Thriller (72 page)

think they cut out with it?”

“We should hide it.”

“Nah, let’s enjoy it for a moment.”

They lapsed into silence. Perotta took another sip of scotch,

enjoying the fiery sensation as it slid down his gullet. Here they

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were in the deep woods, four hundred miles from New York, and

every mile had taken them farther into the boonies. The fire

popped and crackled on the grate. He gave a sigh of satisfaction.

When the soft knock came at the door, almost below the

threshold of audibility, it startled Perotta so much he slopped half

his drink into his lap.

“Who the hell—?”

Woffler was already up, hand on the Tumi knife. He slipped

it into the velvet bag and disappeared into the bathroom. Perotta went to the window, flattened himself sideways, opened the

curtains, and peered out.

“Who is it?” Woffler asked as he came out of the bathroom.

“Nobody. There’s nobody there. What’d you do with it?”

“In the toilet tank.”

Perotta went to the door. Hand on the knob, he hesitated a mo ment. Then he opened it and stepped out on the porch.

The hemlocks were like a dark wall all around the cabin, and

they sighed in the night breeze. The surface of the lake gleamed

like ruffled velvet in the moonlight.

He stepped back inside, stared at Woffler. “It was a knock,

right?”

“Sure sounded like one.”

Perotta reached for a tissue, dabbed at his wet pants. “Maybe

it was a branch or something.”

They sat back down at the fire. Perotta took another slug of

Chivas, but the spell was broken.

“How long you figure we have to stay up here?” Woffler asked.

“Don’t know. Three, maybe four weeks.”

“Think the heat will be off by then?”

“One way or another.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Lipski—”

And then the soft knock came again. This time, Perotta sprang

up and rushed the door, throwing it open.

Nobody.

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“Go see if someone’s around back of the cabin,” said Woffler.

“I’ll need a flashlight first.”

They searched through the kitchen drawers and finally found

one full of flashlights and packages of batteries. They went back

into the living room and stood there, uneasy.

“You think it’s some kids?” Perotta asked.

“We’re ten miles from the nearest town. And they wouldn’t be

out messing around on a weeknight.”

“Maybe the landlord’s a practical joker.”

“The landlord,” Woffler said stiffly, “is eighty and lives down

in Westchester County.”

They stood there, uncertain what to do next. Finally Perotta

went to the door, opened it and shined the light into the dark

woods. The beam played feebly among the dark trunks.

“There!” Woffler said from behind him.

“I didn’t see anything.”

“It was right there. Something white, moving.”

Woffler came forward now, playing his own flashlight beam

into the woods.

“Hey!” Perotta yelled. “Who’s out there?”

He could hear his voice echoing faintly back from the far side

of the pond.

Woffler walked to the edge of the porch and shined the flashlight into the wall of trees. “There!” he said, stabbing with his beam.

Now Perotta thought he saw something, too. It looked like the

figure of a man in white.

“Go see who it is,” he said.

“Me?”

“You’re the one that saw him,” Perotta reasoned.

“I’m not going out there.”

“The hell you aren’t. Look, somebody has to stand guard here.

Don’t worry, I’ll watch your back.”

Reluctantly, Woffler walked down the steps and slowly made his

way toward the edge of the woods, twenty-five feet away. He

stopped, swung his beam around. Then he took a step into the trees.

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“There’s someone in here,” he called back, uneasiness clear in

his voice. “Someone was spying on us, and look—there are footprints in the wet needles.”

“Follow him. Find out what the bastard wants.”

“But—”

“
Do
it.”

Woffler hung back a moment, hesitating. Then he stepped forward and disappeared into the woods. Perotta waited on the

porch, watching the beam flicker and bob through the trees until

it was gone, swallowed up by the woods.

Suddenly it seemed very quiet.

As he waited on the porch, he started to feel a little uneasy

himself. He tried to push the feeling aside. Nobody, he reminded

himself, could know they were there: nobody. Woffler had rented

the cabin online, using a bank account he’d set up in the name

and social security number of a dead man. They had planned it

down to the last detail. Woffler was good at the details; Perotta

had to admit he never could have pulled it off himself.

He wondered if the guy with the tattooed arms had followed

them up here and was trying to pull some shit. But that run-in

was almost thirty miles back, and he was sure they hadn’t been

followed.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes to ten.

Where the hell was Woffler?

Maybe it
was
Woffler. Maybe all his anxiety was just an act.

Maybe he hadn’t really seen anything in the woods. Maybe this

was all an excuse for him to run off with the artifact himself. He

might have rented another car, stashed it somewhere nearby.

Perotta skipped back into the house, ducked into the bathroom, pulled the cover off the toilet tank. The knife was there

all right, wrapped in its sodden velvet pouch. He replaced the

cover and walked thoughtfully back out to the porch.

Could it be Lipski, after all? It didn’t seem likely. Sure, Lipski

knew by now they’d pulled some shit on him—they were supposed to deliver the knife before 5:00 p.m.—but how would he

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know where they’d gone? And it sure as hell wasn’t the rich Peruvian Lipski claimed to be dealing with, the one who wanted

the artifact back for his ancestors or something like that. It was

way too early for him to know he’d been screwed.

He supposed it
could
be Lipski. But how could he trace them?

Through Woffler’s car, maybe? That was the one weak link. But

who’d seen the car? And how could anyone know they’d end up

at the lake? The only way would be if they’d been followed.

He checked his watch. Five past ten.

“Woffler?” he called out. “Hey, Woffler?”

The dark wall of trees sighed back.

He cupped his hands. “Woffler!”

His voice echoed back, distant and lost.

He shined his flashlight into the woods, but there was nothing.

“Shit,” he muttered.

He turned, went back inside, took a slug of Chivas, took the

longest knife he could find from the kitchen and slid it into his

belt. Woffler should have taken a weapon. Stupid.

He threw another log on the fire, paced about, picked up the

snifter, then put it down without taking another sip. He’d better

stay sober; he might need his wits.

He sat down, stood up again. Then he went back out and stood

on the porch.

“Woffler! Yo!”

Ten-fifteen. He’d been gone almost half an hour.

This was bullshit.

Heart beating fast, he walked down the steps and headed toward the spot where Woffler had vanished into the trees, shining his light on the ground. It had rained recently, and the soft

ground, covered with a thick carpet of tiny hemlock needles, retained the clear outline of Woffler’s footprints, and those of someone else—someone with smaller feet.

“Hey, Woffler!”

In the ensuing silence, he could hear the faint lapping of the

lake. He took a few tentative steps into the woods.

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A very distant call came drifting back through the trees, so

faint he couldn’t distinguish it. It wasn’t an echo.

“Woffler! Is that you?”

A sound came back—a distant answering cry. But it was high

pitched: almost, Perotta thought, like a scream.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

He shined his light ahead. The two sets of footprints went off

into the trees. He swallowed a little painfully. Might as well hurry

up and get this over with.

He began hiking fast, following the tracks. The trail wound

between huge tree trunks, and the air smelled of pine pitch and

damp earth. Once or twice he passed some boulders, as tall as

he was, draped with lichen and moss.

“Woffler!”

Perotta quickened his pace. It was stupid to have sent Woffler

out there in the first place. He was a city boy, didn’t know the

first thing about woods. He was probably lost and panicking.

The footprints began skirting a swamp. An owl hooted off in

the darkness.

“Woffler, you coming back or what?”

No answer.

He shined the light around, slapped at a mosquito. The trees

stood all around him like massive dark pillars. Where the ground

became swampy there were thick mats of sphagnum moss. The

footprints ran along the soft verge of the swamp, and then they

veered in sharply, becoming holes where the feet had sunk

through the moss into the mud.

“Jesus.” He stopped. Why would Woffler go into the swamp

like that?

He shined the light around again, and saw something white,

like a mushroom, at the edge of the swamp. He took a step

closer. It wasn’t a mushroom, after all. It was a shell, a white oyster shell. He bent over and picked it up, then immediately

dropped it again, horrified at the rubbery feel.

It fell on the moss, upside down. From this angle, he could

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see that blood was smeared along one side. It was fresh blood,

shiny and intensely red in the glare of the flashlight. Heart

pounding, Perotta picked up a stick and turned it over.

It was an ear. A human ear, severed at the stump, with a gold

earring through the lobe, set with a red stone.

With an involuntary moan, Perotta took a single step back. It

was like a bad dream, the kind of nightmare where something

strange and terrible was happening but you were paralyzed, unable to move, unable to get away, no matter how hard you tried.

And then, suddenly, he found movement. With a sharp cry he

ran wildly, blindly, through the trees, crashing through brush,

clawing through ferns.

He ran and ran until he could run no more, and then he fell.

He lay on the sodden ground, breathing so hard his sides burned

and he moaned with each exhale, the loamy smell filling his nostrils, choking him. He clawed his way back up and turned around

and around, playing the light over the tree trunks. He had no idea

where he was; he’d lost the trail. And now he remembered the

kitchen knife. He fumbled at his belt, drew it out.

“Woffler!” he screamed. “Where are you? Answer me!”

Nothing.

He played the light over the ground. The ground was heavy

with pine needles here, and there were no footprints. Like a goddamn idiot, he’d gotten himself lost. Even if he’d wanted to,

there was no way he could retrace his trail.

He tried to calm his pounding heart, get his hyperventilating

under control. It probably was Lipski, after all. That was the only

answer. Maybe the little shit had suspected them from the beginning, followed them all the way up. That would explain the

small footprints.

Shakily, he began to walk downhill, in the direction he hoped

would lead him back to the lake. If he could find the shore, he’d

be able to see the lights of the cabin and find his way back to the

car and get the hell out.

He saw a sudden movement, a flutter of white, through the trees.

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“Woffler?”

But he knew it wasn’t Woffler.

“I’ll cut you!” he screamed, backing up, brandishing the knife.

“Don’t come near me!”

He turned and ran away from the fluttering movement, slashing through waist-high ferns. He ran and ran and then stopped

again, heaving for air, shining the light around wildly, turning

and turning.

Another flutter of white.

“Get away from me!” He backed up against a tree, the yellow

beam of his flashlight jerking and flitting about the trunks.

“Lipski, look. You can have the knife, it’s in the toilet tank inside the cabin. Go ahead. Just leave me alone.”

Silence.

“Lipski, you hear me?”

The forest was so silent. Even the wind had ceased breathing

in the hemlocks. The cloying smell of wet moss and rotting

wood filled his nostrils.

“I was stupid. I admit it.
Please.
” He gave a choking sob.

He heard a faint sound and saw movement out of the corner

of his eye. Suddenly, a bloody hand shot around from behind the

tree and seized his shirt.

“Get away from me!” he screamed, flailing his arm and slashing with his knife, wrenching himself free, his shirt buttons popping. He backed away from the tree, shakily holding the knife

out ahead of him, his shirt open and hanging loose. “Don’t do

this to me, Lipski,” he choked out. “Don’t.”

But now he wasn’t sure it was Lipski.

The flashlight. He had to turn it off. He had to get away, move

in darkness. He started walking, not fast, and turned the light

off. But the deep blackness of the forest seemed to smother him,

and a feeling of dread and terror overwhelmed him, and he

snapped it back on.

Perotta caught sight of something low to one side. He swung