Crazybone

21

Most businesses in the village were closed for the day; it was almost seven o’clock. The first open place I stopped at a liquor store, had a public phone outside, but the directory was missing. I went inside long enough to ask the clerk a couple of questions about Speyburn single highland malt Scotch. Then I drove on a ways until I came to a Shell station.

Two phone booths there, one with a tattered book. I flipped through the survivor’s white pages. There was a listing — an address on Ridgecrest Road. I had a map in the car that would tell me how to find it.

“He’s not here,” the woman said.

Her name was Lillian. She’d volunteered that information right after she opened the door, making it plain that she preferred her given name to her married one. Even in the pale porch light I could tell she had once been a beauty, the dark-haired, smoky type. She was still attractive at around forty, but there was a letting-go laxness to her facial muscles, a listlessness in her voice and movements, lines bracketing her mouth that had been deep-etched by the acid of bitterness. Behind her, inside the house, I could hear voices and laughter, some young and live, the rest canned — teenagers watching a TV sitcom.

“When do you expect him?” I asked.

“I don’t. He’ll be late, as usual.”

“Do you know where he is? It’s important I talk to him.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“No. It’s urgent. Really.”

Pause. “He said he had a business meeting.”

“Did he say where or with whom?”

“No.”

“So you haven’t any idea where I can find him?”

Another pause, longer this time. Studying me. I was making an effort to keep my feelings from showing, but some of the anger must have leaked through. A good thing, as it turned out.

At length she said, “What do you want to talk to him about?”

“A personal matter.”

“I see. An urgent personal matter.”

“Very urgent.”

Her faint smile had no humor in it; in the diffused light the lines of bitterness looked deep and blood-dark, like slash marks. She thought she knew what kind of urgent matter, that was plain. And it didn’t seem to bother her. If anything, she was pleased. Long-suffering and fed up, and I’d caught her in just the right frame of mind.

“Well, then,” she said, “I may have an idea where he is. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but he has a cabin up in the mountains off Skyline. It used to belong to his brother before Dennis moved to Texas. He goes up there sometimes.”

“On business?”

The faint smile again, so fleeting this time it was like a shadow across her mouth. “When he wants to get away from me and the kids. His private little retreat.”

“Can you give me directions?”

“It’s about fifteen miles from here.”

“I don’t mind driving fifteen miles.”

“You might have trouble finding it.”

“I don’t mind that, either.”

She told me how to get there, in some detail. I said then, “A few more questions before I go. What kind of Scotch does your husband drink?”

“Now why would you want to know that?”

“Speyburn? The expensive twelve-year-old kind?”

“That’s right. Nothing but the best for him.”

“Is he in the habit of keeping a bottle in his car?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Her laugh was as cold as the night. “He wouldn’t want to be caught without it in an emergency. Such as a sudden business meeting. So you’d better be prepared, not that you aren’t already.”

“Prepared?”

“If he is at the cabin,” she said, “he won’t be alone.”

Lillian’s directions were explicit enough, but as she’d predicted I had a little trouble pinpointing the exact location of the cabin. It was northwest of Greenwood, on winding Tenitas Creek Road just off Skyline; the area was heavily forested, the property screened from the road by pine and spruce, the night dark, windy. Shifting splinters of light winked through the trees, but it wasn’t until my second pass that I spotted the half-hidden driveway leading in that way. The drive made a dogleg to the left partway along so I couldn’t tell whether the illumination came from a window or some kind of outside night-light.

I drove past again and on down the road a few hundred yards, to where I’d U-turned the first time. Mine was still the only car in sight. I made another quick swing around, came back uphill in low gear. A short distance below the driveway, on my side of the road, my headlights picked up a narrow, rough-earth turnout. I cut the lights and eased in there, making certain I was all the way off the pavement before I shut off the engine.

I felt around under the dash, unsnapped the .38 Colt Bodyguard from its clips, and slid the gun into my pocket. Heavy darkness broken only by those distant shards of light enveloped me as I got out: the road was still deserted. Cold, pummeling wind, directionless night sounds, the strong resinous scent of evergreens and the more pungent flavor of woodsmoke. I pulled my coat collar up, ran across the road to the driveway.

It was of packed earth, rutted and overlain with a carpeting of pine needles. There was enough starshine overhead to outline the ruts and uneven ground between them; the tree shadow along both sides was as thick as black paste. I walked in as fast as I dared, head down and body bent so I could watch my footing. Dry needles and twigs crackled under my weight, but the wind made more than enough noise to drown out small sounds. The woodsmoke smell was stronger in there.

Off to my left the light grew less fragmented, and when the track began to curve, the trees thinned out and I could see part of a clearing, then the black bulk of the cabin. The light came from inside, making a warm yellow rectangle of a front window. In the outspill, there was the gleam of metal and glass — two cars parked before a narrow, railed porch, one medium-size and dark colored, the other low-slung and light colored.

Richard Twining was here, all right. And he wasn’t by himself.

I changed course slightly, taking an angle that brought me to the cabin on the side away from the lighted window. Music played inside, not loud, just discernible above the skirl of the wind. I passed slowly alongside the sports car, ducked under the log rail at the far end and lifted up on the porch.

Boards creaked, but barely loud enough for me to hear. I took another step, and there was a wind gust that hammered a shutter or loose shingle somewhere, created a series of mutters and rattles and shushes in the trees. By the time it lulled again I was past the front door and up against the wall next to the lighted window.

Inside, a woman laughed suddenly, a shrill giggle that ended in a kind of squeal. Then the squeal became something else, a long, drawn-out sighing moan. I knew that sound, all right; there is no other like it and its cause is as old as time. I eased my head and body around, not being too cautious about it because there was no longer any need, and peered in through the glass.

They were on the floor in front of a stone fireplace, on a scatter of oversize throw pillows. Light from a log fire and a squatty end-table lamp shone on outflung arms and legs and bare, sweat-shiny flesh. The woman was on top, turned in profile to me — young, carrot-topped, plump, and enthusiastic; I had never seen her before. Twining’s face was clearly visible, teeth bared, eyes open and lust-popped, a satyr’s mask that turned my stomach. Under other circumstances I would have looked away immediately; I’ve never much cared for sex as a spectator sport. But it was not what they were doing that kept me standing there a few seconds longer. It was what I saw when he arched his body, twisted and lifted his head off the pillow: three parallel lines a couple of inches long, an angry red in the firelight and lampshine, on the left side of his neck down to the collarbone.

No doubt of it now, none at all. The anger in me boiled up, to the point where I did not give a damn about being reckless. I sidestepped to the door, felt for the knob, turned it. Not locked. Good. Less wear and tear on me.

I went in, making as much noise as I could, and slammed the door behind me.