Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories (12 page)

"We'd better get moving," the dark guy said, and he picked up the flat and slid it into the metal holder attached to the undercarriage, locked it down. Then the three of them went immediately to the driver's door.

I did not want to let them go, but there was no way I could think of to keep them there. Following, I watched the redhead open the door and climb in. That gave me a good look inside the cab, but there wasn't much to see; nothing there that shouldn't be there, nothing at all on the seat or on the little shelf behind the seat, or on the dashboard or on the passenger-side floorboards. The girl got in second, and that made the dark one the driver. He swung the door shut, started the engine.

"Take it easy," I said, and lifted my hand. None of them looked at me. The pickup jerked forward, a little too fast, tires spraying gravel, and pulled out onto Highway One. It went away to the south, gathering speed.

I stood watching until they were out of sight. Then I went back to my car and got inside and started her up and put the heater on high. So now what? Drive back to San Francisco, forget about this little incident? That was the simplest thing to do. But I could not get it out of my head. One of those kids, or maybe even more than one, did not belong. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I ought to know which of them it was. More importantly, there was that aura of tension and anxiety all three had projected.

I had no real cause to play detective, but I did have a duty to my conscience and to the vested interests of others, and I did have a strong disinclination to return to my empty, quiet flat. So all right. So I would do some of what I had been doing in one form or another, for bread and butter, the past thirty-one years.

I put the car in gear and drove out and south on the highway. It took me four miles to catch sight of them. They were moving along at a good clip, maybe ten over the speed limit but within the boundaries of safety. I adjusted my speed to match theirs, with several hundred yards between us. It was not the best time of day for a shagging operation—coming on toward dusk —and the thick, drifting fog cut visibility to a minimum; but the pickup's lights were on and I could track it well enough by the diffused red flickers of the tail lamps.

We went straight down the coast, through Stewart's Point and past Fort Ross. There was still not much traffic, but enough so that we weren't the only two vehicles on the road. The fog got progressively heavier, took on the consistency of a misty drizzle
and forced me to switch on the windshields wipers. Daylight faded into the long, cold shadows of night. When we reached Jenner, at the mouth of the Russian River, it was full dark.

A few miles farther on, the pickup came into Bodega Bay and went right on through without slowing. So that made the dark-haired one a liar about their destination. I wondered just where it was they were really headed, and asked myself how far I was prepared to follow them. I decided all the way, until they stopped somewhere, until I satisfied myself one way or another about the nature of their relationship with each other. If that meant following them into tomorrow, even into another state—okay. I had no cases pending, nothing on my hands and too much on my mind; and work, purposeful or purposeless, was the only real antidote I knew for self-pity and depression.

Valley Ford, Tomales, Point Reyes . . . the pickup did not alter its speed. We were maybe thirty miles from the Golden Gate Bridge then, and I was running low on gas. I had enough to get me into San Francisco, but not much farther than that.

The problem of stopping to refuel turned out to be academic. Just south of Olema Village the pickup slowed and I saw its brake lights flash. Then it swung off onto a secondary road to the west, toward the Point Reyes National Seashore.

When I got to the intersection a couple of minutes later, my headlamps picked up a sign with a black-painted arrow and the words Public Campground, 3 Miles. So maybe they were going to stop here for the night, or for supper anyway. I debated the wisdom of running dark. The fog was thinner along here, curling tendrils moving rapidly in a sharp, gusty wind, and you could see jagged patches of sky, like pieces in an astronomical jigsaw puzzle. Visibility was fairly good, and there did not figure to be much traffic on the secondary road, and I did not want to alert them. I switched off the lights, turned onto the road drove along at less than twenty.

The terrain had a rumpled look because this area was a major San Andreas Fault zone. I passed a little "sag pond" where runoff water had collected in depressions created by past earthquakes. Exactly three miles in, close to the ocean—I could hear again the whisper of combers—the campground appeared on the left. Backed in against high sand dunes westward, and
ringed by pine and fir to the east and south, it was a small, state-maintained facility with wooden outhouses and stone barbecues and trash receptacles placed in reminder every few yards.

The pickup was there, lights still on, pulled back near the trees on the far edge of the grounds.

I saw it on a long diagonal, partially screened by the evergreens. Instead of driving abreast of the entrance and beyond, where they might see or hear me, I took my car onto the berm and cut off the engine. Ten seconds later, the pickup's lights went out.

I sat motionless behind the wheel, trying to decide what to do next, but the mind is a funny thing: all the way here I had been
unable to clarify the reasons why I felt one or more of those
three didn't belong, and now that I was thinking about something else, memory cells went click, click, click, and all at
once I knew just what had been bothering me—three little things that, put together, told me which of them was the interloper. I felt myself frowning. I still had no idea what the situation itself was, but what I had just figured out made the whole thing all the more strange and compelling.

I reached up, took the plastic dome off the interior light and unscrewed the bulb; then I got out of the car, went across the road. The wind, blowing hard and cold, had sharp little teeth in it that bit at the exposed skin on my face and hands. Overhead, wisps of fog fled through the darkness like chilled fingers seeking warmth.

Moving slowly, cautiously, I entered the trees and made my way to the south, parallel to where the pickup was parked.

Beyond the second of two deadfalls I had a glimpse of it through the wind-bent boughs, maybe forty yards away. The cab was
dark and seemed to be empty; faint light shone at the rear of the camper, faint enough to tell me that both door windows were now draped.

I crossed toward the pickup, stopped to listen when I was less than ten yards from it and hidden in shadow along the bole of a
bishop pine. There was nothing to hear except the cry of the wind and the faint murmuring of surf in the distance. I stared in at the cab. Empty, all right. Then I studied the ground along the near side of the pickup: no gravel, just earth and needles that would muffle approaching footsteps.

One careful pace at a time, I went from the pine to the side of the pickup. Near the end of the camper I stopped and leaned in close and pressed my ear against the cold metal, put my right index finger in the other ear to shut out the wind. At first, for a full thirty seconds, there were faint sounds of movement inside but no conversation. Then, muffled but distinguishable, one of them spoke—the one who didn't belong.

"Hurry up with those sandwiches."

"I'm almost finished," another voice said nervously.

"And I'm damned hungry—but I don't want to sit around here any longer than we have to. You understand?"

"It's a public campground. The state park people won't bother us, if that's what —"

"Shut up! I told both of you before, no comments and no trouble if you don't want a bullet in the head. Do I have to tell you again?"

"No."

"Then keep your mouth closed and get those sandwiches ready. We got a lot of driving left to do before we get to Mexico."

That exchange told me as much as I needed to know about the situation, and it was worse than I had expected. Kidnapping, probably, and God knew what other felonies. It was time to take myself out of it, to file a report with the closest Highway Patrol office—Olema or Point Reyes. You can take private detection just so far, and then you're a fool unless you turn things over to a public law-enforcement agency. I pulled back, half-turned and started to retreat into the trees.

In that moment, the way things happen sometimes—unexpectedly, coincidentally—the wind gusted and blew a limb from one of the deadfalls nearby, sent it banging against the metal side of the camper.

From inside, in immediate response, there was a scraping and a crashing of something upended. I was still backing away, but it was too late then for running. The camper's doors rattled open and one of them came lurching out and into my vision, saw me and shouted, "Hold it, you! Hold it!" In one extended hand was something long and black, something that could only be a gun. I held it.

The figure was the one who didn't belong, of course—and the one who didn't belong was the girl.

Only he wasn't a girl.

He stood there with his feet spread, crouching slightly, holding the gun in both hands; nervous, scared, dangerous. He was not wearing the wig or the bandanna now; his hair was clipped close to his scalp, and it was light-colored, almost white in the darkness. Except for his pale, girlish face, his hairless hands—physical quirks of nature—there was nothing at all effeminate about him.

"Move up this way," he said.

I hesitated, and then I did what he told me. He backed away quickly, into position to cover both me and the rear of the camper. When I was three long strides from him I stopped, and I could see the other two standing between the open doors, silhouetted in the light from inside. They were motionless, eyes flicking between me and the one holding the gun.

"What the hell?" the guy with the gun said. He had recognized me. "You followed us."

I did not say anything.

"Why? Who are you, man?"

I watched him for a moment; then, stretching the truth a little because I wanted to see his reaction, I said, "I'm a cop."

He didn't like that. A tic started up on the left side of his mouth and he made a swaying motion with the gun, as if he could not quite keep his hands steady. He wasn't at all chary about using the weapon, I was pretty sure of that—on me or on the two scared kids by the camper. You get so you can gauge the depths of a man, how far he'll go, what he's capable of; this one was capable of murder, all right, and in his agitated state it
would not take much to push him into it.

He said finally, "That's your problem," and made a sound that might have been a grunt or a skittish laugh. "You don't seem surprised that I'm not a female."

"No."

"What put you onto me?"

"Three things," I said. "One was the way you blew your nose back there in the parking area. You took your handkerchief out and snapped it open in front of you; that's a man's gesture, not a woman's. Second thing was the way you walked. Long, hard strides—masculine movements, same as the other two kids. Third thing, you weren't carrying a purse or a handbag, and there wasn't one inside the camper or cab. I never knew a girl yet who didn't have some kind of handbag within easy reach at all times."

He rubbed the back of his free hand across his nose. "I'll have to watch those things from now on," he said. "You're pretty sharp, old man."

Old man, I thought. I said, "Yeah, pretty sharp."

The redheaded kid said, "What are you going to do?" in a shaky voice.

The guy with the gun did not answer immediately; he was staring at me, mouth still twitching. I watched him think it over, making up his mind. Then he said to the other two, "You got rope or anything inside there?"

"Some clothesline," the dark one answered.

"Get it. We'll tie the cop up and take him with us."

Anger started up inside me. You let him tie you up, I told myself, you stand a good chance of dying that way, helpless; you and those two kids, dead by the side of the road somewhere. I said, "Why not shoot me right here and be done with it? Here or someplace else, what difference does it make?"

His face darkened. "Shut up, you!"

I took a measured step toward him.

"Stand still!" He made a convulsive stabbing motion with the gun. "I'm warning you, old man. I'll shoot if you don't stop."

"Sure you will," I said, and jumped him.

The gun went off a foot in front of my face. Flame and powder seared my skin, half-blinded me, and I felt the heat of the bullet past my right cheek. The roar of the shot was deafening, but I got my left hand on his wrist, coming in close to him, and twisted the arm away before he could fire again. I hit him twice with my right—short, hard blows to the stomach and chest. Breath spilled out of his mouth; he staggered, off balance. I kicked his legs out from under him, wrenched the gun free as he fell and then went down on top of him. When I hit him again, on the lower jaw, I felt him go limp. He was out of it.

I pulled back on one knee, stood up holding the gun laxly at my side. My cheek was sore and inflamed, and my eyes stung, watered, but that was all the damage I'd suffered. Except for a liquidy feeling in my legs, I did not seem to have any delayed reaction to what I had just done.