Part 22 (1/2)

”It's odd,” Stillman mused. ”Brothers, I can easily take in stride. Somebody comes up with a way of making big money, tells one of them, and asks if there's somebody else he can trust to bring in on it. The one he thinks of is his brother. Fine for us, because we can find a brother. But this business of second cousins twice removed or something, how do we use it? Most likely they'd have different last names, and n.o.body but them would even know they were related. That's no help.”

”I suppose not,” said Walker. He drove in silence for a while. Stillman's sharp eyes stared, unblinking, into the dark, until Walker said, ”Is there something else wrong?”

”I was thinking about all of them: Ellen Snyder, Fred Teller, the two people who got killed in their swimming pool, the guy in that swamp in Florida.”

”What about them?”

”I was thinking we're way behind. We still haven't figured out very much about the way these people are doing this, or what they'll do next. I'd say that all we can be sure of is that they always move a little faster than we can, and they don't mind killing people.”

”We know a little more than that. We know about James Scully.”

”Oh, yeah,” said Stillman. ”After all this time, we managed to get through all the intentional confusion just once. This time while we were flailing around, we reached in blind and got our hands on a throat. The fellow's dead, but all we can do is keep squeezing.”

28.

They drove along the Old Concord Road, following its meanderings around gentle hills that had been cleared two hundred years ago for sheep that would keep the woolen mills along the Ashuelot River spinning. There were no sheep now. As the mills had died a slow death, the land had been turned, acre by acre, into pasture for dairy cattle, but now another change had occurred. At short intervals, the pastures would be interrupted by stands of second-growth forest, the tall trees blocking the dim purple glow that had begun to tinge the horizon beyond the eastern hills, making it full night again.

There were few cars on the road, but as they drove on they began to see houses with dim lights glowing from windows near the back, and Walker decided somebody must be getting ready to make breakfast. Once when Walker coasted to a stop at a blinking traffic light, the silence let him hear birds chirping unseen in a big tree to his left.

A few minutes later Stillman said, ”Wait a minute. What was the name of that last town?”

”South Haverley.”

Stillman switched on the dome light and studied the map. ”That was five or six miles ago, I think. Okay. We should be at Coulter, or almost.”

”Could I have driven through it without seeing it?”

”I doubt it,” said Stillman. ”Keep going, but slowly.”

After another mile, there was a crooked stretch of road that traced the bases of two identical hills, and then Walker saw a narrow secondary road that met the highway to the right. On the left was an old, spa.r.s.e apple orchard with rows of low, gnarled trees that looked black in the dim light. At the shoulder was a small blue sign that said COULTER COULTER. He continued on the highway for a mile, but there seemed to be no buildings. ”This can't be right.”

”Go back,” said Stillman.

Walker stopped and turned the Explorer around, then drove until he came to the sign. He decided it was safer to park on the secondary road, so he made the turn. A few yards down the road was a sign that said MAIN ST MAIN ST.

”Well, h.e.l.l,” said Stillman. ”Here we are, right on Main Street.” He glared at his map, then waved it at Walker. ”See the dot that says 'Coulter'? It's on the right side of the road, but it never occurred to me that the whole town was off the highway. Go ahead. Let's see what it looks like.”

Walker drove on slowly. The narrow road pierced the s.p.a.ce between the two hills. At a narrow curve where the hills edged up to the road on both sides, the tires pa.s.sed over a wide metal grate that gave a hollow, ringing noise.

”Wonder what that was for,” Stillman said.

”Must be a cow stile,” said Walker. ”The cows won't walk over one of those, so it works like a fence. I guess that must be why it goes all the way across from hill to hill.”

”Maybe,” said Stillman.

As soon as it was out of the pa.s.s between the hills, the road widened. Curbs had been poured, and the pavement was new, black macadam.

”Looks like the Department of Public Works is on the job,” said Walker.

”Right,” said Stillman. ”Odd that they didn't take it the last two hundred yards to the main highway.”

”Summer isn't over yet,” said Walker. ”And cities here must be like everywhere else. They get people to vote for a bond issue, and by the time anything gets built, the price goes up.”

”It's possible,” said Stillman. The road pa.s.sed into a wooded lot, then curved a bit and there was a sign that said BRIDGE 100 FEET BRIDGE 100 FEET. The road straightened, and before them was an old wooden covered bridge.

Walker slowed to five miles an hour as they came closer. ”That's something, isn't it?” As he was about to drive under the roof, Stillman said, ”Stop for a minute.”

He got out of the Explorer, and Walker pulled over to the narrow shoulder and got out too. He found Stillman kneeling on the bridge, looking down between two of the thick planks. Walker bent down too. Between the boards he could see a black stream of water. He said, ”You afraid it won't hold us?”

”No,” said Stillman. ”The roof and sides look really old, but the bed has been replaced. If you look down here, you can see they've left the old cross ties in, but they sh.o.r.ed it up by putting concrete piles and steel beams between them. You drive to the end of it, and I'll join you.”

Walker went back to the Explorer and drove it slowly across the bridge. In the middle, both sides were left open for a s.p.a.ce of about four feet, where he could look out and see the course of the stream. He revised his a.s.sessment, and promoted it to a river. The current was flowing steadily, but the surface had the untroubled look that deep water had, and it was wider than he had expected. He stopped at the end of the bridge and watched Stillman walking to the open spot. Stillman looked out at the river, then went on.

When he climbed into the Explorer again, Walker asked, ”Why are you so interested in the bridge?”

”I don't know what they're supposed to look like,” Stillman answered. ”I'm not about to drive all over New England looking at covered bridges to compare. If the bridge was out, it would be pretty hard to reach the town by road.”

”That's probably why they sh.o.r.ed up the beams with steel supports.”

”Right,” said Stillman. ”Your tax dollars at work.”

”Not mine,” Walker said.

”Don't be too sure. Any city council that couldn't get federal money to preserve a landmark that also happened to be the bridge to the main highway wouldn't be worth a d.a.m.n.”

They drove on for another mile, past open fields that Walker judged must be pasture for cattle that were let out at dawn. There were a couple of old barns, but he didn't see any lights or any vehicles. ”This should be about milking time,” he said.

Stillman looked at him. ”I'll have my secretary free up an appointment. Have you been reading the farmer's almanac, or what?”

”I grew up in Ohio. There's pasture, and there are barns.” Walker added, ”You said-or implied-that I should be mentioning things that I notice. This is when dairy farmers feed and water their cattle, and milk them. When that's done, they let them out to pasture and clean the barn. But I don't see any signs of life. No lights, no pickup trucks. If the barn's that far from the house, you drive there.” He shrugged.

Stillman said, ”That's a point. I suppose what it means is there are no cows. If you have to get up this early to shovel cow s.h.i.+t, they were probably murdered.”

Beyond the next row of trees that had been left as a windbreak at the end of the field rose the gray roofs of buildings. The little river they had crossed at the covered bridge had looped ahead of them in its meandering. It ran along the edge of town in a stony bed, and the trees were just above the riverbank. There was a short, modern steel bridge with no sidewalks about fifteen feet above the water, and then they were in town.

Walker drove slowly along Main Street, turning his head to take in both sides in alternation. The buildings along Main looked old in the same way as the ones in other towns, the biggest faced with red brick and three stories high, with ornate struts holding the overhangs of the eaves. There were others in wood and clapboard that had pilasters flanking the doors and triangular cornices above the windows that gave them the look of the eighteenth century. Stillman said, ”One more nice little town. Everything's squared away and s.h.i.+pshape. Look for Birch Street.”

The town was too small for traffic signals, but there were stop signs at each corner. Walker would coast to a stop, look at the street sign on a post to his right, stare up and down the cross street, and then move on. The side streets all appeared to be about four blocks long, disappearing at either end into an empty field or a building or a stand of trees. The names in this part of town were the names he remembered from small towns in Ohio: Was.h.i.+ngton, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, then jumping ahead to Grant. More recent heroes came too late, probably after the town had stopped growing.

They pa.s.sed a two-story brick building, set back on a lawn, that proclaimed itself Coulter Library and looked like one of the thousands built in the era of Andrew Carnegie. Beyond it was a white clapboard church with a tall steeple that looked like all of the others he had seen in the past two days. Ahead he saw a lighted blue sign that said simply POLICE POLICE, so he turned off Main onto Grant and went up the parallel street to his left.

When he pa.s.sed Sycamore, then Oak, he knew it was coming. There was Maple, then Birch. He paused at the corner, looking at house numbers. There were no lights in any of the windows on this block, but he could see that the dim purple luminescence in the east had begun to make colors distinguishable. He turned up the street. The houses were old, most of them Georgian or early Victorian, but there were modern touches-sidewalks and driveways poured within the past few years, porch lights and fixtures that were s.h.i.+ny and recent. When he braked as he approached 117, Stillman said, ”Keep going and park around the corner.”

Walker stopped in front of a low fence that separated the street from the beginning of a pasture. He got out and waited while Stillman went to the back of the Explorer and opened his leather bag. Walker could see him putting things into his jacket pockets, and then he appeared at Walker's side. ”We'll have to do it efficiently,” he said. ”We've only got twenty minutes before the sun comes up.”