The Triggerman Dance

To his right and down a step is a comfortable little room arranged around a big screen television set in a cabinet along the far wall. There are half a dozen chairs set up, all facing the screen. In the midst of the chairs is an electronics control console so the viewer doesn't have to get up to change channel or volume, start or stop tape, etc.

John wonders why Holt has lavished so much attention on his home entertainment system. Somehow it disappoints him. He tries to image Wayfarer sitting around at night watching Seinfeld. Suddenly, though, John feels stupid, because he realizes that this pub and its big screen theater are not for commercial entertainment, but rather for something very different. A look at the bookshelves, built eye-high along two walls, confirms his idea.

This is where Vann Holt relives the hunt.

The hunts. Of course. Holt takes trophies, but he also records his hunts. John stands before one shelf and scans the titles: Afghanistan Ram, 1966; Africa Kudu, 1988; Africa Lion, 1990; Africa Lion, 1977; Alaska Brown Bear 1989; Alaska Elk, Brown Bear, 197^ Alaska Caribou 1993 ..

John wonders: where would Baum be?

Not under "B", he sees. And not under "S".

Nowhere, he thinks, nowhere I would find it.

He goes to the end of the second shelf and studies the miscellany, but there is no indication on the labels that Holt might have recorded the death of Rebecca Harris in the Journal parking lot He backtracks to "R" and "H", but finds nothing. He tries "C for columnist; "W" for writer; "J" for Journal. Nothing.

He wouldn't label it, John thinks, and he wouldn't leave it here.

Or would he? Where could it call less attention to itself? The needle in the haystack.

He looks at his watch now, and it is 5:20 a.m. Only forty minutes, he thinks, to get all this—and the sketch and photograph in his refrigerator—to the box.

There are drawers under the shelves of video tapes, six to each wall. In the first three he finds predictable odds and ends blank tapes, spare cases, pens for marking, instruction manual for the tape player, monitor, speaker system, remotes. There are dozens of photo albums.

Next time in, he thinks.

CHAPTER 24

John made his cottage in five minutes. He tried to walk with a casual, up-with-the-sun contentedness, but he could feel his deceit in every step. What he wanted to do was sprint, to outrun the feeling somehow.

He let out the dogs, brewed some coffee, poured a cup, and got his walking stick from the deck outside. With the penlight full of film in his pants pocket and the plastic bag inside his shirt, he set out with his dogs along the lake again. He headed for his box of toys, his tunnel, his reason for being.

As soon as the trail led off into the brush, John broke into a run. A few minutes later he stopped to listen and look, but the morning was quiet—just the songbirds in the bushes, the shuffling of Boomer, Bonnie and Belle out ahead of him and the cadence of Rebecca's name in his head.

Re-bec-ca-pause. Re-bec-ca-pause. Re-bec-ca.

Near the halfway point he stopped again. The sun was creeping over the eastern hilltops, round and bright as a ripe orange. He waited, watched and listened. Just me and the last half to go, he thought. I've got the goods. Everything is going to be all right.

He shot up the narrow trail, gravel loosening under his shoes. He pictured Valerie. But he thought of Rebecca.

Re-bec-ca-pause. Re-bec-ca-pause.

But thoughts of Valerie and Rebecca dissipated as he neared the fence, and all John could think about was what he had found in the trophy room. Joshua would be pleased. They were getting closer.

Re-bec-ca-pause.

He stumbled, then regained his balance. His head felt crowded and his legs heavy. Rebecca in the rain.

A few hundred yards short of the fence, John stopped again and tried to still his pounding heart. He looked down the trail and saw nothing but dense brush. He could feel the warm plastic of the bag against his stomach.

Then he was off again, chased by the images of Rebecca. He sped up, jumping across a deep rut in the trail, pushing harder as he climbed. Outrun the pictures, he thought. Just outrun them all.

Re-bec-ca-pause.

But the pictures stayed with him as he neared the fence. Other sensations entered his memory. He remembered the smell of his mother's jacket on the day of her maiden voyage in the yellow airplane. He remembered the smell of Rebecca the first time they'd made love. He remembered the overwhelming presence of Valerie the night before, the way she looked and felt and the way her skin gave way under the touch of his fingers.