64

HE COULDN’T MAKE THEM OUT AT FIRST, THE LIGHT HAD gone gray, and the windshield fogged. But he thought it was the doctor, and rolled down the window and put the camera to his face, ran out the lens.

No, it was the boy, pulling a sled made out of their canoe behind him.

He could hardly believe it. Had the kid done that? Built that thing? And a pack on his back, the straps cutting deep into his green jacket, the pack heavy enough so that he leaned so far forward to compensate, he was nearly looking right into the icy road.

The doctor had to be in the sled, the girl in the pack.

There was nearly a mile to go, and the kid was making slow progress.

For a second he admired the kid, but then he took another look through the camera. He had bruises on his face, and his eyes seemed sunken, and he was moving with great, great effort, jets of steam coming out his mouth, the tumpline biting into his forehead, the pack with the girl in it almost bending him double, and his hand, holding the tumpline, nearly black with dried blood.

Stacey’s. Had to be—or was it Munson’s?

The boy lifted his head, turned from side to side, looking, cautious, and Penry watched, watched him come on, the woman in the station hadn’t caught sight of the boy yet, Penry could see her through the back window, she was reading a magazine, tossing the pages back as if irritated, even as the boy was coming in, like some mendicant, bloodstained and crippled.

Penry could hear, now, the wooden skritch of the sled’s runners on the ice. Upwind, and the sound carrying over the ice-glazed road.

And still Penry waited. He had time. There was no going back, no going for Jack now. But here, only this to finish; he couldn’t leave witnesses, and the thoughts he’d entertained for so many years, as all of them who’d been in on the stealing at Dysart had, thoughts of running off to Canada, or moving to Montana, or getting a job on a boat in Seattle, but with all that jack in your pocket, came to him, and he saw them now for what they really were, no more than phantasms, which shocked him. So much so, in the car he could think of only one sure thing that would secure a place for him in the world now:

He would wipe out any trace of his ever having been here, which struck him as . . . odd.

Erasing himself, so he could go on.

And so he watched the boy come nearer, let him, because the woman in the station would have to be dealt with, only he couldn’t have her calling out on the phone, and, anxious to get moving, he studied the boy through the big lens, holding his breath again, as if that would slow time.

The boy was up the road a mile or so, and had yet to come around the curve there to be in line of sight of the car.

Penry only had minutes, and he thought he could go by the station, to get to the boy, but what if the woman got suspicious? Seeing him pass, even around back? What would she think if she saw him there?

And holding the camera, he knew he could fix all that, simply by going down and cutting her phone line. And he decided he would do that, only he wanted to get a good look at the boy, closer, because he was seeing something, but wasn’t sure just what it was yet.

Penry lifted the camera to his face and ran out the lens. Looked. Pants pockets. His calf. The knife there on his belt, tied outside his jacket, hanging at his waist in the leather sheath. Was it just that? The kid’s knife? But then, he’d surprised Stacey with it, all right.

Penry now studied the boy’s boots, he was doing all right, considering he was walking on nearly sheer ice. Then took in the jacket again.

What was it? And then, there—the boy, lifting his head, and looking behind him, then off into the trees, patted his jacket, on the right.

Outlined in the nylon of the boy’s jacket was something angular. It was the draw of the material over the boy’s shoulder that he’d been seeing, evidence of something heavy in his pocket. Penry’s breath caught at it, his heart leaping, running razzle-dazzle.

What the hell—the kid had a gun, one heavy enough to pull the jacket down like that.

Penry shut the car door quietly and went down the hill, his feet tinkling on the ice-coated grass. He swung himself off the path, bracing himself on the trees, and when he came to the bottom, and the expanse of the graveled lot, he crouched low, and circled around to the back of the station, moving like a wolf, or shadow, among shadows.