The Lime Pit (25 page)

Jellicoe stopped in front of Leach's house and sat
there, with the motor running. The front blinds opened again, the
porch light snapped on--dull yellow in the false dawn. And the little
boy came running out of the red door. Jellicoe opened the passenger
side door and he crawled in. The truck ground back into gear and
started south on Ida, passing me at a slow pace and crossing the
viaduct and disappearing down the hillside where Ida drops to the
city.

I started the Pinto, pulled out, and U-turned in the
street. They were half a mile ahead of me, but I wasn't worried about
losing them. Ida is blind down the hillside just a coil of asphalt
carrying through the trees--and the Dodge was going slowly and would
be easy to spot on the barren, early-morning streets. I started to
feel alive for the first time that night, nervous with excitement as
I slid down Ida, through the S-shaped curves, and saw in the distance
the big yellow van stopped at a light beneath a trestle in the East
Bottoms. I slowed down and pulled to the curb. There was no traffic
at all on Front Street and I didn't want Jellicoe to spot me.

I glanced at my watch. It was ten after five.

When the light changed, Jellicoe turned left onto a
ramp leading to the parkway. I sped down the hill after him, wheeling
through the struts of the L & N trestles and past the smoky
warehouses that abut Front Street to the west and up the ramp onto
Columbia Parkway.

Jellicoe continued driving due west on Columbia, past
the wall of red brick buildings that is the city's south side, past
the stadium, lit green and skeletal across from the downtown
buildings. Then he veered south onto I-75, where it feeds the Brent
Spence bridge that crosses the Ohio into Covington. I laid back half
a mile and followed. A dozen cars and trucks, early birds on their
way south, were already on the expressway--formed in a fast-moving
pack. It wasn't a crowd, but I managed to lose myself behind a semi,
edging out into the fast lane every once in a while to make sure the
van was still ahead of me.

We touched down on the Kentucky side. Drove past the
dark marts and the deserted auto dealerships and the tall cylinder of
the Quality Court Motel, lit in a red band at its topmost floor. And,
then up through the sandstone gorge, where the expressway sweeps left
and right as it climbs to the flat, bluegrass plain above the river.
The highway is divided through those turns by a cement retaining
wall, and the wall makes the traffic close and quick and dangerous.

The dawn began in earnest as we topped the gorge,
driving the violet and dark blue sky ahead of it. A band of light
streaked the eastern horizon and, as the expressway jogged southeast
past the mall of the Erlanger Shopping Center, the sun rose bright
orange. I flipped down the visor and fished through the glove
compartment for a pair of sunglasses--a tricky proposition at close
to sixty miles an hour.

Once out of the suburbs the traffic thinned, and we
travelled through corn fields turning gold in the sunlight, where
farmers on their tractors were already chugging among the tall corn
rows. South past hog sties and cow pastures. Under the highpower
lines and the concrete overpasses. Through country measured only by
mile posts. Decent and featureless as a map.

And, after three-quarters of an hour, with the sun
fully up and beginning to warm the air, we stopped.

I saw him pulling off at an exit marked Belleview,
and I slowed down, letting cars pass me, until he was off the ramp
and heading west along a country road. I took the same exit and found
myself in the middle of farm land, on an old two-lane highway lined
with telephone poles and fenced-in corn rows that bent so close to
the roadside that, in some spots, I could have picked an ear from the
car window.

The sky was almost fully lighted now. Pale blue and
very bright in the rearview mirror. I studied the yellow speck in
front of me. Here and there access roads cut through the cornfields
and spilled dusty tongues of farm dirt on the highway. About a
quarter of an hour up the pike, the yellow van slipped off onto one
of those roads and disappeared behind the corn rows.

He'd come to a destination, an ending spot.

Five minutes later, I turned right onto the same
dusty road and jerked to a stop. Yellow dust swirled around the car
and settled thickly on the windshield and hood. I cracked a window
and dry overheated air flooded through. It must have been a hundred
degrees in that field and it was barely seven in the morning. I took
a pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment, stepped from the
Pinto, and gazed down the road. It continued for a mile or so flanked
by the fields, then seemed to fall off abruptly into a gully. The van
was parked at the gully's edge and beneath it, in a grove of shade
trees, was a white frame farm house with a red tile roof. It was a
good-sized house--two rambling floors--with a porch in front and a
porch in back. To the north there was a silvery reflection that could
have been the beginnings of a creek, and, beyond that, small hills
shagged with locust and maple and pine fanned out in a semicircle.
The ground in front of the house was grooved like a brain-big yellow
grassless whorls of eroded dirt. Behind the house, there was a fenced
lawn, with a play-set standing in its center, and a tire hung from a
dead oak tree near the fence. A big propane tank was lying on its
side next to the rear porch. Nobody was moving around. They'd gone
inside to sleep--the Jellicoes and the children who belonged to that
play-set.

I put down the binoculars and did some calculation. I
couldn't move the car much closer to the house without taking the
chance of waking them all up. And walking straight down the road
wouldn't do either if someone happened to be looking out a window. I
shaded my eyes and searched the corn field. It grew very close to the
yard behind the house. If you walk about half a mile down the road, I
told myself, and stick close to that corn field, then cut west
through the field, you could come out behind the house in that grove
of shade trees and make your way through the back yard to the rear
porch. What happened after that would depend on the Jellicoes.

I got back in the car and pulled it down about thirty
yards and parked it so that it blocked the road. I didn't want anyone
making an unexpected entrance or exit. Then I took off my coat and
got out. A hot wind blew off the corn field, raising a prickle of
sweat on my bare arms. At least the heat felt good on my back. I
patted both of my weapons nervously, the way a man pats his coat to
make sure he hasn't forgotten his billfold, and started up the dirt
road, crouching a little and holding close to the corn row on the
west side. A dog barked once, making me jump. But aside from that
there wasn't a sound, save for the wind clicking among the shucks.

When I got about two hundred yards from the house, I
stepped off the road and into the field. The corn was chest-high and
green and smelled of milky sap and of pesticide. I could see clearly
over the tops of the rows as I curled through them, frightening birds
and field mice and one black, pearly snake. When I got to the grove
of oak trees, I ducked behind a gnarled trunk and studied the rear of
the house.

It was in surprisingly good shape. The siding was
relatively new and freshly painted. The storm windows looked new.
There were none of the usual holes or rust spots in the mesh
enclosing the porch. It seemed too neat to me, too new. Almost as if
it had been built for show. I wondered for whom. Through the wire I
could see the kitchen, where sunlight from a front window glared off
the tile floors and the aluminum pots and pans hung along a side
wall. The kitchen appeared to open on a larger room, perhaps a dining
room. It was hard to tell. All of the windows on the second floor
were drawn with drapes. The whole house had the clean, righteous look
of country life. Currier and Ives. Save that no farmer would still be
asleep at seven-thirty in good weather.

There was a grass lawn between me and the rear porch,
dotted with children's toys and that sinister jungle gym I'd seen
through the binoculars. Fifty feet of open ground. It wasn't going to
grow smaller if I just kept looking at it. I slid out from behind the
oak, hopped the low wire fence, and ran across the yard.

When I got to the rear porch, I flattened myself
against the side of the house. Nobody shrieked or poured burning oil
out of the upstairs window. Which was a little disconcerting. When
you take pains, you want to feel justified. I had the distinct
impression that I could have walked in the front door and nobody
would have cared. Either the Jellicoes were incredibly careless, or
they felt absolutely safe in their rural hideaway. The lock on the
porch door was hook and eye-easy to open with a penknife. I
jimmied it quickly and pulled at the handle. The door opened
noiselessly and I stepped through onto the planking of the porch.
There were a couple of lawn chairs and a chaise on the enclosed porch
and a few more toys. I walked through the doorless opening that led
to the kitchen.

What I wanted to find was an office or a
study--someplace where records might be kept. But I could wander
through a lot of rooms and into a lot of trouble before I lucked onto
the right one. I thought once about the people I was going to be
dealing with and that scared all of the dumb luck philosophy out of
my head.

I'd taken some pains to surprise them. It seemed
lunatic to blow what little edge I had. I took a deep breath and blew
it out and knew that it was better to get the rough part over right
away--to put the Jellicoes out of commission and give myself a free
hand with the kids and the records, if there were any records.

I looked around the kitchen and decided on a
long-handled pot. I didn't want to make too big a racket and bring
the whole house down there. Just Lance or Laurie or both of them, at
worst.

The kitchen door opened inward and was propped with a
rubber stop. Between it and the east wall was a clear space big
enough for a man to stand in without being spotted by someone coming
through the door. Back to the wall, right arm extended, I would be
about two feet from the opening, pointing the pistol chest high on
Lance and head high on Laurie. If he came through in a hurry, I might
be able to sap him from behind. If he played it cautiously, I'd have
no choice but to fire as soon as he peeked around the jamb. There
would be no question of missing him at that range. Or of wounding
him, either. The bullet would drop him instantly.

I didn't really like it, but at that moment I
couldn't see an alternative. Lance was a tough boy. I wasn't sure
what I would find outside the kitchen. So it had to be the way I'd
imagined. And it had to be in the kitchen. And it had to be soon. I
walked over to the pothanger on the north wall, lifted off the
longhandled sauce pan, and dropped it to the floor. It clattered and
rang against the tile.
I heard a noise
overhead. And my heart began to pound.

Someone had gotten out of a bed. I could hear the
springs creak and then the pad of footsteps. A male voice said
something indecipherable. Another, higher one responded. And then
there was a laugh.

That was good. I hoped he'd keep right on laughing
all the way to the kitchen.

I backed against the east wall, took the magnum from
the shoulder holster, braced my feet against the floorboards,
extended my right arm, and pulled back the hammer on the gun.

From the front of the house, I heard a creak of
stairs. Then the sound of footsteps got louder and closer. He was
coming at a sure, unhurried pace. And before I could take a breath,
he was through the door and bending over to pick up the pot. He was
naked, hairy on his back. Big, lithe man. With terrific muscles in
his arms and thighs. I knew immediately that I wasn't going to be
able to sap him-not without both arms. So I took dead aim on his
spine and whispered, "Lance."

He didn't move at all for a second. Just stood there,
bent over, with the pot in his hand and his back to me. I watched the
muscles in his legs. He was taking too long, which meant he was going
to charge me. Which meant I was going to kill him where he stood.
With a painful effort, I braced my right wrist with my left hand.

"Stand up," I said softly. "Slowly."

His whole body quivered. And his back began to sweat.

He made a deep, violent noise-as if he were expelling
all the air inside his huge chest. And very slowly, he stood up.

If he hadn't been naked, I think he would have
charged me, whirling madly and bulling into me with all of his
strength. But there is nothing quite as vulnerable as a naked body.
Lance was human enough to feel that vulnerability for the moment it
had taken him to make up his mind.

"Whatchu doin' heah?" he said, without
turning around. "What the hell you want?"

"Well, right now, I want you to call Laurie down
here. Sweetly, Lance. Like you were calling her to bed."

"Laurie!" he boomed. "C'mon down
heah."

He didn't have much of a bedside manner, Lance. But,
then, he wasn't a subtle man. He didn't need to be, with Laurie for a
partner.

"Turn around," I said to him. "And go
over to that chair and sit down."

He turned. And the look on his big, square, pretty
Texas face was purely murderous. I pointed to a glass breakfast table
on the west side of the room. "Sit. And keep it shut, Lance."