Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

Got an unexpected call that panicked her, started trying to reach Jaeger. She finally did, but too late to save them. Had this all been deleted from the file? Or had the FBI just never found out about all of those calls? The old man was going on.

‘Waitin’ for them Tuesday an’ Thursday calls, she’d listen to my tales ’bout the old days when Terminous was the railhead for produce comin’ out of the Delta. A real nice lady.’

The Delta. A synapse fired in Thorne’s brain. Below that dead tree reaching imploring arms to the sky had been a messy waist-high mound of interwoven twigs and branches and reeds some eight feet in diameter. He checked his watch. He was in a sudden hurry to get out of there. Dusk would soon fall.

‘You got any of that black electrician’s tape for sale?’

The old man cackled. ‘Course I do! It’s a damn general store, ain’t it?’

At the White Slough Wildlife Area gate on Guard Road, Thorne wrapped his flashlight with electrician’s tape and rummaged through his suitcase for a heavy turtleneck sweater. The sun was low, a cold wind had kicked up, swirling dust. The rabbit was gone. No enchantment this time around. Just icy water and a half-assed idea.

Across the channel, a sentry muskrat, its segmented rat-like tail wound around behind it, was sitting on top of the messy mound of interwoven twigs and branches and reeds Thorne belatedly had recognized as a muskrat house. He had also remembered a Michael Gilbert story that mentioned ancient Britons hiding in underground burrows called dene holes to let the Saxon invaders overrun their positions. Hide in plain sight.

He stripped naked, leaving his clothes folded in the track like a suicide going to drown himself. Flashlight in hand, he slid down the steep side of the levee to the water. A lesser grebe popped up in mid-channel, swam for a moment, dove under again. Thorne shivered in the cold wind. He was at least as tough as a helldiver, wasn’t he?

As he dove in himself, the sentry scrambled off the muskrat house. Thorne swam underwater as long as he could, surfaced a few feet from the house, numb with cold. He was used to African waters, warm and sunlit. And full of parasitic bilharzia worms. And hippos. And crocodiles.

Corwin, a generation older and a sicko at that, had been doing this in November. If he could take it, by God so could Thorne. On his next dive, he used his temporarily waterproofed flashlight to find the underwater entrance. Fighting irrational fears of an icy tomb with his face buried in mud, he rammed and wiggled his way up through glutinous mud and water and rotted reeds to burst into air rank with the smell of rodents.

He rested there inside the house, panting, just his eyes and nose above water. No muskrats. His light died, but not before he had seen the proof he sought: a partially obliterated handprint next to his own in the mud beside the entry hole.

Corwin must have been able to disappear into himself as Morengaru could, so animals no longer sensed his presence. Because according to the FBI file, a sentry muskrat had been sitting on top of the house that morning until scared off by two searchers who sat down to smoke a cigarette.

Was he Corwin’s equal? Thorne remembered laying his hand on Bwana Kifaru’s warm flank in the African moonlight. Damn right he was Corwin’s equal.

He surfaced outside the muskrat house, crossed the channel. Now the water felt warm, but the wind was numbing on the levee. He pulled on the heavy sweater, jogged back to the car carrying his other clothes in one hand, his shoes and socks in the other.

He had passed a motel off the cloverleaf where east-west 12 intersected with north-south 1–5. Microtec Inn and Suites. This time of year they’d have plenty of vacancies. And across the interchange, Rocky’s Restaurant. Check in, grab a hot shower and something to eat, try to sleep, in the morning call the Mayflower just in case they had found Corwin and he could quit looking.

Who was he kidding? He was hooked on the hunt.

Dorst walked the 45-year-old Library of Congress research librarian to the door. Her husband had dumped her for a twenty-something grad student. Dorst’s phone, turned down during sessions, started clicking. She caught Thorne in mid-sentence.

‘... got your message, I’ll try again in an hour—’

She picked up quickly. ‘Thanks for calling back.’ She felt like crying. It had been so easy to assure him that his deepest secrets were safe with her. ‘Hatfield... grabbed my session notes right out of my briefcase. He threatened me with National Security if I said anything. I... I caved in.’

‘Don’t sweat it, Doc. You done fine. You called it right. He went after you because he’s afraid to go after me.’ Thorne chuckled. ‘No glass tiger problems. Right now I’m in California, on my way to King’s Canyon. My hunt is starting to feel like German intelligence chess during World War Two. A three-dimensional board, players unknown — and everybody blindfolded.’

Seth Parker ambled over, wiping his hands on his apron. His rolled-up sleeves showed the crude prison tats on his forearms. The deeply tanned, compact man who had taken the Parkers’ last unrented cabin the night before was sitting at the bar under the mounted elk’s head. He moved his own head slightly.

‘Join me?’

Seth’s wary brown eyes reflexively darted around the old chinked-log building that smelled faintly of breakfast even though mid-morning deserted. Third week of April, the tourists were off hiking or driving through the natural wonders of King’s Canyon. He ran a finger along his drooping ginger mustache.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

Seth got two Miller Lites from the cooler and twisted off the caps. They tinked long-neck bottles, drank. The stranger laid a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. Obviously, no tourist.

‘Guy passed through last month, planned to camp up off the ridge trail. Ten, twelve days later a couple of other gents came looking. Said they were his friends. Remember any of them?’

Seth remembered all of them. Because he was always curious about things, he had been around the corner from three murders during his years in stir. Because he was also always cautious, he was alive today. But because of those prison years, Mae hated him getting involved in anything beyond running the resort. He reluctantly snapped the bill away with his forefinger. It landed in the puddle left by Thorne’s bottle. Thorne shook his head.

‘I’m on expenses, you aren’t. Start at the beginning.’

What the hell, Mae was off doing up the cabins. So he told Thorne about the lanky fiftyish hard-bitten man who had walked into his not-yet-open resort at noon on mid-March day...

‘Walked.’ A statement from Thorne, not a question.

‘With his camping gear. Reckon he come on the Greyhound stops at Cedarbrook, some miles down the canyon, walked from there. Stocked up on camp grub real good. Knew just what he wanted.’ He shut an eye for a moment, recollecting. ‘A dozen Cup of Noodles for soup, freeze-dried veggies, big block of sharp cheddar, instant coffee, Granola bars, trail mix. Beef jerky.’

‘Anything strike you as odd? Out of proportion?’

‘Way too much beef jerky.’ Contempt entered his voice. ‘Hell, them guys claiming they was his friends never even picked up on that. I think they was Feds, after him. Had his pichur.’

‘This one?’

Seth bent to look at the photo Thorne laid on the bar.

‘Yep. Reco’nized him right off, acted like I wasn’t sure.’

Thorne put the photo away. ‘Tell ’em where he was camped?’

‘Just said up on the ridge trail. Guess they didn’t find ’im — I ain’t heard nothing more about none of them since.’