10.

I knocked on the door, rapping hard three times in case the old fellow was still sleeping. I waited a bit and knocked again, but there was no answer. The small sounds around the cabin became sharp and distinct as I listened for Red's lurching footsteps inside. High twigs clacked against each other in the breeze, there was the chip-chip call of some bird, a spoon clanking on a metal plate in the next cabin over. A leaf falling from the tree by the side of the cabin scraped along the roof in the breeze off the lake and almost startled me. I filled my lungs and half-bellowed at the door in front of me: "Hey, Red, get up and let me in. It's Lenny!" The only answer was the distant thumping of a boat motor, probably the same one I'd seen from the heights. Sometimes the best course of action is also the most obvious one, and I tried the knob. The door was unlocked.

Although the front room of the cabin looked the same as it always did, I felt the emptiness. The furniture in the dim living room, the linoleum counter in the brighter kitchen, the end of the mattress I could see through the doorway to the bedroom I used; it all felt the way it had when we had arrived the day before and it had been unvisited for months.

Unvisited except by whoever had taken the photograph. "Red?" My voice sank into the gloom of the heavily-curtained front room. I unzipped the waist-pack I was wearing and held my hand on the little pistol, but I left the safety on. After closing and latching the front door behind me, I walked as quietly as I could through every room. The place was empty. Red's bed was rumpled, but the shower in the bathroom was dry and the soap untouched. Red may not have been a sharp dresser, but he verged on the obsessive about staying clean. If a friend had come by to pick him up he would have showered and shaved. And with his injured hip he couldn't walk very far, so if the truck was here and he was gone, someone came to get him. Someone he didn’t have time to get ready for. Maybe. I checked the security chain on the front door, and it looked undamaged. To tell you the truth, I had never even noticed that it was there before. On a hunch, I went to the back door, and there was no equivalent little chain dangling on the doorjamb there. But there was no sign of a fuss of any kind. I went back into Red's bedroom.

I felt funny going in there. I'd never stepped into it before, though I'd leaned on the doorway now and then, chatting while Red put on his shoes before we would head off somewhere. The room smelled lightly of cigarette smoke—up here, Red cheated occasionally on the no-cigs-indoors policy that Cindy enforced at the LA house. The bed was untidy, as you'd expect if someone had slept on it on top of the covers, the way Red did when he took a nap, but everything else looked normal: an unread magazine on the nightstand, the curtains drawn over the window to dim the light, Red's big blocky shoes peeking out from under the box spring….

Red's shoes. He hadn't brought any other shoes up to the lake. Wherever he was, he was out in his stocking feet. The empty cabin seemed to ring with silent warning bells. Red was no hippie, to traipse around barefoot in the woods; the concept was beyond picturing. Suddenly the cabin seemed a vast, dim-gray echoing cavern, its prim Midwestern reticence holding back some grim secret. Something was very wrong.

I looked under the bed, and there was the case that usually carried Red's precious .44 revolver. I pulled it out from under the bed, and its weight told me everything I needed to know. I unzipped it anyway. The gun was inside, smelling faintly of oil and cold death. The old ex-cop would not have gone more than twenty feet from the door without his weapon handy. And hell, he wouldn't have gone farther than the cabin next door without his truck, which was parked outside.

There was a telephone in the living room, a black rotary-dial desk phone on a side table by one of the armchairs. The directory for the river valley, hardly more than a pamphlet, lay under it. It was a crappy print job; our shop could have done it much better. It looked like Red had snagged it from the town's motel, though what he might have been doing there I couldn’t guess. Actually I could guess, and I hoped he was there now, but the shoes under the bed were as bad a sign as two guys in cheap suits knocking at the door. I pulled it out and looked up Mae Belle's diner in it. Mae Belle herself answered on the third ring, her voice sounding oddly formal over the faint clank of kitchen work in the background. "Mae Belle's diner. What can we do for you today?"

"Mae Belle, it's Lenny, Lenny Strasser."

There was a puzzled pause, and then: "Oh, Lenny! You surprised me, boy; why aren't you here in person?"

"I wish I were, Mae Belle. Something funny's going on. Is…is Red there, by any chance?"

"Red? Uh-uh; I haven't seen him since breakfast. Isn't he with you?"

"No. I just got back from a hike, and he's not at the cabin."

"Well, you know Red; he's got friends all up and down the valley. That man does have a magic touch with people, let me tell you. He doesn't put on any kind of show, but he sure does get attention."

"That he does. But his truck is here, and he's not."

She didn't say anything for a moment. The kitchen noises went on faintly in the background. "You better get over here as fast as you can, Lenny. We have to talk this over. There's a lot of surprise in that man, but you and me both know he isn't going on any hikes with that leg of his…. But Lenny: are you sure he isn't with a neighbor?"

"No, I'm not sure." I told her about the shoes. "But he might keep boots or something in the cabin. I really don't know."

Her only answer was to ask, "How soon can you get here?"

"I'll have to walk. I haven't seen the truck keys around."

"Shit!"

I had never heard Mae Bell swear before.

"You wait right there, Lenny. James Jr. just got back, and I'll put him in charge right now. I'm coming over."

I went back out to the living room and fell into one of the armchairs. I was tired, sweaty, and smelled of trail dust—not a bad smell—but there wouldn't be time for a shower before Mae Belle arrived. Helena just wasn't that big a town. I stared across the dim room at nothing, wondering why the curtains were never pulled open here. Red kept his house back in LA pretty dark as well, but there he spent most of his time watching TV, when he wasn’t outside smoking, There was no television set up here, just a radio in the bedroom. I rubbed my face, which itched slightly from the stubble Sheela had mandated before I left town. My eyes fell on the gap in the row of photos on the picture shelf. Could they really have kidnapped Red? As Mae Belle had reminded me, Red had a lot of friends in town. I'd never looked in his closet in the back bedroom, of course. For all I knew, he kept a dozen pairs of shoes in there. My worries began to seem outlandish. He was probably having an early beer on a back porch somewhere with an old coot who had a better view of the lake. I could picture the two of them: Red slouched in a folding chair, white hair brushed back in a wave, the old coot hunched in a windbreaker with the late-afternoon light reflecting from his glasses, a shotgun leaning delicately against the wall behind them…. Telling stories, some of which might even be true. I felt foolish for having gotten Mae Belle all worked up. But if she was worried, maybe I should keep on worrying. She knew him well. I wondered whether I should have checked with Clarence before calling her.

The sound of a motor over tires crunching in gravel announced her arrival.

I hurried outside. The sun was low in the west now, and its slanting light reflected from an immaculate late '60s Cadillac in a polished champagne color. Mae Belle stepped out and slammed the door, then bustled around the car to where I waited. She was wearing a dressy black blouse, plain black slacks, and mannish shoes; I knew that was just what she wore in the diner, but under the circumstances it made her look as though she was in mourning. I shook that idea out of my head. She was scowling as she came around the long hood of the car.

"I know what you're thinking, Lenny, but let me tell you that this old colored woman doesn’t even like Cadillacs. I only drive this because it was my grandpa's last car, and he gave it to me on his deathbed." She took a deep breath. "I surely loved my grandpa…. Well,"' she said abruptly. "Did you touch anything in the cabin?"

"Except for the front doorknob, no, I don't think so. I found his .44 in its case under the bed, and pulled it out. It's on top of the bed now. I think that's all."

"Okay. I'll go in and take a look around now."

I followed her in. Once inside she slowed down, moving slowly with that attentive hesitance of someone visiting a famous cathedral while the locals are in it praying. She held her arms a little away from her sides, and seemed almost to sniff at the air as she looked around. Of course it could just have been that she wore bifocals, but she looked as attentive as a cat who smells an intruder in her yard. She moved delicately through the rooms, now and then asking me a curt question. In the bedroom she said, "Have you looked in the closet?"

"No," I said. "I've never looked in it before, so I wouldn't be able to tell if something was out of place."

She opened the closet door carefully and stood there for a moment, staring inside it with arms akimbo. I looked over her shoulder from a little distance behind her. There wasn't much in it: a couple of shirts on hangers, a pair of slacks, and a windbreaker. Mae Belle looked down towards the floor. She muttered, "His boots are still here. 'Course he hardly ever wears them anyway." Then she stepped partway into the closet and felt the wall to the left of the door. "That old .45 automatic he brought back from the war is still here too. You know that man does not like to travel without a piece of iron around him somewhere. Did he bring any of his little guns up here?"

"Not that he mentioned. In fact he gave me one of them a couple of years ago, the .32 auto. His way of making a man of me, I think. I've got it on me now." I remembered that Mae Belle was an ex-cop too. "With a carry permit, of course." She ignored me.

"He grew up around guns, you know, in that little nothing town of his. For him, it's normal. Then he was a cop. He had a rough beat down there in LA, but you know, I do believe he never played dirty when he wore that badge. And he was good to me after James Sr. got killed. It made a ruckus in the news. We already knew each other—" She chuckled despite our growing gloominess. "I stopped him for speeding when he was on the way up here once, and of course he showed me his retired peace officer ID, and we started chatting and hit it off, and…well! I never expected…. Then James Sr. died…. I tell you, Lenny, that man is full of surprises." She looked down and shook her head slowly. "I'm afraid someone has finally surprised him instead. I'm worried, Lenny. I am worried."

She closed the closet door gently and turned around, surveying the room with gentle eyes, and then let out a long sigh. "We can't report him missing yet—I mean, officially it's been only an hour or so since you got back. We're on our own for a while. Although I suppose that funny friend of his, Clarence at the bar, might want to help."

"Maybe he's even there," I said.

Mae Belle looked through her eyebrows at me. "Without his shoes?" She didn't need to elaborate. "Let's get ourselves to the Broken Antler right now. I haven't been there since God was a pup anyway."

I couldn't lock the door, but it didn't matter. Red wasn't there, and there was nothing to steal. Helena was a town that ran like an old clock; it might not keep time too well, but the hands never turned backwards. At least they hadn't used to. The door latched, and I got into the Cadillac with Mae Belle.

The car was immense; the bench seat dwarfed the one in Red's truck, and there was easily room for two more people my size between me and Mae Belle. The cushioning was smooth and firm, and there was a slight odor of cigarettes and perfume. The dashboard was clean and uncluttered. "You know, I've kept this car just like it was when my grandpa died. I even left the last couple of cigarettes he smoked in the ashtray. I suppose that's foolish, but it keeps him in my heart. I can't see nor hear him any more, but I can feel him around me. He wasn't a great man—he was just a barber down in Texas—but he was a good kindhearted man who never hurt a soul that I heard tell of." She looked at me from behind the huge steering wheel. "That's all it takes to make the world a good place. Your friend Red's one of those men. Though I must say his language could use some cleaning up…." The car started with a quiet snicker, and Mae Belle drove carefully along the dirt road to the highway. It hardly felt as though we were moving in the big, solid car. I didn’t care for the sensation, or I should say lack of sensation. It was as though we'd stepped out of the world for the trip. Stepped into nowhere. We didn’t talk much, and were at the Broken Antler in less than five minutes.

The usual litter of old trucks nuzzled up to the Antler's blank front wall. We got out and looked at each other over the broad roof of the car. The Cadillac looked out of place at the end of the row. Though it was tidy enough in its way, Helena was not a spic-and-span sort of town. Mae Belle took a deep breath and nodded to me to follow her into the bar. The door swung shut behind us on its spring, and we looked around.

A couple of the old coots that the winds of time had swept into the bar's dark corners looked up in mild surprise, but most people ignored us. I had the feeling that some were very studiously ignoring us. It was the kind of bar where everyone looked up to see which old friend had lived through another day to drink again. I wondered, not for the first time, why Mae Belle stayed in such a town. She'd been to the Antler before, though: she knew where Clarence stationed himself at the back table, saw him there, nodded, and stalked across the room to him. I followed along. Clarence looked up from his scatter of paperwork, smiled, and then frowned under his moustache. His only greeting was, "What's wrong? You two look like the bearers of bad news."

"Evening, Clarence," Mae Belle said. "I suppose we might be. Have you seen Red today?"

Clarence frowned again, the light coming from the long bar reflecting in his glasses. "No, can't say that I have. It's a little early for Red anyway, you know. What's wrong?" He looked up at us, then remembered himself. "Sit down, sit down. Isn't he at his little cabin?" He shuffled over on the red vinyl seat, and Mae Belle crowded herself in next to him, looking nervously about the room. I slid in after her.

Mae Belle looked at me. I said, "No. When I got back from a hike, he wasn’t home. But the truck was there. And he hadn't taken his shoes. Since I don't think he's gone all hippie on us, I got worried and called Mae Belle. He wasn't there either, and it's about the time of day he likes to eat."

"Clarence," Mae Belle said, "You know that man has his habits. And you surely know he wouldn't be going far barefoot and without that truck of his!"

Clarence's thick spectacles look at each of us in turn. "Well," he said at last. "That certainly doesn’t sound much like our friend, I agree. He hasn't been here today, if that's what you came to ask." Clarence's face was a blank mask, but his shoulders were slumped a little. A corner of his mouth curled under the moustache. " I don't think this looks too good. What do you two think?"

Mae Belle spoke up. "I don't know what to think. But when Lenny here called me, I got a bad feeling right away." She stared at the doorway of the bar.

I butted in: "That angry-looking couple, the strangers in the van. They've kept turning up since we saw them back at the pass. Three times so far, and they always seemed to look at us and then rush off. Something is...not right about them, I think. What did you say their names were?"

Clarence looked down at his clasped hands. His shoulders became rigid, but his voice was as even as I'd always heard it. "The big guy called himself 'Bullet.' His little woman presented herself as 'Tracer.' I found the monikers to be a bit pretentious." He looked at each of us in turn. "Let's hope they are. You think they're involved?"

I looked at him. He'd known Red longer than anyone else, possibly in the world. "Who else would be? I'm asking seriously."

Clarence looked timidly at Mae Belle. "There's a few people in the valley who think Red's a bit too friendly with misfits such as Mae Belle. But they're not the sort who would actually do anything to him. Or to you, Mae Belle. Some of the same people don’t necessarily think too well of me, either, but I doubt I have anything to worry about from them."

She raised her head and looked back at him. "Well, Mister Clarence, I am not too sure myself on either count, but I know who you mean, and I don't think they have the manhood to face off with Red. I think it's those two strangers."

Clarence looked off into the darkness. "We were all strangers here once, Mae Belle."

"Clarence," I said. 'You're the only one that's actually talked to them. You have any idea where they're staying around here?"

Clarence shook his head. "Sorry. They didn't talk much. I haven't heard any gossip about them either. The weather's getting better, so there's going to be more strangers and occasionals anyway. People here are used to that, being on the highway as we are. Even if it is a highway to nowhere."

Mae Belle spoke up: "Nowhere seems to be a popular place to go, Mister Clarence, considering the mental state of some of those hippie children who stop in at the diner…my, my!"

"Bullet and Tracer," I said. "I saw their van going down the road from Nirvana. At least it looked like their van. I’m guessing they stay up there."

"Good luck, then," Clarence said. "A lot of those people, ah, how do you say it? 'Crash' with strangers. It's not like you can ask the hotel clerk if so-and-so is in. I don't think you're scruffy enough to pass yourself off as one of them."

"I don't either. At least I hope not. But I suppose we ought to try."

Mae Belle's jaw set firmly, and then she said: "I'll drive you up there right now!"

Clarence gave a little grunt. With the light glaring from his spectacles, he looked at us each in turn. "It might be harder than you think to find him, if he really is there. I have some associates, you might say, up there. They are very accepting people…except of anyone they think might be a cop. Or any other authority. Anyone who will try to tell them how they should live."

Mae Belle reared her head with indignation, and spouted: "Well, and if they're mistreating Red? Are they just going to let that go by?"

"If they don't see it happening," Clarence said mildly, "Yes. And you know it's well-known that Red used to be a police officer. And you too. You stand out here, much more than I do, Mae Belle." He clasped his hands on the table in front of him. He seemed to be staring through the invoices on the tabletop, as if they were some sort of very dry oracle. "I can't go with you tonight; Herbie had to take a day off to take his mother to the hospital. If you don't have any luck up there, go back home, get a good night's sleep, and call me any time after dawn. I'll arrange for someone to be here and drive you up, Lenny, if Mae Belle has to attend to the diner." He scribbled his number on a scrap of adding machine paper and handed it to me, nodding and saying, "Let Mae Belle know what you're up to. We should all stay in touch till we find him." He shook his head. "Your suspicions are probably well-founded. Something is not right."

Mae Belle shuffled herself brusquely out of the booth and stood up. "Get up, Lenny. We’ve got us some driving to do!"