Cuts Through Bone (37 page)

Inglewood cursed steadily on the radio as Olsen spaced five shots slowly, pausing to aim. Four screams erupted. The shadows vanished. Honking horns joined the chorus of gunfire, racing engines, and shouts. The riot stopped as suddenly as it had begun, deprived of fresh people to fill with anger. Holloway crawled over to check on Lieberman and Little Prince. The stunned house detective clutched a bleeding, paralyzed arm. The young thug had a bloody knot on his head above his ear. He had recovered his pistol but couldn't fit his flat-brimmed cowboy hat back on his swollen head.

Inside the trailer, Guthrie charged the door to the back room as Vasquez scrambled to her feet in the kitchen. The little man ricocheted from the locked door and smashed a small table in the corner. A fit of coughing swallowed his curse of frustration. The back door of the trailer swung wide with a creak, and Linney aimed into the interior. The dark veteran's eyes were adjusted, and he braced himself with the help of a tree. A grenade sailed through the doorway. Linney stared in puzzlement. The detonation was a flash of light and a concussion like a punch. Linney fired blind, reflexively, as Gagneau tumbled through the door. The little man paused; his AK stuttered. Guthrie and Vasquez threw themselves flat inside the trailer, but Gagneau was aiming at Linney. The heavy bullets whipped the veteran to the ground, and then the killer rushed through the ring of underbrush into the deep darkness under the trees.

The sudden return of quiet seemed like deafness. Guthrie kicked through the locked door, and Olsen low-crawled beneath the trailer. They found Linney by flashlight after calling his name produced no response. His vest had stopped most of the bullets, but a single stray had found his neck. Death made him so still and quiet that he seemed to be part of the ground.

“He got through us, Mike,” Guthrie said on the radio as he peered into the darkness under the trees. Along the back of the encircling road, the hillside rose sharply.

“The kid's wearing a knot on his head the size of a pumpkin,” Holloway said. “Dave's in shock, and I got a few ounces of lead in my ass. We're done around this side.”

Inglewood sighed. “This's the middle of nowhere. I called the deputies. What're you gonna do?”

“I'm going after him,” Guthrie replied.

Vasquez frowned, glancing into the absolute darkness beneath the trees before studying the little detective's face. Olsen slung his rifle and grunted disapproval.

“What?” Guthrie demanded.

“The sergeant was always a careful planner. He would have more than a little in mind here, and without some night vision a guy could stumble around until he caught up to his own ass.” The big man studied Guthrie's face and frowned. “So you're half a cat, then?”

“No, I just do some things the old-fashioned way,” the little detective said. “Maybe he has a plan—or maybe he's circling or waiting. I won't know until I look. Dawn ain't far off anyway.”

“So I'll be right behind you,” Olsen said.

The little detective shook his head. “Mike, maybe you got a reason to take a look in his trailer, right?” he asked.

“I could do that,” Inglewood said, “but I think maybe you should rethink going after this skel. He almost wiped out your crew already. Ain't but three of you left, and I ain't in no shape to climb no mountain—”

“Mike, give it a rest,” Guthrie snarled. He bent, scooped a small handful of leaf litter, and crumbled it. He sprinkled the dust on Linney's body. “I'm gonna get this bastard,” he whispered.

*   *   *

The little detective posted Olsen at the back door of Gagneau's aluminum trailer to watch uphill for lights or movement. He took Vasquez with him, telling her to watch and keep quiet. She followed him blindly for the first minute, concentrating just to keep him in sight, before her eyes could pick out other shapes in the darkness. She listened but couldn't hear his footfalls even when she stopped moving herself. At a distance, the ground seemed as smooth as a blanket, but in the dark, every footstep was treacherous.

Faint gray light trickled into the sky from the east, but Vasquez used Gagneau's trailer to position herself. Guthrie walked a slow semicircle behind the trailer, pausing with each step to kneel and gently run his fingertips over the leaf litter. Several times, he hissed at Vasquez when she took a step or shifted while he listened. The young Puerto Rican fumed but watched him carefully. Guthrie went only about half around the semicircle before he paused and moved away from the trailer. He led the way with his fingertips, brushing soundlessly among the leaves. His footsteps were quiet; he balanced his rifle on his left knee each time he swept at the ground with his right hand. Slowly, he crept a few dozen feet uphill, then stood and looked ahead.

Vasquez looked, too. Trees were slowly emerging from the darkness. She and Guthrie were climbing the eastern side of a broad, tall ridge. Beyond the ridgeline, Twin Oaks waited. She wondered if the little man was crazy, dribbling around on the ground like an old drunk chasing a fallen bottle in the dark. Then Guthrie moved again, taking long steps before bending to test the ground with his fingers again. Every few steps, he stopped to peer again, but he moved faster.

After a few minutes, the little detective crept up to a large forked tree. He stopped Vasquez, then swept a gentle circle around the tree before returning to the trunk. He found a Kalashnikov almost at her feet, with a length of twine and an empty trash bag.

“His first stop,” he muttered. He pointed up the hill. “Then he went that way.” He studied the tree, then tapped a plastic disk nailed to it.

“Seen anything, Greg?” Guthrie asked on the radio.

“Not a thing.”

“Found his cache,” Guthrie said. “He left the machine gun and kept going uphill. What's above us?”

“A few campsites, then that old lodge. Two roads run along the mountainside.” The big man paused. “So you're sure he's going up, then? He left a note explaining he didn't mean to circle?”

The little detective sighed. “He'll make the top of the mountain by midmorning. He was moving fast. You come on up here. Shine a light up the hill. There's a reflector on the cache.”

A flashlight beam washed over them briefly from downhill, then winked out. Olsen began slashing uphill through the leaves. The light was richer; the details of the forest floor were emerging from the darkness at their feet.

“Why you so sure,
viejo
?” Vasquez whispered.

“It ain't the where he was going; it's the how,” he answered softly. Once Olsen joined them, the little detective pointed the way Gagneau had gone, then played his flashlight briefly in that direction. A tree trunk twinkled. The killer had blazed the trail to make it useful in the dead of night.

Olsen checked the assault rifle and found the clip empty. The big man let out a hiss of breath. “He'll have more weapons somewhere,” he said. “That's when he'll turn on us.”

“We still need him alive, Greg. We follow him as best we can, and maybe get ahead of him.” Guthrie looked east at the patches of sky faintly visible through the trees. “I'll be sight-tracking in another half hour. This ground holds sign as good as any in West Virginia. I might puzzle out where he's headed when I can see it.”

“
Viejo,
you're crazy,” Vasquez said.

“You bet,” Olsen echoed.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

In the predawn darkness, the vast mountain towered above the detectives, with Gagneau already vanished, seeking a hole of his choice that they must find by blind chance. Guthrie's slow woodcraft, guided by brushing fingertips, felt like an ant crawling behind a fleeing blue jay. Faint shapes of trees and underbrush sharpened into focus at arm's length, carrying a clinging scent, almost rotten but sweet and moist. The dry, dusty top of the leaf litter hid a cool, slick layer patrolled by an army of mutant insects. The darkness made everything else invisible.

Vasquez struggled behind Guthrie. The little man was silent, but she made a sandpaper racket with every step. Olsen did no better following her. Fortunately, no trap waited; their creeping fear of ambush disappeared as Guthrie's hunch proved true. Gagneau was racing for the ridgetop. They climbed into the descending edge of dawn as the sun peeked above the ridge to the east, lighting the western side of the valley as it rose.

With light, Guthrie moved more swiftly. The killer's boot prints were as plain to him as words on a written page. They climbed past campsite number three, close enough to see the rough wooden platforms, and disappeared into the mountain's cupped hand. The stone surrounding them resembled a mass of broken knuckles and twisted fingers, with oak and maple trees emerging like splinters thrusting upward toward a sky hidden by greenery. Guthrie paused, finding on the mountain's bony knee a perch to see its shaggy crest. He pointed at a notch high above them.

“He's going there,” Guthrie said. “That's contrary, on account that the saddle southeast is lower and quicker.” He pointed again.

Olsen scanned the ridgetop, then said, “If a guy meant to guess, he would suppose that notch fell directly above the spread on the other side, do you think?”

“Sure,” Guthrie replied. “Your sergeant would do that?”

“Dirty and direct was Alpha SOP,” he replied.

Guthrie looked again. “I don't reckon that's quicker.”

The big veteran grunted. “So if he decided to turn aside, you don't think it would matter, then?”

The old man removed his fedora and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He worried at the brim for a moment. “He might be a half hour ahead, striking hard with your head down, but I reckon he's less. We won't make up time trailing to that notch.”

“So we have to split up,” Olsen said. “I can pass that saddle and turn back to the resort, but I can't see what you're looking at on the ground. You'll have to follow him to the notch so he can't turn aside, then.”

“Can you hit his knees?” the little detective asked with a frown. “Can you shoot low?”

“I'm a fair shot,” Olsen replied.

The little detective pulled some short, square Garand magazines from his jacket pockets. The bullets inside were tipped with brass, not blue. He pressed two into Olsen's hand, and a third into Vasquez's. He watched them reload their rifles. The gray limestone made the hollow as cold as a graveyard, even on a warm summer morning. Guthrie pointed out the quickest way along to the saddle, then turned to follow the killer's trail before Olsen passed from sight.

Gagneau's trail up the mountainside was short and hard, clinging to defiles and washes that gave purchase even when they were steep. The coolness of the morning disappeared in a few hours of hard hiking. The detectives ended up in a wash gully leading sharply upward to the notch. Even Vasquez could see the fresh scuffs marring the bare earth, and caked pebbles loose atop dry leaves. At the top, Gagneau's trail continued across a wide, shallow bowl that drained into the gully. Tall pines filled the bowl, lifting a dark green umbrella above a smooth cinnamon carpet. The mountain fell away from the bowl's western side; an oak tree stood guard on a circle of ground, with pines threatening. The trail ended at a parachute cord tied to the oak's trunk.

Along the ridge, the western side fell away repeatedly in cliffs and draws cut into the mountaintop with a giant's pick and shovel. Trees danced up to the edge, before the ground fell away into nothingness. Morning's shadow remained like an unshaved beard even late in the morning. Some open country lay below, old gardens and lawns for the abandoned great lodge visible in breaks between the treetops on the broad terrace below them.

The parachute cord dropped into a rounded hollow. The slope was steep and smooth for a few hundred feet. Mature trees nestled on the slope in several places, but mostly it was bare except for slick curtains of stone, ferns, and lines of leaf litter trapped in creases like gutters. A thick tangle of oak and maple trees crowded their shaggy heads together in whispered conversations. Guthrie and Vasquez lost their view of what lay below, becoming like ants on the mountainside again. Twin Oaks waited at the end of a quarter-hour downhill plunge, for anyone in a hurry, but it was invisible in the folds of stone and crowds of trees. Guthrie sprang along like a hungry goat, his attention split between Gagneau's tracks and the way ahead. Then two rifle shots slashed the quiet mountainside; all the birds abandoned their gossip.

“Missed him,” Olsen reported, his voice broken with movement and punctuated by the thud of his boots. “A guy could've hit a belly shot something easier.”

Guthrie and Vasquez ran. The little detective needed no more caution. The killer was somewhere ahead, running from Olsen, and they were behind the chase. Guthrie picked a sure path, but the rough, pitching ground gave wild slides down leafy slopes and hard pounding on sudden upturns. The wide emptiness of the mountainside ignored their haste, staying stubbornly in their path.

“Think I can get another shot,” Olsen added, measuring his breath. “Need to pass that fence line.” More pounding boots were followed by an afterthought. “Didn't see a weapon.”

Guthrie and Vasquez raced. She didn't quit, even though she couldn't catch the little man. Steady running earned grudging passage from the trees, but the waist of the mountain was a long, jumbled cloth, where each bend revealed only one more space to rush across.

Another pair of rifle shots cracked, followed by a curse from Olsen. The big man was breathing hard. “He made it into the big building.” His footfalls were heavier, slower.

“East side?” Guthrie asked.

“Yeah. I'll enter south side. Must be more doors.”

“Wait on us. We're getting close.”

Olsen's breath whistled. “Negative.” The sound of his footfalls vanished.

Guthrie and Vasquez ran, and the sky opened above them as if the sun had lifted the lid of their leafy green box. Breaks and bends marred the open ground, but in sometime past, gardeners had carefully smoothed out lawns and fields. The Twin Oaks great lodge wore a facade of massive joined timbers under high-pitched roofs cut to display windows, like a circle of Victorian gentlemen gathered around a card table without removing their top hats and frock coats. A string of muffled semiautomatic shots encouraged them to go faster. On the smoother ground, they were swift. They found a small doorway on the eastern side in time to hear another fusillade of semiautomatic fire. None sounded with the sharp, authoritative crack of a Garand.