The Sign of the Book (29 page)

“Well,” Laura said, “what've you two been doing all afternoon?”

“Just hangin' out, watchin' movies.”

I nodded at Jerry and said, “This is a good kid you've got here.”

“He sure is.” She tousled his head. “He's my boy.”

 

The turkey came out of the oven at four o'clock and we ate at the big dining table in a room that had been dark for years. Erin offered a toast, “To new beginnings,” and four glasses clinked lightly. Outside, the snow had begun again: we could see it fluttering past the windows as darkness fell over the town. Parley had lit the fireplace and it roared mightily as we ate and talked and shared an occasional laugh. “Parley's considering moving to Denver,” Erin said at one point, and Parley shrugged. “I will admit that it sounds exciting,” he said. Laura said she had already made her decision: “I can't live here anymore. This was never my place.” She didn't mention her dead husband by name, but we all got the point. It had been his house, his town, his choice to live here. “I'm going to put the house up for sale next week,” she said. “The kids'll be better off in the city, with real schools and others their own age. I think they've had enough of me as a homeschool teacher.”

She was motivated to sell it, she would be willing to dicker the price, she wanted to be far away from Paradise and its little minds before the season turned.

“At the same time, don't be foolish,” Erin said. “This land alone will be worth a fortune in a few years, and you don't want to give it away.”

“I know that. But I can't live my life based on what may be, either. Besides, as I think you all know, I've got some pretty steep legal bills.”

Erin said nothing.

“I may move somewhere I've never been before,” Laura said a few moments later. “Seattle maybe. I've always liked the rain.”

Erin nodded and they looked at each other across the enormous gulf of that tabletop. Laura said, “You think that's a good idea?”

“I think what makes you happy is what's good.”

“I don't know what happy is,” Laura said.

“Then maybe it's time you found out.”

There was a moment just after dinner: Erin and Parley had cleared away the dishes and taken them into the kitchen, and the kids were playing in the far hallway. Laura and I moved past each other at the end of the table, and suddenly she reached over and hugged me tight. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I know how much work you did for me. God knows where I'd be without you.”

Even more suddenly, she stood on her toes and kissed me hard on the mouth. I felt her tongue and I pulled back instinctively and stammered, “Uh, Laura…”

“Mistletoe,” she said, pointing over my head. “But I guess I'd better leave you alone before Erin comes in here and gets the wrong idea.”

The evening passed uneasily. I had the feeling of something afoot that hadn't been there before. At nine o'clock, late by Paradise standards, the telephone rang.

“It's for you,” Parley said.

I went into the hall and picked it up.

“Mr. Janeway?” A woman's voice.

“Hi, who's this?”

“It doesn't matter who I am. You've been going around town, asking about Lennie Walsh. You still interested?”

“Sure I am.”

“Well, he's still here. I saw him night before last.”

“Where?”

“Up at the end of Main Street, right on the edge of town. He was talking to old Freeman Willis…you know, the jailer.”

“You're sure it was him.”

“Oh, yeah. Listen, I've got my reasons for wanting that son of a bitch to get whatever's coming to him. He hasn't made many friends in this town. But I'd rather not get directly involved in whatever happens. Just a word to the wise.”

“Thank you,” I said, but she had already hung up.

Erin sat still and said nothing while I put on my coat. “I'll be back in a little while,” I told her, and I hurried out before any of them had a chance to ask any questions.

One thing about a jail: Christmas, Easter, or the Fourth of July, it never closes.

Freeman was sitting behind the big desk with his feet up, playing sheriff. He jumped when I came in, as if I had caught him robbing a poor box, and his feet clattered on the floor.

“Oh, it's you.”

“Hi, Freeman.”

He came around the desk and sat in the perp's chair looking guilty.

“I thought maybe you and I could have a little talk.”

“I got nuthin' to say to you.”

“That's okay. You can tell it to the DA instead.”

“Tell what to the DA?”

“How a good country boy like you became an accessory to a crime.”

“The hell you talkin' about?”

I sat across from him and looked into his face. “Hey, Freeman, no matter what you think, I am not your enemy. I have no wish to see you go to jail.”

Alarmed now, he said, “Why would I go to jail?”

“Aiding and abetting a criminal was a crime itself, last time I looked.”

“You talkin' about Lennie?”

I nodded solemnly, avoiding the temptation to be sarcastic. “Lennie's got himself into a mess, Freeman. And you two were seen together two nights ago, here in town.”

We stared at each other and I smiled, not unkindly.

“I know you don't think he ran in here and quit his job just because he suddenly got bored with it,” I said. “I know you're smarter than that, Freeman,” but in fact I knew nothing of the kind.

“Who said he quit his job?”

“Then where is he?”

A long moment passed. Freeman rubbed his grizzled chin and tried to look away. I did look away, striking a pose of infinite patience. I read the
WANTED
circulars on the wall and avoided saying the obvious: that soon Lennie would be up there in the rogues' gallery with Elmer Trigger Adams and Henry Scott, notorious flasher and tit-tweaker, who had moved on to buggery, child molestation, kiddie porn, and other monkey business.
I wonder how you'd look up there in that company, Freeman.

“Lennie says you're trying to sandbag him.”

“That's about what I'd expect Lennie to say. In fact, I don't care anything at all about Lennie. You can believe that or not, Freeman, it's no skin off my nose, but if you crawl into bed with Lennie Walsh, you'll live to regret it.”

I waited. “You were seen the other night, talking to Lennie,” I told him again.

“Who says?”

“Never mind that. Somebody reliable, I'll tell you that much. What'd you boys have to talk about so seriously?”

“Nothin'. He just wanted me to give somebody a message.”

“Who might that be?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“What was the message?”

“I don't know.” He looked into my doubtful eyes. “I'm tellin' ya, I don't know. It was a sealed-up letter.”

“I see. Did you deliver it?”

“Why wouldn't I? Lennie never did me no harm.”

I shrugged. “I'm looking for a killer, Freeman. If that happens to be Lennie, and you go down with him…”

I let that settle on him. Softly I said, “Murder's serious business.”

“What's it got to do with me?”

“I think Lennie knows something about it.”

“Well, he didn't tell me where he was going.”

“I see.”

“He didn't. I'm not lyin' to ya.”

“I think you know where he went anyway.”

I pushed back as if to leave.

“Wait a minute,” Freeman said. “Listen.”

I pulled in close again and I listened.

Fourteen hours later I was rolling gingerly along what looked like a rutted turn-of-the-century logging road. It had taken most of the morning to rent the Jeep; I had to wait till the guy decided to open and do the paperwork, and now as I went higher, I felt the tension growing like a knot in my belly. There was a feeling of death in the air: it's always that way when a standoff is in the works and you don't know what the other guy is capable of. The way so far was just as Freeman had said: a nearly impossible road unfit even for horse and mule teams, with deep holes in both ruts that kept me rocking back and forth and in the worst places tilting precariously to one side and then the other over yawning rocky valleys. The cabin was just below timberline, surrounded by a few scrawny, mutant-looking trees and some hardy underbrush. Far below I could see the remains of an old mining town, a collection of ruins that twisted around smaller mountains along what was probably a snow-covered dirt road. Beyond the range was Paradise, socked in now as a storm system moved in from the west. I could see it coming seventy miles away, a swirling gathering of black clouds and snow moving slowly across the rugged landscape. I came over a crest and saw a higher mountain just ahead, and one to the north beyond it.
You'll know you're gettin' close when you see them two peaks,
Freeman said.
You follow the road on up the ridge, past what's left of an old mine, and right after that you'll come on the cabin all-of-a-sudden-like. You'll have to walk or crawl them last two hundred yards. You could make it in a Jeep, but he'd see you comin' and I wouldn't
wanna be you if he does. Lennie is a crack shot with that deer rifle.

He looked worried.
Don't let 'im know it was me you got this from. He'll know anyways; he ain't stupid, and he ain't talked to nobody else.

I'll cover for you, Freeman,
I said. I tried to mean it, but he wouldn't say more than that; he froze and shook his head, afraid he had already put himself in jeopardy, probably wishing that he'd said nothing at all.

Before starting out, I had retrieved my own gun and it was snug under my left arm. But I knew Lennie's deer rifle would beat it at a distance hands down, and there was a good chance he'd be watching.

I stopped and got out; looked over the terrain and imagined Lennie out there, cunningly hidden. No fooling around now, no silly games as we'd done on the slope across from the Marshall place. In plain fact I didn't know what to expect from Lennie. He had talked a bad show, but I had met others like him, dozens of badass hoods who had talked and were dead now because they had messed with the wrong guy or hesitated at the wrong time. Three of them were in the ground by my own hand, and I wasn't anxious to add to that dark tally. But here the odds were on Lennie's side and I knew that as well. That fact alone made me too ready to shoot first and ask questions later, and I still couldn't pin him with anything more than intentionally screwing up a crime scene and lying about it.

I still didn't know. I had had one quick glimmer and a growing hunch that whatever had happened, for better or worse, the answer went through Lennie.

Hunches, instincts, glimmers: all converging in a game of life and death.

But it was more than a hunch now. I moved on, keeping my head below what his line of sight would be from the ridge, and I skirted it with the gun in my right hand, held down at the ground as I walked. There was a path, but it was rugged, cutting across the face of the hill, apparently to the top of the mountain a mile downrange. Much farther than I wanted to go on my belly. For now I picked my way along, dropping off the path whenever I sensed too much open space across the gulch. I knew there would come a time, and it was coming up quickly, when I'd have to dare the hundred-yard final approach across what was essentially open terrain or lie down and wait for the darkness, many hours away. My sense of things told me I didn't want to do that. The storm that was coming would be wicked, especially here at the top.

I had almost reached the ridge when I saw the roof of the cabin peeking above the hill. I stuck my gun hand inside my coat and started on a perpendicular path across the face of the mountain. Ten minutes later I eased up the ridge and saw the cabin just below. Parked behind it was Lennie's truck, and beside that, two freshly cut stacks of firewood.

I sat on the ground and thought about everything, starting long before the murder of Laura Marshall's husband and going right up through this morning. And I looked over the ridge and watched for any sign of life.

There was no life.

The truck sat cold and untouched.

There was no smoke coming from the chimney.

Nothing.

I stood and surveyed the cabin from the top of the ridge. I watched every window for a glimmer of the rifle and there was nothing.

I faced my fear and sucked it up. Started across the open ground. My feet went noiselessly in the fresh, uncrusted snow, which gathered in the wind and whipped across the rocky mountaintop like tiny white dervishes. Once I had decided to go, I went: didn't stop or slow down; just walked straight to the edge of the cabin and stood there getting my breath.

Maybe he's sleeping, I thought. But slowly the truth dawned.

The cabin had a cold, empty feeling to it. No cheery windows steamed warm from his fire.

No fire. Not a sound from inside; only the wind out here.

He wasn't there.

Could be a trap.

I eased around the corner. The door facing the range was open, billowing gently in the wind. From there I could hear the rhythmic squeaking of the hinges. I went to the door and peered inside.

Nothing.

It was a simple hunter's cabin; crude, one big room with a smaller room off to the right and a bathroom on the left; both doors open, light shining in from windows beyond.

I moved quickly now, sensing the worst. Went into the bedroom and rifled through his closet, rummaged through his dresser, such as it was, looked in the desk/table that had been pushed aside in some kind of haste.

A few papers; nothing current, nothing valuable. Lennie wasn't much of a writer, letters or otherwise.

On a whim I tossed his bed; I slapped down the pillows and then turned the mattress. Under it was a sealed yellow business envelope.

I sensed its importance; I could feel it burning through the paper. I tucked it under my arm and moved back out into the big room, went to the doorway, looked out over the distant mountain range.

The door to Lennie's truck was open, like the cabin. Not a good sign.

I moved across what yard there was. Came around the edge of the truck, and there was Lennie, sprawled grotesquely across a seat drenched black with his blood. He stared up in disbelief. One shot had ripped his throat out. The other had got him between his wide-open eyes.

Suddenly I knew what had happened, should've known all along. I tore open the envelope and looked inside and felt a sudden deep chill. It went from my gut up my backbone to my numbing brain. I had made a horrible misjudgment at the start of this case. I thought of Erin and I trembled, and I felt my knees buckle in fear as I slipped quickly down the ridge to the Jeep. I dropped the keys in the snow and roared my anguish at the dark sky as I scrambled frantically to find them.