Wulff made his first real reconnoiter of the estate within three hours of his check-in at the furnished room. Loaded up only with light gear, a belt, a couple of hand grenades, a.357 magnum, and a small-bore rifle, as well as the dependable.45, Wulff took the Fleetwood into the canyons surrounding the estate again and found that the police cars had disappeared from the access road, that there seemed to be no police cars in the vicinity at all. If the first pass of Carlin’s property had indicated furious activity on behalf of enforcement, the second showed none at all … which probably meant that nothing had changed objectively, merely that at upper levels it had been decided that enough of a show of involvement had been made and that patrols could be safely withdrawn. Whatever had happened had happened; events, from the police standpoint, were not to be dealt with but merely reacted to, their levels of reality manipulated in a way that would best protect the interests of the department. That was cynical, perhaps, but it was pretty much the way the situation was.
The access road was a tight, winding little creation nearly obliterated by hanging trees and foliage, which came sprouting off from the sides obscuring it. All carefully calculated of course. Carlin had wanted his privacy. Wulff shrugged, put the car into low gear, and went up the road carefully. If there were patrol cars on site, if there were sentries of any sort at the property, then he was now in severe trouble; he would have a problem to solve … but you could not worry about such things. You took the situation as it developed, opening before you one step at a time. To think too deeply was to risk the negation of all action. He was pretty sure that the man he wanted to kill was no longer there but that did not excuse him from the obligation of checking it out first hand.
Wulff went up the road, the engine groaning and threatening to overheat, the ordnance bouncing away in the back. At the top there was a sharp fork right, and he had to maneuver the big car to make it, coming halfway onto that second road before he lost rear adhesion, backing then for a better angle, coming in slowly, and here the road was barely one car wide; the going was really perilous. Hunched over the wheel, concentrating on that road, Wulff really did not see the house until it sprung up at him, three vaulting stories around another curve in the road, just a little bit of vegetation and open space around it, the house using most of the available space provided on the plot … there was a gothic feeling to Carlin’s home, it might have been a castle surrounded by a moat, a castle in which dreadful things occurred. Of course, that was probably exactly the case … but it was a strange thing to see in Phoenix.
Abandoned. There was no one here at all. No car parked, no indication of movement on the property. They had simply closed it up and gone away. Whoever had been in the house was there no more; whoever had been assigned to do surveillance had been pulled away. Idling the engine, Wulff crept up closer, leaned the nose of the car against the bleak bronze gate that had sealed off the property. Carlin had believed in security, all right.
Wulff knew that he should go. There was nothing more to be done here; he had come on a cold trail. Dead or alive, probably alive and in flight, Carlin had abandoned his estate, and a man like this did not abandon a place of this sort lightly; it could only mean that he had no intention of ever returning. Wulff was merely setting himself up with the authorities by staying here. If on some casual sweep, some routine check, a patrol car should find him here, it was going to be very difficult, very bad. Of course, he could probably explain his presence here, but the Phoenix police would not want to listen. They would have him in jail on other counts. While local police could hardly be said to be enthusiastic about chasing down all-points bulletins, they would not mind taking a little painless credit.
He thought of throwing a few grenades into the estate, just for spite, just for satisfaction, but there was no point to that either. What would it serve? It would only bring the cops in on the trail again and would hardly inconvenience Carlin. Carlin was never going to come back here again.
Wulff shook his head in disgust, put the car into reverse and started to back it slowly down the access road. Then, in a corner of the rear view mirror he saw the car coming up fast behind him, a big, black Fleetwood much newer than his own, making the trail with that kind of proficiency that showed either great skill or familiarity with the terrain. The car was coming up behind him, swallowing up the road on both sides, no way to get past it, no way to move.
Wulff put the car into park, shut off the engine, took out the.357 magnum and waited for the car to come up behind him. There was simply nothing else to do.