Assignment — Angelina (19 page)

"Not at all. If you're interested in a summer rental..."

"I'll be back," Durell said.

He had a cup of coffee in a restaurant next door and then walked over to the Town Hall and consulted the topographical maps of the county on the walls, and then asked for the township plots that included Kittitimi Mountain. He spent over half an hour with the maps, and when he came out, he had the geography of the area well fixed in his mind. He called Mrs. Amberley, and the woman said there was no trace of her husband anywhere. The local sheriff was sending up a deputy to investigate. She was worried lest her husband had gotten up for a walk in the night, and perhaps had fallen into the lake and drowned. Durell didn't tell her that her husband might have preferred that sort of an end to the one waiting for him at Slago's hands.

He considered calling Washington again, but the circuits were busy, and he no longer could resist the pressure of impatience and worry that gnawed at him. He returned to his car and drove as fast as he could toward the looming mountain in the north.

Angelina watched the sunlight go brighter and stronger as the sun came up over the high shoulders of the mountain. She watched the strengthening light with eyes that were dull and blank. She had not closed them all night, but she did not feel tired. She no longer felt any pain. She didn't feel anything, and somewhere deep in the back of her shocked mind she knew she wanted to keep it that quiet nothingness. She resented the daylight that gradually intruded through the cracks in the shutters locked across the window. It brought her back to reality, and she fought against that because the reality of what had happened to her was too ugly to accept.

The woman had been kind enough, in an impersonal way. Jessie, they called her. She was the older man's wife. She had insisted they stop the station wagon at one point during the long ride that night and she bought some bandages and antiseptic stuff at an all-night drugstore and she had taken care of the things Slago had done with his knife.

No, don't think about that, she told herself.

She stirred and hugged herself and shivered in the cool morning air. She didn't know where she was, and she didn't care. Nothing mattered any more, after what Slago had done. She looked down at her arms folded around her middle, and she was surprised to find herself wearing a gray flannel dress. The blonde woman must have given it to her. Her own clothes had been worse than useless. For a moment, Angelina almost unzipped the dress to look down at the body she had been so proud of. But she couldn't look at herself. She never wanted to see herself again. Nobody would ever look at her disrobed without shuddering, she thought. And the feeling she had for Sam was over and finished, done with forever. It seemed only a short time ago when she had been planning to offer herself in simple, uncomplicated pleasure she could give him, and proud of what she could offer. No more. Never again. No one would want her like this, ever again.

She told herself not to think about that, or about the dull pain that Jessie's aspirins had failed to kill. Think about Peche Rouge, she told herself. About the past, where things were safe and sure and settled. She looked around the room.

Sunlight came through the cracks in the shutters and placed bright yellow bars of gold on a hooked rug spread over the pine floor. The walls were half logs, chinked with plaster, but the windows were modern steel casements. She looked up slowly at the raftered ceiling. There were wasp nests up there, but the morning was too chilly for them to be active. A feeling of disuse and mildew clung to the furnishings and touched the room with a damp finger. The bed was old, with brass pipe framing. A battered armchair, a Grand Rapids dresser with the veneer curling at the edges, and the wooden chair she sat in completed the inventory. She was sorry there was nothing else to look at. Looking around kept her from thinking about Slago.

The place was quiet. They had all gone out and then two of them had come back, the sounds of their feet angry on the floor outside. She could not remember what the rest of the house looked liked when they had arrived. She tried, but nothing came back to her. She had shrunk away into some deep, dark place inside herself when they had come back at dawn. She had thought Slago would come in here again. But the door had remained closed and nobody had even bothered to look in at her. She had smelled bacon and eggs and coffee and for a little while she had been hungry; but nobody fed her, and now she wasn't hungry any more.

When she looked at the floor again, she saw that the sunlight had moved quite a few inches across the hooked rug. She sighed and touched her body where the bandages were. The house was so quiet. Where had they gone? Why had they left her alone like this? She was reluctant to get up, because as long as she sat unmoving and unnoticed, she felt safer, somehow. But she got to her feet and looked at the door. It was just a simple batten door with an old-fashioned wrought-iron thumb latch. Was it locked? She was afraid to find out. She was afraid somebody was out there.

Where would she go, even if she got out?

She stood still for a time, standing in the shapeless gray dress that covered her. She heard a bird singing. She heard the sound of running water tumbling over stones. She heard an airplane high in the invisible sky. She heard someone groan in the next room.

Then there was silence again. And another groan.

She drew back from the door. She could not understand it. She thought it was a trap. She trusted nothing and nobody. Someone walked with a slow, painful step across the floor beyond the door. Angelina moved toward the panel again.

"Hello?"

She was startled by the sound of her own voice.

"Hello?" she called' again.

The footsteps halted. There was quiet; the birds sang; the water ran over the rocks outside. Then there came a slow fumbling as someone slid a bolt aside on the door of her room. She shrank back again.

"No, don't..."

A man stood there, looking at her. She hadn't seen this one before. He looked ill, a man with white hair and deep lines of suffering in his handsome face. He wore pajamas, but Angelina did not think this was particularly singular. His feet were bare and bloody, there were livid bruises on his face, and he held one arm as if it had been broken. He breathed queerly, as if every breath hurt him and he wished he could stop breathing, but he couldn't.

"My God, what have they done to
you?"
the man whispered.

"Who are you?"

"Amberley. Carl Amberley. They kidnapped me early this morning. What did they do to you?'

"I don't know. I don't want to think about it."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know."

"Well, don't you want to get away?"

She looked blank. She had buried the thought and hope of escape so deep in her mind that it was difficult to bring it back to the surface and look at it again.

"Are you all right?" the man asked gently.

"Yes. No. I don't know. They did things… Why aren't they here?"

"They've all gone, and were locked in." His voice was bitter, defeated. "They made me tell. I was weak. I have a very bad heart, young lady, and I thought they were going to kill me. I suppose the more intimate one becomes with death, the greater the cowardice for some of us. I thought they were going to kill me, and when that man with the knife…"

"Don't," she said quickly. She shuddered. "Don't mention him."

"But they got the information from me..."

"You couldn't help it. Please, sit down. You can't help me, either. You don't look well at all."

"They're all gone, and I've got to get out of here. But I don't seem to have the strength I need."

She looked at him and suddenly realized that for the last moment or two she had forgotten to think about herself. "Sit down," she said. "I'll look around. Don't you have any shoes?"

"They took me out of my bed."

"Maybe I can find you some."

"What about you?" You're barefooted, too. And in these mountains..."

"Do you know where we are?" she asked.

"Of course. Don't you?"

They took me from New York. Never mind; just sit down." Her voice had tightened. She saw he was having trouble breathing. "Please, sit down. I'll be right back. She even managed to smile. "And thanks for letting me out of my cage."

He started to ask her why she was a prisoner, too, but she didn't wait around to reply. The room she was in served as a living room, typically rustic for a mountain lodge, with wide-pegged floors, a fieldstone fireplace with a mounted deer's head over it, and pegs in the wall alongside where rifles had been kept. Somebody had thoughtfully removed the weapons. She wondered if they had been simply put out of sight, but she gave up hope for that sort of luck. There were two windows, both barred and shuttered from the outside. She tried the heavy plank door. It was also barred from the outside. Turning, she moved into a hallway that opened into a kitchen, with two bedrooms on either hand. None of the beds had been slept in. There was a back door opening onto a porch, but this was locked and the key was not in sight, and the glass panes were too small to break and crawl through. Still, she was not discouraged. She did not allow herself to think more than a step or two ahead. She was simply grateful for the moment that the Corbins and Slago and Fleming were not around.

There was a pot of coffee on the kerosene stove and she found wooden matches in the cupboard and lit the burner under the pot and returned to the living room. Amberley was sitting in a maple rocker, bent forward a little. His arm that looked broken was held at an awkward angle. She thought there were tears on his face, but she looked away from them.

"Are you all right?"

"I don't think... not really, no," Amberley whispered.

"I'll see if I can find some shoes."

"Can we get out of here?"

"I think so."

"The sooner the better, Miss..."

"Greene. Angelina Greene."

"What did they do to you?"

"Enough," she said.

She found a pair of leather moccasins in a suitcase in one of the bedrooms, and she found slippers for herself in Jessie Corbin's. The slippers were tight, but they were better than nothing. She went back to the living room again. Amberley had not moved. She knelt before him and helped him on with the moccasins.

"Do they fit all right?" she asked him.

"Yes. Fine."

"Let's see if we can get out, then."

"Do you know where to go?" he asked. "Do you have any friends around here?"

"No, but don't worry about me. You have to get to the police. You know more about all this than I do. I stumbled into it without knowing what it all meant You're the one to tell it to the police. But first you need some coffee."

She went back to the kitchen. She was worried about the gray look on Amberley's face, and the way he walked, with pain and hesitation. He could not go far, she knew. But every step away from this place would be a help. She couldn't think beyond that.

She gave him a cup of coffee, and while he sipped it, she broke one of the panes of glass in the kitchen door with the heel of her borrowed slipper and reached out and felt in the lock outside to see if the key had been left there. Her groping fingers found nothing. She stood back, frustrated. Through the broken glass, she could see the woods, the side of the silent mountain, the blue of the free sky.

"It's a simple lock," Amberley said. "Let me try."

The hot coffee had helped him. He found a nut pick in the kitchen drawers and he thrust it into the lock and tinkered with it. Angelina stood by and felt despair return like a fog rolling over her mind. Why was she running away? There was no place to go. No place she could hide from herself. She touched the rough bandages on her wounds. It was as if Slago's knife had cut something out of her that couldn't be replaced.

"Here we are," Amberley said, at last.

The door swung open. He breathed heavily again. The air beyond the open door felt crisp and cool. They walked out together.

The lawn around the house was rough and shaggy. Amberley walked uncertainly. A dim trail led off into the pines in front of the house, and without a word, they started down the long slope, moving slowly because of the man's weakness. They did not look back.

The trail led down to a small bridge that spanned a rocky, tumbling stream. The water looked cold and inviting. Angelina longed to bathe; she felt dirty; she felt as if all the water in the world couldn't wash away the filth that grimed her. But she knew she couldn't stop. This man with her suffered every step of the way, but he was going on, and the least she could do was to go on with him.

They were on the bridge when they heard the car approaching. A trick of the terrain had kept them from hearing the motor before. Angelina saw the car almost simultaneously with the sound as it came grinding around a curve in the trail and turned to the bridge. It was the green Buick station wagon, and Slago was driving.

She reacted without thinking or weighing the cost. Escape had been a dream, anyway, a prayer and a curse. Turning, she shoved Amberley off the bridge and down the little slope into the thick brush along the banks of the stream. Almost in the same moment, she ran headlong along the trail, toward the car.

Slago saw her; he stopped before he struck her, and got out, grinning. Angelina turned, pretending to be confused, and began to run in the opposite direction. He ran after her and she looked back, as if in terror. Amberley was climbing up out of the stream, staggering into the brush. Slago had not seen him. She stumbled and fell. She heard Slago crash after her like some animal hunting her down. She tried to get up, but her dress had snagged on the brush, and it held her helplessly to the soft earth until Slago caught up with her. She turned and looked up into his pale, cruel eyes. He was laughing.