Boobytrap

15

They kept me on the scene for more than half an hour. It could have been much longer, but after the first rush and barrage of questions from a grim and shaken Sheriff Rideout they lost interest in me. They swarmed over the cottage, looking for any pieces of Latimer that he might’ve left behind. He was their focus now; even the movements of the bomb squad had become secondary to the brutal slaying of one of their own.

I went down by the lake, where I would not have to look at the blanket-shrouded body of Lieutenant Dewers, and waited restlessly for them to let me go back to the resort. Inside I was still seething and strung tight. I hadn’t told Rideout about Dixon’s failure to put out state and federal warrants on Latimer; neither had Sam, as far as I knew. For the time being, that fact had gotten lost in the aftermath of Dewers’s violent death. I hoped it would stay lost until I could talk to Marian, try to get her husband on the phone — make my decision one way or the other.

The moral issue was only part of it now. The shotgun boobytrap and Dewers’s death had made it personal. Latimer had almost ended my life twice in two days, once inadvertently and once with premeditation. That shotgun charge had been intended for me, all right. I was supposed to be the one lying up there with his chest torn to bloody shreds. He’d hated me since our first meeting, and never mind that the reasons were irrational. Feared me, too, because of who and what I was. So he’d added me to his hit list. Figured I’d be the first to come snooping around his cottage when I found him and Chuck gone, and built his boobytrap accordingly. He’d almost guessed right, too; I’d come close to opening the front door myself earlier. Close.

The only reason I was still alive was luck and his psychosis. He’d had plenty of opportunity to take me out with a gun or knife or blunt instrument, but he preferred to do his killing at a distance, with detachment and methodical prearrangement and no threat to himself. The coward’s way. Nils Ostergaard must’ve been an unavoidable necessity. And it must’ve bothered the hell out of him when it was done.

I stared out at the lake, thinking that I hated Latimer right now more than he could possibly hate me. That I’d like nothing better than an active role in bringing him down before he harmed Pat or Chuck or anyone else; how good it would feel to get close enough to spit in his face. But that was as far as it went. There was no desire for violence in what I felt, just a cold determination that was every bit as personal as a blood vendetta. Violence all around me, aimed at me, but none of it had penetrated. I was like a chunk of stone inside a protective force field: it couldn’t hurt me or turn me into an instrument of violence myself. What I’d thought and felt out at Chuck’s Hole yesterday morning was not a situational reaction but an absolute truth. I was all through with killing or hurting any living thing, except as a last line of self-defense. It was simply not in me anymore to become an avenger, or even a shadow of one.

So I sat there and hated Latimer in my own way and waited for somebody to come and either question me some more or set me free. It wasn’t Rideout but a uniformed deputy who finally walked down, which told me even before he spoke that they were through with me for the time being. “Sheriff says for you to go on back to the resort,” he said. He didn’t offer to drive me; neither did anyone else. That was all right, too. Physical activity was what I needed at the moment, a way to work off some of the tension.

When I reached Judson’s I found things to be pretty quiet. Several cars were in evidence, a county cruiser with two officers inside blocking the road, but most of the residents and guests seemed to be jammed into the cafe. Three stood in front of the grocery half, one of them Fred Dyce; he glanced my way and then turned aside — embarrassed about last night, maybe, if he even remembered what’d happened. The quiet wouldn’t last long, I thought. Just until the media started showing up and the news about Latimer and the kidnapping and Dewers’s death got spread around. Then we’d have Carnival. That was as certain as death itself.

I went straight to the Judsons’ A-frame, and Rita opened up and let me in. Marian stood waiting in the living room, her face pale but otherwise composed.

“Have they finished with the bomb?” she asked.

“Not yet. Anything from Pat?”

“No, not since you left.”

“I’m going to try calling him. Then you and I need to talk.”

I shut myself in the kitchen, punched out the Dixons’ home number. Fifteen rings, no answer. I called the D.A.‘s office and talked briefly to one of the other A.D.A.s; Pat wasn’t there, hadn’t been there all day and hadn’t reported in since he’d put through the request for the Sacramento bomb squad.

Bad, as bad as I’d feared. But not hopeless yet.

What happened next was up to Marian.

I got her alone in the Judsons’ bedroom and laid it out for her. All of it, except for what had happened to Dewers; her defenses were fragile enough without that blow and its implications. At one point she sat heavily on the nearest twin bed, as if her legs had gone shaky on her. Otherwise she took it as well as anybody could. No tears, no emotional reaction of any kind. She just sat there, looking up at me out of wide, pained eyes.

“What are we going to do?” she said.

“Right now, the choice is yours.”

“Mine? I don’t understand.”

“There are two ways we can handle this,” I said. “You’ll have to choose which one, and quickly. Pat’s your husband, Chuck’s your son.”

“Yes,” she said. “All right.”

“The first way, I tell Sheriff Rideout everything I’ve just told you. We put everything in official hands, take ourselves out of it completely.”

“Isn’t that the right thing to do?”

“It’s the approved thing. I haven’t done it yet because it wasn’t my place. I don’t feel I can take the responsibility.”

“Thank you for that. Go on.”

“The authorities have manpower, resources, experience. But it takes time for them to mobilize, interact with one another, and the information that Latimer is at large with your son was given to them only a short while ago. At any time, now that word is out, an officer somewhere could spot Latimer’s car and do what’s necessary to free Chuck. If that happens, it’ll happen no matter what we do. More likely, Latimer will be able to get to where he’s going without interference, if he hasn’t already. In any case, official wheels are turning, and once they turn fast enough, whether or not we tell anybody about Pat, bunches of state cops and FBI agents are going to start showing up with questions and agendas.”

“You mean… here?”

“Here, yes, if this is where you are.”

“Are you telling me we won’t be able to leave?”

“It’s unlikely Rideout would let us go anywhere until the higher-ups arrive. That’s the way it’s done; the feds in particular want the nearest responsible relative in a kidnapping — you — to be close at hand in the event something happens. They’ll let you go home eventually, but not today unless Latimer and Chuck are found. You’ll have to spend the night here or in Quincy or maybe in Sacramento, wherever they decide is best, and you won’t have much privacy.”

“My God,” Marian said, “I don’t want that, I couldn’t stand that. I want to be at home if Pat or Chuck… that’s the only place where I can…” She seemed to realize she was starting to ramble. She bit her lower lip, hard, maybe hard enough to draw blood. Using the pain as a way to calm herself, I thought; it was something I’d done myself once or twice. When she spoke again, the frantic edge was gone from her voice. “What’s the other alternative?”

“We take a partial hands-on position for the time being. Don’t tell the sheriff anything — I go to him and ask permission to drive you back to the city. If nothing has come through on Latimer’s whereabouts, or any official requests to detain either of us, I think he’ll agree to it. As things stand now, he has no real reason to keep us here.”

“Then what? Once we get to the city?”

“We go to your home. And pray Pat’s still there.”

“I don’t…you said he didn’t answer…”

“Not answering the phone doesn’t mean he’s not there. It could be Latimer’s holed up between here and San Francisco and Pat’s gone to meet him. But it could also be that Latimer’s headed for a place in or near the city. Not your house; I doubt he’d risk that. Maybe wherever he lived before he came to Deep Mountain Lake. If that’s the case, he’s barely had enough time to reach the Bay Area. And he’s methodical, a planner — he doesn’t do anything on the spur of the moment unless he has no other option. The odds are that whatever he’s planning, he’ll need time to set it up.” I thought but didn’t add: And with his sadistic streak, he’d get a bang out of letting Pat stew and sweat for a few hours, possibly a lot of hours.

Marian did the lip-biting thing again. “If you’re right… then Pat’s still home?”

“If I’m right.”

“Why wouldn’t he answer the phone?”

“He wouldn’t want to talk to anyone but Latimer, not even you. And it could be Latimer gave him a specific time to expect another call. We can get there by six or six-thirty, if we’re on the road in the next half hour or so. That might be soon enough.”

“You could just call Al Ybarra or Dave Maccerone, couldn’t you? They could go to the house, and if Pat’s there…”

“If he’s there, he’s forted in. He wouldn’t open up for anybody and there’d be no grounds for forcible entry. Even if they did talk to him, Pat wouldn’t be likely to admit what he intends to do.”

“No. No, he wouldn’t. He can be very stubborn when his mind is made up.”

“They could watch the house, follow him when he leaves, but that’s an iffy proposition. And if Pat shows up for his meeting with Latimer dragging a police tail… well, anything might happen.”

There was a little silence before she said, “I don’t think he’d listen to me, either.”

“You’d have a better chance than anyone else — you and me together. You must have some influence over him where Chuck is concerned.”

“Some, yes… Oh God, I don’t know what’s best. I just don’t know!”

“Nobody knows, Marian. It’s all gray area, no matter which way you turn.”

“Would Latimer… do you think he’d… hurt a child?”

“The honest truth? He’s capable of it.”

“Pat must feel the same. He must believe that trying to… trade… is the only way to save Chuck’s life.”

“Probably, but he’s wrong. It’s not the only way. And you can’t barter with a lunatic, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. If he puts himself in Latimer’s hands—”

“He’ll die and Chuck will die. That’s what you’re saying. Both of them will die.”

“There’s a strong chance of it, yes.”

“You could be wrong…”

“I could be. If Pat does meet Latimer, I hope to God I am. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s a miserable situation any way you look at it and anything can happen, good or bad, no matter what you decide or what anybody does.”

She gave her head a loose, wobbly shake. “If we go to the city… if Pat isn’t home… what then?”

“We notify the authorities. Immediately. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. There are other things we can do even before we get to the city. Monitor the manhunt situation, for one, so we’ll know right away if there are any new developments. That can be done through my assistant, Tamara Corbin.”

“I don’t know,” Marian said again. “I can’t make up my mind, I can’t seem to think straight…”

“I understand. Believe me, I do.” I touched her arm, gently; her muscles seemed to twitch under my fingers. “Suppose I give you a few minutes? I’ll go talk to Sheriff Rideout, see if he’ll even allow us to leave—”

“No. No, I don’t want to just sit here, I can’t stand any more sitting and waiting.” Abruptly she got to her feet. “It’s a choice between passive and active, isn’t it? Doing something or doing nothing.”

“In a sense.”

“All right. I’ll go with you, and after you find out if we can leave… then I’ll decide.”

We left the A-frame, cut behind the main resort building toward where the county cruiser was parked blocking the road. Plenty of noise came from inside the cafe, voices rising and falling in an excited babble. From the snatches I could make out, they were all talking about the boobytrap bomb and the kidnapping, which meant that the first of the media — reporters from the Quincy area, probably — had arrived and spread the word. News of Dewers’s death hadn’t been made public yet; Rideout would be keeping the lid on tight until the lieutenant’s next of kin could be notified and the bomb squad finished their work.

Marian walked close beside me, clinging to my arm, her hip touching mine now and then. Her trust in me made me feel guilty again. I wondered if I hadn’t manipulated her, eased her in the direction I wanted her to go. I’d tried to present both options in a neutral fashion, but I couldn’t deny there’d been a subtle bias. Bad enough the way things were, with the load I was already carrying; if she went the way I wanted and something happened to Pat or the boy or both of them…

Cut it out, I told myself. You told her the truth, subtle bias or not. A child in the hands of a madman is the worst kind of pressure situation there is and there are no hard and fast rules because nothing’s predictable, no course you take is completely right or safe. The real fault lies with the madman, no one else. All you can do is make your choices and hope they’re the right ones — trust your instincts and your experience, put your faith in God or fate or whatever you happen to believe in. If it turns out badly, you die a little. If it turns out well, it’s like a rebirth. Either way, you have to accept it.

We reached the cruiser without any attention being paid to us from the cafe. One officer sat inside, an older guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache; his partner was down the road a ways, talking to a couple of men I didn’t recognize. I told him who I was, who Marian was, and that I needed to speak briefly with Sheriff Rideout. Yes, it was important. Would he call him on the radio?

He was the right man to have approached; he did what I asked without much protest. Rideout wasn’t immediately available. It took about five minutes before he radioed back.

I said, when I had the receiver, “I’d like permission to drive Mrs. Dixon back to San Francisco so she can be with her husband.”

Staticky pause. At length he said, “There’ll be people who want to talk to her.”

“I know. They can do that with her at home, can’t they?”

“I suppose so.”

“I can have her there by six, six-thirty.”

“What about you? Where can you be reached?”

“At my home tonight, at my office tomorrow. The numbers and addresses are listed.”

“You’re a witness,” Rideout said. “We may need you to sign a written statement.”

“I can do that by mail or fax. But if it’s necessary for me to come back up here, for any reason, you have my word that I’ll cooperate.”

Another staticky pause. His mike was open; I heard him say to somebody, “Okay, right. It’s about time they decided to dump that goddamn thing in the lake.” Then, to me again, “All right. You can go.”

I looked at Marian. She nodded; she’d made up her mind — firm. “Can we leave right away?” I asked Rideout.

“Just make sure you take Mrs. Dixon straight home.”

“As fast as I can get her there safely.”

I returned the mike to the deputy, walked Marian back toward the Judsons’ A-frame. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?” I asked her.

“I’m sure. Yes.”

“Okay. Get whatever you want to take along and wait for me in the cabin. I’ll come get you pretty quick.”

“Where are you going?”

“To talk to somebody. An idea I have. I won’t be more than ten minutes.”

I veered around to the front of the main resort building and went into the cafe. Hal Cantrell was where I figured he’d be, at the bar — chattering to two other guys, a bottle of beer in his hand and an excited gleam in his eye. Enjoying himself. One of the blood-and-disaster freaks. Well, maybe I could turn that to our advantage if I handled him right.

It took a little doing to pry him away from his audience and get him outside and off to where we had some privacy. I managed it by whispering to him that I needed a favor, an important favor, and that he was the only one who could help me with it.

“So,” he said when we were alone, “what’s this favor?”

“Make a couple of phone calls for me.”

“Phone calls? Who to?”

“Your real-estate office, first. Have somebody run a rental listings check — all the brokers county wide — and find out if Donald Latimer rented a house or apartment in the Half Moon Bay area at any time in the past month to six weeks. Under his own name or as Jacob Strayhorn. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Possible, sure, but— Hey, why Half Moon Bay?”

“Chance he lived there before he came up here.”

“Not Stockton, huh?”

“Not Stockton.”

“Why do you care if he lived in Half Moon Bay?”

“Never mind why. Will you do it?”

His mouth quirked in a sly, boozy little grin. “What’s in it for me?”

“A hundred bucks, cash. And some free publicity if it turns out to be useful information that helps nail Latimer.”

“Yeah? You think it will?”

“Pretty good chance,” I lied.

“Well, I always did like to see my name in the papers. Who’s the other call to?”

“Me. My car phone as soon as you get the information.”

“You leaving here?”

“Driving Mrs. Dixon back to San Francisco.” I dragged my wallet out. I’d brought plenty of cash along, the way you do on vacations; I picked out five twenties, but I didn’t let him have the money yet. “One other thing. This is just between you and me. Don’t discuss it with anyone, and I mean anyone, for twenty-four hours.”

“Law included?”

“The law included. If you do, you won’t like what I have to say to the media about your cooperation.”

Cantrell shrugged. “A deal’s a deal with me,” he said. Now he was serious; the grin was gone. “I’ll take your money” — he plucked the twenties out of my fingers — “but that’s not the real reason I’m going along. Not for any glory, either.”

“No, huh?”

“No. For the woman and her kid. I got kids of my own, you know.”

“I’ll bet you’re a good father.”

The sarcasm was lost on him. “Better’n most.”

“And a good citizen.”

“Try to be,” he said, and he even managed to sound sincere. If he didn’t believe it now, he’d manage to talk himself into it before long. He was just that variety of self-serving, self-deluded asshole.

I took him with me to the Judsons’ cabin, told Rita what he was going to do without getting into specifics and asked her to please make sure her phone stayed free until he had the information I was after. She said she would and she didn’t ask questions. I wrote my car phone number on a piece of notepaper, handed it to Cantrell. In return, he gave me a mock salute and went off with Rita to the kitchen.

Marian was ready. I hustled her out of there, across the lot to where she’d parked my car. We were just getting inside when a couple of guys came running toward us, one with a camera in his hand, the other shouting, “Hey! Hey, wait a minute!” Reporters. I told Marian to lock her door, locked mine, fired up the engine as the two guys reached the car and the shouter started banging on the window glass. I managed not to do him any damage as I drove us away.