Robert B. Parker (16 page)

Newman whistled
see soo
. Janet whistled.

Hood shook his head. “Sounds too human. Whistle through your teeth.”

Newman said, “It rhymes with ‘see through,’ like in ‘see-through blouse.’ ”

Janet whistled again.
See soo
.

“Good.”

They moved back toward the smell of smoke. Very slowly, side by side now, not single file. They slipped past the clumps of sumac, among the saplings, their feet catching in greenbrier and Virginia creeper, and occasionally wild blackberry and raspberry bushes. Sweat and time had wiped away the insect repellent and the bugs were thick and merciless in the dense woods. Newman stayed beside Janet. Hood was to their right. They couldn’t see him.

Ahead of him through the trees Newman could see the moving light of a fire. The smell of smoke was strong, and the smell of cured meat cooking had mixed with the woodsmoke. He could hear the slightly artificial sound of a radio playing. He edged slowly closer. The radio sound was a ballgame. Karl and his party had camped in an open area by a small stream that ran over a nearly flat rock the size of a pool table and dropped into a narrow bed below the rock, where it trickled down the long slope toward the lake. It was a natural campsite and the ground was smooth and clear around the tiny waterfall, as if worn smooth by campers since before Columbus.

An igloo-shaped round orange tent had been set up, a fire was burning in a circle of stones on the bare ground in the middle of the clearing. Adolph Karl sat on the ground, leaning against a packboard and drinking from a large leather-covered flask. His son Richie
sat on his haunches by the fire, cooking sausages in a fry pan set on a small wire rack over the flames. Frank Marriott and Marty Karl were playing cards on a blanket spread before the tent. Marty took the flask from his father and drank. He passed it on to Marriott.

Newman made a slight downward pressure on Janet’s arm with his right hand. He held the Winchester in his left. She dropped to the ground and lay flat watching the camp. Newman remained standing for another moment, looking at the camp.
The tent would be for Karl
, he thought.
He’ll sleep in it and the rest of them will sleep outside. It’s only big enough for him and maybe one other. If he sleeps there alone it’s a chance to get him and slip away. But not with a gun … with a knife? Could I do it with a knife? Maybe Chris can. He did it before. Maybe Janet. Maybe I can
.

He heard something move in the brush. He half-turned and a heavy object exploded against the side of his face. He stumbled backward. He wanted to use the Winchester but he couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in his hand. He was closer to the fire, and then he was very close to it. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them and looked at the mottled tan of a puff-ball almost in his eye. He smelled dirt. He was on the ground.

A voice said, “I was taking a leak when I spotted him prowling around with a gun, Dolph.”

The voice was familiar.

“Here’s the gun,” it said.

Another voice said, “Get him on his feet and look through his pockets. See who he is.” Newman didn’t know the voice. But he knew the first one. He was trying to remember where he knew it from when he
felt himself jerked upright. He swayed slightly as he stood. Someone’s hand held the back of his shirt collar. Someone unbuckled the pistol belt. He smelled body sweat and bad breath and whiskey. His vision was fuzzy, but he could see. Adolph Karl and he remembered. He felt his stomach shrink in upon itself. He half-turned as a hand took his wallet. He saw the huge man and he remembered more. He remembered the voice. The huge man had hold of the back of his shirt collar, holding him up easily with his left hand. With his right he tossed the wallet to Karl. The huge man looked at Newman as Newman looked, twisting half around, at him.

“Motherfucker,” the huge man said. “I know this guy. He’s one of the guys I saw in the alley.”

Karl looked at Newman without expression. Richie Karl pointed a shotgun at Newman. Karl took Newman’s driver’s license out of the wallet and looked at it. He looked at Newman and back at the license. He turned it so he could see the picture better. Then he put the license back in the wallet and tossed the wallet into the fire.

He looked at Newman again. “He’s the guy that fingered me,” Karl said. “The fucking asshole.”

“What are you doing here?” Karl said.

Newman was motionless. He fought against the impulse to look for Chris and Janet. They must be out there. Janet had seen it. She’d been right beside him on the ground. Chris. Did Chris know? He was separate from Janet. What if he’d started back? What if Janet couldn’t rescue him?

The huge man had transferred his grip to Newman’s upper arms, one hand on each.

“What are you doing here?” Karl said. There was no tone in his voice. It sounded mechanical.

Newman stayed still. His face hurt. His head ached. His stomach felt bottomless. He was nearly dizzy with fear.

“Marty,” Karl said. “Stick his face in the fire till he answers me.”

Karl’s younger son stepped toward Newman. He was as tall as his father, and fleshy, with an insufficient moustache over a Cupid’s-bow mouth. He wore a black sweat shirt on which was printed “The Helmet Law Sucks.” He put his right hand behind Newman’s neck and began to bend him forward. Newman stiffened
his neck and swelled the big trapezius muscles he had earned through years of weight training. Marty couldn’t bend him, but the huge man could. He pressed forward and down on Newman’s arms, forcing Newman toward the ground, forcing the knees to bend.
It’s humiliating. Torture isn’t just pain, it’s public humiliation
. He strained against the pressure of Marty’s hand and the huge man’s force. He was losing.
Where the fuck are they?
His knees touched, he could feel the fire.

Chris Hood stepped out from behind the orange pup tent and hit the huge man across the back of the head with the butt of the Springfield. The huge man let go of Newman and pitched sideways and sat down. Without the pressure of the huge man Newman uncoiled like a released spring.

He straightened, tearing loose from Marty’s grasp. He pushed Marty away from him and jumped for the woods. Richie Karl brought the shotgun up and from the shelter of the trees Janet Newman shot him five times. Hood turned the Springfield at Karl and Frank Marriott shot him in the chest with a .357 magnum. Hood died at once.

Newman turned toward the sounds of Janet’s shots and she caught his hand as he reached the dark shelter of the forest. He went ahead of her, she followed, holding on to his hand in the darkness as they blundered as fast as they could through the woods. As they ran, Newman had a vague sense of downhill. He bore left in the darkness, feeling the panic boil in him and fighting to keep it down. They came across some granite outcroppings and stopped.

“Is this the place we were?” Newman’s breath was coming in gasps. The sweat ran off his face.

“I don’t know,” Janet said. She was panting.

“Shh.”

They listened. There was no sound of pursuit. He tried to keep his breathing silent so he could listen. The woods were empty of human sound except his own.

“Where’s Chris?” Newman said. His breathing was still harsh and labored.

“I think they shot him,” Janet said.

“Jesus Christ,” Newman said. “Are you sure?”

“I saw him fall,” Janet said, “then we ran. I don’t know. I think so.”

“Oh, good Jesus,” Newman said. “We’re on our own.”

Janet nodded.

“Jesus, Jesus,” Newman said.

“We can do it,” Janet said.

“What if he’s not dead,” Newman said, “and they’ve got him?”

Janet was silent.

“We’ll have to help him,” Newman said.

“If he’s not dead.”

“We have to know,” Newman said. “Jesus, what a mess.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Janet said. “There’s one fewer of us and at least one fewer of them. The odds are still the same.”

“Except they know we’re here.” Newman’s breathing was easier. He looked at his wife in the dim light where the stars shone into the clearing. “You shot the one with the shotgun.”

“Yes.”

“Just like I showed you.”

“Breathe, Aim, Slack, Squeeze,” she said.

“He would have killed me.”

“That’s why I shot him.”

“How do you feel?”

“Scared, out of wind, mad. Like you,” she said.

“But you killed a guy. You’ve never done that before. Does it bother you?”

“No. It had to be done. I don’t mind. I won’t mind next time either.”

“You are a tough cookie,” Newman said. “Thank God.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it, Aaron. It might be hard if it were right close and you had to wrestle and gouge or if you knew the person. But at fifty feet with someone I don’t know it’s easy. Squeeze the trigger. Just like you put the brakes on in a car. Something happens, you react. Didn’t you ever kill anyone in Korea?”

“I don’t think so. I was a radio operator at battalion level. I heard shots fired in anger, but I didn’t kill anyone I can recall.”

“Well, we’ll have to kill several now. And you’ll have to do some of it.”

“I know,” Newman said. “They know who we are. They’ll figure out what we were doing here. If they get out of here alive we’re dead.”

“And the girls,” Janet said, “they may well be dead too.”

Newman grunted as if he’d been hit.

“So,” Janet said, “let’s get organized.”

Newman sat behind the outcropping of granite in the woods in the dark and rubbed his temples with his left hand. As he sat the sweat cooled on his body and he felt cold.

“It’s September,” he said.

“What?”

“Cold,” Newman said, “it gets cold up here in September.”

“Yes.”

“They took my rifle, and pistol belt.”

“Take the carbine and my ax,” Janet said.

“Yes, and you have the .32 and the knife. We have the jackets and the down vests. I have eleven granola bars. You?”

“Twelve.”

“We ought to try and get by on one a day and stretch them out. Try to live off the land as much as we can.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll eat one each morning. Then we’ll look for berries and stuff. If we’ve found nothing by night we’ll have another one.”

“I hope we’re not here that long.”

“Even if we can get them, and they don’t get us, we may get lost. Neither one of us is big in the woods.”

“You won’t get lost,” Janet said. “You’ve never been lost in your life.”

“I’ve never spent time in the woods.”

“I’ll bet they haven’t either,” Janet said.

“I hope not.”

They slept very little that night, though they tried, huddled together, each in a thigh-length nylon pullover.

“You try and sleep and I’ll watch,” Newman had said. “Then I’ll wake you when I’m falling asleep and you watch.”

But in fact neither one of them slept, and after an hour and a half they realized they weren’t going to and they sat quiet in the dark and listened to the twittering of insects and waited for the morning. It came, finally, with a slow thinning of the darkness. The sky behind the treetops got paler. Then the trees and rocks around them began to take shape. They could begin to see where they were and what it looked like.

“We’ve got to sneak back to the camp and see,” Newman said.

“Yes.”

“You look pretty good for a broad who slept on the ground in her clothes.”

“What I wonder is if they’re sneaking about, looking for us,” Janet said.

All business
, he thought,
even here. Getting in charge
.

“Take the carbine,” she said.

“Okay.”

The sun began to rise. Newman looked at it carefully, turning his body so the sun was to his right. In his mental map he saw himself standing on the East Coast, near the Atlantic, looking at Canada, full-sized, like someone in a television commercial.

“Okay,” he said, “uphill is essentially north, downhill is essentially south. To get back to the lake we want to go south, downhill, remember that. In case we’re separated.”

“How about the packs?” Janet said.

“We’ll bring them.”

“Easier to be sneaking around without them.”

“But if we leave them someplace we may not find them again and we need them,” Newman said. “We better bring them.”

She nodded and slipped into hers. It pleased him that she did what he said without argument.
Not because I said so, though, because she agreed
.

“Let’s go,” she said.

He picked up the carbine. “I’m not even sure which way,” he said. “I’d say northwest.”

“Which way is that?” she said.

He’d known she wouldn’t know. “Bear left, uphill,” he said. “Remember, uphill is north. When you face north, west is to your left.”

“Why not say left and right then?”

“Because left and right are relative to the way you’re standing but north and south are not.”

She was impatient. “Let’s go,” she said.

“All right, but let me go first,” he said. “You tend to get lost.”

She nodded and they moved out of the small clearing.
It feels like I’m leaving a refuge
, he thought.
It’s no safer here than anywhere else but because we spent about eight hours here it’s familiar and it feels safer. Amazing how we adjust. Safety may turn out to be relative too
.

It was full daylight. He moved very slowly through the woods ahead of her. Walking very carefully, putting each foot down thoughtfully, feeling his way through the ground bramble and princess pine that tangled underfoot. He stopped frequently to listen. The second time he stopped there was a thicket of black raspberries. He gestured at them. And they both picked and ate as many as were ripe.

“Blackberries?” she said softly.

“Black raspberries I think. The blackberry bushes are taller and these don’t have that oblong blackberry look, you know.”

“How the hell do you know how high black raspberry bushes are?” she said.

He shrugged. “I read it somewhere.”

“I’m finished,” she said.

He nodded and they moved on, bearing slightly west and slightly uphill, listening. Stopping, moving very slowly a careful step at a time. He held the carbine in his right hand. His finger on the trigger guard but not on the trigger, the barrel pointing down. It was a light weapon; with the fifteen-round clip fully loaded it weighed just over six pounds and it fitted comfortably in one hand. He could even fire it with one hand should he need to.