Watchers (53 page)
In the kitchen, the intruder hissed loudly, a sound like escaping gas, which was immediately followed by a
click-click-click
that might have been made by its sharply clawed feet or hands tapping against a hard surface.
click-click-click
that might have been made by its sharply clawed feet or hands tapping against a hard surface.
Travis had caught Einstein’s tremors. He felt as if he were a fly on the edge of a spider’s web, about to step into a trap.
He remembered Ted Hockney’s bitten, bloodied, eyeless face.
Click-click.
In antiterrorist training, he had been taught how to stalk men, and he had been good at it. But the problem here was that the yellow-eyed intruder was maybe as smart as a man but could not be counted on to
think
like a man, so Travis had no way of knowing what it might do next, how it might respond to any initiative he made. Therefore, he could never outthink it, and by its alien nature the creature had a perpetual and deadly advantage of surprise.
think
like a man, so Travis had no way of knowing what it might do next, how it might respond to any initiative he made. Therefore, he could never outthink it, and by its alien nature the creature had a perpetual and deadly advantage of surprise.
Click
.
.
Travis quietly took a step back from the open kitchen door, then another step, treading with exaggerated care, not wanting the thing to discover that he was retreating because only God knew what it might do if it knew he was slipping out of its reach. Einstein padded silently into the living room, now equally eager to put distance between himself and the intruder.
When he reached Ted Hockney’s corpse, Travis glanced away from the dining room, searching for the least littered route to the front door—and he saw Nora standing by the armchair. Frightened by the gunfire, she had gotten a butcher’s knife from the kitchenette in the Airstream and had come to see if he needed help.
He was impressed by her courage but horrified to see her there in the glow of the corner lamp. Suddenly it seemed as if his nightmares of losing both Einstein and Nora were on the verge of coming true, the Cornell Curse again, because now they were both inside the house, both vulnerable, both possibly within striking distance of the thing in the kitchen.
She started to speak.
Travis shook his head and raised one hand to his mouth.
Silenced, she bit her lip and glanced from him to the dead man on the floor.
As Travis quietly stepped through the rubble, he was stricken by a feeling that the intruder had gone out the back of the house and was coming around the side, heading for the front door, risking being seen by neighbors in the gloom of twilight, intending to enter behind them, swift and fast. Nora was standing between Travis and the front door, so he would not have a clear shot at the creature if it came that way; hell, it would be all over Nora one second after it reached the door. Trying not to panic, trying not to think of Hockney’s eyeless face, Travis moved more quickly across the living room, risking the crackle of some debris underfoot, hoping those small noises would not carry to the kitchen if the intruder was still out there: Reaching Nora, he took her by the arm and propelled her toward the front door, out onto the stoop and down the stairs, looking left and right, half-expecting to see the living nightmare rushing at them, but it was nowhere in sight.
The gunshots and Nora’s shouting had drawn neighbors as far as their front doors all along the street. A few had even come outside onto porches and lawns. Somebody surely would have called the cops. Because of Einstein’s status as a much-wanted fugitive, the police seemed almost as grave a danger as the yellow-eyed thing in the house.
The three of them piled into the pickup. Nora locked her door, and Travis locked his. He started the engine and backed the truck—and the Airstream—out of the driveway, into the street. He was aware of people staring.
The twilight was going to be short-lived, as it always was near the ocean. Already, the sunless sky was blackish in the east, purple overhead, and a steadily darkening blood-red in the west. Travis was grateful for the oncoming cover of nightfall, although he knew the yellow-eyed creature would be sharing it with them.
He drove past the gaping neighbors, none of whom he had ever met during his years of self-imposed solitude, and he turned at the first corner. Nora held Einstein tightly, and Travis drove as fast as he dared. The trailer rocked and swayed behind them when he took the next couple of corners at too great a speed.
“What happened in there?” she asked.
“It killed Hockney earlier today or yesterday—”
“It?”
“—and it was waiting for us to come home.”
“
It?
” she repeated.
It?
” she repeated.
Einstein mewled.
Travis said, “I’ll have to explain later.” He wondered if he could explain. No description he gave of the intruder would do it justice; he did not possess the words necessary to convey the degree of its strangeness.
They had gone no more than eight blocks when they heard sirens in the neighborhood that they had just left. Travis drove another four blocks and parked in the empty lot of a high school.
“What now?” Nora asked.
“We abandon the trailer and the truck,” he said. “They’ll be looking for both.”
He put the revolver in her purse, and she insisted on slipping the butcher’s knife in there, too, rather than leave it behind.
They got out of the pickup and, in the descending night, walked past the side of the school, across an athletic field, through a gate in a chain-link fence, and onto a residential street lined with mature trees.
With nightfall, the breeze became a blustery wind, warm and parched. It blew a few dry leaves at them and harried dust ghosts along the pavement.
Travis knew they were too conspicuous even without the trailer and truck. The neighbors would be telling the police to look for a man, woman, and golden retriever—not the most common trio. They would be wanted for questioning in the death of Ted Hockney, so the search for them would not be perfunctory. They had to get out of sight quickly.
He had no friends with whom they could take refuge. After Paula died, he had withdrawn from his few friends, and he hadn’t maintained relationships with any of the real-estate agents who had once worked for him. Nora had no friends, either, thanks to Violet Devon.
The houses they passed, most with warm lights in the windows, seemed to mock them with unattainable sanctuary.
Garrison Dilworth lived on the border between Santa Barbara and Montecito, on a lushly landscaped half acre, in a stately Tudor home that did not mesh well with the California flora but which perfectly complemented the attorney. When he answered the door, he was wearing black loafers, gray slacks, a navy-blue sports jacket, a white knit shirt, and half-lens tortoise-shell reading glasses over which he peered at them in surprise but, fortunately, not with displeasure. “Well, hello there, newlyweds!”
“Are you alone?” Travis asked as he and Nora and Einstein stepped into a large foyer floored with marble.
“Alone? Yes.”
On the way over, Nora had told Travis that the attorney’s wife had passed away three years ago and that he was now looked after by a housekeeper named Gladys Murphy.
“Mrs. Murphy?” Travis asked.
“She’s gone home for the day,” the attorney said, closing the door behind them. “You look distraught. What on earth’s wrong?”
“We need help,” Nora said.
“But,” Travis warned, “anyone who helps us may be putting himself in jeopardy with the law.”
Garrison raised his eyebrows. “What have you done? Judging by the solemn look of you—I’d say you’ve kidnapped the president.”
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Nora assured him.
“Yes, we have,” Travis disagreed. “And we’re still doing it—we’re harboring the dog.”
Puzzled, Garrison frowned down at the retriever.
Einstein whined, looking suitably miserable and lovable.
“And there’s a dead man in my house,” Travis said.
Garrison’s gaze shifted from the dog to Travis. “Dead man?”
“Travis didn’t kill him,” Nora said.
Garrison looked at Einstein again.
“Neither did the dog,” Travis said. “But I’ll be wanted as a material witness, something like that, sure as hell.”
“Mmmmm,” Garrison said, “why don’t we go into my study and get this straightened out?”
He led them through an enormous and only half-lit living room, along a short hallway, into a den with rich teak paneling and a copper ceiling. The maroon leather armchairs and couch looked expensive and comfortable. The polished teak desk was massive, and a detailed model of a five-masted schooner, all sails rigged, stood on one corner. Nautical items—a ship’s wheel, a brass sextant, a carved bullock’s horn filled with tallow that held what appeared to be sail-making needles, six types of ship lanterns, a helmsman’s bell, and sea charts—were used as decoration. Travis saw photographs of a man and woman on various sailboats, and the man was Garrison.
An open book and a half-finished glass of Scotch were on a small table beside one of the armchairs. Evidently, the attorney had been relaxing here when they had rung the doorbell. Now, he offered them a drink, and they both said they would have whatever he was having.
Leaving the couch for Travis and Nora, Einstein took the second armchair. He sat in it, rather than curling up, as if prepared to participate in the discussion to come.
At a corner wet bar, Garrison poured Chivas Regal on the rocks in two glasses. Although Nora was unaccustomed to whiskey, she startled Travis by downing her drink in two long swallows and asking for another. He decided that she had the right idea, so he followed suit and took his empty glass back to the bar while Garrison was refilling Nora’s.
“I’d like to tell you everything and have your help,” Travis said, “but you really must understand you could be putting yourself on the wrong side of the law.”
Recapping the Chivas, Garrison said, “You’re talking as a layman now. As an attorney, I assure you the law isn’t a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather . . . the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it—very loose, the line of the law—so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always—short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder—safely on the right side. That’s a daunting thing to realize but true. I’ve no fear that anything you tell me could land my bottom in a prison cell, Travis.”
Half an hour later, Travis and Nora had told him everything about Einstein. For a man only a couple of months shy of his seventy-first birthday, the silver-haired attorney had a quick and open mind. He asked the right questions and did not scoff. When given a ten-minute demonstration of Einstein’s uncanny abilities, he did not protest that it was all mere trickery and flummery; he accepted what he saw, and he readjusted his ideas of what was normal and possible in this world. He exhibited greater mental agility and flexibility than most men half his age.
Holding Einstein on his lap in the big leather armchair, gently scratching the dog’s ears, Garrison said, “If you go to the media, hold a press conference, blow the whole thing wide open, then we might be able to sue in court to allow you to keep custody of the dog.”
“Do you really think that would work?” Nora asked.
“At best,” Garrison admitted, “it’s a fifty-fifty chance.”
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