“Oh, yes.”
“Did I make a mistake?”
Finally the young man stepped into the middle of the room. His eyes scanned the light switches. “Do the lights in this house go on automatically?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because the lights went on one by one. Fifteen minutes later you came down the road in the Jeep by yourself. What do you have, some kind of a radio switch in the Jeep?”
Fletch asked, “In which barn are your traveling companions?”
The young man hesitated. “The one further from here.”
“Do they smoke? Do they have matches, lighters?”
“They don’t smoke. I don’t know if they have lighters.”
“If they have matches they’re probably soaked and useless.”
“How did you know about them? My ‘traveling companions’? Why do you call them that?”
“I met the sheriff on the way home. There are roadblocks up. They’re looking for you.”
“Oh. And the sheriff mentioned the name Faoni to you?”
“Kriegel. Faoni. Leary. Moreno. Which one are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“The murderer, the attempted murderer, the kidnapper, or the drug grocer?”
“Attempted murder.”
“I see.”
The young man stood very straight. “I’m asking you if you are alone in the house. I know there was no one in the house before you arrived.”
“You’re trying to tell me you’ve got big, tough friends outside.”
“Yeah.”
Fletch moved some of the papers on his desk, revealing the handgun. He picked it up and put it in his belt. “You saw me arrive alone.”
The young man raised his chin a little. Still he seemed to be sniffing Fletch warily. “Yes.”
“The barns are the first places the cops will look for you, and your traveling companions. As kids they hid in barns themselves.” Jack said nothing. Pointing, Fletch said, “Uphill of the back barn, to the left, about one hundred and fifty meters, is a deep gully. There’s all kind of junk, trees, old barbed wire, fence posts, whatever, thrown in that gully as somebody’s idea of a means to prevent erosion. In a storm like this, shortly, if not already, water will come streaming hard down that gully. I’m certain the cops will not go into that gully.” They will not go into that gully, Fletch knew, because as kids they learned that’s one of the places where the snakes are. He asked Jack, “Do you want to help your traveling companions escape?”
Jack said, “Yes.”
“Then go lead them up to the gully, tell them to hunker down in it, and to stay there until further notice.” Further notice will come, Fletch continued in his own mind, after your traveling companions have been thoroughly exhausted, terrified by snakes, and beaten up by rushing water beating them against trees, fence posts, and coils of rusty barbed wire. “Better put your boots back on. Outside.”
“Why are you helping me? I, we’re a danger to you. And you’d better believe it.”
“Hey. Aren’t fathers supposed to grab every minute they can get to spend with their sons? I mean, here you are, taking probably just a short vacation from a federal penitentiary; clearly you’ve gone considerably out of your way to come see your old dad…”
Narrowing his eyes slightly, Jack said, “You’re ‘mildly curious’ about me.”
“Sure I am. What with the cops looking high and low for you, we’ll have some real quality time together. Don’t you think?”
“You’re not sending me out to hunker down in a gully with the other guys?”
Fletch said, “There’s a shower in there.” He nodded to the door to the study bathroom. “Fresh towels. Down the hall, back of the house, there’s a guest room. Closets, bureau drawers. Some old clothes of mine; some left by forgetful houseguests. While you’re showering and changing, I’ll go heat up the tuna puffs. You want milk?”
“We knocked out your phones. Way down the road.”
Fletch shrugged. “Some people around here still believe that when it rains real hard like this frogs drop out of the sky. When it rains this hard, there certainly are a great many more frogs on the roads. I’ve noticed that myself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I come back, try to look more like a prince, will you? A little less like a frog?”
The young man tried to smile, but failed. “Why?”
“A couple of counties are about to stop by. They want to borrow the Jeep to go looking for you and your traveling companions.”
“What are counties?”
From the hall outside the study, Fletch said: “Cops.”
3
Pulling off his sneakers as he walked, Fletch went through the kitchen into the small back hall. He stepped into his thigh-high black rubber boots. From a wall peg, he took his wide-brimmed dark brown hat and put it on his head. He buttoned his long, brown horse coat to his throat.
Knowing himself virtually invisible and inaudible in the night’s hard rain, he went out the back door, and along the side of the house to the front corner.
Outside the French doors, Jack was visible in the study lights, sockless, stamping on his work boots. He crouched to lace them.
As Fletch knew he would, Jack went down the front walk, across the road, and along the graveled driveway through the home pasture to the barns.
After waiting a moment, Fletch crossed the lawn, the road, and went in a straight line over a white board fence, across the home pasture to the back fence. He sat on the top board of that fence under a tree. From there, even in that rain, even in that dark, he could see movement in the area between the barns and against the back hills. Fletch had learned that if he remained perfectly still, especially sitting, especially if he lowered his head so that his hat was backed by his shoulders, he would not be seen under such circumstances, or at least not be seen as a human.
In a moment a skinny man walked, head down, between the barns. He was headed in the direction of the gully. He took rapid short steps.
There followed a huge man, with a big egg of a head, big chest, big gut. Angrily he was waving his arms. More visible once backed by the hill, he turned. Shouting something, he ran back a couple of meters.
Suddenly, smoothly, a tall, slim, lithe figure ran forward to him, and kicked him in the crotch. The lighter man, the boy, cracked the side of his right hand against the egg of the big man’s head. The young man’s voice came through the pounding rain. “Will you shut up!” Then the young man backed up a meter and postured himself defensively.
The fourth man, shorter than all of them, fatter, came into view. Arms akimbo, he stood over the crouching big man. Fletch guessed he was talking to him, exhorting him.
While he talked, the lithe young man Fletch knew to be Jack jogged ahead of the first man Fletch had seen, who was hesitating by the gate to the pastures.
Jack climbed over the gate. He disappeared across the stream toward the back hill.
Stepping on every rung of the gate, the second man followed.
Angrily shaking the gate as he climbed it, the big man climbed over the gate.
As if puzzled by the problem of gate climbing, the fat, bandy-legged man watched him. He looked for a way of opening the gate, but in the dark did not succeed. Then, clumsily, making more of a job of it than necessary, he climbed over the gate.
Faoni, Moreno, Leary, and Kriegel disappeared across the roaring stream, stumbling and slipping uphill in the dousing rain.
“HEY, ACE.”
“That you, Fletch?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Alston just came in.” It was two hours earlier by the clock in California. “Hang on.”