Dark Tiger (27 page)

Sunday was his day off. He could be gone all day and nobody—except Robin, probably, and she couldn't be helped—would notice.

So Saturday evening after dinner, Calhoun went back to the cabin, snagged a Coke from his refrigerator, and took it out to the screen porch. He sat on one of the rockers to wait for the sun to go down. He'd make his move after it got dark.

Ralph knew something was up. Instead of sprawling on the floor and going to sleep, he sat beside Calhoun with his ears perked up.

Then Robin tapped on the door.

“Come on in,” said Calhoun.

She came onto the porch, gave Ralph a quick pat, then took the rocker beside Calhoun. “So what's going on?” she said.

“Nothin' much.”

“You're going somewhere,” she said.

“What makes you think so?”

“A woman knows these things,” she said. “You're leaving, aren't you?”

He shrugged.

“What's up, Stoney?”

“Tomorrow's my day off. Gotta take care of some business down in St. Cecelia. That's all.”

“You coming back?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

“Why don't I buy that?”

“I don't know,” Calhoun said.

“Can't you tell me what you're up to?”

“I'm not up to anything,” he said.

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Nope,” he said. “I'm all set, thanks.”

She folded her arms. “You're not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Nothing to tell you.”

“What I don't know can't hurt me, is that what you mean?”

“You're making something of nothing,” Calhoun said.

“Ralph's going with you?”

He nodded. “Ralph goes everywhere with me. You know that.”

Robin turned and looked at him. “You're not coming back, are you?”

“Sure I am. I told you that.”

“Just my luck,” she said. She stood up and went over to him where he was sitting in his rocker. She leaned down, put her arms around his neck, and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. Then she straightened up. “See you later, mister,” she said softly.

“You going already?”

“I am, yes.”

“What's your hurry?” he said. “You just got here.”

“I hate saying good-bye,” she said. “No sense of dragging it out.” She stepped away from him. “Whatever you're up to, be careful, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “You, too.”

Robin opened the screen door and stepped outside. Then she turned, looked back at Calhoun, and lifted her hand.

“See you later,” he said.

“You think so?”

“Ayup.”

“Promise?”

“Sure,” said Calhoun. “I promise.”

“Well, good.” She smiled quickly, then turned and started down the path in the direction of the lodge.

Calhoun watched her go. He couldn't tell what she was thinking, but it was pretty clear that she didn't quite believe him. Somehow she sensed that he was up to something. Woman's intuition. Kate had it, and sometimes it was damned spooky.

Pretty soon Robin's shadow melted into the darkness, and he couldn't see her anymore. Night had fallen. It was time to get going.

He went into the cabin. He slipped on the dark windbreaker with the glass vial in its zippered pocket, strapped his sheathed hunting knife to his belt, and checked the batteries in his flashlight before shoving it into his pants pocket. He stuffed
a handful of Milk-Bones into the other pants pocket along with his deputy badge, and he tucked his cell phone into his shirt pocket.

He'd worry about his fishing gear and his clothes another time.

Then he snapped his fingers at Ralph, who'd been following him around expectantly. “Let's go,” he said, and the two of them went outside.

They followed the path toward the lodge but took the fork that led to the oversized garage behind it. When the building came into view in the gathering darkness, he stopped and studied the scene. No lights shone from the garage windows. No vehicles were parked outside. Nobody was standing around. The doors were shut. It appeared that the place was closed down for the night.

Calhoun told Ralph to heel, then he skirted along the edge of the dark woods until he stood next to the garage. He moved up to the outside wall and slid along until he came to a window. He peered inside. All was darkness.

He went around to the front. There were four double-sized doors, the kind that lifted up and slid back on steel runners. He bent over and tugged at one of the handles. The door creaked and groaned as if the moving parts needed oil, but he was able to raise it and slide it back on its tracks.

Parked right there facing the open doorway and ready to roll were two Loon Lake Range Rovers. Calhoun went into the garage. He flicked on his flashlight and shone it through the driver's-side window into the inside of one of the vehicles.

There were no keys dangling from the ignition.

What'd you expect?
Calhoun thought.
How easy did you think it was gonna be?

If he couldn't find the keys, he was out of luck. As far as he
knew, with all of the training he'd had in his unremembered days as one of Mr. Brescia's resourceful operatives, he'd never been taught how to hot-wire a car.

He shone his flashlight around the inside walls of the garage, and its beam stopped on a rectangular metal lockbox mounted on the rear wall. He went to it and looked at it closely. It was locked, naturally.

So he panned his flashlight around some more until it stopped on a big steel toolbox standing open on the floor in the rear corner of the garage. He sifted through the jumble of automobile tools, found a sturdy foot-long screwdriver that he thought would do the job, and went back to the lockbox.

Jimmying it open with the screwdriver was easy.

Eight sets of keys hung from hooks inside the box. Each hook was numbered. Calhoun guessed that he'd opened the garage door on vehicles number one and two, so he plucked down the set of keys for vehicle one. When he went to the car and shoved the key into the Rover's door lock, it clicked open, and when he slid behind the wheel and tried the key in the ignition, the engine started without a sputter.

He held the door open and snapped his fingers at Ralph, who jumped in, climbed over Calhoun, and took his customary seat at shotgun.

Calhoun put the car into gear and pulled out of the garage. He left it running while he got out, went back, and closed the garage door. Whoever went into the garage first would notice the missing vehicle, of course, though depending on who it was, he might not realize the Rover had been stolen. Eventually, the scratched and dented lockbox would alert somebody to the fact that something had happened.

He hoped nobody noticed anything until tomorrow morning. By then he'd be long gone and hard to find.

In any case, there was no sense in advertising the larceny by leaving the garage door open.

He got back into the Rover, put it into gear, and followed the driveway by the pale light of the moonless night sky. He didn't know if headlights would be visible from the lodge, but he certainly wasn't going to take that chance.

The long driveway curved through the woods for about half a mile before it arrived at the lumber company road that led to St. Cecelia. Calhoun stopped there and got out of the car.

He moved all around the outside of the Rover, studying it in the beam of the flashlight. He shone the light around the backseats and under the dashboard but didn't find what he was looking for. He opened the trunk, considered the spare tire well, and discarded it as too obvious.

Then he noticed how the taillight bulbs could be accessed from inside the trunk via snap-in plastic panels. He snapped one of them out. Perfect. There was just enough space behind the bulb. He unzipped his jacket pocket and took out the glass vial containing the yellowish powder. He wrapped it in his handkerchief to cushion it against bumps and stuffed it into the opening behind the driver's-side taillight. Then he snapped the plastic panel back into place.

A professional search of the car would eventually turn up the vial, he knew, but if you didn't know the vial was hidden in the car, would you look that carefully?

Maybe, maybe not. This was safer than keeping it in his pocket, at least.

He climbed back behind the wheel, turned on the headlights, and went left onto the logging road, heading toward St. Cecilia and points south.

As he remembered from the day a week earlier when he drove down to St. Cecelia, the road was rutted and potholed
and littered with big rocks. At night in the headlights it looked even more treacherous. Calhoun was bubbling with adrenaline, and he had to fight the urge to drive fast, to put distance between himself and the Loon Lake Lodge. The last thing he needed was a blown tire or a broken axle or a cracked oil pan.

So he crept along, picking his careful way around the sharp rocks and deep potholes, keeping his focus on the job of driving, and gradually he felt the tension begin to drain out of him. It left him relaxed but still keyed up and alert.

He reached into his pocket, found a Milk-Bone, and held it over to Ralph, who took it gently between his teeth.

“You're welcome,” Calhoun said.

Ralph crunched the treat.

He guessed he'd put about five miles behind him, and he was feeling pretty good. His gas tank was full, and he aimed to drive all night. He wouldn't stop in St. Cecelia or Greenville or Skowhegan or Waterville, except maybe for a cup of coffee and to give Ralph a chance to pee on the bushes. He'd keep going for however long it took to get to Augusta. There he'd look up Ella Grimshaw. He knew he could trust her.

He slowed down when he came to a place where the narrow road dipped down to cross a brook. It was wet there, and he didn't want to get stuck. The road rose and curved to the left on the other side, and as he went up the grade and made the turn, Calhoun saw a red light shining in the darkness ahead of him. It took him a moment to realize that it was his headlights reflecting from the taillight of a vehicle that was stopped smack in the middle of the road in a place where the rutted old timber company road was barely one car width wide. This vehicle was blocking the way.

Calhoun pulled up behind the vehicle and saw that it was a heavy-duty GMC pickup truck. It appeared to be deserted. Most
likely it had broken down and whoever was driving it had just left it there.

He stopped the Range Rover, put it in neutral, and pulled the hand brake, leaving the motor running and the headlights turned on. He sat there for a few minutes looking at the truck. He felt his adrenaline surging again. This was a problem.

When he opened the door and stepped outside, Ralph hopped out, too, and began exploring the roadside shrubbery.

Calhoun went up to the truck and shone his flashlight around the inside. Nobody was sleeping on the seat, and there were no keys in the ignition.

He walked all around the truck, trying to see if he could squeeze the Range Rover past it. A stand of thick-trunked pine trees barred the way on one side, but the other side, the left, looked passable. A screen of alder saplings mingled with some birch whips grew there. The ground looked kind of boggy, but it was flat. Calhoun guessed that the Range Rover could plow right over those saplings. If he put the Rover into four-wheel drive, he might avoid getting stuck in the mud.

Well, he didn't have many options. He had to get past the damn pickup truck.

He whistled to Ralph and went back to the Range Rover. Just as he put his hand on the door latch, something hard jammed into his kidneys.

 

 

 

 

“Put your hands on the roof of your vehicle,” said a man's voice close to Calhoun's ear.

Calhoun obeyed. “You don't need to stick that gun into me,” he said. “I wasn't aiming to steal your truck. I just want to get around it and continue on my way.”

“Shut up,” the man growled.

Calhoun recognized the voice. “Robert,” he said. “Is that you? What the hell are you doing?”

Robert Dunlap was patting Calhoun down. He unsnapped the hunting knife out of its sheath and took the cell phone, the flashlight, the deputy badge, and the wallet from his pockets. “Hold on to these things, sweetheart, will you?” he said.

Then Calhoun realized that there was another person there. He recognized her clean, soapy smell. “Robin?” he said.

“I'm sorry, Stoney,” she said.

“What've you got yourself into?”

“That's enough,” said Robert. He jabbed his gun hard into Calhoun's lower back. “Where is it?”

“Where's what?”

“You know.”

“Nope, I don't. You better tell me.”

“It doesn't belong to you.”

“You mean the Rover?” said Calhoun. “I was borrowing it. Didn't intend to keep it.”

“Not the car, damn you.”

“You better tell me what you want, then,” Calhoun said. “Me, I was just hoping to visit one of the casinos in St. Cecelia tonight, play a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em, have a little fun. Tomorrow's my day off, you know.”

“Don't bullshit me,” said Robert. “If I have to shoot you, I will.”

“Like you shot McNulty?”

“Give me that duct tape,” Robert said to Robin. “Here, you hold the gun on him.”

The gun barrel left Calhoun's kidneys, and then Robert Dunlap grabbed Calhoun's left wrist and pulled it around to his back, and that's when Ralph growled and Robert yelped and Calhoun spun around and smashed his right elbow into Robert's throat, an instinctive move, but one, Calhoun realized, that he'd been taught and had practiced until he could do it without thinking.

Robert was thrashing around on the ground gagging and gasping for breath. Ralph had his teeth sunk into the man's calf. Calhoun dropped onto Robert's chest with both knees and grabbed his throat. Blood pounded in Calhoun's brain. He felt Robert's fragile life fluttering in his hands.