19
Varney saw the black of night beginning to fade into a dim blue, the big old trees and the shrubs and lawns of Delaware Avenue lightening to green again. In about forty-five minutes the sun would be up, and the people who had vacated the streets of the city for him would be climbing into their cars to infest the world again. He had not found Prescott.
The way Prescott had stayed invisible was not mysterious: all he had needed to do was use a false name to register in a hotel and stay there. But Varney had not expected him to do that. All night long, he had expected Prescott to be around the next corner, or waiting inside one of Varney’s haunts, or sitting in his car outside one of the downtown hotels, waiting for Varney to try to find him.
Varney wasn’t even sure why he had expected Prescott to appear during the night. He decided it was that he had gotten used to a rhythm, like the rhythm of two men in a fistfight. At first they had danced around a bit, made a few feints and jabs. Then Varney had tried to win the quick way—not an exploratory tap, but committing himself to a sudden, hard attack that would take Prescott before he was ready for anything serious. Prescott had been ready to brush it aside, and the counterpunch had been immediate. Varney had gotten used to a pace that was fast and intense, based on heart rate and the adrenaline that had already infused both of them. But Prescott had unexpectedly dodged, and now he was dancing again, out of reach and gathering his strength.
That bothered Varney. He had been awake for two nights, struggling and maneuvering to move in on Prescott, wasting his anger and determination. He had spent the night exhausting himself, and Prescott had been in some hotel sleeping on crisp, clean sheets and getting stronger and sharper for their next encounter.
Varney stopped at a gas station to fill his tank, drove back to his house, and went upstairs. He showered and lay on his bed. The sounds of cars began to reach him from the street outside, a low, steady hum that was usually soothing. This morning it irritated him, because it reminded him that he was used up, and the rest of the world was in motion. Prescott would be getting up fresh and rested, probably putting some new scheme into operation. Prescott and the police, and all the forces of pursuit and punishment, would be talking and planning and putting themselves into position, while Varney was here alone, unconscious in a room with the shades drawn. He rolled over, couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t get his mind to stop foraging for things to worry it.
Varney sat up and looked at the clock. It was six o’clock already. He reached for the remote control and turned on the television set. The head and shoulders that came on belonged to a woman about his age who had perfected that dumb, teasing, “I know something you wish you knew” look. She was saying, “You’ll hear if this morning’s humid weather might surprise us with a change later in the day. We’ll have footage of a melee outside last night’s school board meeting, a three-alarm fire in Cheektowaga, and a picture of a man the police would like your help in finding. We’ll be right back!”
Varney moved to the foot of his bed and put his feet on the floor. The first commercial was for cars. He had seen it at least a hundred times, and it had annoyed him the first time. There was a commercial for a financial-services company that couldn’t quite reveal what it was selling but featured close-up shots of people who looked sick with worry. Then there were a few shorter ones that seemed to have been recorded with a home video camera to advertise a florist, a Lebanese restaurant, and a company that sold appliances but seemed to think that today air conditioners were the only ones people wanted to hear about.
At last, the woman reappeared, sitting behind a desk with a pile of papers in front of her and a pen in her hand. As the camera moved in on her, she said, “Buffalo police have released a picture this morning of a man they want to question in connection with a bombing at a Cumberland Avenue building. He is between twenty-five and thirty years old, six feet tall, and weighs about one hundred and seventy-five pounds.”
There was the picture: Varney, staring out of his television set at him. The extreme definition of the color image that Prescott had somehow gotten made Varney’s face as clear as the woman’s on the television screen.
His stomach tightened in a spasm. He was up, stalking the room as the woman continued. “If you know this man or have seen him, call the special hot-line number at the bottom of your screen. Police have emphasized that he is armed and very dangerous. If you should see him, they ask that you do not approach or attempt to detain him. Instead, dial 911, and let them handle the situation.” She took the sheet from the top of her pile and set it aside, giving her special disapproving look. Suddenly she smiled, and turned her head to the side. “And I see Hal Kibbleman has joined us to give a hint of what he has in store for us in the weather department. Are you going to keep us in suspense, Hal?”
Varney punched the power button and the woman vanished. He went to the closet and began to pack. The house deed had a false name on it, and his habits had kept him from being too much in the sight of people in the neighborhood. He had been gone much of the time since he’d bought it, and when he had been here he had stayed out of synchronization with the people who got up in the morning to go to work. It might take Prescott and the police some time to find the house.
When his suitcase was packed, he put it into a plastic trash bag so it would look as though he were simply taking out the garbage when he brought it outside. He considered leaving a booby trap to welcome the inevitable intruders—maybe using the natural-gas pipe and an electrical switch—but that would be time-consuming, and it would involve a kind of concentration that didn’t fit his mood right now. As he thought about it, he realized that he wouldn’t get much pleasure out of it, and it might not even be practical. The police had him firmly in their minds as the mad bomber of Buffalo, so an explosion was precisely what they would be expecting. He was better off getting out of here, letting them find the place, and leaving nothing around that was especially incriminating or revealing. He was certain he could accomplish that, because he had always planned to leave that way. He had stored his guns and ammunition in this single room. As soon as he had used one on a job, he had gotten rid of it before he came back to Buffalo.
At the moment, the house contained no more firearms than many of the houses in this city: a Steyr Scout short-barreled rifle with a ten-power scope, a Remington Model 70 hunting rifle in .308, and three nine-millimeter pistols. He had thirty rounds of ammunition for each firearm. Two nights ago, he had used up his supply of black powder, blasting caps, and pipes for the bombs. All he had left were two rolls of copper wire and a couple of homemade switches. He put them into a second garbage bag with the guns, carried everything out to the car, and returned.
He spent twenty minutes checking to be sure the timers were set right, the faucets were closed on the hoses to the washing machine, the windows locked. He wiped the smooth surfaces with a rag to make the collection of fingerprints a bit more difficult. He had been careful since he had moved into the house to keep out of the dummy apartment downstairs, and had regularly wiped down the items in the upstairs apartment that he habitually touched. He was fairly certain that a real expert would find some prints, but it would take time, and there would be old prints that belonged to other people mixed in.
He went to the desk and collected all the paper. As a habit, he saved very few receipts or bills, and he kept them all in the same place. He used a post office box for his mailing address, so nothing came here. All of his precautions were tempered by the knowledge that a genuine expert could not be fooled forever if he were ever turned loose in this house. Varney could not keep him from connecting the house with a name or two and maybe the post office box, but he could make each step maddeningly complicated and eat up lots of hours making the expert follow trails that didn’t lead to an actual man.