The Intriguers

xiv.

After a long time, I felt the car stop. The door opened and footsteps came around to the rear. Then the trunk lid above me was lifted, daylight came in, and Martha stood there looking down at me, her tanned face in shadow, her blonde wig very bright in the sunshine.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

I sat up painfully and said, "It won't kill me, I guess. But keep that air-conditioner blasting unless you want roast Helm for dinner."

I got out of the trunk and stretched, looking around. We were parked by a small dirt road or lane, under some cottonwoods that apparently got their water from the underground seepage of a muddy stock pond nearby. Some bored-looking Herefords stood around the pond, watching us suspiciously. The lane ran on up across the open range to a house over a mile away, sheltered by more trees, the only other trees in sight.

In the opposite direction, the ground sloped down gently to the distant horizon. The highway was out there, a straight streak across the plain, infested with cars and trucks looking like ants crawling both ways along an endless twig. It was wide-open country, but it didn't have the spectacular, desolate vistas you find farther west, and there were no faraway, wind-eroded buttes and mesas to add interest to the flat landscape.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"We're still in Texas. I thought there might be a roadblock at the Oklahoma border, and I'd better check on you before we hit it."

I said, "I doubt very much the police will be stopping cars on the highway, particularly cars heading into Oklahoma. Hell, they can't go searching every car in the state for old banjo strings, or a saw and what's left of a broomstick. It's not the cops I'm worrying about; it's Leonard's people, some of whom probably know us by sight from Mexico and Arizona, or think they do. Let's hope they're all looking for a couple in a dark green station wagon with a boat towing along behind, so hard they'll pay no attention to a lone blonde in an unencumbered white sedan."

I glanced at the big car, another Chevy that Martha had rented that morning in Amarillo, Texas. It didn't have as much power as the wagon we'd left behind temporarily at a motel, but then it didn't have as much to pull, either. Actually, she'd picked it, on my instructions, not for speed, but for its heat-reflecting color or lack of color, for its large trunk, and for its efficient cooling system that included some ventilating louvres in the trunk lid that might help a man survive back there on a bright summer day. I stretched once more, trying to untie the knots in my back and neck. While the car trunk was about as big as they come, it hadn't really been designed for comfortable occupancy by gents six-feet-four.

Martha was checking her reflection in 'the car window, touching her bright new hair into place.

I said, "Stop fussing with it, Goldilocks. It's all right. You're beautiful."

"Am I?" She turned to look at me. There was quick mischief in her eyes. "You didn't act as if I were last night. All you did was snore."

"Make up your mind," I said. "Yesterday evening you were mad because you thought I was going to rape hell out of you. This morning you're mad because I didn't."

She smiled. "I'm not mad. But you didn't have to sleep quite so soundly. A little insomnia would have been more well, diplomatic." Embarrassed, she stopped smiling abruptly and said, "Well, if you're all right, we'd better hit the road again."

An endless time later I realized that we'd left the interstate freeway for a secondary road: the pavement was rougher, the speed was less, and there was a lot of the braking and accelerating that goes with driving a two-lane highway. Now and then there'd be a series of stops and starts indicating that we were passing through a town. Once I picked up some bruises when she took a set of bumps too fast, presumably a railroad crossing. Then there was a final town, more country roads, and a stop. The trunk opened.

"I hope you survived all that," Martha said.

"Everything except that damned railroad track you hit at ninety miles per hour," I said, crawling out of my metal womb. I looked around. The country had changed. The view was not as big as it had been. This was more rolling farmland with a stream running through it. "Did you find the sheriff's house?" I asked.

"Back down the road three point seven miles," she said precisely. "I thought of stopping near a kind of knoll nearby from which you could have seen the layout for yourself, if you didn't mind climbing a little, but then I thought somebody else might have the same idea."

"Smart girl." I reached into the back seat to get a beer out of the cheap plastic-foam icebox we'd picked up in Amarillo, along with the rental car and the address of Sheriff Thomas M. Rullington, obtained from a friendly telephone operator. "Beer or coke for you… Okay, let's go sit on the riverbank while you tell me what it looks like."

Martha laughed. "In these ladylike clothes you've put me into? My nylons wouldn't last two steps in that brush. Maybe I can make it to that log over there without casualties." She made it to the log, and I opened the coke she'd indicated and handed it to her. She said, "Thanks. Actually, it's a small farm just outside the town, with a shiny new Cadillac in the yard. You go through some brand new ticky-tacky suburbs, real crackerbox stuff, and just as you reach open country, there it is, with a mailbox out front that says 'Rullington, Route ~3' and a number I didn't have time to read as I drove by. The house is white clapboard that could use another coat of paint. In front, a kind of sad-looking, fenced-in flower garden and mangy-looking lawn with a tricycle and a set of swings. At the side, as I said, a big Caddy sedan. In back, a barn and corral with a couple of horses in the corral. Farther back, some fields with cattle in them. That's about all I could see going by, except that there was a man sitting on the corral fence looking at the horses as if he didn't like horses much. And fifty yards down the road was a parked pickup truck-blue, if it matters-with a man in the cab smoking a cigarette as if he'd had so many they were beginning to taste awful."

"Good enough," I said. "We'll make a secret agent of you yet."

"I certainly hope not." Martha's tone was dry. After a moment, she went on. "What are you going to do, Matt?"

I said, "The real question is what Carl's going to do, and what Sheriff Rullington's going to do-or hopes he's going to do-about what Carl's going to do."

"You're certain the sheriff is next on the list."

"It figures that way," I said. "Apparently nobody knows just whose bullet hit Emily Janssen in all that shooting, but it's well established who gave the order to fire. But just how Carl plans to reach him… Wait a minute! You said there were some kids' playthings in the Rullington yard?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because, damn it, Carl is a pro. He can figure the opposition as well as we can. The first killing was easy. Nobody was expecting it. The second was probably almost as simple; nobody was really looking for an encore. But now the whole state's alert, knowing there's a systematic cop-killer loose who's more than likely to strike again. Carl can't help but know he hasn't got a chance of sneaking up on another policeman, let alone the sheriff himself. What will he do? Hell, it's obvious. He'll make the sheriff come to him, assuming he can get his hands on the proper bait. Let's find out just how many kids the Rullingtons have and where… "I stopped, seeing that she was about to go into one of her righteous seizures. I said, "Shut up, Borden! Just keep your Goddamned high-minded disapproval to yourself, so I can get on with my work."

"But kidnaping children-"

"We don't know that's how he'll work it. Anyway, don't forget, Carl is short one child. Maybe he figures he's got one coming. If Rullington can shoot them, why can't he kidnap them?"

"You can't be serious!"

"I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the way Carl's mind is working. The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced that's the way he'll do it: poetic justice or something… You said there was a natural vantage point from which we could have studied the sheriff's farm, only you were afraid somebody might have beat us to it. Well, suppose you're right. Suppose Carl's keeping the place under observation while he learns the Rullington family's daily routine. It's a long shot, but it's worth trying. Let's go."

They don't have mountains in Oklahoma to amount to anything, at least not in that part of Oklahoma. They don't even have anything you'd call a real hill, if you were brought up in a more rugged landscape as I was, but there was a kind of undernourished brushy ridge across the highway from the sheriff's farm-or where my scout informed me the sheriff's farm was located. I still hadn't seen it for myself.

"That little twisted oak or whatever it is," Martha said as she drove. "Up on the ridge right next to that bare-looking knob. I think the house is just opposite that, although it's hard to tell from this side."

We were cruising slowly down a narrow dirt road that left the highway a mile or so outside Fort Adams and kind of wandered behind the ridge in question. I was in the back seat, ready to hit the floor at the sight of another person or car. If anybody remembered the white Texas Chevy, I wanted him to remember it with only one occupant, female.

"If there's any kind of a road leading into that clump of trees to the left, take it," I said. "Right there… What's the matter?"

She had slammed on the brakes an instant after turning into the trees, throwing me off balance. "There's a car hidden in there already! What do I do, Matt?"

"Sit tight. I'll go take a look."

I was dropping out of the sedan on the off side as I spoke. I slipped around the rear with my revolver ready, and made my approach cautiously, working from tree to tree. The vehicle had been backed into a clump of brush to hide it. To call it a car was an exaggeration. It was a Ford panel delivery truck, and not much of a truck at that.

It was well over ten years old, and it had led a hard life. Black paint had been sloshed over it when the original pigment expired. The battered Kentucky license plate was held in place with rusty baling wire. However, the headlights were clean and intact and the tires were new. There was nobody inside.

I made sure of this, and frowned at the interior. The upholstery of the front seat had worn out and the owner had arranged a folded blanket to sit on, driving. There were other blankets, and some pots and pans, in the rear. Apparently he'd been sleeping in the truck and doing his own cooking. The doors were locked and I let them stay that way. I opened the hood instead, and looked at the large and fairly new V8 motor inside. The original mill had probably been a six and considerably less powerful.

I stood there for a moment, considering. Maybe my gamble was paying off. An automotive relic with new tires, good lights, and a muscular replacement power plant in good condition could easily be Carl's idea of camouflage. With that license, the vehicle certainly didn't belong to a local squirrel hunter, even if the Oklahoma squirrel season was open this time of year, which I doubted. I waved to Martha to drive up.

"What is it?" she asked through the open window of the sedan. "I mean, whose is it? Carl's?"

"Maybe," I said. "I certainly hope so. It would save us a lot of time and cleverness-assuming I can sneak up on him up there on the ridge without getting shot. You stay here. If somebody comes, particularly somebody with a uniform, you're sound asleep. When they wake you, you say you got tired of driving and turned off the highway to find a quiet place to take a nap. You don't know anything about the truck. It was here when you got here. You thought it was just an abandoned wreck. While you're resting, you can figure out a plausible story to explain why you rented a car in Texas and drove it into Oklahoma. Good luck."

As I started to turn away, she said, "Matt."

"Yes?" I said over my shoulder.

"No, come back here a minute. This is important."

I turned back. "Shoot. But make it snappy, please."

Her face was very serious, looking up at me from the car window. The heavy, dark eyebrows made a startling, but somehow not unbelievable, contrast with the long shining hair.

"I've helped you," she said. "Haven't I? I put on this masquerade for you, and drove the car for you. Didn't I?"

"You helped," I said.

"Then you've got to tell me something."

"What?"

She licked her lips. "You've got to tell me that you're going to stop it. You're not going to let him kill him. Otherwise… Otherwise I'm going to have to go to him and warn him."

There were some confused pronouns in that, but the meaning was clear enough. I studied her face for a moment longer. "Just what is this thing you have for cops, anyway, Borden?" I asked.

"I don't have a thing for cops! I just have a thing for for human beings!"

"Only sheriff-type human beings. Not Carl-type human beings."

She said sharply, "That's just the point! Your friend Carl is not a human being any longer. He's a machine, a ruthless vengeance-machine. You've got to promise to stop him."

I drew a long breath. "Sure. I'll do my best to stop him. Hell, that's what I'm here for. Keep your fingers crossed."

I turned away, wishing I was leaving behind me a good, reliable agent like Lorna-if I had to have somebody along. At the moment, operating alone, with nobody's temperament to consider but my own, seemed very desirable. Maybe I could talk Mae into giving me an assignment all by myself next time out, if there was a next time out.

It wasn't bad stalking country. The brush was pretty thick, but it wasn't dry and crackly; and the ground was reasonably soft. There was plenty of cover. Moving quietly and staying out of sight was no problem at all. Picking the easiest and most silent route, I kept finding tracks in the ground ahead of me: heavy work shoes, considerably worn. Well, Carl was pretty good about detail. Footgear like that would match the truck below. He'd been brought up on a farm, I remembered, and was pretty good outdoors, unlike some of our city-bred agents who are hell in streets and alleys but tend to get lost in a forty-acre pasture.

The thought made me careful. I remembered the ultimatum Carl was supposed to have delivered, to the effect that anybody Mac sent after him wouldn't come hack. It sounded like Carl. He hadn't actually been speaking to Mac when he said it, of course, but he didn't know that. He did know me, however. If his mood was still the same, he'd undoubtedly jump to the wrong conclusion and try to blow my head off the instant he saw me, unless I arranged to prevent it somehow.

I made the last hundred yards on my belly, an inch at a time, and there he was. At least there was somebody in the brush to my left. I could make out the vague shape of a man. He was holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes; it was the slight movement he'd made to focus that had drawn my attention. Lying beside him was some kind of a rifle I couldn't make out clearly.

Very cautiously, I worked my way up to where I could see the blacktop highway half a mile away, and the ticky-tacky urban blight off to the left, and the farm dead ahead just as Martha had described it except that a blue Volkswagen and a white official sedan with a buggy-whip antenna were standing in the yard along with the Cadillac sedan she'd mentioned. A short, heavy man was just getting out of the radio-equipped car. He wore a big white hat and an ivory-handled revolver-well, at that distance, it could have been white plastic or adhesive tape. A thin, tall woman in jeans and a short-sleeved white blouse was speaking to him as he got out.

I lost the rest of the scene. The man just down the ridge had caught my attention once more, raising his head from the glasses, perhaps to rest his eyes. He wasn't Carl.