Manny must have wanted light, so he could see what damage had been done to his shoulder or arm by Parker’s bullet. Jessup had given in to him, taking a chance on the very small light of a candle, in a room at the rear of the house.
But if Jessup were really smart, he wouldn’t travel with Manny at all.
Parker moved again, slowly. There was always the chance that the candle was a stunt, that Jessup realized Parker would hunt him down, and had left the candle burning so Parker would move into a position where Jessup could ambush him. It was unlikely, but it was a chance.
A small shedlike addition had been built on at the right rear corner of the house, and that was where Jessup and Manny had gained admission. They had probably tried to neaten up in their wake, to make it impossible to trail them, but there’d been no way for them to reattach the plastic sheeting from the inside, and it sagged crookedly now, open practically all the way up the one side.
Jessup had been more careful with the door; however he had gotten in, he’d left the door unscarred and managed to lock it again behind him.
Which probably meant the kind of bolt lock that can be opened with a knife blade slipped between door and jamb. Parker took out his own knife, opened it, slid it through, found the bolt, and forced it slowly out of the way, at the same time turning the knob and leaning part of his weight against the door.
It popped open, without a sound.
Parker waited half a minute, then eased the door farther inward, until it bumped against something and there was a faint clinking sound. There was about a four-inch opening now. Parker crouched, put his left hand carefully through the opening, and felt around on the other side of the door for what he’d hit. His fingers brushed cardboard; the clinking sounded again, small and close.
Soda bottles. Two six-pack cartons of empty soda bottles. Jessup, after coming in here, had rooted around and come up with these cartons of empty bottles, which he’d stood one atop the other just inside the door he’d breached. So that if Parker did get this far, he would knock the cartons over when he opened the door: burglar alarm.
Moving carefully in the darkness, with just the one arm reaching around the door, Parker removed the top carton and set it to one side, and then slid the lower carton out of the way.
Was that all? He felt around some more, but as far as he could reach, there was nothing else in the way. He straightened, and cautiously pushed the door open, and there were no other obstructions.
But there was another door. This one, which led from the shed-type annex in to the main part of the house, had apparently given Jessup more trouble; it was obviously breached, with gouged wood protruding from the jamb around the area of the lock.
Because of the empty bottles at the first door, Parker was very slow and careful now, but this door hadn’t been booby-trapped at all. Apparently Jessup had placed all his faith in the soda bottles. Or else he’d assumed that a man who would get past them would get past whatever else he might be able to set up at the inner door.
It was two steps up through that inner door, and inside there was unrelieved blackness. Parker moved forward by touch, and could tell he was in a kitchen. Alert for booby traps, planned or inadvertent, he felt his way around the walls till he came to a doorway across from he back entrance, and stepped carefully through there.
Light. Very little, so faint as to be almost nothing at all, and half the time flickering down to be nothing at all. But the faintest light is a beacon against complete darkness, and Parker had no trouble seeing it, or moving toward it.
He was in a hall now, a central corridor that ran from the kitchen to the living room at the front of the house, with other rooms opening off on both sides along the way. It was a doorway on the left that showed the flicker of light. Parker moved forward, and when he reached that doorway the light wasn’t coming from that room, but from another room beyond it, this being lightspill from lightspill. Diagonally across this room—a kind of library-parlor— was a doorway leading to a room that would be next to the kitchen at the rear of the house; the right spot for the window where he’d first seen the light wobbling.
This library-parlor was carpeted, and the reflected candle-glow made it possible to see the bulks of furniture. Parker moved more quickly across this room, and looked through the doorway into the room with the light.
A small bedroom. A single bed against the rear wall, under the window. A dresser to the right, a wooden chair and a portable television set on a stand to the left.
The candle was stuck in a Chianti bottle on the floor, the bottle covered with the drippings of dozens of previous candles of different colors. This one was red, it was about three inches long, and its light was yellow.
Manny was lying on his back on the bed, gazing at the ceiling. He was stripped to the waist. His left side was to Parker, and his right shoulder, the one that had been hit, was swathed in ripped sections of sheet, a bulky and awkward bandage, but apparently the best Jessup could do under the circumstances. Manny didn’t seem to be in any pain; his expression as he gazed at the ceiling was bland, quiet, pleasant, contented, tentatively interested.
On the floor near the candle in the bottle lay a small crumpled piece of paper. It looked like the piece of paper Parker had found in the empty farmhouse where Briley had been lured.
Jessup wasn’t in the room.
Parker squatted on his heels beside the doorway, looking through at Manny, his head just slightly above the level of Manny’s head. Jessup wasn’t here. Out getting a car? This early? Wait for him here?
Something made a noise upstairs. Whatever had caused it, it became an anonymous thump by the time it reached this corner of the house.
Parker frowned. Which one did he want behind him? It all depended how long Manny would be away on his trip. Jessup was more dangerous in the long run, because he was rational, but Manny could have moments when he would be very bad to be around.
What was Jessup doing up there? Parker concentrated on that question, and had trouble with it because he would have known better himself than to trap himself away on the second floor. Just as he would have known better than to split his forces. Just as he would have known better than to let Manny trip out now, no matter how much pain Manny might be in.
But he would have known better than to be with Manny anyway.
