Silent Witness (27 page)

“He started pointing guns, not me.”

“If he dies …”

“He threatened you with a gun, for God’s sake. And I shot him. Not you. Me.
Jesus.”
The anger in her voice was palpable: blood lust, distilled.

He turned away, released the parking brake, pointed toward a rise beside the stream. “There’s a clearing up there.”

Traveling slowly in first gear, they rounded a bend. Ahead, on the right, he saw the abandoned barn, decaying in the sun. As they passed the barn he looked for signs of life. Nothing. As he returned his eyes to the road, he saw the revolver, resting on her thigh. Tracking Martelli as he fell to his knees, the revolver had been steady as a rock. Watching her victim bleed, her eyes had been ice. Bright-blue ice.

Killer’s eyes.

Lover’s eyes—killer’s eyes.

Ahead, at the top of the rise, the road ran along the wire fence. He brought the pickup to a stop, set the brake, got out of the truck. From here, the creek was visible for a hundred yards downstream. Was Bernhardt holding John concealed in the bushes that lined the creek bed? This was rattlesnake country. Did Bernhardt know?

Slowly, watchfully, he pivoted, searching for some hint of movement, some sign of life. The full-circle scrutiny ended with Theo, in the truck. She sat motionless, watching him. Theo with her revolver—waiting. Watching him with her ice-blue eyes. Waiting as a killer cat waited, motionless.

As he moved toward the truck, he saw the sparkle of sun striking chrome. The glint came from a grove of oak and manzanita that grew on the far side of the fence beyond the gate. It was a car, parked among the trees and bushes. Had he brought the key ring with the key to the gate? No. Without checking, he knew he hadn’t. As he walked to the fence, he signaled to Theo. She got out of the truck, came toward him. He could see the tension in her body. A predator. A beautifully fashioned predator. In her right hand, she carried the revolver as if it were integral to herself.

“What is it?” She spoke softly, avidly.

“There’s a car—” He pointed. “It’s in that oak grove.”

Was it Fowler? Bernhardt? Someone else?

Anyone else?

Were eyes watching?

He looked at the fence: six feet high, topped by two strands of barbed wire. High enough to stop deer. Meaning that—

To his left, ten feet away, he saw an irregularity in the fence.

“Look—” Quickly, he covered the ten feet. It was a flap cut in the wire, three feet across the top, three feet high, bent flush with the fence, to disguise the cut. Bolt cutters had done the job. Premeditation. Planning. Organization.

The law?

Would Fowler have done it? As he eyed the minimal gap, he felt his solar plexus suddenly contract. He was giggling.
Giggling.
Imagining Fowler squeezing through a three-foot gap, he was giggling. Secretly. Shamefully.

“Look at this.” Theo was pointing at the ground. In the soft, sandy, gravelly earth, the best kind of soil for grapes, he saw footprints. Two sets of footprints, heading from the cut fence to the dirt track, then turning left, toward the creek and the abandoned barn.

“Someone came through here to get him.” As she said it, Theo raised her head, looked up and down the road, looked at the outline of the stranger’s car: pinpoints of chrome, splashes of orange-painted metal visible through the foliage. She looked down at the footprints, followed their direction with her eyes. “They’re still here, somewhere.” Her voice was low; her eyes were in constant motion. “These tracks only go one way.”

“Bernhardt.” Price spoke bitterly. “It’s got to be Bernhardt, that son of a bitch.”

Not replying, she turned away from him. With the revolver swinging at her side, she was following the footprints, back the way they’d come.

“Get the rifle,” she said. “And lock the truck.”

A
S HE PULLED OPEN
the barn door and slipped inside, Bernhardt looked down at the tracks in the dirt; he could see the outline of his Reeboks and the arc of the sagging door dragging in the dust. He drew the door shut and looked for a catch, a bar, something to secure the door. There was nothing. He turned, quickly surveyed the barn’s interior, noted a line of horse stalls, a jumble of empty packing boxes, the rusted-out hulk of an ancient truck, oddments of moldering farm equipment.

John and Janice stood together beside a ladder that led up to a hayloft. He went to them, spoke softly to the woman: “They’re coming back down the road, on foot. He’s got a rifle, she’s got a pistol.” As he spoke, reflexively, he touched his revolver, holstered at the small of his back.

“That shot—” Janice moved a half-step closer to him, unconsciously seeking protection.

Admitting to his own uncertainty, the first hint of fear, Bernhardt shook his head. His eyes were fixed on the door. “I don’t know. It could’ve been anything.” As he spoke, he was aware that John was moving away from them, toward the wall that fronted on the dirt road. The golden light of the gathering sunset came in narrow shafts through the cracks in the wall. John put his eye to a knothole.

“The lookout,” Bernhardt whispered, making an effort to smile at the woman beside him. When he’d first met her, hardly more than a week ago, sitting across from an elegant marble coffee table in her expensive hotel suite, she’d seemed remarkably assured, completely in control. Now, wearing jeans that had gotten dirty when she’d climbed through the fence, hair in disarray, with sweat beading her forehead and upper lip, she was a different person: a small, uneasy woman in a strange place. Now she pointed to the ladder. “There’s a hayloft, up there. We could hide in the hay.”

Instinctively, Bernhardt shook his head. “We’d be cornered, up there. I’d rather face them. Right here.” He pointed to the stalls, and the empty packing boxes and the hulk of the truck. “You and John can get out of sight. If they come in, I’ll talk to them.”

“But the guns …”

He smiled. “There won’t be a shootout, don’t worry. I’m no hero. It doesn’t pay.”

Trying to answer the smile, she said, “The woman—who is she?”

“She’s Price’s girlfriend.”

Beside him, she stood silently, her eyes fixed on the figure of the small boy, half-crouched, his eye to the knothole.

“Alan—I’m scared. The guns … that shot …”

He stepped closer, put his arm around her shoulders, squeezed. “Shooting trespassers is like sending people to the gas chamber for overtime parking.”

She tried to smile. It was a failed effort.

At the far end of the wall, alien movement disturbed the golden lines of sunshine. Reacting, John’s body stiffened; his outspread hands shifted against the rough wood, fingers widespread, tightened.

“They’re out there,” Janice whispered. “They’re right beside the barn.”

Bernhardt nodded, moved to stand in front of her as he faced the door.

“T
HEY COULD BE ANYWHERE
.” Theo’s voice was wary. “If they’re hiding, they could be anywhere.”

Price took a fresh grip on the rifle. Had he remembered to set the safety? Had he jacked a round in the chamber? Yes, the safety was set. But was there a cartridge in the chamber, ready? “Just a minute.” He stopped walking, rested the rifle butt against his thigh, released the safety catch, drew back the bolt. Yes, he could see the brass cartridge casing. As he pushed the bolt home and reset the safety, the specter of Martelli suddenly seared his consciousness. It was a progression of quick cuts: Martelli half-raising the 30-30; Martelli’s face, eyes wide with shock; Martelli falling; Martelli’s upper chest, blood-soaked.

Martelli, dying?

Dead?

If Maria or one of the winery workers had called emergency, would he have heard the sound of the ambulance’s siren? Yes. In this quiet, open country, sound carried.

“Self-defense,”
she’d said. Yes.
Yes.
Certainly, self-defense. And kidnapping, too. Yes.

With the rifle he gestured to a small pathway that led from the barn on their left down to the stream on their right. The pathway was grass, not dirt; there were no footprints. “Let’s try the creek first. That’s where he spends most of his time.”

“I think we should’ve checked out their car.”

“Let’s check the creek, first.”

She made no reply.

At the place where the path intersected the dirt road, across from the derelict barn, he saw another bit of chrome glinting from a thicket beside the barn.

“Theo.” He spoke softly, involuntarily. If he had let a moment pass—a single moment, while he considered—would he have said it? Remembering her eyes after she’d shot Martelli, would he have said it?

Instantly, she turned toward him. With the movement, the revolver came up, held at the ready. It was too late now. The second thought had come too late.

He pointed to the thicket. “That’s his bike. There, in those bushes beside the barn.”

J
OHN WAS ABOUT TO
draw back from the wall when he saw them: his father carrying his deer-hunting rifle, and the woman carrying a pistol.

It was her.
Her.

The woman he’d seen the night his mother died. The woman who’d come down the stairs from the second floor with his father.

As he watched them come closer, just as they’d come closer that night as he lay on the couch, it all came back: angry voices, the crash of furniture, the sound of fighting, and then the terrible silence, broken only by the sound of furtive movement, and the hushed voices. His father’s voice, and the woman’s voice.

Murderers.

Murderers.

The word struck him like a hostile hand, so strong that it forced a low moan of pain, brought the sting of sudden tears, doubled him over.

“John—?” his aunt’s voice called. Through the blur of tears, he saw her stricken face. She was coming closer. Her hands were on his shoulders. If only she would draw him to her, hug him as his mother used to, his earliest memory.

“John. What is it? What’d you see?”

“It—” He swallowed, fought tears. Suddenly it had all come down to this time, this place, this moment.

Now.

“It—it’s her.” With great effort, he raised his arm, pointed. “That lady. She was there, that night. The—the night my mommy died. She was there. With—with—”

Could he do it?

Could he say it?

With all the time gone, with the whole world slipping away, could he say it? Here? Now?

“With my—my father. They were both of them there. Upstairs. They—”

“Oh, God. Oh, John.”

As, yes, her arms came around him, drawing him close—holding him. Finally holding him close.

T
HEO POINTED TO THE
ground, to the fresh footprints in the soft dirt, to the curving track left by the door.

“That’s a child’s footprint,” she whispered. “That’s John. Bernhardt’s got John, in there.”

“It—it could be the sheriff, though. We don’t know it’s Bernhardt. Not really.”

“The sheriff wouldn’t hide.” It was a tight, furious hiss. “It’s
Bernhardt.”
As she spoke, she gripped the door with her left hand, holding the revolver ready in her right hand.

“B—be careful. He could have a gun.”

“Help
me, dammit.”

He gripped the door, pulled it open far enough for her to slip through. After a last glance back over his shoulder, one final glimpse of the familiar sun-drenched terrain he was leaving, he followed her into the shadows of the old barn.

H
IDDEN BEHIND THE SKEWED
stack of broken packing boxes, Bernhardt drew his revolver, swung the cylinder out. One chamber was empty, insurance against accidental discharge, if the gun were dropped. Before they’d left the car he’d put a half-handful of cartridges in his pocket. With his eyes fixed on the barn door, he took a single cartridge from his pocket, slipped it into the empty chamber, noiselessly locked the cylinder in place. Here—now—the safety theory had inverted. Here—now—the sixth cartridge could mean survival.

From this position he could see both his charges: Janice, crouched behind the farthest horse stall, John kneeling on the ground beside the truck’s rear wheel. Janice was thirty feet away from him, John was twenty feet away. It was a defensive triangle, a sixty-second defensive improvisation. He could see them; they could see him. But they couldn’t see each other. He was the director, then. Just as, in that other world, his job was to deploy actors on a stage.

But this was real life. This was—

From his far right, fifty feet away, he heard the sound of the door scraping dirt. On the earthen floor of the barn, a slender line of sunlight was widening—widening. A foot appeared, then a leg, a hand gripping a revolver: Theo Stark, moving silently, silkily—dangerously. The female of the species, on the prowl. Followed by Dennis Price, holding a rifle like he might handle a snake.

Outside, at a distance, the rifle would count; the handgun would be useless.

Here, at close quarters, the maneuverability of the revolver could make the difference.

He looked at Janice. Smiled. Winked.

He looked at John. Smiled. Winked. Placed his forefinger to his lips, pantomiming
Shhh.

Both of them smiled in return. Janice tremulously, John timidly. From where they crouched concealed, neither of them could see the woman and the man as they advanced: the woman in the lead, searching ahead; the man behind, covering her, his head and his rifle swinging from side to side.

Then, suddenly breaking the silence, Price called softly: “John?”

Bernhardt saw the boy’s head come up, saw his lips part, an involuntary response. Quickly, Bernhardt shook his head, raised his hand, once more the director, life or death, now. Confused, the boy frowned, blinked—but remained silent, lowering his head.

The woman and the man had covered more than half the distance between the door and the derelict truck. Another ten paces and Theo, still in the lead, would see John, crouched beside the truck’s big rear wheel.

Five paces.