The store smelled of food and oily polishes and dust. He hadn’t wanted to go far to phone. He had some things to do before Forbes and Lorene could get to the place he’d told them, and he needed the time. He needed privacy too, more than you could get from a wall phone in a village tavern or gas station. These country dumps didn’t have such a thing as a booth. So there was a place where five dirt roads came together, and there were four houses and a one-lung store with a gas pump in front of it. The store was closed for the night but there was a phone line into it. So he left the car in a clump of trees up the road and locked it and came around to the back of the store and opened a window and got in. These country places were like cracker boxes if you wanted to break into them. He’d done it many a time when he was a kid around Butler. The old fool that ran the place could figure he was lucky he didn’t lose more than the price of a long-distance call and a couple of packs of cigarettes.
And now it was all set.
He climbed back out the window and closed it behind him. Then he went back to the car, walking fast, sometimes running, cursing the brambles and the rough stony road. There was a white mist hanging low in the bottoms. The night air was cold on his face.
Lorene. Lorene.
Her voice was still going through his head. It made him want her so he could hardly stand it. He dreamed as he went. Her big white breasts, her soft white belly. The place between the ribs and the hipbones that made her scream when he took a handful of the flesh and dug his fingers in. Little Lorene, so full of herself. Walk out on him, curse him, kick him around, act like she was God, and then, real generous, give him another chance.
The car was dark and still where he had left it. He fought the keys and the lock, cursing. He got the door opened finally and groped on the front seat for the half bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for this time.
Little Lorene.
Lying in her teeth.
She wasn’t coming back to him.
Forbes had put her up to it. You can say anything over a phone. Forbes was a real smart man. “Guthrie’s dumb,” he would tell her. “Talk to him, tell him you’ll do whatever he wants. He’ll swallow it, he’s so dumb. Then he’ll tell me where to bring you to him and I’ll know where I can get at him. See? A real smart trap, and Guthrie’s so dumb he’ll fall right into it.”
Yeah? Well, you know now, Mr. Forbes, it ain’t that easy. I’m calling the tune this time. Let’s see how smart you are. You show up without Lorene and you won’t have time to tell me why.
He leaned over into the back and shook Carolyn.
“Did you think I’d trust ’em?” he shouted at her. “That pair? My wife that ran out on me and that bastard Forbes that already double-crossed me once?”
She moaned.
He was sick of her moaning. One way or the other he’d be rid of her tonight and he was glad.
He took another drink from the bottle and got under the wheel and drove away up the dark back road, raising the dust behind him.
Ben Forbes started his car and roared out of the driveway, spinning his wheels on the short turn into the road.
Virginia Dalby sat next to him on the front seat, holding her handbag on her lap. She wore flat shoes with snow boots pulled over them. Her head was bare.
In the back seat Ernie and Bill Drumm were riding part of the way in comfort, but they were not idle. They had the lens off the dome light and they were busy hacking pieces out of Ernie’s handkerchief and fitting them inside the frosted glass of the lens cup.
Packer and two other detectives were in a second car, trailing Ben. Harbacher was on his way back downtown. The police radio network was busy.
Ben’s car raced down Lister Road.
“Jesus, Ben,” said Ernie, “take it easy. Let’s at least get there in one piece.”
Ben slowed down. But he remained leaning tensely forward over the wheel, staring ahead down the dark road.
Bill Drumm replaced the lens and they tried the light. Ernie said, “I think we can stick in another layer.”
Bill said doubtfully, “That stuff’s liable to catch fire.”
“It won’t have time to get that hot,” Ernie said.
“Oh hell,” said Ben. “Let it burn.”
Release. No more nights, no more days like these last ones. In one hour, less than an hour, I’ll either have her back or I’ll know that she’s dead. And if she’s dead—
Then I’ll do what has to be done.
Due process of law be damned.
The wheel was cold and slippery under his hands. The windshield started to mist up and he turned on the defroster. The night was clear and cool, with rolls of white mist in the low places, along the creek bottoms. Probably by midnight there would be a general fog. Ben did not worry about it. By midnight he could not care what the weather was like.
He turned onto the highway and drove eastward toward the Pennsylvania line.
The dome-light lens was tried for the second time. Now when it was turned on the light it gave was so muffled and fuzzy that a man standing in the dark ten feet away would not be able to see Virginia Dalby’s face well enough to tell that she was not Lorene but only a fairly good imitation.
“That’s the best we can do,” said Ernie. “I hope it’s good enough. Keep your head down as much as you can, Virginia.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”
“If you hear anything that sounds like a shot don’t wait to make sure. Hit the floor. Hear that, Ben?”
“Yes.”
Ernie lighted another cigarette and sat quiet, puffing nervously.
Bill Drumm said, “If we get through the first part of it we might be all right. But he’s sure not taking any chances.”
“No,” said Ernie.
From time to time he talked briefly with Packer on the radio they had installed, with the mike run into the back seat.
Virginia Dalby sat still, her hands flat on her heavy pocket-book.
Seven or eight miles short of the state line Ben turned off the highway onto a secondary road going north. Packer’s car was still behind him. He continued on for several miles, and then Packer said, “It’s just ahead here. Slow down.”
Ben took his foot off the gas. There was a car pulled off the road in a wide place maintained by the Highway Department for its slagging crews. A deputy stood at the side of the road with a flashlight. Ben pulled off beside the car and Packer came behind him. It was dark there, with thick woods and no houses in sight.
Ernie and Bill got out. Packer and one of the men with him got out of their car. A big bull-shouldered man in a tan uniform got out of the car that had the insigne of the Sheriffs Office on it.
“This is Sheriff Magnusson,” said Packer. “Mr. Forbes.”
He went on talking to Magnusson. Ben sat at the wheel and waited because there was nothing else he could do. Cars of the Sheriff’s Office had been deployed around the Shepherd’s Creek area and would move in when they got the signal. Magnusson himself would join Packer in trailing Ben’s car. They would not be able to follow him closely and it would be several minutes before they could reach him even after they were called. Ernie would keep in constant touch with them.
“You’ll have to play it by ear,” Packer said, “as you go along. I just want one thing firmly fixed in everybody’s mind. The first objective is to get Mrs. Forbes away from Guthrie unharmed. Every other consideration must be subordinate to that. Guthrie himself we can deal with. Mr. Forbes?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lose your head. You’ll only endanger your wife. Just do what you have to and let us take care of the rest.”
Ben said, “I know.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
Ernie got into the back seat and crouched down out of sight. Even with the dome light on he could not be seen except by someone standing right beside the car. Bill Drumm climbed into the back deck and pulled it shut, opening it once to make sure the new catch arrangement worked. Then he tapped the inside of the trunk and Ernie said, “Okay.”
Ben started the car and drove on.
Virginia Dalby opened her borrowed handbag and let the tips of her fingers rest on the edge of the flap.
Ben looked in the rearview mirror. The Sheriff’s car and Packer’s car remained in the pull-off. They would give him plenty of room. Al Guthrie had been smart enough to see to that. They were on their own. By the time they called for Packer and Magnusson and the Sheriff’s deputies the vital question of Carolyn would have been settled, one way or the other.
The road was narrow and high-crowned, rough along the edges of the berm. There were woods and fields, farmhouses and barns, a village where the road went over a bridge by an old mill dam. The mill was still standing, a great tall building all dark and sagging. The village had a supermarket and an icecream store, a service station, and a tavern. There were lights in all of them, and Ben caught the sound of a juke box.
He drove on, and the splash of light dropped behind him.
“Take it easy,” said Ernie from the bottom of the back seat. “You’ll overshoot your turn.”
“I think it’s still about half a mile ahead.” He turned to Virginia Dalby. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”
She gave him one. He smoked it, and again there was the coppery unpleasant taste in his mouth. I’m afraid, he thought. But I’ve been afraid for days now and I’m used to it. I’ve been sick for days too, and I’m used to that. I’m used to everything except the actual thought of Carolyn being in his hands. I think around that, or think of the name of it, but the actuality, the truth of it—
Due process of law.
He looked obliquely at the open handbag in Dalby’s lap.
A white signpost loomed ahead in his lights. Shepherd’s Creek 1 mile. He turned east again and the ground began to lift and roughen into hills. This road was not paved. It was washboarded and full of potholes. The gravel flew up and hit the under surfaces of the car with a loud rattling. Ben slowed down. He did not want to break a spring or an axle.
Ernie spoke at intervals into the mike. There was no sign of headlights on the road behind.
The farms were sparse and poor along this road, with old brushy fields and sway-backed houses. The mist was getting thicker, spreading out into the low-lying ground. When you came to a dip there was a thin curtain of it across the road.
Shepherd’s Creek was a place where five dirt roads came together. There were four houses and a store.
Ben hesitated.
“The one to the left,” Ernie said, sticking his head up. “Northeast.”
“I know,” said Ben irritably. “I know.”
He angled into the left-hand road.
The country became wilder and more lonesome, heavily wooded, but with creek bottoms and steep little valleys. The road was no more than a single track, washed and gullied from the rains. Occasionally, where there was a stretch of better land, you could see the lights of a farmhouse at the end of a long muddy lane.
“We must be getting pretty close,” Ernie muttered.
“I’m watching,” said Ben.
He drove a little farther, jouncing and heaving in the rough road. Then it was as though a large strong hand squeezed all his insides together into one painful lump and he said:
“I think this is the beginning of the woods.”
Guthrie had been explicit in his directions.
Ernie settled himself tighter on the floor of the back seat. Virginia Dalby made one rustling movement, shifting her grip on the heavy bag. Ben stepped on the floor button, cutting off his bright beam.
He said, “Turn the dome light on.”
They moved slowly forward, an island bubble of light in the surrounding dark. And now that he was here Ben was seized with a terrible fear that he was not going to be able to go through with it.
The road inched back under the wheels. With the dome light on it was hard to see ahead. Yellow dusty clay, big stones, mud still in the holes from yesterday’s rain. The woods, unbroken walls of tree trunk and bare branch closing in both sides of the road. Ben leaned over the wheel, held by the hard necessity of driving, of not piling up in the ditch too soon.
Somewhere among the trees Al Guthrie was watching.
Virginia Dalby sat with her head bent, peering sideways at the woods, breathing quickly.
Somewhere among the trees was Carolyn.
Carolyn.
Dalby said sharply, “There’s the cut.”
He had almost passed it. It was on the right-hand side of the road, a narrow gap in the trees. Ben swung the wheel and edged the car in through the gap, onto a grass-grown track so faint that he could barely follow it with the added handicap of the inside light. It seemed blindingly bright. It seemed to show up every hair in Dalby’s wig as being just that and every feature of her face as being not Lorene’s. And Guthrie had said, “Go slow.” And he had to go slow because the track was rough and treacherous and the trees crowded in on either side.
Slowly, slowly, waiting for the sudden crack of a shot. And the woods went on for a million miles.
Then on the right-hand side of the road they thinned and there was a brush-grown meadow tilting up a gentle slope to an old schoolhouse lone and shuttered under the stars. A cold sweat broke out on Ben and his hands became limp on the wheel.
“We got through,” he said. “There’s the schoolhouse.”
Dalby said, “Watch it!”
He caught himself and pulled the car back onto the road. From the back seat Ernie said softly:
“You haven’t got it made yet.”
“I know,” said Ben.
Very carefully he turned the car around in the level space in front of the schoolhouse and started back again the way he had come, creeping in the lighted car between the walls of the close-growing trees. Ernie muttered into the microphone.
Ben hunched forward, watching, straining to see.
The tufted grass and the trees, the brush and the briars were all there was.
“Christ,” said Ben, “I’ve done exactly what he told me. Isn’t he going to—”
“In the road ahead,” said Dalby. “Look.”
Al Guthrie stood in the dark and watched the car go by. It passed within ten feet of him, and he had plenty of time to see. Forbes was driving slow, just like he’d been told. Forbes was doing everything just like he’d been told. Lorene was with him. The minute the car turned in from the other road, while it was still a long way off, he had seen her red hair in the light.