Страница 37 из 86
“Bry
Finally she whispered, “Things just didn’t work out… So, there I was, single again. I had Joey and my job-my mother was living with us then, so there was a built-in babysitter. I loved work. Had no plans to get married again. But a couple years ago I met Graham. Bought some plants from his landscaping company. They didn’t work out too well and I came back for more. He told me what I was doing wrong and then asked me out. I said yes. He was fu
“Comfortable’s nice.”
“Oh, real nice. No fights. Home every night.”
“But…?”
Now she was touching her jaw. She lowered her hand.
Bry
Michelle shook her head.
“Statistically more behavior problems, psychological issues. Joey keeps getting into scrapes at school. And he can be a little reckless-he skateboards like a speed-demon. So I was focusing on my job and on Joey, and next thing I know Graham’s started going out to regular poker games.”
“But they weren’t really poker games.”
“Sometimes they were. But sometimes he wouldn’t go for the whole game. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all.”
One thing she didn’t share with Michelle was that when Tom Dahl asked her to drive to Lake Mondac earlier her first thought was: If I go, Graham can’t leave tonight. Can’t see her.
Thinking too: He didn’t answer his phone when she’d called from the car; had he gone anyway?
“You’re sure?” Michelle asked.
“Oh, there was an eyewitness. Saw them together.”
“Do you trust ’im?”
“Pretty much. It was me.” Bry
Seeing them at the motel, she’d wondered: Was it after or before they’d been to the room?
“What’d you say to him?”
“Nothing.”
“No?”
“I don’t know why exactly. Didn’t want to rock the boat for Joey. Splitting with Keith. Then another divorce. Couldn’t do that to him. And he’s such a good person, Graham is.”
“Aside from cheating,” Michelle said darkly.
Bry
“I think people ought to take more than a blood test when they get married. There ought to be a two-day exam. Like the bar.”
Bry
Michelle paused. Then pointed ahead and to the left. “Careful. There’s a steep drop-off that way.”
They steered the safer route. Bry
“THERE THEY ARE.”
Compton Lewis touched Hart’s good arm and pointed through a gap in the trees. Two, three hundred yards away they could just make out in the moonlight the backs of two figures dressed in dark clothes. One limping along, using what looked like a pool cue for a walking stick.
Hart nodded. His heart tapped faster, seeing their quarry in clear view at last, not quite in range but close. And completely unsuspecting.
The men began to move toward their targets.
The Trickster had been at work again.
As they’d stood at the top of the cliff, the bloody ledge below, Hart had been debating fiercely with himself: Had the women really tried to climb down the rock face and make for the ranger station?
Or had they continued along the Joliet Trail?
Finally he’d decided that Bry
Hart had turned the trick against them, though. He wanted Bry
The craftsman had surveyed his handiwork and he was pleased.
Then he and Lewis had continued fast over the trail.
But as to where the women had actually gone-that was up for speculation. It was likely they’d continued on the trail, which according to the GPS kept northeast for a ways-through nearly fifteen miles of woods. They wouldn’t have gone that way. Somewhere north of here they’d have to make a decision: they could go left off the trail, west, bypass the ranger station and find the road that led eventually to the county highway. Or they might go north, aiming for the Snake River, which would lead them either west to the interstate or east to the town of Point of Rocks.
But thanks to the scream-the wailing voice a few minutes before-he knew that they were making for the river. The earlier shout-from the intersection by the shelter-had been faked, of course, like the screams when the men were shooting at the canoe. But the second howling was real, Hart knew, since the women believed the men had climbed down the cliff and were miles away.
Hart and Lewis had left the trail too and moved in the general direction of the sound, picking their way slowly to avoid noisy leaves and branches, as well as the knife-sharp thorns and the steep drop-offs.
As for where the women actually were in this mess of woods north of the trail, they couldn’t say-until they found a clue. Lewis stopped, pointing to something white, lying on the ground. Small but very bright in the sea of blacks.
They approached it very slowly. Hart didn’t think it was a trap-couldn’t imagine what it would be-but he didn’t trust anything about Bry
The Trickster…
“Cover me. I’ll check it out. Don’t shoot unless I’m about to get shot or stuck. I don’t want to give us away.”
A nod.
Hart, crouching, moved in close until he was about three feet away from the object. It was a white tube about eighteen inches long and three inches wide. One end bulged out. He prodded the object with a branch. When nothing happened he looked around. Lewis was sca
The man bent down and picked it up. Lewis joined him.
“A sock with a billiard ball inside.”
“That was theirs?”
“Has to be. It’s clean and dry.”
“Shit. One of ’em was going to use that to clobber us. Man, that’d break some bone.”