Part 29 (1/2)

”Not a whole lot,” Walker answered. ”There doesn't seem to be much going on anymore. How about you?”

”They did a pretty good sweep for an hour or so after we got up here. Since then, it's been a lot more subtle. They've got three patrol cars on the road instead of the usual two, but there seem to be a few cops walking around in plain clothes trying to look inconspicuous.” He pointed at the louvered panel in front of him. ”See? There's one.”

Walker moved to the panel and looked down, standing tall to achieve the proper angle. There was a man in a sport coat walking along Main. He turned into the drugstore. ”He's a cop?”

Stillman said, ”Either he's checking in with a radio or he's making calls on a cell phone every five minutes that last three seconds each.”

They kept watching as the sun sank below the three hills and the steady breeze began to turn cool. The foot traffic on Main Street thinned, and Walker saw some of the shop proprietors come out, close their doors and lock them, then walk up Main and turn onto the residential streets on both sides.

At eight the street lamps flickered once or twice, then came on steadily. By then, the windows of the businesses that sold food or drinks were the only ones that had not gone dark. The belfry was high above any source of artificial light, and it had fallen into deeper darkness than the rest of the town. After some time, Stillman held his wrist close to his face, leaned toward the louvered panel, and stared at his watch. ”Time to go. Watch your step on the way down. It's hard to see.”

They climbed down the ladder to the second level, where there was no opening and the darkness seemed nearly total. Walker had to feel around the floor to find the hatch cover. When he had, he lifted it up carefully and listened for a few seconds before he whispered to Stillman, ”You first.”

Walker heard rustling sounds while Stillman was going down through the opening, then the soft shuffle of his feet on the rungs. When Walker heard Stillman's shoes creaking the floorboards of the cloak room, he started down after him. The moment his head had cleared the opening he began to feel a bit better. The air was cooler, and there was a dim glow through the open doorway of the cloak room, the faint filtered light from the sanctuary windows reflected off the white walls. He carefully replaced the hatch cover and descended to Stillman's side.

They did not speak again until they were outside the building, moving in the shadow of the wall toward Const.i.tution Avenue. Stillman said, ”If those guys go to Scully's first, we're out of luck. The cops will get them. We have to hope they go to the other house first. We'll wait down by the river, near the entrance to town, where we can see them coming and follow on foot.”

They turned at Const.i.tution Avenue and walked purposefully toward the river. They would slow down as they came to each intersection, then turn so they could cross the street in the middle of the block, where the street lamps could not reveal them. When they reached Franklin Street they could see the bright lights in the windows of the Old Mill Restaurant reflected on the black surface of the river.

When they were on Was.h.i.+ngton, nearly to the spot where Main Street narrowed to cross the short bridge, Stillman tapped Walker's arm and they scrambled down the steep bank to the edge of the water, where they were in deep shadow again. Walker found a broad, flat rock on the dry riverbed. When he sat down, Stillman came to sit beside him, facing the town. Walker said, ”Why are you sitting like that?”

”Because I have full confidence that you're capable of seeing a car coming toward you with its headlights on. This way I can see what's coming up behind us.”

While they waited, Walker watched each car that came into town. He would see the glow of headlights appear beyond the fields, bright dots that flickered now and then as they pa.s.sed behind the trunks of trees. He would stare behind the lights, trying to discern the shape of the vehicle in profile before it reached the bend in the road and the headlights turned to aim at him as it crossed the unused farmland. When it came closer, he would duck down so the light skin of his face would not make him visible, and he would listen to the deepening pitch of the engine noise until he heard a b.u.mp. That was the front tires. .h.i.tting the slight seam where the road met the bridge. From then on, the car's headlights were aimed above him and to his right, and for two seconds he could see the car and its occupants clearly illuminated by the street lamps of Main Street.

In the first hour, he estimated that he had seen a dozen cars arriving. Some of the cars had women and children, some solitary men, but each face had presented itself to him as the cars crossed the bridge. It was nearly ten-thirty now, and the numbers had tapered off. He began to sense that the road would soon be deserted until the two men arrived to commit their burglaries.

Then he saw a car that seemed different. It had come out of the woods that hid the covered bridge like the others, then made the turn toward town. It was going across the fields past the two barns when he put his head down to protect his invisibility. He identified the difference by sound. This one was not traveling at the usual constant speed. It would accelerate briefly, then coast until it had slowed considerably, not quite stopping, then accelerate again.

He nudged Stillman without raising his head. ”This car is different. It keeps slowing down.”

Stillman turned and watched the headlights, then ducked down too. ”He's looking for something. Get ready.”

They both turned their bodies away from the bridge. The car grew louder and the headlights brighter. Walker heard the b.u.mp, looked over his shoulder to stare through the car's winds.h.i.+eld, and stood up quickly. The driver was Mary Catherine Casey.

36.

Walker was up out of the riverbed and das.h.i.+ng across Was.h.i.+ngton Street before he had acknowledged the need to make a decision. He sprinted to the corner of Main, trying to reach it in time to see where the car was going. He forced his legs to slow his pace to a fast walk as soon as he was in the pool of light cast by the street lamp at the corner. He stared up Main, and saw the pair of red taillights moving away. Mary was going at a tantalizingly slow speed, but she was pulling farther and farther away every second.

He was almost sure he knew where Mary was going to stop. She would come to the spot on Main where Stillman had parked the Explorer, and recognize it. She would park there and then begin to search for Walker and Stillman. He turned up Const.i.tution, where there was less chance he would be seen, and ran after her. As he ran, he wondered what she was doing here. He had expected her to be in Concord for at least a couple of days. She must have returned to Keene, not seen the Explorer in the hotel lot, and come looking.

He turned up Grant Street, then turned again onto Main and saw her. She was wearing jeans, a red short-sleeved top, and sneakers. At first she seemed not to recognize him. Her body turned to the side with the knees slightly bent and her weight on her toes, as though she was deciding whether to run back to her car. Then she visibly relaxed. He saw her take a deep breath and blow it out, then step off and trot toward him.

When they came together, he put his arms around her, but she pushed him away impatiently. ”Where's Stillman?”

”Back there by the bridge. Why?”

She glanced toward the Explorer. ”Please tell me you've got the keys to this thing.”

”I don't. Stillman drove.”

”Then come on.” She took a step toward the driver's side of her car, then stopped and held out the keys. ”Drive to where he is.”

Walker took the keys, started the car, and headed up the street to the next corner and turned right. ”What's wrong?” he asked.

”I'm not sure it's anything serious, now that I've found you,” she said. ”But there's potential.”

”Why? What happened?”

”When I got back from Concord, I went to my hotel, changed, and called you. You didn't answer, so I walked over to your hotel and sneaked into your room, just like before.” She looked at him, and her eyes were wide. ”Somebody else has been in your room.”

”How do you know?”

”It's a mess. The bed is all torn up, the suitcase dumped on the floor, and all the pockets of your clothes turned out. I went to Stillman's room, and his is worse. Somebody knows you're here, and they know where you're staying.”

”Is there any chance that they saw you?”

”It's possible, but if they did, they don't know I've got anything to do with you. I went in through the restaurant. On the way out, I was spooked, so I made some very strange detours. I even took a quick stroll through the Colony Mill Mall to be sure n.o.body could follow me.”

He looked at her, concerned. ”Would you be able to tell?”

”Of course I would,” she said. ”I was a southern California mall rat. What do you think teenaged girls are doing in those places? They're trying to get somebody to follow them.”

Walker drove down Was.h.i.+ngton and parked in a spot far from the street lamps.

Mary jerked her head one way, then the other, her eyes impatient and troubled. ”Where is he?”

”He's down there in the riverbed. We were waiting for those two guys to show up when you came along.”

”What two-” She stopped herself. ”No. Don't answer now. Let's just go get him.” She slipped out of the seat and hurried around the back of the car. As she stepped into the street, he was surprised to feel her small, thin fingers around his. She tugged his hand and hurried him across the pavement and down the rocky bank until they were on the dry, pebbly ground beside the water. Then her fingers slipped from his and she surged ahead, nearly lost to sight in the shadowy darkness beside the high bank, where the lights of the town did not reach her.

Walker followed, planting his feet carefully while he watched the distant spot beyond the fields where the headlights always appeared first. Every few seconds he would turn his eyes away from it to the right, to check the end of Was.h.i.+ngton Street and the short slice of Main Street that he could see from here.

In a moment, Mary had found Stillman. They were crouched low beside the big rock where Walker had been sitting, and Mary was whispering with animated gestures. Walker came close and knelt on the pebbles beside Mary.

Stillman turned his head toward Walker. ”Did you hear those guys found our hotel?”

”Yes,” said Walker. ”I don't know how they did it.”

”It's the biggest hotel in the biggest town around here,” said Stillman. ”It's where I'd look first. It's a good thing we didn't move before Serena left for Concord. This gives us a little edge we didn't have before.”

”Edge?” said Mary. ”What edge?”

”If they've looked at everything in our rooms, they know we haven't found a d.a.m.ned thing yet.”