Death Benefits_ A Novel Part 31

She was silent for a few seconds. "I think I see it. That square way up there?"

Walker asked, "Are you afraid of heights?"

"Of course I'm afraid of heights," she snapped.

"Stillman can go up first, and then you," said Walker. "I'll be under you, and if anything ... happens, I'll catch you."

Stillman's voice came out of the dark. "He's easily dumb enough to do it, you know." Stillman set his toe on the lowest wooden slat and began to climb.

Mary said to him, "If you fall, don't expect me to catch you."

"I'll use extra caution." He kept climbing, and soon they heard him lift the cover off the hatch. Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so they saw his legs grow shorter and disappear into the deeper darkness above.

Walker started to guide Mary to the ladder, but she shrugged his hand off. "I see it," she said. She reached to the highest rung she could and climbed. Walker watched from below, trying to discern the exact position and att.i.tude of her body in the dim light so he could judge her trajectory if she slipped and fell backward. She kept her head up and climbed like a person who hated it and was determined to get it finished before she had time to think. In a minute only her legs were visible. She suddenly rose out of sight as Stillman took her hands and lifted her up.

Walker climbed quickly too, then carefully replaced the hatch cover and looked around him to find the others. The open square on the third level above them seemed brighter than the second level, even at night, but he could see little. He heard a shuffle of feet and moved toward it. He whispered, "I'm up."

Mary said, "Good for you. I'll go first this time, and you can both catch me." She was already climbing. Her body momentarily blocked the light in the opening above, then disappeared again, and Stillman began to climb. Walker waited until he was up before he climbed too.

He reached the upper level to find Stillman standing at the western side of the belfry, staring out between the slats, and Mary, at the eastern side, looking at him. "This isn't as bad as I expected."

"It's not the sort of place where somebody will just happen by and stumble on us," Walker agreed.

Stillman said, "They're moving." Walker and Mary stepped close to Stillman and looked down. The cars had spread out along Was.h.i.+ngton Street, and now they were taking positions at each of the streets that ran up from the river into the heart of the town. At some signal that Walker could not see, they began to cruise up all of the streets at once. On each street there was a lead car with its high-beam headlights on. Behind it at least a hundred feet was a second car with its headlights off.

Stillman said, "See what they're doing? The first car comes along, trying to light everything up. If it goes by you, and you're an optimist, you think you're in the clear. You break cover and move. Only you're not in the clear because there's another one coming along that you didn't see."

"I hope those two guys are optimists," said Walker.

"Come here," said Stillman. "When the cars coming up Main get right below us and close to the street lamps, see if you can make out a license plate."

Walker knelt on the floor and put his face close to a louvered opening. He could see the two cars coming slowly up the brightly lit commercial street. Both of the cars on Main had their high-beam headlights on. Each time the lead car reached a corner, it would pause briefly while the driver looked up the cross street and the car behind caught up. Then the lead car would move forward again. The lead driver seemed to be trying to stay abreast of the cars on the other streets.

As Walker stared at the white license plate, a suspicion formed in his mind. The print on it seemed to be green. He squinted and leaned forward as the car approached the block where the church was, trying to screen out the glare of the headlights and keep his eyes on the plate. It pa.s.sed the church and stopped at the corner. As the car behind it came closer, its bright headlights made the reflective surface of the rear license plate glow more and more brightly. "It's not New Hamps.h.i.+re," said Walker. He could see that the green numbers were outlined in orange. "The first plate looks like ...Florida!"

Stillman nodded. "That's what I was afraid of. When the first one crossed the bridge, I thought that's what the plate looked like. But I figured you had seen a lot more of them lately than I have. It explains why they're all new. They're rental cars."

Walker said, "The second one is something else. Maybe Georgia."

"What does that mean?" asked Mary.

Stillman said quietly, "It means we came to the right place. It looks like everybody involved in those murders is turning up here at once."

"It seems that would make it the wrong place," she said. "I wonder why they're all here now."

Stillman answered, "This afternoon, before we saw those two guys, we were in the Old Mill. Waiters were setting up for a party of thirty or forty. We couldn't figure out why. It must have been for them. They've been away-down in Florida, where the hurricane was-stealing more money. It was going to be a welcome-home party. I guess the two we saw this afternoon were just the first ones to arrive."

"They must all live here," said Walker. "It wasn't just Scully and Bowles."

"So n.o.body down there is searching for those two killers, right?" said Mary. "They're searching for us."

Stillman nodded. "I think the cops figured that as soon as they told us the two killers were gone, we'd leave. Only when we didn't leave, the plan had to change. They decided to wait until after dark, when these guys got here and they'd have the manpower to find us. By then the rest of the town would be asleep, most of the strangers would be gone-"

"Those tourists," Mary interrupted. "The ones in the restaurant."

Stillman said, "I think they were supposed to be gone, back to wherever they were staying, before those guys got here. They weren't. They couldn't be allowed to see forty men show up, get guns from the police, and search the town. The cops will probably keep them in a holding cell overnight, where they won't see or hear anything. In the morning they'll tell them it was a case of mistaken ident.i.ty, apologize, and let them go."

Mary was quiet for a few seconds. "How are we going to get out of here?"

Stillman said, "If we look closely enough, we'll see an opportunity."

"To do what-shoot our way out?"

"Those men down there appear to be prepared for that sort of thing," said Stillman. "We, on the other hand, are not."

"We're not?"

"No guns," said Walker.

Her eyes widened. "You came here looking for killers, and you didn't even think to bring a gun?"

"We weren't looking for killers," said Walker. "We were looking for a dead man's house." When she remained rigid, he added, "We were just doing research."

She glared at him, then at Stillman, and folded her arms across her chest. Then she turned to face the slatted panel beside her, clearly only because it was a way to end the conversation. After a moment, her arms unfolded and she grasped one of the louvers as she brought her face close to it. "Uh-oh."

Walker stepped to her side and looked. Some of the cars had reached the spot at the east end of town where the streets ended and a long fence separated the town from a vast, gra.s.sy expanse of field. The cars were moving toward Main Street. "They've come to the end," he said. "What's wrong?"

"Not the cars," Mary said. "Down this street. The houses."

Walker bent lower and looked out between the two louvers that were at Mary's eye level. He could see that on Oak Street, something new was going on. There were police cars with their red and blue lights flas.h.i.+ng, creeping slowly up the street. There were other cops on foot, walking quickly from house to house, knocking on doors. He raised his head one level to see the block on Oak where the police cars had already been.

Lights shone from all the windows, and the porch lamps and driveway floods threw broad patches of light on the ground. In the new illumination, he could see people. There were pedestrians coming out into the middle of the quiet block, walking in small groups. Sometimes there were pairs or small knots of people, but all walked toward Main Street. They looked like victims of some disaster streaming out of a city.

He moved his vantage again. The police cars had left the block where he had first seen them. Lights were turning on there, too. Doors were opening, and people were coming outside. As they reached Main they pa.s.sed under the bright street lamps, and he could see them better. There were men and women, and some who appeared to be teenagers. A pair of men who pa.s.sed directly under the steeple before they crossed the street had white hair. Every person he saw was carrying a gun.

39.

From the church steeple, Walker watched people stream up the side streets toward the far end of Main. "There must be two hundred people," he said. "I can't believe it. Maybe the police just told everybody that there were two killers hiding in the town. That might get them all out of their houses."

Stillman squinted as he gazed down at the people in the street. "If they did, I think we can be pretty sure the description they gave doesn't fit the two guys we saw in the coffee shop." He was quiet for a moment. "I'm having trouble believing this too. I'm developing unsightly bruises from pinching myself."

Mary sat on the floor and muttered, "Keep doing it. Maybe you'll find a gun in your pocket."

"I don't think firearms would do us much good. If I could just walk up to all of those people and shoot each one in the head, it would still take more ammunition than I can carry."

She looked up at Walker. "What are they doing now?"

"I'm not sure, exactly," said Walker. "See if you can figure it out."

She stood and looked toward the east end of Main Street. There were men in police uniforms running up and down Cherry, the last cross street at the edge of town. They were waving their arms, moving people into a single line, with about six feet between them and their backs to the chain-link fence that separated the town from the empty fields. Mary moved to the next panel, and she could see that the line of citizens continued to the north end of town. When she turned and stepped to the south panel, the roof of the church below her blocked some of her view.

She stood beside Walker. From here she could see the foot of Main Street, where the bridge crossed the river, and the parking lot of the Old Mill Restaurant. That end of town seemed deserted except for the four police cars parked in the lot.

Stillman called them to the eastern side. "The cars are starting to move again."

Walker and Mary watched as headlights advanced slowly along the line of people. The cars that had been searching side streets moved back to their places and began to creep slowly down in the direction of the river. Then, on some order that could not be heard from here, the long line of people stepped forward.

The people walked straight ahead, across the street, up the lawns on Cherry, along sidewalks and driveways. Doors of houses opened, and the lights came on in the darkened windows, first on ground floors, then on upper floors. From here, people could be seen entering, then moving across lighted windows. Then back doors opened and people streamed out. Garage doors were slid upward, flashlights shone into the interiors, and then the searchers moved on. Others whose courses took them down open streets stopped and shone lights into parked cars and under them, looked up on porches, and searched the shrubbery in front yards. All along the line, the searchers moved forward at about the same pace, the line wavering a bit, but not breaking.

Fifty feet behind the line of citizens, there were men about twenty paces apart with rifles held at the ready across their chests. Occasionally one of them would point or wave an arm, as though he was directing the people in the line ahead to straighten their alignment, or exhorting them not to overlook some possible hiding place.

"It's a tiger hunt," said Stillman. "The people in that line are the beaters. The ones behind with the rifles are there in case we bust through the line." He moved to the panel of louvers on the western side. "They'll have something big waiting for the tiger at the other end. Let's see what it is."

Walker and Mary stood at his shoulders. Far down Main Street they could see the Old Mill, the river, and the opposite bank. The four police cars were still parked by the restaurant, but the activity there seemed to have ceased.

"They don't have the bridge blocked," said Mary.

"Looks a bit too inviting, doesn't it?" said Stillman. "If we wanted to drive out, that would be the way. If we wanted to go on foot, we'd still have to cross the river."

They watched for several minutes, but the sight did not change. The lights of the Old Mill Restaurant looked bright and warm and welcoming from up here.

Walker moved to the north side, where he could look down below the front of the church onto Main Street. The row of people had reached Oak Street now, and he could sight along the wavering line as it pa.s.sed. To his right, all the houses glowed with light. Every window was illuminated, every outdoor flood was s.h.i.+ning down to cast a circle of white on an area of pavement or turn a lawn day-green.

The lights on the streets to his left began to go on, one by one. "What I'm wondering is what happens when they get to the city limits and haven't found us," Walker said.

"We'll see," said Stillman. "I'm hoping they'll figure we got out on foot, and send everybody home to bed." He had not moved from the west side. His eyes were still on the river.

"Could that happen?" asked Walker.

"I don't know why not. We reported seeing two murder suspects in town, and the police made a huge effort to organize a manhunt. If we've got a complaint, it's our word against everybody else's. Our interpretation of events would sound a bit eccentric, to say the least."

Stillman suddenly bobbed up on his toes to peer out above a higher louver, then settled for a lower one. "Come here," he said. The others moved in beside him to look to the west. The cars that had been prowling the streets a block in advance of the line of citizens had reached Was.h.i.+ngton Avenue. The cars all turned onto Was.h.i.+ngton, and now they were pulling over to park by the curb.

In the riverbed, there seemed to be sudden activity. Flashlights were going on at intervals of fifty feet all along the river, as though a signal was being pa.s.sed. After a moment, men began to step up the banks to join the ones getting out of cars on Was.h.i.+ngton.

"That answers my question," said Stillman. "That's what the beaters were trying to herd us into. They wanted us to try to cross the river."

The line of townspeople reached the last row of houses on the near side of Was.h.i.+ngton Street. The lights in the windows went on. Porch lights threw a glow over the stream of people moving through the yards between the houses and spilling in from Main Street, Const.i.tution, Coulter, Federal, and New Hamps.h.i.+re. They all came together to mill about in Was.h.i.+ngton Street and along the banks of the river. The long line had now dissolved, and the people looked like the crowd at a carnival.

A police car turned its flas.h.i.+ng red and blue lights on and drove slowly along Was.h.i.+ngton. Walker could hear a faint, echoing amplified voice from a bullhorn, but he could not pick up a word. Men and women who had been in small knots talking turned and stepped aside to let the patrol car pa.s.s. Others stepped back onto the sidewalks on either side of the street. The car's progress was extremely slow, but at last it emerged from the crowd and reached Main. It turned to head away from the river.

Behind the police car, the crowd closed, already beginning to move after it. In a moment, the fast walkers were turning to follow the police car up Main. They streamed up from the direction of the river, some on the sidewalks, others in the middle of Main Street. They walked in pairs or small groups, talking as they went.

Walker put his arm around Mary and watched the people coming up the street. He waited, hoping that some of them would go into houses on Was.h.i.+ngton and turn off the lights. He held his breath as the central ma.s.s of people moved beyond Adams, Jefferson, Franklin. The compact crowd was now stretched out into a long stream, but Walker could tell that n.o.body was going home.

Mary said quietly, "Not so tight," and Walker realized that his arm had become tense. He pulled it away from her.

Far below them, there was the creak of a heavy door opening, and then voices. At first Walker tried to convince himself that the sounds were coming from Main Street, but then there was an unmistakable echo, the voices bouncing off the bare walls of an enclosed s.p.a.ce. The people were gathering in the church.

40.

Without having made a decision or spoken a word, they found themselves crouching, listening as the townspeople began to crowd into the church below them. The three were absolutely still, barely breathing, but huddled close as though that provided some measure of safety. After a long time, Walker slowly, cautiously, raised himself a bit and peered out onto Main Street, then turned and looked to the west. He eased himself back down with Stillman and Mary.

"The streets are empty," he whispered. "There are just the four police cars on the other side of the river by the restaurant, and a couple more cruising up and down. Everybody seems to be here."

Stillman said, "It feels to me as though it might be time to make a move."

Mary's eyes widened. "You mean go down there?"

"I don't see how that does us any good," said Walker.

Stillman said, "Remember when we were in Scully's house? I took his keys." He took them out of his pocket and held them up where they caught a bit of the filtered glow from the sky. "There's a car key." He looked at them thoughtfully. "None of the rest of them drove to Florida. They flew down, and rented cars to come back. No reason to think he and Bowles did any different."

Mary said, "Wait. Didn't you say the cops were going to put men in Scully's house, just like they did in Bowles's house?"

Stillman said, "Sure, but I don't know any reason to believe what the cops told us, do you?"

Walker said, "We were up here watching all afternoon, and I tried to see if I could spot policemen at Scully's house, but I couldn't."

Stillman said, "They've just walked through and turned on every light bulb in town, including the ones at Scully's. There may have been cops there, and there may still be. But our chances of seeing them with the lights on are pretty fair, and we haven't. The whole town seems to be in the church under our feet right now, so if we could get past them, we'd have a chance."

"If they went to bed, we'd have a better chance," Mary said skeptically.

Stillman said, "Any minute now, the decision could get made for us." He paused. "So what's it going to be?"

"I don't think we'll get a better chance at a car," said Walker.

Mary took a deep breath, but she didn't let it out. "Okay," she said. The breath still seemed trapped in her chest.

Walker looked out the four panels again. He picked out Scully's house. "I still don't see anybody at Scully's. There's n.o.body on Birch Street at all."

Stillman said, "We'd better get started." He crawled to the opening that led down into the darker second level. "One last thing. These people aren't just going to let us out of town. If they get their hands on us, they'll kill us."

Mary said, "Do you think you're making it easier to climb down there?"

"I'm just telling you that we have to think differently tonight," said Stillman. "If somebody points a gun at you, putting your hands in the air won't keep him from pulling the trigger."