The road cut off the paved two-lane at an innocent, totally misleading wood-burned sign, chalice lake, 12 miles. It was probably the worst twelve miles in the eastern hemisphere. He doubted even the Alaskan outback had anything much hairier, and calling it a road was like calling a cream puff a doughnut because both were round.
Pete turned into it with that little flutter in his middle he always got when he took the Chalice Lake Road, as he’d probably done a thousand times in his life, because you never knew what to expect. Today—tonight rather, since the twilight faded fast as clouds thickened—it was about average. It must’ve been a logging trail back around the turn of the century, and once every dozen or so years, the state graded it and scattered some gravel around. You couldn’t even do the first hundred yards in two-wheel drive, and he’d had to tow out a whole range of Japanese off-roaders and even a couple of Range Rovers. It was a Jeep road; nothing else could make it.
The Cherokee heaved over submerged boulders, settled into potholes so deep you drove down one side and up the other. He let the Cherokee find its own way through slick sections where springs had broken out and turned the track (better word for it than road) to pudding.
He averaged six miles an hour (which was pretty good on the Chalice Lake Road), and when he reached the “parking lot” at the lakeside, it was night. One of those dead-black starless nights when the air felt like ink and seemed to gobble up the headlight beams.
He tried the side spot, but that didn’t illuminate much except Latovsky’s Cherokee parked next to the boat landing.
He turned off the spot and headlights and saw the tiny, golden dot of Latovsky’s campfire across the lake.
It was too far across the black water under the black sky; the lake bottom shifted with the seasons, and deadfalls from winter would be rising. He’d make it there, okay; he and Dave could make it back. But rheir chances of hanging up on a sandbar that hadn’t been there last summer or getting hit with dead wood and turning turtle were pretty good.
Not a risk you’d take with two kids in the boats.
He’d wait for first light to bring them back: he and one kid in his dinghy, Dave and the other kid in his.
Captain Meers’s poor dead folks wouldn’t be any deader by morning.
Eve knew she was at the lake, but couldn’t see the water until the headlights hit it. A lot of people probably didn’t see it at all after a few drinks and heaved over the strip of reeds to find themselves hubcap deep in water, sinking into the muck.
“Turn left,” he snapped, and dug the gun deeper into her neck. The muzzle scraped her skull and the pain made her dizzy. She made the turn, and a few minutes later the Ford heaved off the pavement onto the gravel road that led past 300 Lakeshore, the pretty little cabin on the lake where her husband had taken refuge from her and the thing.
“You know where we’re going, don’t you?” the man asked softly.
“Yes.”
“You were there that night.”
“Yes.” She didn’t have to ask which night.
He dug the gun deeper and she said, “Keep that up and I’ll pass out.” He eased up a little but there must be one hell of a bruise in the spot by now. He’d been leaning over the back of her seat with the gun jammed into her neck for four hours, except for a moment of blessed respite when he’d given her the toll ticket and money at the Thruway exit.
She had pulled out into the big, confusing Northway interchange, one way to the mountains, the other to Utica and points west, and thought of taking the wrong road. Rut he’d only force her to go back or shoot her and shove her body out of the car.
She knew he was going to kill her; her only question was why he hadn’t already. At first she’d thought—when she could get past the panic enough to think—that he was taking her someplace remote to hide her body. Then they’d come to the Thruway, he’d ordered her to take the north ramp, and she knew where they were going, but not why. Driving all the way to Raven Lake to hide a body was absurd.
Now they were there, abreast of number 300 Lakeshore, and he said, “Turn.”
The Ford ground up the drive and the headlights swept the forlorn-looking little house. She pulled up next to the swing and stopped. “Kill the motor,” he said. She did, then started to tremble, making the key chain with the little caduceus on it swing back and forth. At first, back at Meg’s, she’d been too terrified to think about the caduceus; but as the trip wore on and her panic and terror turned to something low-grade and grinding, like seasickness, she found herself wondering if he was a doctor.
He sat back and the gun stopped digging into her flesh. The relief was indescribable; she felt her muscles start to slacken... then he hit her with the gun.
It felt like a tap. She thought he’d done it inadvertently, but it must have been much harder than she realized, or he knew exactly where to hit her, because her head snapped forward and whacked the steering wheel, and her body slid helplessly across the front seat.
The next thing she knew she was upside down, with her head, which felt swollen to the size of a soccer ball, dangling. She forced her eyes open and was hit by a burst of color. She thought it must be an effect of the blow, then realized it was the multicolored hooked rug in the foyer of the house. He was carrying her over his shoulder fireman fashion, with her head hanging like a dead chicken’s and her butt jutting up. She wanted to laugh, but her head hurt too much and she was glad to pass out again.
A long, thin streak of blistering pain raced up her arm, and she snapped her eyes open and saw him pull a spent syringe out of her arm. He’d injected her with something that burned all the way to her shoulder and she tried to scream. A hoarse croak came out and he looked at her. The dead eyes met hers, and she thought of her volunteering days at Oban Hospital, where there’d been a Vietnam vet with a glass eye.
“It’s okay, Eve,” he said in a shockingly gentle voice. “It’s just a harmless pre-anesthetic that’ll put you out for a while. I’m sorry to have to do it this way, but I... I...”—he had to force the words out—“can’t... face that... room at night.”
He meant the kitchen and she didn’t blame him.
“You’ll sleep,” he said, “not deeply enough to perform surgery, but that’s not on the agenda.”
He was a doctor; doctor-serial killer, baby sitter-ax murderer, and she giggled. He grinned at her, his eyes and teeth glittered in the lamplight, and he needed a shave. He looked like a wolf.
She closed her eyes to blot him out and drifted.
Whatever he’d shot her full of worked fast, and the pain in her head and arm stopped. She snuggled against the dust-sheeted couch and was amazingly comfortable. Cessation of pain is the only real pleasure, her mother used to say. It must’ve been her mother; she couldn’t imagine Frances coming up with that one.
Poor Frances must be frantic. They’d found the LeBaron by now (whenever now was) and called the locals. But they were a useless bunch who bulked themselves up with enough hardware to fight a war and sauntered down Main trying to look as if their balls were too big for their thighs to meet.
Useless.
Frances knew who she had to call, and she’d do it no matter how much she disliked him. She’d call Satan to save Eve, but soon, Eve thought, please, Auntie, call Dave soon.