Spencerville (35 page)

"Shock?"

"Yeah, that, but... seclusion. In seclusion. Like layin' low. You know?"

"Yeah."

"What do you think? Two guys, right? That explains it. Cops say they don't know what happened. Big mystery. Hell, they got the motel guy, and they got the guy who got the shit beat out of him. They know, but they're not letting on. They do that sometimes. Something weird here. How did the wife get away? You know what I think? The husband paid a ransom. The cops don't want to say that another cop paid a ransom. Right?"

"Could be."

"I should be a cop. Hey, you want coffee? There's a stop up ahead."

Yes, he wanted coffee, he wanted food, he wanted to get rid of a three-day stubble and brush his teeth and wash the stench off him, but he said, "No, I'm in a hurry."

"Sure thing."

About a half hour after they started, Keith saw the exit for Route 15, westbound. He said, "Let's get off here."

"Here?"

"I have to pick up some papers at a lawyer's house."

"Okay... where's that?"

"Not sure. I have directions. If it takes a long time, I'll give you a few bucks extra."

"No problem."

They traveled west on Route 15, and Keith directed Chuck onto a series of roads that he figured the man wouldn't recall later if it ever came up.

Chuck said, "Hey, you got all this memorized, right?"

"Sure do."

"What town is it?"

"It's a farm. Lawyer lives in a farmhouse."

"Okay."

They got onto County Road 22, and as they approached his farm, Keith realized there was something wrong. What was wrong was the skyline — there was no house there.

Keith stood in front of the charred ruins of what had once been his home, his father's home, his grandfather's home.

Chuck said, "Jesus... you think everybody got out all right?"

Keith didn't reply. He looked at the other buildings, which still stood, then out at the endless fields of corn, the deep blue sky, the distant tree line.

Chuck asked, "What do you want to do now?"

What he wanted to do was sit on the ground and look at the house until the sun went down. What he had to do was something else.

It had been a little over an hour since he'd walked out of the hospital. The staff would not have discovered that immediately, and when they did, there'd be an in-hospital search, some confusion, and finally the police in the Toledo area would be notified. Keith figured there would be some lag time before the state police were notified, and more time before someone thought to notify the Spencerville police, who in turn were undoubtedly not famous for their reaction time. Still, the first place they'd look for him was here. He jumped back into the van.

Chuck got behind the wheel. "Where to?"

"Spencerville."

They drove into Spencerville, and Chuck commented, "Hey, there's the police station. This is some coincidence, ain't it? I mean, you comin' all the way from New York and windin' up here where this kidnapping happened. Not a bad-looking little town. Where's this lawyer's office?"

"In his other house. Turn over here."

Keith directed Chuck to the north side of town, and, within a few minutes, they were on Williams Street. Keith had no expectation that Annie and Cliff Baxter would be there, sitting around trying to iron out their differences. They were in seclusion, and Williams Street was not seclusion. The van passed the house, and Keith saw the white Lincoln in the driveway, but there was no other sign that anyone was home, and no obvious sign that the house was being watched. He said to Chuck, "Pull over here."

Chuck pulled over to the curb.

Perhaps by now, the Spencerville police knew that Keith Landry had escaped from the hospital, and if they did, their first thought would probably be that Landry was fleeing the state. But their second thought might well be that Landry was headed back to Spencerville, though they'd think that was a long shot. Still, they'd be on some sort of alert and would probably stake out the farm. But Keith knew there would be two places they wouldn't expect to see him: the police station and the Baxter house.

Keith got out and said, "Be about ten minutes." He took his briefcase and walked to the Baxter house. It was a cool morning, and there was no one on the porches, and no one visible on the street at all. He walked up the driveway and headed toward the rear. If anyone was watching from a window, the blue trust-me suit and briefcase gave off a message of respectability and legitimate purpose.

There was a kennel at the end of the yard, but Keith couldn't see or hear any dogs.

Keith walked up to the rear porch, opened the screen door, and tried the knob on the back door, but it was locked. He looked in both neighboring yards and at the windows of the surrounding houses, but didn't see anyone through the high hedges. Holding the screen door open with his leg, he drove the corner of his briefcase through one of the windowpanes, reached inside, and unlocked the door. He slipped quickly inside, closing the door behind him.

Keith looked around the kitchen, noting its cleanliness and orderliness. He opened the refrigerator and saw that it was nearly empty, which was probably not the way it usually was. Clearly, the Baxters were gone and were not coming back for some time.

He opened the basement door and went down the stairs. He found the den and turned on the lights. A few dozen animal heads were mounted on the walls, and he noted the gun rack that could hold twelve rifles or shotguns. It was completely empty.

He went upstairs again and glanced into the dining room and living room, again noting how clean and tidy everything was. He opened the coat closet in the foyer and saw that there was only one man's civilian trench coat and one police uniform topcoat and two ladies overcoats. All the casual and cold weather outerwear was missing.

Keith went upstairs and glanced into a boy's bedroom and a girl's bedroom, then into a room that was a home office. He went into the office and rummaged around, pulled some Rolodex cards, then left. He found the master bedroom and opened the two closets. Again, only dress clothes hung on the poles, and whatever casual and outdoor clothes and footwear there may have been were gone. In Cliff Baxter's closet were four neat police uniforms — two summer and two winter, along with the accessory shoes, hats, and belts. The bureau drawers were pulled open, and most of the underwear was gone. Keith had a pretty good idea where they had gone, and by the looks of what they'd taken, Baxter intended to be away a long time, perhaps forever. Most important — if her missing clothes were a true indication, it appeared that Annie was alive and that he intended to keep her alive.

Keith went into the master bathroom and saw that the medicine cabinet was open. There was a bloody towel on the sink, blood in the washbasin, and on the counter were a box of gauze, a bandage roll, and a bottle of iodine. On the floor was Baxter's tan uniform, the trousers stained with dried blood.

An inch or so to the left or right, Keith thought, maybe a half inch deeper, and he'd have severed the femoral. Better yet, if he'd reached Toledo Airport an hour earlier, they'd be in Washington now. And if he hadn't gone with Adair to Washington on Thursday, he and Annie would be in Rome by now. And so on and so forth. It didn't do any good to dwell on the bad timing; the important thing was that he and Annie were alive and fate had given them one more chance to be together.

He picked up Baxter's bloody trousers from the floor and went back into the master bedroom. Like most of the house, it had sort of a country look — oak furniture, hooked rugs, chintz curtains, and dried flowers. It struck him that Annie, despite her bad marriage, or perhaps because of it, had taken a great deal of time and trouble with the house, the small details, the touches of hominess and warmth. He supposed she did it out of pride, or out of a need to present a normal setting for her children or her friends and family, but also out of a longing for a life and a marriage that in some small way reflected the surroundings she'd created of home and hearth, peace and caring. Keith, for some reason, found it all very sad and troubling.

There was no great need to be here, he knew, and the risk probably outweighed whatever information he could gather. But he knew he had to come here, to be a voyeur and peek into the lives of Cliff and Annie Baxter, two people who, more than any others, had so profoundly changed and influenced his life.

Cliff Baxter, who as a schoolmate had never been invited into the Landry home, had very recently broken into it and, in some way, Keith reflected, that violation was more flagrant than Baxter's burning of the house, or even what had happened in the motel room. Keith had no intention of burning the Baxter house down, because it was filled with Annie's things and her children's things. But he felt that he had to leave behind some evidence of his presence, some mark of contempt — though not, he thought, for Cliff Baxter to see, because Keith had decided that Baxter would never see this house again. But he wanted to do something for himself, and for the record.

Keith examined his handiwork in the living room. Sitting in the wing-back chair was Baxter's bloody uniform, stuffed with towels and linens, and protruding from the neck of the uniform shirt was the stuffed head of a wolf.

Keith told himself he wasn't crazy, that the blow to the head had not affected his judgment. But neither was he the same man he had been before Cliff Baxter came crashing through the door of the motel room. Keith stared at the wolf head atop the uniform. The white teeth and the glassy eyes mesmerized him for a moment, and he knew that to kill that thing, he would have to become that thing. Clearly, his better angels had been chased away, and he felt the dark wolf rising again in his heart.

"You get what you needed?" Chuck asked.

"Yes."

"Off to Lima?"

"A few more stops first."

Keith directed him out to the commercial strip and into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. Keith took sixty dollars out of his pocket and handed it to Chuck. "Take this for now."

"That's okay, John. I know you're good for it."

Keith put the money on the dashboard. "You just never know, Chuck. Go get yourself something to eat. You have some change?"

"Sure." Chuck handed him a pocketful of loose change, and Keith got out and went to the phone booth, while Chuck went into the convenience store. Keith took one of the Rolodex cards out of his pocket and dialed. He wasn't feeling appreciably better physically, but mentally he was much better, sure she was alive, though not letting himself think of what she was going through.

"Hello?"

"Terry, it's me."

"Oh, my God! Keith, Keith, where are you?"

"I'm on the road. Where is Annie?"

"I don't know. They came back to Spencerville, she called me and said they were going away to spend time together and talk it out. She said they were going to Florida."

Keith knew they hadn't packed for Florida. "How did she sound?"

"It was all a lie. Damn him, he probably had a gun to her head. That bastard. I called the police here in Chatham, but they said they can't do a thing without proof, and I should call Spencerville..."

"I know. Terry, listen, I'm going to find her and bring her back. Tell me where you think they really went."

"Grey Lake."

"I think so, too. Did she give you any clue on the phone?"

There was a silence, then Terry said, "Yeah, she said something... something about driving through Atlanta on the way, and afterward I remembered that Atlanta is also the name of the county seat in Montmorency County in Michigan on the way to Grey Lake. I think that's where they really went, but I called up there a few times and only got the answering machine. So I don't know..."

"Okay. I think that's it."

"Larry wants to drive up there..."

"No. Baxter is armed and dangerous. I'll take care of it through the local police up there."

"The police won't do anything, Keith. She's his wife. That's what they keep telling me."

"I'll take care of it."

"What happened? I thought you were about to get on a plane?"

"It's a long story, but basically we were stopped by the police."

"Damn!"

"Right. But she was all right when they took her away."

"I don't think she's all right now. My father has been hounding the state police, and he's gotten a lawyer, but... I can't believe that bastard could just kidnap her..."

"When did she call you?"

"Monday night, about six. She said she changed her mind about going with you and that she and Cliff were home and they'd spent the day together at home, packed, and were about to drive to Florida. She said she'd called the kids at school and told them everything was fine, and that she and their father were going on vacation. But I called her kids after I heard from her, and they said they never heard from their mother — it was their father who called early in the morning. So then I called Annie back, but the damn call rang at police headquarters, and I asked them what the hell was going on, and they said the Baxter calls were being automatically forwarded... so then my father went to the police station, and they told him Cliff and Annie went to Florida. It's all a lot of bull."

"Okay, do me a favor — don't rock the boat anymore, and tell everyone the same thing. I don't want to spook him if he's up there. Okay?"

"Okay..."

"What does the house look like, Terry?"

"Oh, jeez... I was only up there a few times... it's an A-frame, dark wood, set back a ways from the lake."

"What side of the lake?"

"Let's see... north side. Yes, north side of the lake, and you can only get to it by a single-lane dirt road through the woods."

"Okay. Tell Larry I said hello. I'll call you both tonight from Michigan."

"Promise?"

"You know I will, Terry. Hey, I'm sorry..."

"No, don't apologize. You did the best you could. That bastard is the devil — I swear he is."

"I'll bring his tail and horns back for you."

She tried to laugh. "Oh, God... I'd kill him myself if I could... Keith?"

"Yes?"

"If she can't be with you, she'd rather be dead than be with him. I'm frightened for her."

"I told her we'd be together again. She knows that."

"I pray to God you're right."

"Speak to you tonight." He hung up and took another Rolodex card out of his pocket and dialed.

The operator gave him the charge, and he put the coins in and heard it ring.

An answering machine picked up, and Cliff Baxter's voice said, "You reached Big Chief Cliff's lodge. Ain't nobody here. If you know where the fish is bitin', or the deer is hidin', leave a message."

The machine beeped, and Keith was tempted, but hung up.

Keith took another Rolodex out of his pocket on which were the mobile phone numbers of Spencerville's ten police cars and the beeper page numbers of all fifteen officers. He dialed a beeper number, hung up, and waited.

The phone rang, and he picked it up. "Officer Schenley?"

"Who is this?"

Keith could tell that Schenley was calling from his mobile phone. Keith replied, "This is Keith Landry."

There was a pause, then Schenley said, "How'd you know my beeper number?"

"Doesn't matter. Are you alone?"

"Yup. Cruising. Looking for you, as a matter of fact."

"Well, here I am."

"Where?"

"Let me ask the questions. Do you have a friend on the city council?"

Again, there was a pause, then Schenley said, "Maybe."

"That's my friend, too."

"I know."

"I need some help."

"I guess you do. I'm surprised you're alive."

"Do you want to help?"

"Hold on. Let me pull over." A minute later, Schenley said, "Okay. Listen, Landry, there's a warrant out for your arrest."

"For what?"

"Well, this and that. All bullshit. Signed by Judge Thornsby here, who'll sign anything Baxter shoves under his nose. But there's no state warrant for kidnapping. On the other hand, we just got a message that the state police are looking for you as a witness."

"Witness to what?"

"You know to what. To what happened at that motel."

"Were you there?"

"No. Baxter wouldn't take me on that kind of thing, and I wouldn't go. But I was on the desk that night." He added, "I didn't like what I saw."

"What did you see?"

"Well... damn, I'm a cop, Landry, and you're a fugitive..."

"Are you sleeping well?"

"No."

"Schenley, you understand that Baxter has broken the law, and that when it hits the fan, everybody goes down with him. He doesn't care about you or the men."

"I don't need convincing."

"How do the men feel?"

"Scared. But happy he isn't here."

"Does he call?"