Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(4)

“Well, you’re pretty cool yourself, Hotshot,” Romstead said.
While he didn’t like any of it, he still didn’t want to scare her
over what so far was just a feeling. “But don’t let it go to your
head. If there are prowlers working those apartments, keep the
chain on your door the way I told you, and don’t let anybody in
until you’ve finished the first two volumes of his biography. I’ll
call you tomorrow, and I’ll be back early tomorrow night.”
They talked a few minutes more, and as soon as he’d hung up,
he put in a call to Murdock. His answering service said Mr.
Murdock wasn’t at his office or at home yet, but that he should
report in shortly. Romstead gave her the number of the motel.
“Ask him to call me as soon as he comes in.”
All he could do then was wait. And wonder about it. Too many
things were wrong with the picture, Naturally, any prowler
could get names off the mailboxes down below, but this guy
wasn’t some punk who’d wandered in off the street with a strip
Man on a Leash — 69


of plastic or a credit card. He couldn’t have got in. Those were
dead-bolt locks, and he’d turned the key when he left. Then
there were the other touches, the coverall, the prop toolbag—
both disposable down the nearest garbage chute—the calm
assurance, the plausible patter, all of which bespoke a real
professional—except that no professional in his right mind
would waste his time prowling a single man’s apartment, even if
you left him a key under the doormat. No furs, no jewelry—all
the expensive baubles belonged to women. He’d get three or
four suits that some fence might give him two dollars apiece for
and the cleaning woman’s eight dollars if he could find it.
He could call Paulette Carmody, but he didn’t want to have
the phone tied up if Murdock called.
He waited. He unpacked his bag and studied the maps some
more. It was about twenty minutes before the phone rang. He
grabbed it up. It was Murdock.
“I just got your call,” he said. “Anything new?”
“Yeah, some guy shook down my apartment this afternoon,”
Romstead replied. “I can’t figure what he was after, but let’s
take up your end of it first. You get any line on the girl?”
“Yes, we’ve had pretty good luck so far. I’ve just talked to
Snyder again—he’s the man I put on her. He picked up her trail
at Packer Electronics right off the bat. It’s a big outfit on upper
Mission, handles everything in the electronics line: hi-fi
components, radio and TV parts and tubes, transistors, ham
equipment, and so on. She worked in the office there for about a
year and a half, until last March. They let her go for tapping the
till; apparently her habit was pretty expensive even then.
Snyder got her last known address and checked that out. She’d
been sharing an apartment with another girl named Sylvia
Wolden out near the Marina, but she’d moved out of there in
April. The Wolden girl didn’t know she was on junk but
suspected she was shoplifting, from the things she’d bring
home.
“She left no forwarding address, but Sylvia was able to give
Snyder the name of an old boyfriend, Leo Cullen, who tends bar
at a place on Van Ness. Cullen told Snyder he’d broken up with
her along about Christmas, when she first got hooked on the
stuff, and hadn’t seen her since but had heard she was shacked
up with a guy named Marshall Tallant, who ran a one-man TV
repair place in North Beach. Snyder went out there and found
Man on a Leash — 70
the place; but it was closed, and nobody in the neighborhood
had seen Tallant in over a month. The girl had been living with
him, though, and they’d both disappeared from the
neighborhood about the same time.”
“Any idea how she was supporting her habit?” Romstead
asked. “Tallant couldn’t have made much out of that shop.”
“No,” Murdock replied. “We haven’t got any line on that yet. If
she was hustling, it apparently wasn’t in that neighborhood,
though she might have been shoplifting downtown. And you’re
right about the shop—Tallant couldn’t have paid for any forty- or
fifty-dollar habit unless he had other sources of income. I gather
he was plenty good, could fix anything electronic, but snotty and
temperamental. He’d turn down jobs if they didn’t interest him,
and some days he didn’t even open the place.
“There’s one possibility, though, and that brings me to my end
of it. She could have had some kind of hustle going with your
father. What, I don’t know, but she definitely had been in his
apartment a good many times. Three people I talked to had seen
her going in or coming out of the building over the past four
months, but never with him. She might have been working as a
high-priced call girl, with him as one of her list; I just don’t
know. But I do think she had a key. One of the tenants I talked
to saw her in the corridor on that floor on the Fourth of July,
and you remember your father was in Coleville then. And I think
it’s definite your father was never in the apartment any time
between July sixth and fourteenth. Nobody saw him at all, not
even the apartment house manager, and he and your father
were good friends. He’s a retired merchant marine man himself,
mate on a Standard Oil tanker, and when your father came to
town, they always had a couple of drinks together.
“But here’s the strange part of it. You’re not the only one
interested in her. There’s another guy; Snyder crossed his trail
twice, and I saw him myself when he came to the apartment
house. And that’s not all. Unless Snyder and I both are watching
too much cloak-and-dagger on TV, this guy himself had a tail on
him. We were a whole damn procession shuttling around town.”
“Are you sure of this?” Romstead asked.
“We’re sure of the guy; the tail’s only a guess. He was right
ahead of Snyder at the electronics place and then came into the
bar on Van Ness—where Cullen worked—while Snyder was still
there. Real bruiser, big as you are but mean-looking, apparently
Man on a Leash — 71
just been in a fight. Had a cut place over one eye and a swollen
right hand—”
“Wait,” Romstead interrupted. “Driving a green Porsche with
Nevada plates?”
“That’s right. Then you know him?”
“I’ve met him. He’s her brother, Lew Bonner. I don’t get it,
though, why he’s poking into it. He had it all worked out; my old
man was to blame for everything that happened to her. But
what about the tail?”
“As I say, we’re not sure. Could be just a coincidence, but
seeing him in Bonner’s area three times in different parts of
town is stretching it. Name’s Delevan; he used to be in the
business but had his license yanked and did a stretch in San
Quentin for extortion—”
“Can you describe him?” Romstead cut in quickly.
“He’s pretty hefty himself, about six two, over two hundred
pounds, partially bald—”
“Okay,” Romstead said. “He’s not the one.”
“That shook down your apartment, you mean? When did it
happen?”
“Just after I took off for Reno. I think he must have clocked me
out, made sure I was on the plane, and then came back and let
himself in.” Romstead told him the whole thing. He was puzzled
also.
“Sounds pro to me, too, but what the hell would he be after?
That’s a furnished apartment, isn’t it?”
“The only things in it that are mine are clothes, luggage, and
that hi-fi gear and some records.”
“Planting a bug, maybe?”
“I thought of that, but why? They wouldn’t know I’m
interested in them. I didn’t know it myself until this morning.
You haven’t got a description on Tallant?”
“No, but I can get one damned fast. Let me call you back in
about ten minutes.”
“Fine.” Romstead hung up, frowning. What was Bonner doing
in San Francisco, checking back on Jeri? Had he held out on
Brubaker or learned something new? He waited, consumed with
impatience. When the phone rang, he snatched it up.
Man on a Leash — 72
“I just called Snyder,” Murdock said, “and he checked back
with one of the people he’d talked to in North Beach. Tallant’s
about thirty or thirty-two, medium height, slender, black hair,
brown eyes—”
“That’s enough,” Romstead cut in. “Have you got an extra
man you can get hold of this time of night?”
“Sure. You want Miss Foley covered?”
“Like a blanket, every minute till I get back there. I don’t
know what the son of a bitch is up to or what he had to do with
the old man, but he sounds wrong as hell to me.”
“We’ll take care of it. What’s her apartment number? And
description?”
Romstead told him. “That retainer I gave you won’t begin to
cover this, but for references you can check the Wells Fargo
Bank on Montgomery Street or the Southland Trust in San
Diego.”
“That’s all right. You’re coming back tomorrow?”
“Sometime tomorrow. I guess I should have stayed there; that
seems to be where it is. But as long as I’m up here, I might as
well go ahead and finish what I started to do. Don’t let her out
of your sight. And see what else you can find out about Tallant.”
After he’d hung up, he debated whether to call Mayo again
but decided there was no point in getting her upset over
something that could be miles into left field. He had complete
confidence in Murdock, anyway.
He called Paulette Carmody’s number. She was out, playing
bridge, Carmelita said, and would be back around midnight.
Well, he could talk to her tomorrow.
Man on a Leash — 73
7
It was full daylight when Romstead emerged from Logan’s Cafe
on Aspen Street after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, orange
juice, and two cups of coffee and got into the rented car. He had
put on lightweight slacks and a sport shirt, and the water cooler
was filled and stowed on the floor behind the front seat. Beside
him on the front seat were the Steadman County map and his 8
X 30 Zeiss binoculars. He read the odometer and jotted the
mileage on the map: 6327.4. The street was almost deserted,
the traffic lights flashing amber in the still-cool air of early
morning as he drove out of town, headed south.
The sky was growing pink in the east, the same as it had been
that morning two days ago, when he passed the cemetery. He
glanced toward it, his face impassive, and went on. He thought
of Jeri Bonner and wondered if her funeral would be today. All
the unanswerable questions started invading his mind again,
but he shut them out. He didn’t intend to spend the day
guessing and theorizing from the meager facts he had; too many
of them were contradictory, and he was here to do something
else, a specific task that might turn out to be futile but still had
to be done.
In a few minutes the peaks of the Sierra, far off to his right,
began to be tipped with yellow sunlight. The two-lane blacktop,
which in reality was a good three lanes wide, ran straight down
a wide valley floored with sage and rimmed with buttes and
ridges on both sides. Ahead and behind there was nobody else
Man on a Leash — 74
in sight. He bore down on the accelerator until he was cruising
at seventy.

He began to watch the odometer, but he saw the gravel road a
good mile before he reached it. He turned right into it, stopped,
and read the mileage: 6341.1. He subtracted and wrote 13.7 on
the map at the juncture of the two roads. Eight miles each
direction would cover it. He looked behind and then ahead. You
could see almost the full eight miles both ways, he thought. He
cranked the windows up, opened the wings a crack, and went
on. It wasn’t hot enough yet to need the air conditioning.
The road was badly washboarded and chuckholed, and he had
to keep his speed down. A boiling cloud of dust rolled up behind,
and he was thankful there was nobody ahead of him. Gravel
roared against the underside of the car. A sage hen ran across
the road, and several times he saw jackrabbits bounding out
through the sage, raising and lowering their great ears like
semaphores; but there was no sign of human habitation
anywhere. After five miles he topped a low ridge and saw
another immense flat spread out ahead of him. He stopped and
got out to study it with the glasses. The road ran straight on,
diminishing in the distance. There was no house, no shed,
windmill, or structure of any kind. There was no use going any
farther in this direction. Wherever his father had gone or had
been taken, there had to be a habitation of some kind.
He turned around and drove back to the highway. Checking
the mileage there, he continued on east on the gravel for eight
miles. Nothing. He returned to the highway again and drove
back to town. As he went past the motel, he wanted to stop and
call Mayo but knew it was too early. It wasn’t even eight o’clock
yet; she wouldn’t be up.
Traffic was still light in the streets, but the signals were in
operation now. Stopped at Third Street, he checked the
odometer and wrote the new reading on the map: 6380.8. He
went on through town and out the highway, north this time. A
few cars were abroad now, and he passed a couple of big diesel
rigs. In about ten minutes he came to the first of the dirt roads
leading off to the west. He had to wait for an oncoming car to
turn left into it. He stopped, checked his mileage again, and
entered it on the map; 6391.1.
The road curved down a slight grade and across a flat, rough
and corrugated and full of axle-breaking chuckholes for the
Man on a Leash — 75
unwary, maintained for pickup trucks. Dust boiled up behind
him. He checked the rearview mirror and could see nothing at
all through the swirling white cloud. An old pickup came
clattering toward him and passed, and he had to slow to a crawl
until the dust of its passage began to settle. There was no wind
at all, and it was growing hot now. He switched on the air
conditioner. After eight miles on the odometer he topped
another ridge and stopped. He got out with the glasses.
The road swung down from the ridge and turned north up
another sagebrush flat. In the distance he could see a clump of
cottonwoods, a corral, and tiny ranch buildings. At least four
more miles, he thought. Too far, even allowing for slight
differences in the odometers of the two cars. He turned and
went back to the highway, picked up his new mileage reading,
and continued north to the second road. It was only a dusty and
monotonous repetition of the first. When his odometer reading
added up first to twenty-one, and then twenty-two from town, he
stopped and turned around.
He drove back to town and parked in front of his unit at the
motel. When he got out, he saw the car was as dusty now as the
Mercedes had been. He went inside and put through a call to
Mayo. There was no answer. He let the phone go on ringing for
a full minute before he gave up and broke the connection,
uneasy in spite of himself. Hell, there was nothing to worry
about. Wherever she’d gone, Murdock’s man was right with her.
He called Murdock’s office. Mr. Murdock was out, the
receptionist said. So was Mr. Snyder. He identified himself and
asked if there were any word from the man assigned to Miss
Foley.
“No,” the girl said, “he hasn’t called in since he took over at
eight. But he wouldn’t, anyway, unless he’d lost her.”
He was forced to admit this was right. Reassured, he thanked
her and hung up. He dialed for a local line and called Paulette
Carmody. She answered herself.
“Oh, Eric? You caught me just as I was going out the door.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll call back later.”
“Oh, that’s all right. It’s the church service for Jeri, but I’ve
got a few minutes. What is it?”
“Nothing important. It was just about that crew member you
said the old man locked up for having heroin on the ship—”
Man on a Leash — 76
“Oh, that kooky radio officer. Was he ever out there in space?
Look—where are you now?”‘
“Here in Coleville. At the Conestoga.”
“Fine. Honey, I’ll be home all afternoon; why don’t you come
out for a drink and I’ll tell you about the dingaling? It’s quite a
story.”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Bye now.”
He hung up. Radio officer? Then he shook his head angrily
and went out to the car; there was no use indulging in any wild
speculation until he had more than that to go on. Finish the job
first, he told himself; find the place or admit you were wrong.
He wrote the odometer reading on the map, drove up Aspen,
turned right on Third Street, and was on the blacktop road
headed east out of town.
The country was rougher in this direction, flinty hills and
ridges and twisting ravines. The sun was high overhead now,
and heat waves shimmered off the pavement. He came to the
dirt road leading north and pulled off into it. A weathered
signpost bore arrow markers saying KENDALL MTN 19 and
LADYSMITH SPRGS 22. He checked the odometer and wrote
9.2 on the map. The road went up over a ridge and along a high
flat with ravines on both sides. It was as rough as the others,
the dust a grayish white and as fine as talcum. It was impossible
to see anything behind him.
He came to the fork and stopped to read the mileage again:
13.4. He entered it on the map. The old signs, gouged and
riddled with gunshots, indicated the road bearing off to the
right led to Ladysmith Springs. He shrugged. It didn’t matter
which he took first. A pickup truck came into view down the
other, leaving a swirling plume of dust behind it. The driver
lifted a hand, and it went on past toward the highway. Romstead
took the Ladysmith road and went on. After about a mile there
was a small fenced enclosure on his left and a shed that had
probably been used for the storage of winter hay in the past but
was now empty and falling in ruin. After that there was nothing
but sage and rock and powdery dust and the endless succession
of low hills. When the odometer indicated he’d come twentythree
miles and there was still nothing in sight, he stopped,
poured a drink of the water, waited a minute for his own dust to
settle, and turned back.
Man on a Leash — 77
He checked his mileage again at the fork and turned up the
Kendall Mountain road, discouraged now and facing defeat. This
was his next to last chance. The road ran for two or three miles
up a shallow canyon, and when it climbed out, there was a fence
on his right. The fence continued as the road went up over
another ridge and out across several miles of rough mesa, still
running north. As his mileage was beginning to run out on him,
he passed a gate through the fence, a wooden gate on high
posts, with a single-lane road leading through it and
disappearing over a slight rise about two hundred yards away.
The fence turned at right angles shortly after the gate and ran
off to the east across a continuation of the low ridge.
He was twenty-two miles from town when the road began to
drop down from the mesa and he could see out across another
wide flat ahead. There was no habitation visible anywhere. He
noted the odometer reading and turned and went back. It was
three miles to the gate. Nineteen miles from town, he thought.
He stopped and got out.
The sun was straight overhead now, incandescent and searing
in the cloudless sky, and its weight was like a blow after the
cool interior of the car. There was still no wind, and in the
boundless hush his shoes made little plopping sounds in the
dust as he walked over to the gate. It was secured with a length
of heavy chain and a rusty padlock that looked as though it
hadn’t been opened in years. He could see traces of tire treads
in the dust on the other side, however, indistinct and halfobliterated
by the desert’s afternoon winds. They might have
been made months ago. There was no way he could get through
with the car, but he could walk out to where the road
disappeared over the little rise and see what was in view from
there. He lifted the binoculars off the seat, crawled through the
three-strand fence, and walked up beside the road. As the
country beyond began to come into view, he felt a little surge of
excitement.

It was a wide bowl-shaped valley or flat, and on the far side of
it, among a half dozen aspens or cottonwoods, was a ranch
house. He lifted the binoculars and studied it. Besides the house
itself, there was a barn, a smaller shed of some kind, a corral,
and off a short distance to one side a windmill and a large water
tank. He breathed softly. It was a good two miles, he estimated,
feeling conviction take hold of him, plus the nineteen to the gate
would make it exactly right. But was there anybody there now?
Man on a Leash — 78
No vehicle of any kind was visible, and he could see no one
anywhere. Of course, there might be a car or a truck in the shed
or around behind the house, but he didn’t think so. Those tire
marks in the road were too old. He swung the glasses onto the
windmill again. Several of its blades appeared to be missing, but
he couldn’t be sure at this distance. He couldn’t tell whether
there was any water in the tank or not. But there were no
animals in sight, no dog, chickens, horses, or anything, not even
range cattle.
His eye was caught then by movement in the sage a quarter
mile in front of the house, and he brought the glasses around. It
was vultures, five or six of them clustered around something on
the ground. As he watched, one of them took off, flapping, and
began to soar. Two or three more were circling high overhead.
He returned to his scrutiny of the ranch buildings. The place, he
decided, was almost surely abandoned. There was no mailbox
out here at the road, no telephone or power lines leading in.
It would be a long walk in the scorching heat of midday, and
he’d better have a drink of the water before he started. He went
back and was about to crawl between the strands of barbed
wire beside the gate when his attention was suddenly caught by
the chain encircling the post. It had been cut.
Somebody had used bolt cutters to remove a quarter-inch
section of one side of one of the links, and not too long ago. The
clean metallic gray of the ends contrasted sharply with the rusty
condition of the rest of it. It had been carefully arranged in back
of the post where it would remain unnoticed by anyone going
past in front. This had to be the place, he thought, and his eyes
were cold as he slipped the adjoining link through the gap and
opened the gate.
He could have been the only person in this end of Nevada as
he drove through, closed the gate, and rehooked the chain
again. There was no dust in sight along the road as far as he
could see, no sound of car or truck. As soon as he had dropped
down the short grade into the flat, he was out of sight of the
road except for the rising dust cloud of his passage. He drove
slowly, keeping his eyes on the building for any sign of life.
Nothing moved anywhere except the vultures, taking off in
alarm as he went past. Whatever carrion they were tearing at
was hidden by the sage some hundred yards off to his right.
Man on a Leash — 79
He was near enough now to see that most of the panes were
broken in the old-fashioned sashes of the two windows in front.
It was a small house, of board-and-batten construction, long
unpainted, with a porch across the front and a roof of weathered
shingles. There was a fieldstone chimney at the right end of it.
He stopped in the shade of one of the trees in front and got out
in the silence and the incandescent glare of noon.
The windmill and the big galvanized water tank were straight
ahead, some fifty yards off to the right of the house. Nearly half
the mill’s blades were missing, and its framework and ladder
were discolored with rust. The corral fence and barn were
behind the windmill, both silvery with age and fallen into
disrepair. It was years, he thought, since anybody had lived
here, but the place had definitely had visitors. The baked earth
of the yard bore the tracks of at least two vehicles, one of which
he thought must have been a truck of some kind because the
tires were bigger and the treads more deeply impressed. This
one had apparently been back and forth several times.
He walked around to the rear. There was a small back porch.
The windows here had broken panes in them, too. The tire
tracks of the heavy vehicle came on into the backyard, and the
truck or whatever it was had apparently stood for some length
of time in two places under the big cottonwood some distance
behind the porch, judging from the accumulated drops of
leaking crankcase oil. There were a great many heel marks and
scuffs of shoe soles as though a number of people had been
walking around, but the ground was too hard-baked and they
were too indistinct for him to gather any information from them.
The other building, off to one side of the barn, was apparently a
chicken house, and there was an old privy farther back.
He walked out to the barn, continuing to study the ground.
The wide double doors were open and sagging on their hinges,
and the ground was softer inside, a mixture of dust and sand
and ancient manure unbaked by the sun. There were some stalls
at the far end, an enclosed feed bin, and an opening above
leading into a hayloft, but the ladder beneath it was gone except
for two rungs near the top. One of the vehicles—the lighter one,
he thought—had been driven in here just once and then backed
out. A few drops of oil discolored the ground between the tracks
where it had stopped, but as a measure of the time it had stood
here they were meaningless. One car would drip that much in a
few hours, another in a month.
Man on a Leash — 80
He went back to the rear of the house and stepped up on the
porch. The door was closed, but when he tried it, it swung open
freely, and he saw it had been forced with a jimmy or pinch bar.
It had been a long time ago, however, for there was no raw,
fresh look to the splintered wood where the lock had been torn
out of the jamb. There was a stovepipe hole and sleeve through
the ceiling, so the room had apparently been the kitchen, but
nothing remained now except an old table presumably not worth
loading when the last occupants moved away. But something
was definitely wrong with the picture, and in a moment he
realized what it was.
He went on into the room in front, with its fireplace, and then
into the remaining two, presumably bedrooms, all empty of any
furniture, all with broken windowpanes, and they were the
same. There was only the thinnest film of dust, with no
footprints visible anywhere. The house had been swept. The
floors should have been heavily covered with dust, drifted sand
from the broken windows, and probably old rodent droppings
and dead insects, but somebody had cleaned it. Why? To remove
footprints? And people had been here, presumably for hours or
maybe even days, and nowhere had he seen a cigarette butt, an
empty cigarette pack, nonreturnable bottle, or tin can.
Trespassers with a conscience? Ecology freaks?
He stood in the kitchen again, still puzzled by this, when
something shiny caught his eyes in one of the cracks of the
floor. When he looked more closely, at different angles, he saw
there were several of them. He pulled a thin splinter of wood
from the wreckage of the doorjamb and knelt to poke one out. It
was smooth, bright, metallic, shaped like a teardrop but
flattened on one side. Solder? he thought. Here? He lifted out
another. There was no doubt of it. They’d fallen into the cracks
when the floor was being swept. While there was no electricity
for a soldering iron, he knew they were also heated by torches,
but what in God’s name would somebody have been soldering in
this place? He shrugged helplessly and went outside.
There was no litter can or garbage dump anywhere. He went
back to the old chicken house and looked inside and behind it.
Nothing. He came back and stood under the trees in front,
feeling as baffled and frustrated as he had after his interview
with Richter. Several people had been here, in two vehicles,
they’d cut their way through that chain out there, he was
certain this was the place his father had come or been brought
Man on a Leash — 81

at gunpoint; but there wasn’t a shred of proof of it or the
slightest clue to their identities. Even reporting it to Brubaker
was pointless; he wouldn’t find anything here either. Of course,
he’d probably know who owned the place, but that was of little
value. The owners would have entered with a key, not a pair of
bolt cutters.
He sighed and got in the car and started back out to the gate.
From the sagebrush off to his left, the vultures took off again,
flapping clumsily to get themselves aloft. Purely on impulse, he
stopped the car and got out. It was probably the carcass of a
jack-rabbit or a calf, but at least he’d know for sure. As he
started out through the brush, he saw a lengthening plume of
dust rising from the road. It was coming up from the south, the
vehicle itself out of sight beyond the low ridge this side of the
gate. He stopped to watch it. It came up to where the gate
would be and went past. He went on, beginning to be conscious
of the odor of putrefaction. The carcass came into view then. It
was a burro, or what was left of one.
It lay in a small open space surrounded by a scattering of
greenish-black feathers and the white lime of bird droppings
where the vultures had been tearing at it for days or perhaps
weeks. All the soft tissues were gone now, consumed by the big
birds and the other, smaller scavengers of nature’s clean-up
crew, so that little remained except the skeleton, some of the
tougher connective tissues, and enough of the leathery hide to
identify it. He was about to turn back to the car when he noticed
a puzzling thing about the skeleton. Nearly all the ribs were
broken.
That really was odd, when you thought about it. The
scavengers could separate the individual bones as the
connective tissues deteriorated, but their breaking anything as
strong as the ribs of one of these small desert mules was out of
the question. He wondered what could have killed it. The only
North American predator with the power to smash in the chest
that way would be a grizzly, and there were no grizzlies in the
desert or probably anywhere nearer than Yellowstone.
He shrugged. Strange it might be, but not very important. It
could have been hit by a car or truck out on the road and then
brought in here to be disposed of. He turned away and started
back to the car, idly watching the ground for tracks. He’d taken
only a few steps when he saw the piece of metal. He picked it
up. It was a small aluminum cap, and even as the tingle of
Man on a Leash — 82
excitement began to spread along his nerves, he saw the other
thing on the ground—a thin slice of wood veneer the same
length as one of the Upmann cigars. It was flat now instead of
curled, and somewhat bleached by the sun, but there was no
doubt what it was.
What in God’s name had the old man been doing out here by
the carcass of a burro—assuming the carcass had been here
then? And where was the tube itself? He began a search then,
slowly, systematically, covering every inch of the ground in a
widening spiral outward from the burro. Several times he saw
heel prints, but the ground was too hard to tell whether they
were all made by the same pair of shoes. The sun beat down
relentlessly, and the smell was disagreeable until he began to
get farther away. It was obvious now the burro hadn’t been
dragged in here or unloaded from a truck because no vehicle
had been near the place at all, but this interested him only
slightly at the moment. It was a full ten minutes before he found
anything else, and then it wasn’t the cigar tube—he already
knew he wasn’t going to find that, and why.
It was a small strip of brown plastic or wax-impregnated
cardboard a little more than an inch long and varying from a
half inch to an inch in width, jagged of outline and looking as if
it had been scorched. It was slightly curved as though it had
once been part of a cylinder, and it was crimped at one end. The
only images he could evoke from this much of it were of a
shotgun shell or a stick of dynamite, but it couldn’t be either of
these because of the markings. At one end, where it had
apparently been crimped, was a plus sign, and at the other,
where it was torn and scorched, the two lower-case letters: fd.
Was there a word in the English language that ended in fd? He
couldn’t think of one, and if he’d ever seen anything resembling
this, he couldn’t remember it. He put it in the pocket of his
shirt.
The three beer cans made even less sense. He found them as
he was completing his last circuit, now a good fifty yards away
from the burro. They were almost that far again beyond him,
toward the house, but sunlight glinting off one of them caught
his eye and he went over. They were shiny and new, emptied
only recently, and were strung together with short lengths of
soft copper wire as if somebody had fashioned a homemade toy
for some toddler to drag around. He pulled them from the clump
Man on a Leash — 83
of sage in which they were caught, looked at them blankly, and
shook his head.
Their being linked together with the wire seemed too
pointless even for speculation, and their only significance was
the proof that there had indeed been people here within the
past few weeks and that, contrary to the evidence so far, they
weren’t a new species of man subsisting off the surrounding air
in the manner of lichens and orchids, both of which he’d already
established when he found the cap to the cigar tube. He tossed
them back into the bush, went out to the car, savagely turned it
around, and drove back to the house. There were only two
possibilities. Either they’d carried everything away with them,
in which case he was out of luck, or they’d disposed of it farther
from the house, possibly by burning or burying.
He parked in the shade of one of the trees in the rear yard and
went straight back, carrying the binoculars. At first the ground
was flat, sparsely covered with sage, but after about two
hundred yards it rose in a series of low benches, cut here and
there by ravines. He climbed up and turned to survey the flat,
sweeping the glasses slowly back and forth over all the ground
between there and the house. Nothing. He went on, following
the course of one of the twisting ravines for several hundred
yards, crossed it, and worked his way back down another. The
sun was blistering, and sweat ran down his face. Thirst began to
bother him, and he wished he’d taken a drink of the water
before he started. A jackrabbit burst out of a clump of sage and
went bounding off. Heat waves shimmered off the rocky ridge
just beyond him to the north. It was a half hour later, and he
was a good quarter mile from the house when he found it.
A steep-sided gully about twelve feet deep led off from one of
the ravines, and at the bottom of it, half-covered with dead
tumbleweeds, were the remains of a fire and a heap of
blackened tin cans and broken bottles. He backtracked, found a
place to climb down into the ravine, and followed it up to its
steep-sided tributary. He entered it, feeling the brutal heat
within its constricting walls, and smashed and shoved the old
tumbleweeds out of the way.
He found a short piece of stick left over from the fire and
began to probe carefully through the pile, separating and
cataloging its contents. The labels were all burned off the cans,
of course, but at least a dozen of them were food tins—the tops
removed completely with a mechanical can opener—in addition
Man on a Leash — 84
to seven fruit-juice tins—punched—and forty-five beer cans. He
paused, baffled, as he was tossing the beer cans to one side.
Nine of them were tied together with short lengths of copper
wire, three in one string and six in another, the same as the
ones he’d found out in the flat.

He shrugged and threw them behind him. He could puzzle
over that later. There were a number of battered aluminum
trays that presumably had held frozen food of some kind, a
mustard jar and a pickle jar, both unbroken, and the pieces of
what appeared to be two whiskey bottles. Next was a large
buckle. It was fire-blackened, and whatever had been attached
to it was completely burned away. Then he poked out a short
length of stranded copper wire, its insulation burned off. Then
another buckle, the same size and shape as the first, and several
more scraps of wire, and finally, at the bottom of the whole
thing, he began to uncover the cigar tubes he’d been certain he
would find. Some of them were flattened and bent and all were
scorched by the fire, but there was no doubt they were
Upmanns. On a few of them part of the name was still legible.
There were twenty-three of them. He tossed the stick aside and
stood up.
There was no way of knowing how many people had been here
or whether some of the others had been smoking the cigars as
well as his father, but even so they could have remained four or
five days with the amount of supplies they’d used. They’d
obviously had camping equipment, including an icebox and a
stove of some kind, and it was possible the heavier vehicle had
been a pickup camper. There was little or no chance anybody
had seen them while they were in here, since the place was out
of sight of the road, but somebody might have seen them
coming or going. The thing to do now was report it to Brubaker
as soon as possible so he could start questioning the people who
used the road. He went back and climbed out of the ravine.
Sweat was pouring off his face, and his shirt was stuck to him
all over.
He started toward the house but had taken only a few steps
when he stopped abruptly, looking out over the flat beyond it. A
plume of dust had appeared over the rise just this side of the
gate, and the vehicle at the head of it was coming this way in a
hurry. He jumped down into the edge of the ravine and lifted the
binoculars from their strap around his neck. It was a sports car.
It disappeared from view behind the trees before he could get
Man on a Leash — 85
more than this brief glimpse of it, but his eyes were coldly
watchful as he waited for it to come into view in the yard at the
side of the house. It did in a little more than a minute, and even
as it came to a sliding stop, he saw it was Bonner’s Porsche.
The big man leaped out, almost before the car had come to a
full stop, and lunged toward the wall of the house, flattening
himself against it between the windows, and Romstead could
see he had the flat slab of an automatic in his hand. He hadn’t
known the other car was there until he’d made the turn into the
yard, Romstead thought. He was being blinded with sweat and
had to lower the glasses to wipe it away. When he replaced
them, Bonner had eased along the wall until he could peer into
the kitchen window.
He went around the corner then, up onto the porch, and
pushed the door open and went inside. That took guts,
Romstead thought, not knowing who might be in there waiting
to blow your head off—guts or wild, bullheaded rage. He’d
already seen the other was incongruously dressed in a dark suit,
white shirt, and a tie; he’d just come from his sister’s funeral.
Bonner emerged from the house, strode to the rented car, and
opened the door to lean in. Looking for the registration,
Romstead thought. The big man straightened up then with the
Steadman County map in his hand. He studied it for a moment,
threw it back on the seat, and dropped the automatic in the
pocket of his jacket. He strode over to the barn, emerged from
that after a brief moment, and went to the chicken house to
peer inside. He looked once around the flat and then began to
stride furiously straight back toward the hillside and the ravines
where Romstead was.
He’s not after me, Romstead thought, unless he’s gone
completely berserk and stopped thinking altogether, but I’d
better find out for sure before he gets right on top of me with
that gun. Better to have him open up at fifty yards so I can haul
ass than to let him stumble over me. He stood up as though he’d
just climbed out of the ravine and started to walk toward the
other. Bonner saw him but made no move toward the gun in his
pocket; he merely quickened his pace. He began to run up the
slope toward the bench where Romstead was. When he reached
the top he slowed to a furious walk beside the ravine and
shouted.
“Romstead! What the hell are you doing here?”
Man on a Leash — 86
“The same thing you are,” Romstead called back.
They were less than twenty yards apart when it happened.
Romstead heard the whuck of the bullet’s slapping into flesh
and bone a fraction of a second before he heard the crack of the
rifle up on the ridge to his right. Bonner’s body jerked with the
impact, he spun around, thrown off-balance, and started to fall.
There was another whuck, and his body jerked again even as it
was going down. Romstead was already diving for the ravine.
He landed on the sloping side of it and rolled and skidded to the
bottom, and as he was spitting out dirt and trying to get the
dust and sweat out of his eyes, he heard the rifle fire again.
The ravine was a good seven feet deep, so he was safe here as
long as the rifleman stayed where he was, but he had to try to
get Bonner down from there if he could locate him. He ran bent
over, hugging the wall, and tried to remember just where the
big man had fallen. Then he saw the dark coat-sleeved arm. The
ravine wall was steeper here. He grasped the hand to pull, and
at the same time there was another whuck above him, followed
by the crack of the rifle. He hauled. Bonner’s head and
shoulders dangled over the lip of the ravine, and a stream of
foamy, bright arterial blood gushed downward through the dust
from the throat that was almost completely shot away.
Romstead gagged and retched and pushed himself to one side
to get out of the way of it, and then the sickness was gone, and
he was conscious only of a cold, consuming rage. He clawed his
way up the wall, grasped a protruding root to hold himself there
behind the body while he groped in the right-hand pocket of the
jacket. He had the automatic then, but it was slick with blood
from one of the other wounds, and as he slid back to the bottom
of the ravine and started to pull back the slide to arm it, it
slipped from his hands. He scooped it up, now pasty with dust,
operated the slide, numbly watched the cartridge fly out of the
already-loaded chamber, and pounded back up the ravine.
Twenty yards away he threw himself against the sloping wall
and inched upward until he could see past a clump of sage at
the top. The crest of the ridge ahead of him was at least two
hundred and fifty yards away. The handgun, of course, was as
useless at that distance as a slingshot, but if the son of a bitch
came down to appraise his work and finish off the hiding and
unarmed witness, he was going to get the greatest, and last,
surprise of his life.
Man on a Leash — 87
He waited. Minutes crept by. There was no movement
anywhere along the ridge. He wiped sweat from his face and left
it smeared with blood and dust from his hand. Raising the
binoculars, he carefully swept the full crest of the ridge for
several hundred yards in both directions and saw nothing but
sage and sun-blasted rock. Then he heard a car start up, or a
truck, somewhere beyond it. It began to draw away and faded
into silence. He turned so he could look out over the flat beyond
the ranch house, and in a few minutes he saw the lengthening
plume of dust rising from the road as the unseen vehicle sped
along it, headed south.

It might be a decoy, he knew; there could have been two of
them, one remaining to cut him down when he ventured out into
the open, but he didn’t think so. A feeling was growing in him
now, a totally inexplicable conviction that the rifleman had been
up there the whole time he was walking around this hillside and
that the man could have killed him fifty times over. Then why
Bonner?
In a few minutes he eased back down the ravine to where it
shallowed and finally debouched upon the flat. On shaky knees
and with his back muscles. drawn up into knots, he stepped out
into the open and started toward the house. After a hundred
yards he began to breathe easily again.
When he got out to the gate, the fence was gone on one side
of it. Bonner had apparently just chopped his way through the
wire without even looking at the chain. The dust of the other
vehicle’s passage had long since settled, and there were no
others in sight. The wheels spun as he straightened out and
gunned it, headed for town.
Man on a Leash — 88
8
“If you two goddamned bullheaded—” Brubaker searched for a
word, gave up in bitter futility, and took a cigar from his desk.
He began to strip off the cellophane. “He’d be alive now, but no,
he had to go charging out there like a gut-shot rhinoceros
instead of telling us about it, whatever it was. And if you can
give me one single damned reason on God’s green earth why
you shouldn’t be dead too, I’ll kiss your ass at half time in the
Rose Bowl. Any one of those four slugs he put in Bonner would
have killed him, and he could just as easily put the second one
in you instead of wasting it on a man who was already as good
as dead while he was still falling. Or maybe you’re so small he
wasn’t sure he could hit you at two hundred and fifty yards with
probably a twelve power scope, a bench rest, and hand-loaded
ammunition that would put all five shots in your eye at that
range—”
“I don’t know what he was shooting,” Romstead said wearily.
“All I know is it was plenty hot, and he was an artist with it. And
I’ve already told you, anyway, he could have shot me any time in
that half hour I was wandering around there. He must have
been up there all the time, and he knew I’d found their garbage
dump and those cigar tubes—” He gestured toward the
confused litter on Brubaker’s desk, the still bloody and dustsmeared
automatic, his own statement, now typed out and
signed, and half a dozen of the scorched aluminum tubes, a
handwritten letter and some more papers, and a flat plastic bag
Man on a Leash — 89
of heroin. “I don’t know why he didn’t, except it was Bonner he
wanted.”
It was after 4 P.M. Romstead had returned with them to what
he had learned by now was called the old Van Sickle place.
Brubaker and another deputy had searched the ridge and the
area behind it, found a few footprints and the tracks of a pickup
truck or jeep, but no brass. The rifleman had taken his four
cartridge cases with him, probably, as Brubaker had said,
because they were hand loads instead of factory ammunition,
possibly some necked-down and resized wildcat too distinctive
to leave lying around. The ambulance had driven out across the
flat in back of the house, and they’d carried Bonner’s
exsanguinated body down from the hillside on a stretcher,
looking pitifully shrunken and crumpled in on itself. Romstead
had shown them the garbage dump, and after they’d come back
to the office, he’d made a full statement and signed it. His face
felt sunburned over the old tan and still had dust caked on it.
His sweaty clothes had dried now in the air conditioning and
stuck to him when he moved.