Even if John Shea was buried across the street, it was going to be a crap shoot. Internet satellite photos can be old, sometimes three or more years. The trees would have grown; the terrain would have changed.
I parked on the residential side street closest to the southern edge of the 100 Partners property. Most of the houses that abutted the woods across from Wade’s estate had fences to keep deer out, but one dark house had a yard that ran back unobstructed to the tree line. I waited until the dusk was thick enough to move unseen but still light enough to check out the five likely spots I’d circled on the satellite photo. I estimated I had fifteen minutes, at the most, to scout for low growth or, even better, no growth at all.
I ran into the woods.
The closest spot was fifty feet in, a ragged clearing in a copse of seven trees. I’d brought a small shovel to jam into the ground. The dirt was hard. I ran on.
The second spot was in a direct line from the first, twenty yards closer to the road that ran in front of Wade’s house. It, too, was nestled in a copse of trees but the clearing was larger.
My foot sank two inches into the dirt as soon as I ran up. The ground was spongy, as if loosened by the last rain.
I stabbed my shovel at the ground to be sure the boundaries were far enough apart. It only took a couple of minutes to find a rectangle of soft earth, six feet by three feet. Nature doesn’t like straight lines but whoever had dug in this spot certainly had. It was enough.
By now, it was almost completely dark. I began to pick my way back through the thin woods, toward the row of house lights filtering through the leafless trees.
A twig snapped behind me. Before I could turn, he hit me square across the back, knocking me face down onto the ground.
And then he was on me, a fast blur in the dark, beating at the back of my neck with his fists. Raising my hands to cover my head, I raised my knees enough to buck him off. His hands grazed the soft skin of my neck as he fell away.
I pushed my heels hard into the ground, clawed at the ground ahead and found the handle of my shovel. Clutching it tight, I scrambled up to stand and swung into the dark. I hit something soft, like a belly or a neck.
He wheezed hard; I’d caught him but he was up, too. I swung again, hit nothing, threw the shovel where I hoped he was and ran for the house lights at the edge of the woods.
All I could think was that the Wades’ guards had guns.
He came crashing loudly behind me; he was following the sound of my feet. But no flashlight lit the night. I was as invisible to him as he was to me.
I slammed hard into a wall, the rough cedar crisscross of a fence. I stabbed a toe into its thick lattice, climbed up a foot, and another. He was swearing loudly, only a few feet behind me.
I pulled myself onto the top of the fence, rolled over and fell onto a flowerbed. A patio was ahead, lit with little lights.
He crashed into the other side of the fence, bending it toward me. I scrambled up and ran toward the little lights.
I tripped a motion detector and a high-wattage security bulb flooded the entire yard with bright light. I didn’t dare look back. I was lit up now, easy enough to shoot.
Twenty feet ahead, a woman stood looking out her kitchen window, lifting a telephone. Cops would come. Cops would be good now. Cops would be very good.
Other security lights tripped on ahead, and from the house next door. I ran between them, past the sidewalk and out onto the street. The Jeep was several houses farther down. I heard no one pounding behind me. I pulled out my ignition key. Fifty feet, twenty feet and I was there.
I jumped in, twisted the key and sped to the main intersection. Two cars were approaching from the direction of the Wade estate. I slowed, to be normal. Oh, please, I begged the night, let them be cops.
I turned the other way and drove slow enough to watch in my rearview mirror, coming up fast. They got to the intersection.
They turned in, lit up for an instant by the street lamp, before disappearing into the housing development. They were cops, running without their bubble lights.
Coming for me, but now I was gone.