Hour Game

King and Michelle were in the dining room having coffee with Sylvia, Bailey and Williams and talking about the case.

'Eddie's a very experienced outdoorsman. And he knows this country better than most,' pointed out Bailey. 'He's hunted over it and explored it for most of his life. He can live on next to nothing for weeks.'

'Thanks, Chip, that's very encouraging,' Williams said sourly. 'We'll find the son of a bitch, but I can't promise to bring him in alive.'

'I don't think Eddie will let that happen again,' King said.

'Wouldn't he have fled the area as fast as possible?' asked Michelle.

King shook his head. 'Too many roadblocks and police at all the bus and train stations and the airport. The police car he stole was found abandoned on a back road. I think he took to the hills.'

Williams nodded at this. 'His best chance is to lay low around here, change his appearance as much as he can, and when things quiet down a bit, he makes his run.'

King didn't look convinced.

Williams noted this and said, 'You disagree?'

'I think he's hanging around but not for the purpose you think.'

'What, then?'

'Someone killed his father.'

'So?'

'So I think Eddie wanted that all to himself. I think Bobby was supposed to be the final victim in all this, if the stroke didn't kill him first.' King glanced at Michelle. 'He came to see us, claiming his mother was upset about people thinking she had Junior and her husband killed. He knew she hadn't done it. He wanted us to find out who had. And you remember when we were having drinks with him at the Sage Gentleman. He said his father just had to live.'

'So he could kill him,' said Michelle.

'So what the hell is he going to do, go after the person who killed Bobby?' said Williams. 'We don't even know who that is, Sean.'

'But if we run that person down, we have a good shot at nailing Eddie.'

'I'd appreciate it if you would not plot the capture and execution of my only remaining son in my house.'

They all turned to see Remmy standing there. She'd rarely come into the mansion's public spaces. When she did, she spoke to no one, not even Harry. Her meals were delivered to her bedroom.

King rose from his chair. 'I'm sorry, Remmy, we didn't see you standing there.'

'Why should I be? This is only my house and my dining room, and those cups you're drinking out of are mine too, in case you'd forgotten.'

King glanced at Williams. 'I know this arrangement is awkward-'

'To put it mildly,' she interrupted.

Williams said, 'It's just a lot easier having all of you in the same place, Remmy.'

'Oh, I'm glad it's easier for some people; it's certainly not for me.'

'We can go to a hotel,' suggested Michelle, but Remmy dismissed this remark with a decisive wave of her hand.

'Never let it be said I shirked my civic duty, even if it does mean losing my son.' She stalked out of the room.

They all looked at each other nervously.

'This really is an impossible situation for her,' said Sylvia.

'Do you think any of us like it?' rebutted Michelle. 'Eddie is a mass murderer. She has to learn to accept that.'

King took on a thoughtful look as he stirred more sugar into his coffee. 'Speaking of which, I hope all of you realize that the case against Eddie isn't ironclad.'

'What the hell are you talking about?' protested Williams. 'He showed up at Harry's house with a zodiac mask on, ready to kill all of you. And now he's escaped and killed a deputy in the process.'

'Right. But not knowing what happened between him and the deputy, there might be a claim for self-defense or manslaughter. The cell door was open, and a defense counsel could make the claim that the deputy was trying to hurry along the process of justice and Eddie just fought back. Now, I'm as certain he's guilty of all those murders as though I'd seen him commit them. But you don't have to convince me, you have to convince a neutral jury, maybe one from another part of the state or even a different state. So where's your direct evidence that he committed the murders?'

Williams was still bristling. 'All the stuff you said. His motivation, the cipher disk, drugging Dorothea.'

'That's theorizing and speculation, Todd,' said King firmly. 'We need physical evidence tying him to the crimes; do we have it?'

Sylvia spoke up. 'If you'd asked me before the murder of Jean Robinson, I'd probably say no. However, I found a hair follicle with root attached to it on the floor next to her bed. I don't know how it got there, but the color and texture told me it wasn't hers or her husband's. I've sent it for typing along with a sample of Eddie's DNA. If it matches, we have him, at least for that murder.'

'And hopefully ballistics will match the slugs shot into our car tires when Junior was killed to the gun taken from Eddie,' pointed out Michelle.

'Just let me get hold of him,' said Williams. 'We'll have a confession in no time.'

'Ifwe get hold of him,' said Michelle.

'He can hide for a while, but we'll eventually catch him,' said the police chief confidently.

'The person he's after,' said King. 'That's the key. We find him, we find Eddie.'

'You really think that?' said Bailey.

'No,' replied King, 'I know it. He's got one more to go. Just one more. And we have to get there before he does.'

CHAPTER 91

EDDIE SAT BACK ON THE SMALL cot in his cave. He'd rested, eaten and planned. He had a battery-powered TV/ radio/ police scanner and had kept abreast of the search developments, which was fairly easy since there were none. However, he was limited in his movements. He could only go out at night, and it was a long hike to the battered old truck he'd hidden away in a patch of woods just for this contingency.

After all these years of bouncing from thing to thing, never really etching an identity anywhere, he'd finally found his niche: fugitive killer. He laughed, rose, stretched, dropped to the ground and did a hundred push-ups and an equal number of sit-ups. He had wedged a steel bar between two jagged outcroppings of rock farther back in the cave. He did twenty-five quick pull-ups and then five with each arm. He dropped to the ground, breathing hard. He wasn't twenty anymore, but for his age he wasn't doing too badly. Big cop would no doubt have attested to that.

He slid the pistol out of its holster and chambered body-armor-piercing ammo he'd purchased on the black market with as much ease as clicking a mouse key. Hell, you could buy anything on the Net-guns, ammo, women, children, marriage, divorce, happiness, death-if you just knew where to look. But it was only one gun against a thousand, far worse odds than even at the Alamo.

And yet a man with nothing to live for is a powerful man indeed. Perhaps unbeatable. Had he read that somewhere or just made it up? Whatever, it would become his coda from this point forward.

They'd eventually hunt him down and kill him. Of that he was certain. But it didn't matter so long as he got to his father's killer first. That's all that really mattered now. Wow, he'd certainly streamlined his life. He laughed again.

He took the list from his pocket. The names were dwindling, but he wasn't sure he could manage now to get to them all. However, after much thought he might just have come upon a shortcut. He'd try it out tonight. Two more deaths: his father's killer and his own. And then Wrightsburg could get back to normal. His family could move