Zigzag Read Free Page A

following Mrs. Blunt and then U-turn away from the scene of the accident. No surprise that he hadn’t told me if so, as uncooperative as he’d been.
    â€œI take it Mears is local,” I said. “Do you know him well?”
    â€œNo one knows him well. He keeps to himself, hardly has a civil word for anybody.”
    â€œCan you tell me where he lives?”
    â€œIn the hills somewhere between Rio Verdi and Monte Rio, I don’t know exactly where. Grace Hammond at the market might be able to tell you.”
    â€œWhat does he do for a living?”
    â€œI don’t really know, except that he hunts deer and sells venison to Grace now and then. You’d have to ask him.”
    â€œI will when I talk to him.”
    â€œIf you talk to him,” Mrs. Blunt said. “He’s an unfriendly cuss, Floyd Mears is. I’d be surprised to hear he gave you the time of day, let alone admitted to witnessing the accident.”

 
    3
    The drizzle had stopped by the time I rolled up and over heavily wooded Walker Hill and picked out the narrow, muddy access lane to Floyd Mears’ property from the landmarks Grace Hammond had given me. It was getting on toward four o’clock by then, the combination of overcast sky and dense pine and redwood forest creating a wet, dusklike gloom. If there were any other homes in the vicinity, they were well hidden. It had been a quarter of a mile since the last driveway before this one had appeared and then disappeared among the trees.
    I turned in at a crawl in deference to the muddy surface and the fact that the lane led downhill, gradually at first, more steeply and crookedly after I crossed a platform bridge spanning a slender, fast-running creek. I’d gone a hundred yards or so before the lane curved, the trees thinned, and a broad clearing opened up ahead. Not one but three structures squatted there, all of them built of rough-hewn redwood—a good-sized cabin and two outbuildings off to one side.
    Floyd Mears was home: a newish, mud-streaked, white four-door Dodge Ram pickup was parked near the largest of the outbuildings and light leaked through the cabin’s front window. A little surprisingly, given Earline Blunt’s description of him as unfriendly and reclusive, he already had company. A second vehicle, this one a nondescript Ford van several years older, was angled in behind the pickup. The visitor probably reduced even more my chances of getting Mears to talk to me.
    I parked and got out onto a rough carpeting of wet pine-needled grass. It was quiet here except for the dripping of rainwater from tree branches and a faint clattering noise that seemed to come from the smallest, shedlike outbuilding. Nobody came out of the cabin. That was a little surprising, too. My car is eight years old and not the quietest vehicle on the road; they must have heard me jouncing in along the lane.
    There was no front porch, just three steps to a little landing before the door. I went up and used my knuckles—once, twice, three times. Still nobody showed. Well, maybe they were in one of the outbuildings or out in the woods for some reason. Or maybe Mears had seen me through the window and just wasn’t opening up to a stranger.
    I tried knocking again, gave it up, and slogged over the wet ground toward the other structures. The clattering noise grew louder and I could also hear the throb of a motor as I passed the smaller shed. Generator, a large one with a troublesome bearing—Mears’ sole source of electricity, evidently. The only wires anywhere on the property ran from that shed to both its larger neighbor and the cabin.
    The other shed was set farther back against the pine woods, its facing side a blank wall against which cordwood was stacked under a hanging tarp. The entrance was around on the near side. When I turned the corner I saw the door—and something else that pulled me up short, set up a prickly sensation on the back of my