Scare Tactics (31 page)

He sat up carefully, aware that any sound he made would be heard. The screen door was let softly into its frame. He reached out and pulled open the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed. He hesitated, trying to remember the position of the revolver inside. Then he put his fingers around the butt and drew it out. He shifted the revolver from his right hand to his left and turned his head toward the doorway of the bedroom.

With his thumb he cocked back the hammer of the revolver, and waited.

“Jim?”

He sighed and put the revolver aside, then reached out and turned on the lamp. Chris Guthrie appeared in the hall and looked at him with bright, tired eyes.

“What are you doing here, Chris? It’s almost eleven o’clock. Who’s with you?”

Chris walked silently in and crawled up on the bed. Practice put the revolver back in the drawer. The boy’s lips were trembling.

“Did you walk all the way?”

It was over two miles from the mansion, and Chris had been to his apartment only once before, when Lucy had stopped by with him for a few moments.

Chris nodded.

“Does Lucy know you’re gone? She doesn’t, does she?”

“Can I stay here?” Chris whispered.

“Why don’t we have a cup of coffee together? I was going over to the mansion a little later myself. You can go along, and we’ll talk to your dad about it.”

Before the coffee was ready Chris’s head rested on his crossed arms, and he was sound asleep. Practice went out quietly and called the mansion. Lucy answered.

She was astonished when he told her where Chris was, and then alarmed.

“Jim, he’s never done anything like this before! How could he get out without anyone knowing it? I put him to bed at seven and he went right to sleep.”

“Probably he was faking. I don’t suppose it’s too difficult to come and go without being seen, especially if you’re friendly with the dogs. I’ll bring him right home. Not,” he lidded, “that he wants to come.”

Lucy was silent for a few seconds, and then he heard her sigh.

“I know, I know. I’ve been trying to put off having a talk with the Governor, but Chris’s running away is serious. Jim, you didn’t fuss at him, did you?”

“I was glad to see him. I’ve been putting Chris off myself lately. I think I’ll get in touch with Riley at the Air National Guard and see if we can’t arrange a plane ride for Chris early next week. He’s been promised and promised.”

“Good for you,” Lucy said, and the tone of her voice warmed him.

He was going to ask her if she had been in her room when Chris went out, because the child had to go through Lucy’s room to reach the hall, but he decided it would sound like a reproach. Obviously she had been somewhere else.

He
put on his coat and gathered Chris up, then carried him down the back steps to the garage. Chris stirred, but his
eyes
didn’t open.

On his way up the hill to the Governor’s mansion Practice saw
a light burning in Bill Dylan’s office high up in the Department of State building, and reminded himself to give Dylan a call; he had forgotten all about the dragonslayer and the fingerprints.

T
he back gates of the mansion were open, as usual, and he drove up to the garage. His headlights passed over Trudy, one of the mansion shepherds. The dog was straining at the rope that restricted her, and her eyes glared in the light. Her ears were almost flat against her head. Practice got out of the car and heard a low, shocking growl. He went cautiously over to her. He’d never seen any of the dogs act that way, and momentarily he wondered where Josh was.

Trudy stared at him as he hunkered down beside her, then renewed her efforts to be free of the rope. Saliva mixed with blood fell from her lips; she was nearly half choked.

Practice reached into his pocket for a knife to cut the rope.

Crouched over Trudy, with the knife open, he had only a moment’s warning, a sizzling sensation of imminent danger as the male shepherd attacked from the dark. He was bowled over by the snarling dog, separated from the knife.

Practice had a horrifying impression of bared teeth and glittering eyes, inches from his own face. He had both hands on the ruff of the shepherd’s brawny neck, hanging on for his life, but he had no hope of subduing the powerful animal, who must have seen the knife in his hand and acted instinctively to protect Trudy. Or maybe he had mistaken Practice for someone else.

“Josh! No!”

He jerked his face aside, just avoiding the dog’s jaws; then Josh identified him before he could try to bite again. Behind them Trudy strained at the half-severed rope, broke it, and was off like a shot, silently, low to the ground. Josh whirled and followed her; Practice was a distant third. From a corner of the lawn, in the darkness of the rose arbor, he heard a terrified shriek, and saw a figure lunge toward the wall a dozen feet away. But Trudy was on him and the man went down, still screaming.

A frightened face appeared at one of the back windows and Practice shouted, “Lights! Turn on the garden lights!”

He was halfway to the arbor when Trudy suddenly yelped and whimpered. The man rose up against the sky, careened, plowed through several bushes, and mounted the wall in a bound. He was tall, Practice saw, but he saw nothing else. There was no moon. The man disappeared over the edge of the bluff, and Practice could hear the clatter of dislodged stones as he made his way down the steep facing.

The lights in the garden flashed on, right in Practice’s eyes, and he was momentarily blinded. He cursed and made his way to the wall, peering over it. He could still hear the man’s progress, but there was nothing to see but the blue-white image of floodlights dancing in his eyes.

He turned back. Luke had come out of the kitchen in his nightshirt with a shotgun in his hands.

Practice waved him away. “Call the patrol,” he said. But he knew it was unlikely that a search would turn up the man. Once he reached the railroad tracks below he’d get away.

Something on top of the wall caught Practice’s eye, and he took out his handkerchief. It came away bloody from the stones, quite a bit of blood.

Apparently Trudy had nicked a vein in the man’s arm or hand. He looked for Trudy and saw her lying motionless in the arbor. Not far away Josh lay. Practice knelt and turned the big yellow shepherd over. Josh was dead; his throat had been hacked. He went to Trudy. There was a long cut across the bridge of her nose and a stab wound in her chest was welling blood, but she was conscious. He changed his mind about the blood on the stones; it could easily have been Trudy’s.

Practice looked up again to see Lucy approaching in pajamas, slippers, and a robe.

“Oh, no,” she said, horrified. “Oh, Trudy.”

The dog had been a particular favorite of Lucy’s. She dropped to her knees, then looked up at Practice, her face colorless.

“What ...”

“Somebody was hanging around out here, looking for a way into the mansion. Or maybe he’d been in and was on his way out. Josh apparently surprised him the first time, but Josh always was too softhearted for his own good. Not Trudy. I think she may have gotten her teeth into him.”

“Did you see the man?”

“Just barely. He was tall and thin. Fast on his feet.” Lucy put her hands under Trudy.

“Help me, Jim.”

They moved the dog into the garage and Practice had Luke call for a vet. In the excitement he had forgotten about Chris, and now he looked in the car. Chris was curled up asleep on the front seat.

“I’d better get him to bed,” Lucy said, staring at Chris as if she were in shock.

“Are you okay, Lucy?”

“I think I am. Would you carry him for me?”

She followed, as Practice took Chris up to bed. The boy sat up and complained sleepily as Lucy took off his shoes and clothing, then went right back to sleep.

Elizabeth, Luke’s wife, looked in at the door, her hands fluttering with excitement.

“Police here.”

“I’ll stay and keep an eye on Chris,” Lucy said.

“No, I think you’d better come.”

She stared at Practice, troubled, then looked away.

“All right, but I have to change first.”

“Lucy, where were you tonight? When Chris ran off?” She was very pale, but her eyes met his, somewhat defiantly.

“I went out. For about an hour.”

“To meet someone?”

She gathered the robe more tightly about her throat with one hand.

“Yes, to meet someone,” she said evenly. “I suppose I shouldn’t have”—she glanced down at the sleeping Chris—“but I didn’t know he ...”

“Forget it,” Practice said wearily. “It’s none of my business.” He turned away from her abruptly and went downstairs to talk to the officers.

—

Highway patrol and city police had arrived almost simultaneously. Practice glanced at his watch; not quite ten minutes had gone by since he had seen the intruder vault over the wall. The grounds were now being painstakingly searched.

Practice gave a brief account of the incident and Captain Mike Liles of the highway patrol issued orders over a telephone. A tight net would be drawn around a ten-square-block area, south from the river. But a thorough shakedown of the railroad yards would take time, and if the man hadn’t been too badly hurt, he could have traveled a mile or more along the tracks within five minutes.

Liles made a second call, relayed by radio to the troopers assigned to the Governor’s Day Dinner. Four more cars were automatically assigned to the armory, and in another minute additional men would be inside the hall, their eyes on the Governor. The routine was well established.

Liles’s third call was to the patrol laboratory, and a field investigation truck was dispatched. He went off to check on his men, who were going over every window and door of the mansion, looking for signs of possible entry. He came back with the servants in tow just as Lucy joined them. She still looked unpleasantly pale to Practice, but seemed composed and alert.

Luke and his wife had been asleep in their room and hadn’t heard anything until the scream awakened them. The cook, an old black woman named Mary, was hard of hearing and hadn’t known that anything was wrong until a trooper banged on her door.

“Where were you, Lucy?” Liles asked.

“In my room. I wasn’t asleep. I was waiting for Jim to bring Chris home.”

Liles’s eyebrows went up slightly at that, but he didn’t comment.

“Did you hear the scream?”

“Yes. It wasn’t loud, of course. With my door shut I can’t hear much of anything, not even in the next room.” Her eyes flickered to Practice, and she touched the tip of her tongue nervously to her lips.

Liles nodded. “You didn’t hear either of the dogs barking?”

“Trudy doesn’t bark, she growls. Josh barks all night long, at everything. I may have heard Josh, but I didn’t pay attention if I did.”

One of the troopers came into the sitting room.

“We’ve checked the first two floors, Captain. No sign of entry anywhere. About all that’s left is the Governor’s apartment ...”

Lucy stood up so suddenly that the chair she had been sitting in toppled over.

“My Lord,” she said shrilly. “Dore! We forgot all about Dore!”

P
ractice was out of the sitting room almost before Lucy had finished, with Captain Liles and three troopers in his wake. He reached the third floor and the door of the Governor’s apartment far ahead of the others, and was twisting the knobs ineffectually when they caught up.

“Dore!” he shouted, then turned.

“Should we try to break it down?” one of the patrolmen asked helpfully.

“These doors are solid oak,” Practice said. “Luke?”

“Suh?”

“Bring your spare key.”

Luke went back down the stairs in bowlegged haste, and they milled around tensely until he returned. There was no sound at all from within the apartment.

Practice snatched the keys from Luke’s outstretched hand and tried two of them before finding the right one.

The sitting room was brightly lighted, but empty. Practice threw open the door of Dore’s bedroom and looked inside. The covers had been neatly turned back on the bed and a table lamp was lighted, but there was no sign of Dore.

“What was that?” Liles asked, lifting his head and frowning.

Practice listened and heard the sounds, too, the faint crashing of piano keys.

He ran out of Dore’s bedroom and across to the Governor’s door.

The discordant sounds of the piano were louder. Practice pounded on the door, then looked through the ring of keys again until he found one that would fit the lock. He opened the door slightly and peered in.

“My God!” Liles whispered, and withdrew, his cheeks reddening.

Practice shut the door.

“Lucy, get a robe out of Dore’s closet. Mike ...”

“We’ll wait downstairs,” Liles said, and quickly herded his men from the Governor’s apartment.

When Lucy had returned with a robe, Practice opened the door again and they went inside.