Honeymoon for Three (17 page)

Detective Landon wrote busily in his
notebook.

“He was with us all day,” Penny continued.
“He ate dinner with us and even washed his clothes with us. He got
me away from Gary at dinner and made a pass at me. I punched him,
but it didn’t seem to bother him. We made him get a separate room
at the lodge. I lay awake most of the night. Before dawn I woke
Gary up and asked him if we could leave. We haven’t seen Alfred
since.”

The detective asked a few questions, which
Penny answered, feeling guilty that she hadn’t told the whole
truth. Then he said, “I’d like to confirm that the notebook found
in his car belongs to you.” He extracted their notebook from the
briefcase. “We’ve already checked it for fingerprints.”

Gary took it and flipped through the pages.
“This is ours.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t let you keep it. We
need it for evidence. If there’s any information from it that you
need, you can look at it now.”

“I think we successfully reconstructed
everything. He took it from our tent at Crater Lake.” Gary handed
the notebook back to the detective.

“Which proves that he’s followed you
throughout the trip.”

“We think he’s the one who tried to stop our
wedding in Reno,” Penny said. “Gary was taken to the police
station.”

She and Gary elaborated on the police
incident while Detective Landon took more notes. When they finished
that recital, he looked at Penny.

“When was the last time you saw Alfred
before your trip?”

She thought. “I saw him a few times while I
was going to college. Not very often. Usually during the summers
when I was home. I think he was working in Fenwick. As far as I
know, he didn’t go to college. But we never did anything together.
I don’t remember saying more than a hundred words to him all the
time I was in college.”

“When did you go to California?”

“June 1962, right after I graduated from
college.”

“You didn’t know that he was living close to
you in Lomita, California?”

“No.” She still couldn’t believe it,
although the evidence indicated it must be so.

“He’s probably been keeping tabs on you for
some time. Your mother told me he called her from California before
you left on your trip. He was looking for you.”

“She didn’t tell me that.” Sometimes her
mother could be exasperating.

“She told him you were going on a trip.”

“Great.”

“What about the phone calls and the notes?”
Gary asked.

Penny explained about those to the
detective. Alfred knew where she lived. She shivered, realizing
that he had been watching her, and she didn’t even know it.

“Now I’d like to show you the pictures that
were found in his car.” Detective Landon hesitated, looking
sideways at Gary. “You might find one of them a
little…shocking.”

Penny didn’t think she could be any more
shocked than she already was. Detective Landon pulled a sketchpad
out of the briefcase with pages approximately equal to legal size
stationery. He lifted the cover and extracted a black-and-white
photograph that Penny recognized immediately. She was in her
cheerleader uniform. Her sweater had a large F on it, and she had a
smug smile on her face and one hand raised into the air, as if she
were in the middle of a cheer.

“That’s from my high school yearbook.”

Detective Landon nodded. “It was hanging
from his rearview mirror.”

“It wasn’t hanging from the mirror while I
was driving his car.”

“He probably hid it in his trunk. He didn’t
want to reveal too much about himself to you. People like him are
very secretive. The note below the picture mentions your high
school. That’s how we found your parents. There aren’t many
Singletons living in Fenwick, Connecticut. It turns out that Alfred
is something of an artist. Take a look at this.”

He pulled a loose page out of the sketchpad
and held it up. The pencil drawing was a very good likeness of the
cheerleader picture, even to Penny’s smile.

“When did he do that?” Penny asked.

Detective Landon shrugged. “It could have
been anytime since you graduated from high school. I have one more
to show you.” He hesitated. “I’d rather not get it out in here with
all these people around. Go ahead and finish your dinners. Then
we’ll go outside, and I’ll show it to you there.”

Penny hardly ate anything. What was so bad
about this picture? She wanted to take the detective outside right
now without Gary, but that was impossible. Gary, however, didn’t
seem to have any trouble eating.

While they ate, they talked about what
Alfred might do next. Detective Landon was of the opinion that he
would keep following them, if he could. He asked them where they
were staying. When they told him they were camping, he said that
the National Park Service was cooperating with the police. They
would keep a watch on the campground. He wrote down their route for
the rest of the trip in his notebook. He gave them a number where
they could call him collect, any time, day or night.

They paid their bill and went out of the
restaurant. Detective Landon took them to his unmarked car, which
was parked in a lighted area. He placed the briefcase on the top of
the car, opened it, and pulled out another sheet from inside the
sketchpad. He turned and held it up so they could see it.

Penny gasped. It was a nude drawing of her.
“I never posed for that.” She glanced at Gary. He was gazing
intently at the picture.

“He could have drawn your head with somebody
else’s body,” Detective Landon said. “Maybe from a magazine like
Playboy
.”

“No, that’s me.” There was the mole on her
left breast, prominently displayed. Gary saw it too, so there was
no sense trying to cover it up. “I haven’t told you everything.”
Better to tell the truth than let Gary’s imagination soar. She
proceeded to tell the story of the Halloween party when she was in
high school. She admitted that she passed out from drinking and was
naked when she came to. Alfred could have drawn her then. Or done
something worse.

“Your hair in this picture is shorter than
it is in the cheerleader picture,” Detective Landon said. “More
like it is now.”

“He could have drawn the picture recently,
based on his memory. When we were together, he mentioned my mole.
He threatened to tell Gary about the mole and the Halloween party.
That was his way of trying to make me do what he wanted.”

“He’s obsessed with you,” Detective Landon
said. “That’s obvious.”

“He exaggerated your navel,” Gary said.

Penny had noticed it, too. “Alfred likes
navels.” For some reason, it was more embarrassing for her to talk
about that than if he had touched her breasts. She knew her face
had turned scarlet, but she struggled on. “When he took me to see
the sunset at the campground, he…he…played with my navel.”

“And that’s when you hit him?”

“Yes. And when we were driving together, I
think he was playing with his own navel.”

“This boy has a naval fetish,” Detective
Landon said. “It may sound weird, but I can tell you from personal
experience that people are weird. In my business, you see people as
they really are.

“In addition, you’re his obsession. People
with obsessions will go to any lengths to attain the object of
their obsession. They behave compulsively, doing crazy things the
rest of us can’t imagine doing. It’s not your fault, Penny. You
just have to stay away from him. Since he’s wanted for murder, if
we catch him, the problem will end. But don’t feel guilty about
him.”

“I was feeling guilty,” Penny admitted. “I
thought I might have led him on somehow.”

Detective Landon didn’t have any more
questions. He replaced the drawing in his briefcase and put it in
his car. He left them, telling them that they should call him if
they had any contact with Alfred, or remembered anything else that
might be pertinent.

After he drove away, Penny avoided Gary’s
eyes. What did he think of the nude picture, or of her behavior at
the Halloween party?

“Let’s go back to the campground,” Gary
said.

To Penny, his voice sounded stiff. They rode
in silence. Penny wondered if this would affect their relationship.
She felt scared and sad at the same time.

“I need to take a walk,” Gary said when they
got there.

Penny didn’t try to stop him. She went into
the tent and bundled herself into the sleeping bag where she cried
silently.

***

Gary walked fast, partly to keep warm,
partly to get the devils out of him. He circled the campground,
looking for a blue Ford Falcon as he went. He saw only one car that
came close to matching that description. The owners were at a
picnic table nearby, playing cards and drinking by the light of a
lantern. That was not Alfred’s car.

After an hour of hard walking, Gary was
exhausted—from the walk and from the activities of the day. He knew
what he had to do. He walked back to their campsite and called to
Penny from the door of the tent so that she wouldn’t be alarmed.
She gave a soft response. He opened the flap and saw her face dimly
lit by the light from his flashlight. She looked unhappy, and her
face was streaked. He crawled inside and closed the flap. He
couldn’t see her now. It was just as well.

“I have a story to tell,” he said. “I told
you that when I was a second-semester senior in college I fell in
love with a first-semester freshman. She was seventeen, like you
were at the time of the Halloween party. That was in the days of
segregated dorms. Girls lived in one set of dorms, boys in another.
Our dorms were a mile apart. Girls couldn’t go upstairs in our dorm
except during special events, and I don’t remember ever seeing a
room in a girls’ dorm. When girls were allowed into our rooms, we
had to keep the door open and four feet on the floor.

“With all the rules, you would think that
life there would be pretty chaste. So perhaps it was especially bad
that we found a way to shack up on weekends.”

Gary paused to let that sink in.

“Did she love you?” Penny asked, softly.

“She loved me physically, although not with
her heart and soul, which perhaps makes her sin worse. But the
point of this whole thing is, should she be tainted for life for
what she did? Should I? Should you for what you’ve done? Who is to
judge? All I want you to know is that I love you.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then
Penny said, “Give me a kiss.”

He kissed her and felt the wetness of her
tears. He kissed them away. Her lips were soft.

She said, “Get undressed and come to
bed.”

CHAPTER 19

“Did you get the feeling we were sliding
downhill all night?” Gary asked the question as he crawled out of
the small tent and braved the coolness of the morning. The singing
of the birds had woken them up earlier than they would have
liked.

Penny poked her head out and blinked at the
morning sun. “We set the tent up on a slope, didn’t we?”

“Yup. If we do that again we’ll at least
point our heads uphill.”

“Well, now that we’re up, we might as well
get going. Fire up the stove and let’s have breakfast. Then
animals, here we come.”

“And Old Faithful.” Gary didn’t say anything
about what had happened last night, and Penny wasn’t about to
mention it. That they were behaving like honeymooners again was
enough for her.

***

For at least the tenth time, Alfred bemoaned
the loss of his car. He had spent a second night sleeping in the
small Falcon, and he was stiff and sore as a result. He had stayed
in the campground closest to Old Faithful, figuring that he would
be less conspicuous there than he would parked along the road
somewhere. Park officials discouraged camping except in the
campgrounds.

He ate breakfast in a café and then set up
his observation post where he could see Old Faithful but not be
seen by the tourists who gathered at the benches that served as a
viewing location. He used the buildings of Old Faithful Village as
shields. Scalding steam rose constantly from a number of fissures.
This was a hotbed of volcanic activity. When Old Faithful did
erupt, boiling water and steam rose into the sky in an awesome and
terrible display of the power of nature.

Although he was not normally attracted to
the outdoors, Alfred could watch Old Faithful all day. He pictured
what was happening below ground to produce this spectacle, and it
showed how puny mankind was in comparison to these forces. This
made him glad, because it meant that the people in the world who
were full of themselves weren’t so great after all.

Alfred had purchased a hunting knife before
he came into the park. Knives weren’t traceable the way guns were,
but they could be just as deadly. A knife didn’t go off
unexpectedly. He kept it in a sheath on his belt and wore his
jacket over it.

***

The animals were absent without leave. So
were the geysers. Penny and Gary walked around Norris Geyser Basin,
but nothing was erupting. Then they drove along a dirt service road
for five miles, searching in vain for the elusive animals. They ate
lunch during their search. Then they drove toward Old Faithful
Village.

***

Alfred hadn’t dared desert his post to eat
lunch, and hunger gnawed at his insides like a dog gnawing on a
bone. The few potato chips he’d eaten didn’t satisfy him. Hunger
made him grouchy. He had spent much of the trip being hungry. Now
more than ever he was prepared to deal with Gary.

When he finally spotted Gary and Penny, they
were headed not toward Old Faithful but toward the laundry at Old
Faithful Village. It was dumb luck on his part that they didn’t see
him, because he had been looking in the wrong direction. He ducked
around a corner and contemplated his next move.

They were always doing laundry. They had
done laundry the night he was with them. He had done laundry then,
too, but nothing since. He was stuck with the clothes on his back,
because he had left everything else in his car. It was just another
reason to regret giving up his car.