The Stalker (17 page)

The limping man rested there for a moment, and then started off to his left, walking slowly, cradling the shopping bag in close to his body. It was very dark. The sky was the color of soot, and the trees and bushes limned against it were little more than formless black shadows. He paused once, listening. There was no sound, save for the temperate fall of the rain and the sibilant rush of the creek water. The night was wet and black and silent around him—a huge enveloping blanket—and he was safely hidden within its folds. He moved forward again.

When he reached the half-upright log imbedded in the soil at the creek’s edge, he stopped and peered across to the opposite side. He could see the wall there, a solid black line atop the bank, and he nodded once and began to pick his way gingerly across the bed. It was littered with leaves and twigs and mud and various bits and pieces of garbage carried and deposited by the accelerated rain water. The footing was treacherous, but he reached the opposite bank without incident.

He began to work his way upward along its surface. The contours of the stone-and-mortar wall became evident to him, and then he was standing before it, with his left hand steadying his body on the cold, moist stone. He could not see over the top of the wall from that point. He went to a build-up of silt on a higher section of ground near the far end of the wall. From there he was able to peer cautiously over the top at what lay beyond it.

An elongation of pale light spilled out through a glass-enclosed archway in the house across the interior patio; it gave substance to the shapes within the patio. So Green was still up and about, the limping man thought. Well, all right. Better if he was asleep, but not really that important; he could come back later of course, but he was here now, and there was really no need in taking unnecessary chances.

Carefully, he placed the shopping bag on the flat top of the wall. He swung himself up by utilizing the power in his wrists and forearms, favoring his game leg; he was an agilely poised black shadow for an instant atop the wall, and then he dropped inside the patio, crouching on one of the
macetas
, listening. There was no discernible sound from within the house. He straightened momentarily to lift the shopping bag down, and after a few seconds he began to make his way slowly, silently, across the stone floor of the patio. He paused at the fountain in its center, by one of the stunted Joshua trees, unhurried now, moving with care, with precision.

He reached the wall beside the glassed archway and flattened himself against the damp stucco. His ears strained, and voices—faint, but comprehensible—filtered through the glass.

“...are you going to do, Larry?”

Woman’s voice. Green had company. Well, maybe she would leave, but he couldn’t wait very long. If she was still in there when the time came, then that was too bad for her. Damned whore anyway, what did it matter? He couldn’t afford to be humane, not now, not now.

“... expect me to do?” Green’s voice, harsh and cold.

“Marry me, Larry. That’s what I expect you to do.”

“Marry you?” Laughter, without humor. “Jesus! I told you to take the goddamned pill, didn’t I? Is it my fault you’re too stupid to do it?”

Silence. And then: “You . . . never loved me at all, did you? You only said the words, lied to me, to . . . to...”

“To get into your pants, sweetheart.” Viciously, with contempt. “The only thing I ever cared about, baby, was that hot little fanny of yours. So there it is, all out in the open at last. Now are you going to get out of here, or would you like me to tell you some more? Like what a really lousy lay you are. And how I was thinking about other girls the whole time, even when I was—”

“No! Oh God, Larry, stop it! Stop it!”

“Then get out!”

Vague weeping sounds. Footsteps, rapid, retreating. Door slamming. Silence.

Now.

The limping man squatted and placed the shopping bag on the wet stone at his feet. He lifted out the gallon jug which had once contained apple cider, but which now contained the high-octane gasoline he had purchased at a Chevron station in Belmont forty-five minutes earlier. He removed the protective section of cellophane food wrap from the top and felt the strips of cotton sheeting which were stuffed into the bottle’s neck. Dry. All right.

He got the windproof butane lighter from his overcoat pocket and straightened up, bringing the gallon jug with him, crooked in his left arm, and he held the lighter poised in his right. He flipped the cap down and his gloved thumb rasped the flint wheel. A thin, high jet of flame shot up. He held it to the sheet strips, watching them flare and begin to bum brightly, and then he stepped out to stand directly in front of the glassed archway, the jug held chest-high like a basketball about to be passed, and Green was there, with his back to him, ten feet away and moving, and almost casually then, the limping man thrust forward, releasing and stepping back, and the flaming container shattered the archway glass and shattered the stillness and shattered itself on the floor inside in a great, rushing, mushrooming sweep of heat and fire and destruction . . .

The sound of the archway glass breaking sends Larry Drexel whirling about, his eyes bulging wide in surprise and sudden fear, and there is in that moment an intense, bursting. undulating vortex of flame that sends him stumbling backward, trying to get his arm up to protect his eyes, but it is too late for that, too late, and the heat singes away his eyebrows and his eyelashes and blisters the skin of his face like a strip of paint under a blowtorch.

He goes to his knees with a scream erupting from his throat, high and shrill and containing every decibel of mortal terror. The flames spread with insane rapidity, licking at the walls, the furniture, the rug and the floor, consuming the scrolled desk, consuming the religious mural and the blue velvet nude, crackling, thundering, brilliant red-orange billowing smoke, searing heat. Drexel tries to stand, and the flames reach out for him, catch him, hold him, set his sleek black hair ablaze, and his shirt and jacket and trousers ablaze, and in the pain thing that is his brain:

Oh God the heat the heat the heat I’m on fire I’m on fire help me Jesus Christ help me I’m on fire

He screams again, and again, and again, he can’t stop screaming, and then he is on his feet and running, running toward the hallway and into it, running for the door, getting it open somehow, trailing fire, running outside, running blind, seeing nothing, feeling nothing but the heat and the pain, a human torch, screaming, dying . . .

The first thing Steve Kilduff saw was the orange glow flickering through the windows of the house.

He hand just turned onto the Five-Hundred block of San Amaron Drive, and when he perceived the glow at two hundred yards he knew that the house was on fire. Intuitively, he sensed that it was Drexel’s house, that it was Number 547, even though he was still too far away to read the number and to determine accurately the make and color of the sports car parked in the drive. His foot came off the accelerator and touched the brake, and the long conical beams of his headlights picked up the outline of a car parked in front of the house and picked up, too, the figure of a girl in a plastic raincoat standing immobile on the sidewalk, looking back.

And that was when the front door burst open and the man on fire came hurtling out.

Kilduff. thought: My God, my God, my God! He knew that it was Drexel, knew with that same intuitive certainty that it was Drexel and that Helgerman had been responsible, had gotten to Number Five. He saw the burning man, Drexel, veer to the left, stumbling over the land scaped front yard, through bottle brush and barrel cactus and Joshua trees, across the drive at the rear of the sports car—and his foot came crashing down hard on the brake. The machine slewed violently sideways, the rear end coming around on the rain-slick macadam street, the front wheels skipping up over the low curb. Kilduff was out of the car before it had rocked to a full stop, out and running after Drexel, no indecision, no weighing and considering, he wasn’t thinking at all; he was reacting, reflex, instinct, military training, pulling off his overcoat as he ran along the sidewalk, past the girl in the plastic raincoat. She was screaming, hysterical; and fifty yards away, bulling through a low thin hedge, Drexel was screaming with a different kind of hysteria. The night was alive with vibrating nightmare sounds.

Kilduff had the overcoat off now, and he closed the gap between himself and Drexel to twenty yards ... fifteen ... ten. They were on a wide expanse of neighboring lawn, on a cushiony surface dotted with rain ponds that glistened dancing silver highlights in the scintillation from the fanning, clinging flames. Kilduff overtook Drexel and threw the overcoat around him, the screams piercing his skin like long sharp needles, and pulled him down onto the wet grass. He held the overcoat around him, trying to smother the flames, his hands locked together at Drexel’s belt, feeling the heat scorch his body through the heavy cloth. And then they were rolling over and over through the cold, wet grass and Kilduff was able to gain his knees beside Drexel, smelling the stench of burned hair and burned flesh, and vomit came up into his throat and gagged him. He pulled the overcoat back, and the flames had given way to rising puffs of blackly acrid smoke; but Kilduff kept rolling him back and forth on the puddled grass for a long, long time.

When he finally stopped, he could hear screaming again, from close behind him, and he knew it was the girl in the raincoat. He shut his eyes and opened them again and looked down at the charred, smoking body, looked down at it long enough to confirm what he already knew —that the man was Larry Drexel—and then he turned away and let the vomit come boiling out of his throat.

Light flooded over him as he rose to wipe his mouth, and a frightened woman’s voice said, “I’ve called the police and the fire department—is that Mr. Drexel, is he dead?—oh dear Lord, I saw him running on fire...”

“Shut off that light,” Kilduff said. “Shut it the hell off.”

The light went off, and there was the sound of a door slamming. Kilduff got his arm under Drexel’s head and lifted it up; with his other hand he found one of the wrists, still hot, and probed for a pulsebeat. He couldn’t find one, and he thought that Drexel was dead; but then he realized the two terrible black-white things which had once been eyes were staring at him and somehow seeing him, somehow recognizing him, and the black gashed thing which had once been a mouth was working around a protruding tongue. Dry, brittle sounds came out, the sounds of twigs snapping in the darkness of a forest, and after that there were words, unrecognizable at first, but Kilduff put his ear very close to Drexel’s mouth and he could understand some of them.

“Helgerman . . . listen . . . Helgerman . . . ”

Kilduff wanted to vomit again. He wanted the girl behind him to stop screaming. He wanted to turn and run, get away from there, far, far away. But he said, “Don’t try to talk, Larry,” in a voice that was strangely gentle, strangely calm. “Don’t try to talk.”

But Drexel’s mouth continued to work, and the brittle sounds that became words reached Kilduff’s ears again. “Helgerman . . . dead . . . long-time dead.”

And the brittle sounds ceased, and there was a single, barely audible, undeniably final exhalation of breath, and the blackened lump of flesh which had been Larry Drexel died shuddering in Kilduff’s arms.

Thursday morning, 3:45 A.M.

Twin Peaks lay quiet and empty under an enveloping shroud of high, drifting fog and thinly cold rain-mist. The steep, winding expanse of Caveat Way was very dark, with only a single, pale-aureoled street lamp burning a half block from where the seemingly empty Ford Mustang was parked between two other cars.

But in the shadowed driver’s seat, slumped down beneath the wheel until his eyes were on a level with the sill of the closed window, the limping man sat nervously waiting. On the seat beside him lay the American Tourister briefcase, the catches unfastened, the .44 Ruger Magnum resting just inside the joined halves. His eyes were watchful, probing now and then the silhouetted darkness which blanketed the glass entranceway to Orange’s apartment building diagonally across the street.

He remained absolutely motionless, save for a soft, quick, nervous drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. As he waited, he let his mind drift briefly to the recent events in Los Gatos.

He hadn’t seen the actual immolation of Green, but the sweeping wall of fire flashing toward him had been enough; Green had not survived the holocaust. As for his own escape, he had accomplished that without incident. It had taken him only a matter of seconds to clear the stone-and-mortar wall at the rear of the patio and to make his way quickly down the bank to the creek bed. No one had seen him, he was certain of that. The dead-end street had still been as dark and deserted as when he had left it, and the cross-street was likewise void of traffic when he took the rented Mustang onto it moments later. He had debated driving around to San Amaron Drive to see first-hand what had happened, but had decided against that almost immediately; there was no use inviting unnecessary risk.

So it had all gone very nicely.

Now there was only the problem of Orange.

As he had driven back toward San Francisco, the limping man had considered his original plan. He did not care for the fact that Orange lived in an apartment in a well-populated area; not at all like Green, who lived in a residential neighborhood that afforded such safety factors as the swallowing darkness of the creek bed and the walled-in patio and the dead-end street. Reaching Orange in the sanctity of his apartment building, in the limiting surroundings of San Francisco itself, would be dimcult—perhaps even foolhardy.