Blood Money (46 page)

She kept up her pace, using her ears and her sense of touch instead of her eyes. But slowly, gradually, she began to acknowledge that she heard noises. They seemed at first to be far behind her. They were engine noises, cars driving along, and she told herself that it was just the occasional vehicle moving along the now distant highway. They seemed to be going in both directions, because she would hear one start somewhere behind her right ear, get louder, and then diminish into the range of her left ear. Then, a few seconds later, she would hear the sound again, in reverse.

But then, one of them seemed much louder. She stopped and sighted along the corn row to her right, toward the farm road. She saw nothing. Then she turned around, and the fear gripped her chest so she breathed in quick, shallow gasps. She could see lights.

Only fifty yards behind her, the beams of headlights shone through the tall stalks of corn. They were moving from left to right across the field, the glow of the lights ahead of the engine noises. Then the lights swung around and came back. The three cars were driving back and forth along the rows as she had, flattening the cornstalks so she could not hide. She moved her head, then sidestepped to get a better view. They were halfway up the slope. It was already impossible for her to go back to the highway without being seen.

The headlights were moving quickly. The men had discovered, as she had, that the ruts and mounds of the cornfield were perfectly regular, and that the only obstruction was visual—the tall, frail cornstalks. They seemed to be driving back and forth at twenty or thirty miles an hour. They would reach her in a minute or two.

Jane whirled and began to run. She had to try to make it to the cluster of farm buildings. There would be shelter there, of some sort. There would be a telephone. There might even be a gun. This was a huge farm, after all, in the middle of agricultural country. You could fire a rifle in any direction without much fear of hitting anybody by accident, and there was no neighbor to annoy with the sound of it. There had to be a gun. Please, she thought. Let there be a gun.

The sounds of the cars seemed to her to grow louder. She lengthened her strides and dug into the soft earth to gain speed. She gave up pausing to look along the corn rows. Nothing she could possibly see there would be worse news than what was already behind her, and pausing would just give somebody a chance to aim.

She could tell she was still a long way from the buildings. They had seemed tiny from the highway, like a little village in some remote, forgotten place. But there had been a building shaped like a barn, and she knew that anything as tall as a barn would be visible above the stalks ahead long before she reached it. She ran on, hearing her own breaths now, her mouth open to bring in more air.

But the first thing that Jane saw was a tree. It was a high, old chestnut, and its dark cloud of leaves blocked out the stars. Jane slowed her pace and moved forward between the rows, then stopped at the last line of vertical stalks that stood like a palisade between her and the buildings.

She looked between them. She could see a barn, and it was as big as she had imagined. It had a wide white door that was closed, and she could see that a branch of the farm road ran right into it. This wasn’t the kind of farm that raised animals, she decided. The barn must be just a huge garage for all the machinery.

She leaned forward a little and looked at the house. It was a two-story white clapboard structure with a long, roofed-over porch that had several chairs and a table on it, and a wicker love seat. There were no lights glowing behind any of the windows. She looked farther to the left and saw a high, broad shape that she couldn’t interpret at first, but then it came into focus. It was an above-ground swimming pool.

Jane waited a few more seconds, trying to interpret each variation in the darkness, attempting to pick out anything that might be a man. She thought she had heard a dog some time ago, but it could not have been here, or it would already have sensed her presence and come to investigate. The place seemed to be deserted. Then the noise of the car engines seemed
to grow louder as they passed once again, and Jane stepped forward.

She moved away from the corn onto the edge of a lawn. She stepped quietly and quickly, hoping that if someone she had not seen was nearby, her shape would merge in his vision with the wall of tall stalks behind her. She hurried toward the house.

Jane had no time to formulate even her hopes in any orderly way. She hoped there was a gun, she hoped there was a telephone, another road in the fields beyond the house that led away. She climbed the steps to the porch quietly, but decided that pounding on the door was not the right way to do this.

Jane looked along the porch and saw movement. She froze and looked harder. It was an open window, and the motion had been the curtain inside, swinging a little in the breeze. She stepped to the window, pushed her car key through the screen, unlatched it, slipped inside, and latched it again.

Jane could see that she was in an old-fashioned parlor that had been taken over by someone with modern tastes. There was a new leather couch beside her, and ahead of her a glass-topped coffee table with a stone sculpture as a base. In the far corner of the room was a big-screen television set. She looked down at the floor to see whether it was likely to creak. She couldn’t see it very well, but when she knelt to feel it, she could pick up a little of the pattern in the moonlight. It was a new bleached hardwood floor.

She moved away from the window into the room, then found her way to the staircase. Somebody could be asleep up there. She supposed the sound of the rifle dismantling her Explorer could not have been as loud here as it had been to her. It was a half mile away. She began to climb the stairs quickly and quietly, then noticed that something looked odd under her feet. There seemed to be a long black shadow that fell like a stripe on each step—the railing? She waved her hand by the railing, but she could see no difference.

With growing discomfort, Jane reached down and touched a step. It was wet. She raised her fingers in front of her face,
and saw that it was dark. It felt a little sticky, as though it were drying. She stared upward, and saw the dog.

He was lying on his side at the top of the stairs, his eyes open and staring with the dull gaze of the dead. She moved closer, and she could see that the blood was his, seeping from a wound in his mouth. She stepped to the top of the stairs and edged past him. She took a step toward the first open door, dreading what she was going to see.

She peered into the room. There was a double bed with a man and a woman lying on it—the woman in a blood-soaked nightgown, and the man in a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt that had three holes in the chest. She stepped backward out of the room and went to the next. It was an empty guest room, all made up with a flowered bedspread and lace covers over the dresser and nightstand. She moved along the second-floor hallway looking for more victims, but she found none.

She tried to stop thinking about what she had just seen and concentrate on what she had to do. She forced herself to go back into the master bedroom. There was a telephone on the low table by the woman’s side of the bed. She stepped to it and picked it up. There was no dial tone.

She closed her eyes and replaced the receiver. Of course they would have cut the line before they came in. The dog must have met them at the top of the stairs and barked. They had shot the dog, rushed into the master bedroom before the farmer and his wife could get up, and killed them.

Jane moved to the closet on the man’s side of the bed. If he had a gun, it would probably be in the closet or in his dresser. She knelt on the floor and ran her hand around the dark closet, feeling for anything that might be a long gun. All she felt were boots and shoes. She reached to the top shelf, but all she could find were hats. She moved to the man’s dresser and began with the top drawers, then moved downward. There was no firearm. On the top of the dresser, she could see that the man had left his wallet and his keys. She took the keys and slipped them into her pocket. She had not seen the car yet, but she would probably find it in the barn. She lay on
her belly and reached under the bed, but there was nothing hidden there.

Jane got up and walked down the hall toward the stairs. She sidestepped to get past the dog, then walked carefully down the steps to avoid the blood. She walked through the dining room and found the kitchen at the back of the house. She quietly began opening drawers under the counter. She found clean, folded dishtowels, then silverware, then a drawer of miscellaneous things that collected in kitchens—corkscrews, rubber bands, coupons. Finally, she found the drawer she had known must exist. She examined the knives in it. The boning knife was the right one for the purpose she had in mind. She slid the blade of it into the back pocket of her jeans so she could reach the handle, then noticed a second knife that looked right. It was about the same size, with a seven-inch blade, but the edge was serrated, and the handle was flatter. She lifted the right leg of her jeans and slid it into her sock, then lowered the denim to cover it.

Suddenly she became aware of the sound of the cars again. They seemed much louder and closer than they had been before. She realized that she needed to know exactly where they were before she tried to cross the open yard to the barn.

Jane looked out the kitchen window, but all she could see was the field of low alfalfa. She moved to the front of the house and looked out the window where she had entered. The headlights of the three cars were still moving back and forth across the cornfield in a line, flattening about twenty feet of corn at each pass. Beyond the cars, she could just pick out the shapes of several men, a hundred or more feet apart, walking slowly toward the house over the newly flattened corn. She judged the distance and decided that she still had a few more minutes. She was about to turn away from the window and head for the barn when she saw the other set of headlights.

They were higher than the headlights of the cars, and they bounced upward now and then as they came up the farm road toward the house. It was the Suburban. Jane turned and hurried to the side of the house nearest the barn. She opened a
window and pushed her right leg over the sill, just as the Suburban came up and turned, its headlights now shining on the barn door. No, she thought. Not in front of the barn. Anywhere but there. The Suburban stopped, blocking the barn door. Its headlights went out.

Jane pulled her leg back inside and ducked down. She saw the doors open, and the interior light went on. There were two men. The driver was young and muscular. The man beside him was a bit older, with a little gray in his dark hair. They both wore sport coats, as though they were dressed for a pleasant visit to the dead family upstairs. They both got out of the Suburban and slammed the doors, then walked toward the house.

Jane heard the older man say, “I’m not saying Buccio and his guys are useless. It just took me a while to figure out what they’re thinking—how they see themselves—and try to work with it. They’re playing war. He needs to be desperate, like he was a Green Beret behind enemy lines or something. Everything has to be win or die. Look at them out there. They love this, and they’re good at it.”

“Think they’ll find her, Mr. Delfina?”

Jane froze. Delfina. That man was Frank Delfina. She heard the footsteps heading toward the porch.

“If I didn’t, they wouldn’t be here.”

Jane turned and hurried back up the stairs to the second floor. She stepped over the body of the dog and threw herself against the wall just as the front door opened. She heard their footsteps on the hardwood floor.

A light went on. She heard footsteps come close to the staircase. Delfina’s voice said, “Mike. Look at that. They even killed the dog.”

The younger man’s footsteps sounded, then stopped. He said, “It probably barked.”

Delfina said, “I suppose. Turn the light off down here, and we’ll go up and watch from the window.”

“Okay.”

Jane looked at the doors on the upstairs corridor. The one with the farmer and his wife in it looked down on the back of
the house, where the alfalfa field began. They would want to see the front. She quietly slipped into the room, then hurried to the closet. She crouched in the back of it and pulled the door closed so that only a tiny crack remained. She kept her ear to it and listened to the footsteps.

She heard Delfina say, “The land is practically flat. From up here, we’ll be able to see for a mile.”

They walked into the guest room. Jane wondered if she could move quickly and quietly enough to slip out and make it across the hall to the stairs.

Delfina said, “I’ll watch this one. You go in there and keep your eyes open.”

The younger man appeared in the doorway to the master bedroom. Jane held her breath as he moved to the window beside the bed. His voice startled her. “Mr. Delfina?”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t see the cornfield from out here. This is the wrong side of the house.”

“That’s right,” he called. “If she’s in the cornfield, they’ll see her, or I will. I want you to cover the field where she hasn’t been yet. If you see her, try and drop her from the window. Even if you miss, Buccio’s guys will hear the shot and come running.”

“Okay.” Jane watched the younger man reach into his coat and pull out a pistol. He stood watching for a few minutes, while Jane’s mind ran frantically through everything she knew. Each time she thought of a way out of this, something stopped her. Maybe she could wait in this closet until daylight came. Maybe Delfina would have to pull his men out and leave. But the others were all moving methodically through the fields, destroying the cover, and when they were through, they would arrive at this house. They would be here in ten or fifteen minutes. They would probably realize that if she had not turned up outside, she had to be in the building. Even if they gave up, they might decide to burn the house to cover the murders.

Jane waited. Any small change would improve her chance of getting out. She watched impatiently. The young man sighed in
boredom. He seemed tired of staring out the window at the empty, unchanging field. He let his eyes drift a bit. He looked at the two bodies on the bed. Jane detected no horror at the sight, and not even any visible distaste. He looked out the window again. The next time, he looked around the room. His eye happened to land on the top of the man’s dresser, where his wallet was visible.