swallowed. He shrugged at them. He looked down to see if Holgate had left something behind.
He hadn’t.
Not even a footprint.
Except for his own tracks, the snow was clear.
Which was, he thought as he headed back to the crossing, clearly impossible. But not so impossible if he considered how heavily the snow had begun to fall, and how long it had taken him to make up his mind to chase the bastard off. With leaves and pine needles on the ground, the snow wouldn’t have been very deep in the first place—it was only an inch, not much more—and a few minutes blowing would cover everything up as if it had never been.
No big deal.
Nevertheless, he veered straight into the trees when he crossed the creek again, following a worn trail that led to his house. Thankful that for once he hadn’t been conscientious about locking up after he’d left earlier, he stumbled inside and sagged back against the door. His ears burned, his lips felt chapped, and the warmth of the building felt painfully tropical as he waited for the cold to leave his lungs and let him breathe properly again.
Once done, and remembering the others, he opened the coat closet, reached in, and pulled out a rifle carefully wrapped in oilcloth. He tossed the cloth aside. A quick check to be sure the weapon wasn’t loaded. A box of ammunition from the shelf behind a hat he never wore. He hoped the damn thing worked. The last time he’d fired it more than once was at a town-sponsored turkey shoot three Thanksgivings ago, the prize a free meal for ten in a Hunter Lake restaurant. He wasn’t a hunter; the rifle had been his father’s. And the turkeys had been cardboard. He hadn’t won the meal.
As a matter of fact, he remembered with a grin, Nester had won that year, claiming he’d need all that food just to feed his wife.
The other times he’d used it were essentially whenever he had thought about it, never more than a half-dozen times a year; a cleaning, a shot or two into the air, a cleaning, a putting away until next time.
He’d look awfully stupid if he had to use it now and it blew up in his face.
After rewrapping the rifle to protect it from the weather, he left, didn’t stop until he reached the parking lot, to check one more time to see if Holgate had returned. When he couldn’t find him, when the wind practically slammed him against the wall, he hurried inside and gasped aloud as the storm shoved him over the threshold.
Brandt was there, his coat half on, dangling from one shoulder. “What the hell is that for? The goddamn raven’s long gone.”
Neil shook his head, too cold to answer, and let his own coat fall to the floor, stamped his feet to get the feeling back. Then he reached over the counter and propped the rifle against the wall, picked up the jacket and dropped it into the near booth. “Next time the jackass shows up, I’m going to scare the hell out of him.”
Brandt coughed, hard and long.
Voices in the restaurant; the music had stopped.
“Going home,” Brandt announced, finishing putting on his coat. Sniffed. Wiped his nose with a sleeve. “She’ll kill me, I don’t come home.”
Neil rubbed his hands for warmth, rubbed his forearms. “On the bike, right?”
“Sure.” Brandt licked his lips. “You think I’d walk on a night like this?”
Mandy came up the steps.
Neil put his hands firmly on the gambler’s shoulders, looked him in the eye. “You can’t.”
“Sure I can. 1 ain’t old.”
“Never said you were.”
“You say you are, damnit, that means I’m practically ancient, for Christ’s sake.” He slapped the hands away. , “Leave me alone, I want to go home.”
“Nester, c’mon, I can’t let you, you know that. You fall in a ditch and freeze to death, the crone’ll skin me alive.”
Brandt backed away, drew himself up. “Fuck you, cop.”
“Hey, c’mon, Nes.”
Brandt heard Mandy’s approach and stumbled around to face her. “He was a cop, y’know. Fucking disgraced the family, walked right out on his buddies.”
“Damnit, Nester.”
Brandt spat dryly at the floor. “You fuck him, lady, you’ll probably die.”
Before Neil could lose the rest of his temper, the gambler shoved him aside and kicked open the door. “I can ride in any kind of damn weather I want to.”
Snow blew on the floor, scuttling toward the tables.
Neil grabbed for him.
The wind caught the door and slammed it back against the outside wall. Startled, Brandt half-fell, half-ran down the steps, threw out his hands and yelled wordlessly at the sky.
“Christ,” Neil said, “i hope he doesn’t want another bath.”
Brandt yelled again and began to shamble across the lot toward the road.
“Neil,” Mandy said, and pointed.
“Know him!” Brandt yelled, spun around, cupped his mouth. “Sonofabitch, I think I know him!”
Paying no heed to the cold, the snow, Neil stood on the threshold, Mandy right behind him, peering around his shoulder.
The man was back, in fog behind the streetlamp.
Brandt reached the fence and fell against it, grabbed the top rail to keep from sliding to the ground. “Neil, I think I know that bastard!” He lurched around and braced himself on his elbows. “Hear me, cop? I know him! I know who he looks like!”
The man in black reached into his long coat.
“Oh Jesus,” Neil said, and plunged out of the room.
Something gleamed in the man’s hands.
Brandt waved. “C’mon, Neil, I’ll show you, I’ll prove it.”
Neil fell on his hands and knees, and the wind toppled him against Davies’s car. He used it to pull himself up.
“Neil, you sorry bastard. 1 ain’t drunk! He looks like—”
In the snow and wind, an explosion, fire and smoke.
Brandt screamed.
Mandy screamed.
Neil watched the gambler collapse, right arm wrapped around the top rail until his weight pulled it free and it flopped twisted to his side.
“Nester!”
The shotgun fired again, and Brandt jumped, snow in a geyser.
Neil started forward, then ran back to get his rifle, knocking Mandy off her feet, barely hearing the shouts and cries inside, raced back out and stood for a moment before leaping off the steps and running low to the fence.
He knew without looking that Nester Brandt was dead.
The ragged overcoat smoking, steaming, spilling dark onto the snow.
Neil looked up.
The man in black was gone.
For the longest rime nothing moved, not the snow, not the wind, not even Neil’s hand as it pressed against the back of Brandt’s neck.
A cloud of smoke over the road.
Mandy back on her feet in the doorway, hands pressed to her mouth, and someone behind her trying to see what had happened.
Nothing moved.
When sound and sense returned, Neil realized his teeth were chattering and an impulse to leap the fence and chase the murderer into the woods was aborted; he ran-slid back to the door, and Mandy grabbed his arm and pulled him in.
People asked questions.
“Call the police,” he ordered, and snatched his coat from the floor. “Ken, come with me.”
For the longest time, nothing moved.
He grabbed Havvick’s arm and thrust him away. “Get your goddamn coat and come with me.” One word at a time. “Will someone for Christ’s sake call the damn police? Nester’s dead.”
He left the rifle and ran out again, heard Havvick following and waited for him by the body… The young man skidded to a halt against the fence, looked, and doubled over. His coat was short, not a real topcoat at all and buttoned hastily to the neck, his suit jacket poking out below it.
“We have to get him inside,” Neil said.
Havvick shook his head; he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t touch it.
“He’s gone, Ken, it’s okay. The guy’s gone, he’s not going to shoot us.”
Havvick moaned, stared at the trees.
Neil leaned down and slipped his hands under Nester’s arms. “Take his feet.”
The young man spat and wiped his mouth, several times with the back of a rigid hand.
“Take. His. Feet.”
Havvick obeyed.
They struggled down the slope and around the building. In the storeroom, Neil decided; put him in the storeroom until the ambulance comes. Not exactly procedure, whatever the hell that passed for around here, but he couldn’t leave his friend out in the cold. Not with him out there. He’d shot Nester in the back, shot him when he was down. No question of the cause of death; the frozen blood would mark the place.
“Why?”
Neil glanced up at Havvick’s bloodless face, understood that the question had already been asked several times.
“I don’t know. Don’t drop him.”
Jesus, Nester, how the hell’d you get so heavy?
Havvick was trying desperately not to look at what he held. “Why?”
It didn’t occur to Neil to check the creek until they were already around the corner and into the light. The storeroom door was already open.
Mandy skipped aside when they stumbled in, at her feet a crumpled length of tarp. She didn’t look; she waited by the staircase as they laid the body against the side wall and covered it. Ken started back outside; Neil took his arm and shook his head. Havvick nodded weakly, moved to the stairs and started up. Head and shoulders disappeared before he leaned down and said, “Don’t you feel sick?” And disappeared again.
A knee began to buckle. He sagged against a post and let the tremors work their way through him. Teeth chattering again. Blinking so fast that when Mandy stepped before him she seemed trapped in a dim strobe light that made him dizzy. Trying to move away when she reached out a hand. Feeling the cold. Swallowing bile. Raising his head helplessly toward the ceiling when she put an arm around his waist and held him, saying nothing, squeezing once in a while, finger-combing the melting snow from his hair.
I’m supposed to be mad now, he thought, watching cobwebs shift lazily in a draft; I’m supposed to go outside with forty guns strapped to my chest and blow the bastard away.
I’m supposed to be mad.
I’m acting like a baby.
Mandy said nothing; she held him and squeezed once more.
It felt like an hour; it was only a few seconds.
“The cops?” he finally asked, voice rasping.
“The phone is dead. Both of them.”
“Someone will have to go.”
She tugged. “Not now. Upstairs. It’s warmer.”
He didn’t think he could move, and was amazed that his legs didn’t splinter when he finally tried to walk. By the time they reached the staircase she had released him, but stayed behind him, guiding fingers lightly on his leg as he climbed the stairs hand over hand as if it were a ladder. Once he was through and out, Davies took his elbow and led him to the nearest table, and as he sat, Julia put a glass beside his hand. The hand jumped. The fingers clutched and opened. He stared at them, commanding them to knock it off. And when they didn’t, couldn’t, he curled the hand into his lap and stared blindly at the creek.
“Someone has to go.”
“On my way,” Davies volunteered without hesitation. “West or east?”
“Deerfield,” Julia told him. “West. It’s closest. You can’t miss it. A blinking light at a T-intersection. Turn right and it’s about a mile up, on the right.” She faltered, cleared her throat. “It’s a State Police barracks.”
“Give him the gun,” Neil told her. He cleared his throat, cleared it again. “Give him the gun.”
“Oh, now wait a minute,” Davies protested, holding up a hand.
“Don’t argue. Julia, give him the gun.”
Davies moved away to fetch his coat, still refusing. “Wouldn’t do any good, believe me, I’ve never used one. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“He’s crazy.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“The sonofabitch is crazy.”
He closed his eyes then and leaned back. The hand in his lap jumped once and steadied. Someone helped him off with his coat, and he moved as little as possible, listening to the building take on the wind, to footsteps moving cautiously around him, whispers, a woman trying not to cry and failing, but softly; rustling cloth, the clink of a bottle against a tumbler, the furnace, the scrape of a chair, the trapdoor being lowered back into place.
i think i know him
Who was it, Nester?
i know who he looks like
It wasn’t a Holgate.
He hadn’t seen the man’s face clearly, but he knew it wasn’t one of them.
So who was it, Nes, who was it?
“Hugh?”
“Don’t worry, love, I won’t take any chances.”
A door opened and closed.
He opened his eyes and managed a grateful smile when he saw Mandy seated across the table. She returned the smile, touched her hair, nodded to the drink Julia had poured. He wasn’t sure he could lift it, but he was able, with concentration, to bring it to his lips without spilling a drop, sip without choking.
It burned, and he was glad.
“So what do we do?” Havvick asked. He was in the corner booth with Ceil and Trish.
“Wait for the police.”
“Don’t …” Trish had a handkerchief balled up in her hands. “Don’t you think we should get away from …” A fearful look at the glass wall.
Neil tensed, but the man wasn’t out there, and he finally said no, there had been enough opportunities for him to fire again if he had wanted. Besides, he had a shotgun, and at that distance, and through thick glass, unless he was some kind of magician, the damage wouldn’t be all that bad, the injuries nonexistent. “But if you want, you can sit up above, close the drapes. If it’ll make you feel better.”
Trish slid immediately out of the booth and hastened to the front. She didn’t look at Kenny once.
“Feeling better, Mr. Maclaren?”
Surprised, he turned around and saw Willie standing behind the bar. His apron was gone. White shirt and white trousers, white tie. He looked as if he was on his way to church in some tropical republic.
“Yeah,” he said gratefully. “Much better.”
It was true. In spite of the fact that a friend’s body lay in the cold beneath his feet, the reaction had passed, his mind had stopped spinning. More than anything, in fact, he felt acutely embarrassed. He was the ex-cop. He was supposed to know arcane cop things and have nerves of steel, be a leader. Be a man. He had done what he’d had to do, but somehow felt it hadn’t been enough. But since no one had seemed to notice, he supposed, with guilty relief, it was, for the time being, all spilled milk. And when he heard Trish say something and heard Davies answer, he only shifted his chair instead of standing when the radio man stood in the gap at the head of the stairs and said, “The car won’t work.”
“That’s silly, Hugh,” Ceil told him. “It’s practically new.”
Davies shrugged. “What can I tell you? The motor won’t catch. It just makes noise. Actually, it caught once and then died before 1 could move. And no, dear,” he added patiently when her mouth opened to interrupt, “I did not look under the hood. I wouldn’t know what to look for.” He didn’t take his coat off when he took a seat at the bar. “There are other cars, however, and that van.”
It didn’t take but a few seconds before Julia and Ken had handed him their keys. Willie balked, insisting he could start his own car himself. Neil didn’t interfere, and the two men left, giant and child.
“Why?”
It was Ken, and from his voice, recovered.
Neil had no answers and told him so.
“A terrorist,” Ceil guessed. “Kidnapper or something, wouldn’t that make sense?” The cigarette in her hand wobbled until she brought it to her lips. “He cuts us off, terrifies us, and then, when he’s good and ready, he’ll make his demands.” A wave of a hand. “Money, something like that.”
“Then why did he kill Nester?” Julia wanted to know.
