Possession (25 page)

182

loaded with telephone poles. He saw it coming—damn hjm—and he ducked, but one of the poles came through the windshield and it took her head off."

"Oh!" It hit her bluntly and she could not stop the gasp, although his voice remained steady and matter of fact

"I was about five, and I waited and waited for her to come back. They put me in the fat lady's truck and they just moved on out of town. I used to worry that she wouldn't be able to find us when she came back. I used to go write my name on the outside of that truck, so she'd know I was in there. Then I started writing it on billboards in different towns and putting down where we were headed next. So finally they told me she wouldn't be back. They just said she had gone away, but I heard them talking about the poles one night, and what happened to her head, and I knew she was gone for good and I quit leaving messages for her."

"Didn't your father try to find you?"

He laughed harshly. "We have to sleep. I've got to get you down the mountain tomorrow."

She picked up her sleeping bag and started to spread it out on the other side of the failing embers.

"No. Over here."

She was afraid. "Why?"

"Because I have to know where you are." He led her to a spot beside his sleeping pallet and drew a length of rope from his pack.

"Lie down, but don't zip up your bag."

"I'll freeze."

"You can zip it part way. Hold out your right ankle." He looped the rope around her calf and then cinched it around her ankle, tight enough so that she couldn't get it off, but not so tightly that it cut off her circulation. He tied the other end around his own leg, binding them together with the foot-long hobble.

"You don't have to do that," she protested. "There's nowhere I can go at night. I promise I won't try to get away. Don't you trust me?"

"Why should I?" His voice was close, so soft that she 183

could barely hear its muted whisper, but she could not see his face.

"You tried to kill me this morning. You were going to splatter my brains with a boulder."

She could scarcely remember it, but if it had happened— if she had held the stone above his face—it had been a long time ago, a week, maybe more. They had been in the meadow for days. She was quite sure of that.

16

On Wednesday Sam called the farm phone six times in an hour, had the operator check the line, found it in working order, and then forced himself to stay off his own phone so that it wouldn't be busy when Danny called. If they'd taken an extra day, they'd be in soon.

Waiting, he confronted the possibility that Danny's constraint during their last conversation in his trailer had been more than embarrassment over his own confessions of loneliness. He had blundered into Danny's personal boundaries, intruded into a marriage, and Danny had begun to shut him out. Their travel plans were their own business. Let them stay away on their private journey. Let them come back when they damn well pleased. It was Danny's responsibility if he failed to show up for shift tonight. It was his night off, and let Danny cover his own ass.

He switched on the five o'clock news and watched it without interest as he lit one cigarette after another. After an hour, he grabbed the phone again and dialed information and asked for the number for the North Cascades Lodge in Stehekin.

"The only listing we have, sir, is a number in Chelan."

"Give me that, then."

After a dozen rings, a young man's voice answered. No, there were no passenger lists. No reservations on The Lady of the Lake—you bought your ticket, you rode up, you rode back, nobody checked you in or out.

184

He hung up, dialed Walt Kluznewski's number and that too rang empty. He called the Chelan number back.

"Son," he said, pushing authority into his words. "This is Deputy Clinton at the Natchitat County Sheriff's Office. You have a parking lot up there for your passengers?"

"Yessir—for the overnighters and longer."

"Give it a quick look-see and tell me if there's a 1979 GMC pickup—red with Natchitat County plates—lemme see—here: TLL-687 or 876 still parked there. No. I'll wait."

He heard Willie Nelson wailing over the boat office radio. Twenty seconds later, the phone was picked up again.

"Deputy?"

"Yes."

"It's here. Looks like it hasn't been moved for a long time. Can't see through the windshield for dust."

"Don't touch it. Leave it alone until I get up there. You got a boat to Stehekin tonight?"

"No sir. One trip up every day at 8:30 A.M. One trip back."

"Any other way to go uplake?"

"Yessir. Ernie Gibson'll fly you up in his seaplane. He can make Stehekin in about twenty or twenty-five minutes— been doin' it every day for over thirty years except in deep winter. Or you got you a power boat, they go up. Chelan County's got a sheriffs boat out there. Why don'tcha call them?"

Sam hung up without thanking the kid and sat staring at the phone. If he were to go charging up to Stehekin to find Danny and Joanne enjoying themselves, safe, they'd be pissed. More than pissed; he'd interfered enough in their lives.

He cracked a beer and turned the television up, trying to quash the niggle of alarm that wouldn't go away. When the phone rang, he jerked so forcibly that he splashed beer over his coffee table, and cracked his shin in his leap toward the ringing.

But the voice was a woman's voice, familiar and faintly querulous.

"Mr. Clinton?"

"Yes, ma'am." It registered: Elizabeth Crowder, Joanne's 185

mother. He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"I'm feeling some concern, Mr. Clinton. I have heard nothing from my daughter and son-in-law. They were to be back Monday night. Did you know that?"

"Yes, ma'am, I know they intended that, but I wouldn't worry if I were you. I'm sure they'll be in this evening."

Mrs. Crowder began to weep. "I drove out there, and nobody's home, and I drove over to Sonia's—Mrs. Kluznewski's—and they haven't heard anything either. I'm so concerned, Mr. Clinton. Joanne is the type of person who always calls, even if she's only going to be fifteen minutes late—"

He felt sweat bead the back of his neck. "There's no telephones up there, ma'am. She wouldn't be able to call you."

"I didn't want her to go."

"I'm sure everything is just fine. I'll tell you what, if they call me first, I'll get right back to you, and if they call you, you give me a jingle. How about that?"

"Yes, yes. We'd better keep the lines clear. It's just—Mr. Clinton—it's just that they're all I have—"

He stripped as he walked through the trailer, pulled on jeans and an old flannel shirt, dug through the dust under the bed in the back room for the fatigue boots they'd issued him for the Tact Squad in the riots in Seattle, and cursed the rotting laces when they snapped. He was on his way out the door when he remembered Pistol. He opened five cans of cat food and set them on the counter, dumped some dry food in the sink; the cat always drank out of the toilet anyway. He propped open the bedroom window above the wall marked with a trail of claw marks, and saw that Pistol had eaten his way through one tin of shrimp and tuna already and was working on another.

"Make it last, kid, or you'll have to work for a living. And keep your eyes on the valuables."

He didn't bother calling the office. If he wasn't back, he wasn't back. And Fewell could like it or lump it. * * * 186

They lifted off the south end of the lake at dawn in one of Ernie Gibson's seaplanes, the DeHaviland left over from World War II. Sam, riding copilot in the six-seater, noted there was still a knob marked bomb release on the instrument panel, and speculated on the craft's history. He saw himself at eighteen, the gung-ho sailor who never saw anything of the war outside of Great Lakes Naval Station. Ernie Gibson had. You could tell by the way he flew, as easily as if he and the plane had welded into one form four decades before. He glanced sideways and saw the pilot, ageless—but he had to go sixty or more. Tight weathered skin over aquiline features, his concentration focused on whatever tune played through his earphones, his whole mien so relaxed he seemed to be napping. That was O.K. Sam wasn't up to small talk. They flew over orchards, farmhouses, and bright aqua swimming pools, and then over the lake itself, between the dark mountains. Twenty-five minutes later, the DeHaviland settled on the water in front of the lodge as gracefully as a gull pouncing on a bit of bread, and Gibson was out and tying them up before Sam could react. They walked up the creaking dock toward the smell of coffee and bacon from the lodge, and Sam felt a moment of regret that he had no time to talk to Gibson or know him. Another time, another place, they would have been friends. Now Ernie headed toward the restaurant's steamed-up glass door and Sam walked toward the ranger's office, grateful that he'd worn his down jacket; the air here whispered of frost even while the zinnias and petunias still bloomed along the walkway. What had been summer here was gone, and the feeling was one of closing up and closing in. The Forest Service Office was warm and comfortably familiar, and the ranger in charge smiled broadly and held out his hand. "Deputy. Glad to know you. Must have been one of your guys through here last week."

"That's why I'm here. My partner and his wife were headed up here, and they're late getting home. Thought I'd check in with you and see what's up."

The ranger frowned slightly and pulled a ledger toward 187

him. "That so? Let's see what they wrote down here. We keep track of people—follow some of them all up and down the Pacific Trail. Lindstrom?

Right?"

"Right."

The ranger ran his finger down a column of names, turned the page, and repeated the motion, stopping halfway down the list. "Here it is. I talked to them last Friday; they stayed that night in the lodge. They signed out for Rainbow Lake, and your buddy talked about going on over to pick up the North Cascades Highway instead of coming back here. When they weren't back Monday, we figured that's what they'd done. Seemed to be experienced hikers—had plenty of gear."

"Yeah. Well—he hasn't called in. How far would it be for them to go over the other side?"

"From the lake? Ohh, five, six hours. Once they got out to the North Cascades Highway, they wouldn't have had any trouble getting to a phone. We figured they'd decided to go over Bowan Mountain, and pick up the highway and catch a bus from Winthrop back to pick up their vehicle in Chelan."

Sam shook his head. "Their truck's still back there at the boat dock. If you'll point out the trail to me—the one up to Rainbow Lake—I'll hike on up there and have a look. They're probably just having such a good time they decided to stretch out their vacation."

"You want me to come along?"

"Thanks, but I'll be fine."

"Grade's fairly steep. You in shape?"

The ranger was nudging fifty too, and Sam grinned. "As much as any of us old guys. Do me good to sweat a little."

"O.K. Here's your map—pretty basic."

"Do you want me to leave crumbs behind so you can find me?"

"Just stay on the trails. You'll probably bump into them coming down."

"Most likely."

For half an hour, Sam climbed without stopping on a surge of false energy, but it could not last. His hip sent first a

188

twinge of pain when he put his right foot down too solidly, and then it sprouted a steady ache that was like a girdle radiating from his lower back. He tried to ignore it, but it would not go away. His muscles knotted in spasm until his entire back was rigid. Too many years of sitting. Too many years period. He tried to pace himself, stopping and resting too often. His lungs would not expand the way they had— how many years ago? Ten? Twenty? Thirty, probably. He panted and grunted like an old woman.

At the first meadow he eased his treacherous body down and lay on his back, feeling his right leg twitch by itself. He could see why they shuffled most cops off the street before they were fifty, he couldn't chase a one-legged blind man and expect to catch him. He stretched, and the spasms lessened their hold, but only partially. He knew if he lay too long, he'd never walk again, and if he started climbing too soon, they'd have to come get him with a litter. He was sure he'd made three miles, but when he checked the map, he found he'd gone just under two. He wanted a cold beer more than he'd ever wanted anything, and he remembered the perfect rows of Olympia that waited back in his trailer. It hadn't occurred to him to bring any. He'd thrown two cans of franks and beans into his jacket pockets and bought some beef jerky at a 7-11 in Chelan. What the hell could you expect from a city cop?

He groaned and hit it again. The trail was obviously designed for mountain goats. The switchbacks were a maze. Once he was on the zig-zag path that led higher and higher, there was no stopping, no place to sit, and sure as hell no place to lie down.

His tension—the steady hum of concern that had seen him through the night's drive where nothing existed beyond the two yellow funnels of his headlights—shaded gradually until it became anger. Anger at himself because he was a fool. Anger at Danny for somehow summoning him to this mountainside, and, only slightly diminished, anger at Joanne for thinking of the whole fucking mess in the first place. 189

He crossed the creek on the plank bridge and lay on his belly to drink the icy water that, miraculously, tasted better than beer. The air was warm now, and the sun deceived him into thinking he had found summer. With the heat, a faint suggestion of well-being crept over him.

A mile further on, at least by his shirttail reckoning, he came to a camping area. Five campsites, and none with the look of recent occupancy. A scrabbly, blighted area with no view of anything. The little can of franks and beans opened with a tab that made him think of beer. He had had no supper or breakfast, and the food, cold and gelatinous as it was, restored his energy.

He lit a cigarette and sensed at the moment he slipped his lighter back into his shirtpocket that he wasn't alone. The presence was to his left, and he turned his head slowly— ready to speak until his eyes met the flat lidded yellow orbs staring at him with lazy interest. The rattler, thick as his wrist, lay stretched across the rock pile three feet away.