his mind’s eye, wondered if she were wondering where he was. Or had they discovered that Dawn was missing yet? If so, it wouldn’t have been long before they found the cruiser in the ditch outside the gate. All somebody’d have to do is grab the microphone, key it in, start yelling. The search might already be under way. If so, his job was to keep himself and Dawn alive long enough to be found.
The procession halted. Phil gave his gun to Emily to hold, shucked off his pack, then helped Bennie clear the brush and vines from a round black hole some three feet in diameter, set into the base of a rocky hillside.
Bennie switched his headlamp to the broad white beam, took the pistol from Emily, and wriggled headfirst, belly down, into the hole, pushing his knapsack ahead of him.
No way, Pender told himself, lifting Dawn off his back, cradling her in his arms. No fucking way they were going down there. A plan began to hatch itself. If he threw Dawn as far as he could, just flat-out dwarf-tossed her, even if he took a bullet it might buy her enough time to get away. And Dawson had said the forest was safe, no wild animals.
“Are you a fast runner?” Pender whispered, turning away from the others, his face half-hidden by his hood.
She nodded, her cheek pressed against the front of his slicker.
“Good. Hit the ground running, don’t stop for anything.”
Bennie? No problem. Phil, Emily? Blow them to hell without a second thought. Pender? Sheer serendipity. He disappears with the other three, his suspicions disappear with him. And to wrap it up in a tidy bow, Lewis told himself, he could even tell the cops he seemed to recall running into the Epps Friday night, when they were supposed to have been in Puerto Rico.
But seeing the little girl had taken all the fun out of it. On the way up the hill, turning back to keep the gun on Pender, he couldn’t help seeing her eyes staring at him over Pender’s shoulder. How did things get so fucking out of hand? he wondered again. It had seemed terribly simple once-Hokey dies, all your problems are ended.
Instead, he’d traded them in, along with his soul, for thirty pieces of silver-that’s how it was starting to feel. Not that Lewis believed in the existence of the soul, any more than he believed in the hooha and the fatamatawhatsis of the Epps. Or maybe he just wasn’t drunk enough-in any case, the idea stuck in his craw. Killing a little girl-that would leave a mark. And haunt your dreams for a long, long time. Make the ram look like Mary’s little lamb.
So when Lewis realized from Pender’s body language what he had in mind, he had a fraction of a second to decide not to shoot him until after the kid had a chance to get away. And afterward, with the remains of the others safely buried under a couple tons of rock and earth, Lewis would tell Coffee that the Epps had made him do it, said they’d shoot him if he didn’t cooperate. Then he’d lead the search party for the girl.
And if she remembered otherwise, it would be the word of a terrified six-year-old against that of a grown man, a pillar of the community-Lewis would have been willing to take the chance.
But the chance never came. Phil grabbed the kid from Pender before he could make his move, sent her down the hole ahead of him. Emily ordered Pender into the tunnel next. He was a tight fit. That left two of them above ground. “Your turn,” said Emily.
“After you,” said Lewis, his free hand dipping unconsciously into his trench coat pocket to reassure himself that the grenades were still there.
2
Nightclothes and rain gear, general alarm. Every building in the Core was searched. They soon spotted the SLPD cruiser parked down by the gate. Roger the Dodger grabbed the microphone off the dashboard, explained the situation as best he could. After a few minutes of confusion, during which the night desk sergeant, who doubled as switchboard operator and night dispatcher, was under the impression that Pender was being accused of kidnapping a six-year-old girl, a patrol car was dispatched to the Core.
Vijay Winstone was the responding officer. Normally he’d have been glad for something to do, but his goal that night had been to get through his shift without getting wet. Buncha crazy hippies, was his first reaction.
He asked if they were sure they’d searched every building.
Yes, they were sure.
And the child was last seen when?
The auntie had tucked her into bed around eight o’clock, read her a story. She was there when the brother, the armless boy, went to sleep at nine, and wasn’t missed until around ten-thirty.
Did anybody see or hear anything out of the ordinary during those ninety minutes?
Car left like a bat out of hell between ten and ten-thirty, reported Miss Blessingdon, a nurse at Missionary who lived down by the lane-she could narrow down the time, she said, because she’d been listening to the BBC news on the radio.
And Pender? When was the last time anyone had seen him?
Shrugs all around. Vijay got on the squawkbox (and in his old Plymouth cruiser it really did squawk) and asked the desk sergeant about Pender.
“Lef’ here around eight. Ain’ seen nor heard from him since.”
“Maybe you’d better call de chief,” said Vijay.
“Maybe
“No phone line out here.”
“I’ll patch you t’rough.”
“Give me a few more minutes-I’ll get back to you.”
Vijay, who didn’t want to spend the rest of his career working night shifts, would have to be awfully sure there was a problem before he called the chief at home so close to midnight. But as he slipped the microphone back into its wire cradle, someone banged on the window of his cruiser. It was the armless boy, the brother of the missing girl, knocking with his head to get Vijay’s attention. Vijay rolled down the window.
“What is it, buoy?”
“Come quick, see what I found.”
Vijay pulled up the hood of his department-issue yellow slicker, stepped back out into the rain, followed the barefoot, dripping wet, pajama-clad boy down the lane and around the side of the A-frame to the right of the lane. Holding the butt end of a pencil flashlight in his mouth, the boy shined the beam downward. Vijay followed with the more powerful beam of his eighteen-inch cop torch/truncheon, illuminated a department-issue semiautomatic pistol lying in the brush beside the muddy path just beyond the A-frame.
“Dot’s Pendah’s gun, sah,” said Marley, unconsciously slipping into deep dialect.
Vijay patted him on the shoulder. “Good work, wait here, don’t let nobody touch nuttin’.” Then he stripped off his own slicker and draped it over the boy’s shoulders, buttoned the top button under the boy’s chin to hold it on, raced back to his cruiser, snatched up the microphone, and told the desk sergeant to patch him through to the chief.
3
Standing in the rain outside the cave entrance, Lewis and Emily went through one more round of Alphonse and Gaston before Lewis acceded to her demand that he go first. He didn’t think she knew about the grenades, but he didn’t want to take the chance of inflaming her suspicions. And his options were limited-if he killed her then and there, he might not have time to uncork and heave the grenades before Phil or Bennie came out to investigate the sound of the gunshot.
He pocketed his gun, started down the tunnel on his hands and knees, flashlight bumping the ground as he crawled. What he saw encouraged him: the floor of the tunnel was solid rock, as he’d remembered, but the walls and ceiling were boulders and dirt, with roots showing through in places. It certainly looked as if a grenade would bring it down-the hard part was going to be preventing the grenade from rolling all the way down the slope and
