John Saul - In the Dark of the Night

Leaving the dog behind and shutting the cabin door so it couldn’t follow, Logan started up the hill toward a place he’d found a long time ago.

A cave that was small — much smaller than his cabin — but that was so well hidden he knew no one else would ever find it.

It was his safe spot.

There was no path to the cave. He’d seen to that, always approaching it from a different direction, always leaving it by a different route from the one along which he’d come.

No path meant nothing to follow.

But Logan knew the way. Knew it in his heart and in his head and in his spirit.

He hurried now, moving quickly, but leaving no track, no sign that he’d been there at all.

When he reached the rocky outcropping, he carefully pushed the bushes just far enough away from the opening to the cave to let him wriggle in.

He reached back and replaced the branches so perfectly that they appeared not to have been moved at all.

At last he settled himself on the floor of the cave, to wait.

Everything was going to be different now.

He closed his eyes.

Soon he would know what to do and how long to wait.

Dr. Darby — or maybe even Jesus himself — would tell him.

And when the time came and he knew exactly what he was supposed to do, he would leave the cave.

Leave the last place of safety.

And he would do what he was supposed to do.

WHILE DEREK ANDERS picked up the painter from the floor of the old aluminum scow that served as Phantom Lake’s sole police boat, Rusty Ruston shifted the outboard into neutral. Then he killed the engine and tipped it up so neither the water intake nor the propeller would foul in the mud and reeds that choked this side of the lake. Inertia and the small craft’s own wake carried its nose gently into the weedy lakeshore brush, just far enough for Anders to catch a sturdy limb to pull it fully ashore.

“We sure hit the right spot,” Anders said, pointing to a boat that was all but invisible in the tangle some thirty feet to their left. As Anders made the painter fast to a tree, Ruston gazed silently at the feature of the boat that was most visible — the weird wooden cross that for years had identified Logan to anybody who had ever seen him skulking about the lake.

“Well, at least we know he’s here,” Ruston said, once more checking the shotgun he hoped he wasn’t going to have to use. In his entire career, Ruston had yet to shoot anyone, and right now he was praying that this wasn’t going to be the day that record was broken.

With the boat securely tied and their shotguns cradled in their arms, Ruston and Anders began walking warily up the worn path toward the cabin in which Logan had been squatting for so many years that everyone, even Ruston, thought of it as belonging to the old recluse. “Keep an eye out for traps,” Ruston said. “If he spotted us coming, no telling what he might do.” As he made his way slowly up the hill, he ruefully remembered the fantasies he’d entertained now and then over the years, when instead of being a nearly unnecessary sheriff in a backwater town, he was the kind of fearless crime fighter upon which TV series were based. Now, faced with the reality of what might lie at the end of this walk, he decided he’d never entertain such a fantasy again.

His gut just didn’t like it.

Still, he plodded on, and was just beginning to find the slope a little wearing when he caught sight of the roofline of Logan’s shack. He stopped short, his hands tightening on the shotgun, and knew Anders had stopped, too, could almost feel the former high school football star’s bulk looming close behind him.

Suddenly, everything seemed quiet.

Too quiet?

Even the birds seemed to have fallen silent, as if they knew something was about to happen.

With Anders staying on his heels, Ruston moved slowly forward. Brush had been cut and trampled in front of Logan’s shack, and a few trees had been felled, probably for firewood. Some of their branches still lay strewn about, like the bare bones of an animal after the wolves have torn it to pieces and devoured every scrap of edible substance.

He knew that crossing that field of dry branches would be a loud announcement of their approach and would let Logan slip unseen from the back of the cabin.

Without being told, Derek split off from Ruston, going quietly to the right, keeping behind trees. Ruston waited for him to get into a position from which he could watch the two sides of the cabin that he himself could not, then shouted loudly. “Logan!” he called, cupping his left hand to his mouth while he still gripped the shotgun with his right. “It’s Sheriff Ruston! If you’re there, come out of the cabin with your hands up.” He dropped his left hand to the stock of the shotgun and waited.

Seconds ticked by.

Nothing happened. No sound, no flicker of movement from the shadowy interior.

Nothing.

Though he was already fairly sure Logan wasn’t there, Ruston called out once more. “Logan! Show yourself within ten seconds or we’re going to fire!” Then, as Anders raised his gun to his shoulder and took aim at the tiny shack, Ruston gestured frantically for him to hold his fire. Knowing Logan as long as he had, he was all but certain that if the man were in the cabin, the threat alone would be enough to flush him out.

Once again the seconds ticked by.

Once again nothing happened.

“Let’s go take a look,” he said loud enough for Anders to hear, nearly certain that wherever Logan was, he wasn’t inside the cabin. “You go around the back and I’ll go in the front. And for Christ’s sake, make sure you don’t shoot me, okay?”

Obviously disappointed that he wasn’t being allowed to open fire on the house, Anders reluctantly lowered his shotgun and disappeared around the far corner of the house as Ruston crossed the twigs and branches to the front door, which was neither latched nor even quite closed. Standing to one side, he used the butt of the gun to push the door wider.

When still nothing happened, he stepped in front of the door and pointed his shotgun at the dim interior.

A dog growled from the corner.

“Easy boy,” Ruston said, but the dog took a snarling step toward him.

“I’ll take care of the dog,” Anders said, coming through the back door at the opposite end of the cabin.

Ruston looked around. Clearly, Logan was not there. The shack was no larger than Ruston’s bedroom, and looked like it was mostly a storage place for whatever the hermit had scavenged over the years. The floor was littered with some kind of crumbs, and a crippled crow that was pecking at them only glared up at Ruston before going back to devouring the crumbs. A few ragged items of clothing hung on nails haphazardly hammered into the cabin’s rough walls.

Then the dog’s snarling grew louder, and Ruston turned to look just as it launched itself at Derek Anders, who reflexively pulled the trigger of his shotgun in response to the attack.

The blast almost knocked down the flimsy walls of the shack, and Ruston’s ears rang with the concussion.

The crow screamed, leaping into the air as its one good wing flapped wildly.

Ruston grabbed a filthy shirt from a hook, threw it over the crow, picked it up, and took it outside, where it immediately scuttled away into the brush at the edge of the small clearing.

Back inside the cabin, Ruston found Anders looking intently at something he was clutching in his right hand, the shotgun now slung over his shoulder. “Look at this,” the deputy said, and a moment later Ruston found himself gazing at a yellowed newspaper clipping. “It was nailed to the wall over there,” Anders went on, pointing at a nasty tangle of rags on a torn mattress that must have served as Logan’s bed. SUSPECT ARRESTED IN HARTWELL STRANGLING