to the carpet and pressed his nose against it. The odor of car exhaust made him cough. Not surprising in a garage. Or was it…?
He was not after smells, he realized, and just as suddenly he knew what he was seeking. He was looking for a knife. A small worktable attached to one wall was topped by a pegboard on which hung a variety of tools, many of them marked with their outlines drawn on the board. There were no vacant outlines, everything was in its place. Drawers in the table held nails, screws, nuts, bolts, each in its original box or in glass jars, appropriately marked. A supplemental plastic chest of drawers sat atop the table. Tee searched the drawers and found string, twine, electrical cord, wire, fuses, extension cords, three-pronged plug adapters, telephone lines, spares and extras of all kinds, each tidily arranged and in its place. McNeil should have been in hardware, not police work, Tee mused, thinking of the chaos of his own garage.
The bottom drawer held knives. A cornucopia of knives, a catalog display of knives: sportsmen's knives, kitchen knives, specialty knives, blades without handles, knives with replaceable blades. They ranged in size from a massive Bowie knife to a penknife no longer than the last joint on Tee's little finger. Not one of them was rusty, Tee realized, and not one was dull. McNeil had taken great care with each of them.
But what possible use?
Tee studied the collection, seeking the right instrument. The sharpest, thinnest blade of any utility was that of an artist's knife, a razor edge with a pronounced triangular shape at the cutting end. Tee remembered using one decades before, when carving models from balsa wood. He lifted it, held it against the light. Was it strong enough to cut through flesh? Certainly. Durable enough to maneuver through a human joint? Probably not, but then it didn't have to be. The blade was replaceable. A small box of refills sat in the drawer. The head of the instrument was also detachable from the four-inch-long shaft.
Without the blade attached, the shaft and head were shorter than a pencil and no thicker. They could be carried anywhere and never be noticed. With a piece of tape over the cutting edge, the blade, less than an inch long and wafer-thin, could be concealed in a wallet, in a shoe, in the lining of a coat, anywhere at all.
This blade looked factory-new. He turned it in the light from the overhead bulb. Not a nick, not a scratch, not a sign of wear. There would be nothing to see under the microscope, either, Tee was certain.
Whatever else McNeil might be, he was scrupulously clean.
Tee was surprised at how much he was suddenly prepared to think McNeil capable of. How had he come so quickly to the dangerous thoughts he was now contemplating? McNeil had deliberately not searched the orchard that held the bones. McNeil had been going out of his way to pass the orchard on the morning he found Tee there-but then so had Tee. Did that mean he was returning to the scene of the crime? It was a stretch, Tee knew it, and yet… Tee had said to him that seven or eight all pairs had left their employers without warning in the past eight years, McNeil had claimed a much lower number. When Tee did the research, he found that the number was six. Did that mean McNeil was trying to mislead Tee? Not necessarily. Even the anonymous phone call had not linked McNeil to the Johnny Appleseed bodies. What did 'doing your hos' mean, anyway?
The sound of movement outside the window startled Tee. If he was found making an illegal search of McNeil's home, any evidence would be tainted. He inched toward the window, his right hand touching the butt of his service automatic, a weapon he had never even unholstered in the line of duty in Clamden. His skin prickled and Tee realized that he was not just alarmed-he was frightened. The noise came again — and Tee forced himself to control his breathing as he eased to the window and peeked out.
A large raccoon squatted on its haunches outside the shed that was attached to the garage, tugging at the door with its surprisingly delicate forepaws, trying to get at the garbage within. Fat and self-assured, it regarded Tee through the window, looking curious rather than frightened. Its bandit eyes peered at him for a moment, then dismissed him as an irrelevancy, returning to its quest for garbage.
Several yards away, poised at the edge of the treeline and scarcely visible, a deer in its summer buff had lifted its head from browsing to watch Tee and the raccoon. Tee knew there would be more deer close by, frozen into position until they determined that the face in the window was no threat they would take more convincing than the raccoon-and he would never see them until they moved. When he left the garage, the raccoon moved off slowly, waddling away as if aggrieved by the human trespass on its garbage rights. The deer stared at Tee a moment longer before bounding off in a flight that seemed quick yet unpanicked, almost casual. Tee caught sight of three other deer, each moving deeper into the trees. They were cautious, not alarmed, and did not bother to flash the white of their tails in their panic sign. Tee felt mildly insulted.
Metzger drove the lonely roads of predawn Clamden, cruising slowly, looking, without much expectation, for the unusual, the furtive, the stealthy. It was too late for the drinkers, the partygoers, even carousing teenagers; too early for the commuters to rouse themselves for the daily trek to the city. At this hour the town was sound asleep, which was exactly the way the residents and the police wanted it. He swung past the recycling center and made an arc along the lengthy sweep of unpopulated acreage that made up Converse Park, one of the six tracts of nature preserve in the town. A long dirt road led to the parking area, which was little more than a dirt rotary where people could nose their cars off the road far enough for others to pass. A wooden sign declared the area off limits after dark, but it was an injunction honored as much in the breach as the observance. Schoolchildren in science class, hikers, and dog owners walked the forest trails by day.
Lovers came at night in the warmer months. Teenagers tended to shun the outdoors for their trysts, preferring cars and beds, but older people seemed more romantic and hiked among the flora to make love on the loamy earth. The cops left them alone. Embarrassed citizens could become both vituperative and litigious. There were no other cars in the parking area and Metzger pulled to the side and shut off his headlights. He put his head back against the seat and glanced at his watch. It was 3:40. In twenty minutes, at the top of the hour, his watch would beep and he would waken, if not truly refreshed, at least able to finish the shift.
Deep in the woods, Captain Luv had seen the sweep of the approaching headlights and had doused his flashlight before the beam came over him.
He saw the headlights vanish, then waited to hear the slam of a car door but heard nothing beyond his own breathing. Even the insects were still at this hour, their mating chorus long since finished. More mating going on in the car, Luv reasoned. He waited longer, making- sure the adulterers were preoccupied with each other, then switched his flashlight back on, resting it on the ground so its light stayed low.
The grave was only half dug, but he had been lucky in his choice of burial sites the ground was moist and easily penetrated. There was nowhere in Connecticut where stones didn't pepper the earth, but he had encountered no large rocks, nothing big enough to delay him. He moved the flashlight so that it perched on the edge of the hole. To secure it into place he shifted the trash bag, creating a cradle for the light amongst the mobile body parts.
Metzger awoke to the tinny beep of his wristwatch and saw a shaft of light in the woods shining straight up the trunk of a tree as if emerging from a rent in the earth. For a brief moment it resembled something from science fiction and Metzger thought crazily of aliens arriving. Then the light wavered before plunging abruptly earthward and disappearing. Metzger opened the car door and immediately cursed himself for not removing the key from the ignition first. The door alarm sounded annoyingly before he pulled the key loose. He heard the dull clink of metal on stone; then all was silent. Metzger reached inside and shut off the ceiling light that had gone on automatically when the door was opened. He looked toward the source of the sound and thought he saw a faint glow along the ground, almost as if a company of fireflies were massing. Then that light, too, was extinguished.
He stood beside the car for a long time as a growing sense of unease pervaded him. There were no other cars in the parking area. Whoever was in the woods must have parked somewhere and hiked in. That did not sound like lovers. Metal on stone did not sound like lovers either. It sounded like someone digging. After a long time Metzger started into the woods as silently as he could.
Luv heard the sound of the car alarm and saw the interior light. The lovers had gotten out of the car, perhaps to gain more legroom. Perhaps to venture into the woods, He turned off the flashlight and waited. He was not worried. If they came toward him, he would deal with it. He did not know how; he did not need to know how. Yet.
Luv had encountered a large stone in his digging. It lay two feet down, squarely in the middle of the grave, and seemed, as he groped around it searching for an edge, as spacious as a sack of potatoes. The loss of his orchard cemetery with the pretilled land was proving a more serious problem than he had thought.
He heard the footsteps coming slowly toward him. They were moving at an unnatural pace. Someone was
