He took his shotgun from the backseat of the car.
%231 “Think we ought to call in the troops?” He chambered a shell and looked at the house again. “We don’t even know he’s in there. I did tell ‘em where we were headed.” We got out at the same time and stood silently for a while on either side of the car, listening. The trees and ground were heavy with undisturbed snow, including around the front door of the house. It was so cold the snow creaked underfoot when we finally began to walk forward. The cold steel of my service revolver caused my bare hand to ache slightly. We kept about fifteen feet apart until we reached the wall. Then, ducking under the windows, we reconvened on either side of the door. Spinney shifted his shotgun and pointed at the door frame.
There was a slight gap-the door was slightly open.
I reached out and pushed inward. The door swung back without a sound.
“Earle? This is the police. We want to talk to you.” Nothing. We strained to hear anything beyond the occasional groaning of a tree and the isolated scurrying of an invisible woods animal.
Spinney cautiously poked his head around the corner, his features etched in nervous strain. Then, slowly, gaining confidence from what he saw, or didn’t see, he nodded to me and made his move, gliding around the edge of the door and to the left, as I did the same to the right.
We both ended up in a kitchen, crouched against the wall, our guns pointed at an empty room with an open doorway opposite. The place was as cold as the outside. On the floor before us lay a short jumble of climbing rope, an Army-type web belt with various pouches, and an empty scabbard. Next to it was an enormous bowie knife. The knife lay slightly to one side, as if thrown there, its otherwise gleaming blade tarnished with smears of dried blood.
We crossed the kitchen to the other door and looked in. The curtains were drawn across the windows, but enough light filtered through to reveal a small, messy living room with an assortment of cast-off furniture and a short, dark hallway beyond. Now well inside the tiny house, we were cut off from even the rare sounds of the frigid forest.
Spinney and I looked nervously at each other. As before, we split to either side and crossed the room to the cavelike opening of the narrow hall.
Keeping our bodies out of sight, we craned our necks to see what lay ahead. The darkness was virtually total, a corridor leading to an absolute black void.
%232 I shut my eyes briefly and then reopened them. What lay ahead was not entirely blacked out; there was something there. I could sense from Spinney’s sudden stiffening that he’d seen the same thing. In the midst of the gloom, barely visible, there was a single tiny red point of light-the tip of a burning cigarette.
“Earle, this is the police. Come on out with your hands up.” Nothing, not a sound nor a movement.
Spinney began to back toward the front of the building. “This stinks.
I’m calling for backup. I’ll bring back a flashlight, too. Wait here.”
I nodded my approval. Not to have asked for backup earlier had been a judgment call, one on which we’d both agreed. Now, there was no alternative. Christ only knew what Earle had waiting for us in that bedroom.
I stared long and hard at the small point of light. “Come on, Earle, give it up. This is stupid.” Again, no sound and no movement. And no brains, I thought suddenly. I grabbed a pillow off the couch beside me and tossed it like a Frisbee into the bedroom, directly at the cigarette. I missed, but not by much, and still the tiny red glow didn’t move a hair.
“Shit we’ve.been had.” I still didn’t dare enter the bedroom; he might be standing in the corner, waiting for one of us to do just that, but I was also afraid for Spinney. If the cigarette had been a lure, it might have been rigged precisely to split us up.
I ran back to the kitchen and looked out the window toward Spinney’s car. I was just in time to see him being handcuffed to the doorframe by a thinner, dirtier version of the man in Nadine’s photograph. As I watched, the man began returning to the house.
He was about one hundred yards away, a distance he would take cautiously since he didn’t know whether I was still standing by the bedroom door, or waiting to blow him away. I didn’t want to kill him, but I thought about putting him in my sights and telling him to drop the rifle he was carrying. But Spinney was directly in my line of fire. If I had to shoot, my bullet could pass right through Earle and hit Spinney. I retreated toward the bedroom, scooping the rope off the kitchen floor as I went.
I quickly pulled back the blanket Earle had rigged across the open window, flooding the place with light. Taped to the iron bed’s headboard, facing the door, was a barely smoldering cigarette. Without pausing to admire the man’s style, I quickly tied one end of the rope around the leg of a side table and passed the rest of it out the window.
Then, poking my head outside to see if the coast was clear, I sat on the %233 windowsill, swung my legs out silently, and let the curtain drop closed behind me.
Without a sound, my gun in one hand and the end of the rope in the other, I moved along the wall, below the windows, until I was just shy of the front corner of the house. Just a few yards away, around that corner, I heard Earle quietly open the front door. I pulled gently on the rope. Barely audibly, I heard a scraping sound come from the back of the house. I counted to three, and looked quickly around the corner.
Earle was gone and Spinney was still at the car, his eyes fixed on me.
With the rope still in hand, I scurried to the door and very carefully looked in. Earle was in the kitchen, crouching by the living room entrance. Again, I pulled on the rope. He tensed and levelled the rifle toward the rear of the building, turning his back to me completely.
Using the doorframe as cover, I pointed my gun at him and spoke softly.
“Don’t move, Earle-not a muscle.” There was that inevitable slow count of three, that endless moment in which fateful decisions are made between life and death. I wasn’t sure of Earle. I didn’t even know the man. He’d had a hard life, had his brains twisted around by the very person who should have lent him guidance, and he’d finally given in to the ultimate act of violence. I was fully expecting him to turn that rifle on me to put his misery forever behind him.
But he didn’t. He laid it on the ground beside him and placed his hands on top of his head. He was smiling when he turned around. “How the hell… ?” I showed him the rope and pulled it. The table moved a bit in the dark beyond him. “Lie down on the floor-hands behind your neck and ankles crossed.” He did as he was told and I put my handcuffs on him. “I didn’t expect your buddy to come out so fast. I was going to nail both of you inside.” His voice was utterly calm, as if he were sorting out the details of some minor housekeeping mishap. I decided to take advantage of what might be just a temporary state of mind.
“Why’d you kill Rennie?” He snorted. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that.” “Why now?” “Dumb luck. I saw him pull into Lemon Road when I was coming down Radar. I was feeling bad, thought a drive might clear my head. It sure did. I saw him, followed him, watched him rig a meeting with those fruitcake bastards, waited ‘til they left, and then I cut him open.
%234 I’ve wanted to do that for more years than I can remember. It felt great. You should have seen him go.” I watched him lying on his stomach, his cheek pressed against the cold wood floor, a smile on his face. Now I knew why he hadn’t challenged me-the life had already gone out of him. He didn’t give a damn anymore.
“The fruitcake bastards was one of them Edward Sarris?” He cocked an eye at me, surprised. “Him and some girl. You got all the answers, don’t you?” Didn’t I wish. “I’m getting there.” Hamilton stopped the car halfway up the hill and watched Sarris’s building. Most of it was dark, with only the windows to the far left brightly lit.