Flynn's In (23 page)

Flynn left Cocky behind the boulders.

Following a course parallel to Hewitt, well behind him, Flynn kept to the woods outside the cabin’s clearing. Walking, Flynn did not pick up his feet much, but pushed them along under the snow. The toes of his boots stopped at rocks and roots without tripping him.

In the woods near the road, Flynn waited. Standing stock still behind a tree, he watched Hewitt come down the road. He walked through the snow as a city person would along a sidewalk in June.

It was a shotgun Hewitt was carrying.

After passing Flynn, down the road, nearer the clubhouse, Hewitt stopped. He looked around. Obviously he had found Flynn’s and Cocky’s tracks crossing the road on their way to his cabin. Flynn supposed Hewitt was trying to guess from the
amount of new snow that had fallen in the tracks how much time had passed since the tracks were fresh.

Hewitt hesitated a long moment, looking around, listening.

Then he went on.

Flynn decided he had seen enough, knew enough to pursue Hewitt openly, confront him. In the dark of the night the man was headed for the clubhouse with a shotgun and a bucket of kerosene.

By the time Flynn had scrambled through the snow-filled, rocky ditch onto the road, Hewitt had disappeared.

“Hewitt!” Flynn bellowed.

Hurrying now, Flynn ran down the road following Hewitt’s tracks.

The tracks went off the road, to the left, across a ditch and into the woods. The path wandered uphill through the woods.

Halfway up the hill, Flynn stumbled. He landed on his hands and knees. He raised his head and yelled, “Hewitt!” He realized Hewitt could think Flynn was calling for him down at his cabin.

When he stood up, Flynn broke into as much of a run as he could manage up the rest of the path.

He found himself at the back of the clubhouse, facing the back porch. The lights in the kitchen were off.

On the porch, something struck the gong, just lightly, just touched it. Nevertheless, it made a noise.

Someone crouching beside the gong stood up.

Flynn ran toward the back of the house.

Hewitt was swinging the bucket, throwing kerosene widely over the back wall of the porch.

Hearing Flynn, he turned around, dropped the bucket. He picked the shotgun up from where it leaned against the gong.

In a rush Hewitt came down the few stairs of the porch. He carried the shotgun at an angle high across his chest. He looked like a canoeist changing his paddle from one side of the boat to another.

Slipping in the snow, Flynn raised his left arm to catch the blow. Flynn yelled, loud, twice.

Nothing hit his left arm.

The shotgun stock cracked against the side of his head, just above his left ear.

Falling, Flynn thought how nice the snow would feel against his face.

He never felt it.

First he heard the flames. Then many excited Vietnamese shouting orders.

Someone was holding him in a sitting position in the snow, facing away from the clubhouse. A warm hand was on the back of his neck.

Flickering light from the flames were turning the snow around Flynn red, yellow.

Brown, thin bare legs, bare feet were in the snow beside him.

A high voice asked, “You okay?”

Flynn nodded his head and regretted the pain. “I’m okay.”

The hand left his neck. The bare feet flew from the snow like two little birds.

Flynn looked around from where he was seated in the snow.

A half dozen agile Vietnamese, the kitchen help, bare arms and feet flashing warmly in the firelight against the snow, were scooping up armfuls of snow and throwing it at the fire. Flames were climbing the back walls of the porch curling up the struts holding up the roof. Smoke billowed out from under the roof. Now the lights were on in the kitchen, the kitchen door open. The flames were moving fast over the old timber, but the Vietnamese were moving even faster.

While Flynn watched, one side of the gong’s smouldering oak frame collapsed. Like a huge discus, the gong fell to the floor of the porch with a sour clunk. Its own weight caused it to roll slowly off the porch. It dragged its frame with it into the snow.

The Vietnamese cheered.

The kitchen help seemed to be making rather a party of the
fire. Barefooted in the snow, their movements made a pretty dance.

Their job was greatly aided by the collapse of the porch roof. The snow on the roof helped smother the fire.

Hands in the snow, Flynn pushed himself into a kneeling position. Another concentrated push and he was standing in the snow. He swayed slightly.

For a moment he felt nauseous. His fingers felt the bump over his left ear. He watched the Vietnamese working on the edges of the fire. A kitchen window was smoked, cracked.

Then he started down the hill, going off the path, to the right, following Hewitt’s tracks.

Of course Flynn could not move fast over rough ground downhill through the snow. What he wanted was to breathe deeply, evenly through his nose. What he really wanted was to lie down in the snow.

And he was not thinking about what he was doing with great clarity. He had been following Hewitt before he was cracked on the head. He had gotten up and begun following Hewitt again.

When he came to the dirt road it took him a moment to figure out what he was seeing. In the middle of the road, he turned in a slow circle.

Hewitt’s tracks went to the right along the road, in as straight a line as the road permitted, to the right of the tracks he had made coming from his cabin.

A very messy track came onto the road from the ditch the other side, made a wide curve in the road and, not going in a straight line at all, followed Hewitt’s tracks.

The two tracks together made it seem that something as efficient as a cross-country skier was being pursued by something as inefficient as a donkey-powered plow.

Cocky was following Hewitt.

Hewitt had murdered Huttenbach, Lauderdale, Ashley and Rutledge. He had tried to kill everyone, except Cocky and Flynn.

Hewitt was carrying a shotgun, and was expert at using it. He had hunted these woods professionally for decades.

Flynn ran a few steps following the tracks. The pounding in his head slowed him to a walk. It warned him of renewed unconsciousness. He moved at the fastest parade march of which he was capable.

Hewitt’s tracks went off the road, across the ditch, and into the dark woods. On the right-hand side of the road. On the opposite side of the road from his cabin.

Hewitt knew he was being followed.

Cocky’s churned-up track also left the road. A wide, circular area of snow in the ditch was messed up. Cocky must have fallen, struggled in the snow, gotten himself up. His track led up the other side of the ditch, into the wood.

Flynn raised his eyes, up into the dark trees. Many still had late foliage on them. This was an early snow, for these woods. Two thousand acres of trees, and Hewitt knew every square meter.

Strong-hearted Cocky, with no experience Flynn knew of, off the city streets, was following Hewitt, dragging after an armed, professional hunter, in the dark, in the snow, in the hunter’s own woods.

Head down again, Flynn went through the ditch. He followed Cocky’s more erratic trail.

Well into the woods, head throbbing, tired himself, Flynn stopped. He had just climbed a rise. Before him was a fairly open area.

Hewitt’s clean tracks went somewhat to the right.

Cocky’s ever-thickening track crossed Hewitt’s oddly, and went to the left.

Many meters ahead of Flynn was a tall, dark, thick tree, leaves still on it, almost a structure by itself, looking solid, sheltering.

Puffs of steam were coming from the side of the tree.

In the snowing, dark night of the woods, Flynn focused his eyes on the tree.

Cocky was leaning his back against the tree, head bowed, breathing hard.

Before Flynn could move to him, Cocky said, “Hewitt….”

Cocky’s white face became visible against the dark tree trunk. “Hewitt!”

Flynn decided to stand easy, to wait. To see what would happen. If Hewitt had wanted to rid himself of Cocky, it would have been easy enough to shoot him by now.

“I can’t chase you any more,” Cocky said to the stark wood. “I’m a crippled man. You know that.”

The only response was the hiss of the snow.

In a conversational tone, as if Hewitt were standing beside him, Cocky said, “I can’t catch you.” Flynn watched Cocky shake his head. “You’re old and you’re sick, you’re dying, Hewitt, but you’re a professional hunter, you know these woods, you probably even know how to get out of them, through the fence, and you’ve got a gun, and…I can’t catch you. I can’t come after you any more.”

Flynn pressed gloved fingers against the bump over his ear. He breathed deeply, as silently as he could.

“You killed a lot of people, Hewitt. Murdered ’em. Young Huttenbach, and crazy old Lauderdale, and that nervous jerk, Ashley. That pompous Rutledge. You gotta get caught, Hewitt. We’ve got to make sure you’re stopped. You know that.”

The next pause was long.

Flynn was about to step forward when Cocky said, “I can’t catch you, man!”

Flynn waited another moment.

The right corner of his eye detected a small movement across the clearing from Cocky. Someone was moving.

Then this dark form moved steadily through the trees toward Cocky.

It was Hewitt.

And he was carrying his shotgun in the crook of his arm, in no position to be fired.

Flynn remained silent, still, in the hissing wood.

Hewitt’s gait was not all that certain. As he crossed the snowfield, his body was bent, his legs wobbly. At one point he stopped and took a deep breath.

Finally he stopped within the reach of Cocky under the big tree.
Hewitt held out the shotgun to Cocky, for Cocky to take.

Cocky pushed himself off the tree. He stood as erect as he could. He waved away the shotgun. “I can’t carry it,” he said. “I’ll have all I can do to get myself back.”

Cocky began to lurch through the snow. He fell.

Behind him, Hewitt dropped to his knees silently in the snow. He put down his shotgun. He held onto his stomach with both hands. He doubled over.

Floundering tiredly, trying to straighten himself in the snow, to stand up, Cocky did not look around at Hewitt. He did not see that Hewitt, too, had fallen.

In the still, stark wood in a dark, snowing night, silently Flynn watched two men struggling quietly with their own mortality, their mortification, their pride, victims of their own experiences, their humanity, their handicaps, their dignities, their beliefs, prisoners of each other, of their own lives, of damaged bodies and believing minds, in fresh and still-falling snow.

By the time Cocky had regained his feet, behind him, Hewitt, too, had stood with his shotgun under his arm and taken deep and, Flynn was sure, painful breath.

With his free hand, then, Hewitt took Cocky’s arm.

“I can walk,” Cocky said. He lurched forward and almost fell again. “It’s just that my shoes are so wet.”

The hunter and the hunted passed the silent Flynn in the wood. Neither saw him nor heard him there.

Struggling along courageously, back to their more certain futures, took all their combined efforts, all their concentrations.

“G
ood morning, Grover. Are you there at all?”

It was shortly after nine Tuesday morning. Flynn’s head still hurt, still had a considerable knob over the left ear, but he had slept with the help of aspirin, arisen somewhat refreshed, bathed, packed, enjoyed the tea and toast Taylor had delivered without being asked.

Outside bright sun poured from a clear sky onto the fresh snow.

And the telephone worked.

“I’m here, Inspector.”

“Tell me, Grover, did you get an urgent message yesterday to telephone me?”

“Yes.”

“And you got the number to call?”

“Yes.”

“And did you try to call me?”

“No.”

“You didn’t. Why not?”

“Because I knew the source of the call, Inspector.”

“I was the source of the request.”

“Stacey Matson called me, Mrs. Willard Matson, crying like a loon into the phone saying I had to call you right away.”

“You don’t observe the requests of weeping women?”

“We have her husband in custody, Inspector. For hit-and-run. For the killing of Hiram Goldberg.”

“I needed you to call me, Grover.”

“Yeah, and I know about what. A crying woman, the wife of a felon, calls you, wherever the hell you are, tells you some big sob story. How did she know where to call you? I didn’t.”

“A coincidence, Grover. She had the wit to call my house. Her call was passed on to me here.”

“Yeah, well, she must be a pretty good friend to be calling your home.”

“She has met my wife. They serve on some committee. The Committee to Encourage Young People to Play Together, or some such thing.”

“You told this Matson dame to call me.”

“Yes. I was unable to do so myself.”

“I had just arrested her husband, Frank.”

“One thing did not have to do with the other.”

“You told her to tell me to call you.”

“I can see it might not seem like the best form, Grover, but under the circumstances—”

“And you were going to tell me to release the poor, weeping woman’s husband. Right? He killed a guy, Frank.”

“Among other things, I was going to tell you to investigate the possibility of child abuse in the Matson family. Before releasing the husband.”

“Exactly. I knew all that. You try to run an investigation by telephone and then tell me I’ve made a bad arrest? I’ve had enough of all this, Frank.”

“Mrs. Matson was my only way of getting a message to you.”

“I bet. I checked the area code of the telephone number she gave me. You’re in the mountains, Inspector. In the resort area. Hard at work playing chess with Concannon by the fire, Frank?”

“When you get a message to call me, Grover, under any circumstances—”

“I’m writing a full report to the Commissioner.”