Hopscotch

— 15 -

The place was thirty miles out of town. Ross’s odometer showed twenty-nine and a half when Cutter said, “This’ll do. Pull over.”

He slid it over against the wooded embankment and switched off. The two FBI cars parked in tandem behind them. Cutter stepped out and spread the topographical map across the trunk of the car and played his flashlight on it. The eight FBI agents walked forward and crowded around.

Cutter said, “Ross and I and four of you will walk it from here-sound travels in these hills, he’ll hear the cars coming. You four give us forty minutes, then drive in. This car and your first cruiser you drive him into the farm. The second cruiser waits down at the foot of his driveway with two men in it.” He put his finger on the map. “The Scudder farm. Pay attention to these contour lines-that driveway’s damned steep.”

Greiff said, “Any chance he’d have it booby-trapped?”

“No. He’s not a killer. There may be telltales.”

“He’s not a killer-what is he then?”

“We want him. That’s all you need to know.”

Greiff wasn’t used to being talked to that way; it showed on his middle-aged face. He was the District Director out of Atlanta and he had the habit of command.

A car came down the road, an old one jouncing on its springs. It slowed to a crawl and the three men inside it gave Cutter’s party a xenophobic scrutiny. One of the FBI men slid his hand under his jacket. The, old car moved on. Greiff said, “They’ll figure us for revenuers-never mind.”

Ross was looking at the map again. He saw how the farm tilted, how the driveway corkscrewed up from the road. If it was like the other places they’d passed it would be crowded pretty close by the forest.

Cutter said, “He’s expecting us. All right, he won’t be in the house. He’ll be out in the woods watching.” Cutter’s finger moved along the lines of the map. “We won’t walk all the way to the yard. We’ll cut off the driveway and fan out through the trees. Three of us-I’ll take you two-move left. Ross and these two move right. Everybody keeps his flare pistol charged and ready. We’ll work our way through the woods and bracket the place. For God’s sake don’t go crashing around-keep your eye on where you’re walking and don’t blunder into any dead trees. Now if you spot him fire a flare. If you don’t just settle down and wait.”

Cutter turned to Greiff. “It’ll take us about forty minutes to get positioned. Give us that long and then start up. The last car waits at the foot of the driveway on the main road. The other two go right up the driveway like you’ve got business there. Don’t crawl but don’t rush it. Keep your lights on bright. Drive right up into the yard and turn the cars around so you can pull out fast if you’ve got to. Then get out the bullhorn and challenge the house. Don’t go charging it, just give him a shout-talk to him about tear gas, show your shotguns.”

“Then what?”

“He’ll have some diversion set up. A fire bomb in the barn or something. Don’t stick your necks out and don’t fall for it. Just yell at him. He’ll make a move. It won’t be from the house. One of us in the trees ought to be in earshot when he does-we’ll light him up like Times Square with flares. Then we box him and throw down on him. Got it? All right-come on, let’s walk.”

There was a good chance he’d be long gone. He’d had more than a half hour since Greiff had tested the phone. But Cutter had insisted he’d be there waiting for them. “He didn’t set this up with all that care just to leave us with a cold trail. You’ve got to understand this is a game to him. He wants to see our faces.”

“I wish I was as sure of that as you are. Those chapters I read didn’t look like kiddy time to me.”

“They’re not. They had to be the genuine article, hot enough to scorch a lot of big people. Otherwise we wouldn’t be playing his game.”

They’d nailed him on the phone call to Ives actually but the Southworth Bond paper had brought them close and they’d have made him on that alone; the phone call had just speeded it up. He’d bought two hundred sheets of it in Chatsworth and then he’d bought a ream in Birmingham. Chatsworth was less than a hundred miles from here. But the phone call to Ives in New York had been placed from Adairsville and there were only nine phones in town, one in a pay booth between the gas station and the country store. The storekeeper knew Mr. Hannaway, recognized the composite Identikit portrait and said Mr. Hannaway had bought a big stock of groceries three days ago. The kid at the gas station described Mr. Hannaway’s Pontiac and remembered filling it and the five-gallon jerrycan in the trunk. The kingpin in town was a back-porch country lawyer who owned the lumberyard and auto repair yard, and probably a distillery and half a dozen county politicians, and sidelined in real estate; he’d rented the Scudder farm to Mr. Hannaway and had received a second month’s rent in advance just six days ago. Ross had been pleased with their detective work until Cutter told him Kendig had planned it that way.

They walked up the driveway slowly, spread out. Ross’s ankle snagged something and he heard a distant tinkle-a cowbell, he thought; he listened for it again but it didn’t repeat. They moved ever more slowly, keeping close to the trees on either side of the rutted drive. Lamplight winked vaguely through the trees. The moon was hazed with a thin cloud cover but there was light enough to see where you were going. The flare pistol in his hand was slippery with his sweat; he shifted it to his left hand and wiped his palm on his trousers.

Cutter stopped them and made hand motions. Ross took his two men into the forest and led the way with great caution, well back below the perimeter of the yard; only now and then could he catch a wink of the lamps. The footing was soft and quiet-a half-rotted carpet of needles. He touched one of the FBI men in the chest and pointed; the FBI man nodded and moved uphill and Ross waited until the man blended into the darkness. Then he took his remaining companion on with him, crossed another seventy-five yards and left the man posted in the trees and continued alone. He keened the night with eyes and ears, breathing silently with his mouth open; he shifted the flare pistol again to his left hand, dried his right hand and brought out his. 38 revolver.

He crossed into a stand of younger growth; there had been a fire here at some time, there were no big trees. Younger growth had sprouted and some of the saplings were ten or twelve feet high, no more. But they were close together and he had to move by inches to avoid sound. Above and to the left he could see the lamps of the house more clearly. Every two or three steps he stopped bolt still to scan the shadows. There was a racket of insects, and he heard water running somewhere-a creek or a river.

He came to an opening that swathed irregularly from left to right. It began above him in a tangle of dead brush and it disappeared below him into heavier forest growth. He knelt and saw that some of the saplings had been sawed off close to the ground. Man-made then. For what purpose?

It was a puzzle he couldn’t solve without more evidence and in any case it probably didn’t matter. He studied it in both directions and then stepped across into the trees beyond and moved on, angling closer toward the house now. Cutter would be some-where not far to his right, having come around the opposite way. This would be about right. He settled down to wait.

He was down on one knee sweeping the yard with his eyes when he heard or felt something but he didn’t have time to move; a hand clutched his mouth and jaw, something rigid jabbed his spine and in his panic he heard a whisper:

“Freeze.”

The man was behind him, it was probably a gun in his back and no amount of hand-to-hand instruction at the academy could prepare a man to counter that. Ross didn’t stir; he hardly even breathed.

“I’m taking my hand off your mouth. Yell and you’re dead. Understand me? Nod your head.”

He nodded his head. The hand dropped away from his jaw and relieved him of his revolver.

He still had the flare pistol. The whisper anticipated him: “Don’t even think about it. Drop it easy, right by your foot.”

He let go. There was the slightest thud when it hit the pine needles.

“Hands behind you now.”

He obeyed, felt something harsh against his wrists and judged it to be heavy wire of some kind-possibly coat-hanger wire. He drew breath but then something plunged into his mouth and he sucked for breath in panic before he realized the man was gagging him with a wad of cloth. He felt a strip of fabric go around his face and then the man was knotting it tight at the back. An abstract corner of his mind appreciated the economy with which it had been done.

He kept in mind what Cutter had said. He’s not a killer. It would be an unfortunate time for Cutter to be wrong.

Then something dropped to the earth; the man stoped to pick up Ross’s flare pistol. He saw two things: Kendig’s profile and a short piece of half-inch galvanized pipe. He’d been bluffed-it hadn’t been a gun at all.

There was the scrape and growl of cars coming up the drive. He felt the pressure of the gun-his own-against his back. The two cars rolled into sight, high beams jiggling across the porch; the cars swung wide and stopped nose-out in tandem and the drivers slid out and hunkered against the fenders; Ross saw Greiff lift the bullhorn. The metallic voice was magnified and unreal: “FBI. Come out of the house with your hands empty. You’ve got one minute.”

The FBI man with Greiff lofted a shotgun and cocked its slide with a good deal of racket.

There was a whisper in Ross’s ear: “Where’s Joe Cutter?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

Greiff said on the bullhorn, “Thirty seconds. Then we fill the house with tear gas. Come on out-we’ve got you surrounded.”

“Stay put,” Kendig whispered and Ross thought of making a run for it when the gun pulled away from his back but Kendig was still right there; Ross saw the flare pistol rise past his shoulder. For a moment he thought Kendig was going to crown him with it and he flinched involuntarily but there was no blow. The flare pistol hung in the air above and behind his left shoulder.

“Ten seconds,” Greiff roared.

Simultaneously there was a whump close in Ross’s ear. It took him a moment to realize what it was: Kendig had fired the flare pistol, using Grieff’s racket on the bullhorn to mask the sound of the discharge.

Then the flare ignited. High in the air above the woods across the yard-probably not far from where Cutter was posted. It bathed the trees in harsh brilliant white light and suddenly men were crashing through the forest and Ross heard voices calling across the night in harsh tones… Then Kendig was spinning him with a hard grip on his arm: “Come on-move.” And Ross was being propelled through the saplings, stumbling, yanked upright and pushed on by Kendig’s powerful grip.

He skittered through the trees and suddenly they were out in the open swath he’d discovered before and Kendig was shoving him down the steep pathway; he slid and stumbled his way, eyes on the ground, avoiding stumps, trying to keep his balance with his wrists wired behind him. It was getting hard to breathe through his nose but Kendig kept shoving and yanking. He caromed down into the heavier forest and then Kendig slowed them down and they were walking, following a broad path among the trees, still hearing the hunters baying up at the far side of the yard; he heard Cutter’s distinct voice, louder than the others, calling for order and after that the racket diminished.

Abruptly there was a heavier mass in front of him in the deep forest shadows. He didn’t realize what it was until Kendig pulled the door open and shoved him into the passenger seat of the car. The door slammed against his right elbow and before he had time to react to it Kendig was behind the wheel flicking a switch and pushing a button. The engine roared and immediately they went bucketing forward, crashing through loose brush which he now saw had been piled there on purpose. It was a thin tangle of deadwood and it gave way easily before the thrust of the powerful car; Kendig spun the car onto the blacktop and the rear wheels bounced from side to side before they dug in and propelled the car forward, pinning Ross back painfully against his trapped forearms.

When he twisted around to look back he saw a car pulling out, coming after them-the one Cutter had left at the foot of the driveway.

Then he looked at Kendig. It was the first real look he’d had at his captor.

Kendig was smiling-gently and happily.

The FBI car wasn’t gaining but it was keeping up, maybe two-tenths of a mile behind them; he kept looking back for it and saw it intermittently on the straightaways. This was an old car but it must have had a souped-up mill and heavy-duty suspension for the bends; Kendig was treating it like a sports car and it was holding the road like one. It was all pretty damned neat, Ross conceded.

Kendig curled the car onto a straightaway and then his right hand came across the back of the seat and Ross ducked away but Kendig was only untying the gag and when he realized that he stopped flinching. He spat the gag out and Kendig said, “What are you, FBI or Agency?”

Ross didn’t say anything and Kendig nodded. “Then you’re Agency. A Bureau man would be proclaiming it to the sky, full of indignation. You’re working with Cutter on this?” Kendig spared him a quick glance. “Sure. You’re Ross, aren’t you.”

“Yeah.” His voice was hoarse from the gag and he cleared his throat several times.

“You’ve come up in the world from the third floor.”

“What are you trying to prove, Kendig?”

But Kendig didn’t take the time to answer that. He had his eyes on the mirror and Ross twisted his head to look. The FBI car was still there, maybe a little closer. It was a long straightaway and farther back he could see the glow of headlights above a skyline.

Kendig said, “They’ve got three cars, haven’t they. We’ll have to lose those.”

“You’re bottled up on every road in this county, Kendig.”

“You haven’t got that kind of manpower. Don’t try to bluff me, Ross, you haven’t had enough practice.”

They soared over a hilltop and then the road plunged into a series of tight bends on the down-slope; they had to slow to twenty and even then the tires squealed and whimpered.

At the bottom there was a drain-off ditch beyond the outside of the curve, no guardrail. They went into the bend at about twenty-five and Ross saw Kendig yank something with his left hand, down beside the seat. Then Kendig gunned the engine and they gathered speed down the flats.

Kendig wasn’t using a map but he knew what he was doing; either he’d explored the roads or memorized a map. He took a left turn at an intersection and they bumped along a dirt road that looked to Ross as if it ought to be a dead end but it let them onto another paved byway and Kendig only followed that a mile and a half before he cut to the left again into the pines and went up a narrow chuckholed track past a cluster of farms. Chickens cackled in the night from the disturbance. They came into yet another blacktop road, made a gravel detour and emerged onto a wider concrete highway. Kendig had fled southeast from his farm but now if Ross’s sense of direction hadn’t packed up they were rolling almost due west.

Then Kendig pulled over onto the verge. He stopped the car and patted Ross’s jacket and lifted his wallet and ID folder.

“Now you add that to your sins,” Ross said.

Kendig ignored it and pocketed Ross’s wallets. “I want you to give Joe Cutter a message. Tell him I’ve finished writing the book. I’ll be carrying it with me. Every now and then I’ll stop somewhere and mail off another chapter. I’ll keep a crucial page here and there, just as I did with the first ones. I’m playing fair-I haven’t hidden the manuscript with a lawyer to be opened in the event I don’t check in or anything like that. If you and Joe can catch me you’ll catch the manuscript with me. But the longer you take, the more pages they’ll be receiving at the publishers. And I’m likely to start mailing out those evidential pages any time. Tell him that for me-he ought to enjoy the news.”

“You’re a madman, you know that?”

“I’m having fun and so are you.”

Ross couldn’t help it: he said acidly, “You have any suggestions where we might start looking for you next time?”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun.” Kendig reached across Ross’s lap and pushed the door open. “Go on.”

“What about my hands?”

“Use your ingenuity.”

“Thanks.”

“Somebody will pick you up sooner or later. Go on, Ross.”

He clambered from the car, obscurely torn by anger and gratitude. The car bolted away, its momentum slamming the door he’d left open. His own revolver bounced on the shoulder and dropped to rest. Ross tried to read the plate but its light had been extinguished. It probably didn’t matter-Kendig would have to ditch that car soon.

He retrieved his revolver awkwardly and stood along the roadside quite a while, waiting. It amazed him how gently Kendig had treated him. But then nothing made much sense on this assignment. All of them seemed to be reveling in an exercise in nostalgia. Even Cutter in his cool way seemed to be facing the job as if Kendig were a rival white-scarfed aviator in an open biplane-the sort of man you saluted after you’d shot him down. The anachronism made it hard to come to terms with the assignment: Ross saw what kind of game he was supposed to be playing but he’d never played it before and wasn’t sure he had the capacities for it. Yet comprehension tantalized him; he almost had it-in spite of the absurd embarrassment of his position he felt something that wasn’t exactly admiration or respect for Kendig; it was more like pride.

It was a long time before he realized the FBI cars weren’t coming. He had a feeling that was oil Kendig had dumped back on the bend. They’d have been traveling very slowly there, not fast enough to do the passengers much damage but the cars must have tangled up in that drain-off ditch and it would be a foul-mouthed crowd there.

He began to work out ways to get the wire off his wrists.