Chapter 16
In his search, he wandered in ever-widening circles away from the house. Once he found footprints in the snow and followed them for a while but then they were lost again. He couldn't stop shivering, his teeth chattered, the cold seemed to penetrate to his bones. He tried to keep the flashlight close to the ground so there would be no danger of anyone seeing the light. Whenever he crossed an open field where there was no need for the light, he turned it off.
His fingers tingled from the cold, they numbed until he could no longer manipulate the flashlight lever. He struck his hands against his legs to restore circulation but the pain rang a distant unheard alarm, his fingers remained numb and useless. Whenever he crossed a field or came near a road, he thrust the flashlight in his coat pocket to hide the light.
He wondered how low the temperature had fallen. It felt well below zero and he wondered if he could find Janie before she died from the cold. She had left the house without her coat. She hadn't gone to the cellar to get it. He'd checked the closets. She hadn't taken any of his coats. That meant she'd run from the house either in blind panic or in a frantic attempt to escape.
Without a coat, with no more protection than her skirt and blouse, the intense cold would kill her. If she didn't find help fast ... a passing car or a house. There wouldn't be any traffic on these roads. There would be traffic on 882 but that was miles away. She could freeze to death before she reached 882.
She wouldn't find any houses. Unless she found the Parker house. It was the closest, possibly the only place she could reach that would save her life. If she didn't find the Parker house, she would freeze to death before she reached any other shelter.
He cried when he thought of the sub-zero wind biting into her soft body. His tears froze and stung his eyes and cheeks. He ran when he had the strength to run and when he did not he walked. Once he stumbled and fell and crawled on his hands and knees, peering at the snow beneath him for signs of her passing. There were no footprints.
The snow had turned to white powder, the wind whipped huge billowing clouds and, when there were no clouds of snow drifting through the forest and across the fields, there remained a shifting of the surface snow that would hide any footprints almost instantly after they were made.
Skeletons of tree branches and brush lashed his face. He felt the occasional wetness of blood but only momentarily-his blood seemed to freeze as soon as it reached the surface of any wound.
He went to the Parker house. If Jane had reached there, there would be lights in the windows. If a half-dead girl stumbles into your house on a wintry night, you do not turn off the lights and go back to bed again. No. You call a doctor and then you call the police.
The doctor arrives and gives medical attention and arranges for an ambulance. The police arrive. The police ask questions. Then you are too excited to go to sleep again. Then you stay awake and drink coffee or a highball and talk about the half-dead girl.
With the idea that the Parkers might still be awake even if Janie had stumbled into their house long before, he completely circled the house. There were no lights, none. They were all sound asleep.
Janie hadn't reached the Parker house.
He headed north toward 882 with the idea that Janie might have headed that way if she had retained any sense of direction. But before he had moved more than a few yards, he heard a strange sound from the Parker house. He turned and saw the black shadow loping toward him. He quickened his pace but the black shadow loped easily, faster, shortening the distance between them.
He ran, lifting his knees high as he passed through a deep snowbank, his lungs burning with the effort, bright stars swimming before his eyes. He heard the vicious snarl and turned as the dog leaped and caught his arm. Sharp teeth tore through his coat and gouged his forearm. He fell off balance, rolling in the snow and the teeth clamped into his flesh. Needles of pain jabbed through the numbing cold and he gasped, "Trix!"
He almost struck at the dog to drive away those teeth but realized that might be fatal. "Trix! Trix!"
The needles of pain released his arm. The dog sniffed at his clothes and whimpered recognition.
Stan sat up in the snow, rubbing his arm. "It's me, Trix. Remember?"
Those summers when Jess Parker and he and Trix had hunted in the forest around the Parker house ... Jess had trained Trix to be half-watchdog, half-hunter. He remembered Trix had been vicious. He had seemed to tear rabbits apart from the sheer joy of killing.
Once a hobo had been found on a road near the Parker house. The hobo's throat hadn't been touched but his arms and legs had been torn badly. The hobo had bled to death. Jess had smoothed it with the police. A watchdog was not a killer, Jess had said, a watchdog was a protector. This was private property.
"You remember me, don't you, Trix?" He rose wearily. He stroked the dog's head, he began walking again. When he reached the top of a hill he saw Trix watching him as if wondering why he would be in the forest at this hour of the morning, then Trix loped back toward the shadowy hulk of the Parker house....
When he reached 882, he stayed off the road itself, walking through the brush a few yards from the road, close enough so he could see the random glare of headlights, close enough so he'd be able to see anyone walking on the shoulder of the road.
He couldn't lift his feet. He had to drag them through the snow. His lungs burned. His arm tingled. He wondered how badly Trix had hurt him. When he raised his arm to look at it in the moonlight, there was no blood on his glove, no blood on his wrist. No blood had soaked through his coat. Trix must have drawn blood-but not much.
He couldn't give up. He had to find Janie. She would die if he didn't find her. He thought, I can't stop. I can't stop. I can't stop.
Too late he saw the police car. It skidded onto the shoulder of the road so close he could see the policemen through the windshield. The car stopped. He heard the door slam and before he heard the shout hurled himself deeper into the forest.
They followed. He heard them as they crashed through the brush. He stumbled and fell and grayness washed over him. Beneath him the ground cracked and swayed. His feet were suddenly wet. He heard the gurgling of water and tried to rise and run again. All the strength had ebbed from his body. Slowly-with an agony of effort-he managed to turn on his side. He could see he'd fallen into a snowbank at least six feet deep.
Snowbank?
No. It was one of the narrow streams that wound through the forest. The water had frozen on the surface, the wind had piled snow on the ice. He'd fallen down a bank and landed in the stream. Partially. His feet had broken through the ice....
He tried to stop breathing. They were so close they could hear him if he breathed too loudly. He took one last look, saw that he was partially hidden by the snow he'd fallen into and closed his eyes to concentrate on silence. He closed his mouth. Breathing through his nostrils brought fresh fiery pain to his lungs. They wanted more oxygen than he could draw through his nostrils but it was quieter than breathing through his mouth.
He waited. He listened.
They crashed through the brush and it seemed they were almost walking on him. He had one advantage, he knew. The brush was so thick it would be difficult for them to spot his footprints.
"It was a man."
"With four legs?"
"I saw a man"
"It was a deer. You're jumpy. Jesus! Let's get in the car and call in. Maybe they got something new to work on. Christ, it's cold!" .
For an instant a triangle of light stabbed through the air above him, illuminating flecks of snow. The voices receded.
He thought, Cold?
It didn't seem cold any more. In his hole in the snow he felt warm and comfortable and sleepy. It would be easy to sleep he knew. A warm and comfortable soft white bed....
He began moving by degrees. First the flexing of a finger, then the flexing of a hand, then the flexing of an arm. He had rested. He had slept and, he knew, almost died. They would have found him much later. Maybe they wouldn't have found him until spring! His body would have thawed by then.
After he could move both arms, he rolled in the snow. The ice cracked again but he did not sink into the water. Carefully he burrowed through the snow, crawling until his body was flexible enough so that he could walk.
The sun had risen again. It glared at him from a ghostly gray sky. There was no warmth in it.
He staggered. He continually fell over the smallest obstacle. He couldn't raise his feet high enough. He couldn't walk right. He couldn't see right. The trees jumped and blurred. The snow wavered.
He knew what he'd do. He'd go to the house and eat and rest. But not for too long. He'd get warm again. He'd take some healthy slugs of whisky to numb the pain in his arm. Then he'd get in the car and drive over all the roads that led through the forest-every one of them, no matter how small it might be, no matter how old it might be, no matter how little-used.
He could cover a lot of territory in the car and cover it fast. Maybe he'd find Janie's footprints where she crossed a road. She must be dead, but now the main thing would be to find her body before the police found it. If the police found her body so close to his home, they'd be sure to connect her death with him.
They could fry him. First Emma, now Janie. Kidnapping and murder. He hadn't killed Emma or Janie with his own hands, but a good prosecuting attorney would make it seem as if he had. He shuddered. Kidnapping and a double murder. It wasn't one of those things where you could be on parole in ten years. It would be one of those things where they would kill you swiftly-or let you rot slowly behind the high gray walls....
Behind the glass walls of the Burger King, the men in the white uniforms moved woodenly around the stoves and ovens and counters, never seeming to hurry. Above the glass walls, the Burger King sat on a monstrous hamburger, grinning with all the idiocy of a Humpty Dumpty. Dull neon said in the center of his belly-15c.
Cars moved cautiously to and from the parking lot. Headlights blinked for service and amid the constant activity the only obvious sound was that of an occasional car door. A redhead in black stretch-pants and black wool sweater scurried from car to car, expertly balancing trays, counting change and forever smiling.
She smiled the widest when she greeted a customer upon taking his order or when she received a tip. When she went to a car to remove the tray from the window and there was no tip, the smile dwindled to a faint curvature of crimson lips, faintly dimpled cheeks.
The black stretch-pants left only a small area to the imagination-customers were treated to the flexing of her every muscle from waist to calf. When she returned to the counters behind the glass walls, her buttocks were a symphony of rippling black, her clothes were a form of nakedness.
The sky had turned gray, cloudless, marred only by a jet-stream in the stratosphere and a twinkle of sunlight on a distant helicopter. As Stan watched the jet-stream it vanished. The helicopter became a speck ... and vanished, too.
Hamburgers, french fries, a chocolate milkshake. The food and the warmth of the car had numbed his senses and dulled the barbs of pain in his body. He wished he could sit in the car forever and watch the tin-and-neon Burger King, the clear gray sky, the girl in the tight black pants.
He had driven over every road within a ten-mile radius of his house, doubling back over most of the roads. There were only two possibilities. Janie had died and her body lay somewhere hidden by the snow. Or-Janie had managed to reach help and was still alive. If she were still alive. If she were still alive, the police would find him before too long. Janie would be sure to tell them who had kidnapped her.
He remembered he had promised Amy he would phone her on Wednesday. He left the car and went to the phone booth built into one of the pastel stucco walls of the Burger King Amy answered the phone on the first ring.
"Stan?"
"What's wrong, Amy? You sound as if."
"Bob knows, Stan. Bob knows."
"Knows what?" Even as he asked the question, he knew what she meant.
"He knows about us. I told mother about the shotgun. I told her that was why you had stopped by to see me. She believed that part of it, Stan. She believed every word of it. But then...."
Amy began to cry hysterically. He waited, holding the phone a few inches from his ear. When it seemed she would never calm, he said, "Take it easy, Amy. Tell me what happened!"
"But then ... She thought that was what had brought us together. She started crying and I asked her why she was crying. She said she knew what you and I had done. I told her that was silly. I told her she had no reason to think anything like that. She told me what happened, Stan.
"Remember? We fell asleep that first day. We heard the children coming up the stairs. We thought mother had just brought them back ... She had brought them back before that. She had let them play outside and she came in the house. She called me and I didn't answer.
"She thought I had taken a nap ... so she came up to the bedroom. She saw us together on the bed while we were sleeping. She went downstairs again and when the children came in the house and wanted to see me, she tried to stop them from coming up the stairs, but they ran past her. She believed the part about the shotgun but she thinks that's what brought us together. I pleaded with her not to tell Bob.
"But she must have told Bob. He came home during his lunch hour today and got all the children dressed and took them somewhere. He didn't say where he was taking them, he just said he didn't want them to be here while he had a talk with me. He's coming back, Stan, I don't know what to do.
"He looked so mad ... He looked as if he could kill me ... I don't know why mother told him. She must be so old she doesn't understand Bob's knowing won't help anything. I don't know what to do!"
He listened for a few more minutes, holding the phone away from his ear. Amy's voice rose in volume, stretching toward hysteria, taut with fear. She cried and the crying made everything else incoherent.
"I'm sorry, Amy. I'm sorry it has to end this way."
There was no indication she heard or understood what he said. He placed the phone in its cradle and stumbled out of the phone booth. His legs felt stiff. He brushed against cars without seeing them.
When he moved between two of the cars, he almost walked into the redheaded waitress. She pressed against the fender of a Buick, juggling a tray in one hand and staring at him. He climbed into his car and swerved out of the Burger King exit, almost colliding with a truck.