The Twisted Window (19 page)

After he had his basket filled with supplies, he carried it to the front of the store and set it down on the counter.

"So, how many sisters you got, Brad?" Renzo asked a bit too casually as he totaled up the bill.

"Only one," Brad said.

"She younger or older than the one who got hit by the car?"

Brad regarded the man in bewilderment.

"I said, I only have one sister. All I've ever had is one sister. You can look out the window and see her there in the front seat."

"I already saw the kid in the car," said Renzo. "I guess I must be mixed up about what happened. It was somebody else who got killed, then, is that it? That newspaper story was wrong? It was another kid?"

"I don't know what you read in the paper," said Brad. "But as you can see, my sister's doing just fine. I'm taking her up to the cabin to teach her to fish."

He paid for the groceries, noting as he did so that he was running low on cash. When he phoned Jamie, he would have to ask her to bring up some money.

He went back out to the car, opened the rear door, and set the bags of groceries on the back seat. Then he climbed into the front and started the engine. Mindy was still in the same position in which he had left her. Her thumb was in her mouth, and her free arm was locked around the toy monkey.

"That thumb-sucking business has got to go," Brad said. "Is that something you started doing in Texas?"

The child regarded him solemnly and did not answer.

"I'm asking you a question, Mindy," Brad said.

"Cricket," the little girl murmured without removing the thumb from her mouth.

"Mindy," Brad said. "Your name is Mindy, not Cricket. I can see where Jamie and I have our work cut out for us."

He pulled out of the parking lot and turned east onto the road leading up from Terrero into the hills. The fact that this weekend was the culmination of spring break in the public schools was evidenced by the number of families who had come up to the mountains to wind up their children's week-long holiday. In the camping area just beyond the village, pickup trucks, mobile homes, and campers were parked bumper to bumper. Any space that remained was jammed with pup tents and deck chairs, and the air was thick with smoke from charcoal grills. The blast of conflicting rock music played at top volume on an assortment of portable ghetto blasters all but drowned out the shrieks and laughter of romping children.

Beyond this, the road rose abruptly into the forest, looping back and forth in a series of hairpin curves. Steep and winding, it required skillful driving to maneuver, but each twist and turn revealed a spectacular new vista as pine woods gave way to groves of shimmering aspen and green meadows became frosted over with blue and yellow wildflowers. In one spot, a stand of silver birch trees stood out from the surrounding greenery, smooth and tapered as candles, and in another, a galloping stream hurled itself dramatically over the edge of a suicidal drop, only to resume its journey more placidly a hundred yards below.

As Brad took the car around a curve, a deer leapt out in front of him, so close that its feathered tail brushed against a fender, and farther on, a raccoon strolled casually along by the side of the road as though expecting the driver of some passing vehicle to stop and offer it a lift.

The dirt road leading to the cabin wound off into the trees just short of the access point to the footpaths and horse trails that led into the depths of the wilderness area. When he turned here, Brad had to shift down into first gear. The snows of the previous winter had engraved deep ruts in the hard packed earth, which spring rains had then filled with water, and the Chevy lurched and slid and floundered in mud as it inched its uncertain way forward and upward. Bushes scraped and slapped at the sides of the car, and branches clawed at the windows with sharp, taloned fingers, as though they were trying to force their way in through the glass.

Mindy covered her face with her hands and wailed.

"I told you, no more crying," Brad reminded her.

"Don't like it here," sobbed Mindy. "Cricket wants to go home!"

"We are nearly home," Brad told her. "It's not much farther. Once we hole up in the cabin we're going to be safe."

But was that true? The question occurred to him suddenly. To whom had Tracy been making her surreptitious phone call? In the car after leaving Winfield, he had talked so much about the cabin that she might suspect that he would take his sister there. Of course, she did not know its exact location, but anyone who stopped in the village could find that out from Renzo.

What if Tracy had decided Mindy belonged with the Carvers? What if she had called the police to report that Brad had taken her? Although Gavin did not have legal claim to the child, neither did Brad. It was his mother who had been awarded custody, and at the time, she had seemed to want it very much. Still, once the legal battle was over, as Tracy's father had demonstrated, the responsibility of full-time parenting could seem less appealing. The fact that their mother had shown so little interest in getting Mandy back did seem to indicate that she was no longer eager to raise her. If the police should arrive at the cabin and confiscate the child, it was not inconceivable she might be returned to Gavin.

Well, he would not allow that to happen, Brad vowed silently, glancing across at the girl on the seat beside him He had not brought her this far to give her up now. No one was going to take Mandy, as long as he was able to prevent it, and he had no intention of leaving her unguarded.

The road was becoming steeper and more rutted the farther they progressed After about three quarters of a mile, they came to a rise, and the Chevy lunged up it, grasped, lost its grip, and slid back down Brad floored the accelerator, and the car shot forward again for a second charge. This time its tires caught hold and it managed to haul itself laboriously upward until it reached the peak of the slope and plunged triumphantly out into the knee-deep grasses of a mountain meadow Brad put the car into neutral and switched off the engine.

Immediately the world was filled with the trill of birds and the far, sweet song of wind in rustling branches

"There it is," Brad told Mindy reverently "Look up there!"

The cabin was nestled in a hollow on the lower slope of a hill, like a small brown wren settled snugly into a nest The mountain cedar grew so thick around it that the trees seemed to be holding the little house in their arms, and the stream that tumbled by at the base of the porch was a leaping, laughing miracle of churning silver.

Brad opened the door of the car and got out.

"Come on, Mindy," he said "We can't drive any closer than this. We're going to have to walk across the field and climb that hill. We'll take just enough supplies right now so we can eat and get ourselves settled, and I'll come back later and bring up everything else."

He opened the rear door and extracted the groceries.

Mindy shook her head stubbornly and refused to look at him. "Don't like it here," she muttered. "Want to go home."

"You can take Monk-Monk with you," Brad said enticingly. "There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm here to take care of you. If anyone comes, well hear their car when they're a long way off. Nobody's going to take you away from me, baby." He shifted the sack of groceries into the crook of his left arm.

Then, with his free right hand, he picked up the gun.

CHAPTER 18

It was mid afternoon by the time they reached the Pecos, and later still when Jamie finally maneuvered her car up the last steep stretch of muddy road that brought them over the top of the rise and out onto the grassy plateau across from the cabin.

She pulled the car to a stop next to Brad's and shut off the motor.

"So, he's really here," Tracy said, gazing across at the familiar blue Chevy that stood opposite them.

"The man at the store in the village told us he would be."

"I know, but I still can't believe we ever found this place." Tracy gave the field a hasty perusal. "Where's the cabin?"

"Up there," Jamie said, gesturing toward the hill on the far side of the meadow. "It's hard to make out anything with the sun in your eyes. It's in all that foliage by the side of the stream."

"Oh, I see it now," Tracy said, squinting into the blinding glare of the afternoon light. "I can see why Brad had to park the car down here. There's no way anybody could get a vehicle up between those trees."

"This is backpacking country," said Jamie. "We're right at the edge of the Wilderness. It's lucky for us there was a road that came in this far."

She opened the door on her side of the car and climbed out. Shading her eyes with her hand, she stared up at the shadows that encompassed the cabin.

"I think there's somebody out on the porch," she said.

"Is it Brad," Tracy asked, "or Cricket?"

"I can't tell. I just thought I saw some movement there by the steps." Jamie drew a long breath. "Brad, is that you?" she called.

There was a moment of silence; then Brad's voice floated down to them.

"How did you get here, Tracy? Where did you get the car?"

"He thinks you're me!" exclaimed Tracy, making an automatic move to open the door on the passenger side.

"No, stay where you are," Jamie cautioned. "It's better if he keeps thinking he's dealing with only one of us." Raising her voice again, she called to the boy on the hill above her, "This isn't Tracy, Brad! It's Jamie!"

"Get back!" Brad shouted. "You can't fool me, Tracy Lloyd! I know why you're here! You want to take Mindy back to Gavin! Well, I'm not going to let you have her! You know I've got a gun!"

"You're faking, Brad!" Jamie took an impulsive step out into the field. "You don't have a gun, but even if you did, you'd never shoot anybody!"

"Don't bait him like that!" hissed Tracy. "He does have a rifle. He used it to threaten Doug Carver. Face it, Jamie, Brad's as dangerous as he is crazy!"

"Don't you dare call Brad crazy!" Jamie said angrily.

"What term would you use for someone who threatens to kill people?"

"He's been pretending too long, that's all," said Jamie. "You don't have any idea of all that Brad's been through. It's enough to have made anybody act sort of—different."

"Tragedies occur, and people live through them," said Tracy. "Brad's not the only person in the world to lose someone he loved."

"With him it's worse than just having lost his sister."

"You mean, there's more to the story?"

"Yes, there's more."

"I don't understand. What else could there possibly be?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Jamie said shortly. "None of it would have happened if his mother hadn't pushed him so far."

"I don't think this is something we ought to be dealing with," Tracy told her. "I think we should go back to Terrero and call the state police."

"No," Jamie objected. "We just can't do that to Brad. This whole stupid thing would get blown out of all proportion. I'm going to go up there and try to talk some sense into him. No matter how upset and confused he is, he'd never hurt me."

"Look, we're not the only two people involved here," said Tracy. "Maybe you're right, maybe you could march straight up there and nothing bad would happen to you. But the thing is, Cricket's in that cabin too. If Brad should go nuts with that gun, anything could happen. We can't afford to take chances with a little girl's life."

"All right," Jamie said. "First, we'll get the Carver kid out. After that, I'll go up and see if I can reason with Brad."

Tracy regarded her doubtfully.

"You actually think he'll allow Cricket to come down here?"

"No, of course he won't, but one of us can go up and get her. Brad knows I'm here, but he hasn't caught a glimpse of you yet. He doesn't have any idea there are two of us. The door on the passenger side faces away from the cabin. If I divert his attention by walking out into the middle of the meadow, you can jump out of the car and make a dash for the trees."

"What, then?" Tracy asked skeptically. "What good would that do?"

"Once you're in among the cedars, you'll be as good as invisible. You can work your way around the edge of the meadow to the base of the hill. There's a path that starts over there by that big clump of bushes. It runs along the side of the stream, all the way up through the woods. If you take that, it will lead you to the back door of the cabin."

"Then what would I do?" Tracy asked her. "Open it and walk in? I don't think Brad's going to have the welcome mat out for me."

"He'll be out on the steps, just the way he is now," said Jamie. "He can't see what's happening inside when he's busy talking to me. You can slip in through the back, grab Cricket, and get her out of there. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes."

"That might work," Tracy conceded, "provided the back door's unlocked and Cricket's in the house and not out front with Brad. Let's say I do get her out, though, what happens after that? When he discovers what we've done, won't he take it out on you?"

"Brad would never do anything to hurt me," Jamie said confidently. "Well, what do you say? Are you game to give this a try?