The Stalker

19

Where was Orange?

Damn it, damn it, where the hell was Orange?

The limping man looked at his watch, and then leaned sideways to peer around the tall rushes, looking along the muddied expanse of the private road. Nothing, no sign of him. He should have been here by now, fifteen minutes ago. Had something gone wrong? Had he become suspicious at the last minute? Or maybe it was the rain, yes, traffic became snarled badly by the rain at times, that was probably it, Orange had just been delayed by the weather and he would be along any time now.

Hurry, Orange, hurry.

You can’t keep death waiting.

The limping man leaned back against his upturned heels, letting his eyes drift eastward, toward the cabin. Across the bleak marshland, to the right of the structure, he could see the wind-frothed water of the slough; and he could see a marsh hawk, caught somehow in the deluge, fluttering erratically, very low over the width of the slough, seeking shelter; and he could see—

A splash of color.

Yellow, lemon-yellow.

Movement independent of the morass, of the elements.

Someone moving along the shoreline, away from the shack.

The muscles in the limping man’s neck corded. Orange? Orange? No it was impossible damn damn damn how could it he couldn’t have gotten past unless he had a boat a boat waiting and he had the woman he had come in sneaking and reached the shack and released the woman damn you Orange goddamn you to hell Orange . . .

He stumbled to his feet, taking the Magnum out from beneath his overcoat, and a tic had gotten up along his lower left jaw, pulling that side of his mouth down grotesquely, so that he seemed to be half smiling, half-frowning, like a caricature of a comedy-tragedy theatrical mask. He stood there with his feet spread wide apart, staring through the rain at the shoreline, and he saw it again, the splash of color, the movement, and now the clear silhouettes of two figures humped over, holding hands, moving swiftly, recognizable.

Orange.

And the woman, his wife.

Blind rage welled inside the limping man, and there was no thought now of caution, of stealth; there was only the overpowering need to kill Orange, to end it, things had become complicated, no longer fitting precisely into a well-ordered progression, Orange had tricked him, fooled him, Orange had to die, die . . .

He lunged forward, starting to run, the Magnum extended in his hand, arm stiff, finger curling back on the trigger.

“Steve!”

Kilduff pulled up in the small belly of the shoreline, half turning as he heard Andrea cry out, and felt the sharp, frightened stab of her nails into the back of his hand. As he did so, his eyes lifted past her, lifted inland, and he saw what she had seen, saw the man running toward them, running crab-like through the wet, wavering vegetation, saw the stiffly horizontal arm with its black, manifest extension . . .

“Oh God, Steve, it’s him, it’s him!”

Her voice was laced with panic, and he felt a trapped fear rise in his own throat, a choking ball of it that made him feel as if he wanted to vomit. So close, they had been so close . . . He looked wildly about him, seeking a way out, an avenue of escape, but there was only the slough and the shack from which they had come and the dock with the waiting skiff and the sweeping expanse of the marshland. Four roads, and all of them were dead ends, box canyons, now that they had been seen. The slough was treacherous and Andrea couldn’t swim; there was no protection and no weapon effective against a gun; they would make fine targets sitting in the skiff if they managed to reach the dock, and the chances of that were poor with the open shoreline; and the man, the killer, was running toward them across the fen. No way out, no way out . . .

He saw the roof of the shack belonging to Glen Preston, then, and an idea struck him, all at once, untenable perhaps, but there was nothing else, and he veered into the vegetation, pulling Andrea roughly behind him, moving diagonally toward the Preston cabin, moving toward a high thick cluster of sage. The wind blew stinging rain into his face, blurring his vision, and the tangled growth through which they were running tugged resistingly at his shoes and ankles. They plunged through the sage finally, beyond it; Kilduff felt something brush his face, whispering, cold, felt Andrea’s hand almost slip from his, heard her cry out softly, and he stopped, pivoting, clutching at her, seizing her hand again, pulling her forward. They were some seventy-five yards from the cabin now, but the vegetation had begun to thin out, leaving only intermittent cover. Without breaking stride, he pulled Andrea to the left, through a circular patch of rushes, praying that the thick stalks—the cluster of sage—would hide them from the killer’s view long enough, just long enough . . .

He saw the natural-drainage gulley fifteen yards distant, exactly where he had judged it to be, the banks grown densely—momentary concealment, momentary safety—and he slowed, allowing Andrea to rush into him, and when she had, he caught her around the waist and threw both of them forward, skidding through the grasses, over the bank, down the muddy sides and into the rushing, icy brown rainwater which flowed within the narrow spread. He held her tightly against him for a moment, fighting breath into his lungs, forcing himself calm. Then he drew apart from her, looking into her eyes, seeing them reflect the awful terror that grotesquely contorted her features. Her mouth worked convulsively, forming a silent scream, and he shook her roughly.

“Listen, Andrea,” he said urgently, breathlessly, “get control of yourself, you’ve got to do what I tell you, now follow this gulley, it comes out by Preston’s dock and there’s a skiff tied up there, I don’t think you’ll be able to start the outboard, so just get inside and push off into the slough, let the current take you down to the river fork, you should be able to make it to shore there and find help.”

She swallowed, digging her teeth into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “What ... what are you going to do? Why can’t we both-?”

“There’s not enough time, he’ll find us before long, now go—hurry!”

“Steve ...”

“Damn it, do what I tell you, go, go!”

He shoved her away from him and she stumbled, almost falling, gaining her balance again, looking at him. “Go!” he said again, and she hesitated for an instant, but only for that long, turning abruptly and running as quickly as she was able through the muddy water, her hands clutching frantically at the reeds and cattails to maintain her footing.

He watched her for a moment to make sure she was obeying, and then he swiveled his body so that it was facing toward the cabin, Preston’s cabin, his hands digging into the soft mire of the bank, gauging times and distances in his mind, guessing fatalistically that there hadn’t been enough time, that he would run directly into the killer’s arms, banishing the fear as rapidly as it had come, thinking: Decoy, decoy, move now, move! He scrambled up the bank, straightening into a low crouch as he gained the flat marsh ground, his eyes flashing in a wide rapid sweep through the wind-rain—and he saw the killer less than thirty yards away, running parallel to him in the opposite direction, toward the slough, saw him stop and jerk his body around as he spied his prey coming out of the gulley.

Run!

His legs churned on the wet, slippery turf, his eyes twisting frontally again, and he was gathering speed, running now in a low infantry zig-zag, changing direction, changing pace, trying to blend as best he could with the surrounding terrain. The shack was sixty yards away, fifty, and he heard the first faint, distant, popgun-loud sound behind him, absorbed immediately by the howling gale, the bullet missing badly; heard a second report, absorbed, missing closer; heard a third shot—

At almost the same instant, he felt a sharp, stinging pain in the lower part of his back, just above the left kidney. That entire side went instantaneously numb, and he lost his balance, stumbling forward, putting out his right hand instinctively as he felt himself falling. I’ve been shot! he thought with a kind of awe, and he struck the ground solidly, jarringly, sliding on the slick wet earth, sliding behind a high growth of anise less than thirty yards from the northern side of the cabin. Breath burst from his lungs, and pinwheeling lights exploded in back of his eyes, fading rapidly after that first intense burst, fading into a series of large, cinereous dots that blended together to form a screen of murky darkness ...

The limping man saw Orange fall, and a sudden premature exultancy seized hold of him. He pulled up, lowering his right arm, finger relaxing on the Magnum’s trigger. He thought: Got him, I got him, he’s dead, they’re all dead, it’s over, it’s over!

But almost immediately, the methodical caution with which and by which he had functioned throughout the whole of it returned, and he knew he had to make sure, make certain, put a bullet squarely between Orange’s eyes, no mistake. There would be enough time then to locate the woman—probably hiding where Orange had suddenly appeared, she wouldn’t get away—and when he did he would make her scream for him and then he would kill her quickly and painlessly and mercifully; he had nothing against the woman after all . . .

He began to run toward the thick, fringed clump of anise behind which Orange had disappeared.

Andrea checked her flight, looking back over her shoulder, at the exact moment Steve came up out of the gulley and began to run. She froze, watching him lurch drunkenly across the open ground toward the Preston cabin until the high greenish-brown marsh grasses along the near bank of the drainage gulley blocked her vision—watching with the sudden realization that he was trying to draw the limping man away from her so that she could get away, escape . . .

Her gaze swiveled frenetically past the sparser growth on the opposite bank and across the morass to the north, and she saw the limping man racing toward the Preston cabin, his arm extended; saw the first indistinct orange flash from the large black gun in his hand, the second, the third; saw the limping man come to an abrupt halt, peering toward the spot where she had last seen her husband.

And her immediate reaction was: He’s shot Steve, oh dear God, he’s shot Steve!

She stood immobile as the limping man began to run again, vanishing momentarily as Steve had vanished. The turbulent rainwater swirled and eddied around her legs, and she was dimly aware that one of the suede flats had been pulled loose from her foot and carried off. She didn’t know what to do. He had told her to get to the boat, get away from there and summon help, but what if he was badly hurt, maybe dying, maybe already—Oh no, no, he was all right, he had to be, he hadn’t really been shot, this whole thing was so alien, so terrifying, she couldn’t cope with it, what should she do, what should she do?

She tried to think, tried to reason, and after a moment she seemed to know the answer to her mute plea: Get help, yes, get the police, that was all she could do; she couldn’t fight the limping man, she was only a woman alone. She had to get help, bring aid quickly, Steve was all right, he hadn’t been shot, he would get away and she would bring help, she couldn’t panic now, not now, she had to do what he had told her to do.

Andrea pivoted and began to rush once again toward the storm-flayed slough.

Kilduff shook his head violently, trying to clear away the gathering darkness in back of his eyes. He had no feeling in his left arm, and he knew that it was useless; he got his right hand under his chest, palm flat on the swampy ground, and lifted himself onto his knees, still shaking his head. Gray light—rain-blurred images—took away the darkness finally, and he could see again. He struggled upward, standing unsteadily just beyond the cluster of anise, chest heaving, looking toward the Preston cabin. Transitory cover, he thought, so futile, why does a man fight for every last second, every chance for another breath, when death is imminent?

He stumbled forward in a kind of awkward, spindle-legged run, not looking back, not daring to. Ahead he could see a narrow, squat, ram shackle structure—a woodshed—with shadowed gaps like missing teeth in its visible side, where the boarding had rotted or pulled away; it sat in a bayou-like quagmire void of any growth other than a few shocks of cord grass, ten yards from the near wall of the shack. Kilduff reached it, waiting for another bullet to slam into his back, tensing his muscles, girding himself for it as he ran; but he was past the shed, almost to the cabin, when the shot finally came, missing wide right, gouging wood splinters from the wall near the set of four stairs on the cabin’s inland side. He threw himself forward reflexively, like a runner making a head-first dive into second base, skimming across and through the muddy pools, sending low wakes of spray outward on either side of him. He kept his head cradled against his good arm as he planed into the two-foot open space between the bottom of the block raised cabin and the liquidy ground. He caught his forward momentum as he passed beneath the shack, twisting sideways, crawling through the fetid muck toward a vertical plywood section which served as a siding to the set of stairs. He crawled belly-down into the shadows there, wiped some of the slime from his eyes, and peered out.

He saw the killer come running in a limping gait one step past the woodshed, saw the black gun stretched forth in one hand. The limping man skidded to a halt there, legs spread wide, neck craned forward, seeing the slug-like furrow Kilduff had left through the quagmire. He remained standing there for a moment, indecisive, and then he took two quick steps backward, leaning his body back against the side wall of the shed, blending with the dwelling, no longer discernible.

Kilduff pulled the cold moist air hungrily into his lungs, still staring out at the shed, waiting, a growing weakness beginning to take command of his body, a frustrated helplessness permeating his mind. In that single moment of hesitation, he had glimpsed the limping man’s face clearly through the pelting, stinging rain.

He didn’t know him at all.