Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) (26 page)

All right, that’s long enough—move.

She moved, deeper into the trees, keeping both the creek and the driveway in sight. The pines didn’t grow as close together here, and ahead they thinned even more. Through the gaps between them she could see almost all the clearing—the trailer, the SUV, the barn.

And Lemoyne.

Standing near the trailer, in the shadow of the trailer—standing still the way he had in front of the barn earlier, only this time he was all tensed with his head craned forward. Staring toward where she was in the woods.

She made like one of the tree trunks, a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her heart skipped a beat, stuttered, skipped another.

Lemoyne broke into a run, heading straight at her.

Saw us!

Panic spun her around, sent her plunging away from him, away from the creek and the driveway, deeper into the woods.

Five minutes in Nevada City, and you knew two certainties about the place. The steep streets, narrow lanes, old and false-fronted buildings, and business and street names told you it was an old mining town dating back to the California Gold Rush. And the bookshops, antique stores, boutiques, restaurants, saloons, and bed and breakfasts told you the rich ore being mined there nowadays was the tourist dollar. It was the kind of place Colleen would’ve liked; she’d shared his interest in history, and she’d loved to prowl bookshops and antique stores. He didn’t have an opinion one way or the other. Now that she was gone, it was just a place like all the other places.

They pulled into the center of town a couple of minutes past seven. Two hours to kill, so Runyon found a café that was open on a side street off the main drag and they went in there and crawled into a booth. He was tired, gritty-eyed, but not as bad off as Bill. Hollow-cheeked, bags under his eyes, beard
stubble stark against a splotchy pallor. They both needed about ten hours’ sleep. Caffeine and something in their stomachs would be enough for now.

“Just coffee,” Bill said when the waitress brought the menus.

Runyon said, “Better eat something.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Just the same. Obvious reason.”

“Yeah. Guess you’re right.”

Runyon ate two bear claws with his tea. Bill broke a doughnut into little pieces and nibbled down about half of it. Neither of them said much; there was nothing left to say until they pinpointed the location of Parcel Number 1899-A6.

Eight o’clock. “Let’s roll,” Bill said. “I can’t sit here anymore.”

They rolled. Mick Savage had provided the location of the Nevada County Administrative Center; it was off Highway 49 on the northern edge of town, easy to find. Big, newish complex—county offices, county jail, main library. The recorder’s office was in the main building, so that was where they parked, as close to the entrance as they could get.

Bill couldn’t sit still there, either. He wanted to be out and moving, so they prowled the landscaped grounds—circling each of the buildings three times. On one circuit of the jail, a county sheriff’s cruiser passed by and the officer inside gave them a long curious look, but he didn’t stop. Just as well. As amped up as Bill was, any sort of conversation might have made the deputy suspicious and then they’d have had to waste time smoothing it over.

At a quarter of nine they waited around in front of the main entrance. “They better open on time,” Bill said once. Talking mostly for his own ears. Runyon still had his engines on idle,
but still he could feel the thin blade of tension himself. Getting close to it, now. No guarantees that Lemoyne had taken Tamara and the child up here, but you developed a kind of precognitive instinct when you’d been in police work a long time; he had it now and he sensed that Bill did, too. Parcel 1899-A6 in Rough and Ready was where they were, where some if not all of this business was going to finish.

A woman came into the lobby and opened the doors at nine straight up. Runyon asked her directions to the recorder’s office; two minutes later they were in there and Bill was giving the clerk Mia Canfield’s name and the parcel number and asking for maps to pinpoint the exact location. It took the clerk a few minutes to look it up, bring out a big book of area maps, find the one that showed 1899-A6.

Bill studied the map with Runyon looking over his shoulder. The parcel was a couple of miles outside Rough and Ready, on Old Stovepipe Road. Looked easy enough to find: follow the Rough and Ready Highway through the village, left turn on Bugeye Mine Road, left turn on Old Stovepipe and a quarter of a mile down. The parcel itself was rectangular, half again as deep as it was wide, with a creek running through it lengthwise along the south borderline; the creek and the mileage ought to be all the landmarks they’d need.

Five minutes and they were back in the car, another ten and they were taking the Highway 20 exit off 49. They still weren’t talking, but only because words were unnecessary. They were a single-purpose unit, had been all along. Bill was the emotional type until push came to shove; then he was like a rock. Plenty of proof of that last Christmas, if any was needed. He sensed that you couldn’t ask for a better man to partner with in a tight situation.

As they shot downhill toward the Rough and Ready turnoff, Runyon glanced over and saw that Bill had his piece out—a .38 Colt Bodyguard—and was checking the loads. In his cop days, when Colleen was still alive, he might’ve told him to put the gun away, it wasn’t safe riding with a loaded revolver in your lap. But he wasn’t a cop anymore, and Colleen was gone, and Bill knew what he was doing; he didn’t say anything. If their positions had been reversed, he’d probably have been doing the same thing.

When he first saw something moving in the woods, he thought it was a deer. Lots of deer up here, roaming alone or in little herds, eating up all the ground cover and crapping everywhere so you were always stepping on their turds. Rats with hooves. But then, in the next second, there was a splash of color . . . two legs, not four . . . and that brought him up short. Somebody trespassing on his property? He squinted hard, shading his eyes. And then the figure hobbled onto a patch of open ground where sunlight slanted down among the trees, and there was a ripping sensation behind his eyes that brought fragments of confusion, disbelief.

Dark Chocolate.

Couldn’t be, she couldn’t have gotten out of the trailer. But it was. How? Carrying something wrapped in a blanket . . . Angie? Not Angie, the stranger who wasn’t Angie. Both of them trying to get away.

She wasn’t moving anymore. Poised like a deer trying to blend into the background. She’d seen him, too. Deer and hunter, only he was too far away for a clear shot and he wasn’t any good with a handgun anyway. All he could do was take off running. And as soon as he did, she did the same thing—wounded deer, dark chocolate deer, limping deeper into the woods.

He raced across the yard, unzipping his jacket pocket, fumbling the gun out. Another blip of sunlit color, then he couldn’t see her anymore in the tree shadow. But he could hear her, even at a distance, blundering around in there. He reached the creek, trampled some ferns getting down the bank, splashed across, and then he was in the woods with her.

Where would she go? Savage pounding ache in his head now . . . he couldn’t think clearly. He gritted his teeth, pinched his eyes hard with his free hand.
Think!
Where would she go? The road, across it to the thicker woods on the other side? If she made it into that stretch, there were plenty of places she could hide and he might not be able to find her. Or would she go over the boundary fence onto Brannigan’s parcel? You could see the farmhouse from there, Brannigan had a big family and there was always somebody around. If they saw her . . . if he couldn’t stop her . . .

Boundary fence. Wire, barbed wire. Meadow on the other side, graze for Brannigan’s mangy herd of dairy cattle. No, she wouldn’t go that way . . . the barbed wire, all that open ground . . . if she made as far as the fence she’d veer off . . .

The road.

He pulled up, sucking air. Pinched his eyes again, jammed the heel of his hand against one socket, then the other. The road. Couple of hundred yards of woods . . . she didn’t know
them, it’d take her a while to find her way through. He didn’t have to chase her on foot to catch her before she ruined everything. The road, Old Stovepipe Road.

He swung around and ran back out of the trees, over the creek and across the clearing to where the Suburban waited.

She heard him crashing around somewhere behind her. Then she didn’t hear him anymore. Must’ve slowed down so he wouldn’t make as much noise and she wouldn’t be able to tell where he was.

She forced herself to do the same thing. Would’ve had to anyway because her ankle was on fire and she was afraid it’d give out on her or she’d step on a rock or something hidden under the thick matting of needles and twist it even worse, maybe break it. And Lauren, small as she was, was no longer a clinging featherweight; heavy now, a constant strain on the tired muscles in her arm and shoulder.

The first rush of panic was gone. She was still plenty scared, but mad as hell and even more determined. Son of a bitch wasn’t gonna get his hands on them again. Not after all they’d been through, not this close to freedom. If he got near enough to shoot her he’d better kill her with the first bullet. Otherwise she’d find a way to claw his eyes, break his balls, tear his throat out with her teeth, take that Saturday night special away from him and shove it up his ass so far the barrel be poking out one of his nostrils. Wasn’t gonna hurt Lauren. Wasn’t gonna stop her. Wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t!

She dodged around tree trunks, hopping on her good leg, dragging the bad. How far was the road? Couldn’t be too far now. She was sure she hadn’t lost her sense of direction, it had to be straight ahead. Ground slanted upward here, little moss-coated humps of rock sticking out of it, thick grass and bushes and ferns and the trees close-packed again. She made it to the top of the rise, paused with her back to one of the pine boles to catch her breath and listen. At first all she heard was Lauren’s breathing—raspy, liquidy, as if she might have fluid in her lungs, hot and moist in her ear.

Sudden rustling, snapping noise somewhere behind her . . . but it wasn’t Lemoyne. Jay or some other bird high up in the interlacing of branches; it squawked when it flew off.

Was that a fence over there?

She focused, staring past a tangle of brush and dead limbs to a spot twenty or thirty yards away. Yo . . . fence post, wire, barbs glinting in a patch of sun. She pushed off the tree, forgetting her ankle for a second, biting down hard against the splintering pain, and hobbled that way. Once she got to the tangle she could see all the way past. Boundary fence, long stretch of it visible from there. And on the other side a wide meadow, empty except for stumps where some trees had been cut down. Above it was a section of tilled land—

And a farmhouse. Long way off, few hundred yards. Flatbed truck parked on one side, some kind of car under a carport on the other. Thin streamers of smoke coming out a tall metal chimney.

People.

Help.

Her pulse rate jumped. But the rush of relief didn’t last
long. Try to climb over or through that barbed wire, she might get herself hung up and Lauren hung up . . . and she didn’t know where Lemoyne was, he might be close enough to catch her before she made it onto the other property. The farmhouse was too far away for yelling to do any good; it’d just tell him exactly where she was. And even if she did get past the fence, there was all that open space over there. She couldn’t outrun him with a twisted ankle. Be easy for him to catch her in the meadow, drag her and Lauren back onto his property. Or shoot them while they were out in the open, pick them off like animals on the run . . .

Her attention snagged on a long driveway that led up to the house between rows of whitewashed wooden fence. She followed it with her eyes. She couldn’t see where it intersected with the road, but in the distance she could see a piece of the road itself. Cars, other farms, other people . . . all she had to do was get to the road. It had to be closer than the farmhouse. And the boundary fence paralleled the driveway, just follow the fence.

She hobbled along it, holding on to Lauren with both hands now, straining to hear over the blood-pound in her ears. Wherever Lemoyne was, it couldn’t be too near . . . there were no sounds of pursuit. A berry thicket forced her away from the fence, back among and through the trees. Sharp-thorned suckers scratched her bare legs, caught at her skirt. Twigs snapped and crackled under her shoes, loud, loud. But nothing happened, she didn’t see or hear Lemoyne, and when the berry thicket ended and she veered back to the fence, she was near enough to the road to see the driveway gate next door, longer pieces of the road. Empty pieces, but somebody might come
along any minute. Wasn’t far now, less than fifty yards.

Long, dragging seconds . . . minutes . . . she’d lost all track of time. Follow the fence, just keep picking her way along the fence.

The trees thinned again ahead. Through them she could see part of the road directly in front of her.

A little farther . . . and out of the trees finally, onto a grassy verge, onto the road itself.

Made it!

From behind one of the pines that edged his driveway he saw her stagger into sight a hundred yards away. Watched her limp out onto Old Stovepipe Road, turn in the direction of Brannigan’s place. Just what he’d figured. He ran to where he’d left the Suburban, engine idling, just far enough back on the drive so it couldn’t be seen from down the road. The Saturday night special was on the seat. He put the car in gear, swung fast out of the driveway.

Dark Chocolate heard him coming, but by then it was too late for her to get away again. She took a couple of lurching steps toward the woods on the other side, stumbled back when he veered over that way to cut her off. When she tried to run, her hurt leg gave out and she fell down, almost fell on the little girl that wasn’t Angie. He hit the brakes, twisted the wheel, rocked to a stop a few feet from them, and jumped out with the gun in his hand.