that conduct their business in an office or over a drink in the back room-not on a deserted bluff while they were in the middle of a fishing trip; and both of them were strong as bulls, they would each be more likely to use their hands than a tire iron if they wanted to kill somebody.
Cody. Looking at it one way, he had a rich father who spent a lot of time in Europe, where there was a thriving market among collectors of rare art. Looking at it another way, he was forced to live on remittance, to come to places like this camp that he hated, and he seemed to be the kind of pseudo-smart, cocky kid who might get himself involved in illegal enterprise in order to get out from under his father. He lived in Vegas, too, not only a rich town but one full of Mafia types, if you could believe the media-and you probably could. The Mafia had a hand in everything; why not stolen Orientals? And yet Cody was a coward hiding behind a bluff exterior, and I could not quite imagine him working up the kind of reverse courage it takes to kill another man face to face, even in a blind rage.
Maybe yes, maybe no, on all of them. Which put me right back at zero.
Okay then, what about the peacock feather? Did that point to anyone at the camp? But I drew another blank there. I could not make any further connections beyond the house in The Pines, the peacocks, and the feathers inside the fence that anyone using the county road to and from Eden Lake could notice and pick up unobserved.
I thought about the Daghestan itself, making the assumption that it had been in Terzian's van last evening. If Bascomb was the murderer, and took the carpet, it could be anywhere. But everyone else was and had been accounted for at least most of last night and today; not much chance for any of them to transport it out of the area. It was a pretty big carpet, from Kayabalian's description, too big to hide in places like the trunk of a car, too conspicuous to leave inside a cabin where someone might chance seeing it. And you could not conceal it in the woods or somewhere else out in the open because of the risk of damage. So what could you do with an eight-by- ten-foot carpet in these surroundings? Where could you put it so that you'd be reasonably sure it was safe and well hidden and easily accessible when you wanted it again? Here at the camp? In The Pines? Where?
It was no good, none of this was getting me anything but a headache. There were too many questions unanswered or unanswerable, too many possibilities and not enough facts. What I had to do was to lay it all in Cloudman's lap tomorrow morning, when I drove into The Pines to see Kayabalian and take care of the other thing, the phone call to Dr. White in San Francisco. Let him work with it and pull it together or toss it out. All I could do myself was what Kayabalian was paying me to do-try to trace the Daghestan to somebody by working backward from the other end, from San Jose and Terzian's associates. And that seemed even more futile now, if I was right with this damned nagging hunch.
It was getting to be hot in there with the front door closed, and I got up and cracked the window above the bed. Then I took a lukewarm shower and shut off the lights and stretched out naked to wait for sleep.
But in the darkness, without the speculations to occupy my mind, it was the fear and the uncertainty-the specter of death-that crept back into me instead. Tomorrow. Tuesday. The day of the big answer: malignant or benign. And I was still no more prepared to accept it than I had been yesterday or last Friday.
Is life reality? I thought. Or is death reality? Riddle me that, too.
After a while sleep did come, but it was the same kind of shallow, fitful sleep of the night before and all the nights since I had found out about the lesion. Dreams, waking up from time to time slick with sweat, breathing labored because of the heat. No rest for the weary. No rest for the condemned?
A long time later, thin hazy light filtered in through the window and pushed at the shadows in the room.
Tuesday morning coming down…
Fourteen
The first thing I did when I left the cabin a few minutes past dawn was to go over to Four and have another look through the screen. Bascomb had not come back during the night, and neither had anyone else; everything was just as it had been before. I went around to the east side and wandered along there and in among the trees, looking for some sign that might point to the identity of the intruder. But there was nothing to find except sections of trampled underbrush. I gave it up finally, not without reluctance, and walked down to the lake.
Ray Jerrold was out on the pier, kneeling there and holding onto the painter on one of the skiffs while he loaded the bow with fishing tackle.
I did not like that one bit. I went out there, making myself walk at a leisurely pace, and when he heard me coming he swung his head around and up in a startled way, like a kid caught doing something furtive. The skin across his cheekbones had a waxy, blotched appearance, and there were dark half-moons under both eyes. I could see the eyes clearly today; they were haunted, evasive. A knotted muscle jumped at one corner of his mouth, pulled it up and down in rapid tempo like a mime burlesquing somebody's speech habits. All of it screamed hangover and inner turmoil.
“Morning,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, and watched me warily, as if he thought I might jump him.
“Going out fishing?”
“No,” he said, “bear hunting. You're not blind, are you?”
“Well, I heard you were leaving today, going home.”
He did not say anything for a moment, and I was afraid he was going to turn ugly again, as he had on Sunday; I could feel myself tensing. But then he shrugged, and one corner of his mouth quirked upward in a smile that was almost sly.
“That's right,” he said, “we're leaving, both of us,” and the smile seemed to say: So you won't be able to get your hands on Angela any more, none of you will. “I want to get out on the lake one last time, land a couple more bass.”
I let myself relax. “I can appreciate that,” I said.
“You heading out too?”
“I don't think so, not this morning.”
“Not going to give me any competition, huh?”
“Not me,” I said.
He laughed, and it sounded like genuine mirth. He stood up, tugged at the waistband of his shorts; his eyes danced from the skiff to the northern reaches of the lake and then back to me again. “Hold the painter for me, will you?”
“Sure.”
I took it from him, held it so that the bow stayed butted up against one of the pilings. Jerrold clambered down into the skiff, got himself settled on the stern seat, and motioned up to me to drop the line. When I had done that he reached forward and opened up his tackle box and hauled out a thermos. It might have had coffee in it, and it might have had something else; I couldn't tell; he unscrewed the top and raised it and drank straight from the mouth.
“I won't be gone long,” he said then, as though warning me. “Got a lot of things to do today. Police want to see me in Sonora, you were right about that.”
I nodded, watched him put the top back on the thermos and replace it in the tackle box. And then I threw him a curve to see what he would do with it. “You wouldn't happen to have seen Walt Bascomb around, would you?”
He did not do anything with it; he heard me all right, but he neither acknowledged the question nor answered it. Without looking at me, he reached around and jerked the outboard into stuttering life.
“Mr. Jerrold? About Walt-”
I did not get the rest of it out because he had already hit the throttle and was backing the skiff away from the pier; as far as he was concerned, I was no longer there. Then he hit the throttle again and swung off to the north along the shoreline.
I stood staring after him until he and the boat blended into a dark speck in the distance, like a smudge on tinted glass. You could make something out of his ignoring the question about Bascomb, or you could chalk it up to simple neurosis. No way of telling which one-no way of telling any damned thing at all, it seemed.
