“Gentlemen, I'm sorry to keep you waitin'. But, as I'm sure you understand, my daughter and I had a lot of catchin' up to do.”
“And as you must understand, this is an urgent national security matter,” Sharp said, though more quietly than he had spoken earlier.
Unperturbed, The Stone said, “My daughter says you want to know if maybe she has some idea where a fella named Leben is hidin' out.”
“That's right,” Sharp said tightly.
“She said somethin' about him bein' a livin' dead man, which I can't quite get clear with her, but maybe that was just the drugs talkin' through her. You think?”
“Just the drugs,” Sharp said.
“Well, she knows of a certain place he might be,” The Stone said. “The fella owns a cabin above Lake Arrowhead, she says. It's a sort of secret retreat for him.” He took a folded paper from his shirt pocket. “I've written down these directions.” He handed the paper to Peake. To Peake, not to Anson Sharp.
Peake glanced at The Stone's precise, clear handwriting, then passed the paper to Sharp.
“You know,” The Stone said, “my Sarah was a good girl up until three years ago, a fine daughter in every way. Then she fell under the spell of a sick person who got her onto drugs, put twisted thoughts in her head. She was only thirteen then, impressionable, vulnerable, easy pickin'.”
“Mr. Kiel, we don't have time—”
The Stone pretended not to hear Sharp, even though he was looking directly at him. “My wife and I tried our best to find out who it was that had her spellbound, figured it had to be an older boy at school, but we could never identify him. Then one day, after a year durin' which hell moved right into our home, Sarah up and disappeared, ran off to California to 'live the good life.' That's what she wrote in the note to us, said she wanted to live the good life and that we were unsophisticated country people who didn't know anythin' about the world, said we were full of funny ideas. Like honesty, sobriety, and self-respect, I suppose. These days, lots of folks think those are funny ideas.”
“Mr. Kiel—”
“Anyway,” The Stone continued, “not long after that, I finally learned who it was corrupted her. A teacher. Can you credit that? A teacher, who's supposed to be a figure of respect. New young history teacher. I demanded the school board investigate him. Most of the other teachers rallied round him to fight any investigation 'cause these days a lot of 'em seem to think we exist just to keep our mouths shut and pay their salaries no matter what garbage they want to pump into our children's heads. Two-thirds of the teachers—”
“Mr. Kiel,” Sharp said more forcefully, “none of this is of any interest to us, and we—”
“Oh, it'll be of interest when you hear the whole story,” The Stone said. “I can assure you.”
Peake knew The Stone was not the kind of man who rambled, knew all of this had some purpose, and he was eager to see where it was going to wind up.
“As I was sayin',” The Stone continued, “two-thirds of the teachers and half the town were agin me, like I was the troublemaker. But in the end they turned up worse stuff about that history teacher, worse than givin' and sellin' drugs to some of his students, and by the time it was over, they were glad to be shed of him. Then, the day after he was canned, he showed up at the farm, wantin' to go man to man. He was a good-sized fella, but he was on somethin' even then, what you call pot-marijuana or maybe even stronger poison, and it wasn't so hard to handle him. I'm sorry to say I broke both his arms, which is worse than I intended.”
Jesus, Peake thought.
“But even that wasn't the end of it, 'cause it turned out he had an uncle was president of the biggest bank in our county, the very same bank has my farm loans. Now, any man who allows personal grudges to interfere with his business judgment is an idiot, but this banker fella was an idiot 'cause he tried to pull a fast one to teach me a lesson, tried to reinterpret one of the clauses in my biggest loan, hopin' to call it due and put me at risk of my land. The wife and I been fightin' back for a year, filed a lawsuit and everythin', and just last week the bank had to back down and settle our suit out of court for enough to pay off half my loans.”
The Stone was finished, and Peake understood the point, but Sharp said impatiently, “So? I still don't see what it has to do with me.”
“Oh, I think you do,” The Stone said quietly, and the eyes he turned on Sharp were so intense that the deputy director winced.
Sharp looked down at the directions on the piece of paper, read them, cleared his throat, looked up. “This is all we want. I don't believe we'll need to talk further with either you or your daughter.”
“I'm certainly relieved to hear that,” The Stone said. “We'll be goin' back to Kansas tomorrow, and I wouldn't want to think this will be followin' us there.”
Then The Stone smiled. At Peake, not at Sharp.
The deputy director turned sharply away and stalked down the hall. Peake returned The Stone's smile, then followed his boss.
23
THE DARK OF THE WOODS
Reeeeee, reeeeee, reeeeee, reeeeee … At first the steam-whistle cries of the cicadas pleased Rachael because they were reminiscent of grade-school field trips to public parks, holiday picnics, and the hiking she had done while in college. However, she quickly grew irritated by the piercing noise. Neither the brush nor the heavy pine boughs softened the racket. Every molecule of the cool dry air seemed to reverberate with that grating sound, and soon her teeth and bones were reverberating with it, too.
Her reaction was, in part, a result of Benny's sudden conviction that he had heard something in the nearby brush that was not part of the ordinary background noises of a forest. She silently cursed the insects and willed them to shut up so she could hear any unnatural sounds — such as twigs snapping and underbrush rustling from the passage of something more substantial than the wind.
The Combat Magnum was in her purse, and she was holding only the thirty-two pistol. She had discovered she needed one hand to push aside tall weeds and to grab convenient branches to pull herself over steeper or more treacherous stretches of ground. She considered getting the.357 out of the bag, but the sound of the zipper would pinpoint their location to anyone who might be seeking them.
Anyone. That was a cowardly evasion. Surely, only one person might be seeking them out here. Eric.
She and Benny had been moving directly south across the face of the mountainside, catching brief glimpses of the cabin on the slope a couple of hundred yards above, being careful to interpose trees and brush and rock formations between themselves and the large picture windows that made her think of enormous, square eye sockets. When they had been about thirty yards past the cabin, they had turned east, which was upslope, and the way proved sufficiently steep that they had progressed at only half the speed they had been making previously. Benny's intention had been to circle the cabin and come in behind it. Then, when they had ascended only about a hundred yards — which put them still a hundred yards below and thirty south of the structure — Benny heard something, stopped, eased up against the protective cover of a spruce trunk that had a five-foot diameter, cocked his head, and raised the shotgun.
Reeeeee, reeeeee, reeeeee…
In addition to the ceaseless cicada chorus — which had not fallen silent because of their presence and, therefore, would not fall silent to reveal anyone else's presence, either — there was the annoyance of a noisy wind. The breeze that had sprung up when they had come out of the sporting-goods store down by the lake, less than three-quarters of an hour ago, had evidently grown stronger. Not much of it reached as far as the sheltered forest floor, barely a soft breath. But the upper reaches of the massive trees stirred restlessly, and a hollow mournful moaning settled down from above as the wind wove through the interstices of the highest branches.