town-the private cops might spot him and the last thing he wanted was them following him home. He was careful when he neared his driveway, but it was all right. Nobody around, the gates locked tight. Bruno started barking up a storm when he unlocked them, drove into the yard. Okay, good, everything just the way he’d left it.
Still time. Make it fast, but don’t forget anything.
First thing was the camper shell. He locked the gates again, drove over to the workshop, opened the double doors, then backed the pickup in close to the rear wall where he had the shell drawn up on pulleys. He lowered it, swung it into place, released the pulleys, and locked it down.
Work supplies next. Didn’t take him long-his toolkit was already in the truck. Double-bitted ax, shovels, a pick, some other hand tools and hardware. Nothing electric or battery-operated except for his B amp;D drill, a grinder, and a small Skil saw. Nothing big or bulky. He hated to leave his big power tools, the circular saw and jigsaw and lathe and router, but there just wasn’t enough room. Wouldn’t be needing them anyway, where he was going.
Plenty of space left once he had it all stored. Plenty. When he drove out, he took a long look at Crooked Creek Road to make sure he didn’t have company, then went on up to the house. Inside, he unlocked and emptied his gun cabinet. Took two trips to load the Bushmaster, the MK7, one of his deer rifles, an over-and-under shotgun, the Glock. 380 auto, and all the ammo he had on hand. His hunting knives, too, the 16-inch Bowie and the skinner and the gut-hook. The. 38 he’d use on Verriker was already locked inside the glove box.
Bedroom. That was where he kept his laptop, and when he saw it sitting on the desk, he thought again about taking it along. But it just wouldn’t be smart. They had ways of finding you when you used your computer. Cut all his ties, don’t leave any traces-that was the only way to do it. And don’t take anything along that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
He got his suitcase out of the closet, the big one Charlotte had bought him right after they were married so they could travel around, see the country, as if he’d cared to take any kind of trip with that fat cow. He packed it up with pants, shirts, two heavy sweaters, underwear, and shaving gear and a few other things from the bathroom. Stored that in the camper shell, then went and got his hiking boots, both pairs, the old Marlboro Man jacket he’d bought secondhand in Placerville, the rolled-up camp bed and two wool blankets.
What else?
Food, right. Not too much, just enough to hold him for a few days so he wouldn’t have to stop at restaurants or fast-food places. Do his eating and sleeping at rest stops or campgrounds, no other stops except for gas. Straight on through.
He filled a flour sack, added his last two bottles of Jack Daniel’s, and took that to the truck. Then he went and got a frying pan, a couple of cook pots, the old tin coffee pot he took on his hunting trips, a few other things. All of that pretty much filled up the camper. Just enough room left.
Bruno was yapping again, but it wasn’t because anybody’d showed up. Yeah, he’d figured the detectives right. Dog was just barking because he was a dumb mutt that liked to hear himself make a lot of noise. Or maybe he was hungry, but the hell with that. No time to feed him. Didn’t make no difference what happened to Bruno now anyway.
Back inside, he used a screwdriver to pop off the baseboard on one bathroom wall. The hole he’d cut out behind it was just large enough for the two cigar boxes he kept in there. His stash. All the cash he’d been paid for construction work and never reported to the IRS; screw the IRS. A little over seven thousand, mostly tens and twenties, nothing larger than a fifty-he’d counted it two nights ago, after he had his plans all worked out. Last him a long time if he was real careful. He put three hundred in his wallet, stuffed the rest into one cigar box, took that out to the pickup, and hid it under the floorboards on the passenger side. Somebody’d have to be looking for it, strip- searching, otherwise they’d never find it.
Just about done. He quick-checked his list to make sure. No, he hadn’t forgotten anything.
One last thing to do and he’d be loaded and ready to roll.
23
KERRY
She lay marinating in heat and the stench from her soiled body. Drifting in and out of consciousness now, a floating limbo. Wrapped in tape from neck to feet this time, a gray mummy stretched out on its back on the dirty floor, unable to move even a little because more tape held her immobile against one of the bench stanchions. For a long time, there had been agony-cramped muscles, sensations of suffocation, shoots of pain in her jaw where Balfour had hit her after she missed stabbing his eye with the tack weapon. Fear and hate, too, rising like tides, receding, rising again, receding again. Then resignation had set in, followed by a return of the apathy, followed by a numbness both physical and mental.
Now, she felt as if her mind had become detached from her body, her spirit already hovering just outside her body. The spirit withering, losing sentience, drifting for long periods in a trancelike state where nonfrightening images swam and darted like creatures beneath the surface of a calm sea. Then it would stir back to life, send out little pulses of awareness-heat, pain, thirst, hunger, the death odors as if her body had already begun to decay. And the fear and the hate would come again, but only briefly and with less and less intensity. Even the desperate will to live had become muted, begun to give way to a desire for the peace that lay beyond the floating limbo.
Adrift again.
Aware again.
Sounds. The dog barking, always barking. Damn the dog.
Something else then, a roaring noise. Car engine. Outside, close.
Door slamming. Balfour, coming back.
She didn’t care anymore. Let him come.
She tried to will the hovering spirit to take her back into the nowhere place. But awareness remained. Spasms of pain, thirst, hunger, fear, hate. Fragments of thought. And more sounds. Key scraping in the door lock. The truck engine, louder, throbbing. Heavy steps moving toward her.
His voice: “Didn’t get loose this time, did you?”
Words came to her, bright and clear, as if they were being held up on a sign: Fuck you. But she couldn’t say them. Her throat was closed tight, her vocal chords shriveled and frozen.
Bending over her, putting a hand on her.
Don’t touch me!
Snick. Knife, he had a knife in the other hand.
No, don’t. Go ahead, get it over with. No, please don’t!
He didn’t. Ripping sounds… he was using the knife to saw at the tape that held her against the bench support.
Another snick and the knife disappeared. His hands on her again then, pulling her away from the bench, turning her onto her back. A gurgling whimper came out of the hollowness inside as he bent over her, worked his hands under her and lifted her up tight against his body.
“Jesus, lady. You stink.”
His breath was no better. The sour spew of it in her face jerked her head aside.
Grunting, he carried her out through the open door. The glare of sunlight was like needles poked into her eyes; she squeezed them shut. The dog was close by, its barks and growls loud.
“Shut up, Bruno. Shut up!”
The animal noises stopped and Kerry could hear the engine rumble again. She opened her eyes to slits. Blurred images settled into focus.
Pickup with a camper top, the camper’s rear door open. He brought her up to it, lifted her inside, shoved her roughly across a hard floor. The back of her head thudded into something, her arm scraped against something else-cuts of pain that she barely felt. Things were piled up all around her… tools, camping equipment. And guns, big guns, rifles, automatic weapons, shoved into a space beneath a side-wall bench.
Balfour crawled in, up over her body, until he was kneeling astride her. He put his ugly face close to hers again, a white-and-black smear of beard-stubbled skin.
