Night Relics (6 page)

When he had gotten back, something like an hour and a half later, Amanda and David were gone. Amanda had
threatened that before he left. She had told him that Peggy would gladly give them a ride home. Peggy was only working a four-hour
shift at the Trabuco Oaks Steak House. Amanda and David could walk across the ridge and down into the Oaks in about forty
minutes, not much longer than the time that it took to drive there on the dirt road. Peter had taken off for the more distant
market anyway, despite Amanda’s warning.
Because
of Amanda’s warning. When he got back they were gone.

“So why did you call?” Peggy asked.

“What?”

“Why did you call? Just to talk?”

“No real reason,” Peter said. “I’m just trying to keep on top of it all. You know. I can’t give it up just like that.”

“It isn’t easy, is it?”

“Not much, no,” Peter said.

“It’s not easy on Amanda, either, you know. I’m sorry about screwing up your dinner, though.”

“I screwed it up,” Peter said. “Just another mistake.”

“Keep in touch,” she said.

“Sure.” He hung up and sat for a moment thinking, his throat and stomach hollow. He had no real way of knowing that Amanda
and David had ever left the canyon on that windy Sunday afternoon a week ago. He had taken it for granted that they had, and
the next day he had driven cheerfully off to Santa Barbara. If he set out right now to make a list of the things he had taken
for granted in his life, he’d go broke buying paper.

R
ATS IN THE WELL WOULD MAKE
A
CKROYD A SICK MAN
, but a dead cat in the well would make him something worse, especially when he found out it was his own cat.

Upending the bag, Pomeroy dropped the three rats beside the trail, then shoved the empty bag into his back pocket and started
to climb back down, anxious not to move too fast and scare the cat. Then he stopped, thought again, and went back up after
one of the two freshly dead rats, which he picked up by the tail, nearly gagging at the rubbery feel of the rat tail pressed
between his fingers.

He went back down, smiling in the cat’s direction, holding the rat visible. The cat watched him, its tail flicking back and
forth now. Pomeroy took the bag out of his back pocket with his free hand, although he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
He had killed small animals before by putting them into a plastic bag, then shoving the mouth of the bag over the exhaust
pipe of a car. The carbon monoxide put them right out. It was very humane.

A live cat would tear the bag to shreds, though. He looked around for something to hit it with. He didn’t like the idea of
the animal suffering. There was nothing close by, and he didn’t want to go looking for something. The cat would get away.

He decided just to grab it by the tail and slam it into the wall of the house. That would stun it long enough for him to get
it up the hill and drown it in the water tank. The cat wouldn’t suffer at all that way.

Pomeroy spoke to it, dropping the bag and flexing the fingers of his right hand. He laid the rat carefully on the wooden porch,
and the cat batted at it with its paw, as if it wanted the rat to get up and run.

“That’s right,” Pomeroy said softly. And then, quick as a snake, he grabbed the cat’s tail and spun around toward the house,
snatching the cat up off the porch. Surprisingly, the cat retracted, balling itself up, latching on to his forearm with its
claws. Then there was the sharp, hot pain of teeth fixed into his bicep as the cat scrabbled up his shirt, clawing the sleeve
to ribbons.

Pomeroy trod backward across the porch, stepping on the rat, trying to yank the frenzied cat away from his neck and face.
The creature sank its teeth into his hand, lacerating the soft skin of his palm, and when he tried to fling it away, it held
on long enough to tear out a piece of flesh. Then it let go and dropped, somersaulted forward, and raced away into the underbrush.

He held his fist closed. His whole hand throbbed. The rat’s head was crushed where he’d stepped on it, but he forced himself
to pick it up anyway, by the tail again. He grabbed the bag off the ground with the same hand and walked stiffly back toward
the trail to the water tank. Blood trickled down his forearm from the scratches, but it was the bite that ached, and he could
feel blood leaking out of his closed fist onto the edge of his hand.

Next time he’d be ready for the cat.

After climbing back up the hillside, he located the other two rats, forced himself to pick them up, and then had to put them
down again to push back the little trapdoor in the lid of the steel tank. He put his lacerated hand into the icy water, flexed
it, and gasped when the cold pain lanced up his arm. He pulled his hand out, closed his fist again, and dropped the rats into
the tank one by one before pushing the door shut.

He tucked the bag into his pocket and started down, holding on to roots and branches with his free hand to steady
himself. There was no sign of the cat anywhere, but he bent over to pick up a grapefruit-sized rock just in case it showed
its face. When he straightened up, there was a woman not twenty feet in front of him, walking on the road.

“Linda!” Pomeroy gasped. His throat constricted and for a moment he was afraid he would pass out. Then he saw that he was
wrong. It wasn’t Linda. Same blond hair, tall. Jesus, same build. It was her mouth, too, the full lips …

For a moment he allowed himself to imagine that it
was
Linda, and he pictured her alone in her bedroom, unhurriedly sorting through the things in an open dresser drawer. Now she
had come to him alone ljke this, out of the forest, having finally noticed him, understood him. He would forgive her, and
together they would go into the trees….

Now that she was closer he could see a certain suspicion in the woman’s eyes, and he smiled brightly at her and nodded.

“Haven’t seen Mr. Ackroyd this morning, have you?” he asked. Before she could answer he said, “My name’s Adams. Henry Adams.”
He almost shoved his hand out for her to shake, but his palm was slick with blood again. He dropped the rock behind his back.
She seemed to have visibly relaxed when he mentioned Ackroyd’s name. Thank God she hadn’t been standing there two minutes
ago when he was dropping rats into the water tank.

Or had she?

He stopped himself from turning to look at the tank.

“Name’s Beth,” she said.

She looked so much like Linda that he nearly couldn’t trust himself to speak. He had never had a chance to explain himself,
his love for her. Beth—her name filled his mind.

Then he realized that she was looking at him uneasily, and he made himself smile again. “I was just thinking that I knew you,”
he said. “You remind me of … of a woman I knew once.”

“I’ve got a common face,” she said. “What happened to your hand? It’s bleeding like crazy. My boyfriend’s place
is right up the road. He’s got a first-aid kit. You ought to put some hydrogen peroxide on that and bandage it up.”

“Naw,” Pomeroy said. He was pretty sure why she had mentioned the boyfriend. She was attracted to him, but was a little too
modest to be open about it. She just wanted a little space at first, and that was all right.

Or maybe she
had
seen him up on the hill, and was threatening him with the boyfriend. He tried to read her face, looking deeply into her eyes.
He couldn’t see any suspicion there, or any fear. She trusted him.

“I tried to pet Mr. Ackroyd’s cat,” he said, opening his hand now, “but the darned thing took a swipe at me. First time that’s
happened. We’re old friends.”

She nodded. “You ought to have someone look at it, old friends or not. Cat scratches as deep as those are dangerous.”

“My car’s just up the road,” Pomeroy said, falling in beside her and heading toward where the Thunderbird sat at the turnout.
“I’ve got a first-aid kit in the trunk. Maybe you could help?” He looked her over, his eyes stopping for a moment on her breasts.
She glanced at him and he pulled his eyes away, embarrassed. “Where you headed?”

“Just out walking,” she said.

“Like a ride somewhere?” He could sense that she understood him, or at least would be open to the idea of … He couldn’t define
it too clearly. He wondered if she lived nearby, maybe in one of the isolated houses out here in the canyon.

“No, thank you. I’m headed up toward the ridge, actually. I like to walk. Walking gives me time to think.”

He considered asking her to drive his car for him. He could plead cat bite, say he was feeling shaky. But maybe it would be
too much too soon. “What’s your sign?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s neon.”

Pomeroy laughed. He liked that, a woman who could joke. He had worked hard to develop his sense of humor.
That was invaluable for a salesman. It was a very human thing, a sense of humor, and was attractive to people.

“You live out here?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “My boyfriend does.”

“How about you? Where do you live?” He pictured her in a small house, lace curtains, far enough from the prying eyes of neighbors
so that she wasn’t fastidious about her privacy. He wondered what her habits were when she was alone. Linda had been very
free when she thought she was alone, very uninhibited.

“Locally,” she said.

They were at the Thunderbird now, and he opened the trunk and took out the first-aid kit he carried. The canyon was full of
hazards—snakes and animals. He liked to be prepared. It was the boy scout in him.

Beth dabbed the cut with a gauze pad soaked in liquid from a little spray can of antiseptic. The bite was ragged and deep,
but the bleeding had nearly stopped. She covered his palm with another pad, fixed it in place with tape, and then wrapped
his hand with a strip of gauze bandage.

Pomeroy barely noticed the throbbing in his hand now. Her face was close to his—closer than Linda’s had ever been. Beth trusted
him. She cared about him,
for
him. He cocked his head and smiled at her, putting his whole heart into it.

She stepped away. “There you go,” she said. “You still ought to see a doctor. Bacterial infections are pretty common in cat
bites.”

He nodded. “I
will.
Thanks. You know, it’s a pleasure to meet a beautiful woman out walking like this. Quite a surprise. Sure I can’t drop you
somewhere?”

“Very sure,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”

Near the parked Thunderbird she stepped off the road and onto a trail that angled down toward the creek. He could see that
it wound away upward on the other side, and there was a cut in the steep mountainside where the trail lost itself in the brush.
Pomeroy unlocked the car, and got
in, watching her as she crossed the creek. Almost at once she was lost from view. He should have gone along with her. She
would have enjoyed his company.

He started the engine, certain that he would see her again. Synchronicity had brought them together. He could sense it. This
was
meant
to happen, to make up for … for what had happened before.

The cat bite throbbed worse than ever. Beth had been right about seeing a doctor. That had been good advice. He would keep
an eye on his hand. Right now, though, he had a couple of other things to do.

He smelled dead rats and realized that the plastic bag was still tucked into his pants pocket. So he wound down the window
and threw it out before driving away west, toward civilization. Things were going well. Even the damned cat bite had paid
out. He grinned suddenly, anticipating his phone conversation with Lance Klein.

K
LEIN WATCHED THE HILLSIDES THROUGH THE WINDOW
. He knew it was crazy, but something inside him, almost like a memory, whispered that at any moment she would appear. He’d
been waiting for her, expecting her. He could picture her face clearly—the pale porcelain cast of her skin, her dark eyes
and hair. Her name flitted into his head without his making any conscious effort to invent one for her, as if he had always
known it.

The wind fell suddenly, and the shadows and trees were still, the hills empty. He imagined it was dark, late at night,
the moon high in the sky over the ridge. Heavy with expectation, he walked toward the hills through the high grass. She appeared
in the moonlight, and he went out to meet her, taking her hand and leading her to a room that smelled like pine and wool and
tallow. Her clothes were a puzzle of ties and buttons, but with practiced hands he undressed her, the two of them moving together
slowly in the sepia-toned candlelight….

When the telephone rang he nearly knocked it onto the floor. It took a moment for him to recognize Pomeroy’s voice.

“I think we’ve got a live one out at the end of the road,” Pomeroy said.

“Which cabin?” Klein forced himself to look at the countertop, to yank his eyes and his mind around to business and away from
the windy hillside.

“Thirty-five,” Pomeroy said.

“They settled on a price?”

“Nope.”

“You make any kind of offer?”

“Nope.”

Klein waited. He did a lot of waiting when he talked to Pomeroy, whose pronouncements were full of pauses that seemed to imply
things, except that Klein never knew if the pauses implied stupidity or secret knowledge. “So what did you tell them?” he
asked, finally giving in. Two points for you, he thought.

“I told the woman to talk it over with her husband. My idea is to drive back out there in a couple of days, after they’ve
had time to get worked up, and tell them I’m not interested. Then one of the new fronts can pick it up.”

“All right,” Klein said. “I’ll go for that. Give me the name and phone number.”

After listening for a moment he hung up the phone and shook his head, immediately punching in a number. The phone rang three
times before a man picked up at the other end and said, “Callaway.”

“Bob, this is Lance Klein, calling about that little real estate deal we talked about at the Spanglers’ party. That’s right,”
Klein said. “She was a riot, wasn’t she? I
am
a lucky man. You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, about that little deal,
it’s easy money, payment up front.”