As he looked up at the hillside, he heard an engine. He saw the blue roof of a car rush by.
“Oh shit,” he muttered.
He unzipped the side of the mummy bag and crawled out. Standing, he unrolled his jeans. He reached into them and pulled out his Jockey shorts. Balancing on one foot, then the other, he stepped into them.
He heard voices.
“Oh shit oh shit.”
He sat down quickly on the mummy bag and started pulling on his jeans.
Two hikers, a young couple, came striding along the hillside just above his camp. They wore soft felt hats, like the ones he’d seen in Karen and Bob’s closet.
They came closer and closer.
Lifting his rump, he pulled up his jeans. Zipped them. Buckled them.
The couple stepped into the clearing.
He couldn’t believe it! The fucking trail ran right past his mummy bag!
“Oh hello,” said the man of the pair. He seemed pleasantly surprised to meet Roy.
“Hi,” said the girl with him. She seemed no older than eighteen.
“Hello,” Roy answered. “You almost caught me with my pants down.”
The girl grinned. She had a big mouth for smiling, and huge teeth. Also huge breasts. They did a lot of swinging inside her tight, green tank top. She wore white shorts. Her legs looked tanned and powerful.
The man pulled a briar pipe from a pocket of his shorts. “You camped smack in the middle of the trail,” he said, as if he found it amusing.
“I didn’t want to get lost.”
He slipped a leather pouch out of his rear pocket and started filling his pipe. “What’d you use for water?”
“I did without.”
“There’s a public campground about a mile that way.” He pointed his pipe stem at the hill. “Faucets there, toilets.”
“That’s good to know. Maybe I’ll head up that way.”
He lit a match and sucked its flame down into his pipe. “Illegal camping here, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yep. Anywhere but the public sites.”
“I can’t stand those places,” Roy said. “They’re too crowded. I’d rather stay home.”
“They are awful,” agreed the girl.
“Yep,” the man said, and puffed.
“Where are you headed?” Roy asked, hoping to get them on their way.
“Stinson Beach,” said the man.
“How far’s that?”
“We plan to get there by noon.”
“Well,” Roy said, “have a good hike.”
“That’s some nice equipment you’ve got. Where’d you outfit yourself?”
“I’m from L.A.,” he said.
“That so? Been over to Kelty’s in Glendale?”
“That’s where I bought most of my stuff.”
“I’ve been there. Bought my boots there, in fact. Back about six years ago.” He looked down fondly at them.
“Who’s that in your sleeping bag?” the girl asked.
Roy’s stomach clenched. He thought about his knife. It was rolled inside his shirt, within easy reach of his right hand.
“It’s my wife,” he said.
The man grinned, gripping the pipe in his teeth. “You both fit in the same bag?”
“It’s cozy that way,” Roy said.
“Do you have room to maneuver?” asked the man.
“Enough.”
The man laughed. “We ought to try that, huh, Jack?”
Jack, the girl, didn’t look amused.
“Our bags zip together,” the man. “You ought to try it that way. Gives a lot more room.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Jack asked.
“Nothing, why? ’Cause she doesn’t come out? She’s a pretty heavy sleeper.”
“Can she breathe in there?” asked the man.
“Sure. She always sleeps that way. Far down like that. She doesn’t like her head getting cold.”
“Yeah?” The girl named Jack looked skeptical.
“Well, we’d better be off,” said the man.
“Have a nice hike,” Roy told him.
“You too.”
They walked past him. He watched until they disappeared into the trees, then he unrolled his shirt. He raised his pant leg, and slipped the knife into the sheath taped to his calf. Then he put on his shirt.
He took Joni’s blouse and skirt out of the pack, and knelt at the head of the mummy bag. He scanned the trees. Nobody around.
Joni groaned as he pulled her out by the arm. She opened one eye, and closed it again. Roy arranged her face-up on top of the bag.
The sight of her sunlit, naked body excited him.
Not now.
Shit, not now.
He pulled the dress up her legs, and fastened it. Then he raised her to a sitting position, and worked the blouse up her arms. He let her fall back. Quickly, he buttoned her blouse.
“Wake up,” he said. He slapped her.
Her eyes squeezed tight at the sudden pain, then fluttered open.
“Get up.”
Slowly, she rolled over and got to her knees. Her hair was bloody and matted to the back of her head where the knife hilt had bludgeoned her.
Breaking camp seemed to take a long time. While he worked, he watched Joni closely. He listened for voices. He kept glancing up the hillside at the trail and the road. Finally, everything was loaded in the pack. He swung it to his shoulders, grabbed Joni’s hand, and led her down to the lower road.
A Ford van passed.
He waved and smiled.
When the road was deserted again, he opened the Pontiac’s trunk. “Climb in, honey.” 2.
As Roy drove, he heard radio reports about a house fire and double murder in Santa Monica. They didn’t give the victims’ names, but mentioned a missing eight-year-old girl. He heard nothing about Karen and Bob Marston.
That worried him.
He went over it in his mind: how Karen had spilled the beans about Malcasa Point; how surprised she was when, instead of leaving, he gagged her and really got down to business until she died; how he had waited, hidden in the hall, for Bob to come home; the way Bob shook his head and moaned when he stepped into the bedroom and saw his wife hanging on the door; the sound of Bob’s head splitting under the ax; the candle placed carefully in a circle of paper wads, just the way he’d done it at the other place.
Maybe a visitor dropped by and stopped the fire.
Maybe, somehow, the candle blew out.
If the candle blew out, maybe the bodies hadn’t been discovered yet.
