Night Relics (19 page)

Somebody was home, though. The front door was open, and there was a light blue Isuzu Trooper parked outside, nearly brand
new and utterly out of character with the cabin. It was possible that Amanda and David had come this way last Sunday if they’d
hiked up one of the trails to the ridge.
Somebody
must have seen them.

His conversation with Mr. Ackroyd this morning was making that harder and harder to believe. So this was it. If nothing panned
out here, then he’d pack it in. He walked up the drive, and just then a scrawny little dog crawled out from under the porch
and wandered toward him. It was some kind of pop-eyed chihuahua mix with a skin condition
and a head the size of a golf ball. There was something weirdly possum-looking about it—maybe its tail, which was hairless
except for a patch of fur at the end.

“Sit, Queenie,” Peter said, bending over to pet it, and the dog sat down and raised its paw, then lowered it again without
giving Peter time to shake it. It lay down and rolled onto its side, waving the paw in the air in a gesture of friendship.
He scratched it behind the ear, and abruptly there was a loud voice from inside the cabin. Somebody was either angry or deaf.
Peter stood up. To hell with knocking. Whatever this was, he didn’t need it.

Just then the screen door banged open and a man strode out onto the porch, turning to say one last thing through the open
door. Peter recognized him immediately—what’s-his-name, Adams, the man who was “looking for something to buy” at the steak
house last night.

“That’s an attitude that some people can’t afford to take,” Adams said, in a tone that sounded as if the statement were meant
as a piece of good friendly advice, and not as a threat.

“Shove off!” a voice shouted back.

“I’ll consider …” Adams started, but then there was the sound of something heavy hitting the floor inside, and he clipped off
his sentence and stepped quickly down the wooden steps.

“Think about
this
” the voice said, but whatever it was, Adams didn’t wait to find out. He climbed into the Trooper, started the engine, and
drove straight past Peter without taking his eyes off the road. There was fear and hatred in his face, which he seemed to
want to take out on the car, slamming away across the potholes and throwing up a cloud of dust and leaves.

“That man’s no damn good, Queenie,” Peter said. The dog watched the car disappear around the bend.

Through the screen door someone shouted, “Freeway!” and the dog trotted toward the porch. A man stepped out and gave Peter
a hard look. He was tall and thin, with white
hair combed forward to cover a bald spot, although it looked as if it were combed that way by accident rather than vanity,
and he clearly hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His flannel shirt was torn out at the elbows, and he wore it with the sleeves
rolled up over long underwear even though the Santa Ana winds had already heated the morning air.

Peter nodded at him. “I think that guy might be trouble,” he said. “I’ve run into him before.”

“Run into him harder next time,” the man said, wiping his mouth with his hand. “So who the hell are you? You want to buy me
out, too? I don’t even want to
hear
a price. I told that till I’m blue in the face to three people now. This cabin’s about all I’ve got. Costs me three hundred
a year lease from the Forest Service, and that’s it. No rent. No mortgage. You can’t live that cheap in jail. Why the hell
would I sell out? Every damned weekend somebody comes up here looking to buy, but I ain’t selling, and you can tell ’em that.”

“I don’t want to buy your place,” Peter said. “I’ve got one of my own down the road. I was just shooting the breeze with your
dog.”

“That’s old Freeway.” The man relaxed, as if he could trust anyone who was a friend to his dog.

“Good name,” Peter said. “I might get a dog one of these days.”

“He’s half purebred. Champion stock. You don’t want to get a whole purebred, though. Their brain’s screwed up from the inbreeding.”

“I’ve always had a mutt,” Peter said.

“And keep ’em in at night if you don’t want the lions to eat ’em. It’s all right they stay outside in the daytime, but night’s
a different deal. If you do leave ’em out at night, for God’s sake don’t tie ’em up. They ain’t nothing but TV dinners tied
up. Lion’ll come down and eat a dog right off the chain, bones and all. Don’t think it hasn’t happened.”

Peter nodded. “I get the picture,” he said, reaching
down to pet Freeway again, who lay down and wallowed in the loose dirt. “I wanted to ask you a question if you’ve got a minute.”

“I got all day,” the man said. “That’s why I live out here. That stupid son of a bitch couldn’t grasp that. You know what
he did? Turned me in to the Forest Service for all this crap in the yard. I
know
it was him, trying to wedge me out of here.” He gestured at the mattress springs and paint cans. “None of his damned business,
and he calls the Ranger and turns me in. Now I got a notice that I got to clean it up. This morning he walks right in the
door, like he already owns the place, and tells me that he knows I got my price, and he’s willing to pay it. He comes around
here again I’m going to set old Freeway on him. Freeway ain’t got much hair, but he’s got teeth like a saw blade. Hold on
a second.”

He went into the house and then came straight back out carrying two bottles of beer. “Set down,” he said, nodding at two old
kitchen chairs on the porch.

“Peter Travers,” Peter said, holding out his hand.

The man shook it, then put the beer into it. “Dooly Bateman. Which cabin?”

“Number twelve.”

“I thought twelve was empty. Has been for years.”

“Not anymore. I bought it.”

“Twelve’s been empty for years.” He scratched his nose, as if he was calculating. “I’ll be damned. Twelve. What’d it sell
for?”

“Thirty thousand,” Peter said.

He whistled and widened his eyes. “It don’t seem like they could give it away. Nice place in its day, of course. I always
wondered about it. Supposed to be haunted. They say a crazy man used to own it. Old Ackroyd could tell you about it. He’s
the only one’s been out here long enough. I don’t guess people want a place like that.”

“I guess not,” Peter said. “Nobody but me. What do you mean, haunted?”

“Oh, you know. Regular sort of thing. Old man who owned it was supposed to have died out there or disappeared or whatever.
Anyway they never found him. People seen him through the windows, going around, doing all that worthless crap ghosts do. It’s
all lies, of course. Nothing to keep you awake nights.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Peter said. He held up the photograph of Amanda and David. “I wonder if you’ve seen these people.”

The man took it, holding it at arm’s length. “What are you,” he said, “some kind of cop?”

“No,” Peter said, dreading this part. “I’m her husband.”

“Swear to God?” Bateman said, widening his eyes. He paused long enough to drink the rest of the beer in his bottle, then looked
at the photo again. “Now, I might know the woman,” he said. “But the boy … I ain’t seen the boy. What’s the deal about ’em?”

“Lost,” Peter said. “Last Sunday afternoon.” That was the worst part. “When did you see the woman?”

“Well, at first I thought she was the one used to work up at the general store. Back a couple of years. But you say you’re
married to her, so you’d know that better than me. What was her name? Lu, I think it was. 1 didn’t know she had a kid, though.”

“That couldn’t be her,” Peter said.

“No, I don’t guess so.” He looked at the photo again. “You want another beer? I was just going to open me another one.”

Peter shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”

“You going to drink that one?”

“I guess not,” Peter said.

“Then I’ll go ahead and drink it for you. If I had a Coke or something I’d offer it, but I’m out. Cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Where they supposed to be, anyway?” He gestured at the photograph.

“Hawaii,” Peter said without thinking.

He nodded slowly, as if that explained nearly everything. “I was married once. Lasted ten years. Two kids. She up and left
me, too. Oh, it was my fault, I guess, come to think of it. You’ve got to treat a woman right.” He looked at the photo again.
“Nice-looking lady. No offense my saying so, I hope.”

“No offense,” Peter said.

“If it was me, I’d try to hold on to her a little tighter. I’d get the hell over to Hawaii, if I was you, not that I mean
to be giving you advice. Either that or why don’t you wire ’em money? You can do that nearly everywhere now. No problem to
Hawaii. Tell her to get on the next plane out’s what I’d do. Sometimes you’ve got to eat a little crow. It don’t taste bad.
A married man gets used to the flavor or he don’t stay married.”

“That’s the truth,” Peter said. Somehow a wire had disconnected in the conversation. He let it go for the moment.

“So what kept
you
home, anyway? Seems to me a man should go along with the family to a place like Hawaii. No offense meant again.”

“I can’t stand the heat,” Peter said, taking the photograph back. “Haven’t seen either of them, then?”

“Not unless that’s Lu, and all I can tell you is that she worked over at the store in the Oaks, might have been, hell, three,
four years back, come to think of it. Real nice gal. Same hair as this anyway. Dress kind of reminds me of a woman’s been
hanging around the canyon for the last week or so. Woman and boy. I don’t know, though.” He focused on the photograph and
shook his head. “I guess that ain’t them, either.”

“Woman in a black dress?” Peter asked. “Kid’s got suspenders and a striped shirt?”

“Them’s the ones. I think they’re some kind of homeless. That son of a bitch I just run off probably bought ’em out. That
guy blows like big rats.”

“That’s the truth,” Peter said, standing up. “Thanks, for
the time.” He patted Freeway again and stepped down off the porch.

“Sure you won’t drink a beer?”

“Maybe later on.”

“Well, tell me, you ain’t going up the road sometime today are you? My battery’s just about as dead as it can be. You mind
picking me up a couple of things? Just enough till I get going again. I could walk it, but I’ve got arthritis in both knees,
and I’m about out of groceries.”

“Sure,” Peter said. What the hell. He probably
was
going out sometime before the day was over, and if he wasn’t, then he’d go out anyway. Bateman stepped inside and then back
out again with a pencil and paper. He scribbled on the paper and handed it to Peter along with a pile of ones and some change.
Peter shoved it all into his pocket.

“No hurry,” the man said.

“Probably be later on this evening.”

“That’d be fine. And no offense on the advice, I hope. If I was you I’d think about wiring that money to the little woman,
though. Soon, too. Western Union’s the quickest, I guess. You wait too long like I did and you’ll find yourself living out
here like me with holes in your damned sleeves. Not that I don’t like it.”

“Thanks for the good word,” Peter said, turning around and waving over his shoulder. When he was out of sight down the road
he took out the grocery list. “Pabst Blue Ribbon, case” was the first item, “Pabst” and “case” underlined three times. Then
the words “block ice.” That was it. He didn’t bother to count the money. If there was any change left he could wire it to
Hawaii.

The sun had just climbed over the ridge and was baking the west-facing slopes. In the oak shadows of the canyon floor it was
cool and perfect—the kind of day to open all the windows and doors and let the air in. The winds had diminished for the moment
to a willowy little breeze that
drifted out of the northeast, stirring the leaves high up in the alders and carrying on it the smell of chaparral. There were
autumn colors in the sycamores, and except for that and the carpet of fallen leaves, it might have been summer.

Instead of heading toward home Peter hiked up the slope toward the ridge. If Amanda and David
had
gone that way then maybe there’d be something, some clue. If he had a dog like Freeway he could probably search out a broken
twig or a wind-faded spoor. “Comb the hillsides, Freeway!” he said out loud, then laughed.

He stopped himself, closing his eyes instead, letting the breeze wash past him. If only he wasn’t so damned useless! He’d
had a wife and child, and six months ago he’d lost them, or thought he had. He’d spent those months twisting it in his head,
arguing through it—whose fault it was, how it happened, this leading to that—as if the pieces of his marriage were a complicated
jigsaw puzzle, and he could move the pieces around until they’d make a clear picture that he could study and make sense of.

Now he’d lost them again. Only this time it wasn’t in any kind of figurative sense. There weren’t any puzzle pieces now, nothing
to argue through, nothing to protest, just some ghostly shapes in the darkness. What Ackroyd had told him hadn’t made anything
more clear, but had revealed an even deeper void, and he stood now on this windy hillside looking into it, trying to see something
where there was nothing.

He opened his eyes. The canyon stretched before him, winding down toward the flatlands, disappearing beyond the ridges so
that civilization might have been infinitely distant. He decided right then to hike as far as the top of Falls Canyon just
to see what the falls looked like in the daytime. Maybe what he’d seen last night was some trick of shadow and perspective—just
another illusion. Or maybe it was a picture in the darkness.

K
LEIN HAD BEEN UP SINCE FIVE IN THE MORNING, PROWLING
around the house, listening to the wind. He had cleaned and loaded his two pistols first thing—one of them for Beth, although
she would probably try to argue with him about it. She didn’t understand about Pomeroy, but he certainly couldn’t explain
him to her. Sometime this morning he would head down to the Builders Emporium in El Toro to buy a couple of decent dead-bolt
locks for Beth’s doors, and new sash hardware to replace the screwed-up stuff on her windows. He was going to lend her a cordless
phone, too, in case the dirty little prick came back. She could haul the phone around with her from room to room and punch
his number in the memory dial if she needed to. He pictured confronting Pomeroy—the look on his face when he saw the pistol
in Klein’s hand.