No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) (28 page)

The best idea would be for us to find one of these houses
occupied by someone other than Vic and Geri and call the police from there.
 
But which one?
 
If we could see Vic or Geri through a window,
we could sprint to another house.
 
But
until we did, we could just as easily run to the one where they were.

“Let’s see if we can find another window to look through.”

He nodded, and we both crept along the edge of the
house.
 
We went around the corner and up
the side.
 
The only window on this side
was near the front of the house, but it was covered on the inside by what
looked like heavy curtains.

I looked up and saw Sean already peering around the front
corner.

“Sean,” I whispered, but he disappeared around the
corner.
 
As he did, a light came on.

ean nearly flew back around the
corner of the house.
 
For a second I
thought he might take off running.
 
I
grabbed his sleeve, and he squatted down behind the single small bush that some
landscaper thought would be the perfect adornment for this corner. It didn’t
give us much cover as we both huddled there.

“A security light,” he said with his voice kept low.
 
I could see the beads of sweat on his
forehead.

“That’s why I called for you.
 
You can’t just rush off.”

We remained still for about thirty seconds.

“The people inside may not have noticed, or they may have
checked all the windows and just assumed the light was set off by an animal.”

“They could think you’re following them,” Sean said.

“If it’s them, if they noticed, and if they think I’m
still alive.
 
Let’s go back around to the
other side and check the far windows.”

We moved slowly and kept close to the ground.
 
Sean followed my lead.
 
Two smaller windows broke the monotony of the
wall on this side of the cabin. Unfortunately both windows were covered with
curtains.
 
A very small gap in the curtains
allowed me to see that one of the rooms was a bedroom, but other than the corner
of a bed and a small, empty area beyond, I saw nothing.

“We’ll have to try the front door,” I said.

“How?
 
Won’t that be dangerous?”

“Yeah, but I have an idea.
 
First though, I need you to go back around and position yourself behind
that bush again.”

“Then what?”

I explained my idea to him. He liked it.

I waited at my corner.
 
I put just enough of my head out to see. While I waited the light went
out.
 
I hadn’t timed the light but I
figured it had only been on for a minute or two.
 
I saw Sean wave a hand at me from the far
corner.
 
The light went back on.

“Damn,” I said to myself, but I knew it didn’t matter
because it would have gone on with my next step.
 
I ran to the front door, found the button for
the
door bell
and pushed it twice.
 
I also hit the door once for good luck and
then ran back to my corner.

My plan was simple. If Vic answered the door, I would say
something to get his attention.
 
Something that would let him know I was still alive and that I knew
where he was.
 
I would then take off at a
full sprint toward the far cabin.
 
If he
ran after me, Sean would go in, grab Geri, and get her out.
 
If he had to, he would carry her out and head
in the opposite direction.
 
If Vic didn’t
go after me, Sean would stay in the shadows and watch the house to see if Vic
left before the police arrived. I didn’t suggest that he follow them if they
did leave, but I expected that he would.

There was a flaw in my planning that I tried not to think
about, but when no one came to the door I realized I should have given it more
consideration.
 
After about a minute of
waiting, I saw Sean crawl to the front window.
 
He peered in and then looked at me and shook his head.
 
I crawled to the matching window on my side
of the front door and looked in.
 
No sign
of life.

“We saw a light on in this house.
 
Someone has to be in there,” he said after he
came to me.

The idea that the light may have been on a timer and that
there really was no one inside started making sense.
 
Why would Vic have turned all the lights
out?
 
We didn’t see any indication of a
flashlight being used in the house as we approached it or after the light went
out.

“Maybe not,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than
I was.

“Should we go to another cabin?”

“I’m going to break into this cabin.
 
If no one is inside I’ll use the phone to
call the sheriff’s office.
 
We need to
get them out here.”

“What if someone is inside?
 
You could get yourself killed.”

“You can watch.
 
If
I do get shot by Vic in there, run to another house and get help.
 
If I get shot but it’s not Vic, yell at them
to call the police.
 
Tell them what’s
going on and that they need to get the sheriff out here.
 
Either way,
don’t
worry about me. It’ll be too late at that point.”

“Come on,” I said.
 
I went around back.
 
I didn’t want
to be the one standing in the light if any shooting started.
 
A light mist had started falling, or perhaps
the clouds simply had come down to us.

I found a rock about the size of a baseball and used it to
smash a hole in the window just above the single latch.
 
I felt like the sound of the breaking glass
could be heard for miles. I reached in, unlocked the latch, and then slid the
bottom window up.
 
Before I entered, I
looked through the blinds, but still saw no signs of life.
 
I felt a little more confident that no one
was in the cabin.

After brushing off the few pieces of glass I could see, I
crawled through the open window.
 
I moved
quickly to the far wall before I paused and listened again.
 
Still no noise to indicate anyone else might
be there.
 
I moved as silently but as
quickly as I could from room to room. The place was empty.
 
I found the lamp plugged into a timer on the
kitchen counter.

I turned on a couple of overhead lights and looked for a
phone.
 
I shouldn’t have been surprised
by not finding one.
 
More people were
moving away from land line phones every day.
 
It only made sense that if someone used this cabin for weekends or the
occasional vacation that they may not want to bother with a phone.

To me, though, it was like another punch in the gut. Time
wasted and nothing to show for it.
 
They
may not have even stopped in this cluster of cabins.
 
For all I knew there might be a dozen more
cabins a half mile away.

“Jim,” Sean called from another room.
 
He had not waited outside like we had
planned, but I guessed that once I started turning on lights he figured no one
else was in the cabin.

“In here,” I said.

“Any telephone?”

“No.”

He sat down in a cushioned chair and had a frustrated look
on his face.

“What now?”

“We move to the next cabin.
 
We either find them or find a way to get in
touch with the sheriff’s office.”

“Think we’ll be too late for Geri?”

“No,” I said without conviction.
 
It struck me that this was the first time he
had used her name.

I closed and locked the window despite it being
broken.
 
After turning off the lights we
went out the back door, locking it too.
 
The house to our left looked a couple hundred yards away.
 
The one to our right appeared to be about
twice as far.
 
I looked again to try to
see another one.
 
I didn’t see any more,
but they could have been out there hidden in or behind the trees.
 
A dirt road ran in an arc in front of the
three cabins.

We hadn’t seen any light in the closer of the two cabins,
but that didn’t mean much.

“Should we run?” Sean asked.

“Better not.
 
We
might miss something if we do, and we’ll make too much noise breathing once we
get there.”
 
I didn’t blame him.
 
I wanted this to get over quickly, too.

This time we followed the dirt road until we were close to
the cabin.
 
We were about thirty yards
from the right, front corner when I saw what looked like a small light flicker
through the front window.
 
Then it went
away.

I left the road and hurried to the corner of the
house.
 
I didn’t know if Sean saw
anything, but he followed me. Once there, I looked for security lights and
didn’t see any. A small section of roofing, more decorative than functional,
covered the front entrance and had a single light recessed into it. The light
was not on.
 
I crawled over and peered
into the front window.
 
This window was
much larger than the two front windows at the previous cabin, and it was the
only window facing the front yard.

I saw furniture but no people.
 
More importantly, however, I saw light coming
from below a closed door to an adjoining room. I studied the interior of the
cabin.
 
The large front room served as
the family or living room. A kitchen occupied one far end of the large open
area, and a short hallway led back to one or two other rooms.

“What do you see?”

I stood up and walked to the far side of the cabin.
 
The side from where the light seemed to
originate.

“Nothing yet,” I said.

He paused at the window and looked in making no effort to
conceal himself.

“Look,” Sean said.

I turned and saw he was looking in the direction of the
far house.
 
The one we had not been to
yet.
 
A car had just pulled in front of
it.
 
Its headlights went out while we
watched.
 
Two people got out of the car
and entered the house.
 
The distance and
the darkness made it impossible to tell anything more than it was two people,
and we only knew that because the light from the car indicated that two car
doors had been opened and two figures got out.

“Why don’t you run over there and get them to call the
police?” I whispered.

“Why don’t you run over there instead?
  
I want to be part of this.”

“Let’s hope we both don’t regret what we’re doing.”

We continued around the side of the cabin. A window near
the middle of the side wall definitely belonged to a room where the light was
on inside. Unfortunately, a heavy curtain covered the entire window and blocked
our view of what or who was inside.
 
I
moved to the next window, near the back corner of the cabin. It also had a
curtain hanging inside, but there didn’t appear to be any light on inside of
the room.

We checked out the rear of the cabin, but the only window
on it came off what I believed to be the kitchen and was too high off the
ground to look through. No light shone through the window, so I didn’t think it
mattered anyway.
 
The cabin did have a
solid back door.
 
I checked it and found
it to be locked.

“Same game plan?”
Sean asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and we moved around to the front of the
cabin.

To my surprise, the light in the interior room had been
turned off.

“The light’s out,” Sean said.

We crouched at the corner of the window for about thirty seconds
waiting for any sign of movement from inside.
 
When we didn’t get any, I told Sean to move to the far corner and that
we were going to do the same thing we did at the last house.