After securing the warrants, he had driven to Norman Walters’s office. He had expected more of a reaction from Richie’s father, yet he could understand the emotions the man must have experienced when he received the news that his son was finally to be avenged. Walters had been cool to him in recent years, but Shindler felt that this was a reaction to his failure to solve the case. All that would change now.

Shindler absent-mindedly touched the arrest warrant in his left inside jacket pocket and looked up at the third-floor apartment where Sarah Rhodes lived. His watch showed eleven-thirty. It was a warm, sunny day. The beginning of spring. In a half hour, police detectives carrying a similar warrant would arrive at the State Penitentiary.

The uniformed policemen were out of their car now and Shindler, followed by Avritt, entered the apartment building. The calm was still inside him. It was the feeling of victory, of satisfaction. He had known all along, from the first moment he had seen Billy Coolidge. He thought of the long years when the case had floated in limbo. How often he had despaired of ever proving what he knew in his heart to be the truth.

Shindler paused in front of the apartment door and waited for the others. When they caught up, he rang the bell. A girl answered the door.

“Miss Rhodes?”

“Yes.”

He showed her his badge. The girl looked confused. A man’s voice called out from the other room and Shindler’s pulse began to race.

“Is Bobby Coolidge here?” Shindler asked.

“Yes. Is anything wrong?”

Shindler smiled. He was the fisherman, the hunter. The prey was close, the line was taut.

“We have a matter to discuss with Mr. Coolidge. I wonder if you could ask him to step in here for a moment.”

“Of course,” she said, hesitantly. She disappeared into another room and the officers filled up the entry way.

Sarah returned. Shindler studied Bobby as he came down the hall. The D.A. haircut was gone and so was the arrogance. He had put on a little weight, but he was the same person Shindler had seen on the night in ’61 when they had interrogated the brothers at the station house.

“Robert Coolidge?”

“Yes.”

“I have a warrant for your arrest. You will have to accompany us to the station house.”

Bobby smiled and looked back and forth between Shindler and the other policemen.

“Is this a joke?”

“I’m afraid not,” Shindler said, handing Coolidge a copy of the warrant. Bobby did not look at it.

“Well, what’s the charge?”

“Mr. Coolidge, I am here to arrest you for the murders of Elaine Murray and Richie Walters.”

PART FOUR. SHADOWS AND WHISPERS

1

Bobby was in the village again and he was afraid. There were no stars and, like a Hollywood backdrop, the solid black sky seemed to have no dimensions. Mist snaked its way around the circular, grass-thatched huts and shrouded the bodies, creating the eerie illusion that their moans and screams were emitted by the fog.

Bobby looked for the rest of his company, but he saw no one. There was a sound like a spider scuttling in the dark. Another, like Witch’s Wind rustling the trees. Bobby clutched his carbine to his khaki-clad chest. He crept forward, bent at the waist, his eyes darting into the ebony mist.

The toe of his boot struck an object and he jumped back, startled. The fog cleared around a patch of ground. There was an old man lying in the dust. He was obviously dead, yet undead. His eyes pleaded with Coolidge and Bobby was seized by an unreasoning terror. He leaped on the old man, stabbing, screaming. His knife struck repeatedly and there was blood everywhere. Fountains of blood, spraying in red streams high into the night sky, as the ancient, sorrow-filled eyes pleaded with him and he listened to the cacophony of his own screams.

“Shut up, goddamn it!”

“What?”

There were several voices yelling for quiet. Bobby’s eyes were wide open and he was in his cell and not in the jungle.

“I said, ‘Shut up or I’ll shut you up,’” someone yelled down the stone corridor.

Bobby mumbled an apology. He was soaking wet. He ran a hand across his face. His heartbeat was rapid. At least he was not in the jungle. He realized that the blanket was clutched around his throat. He released it. He swung his legs over the side of the bunk and let his head fall heavily into the palms of his hands. He could not relax. Deep breathing did not help. Inside was a vacuum. When they had read him the charge, everything that he had been or dreamed had evaporated.

He had been in isolation since his arrest yesterday afternoon. There had been no visitors, except the detectives, and he had refused to talk to them. He wondered why Sarah had not come to see him.

The jail cell was small. There was a bunk bed and a toilet, nothing else. He had enough room to pace, but he had no desire to move. For the last eighteen hours he had been like a rag doll. Every movement was an effort. It was as if his bones had become fluid and his heart a fluttering bird, afraid of the slightest whisper. When they had turned out the lights last evening, he had cried, not out of anger, but in desperation. He was lost.

He wanted someone to hold him and assure him that it was not all going to end. He wanted to bury his head in Sarah’s lap and let her stroke his hair and talk about their future together. He wanted to believe.

After he sat on the edge of his bed for some time, his breathing became more regular and he felt very tired. He let himself fall back onto the bed and he covered himself with the blanket and shut his eyes. As soon as he did, a great fear gripped him. It was Vietnam again and even before that. To sleep was to dream. Oh, God, let me rest. Please! But there was a roaring in his head. Wakefulness was the dam that blocked the flood of dreams, sleep the lever that released it. There was no liquor here and no Sarah. Slowly he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He could hear movement in the darkness. The scratching of rat claws on the dry cement floors.

There was an attractive young woman and a man who looked vaguely familiar seated in his waiting room when Mark Shaeffer arrived at his office.

“I don’t know if you remember me,” the man said. “I’m George Rasmussen. You helped me out of a scrape a few months ago.”

The name brought back the event. This was the college student who had been arrested for drunk driving. He wondered if the girl was Rasmussen’s wife. He had trouble taking his eyes off her. She was very tense and so was George. He ushered them into his private office.

“What’s the problem?” he asked when they were seated. His eyes strayed again to the girl. She was wearing slacks and a tight sweater that showed off her figure. There was a disturbing quality about the girl that struck a sexual chord. She seemed soft and lost and her nearness awakened a desire to protect and to touch. His relations with Cindy had been sporadic lately and he found that he was becoming aroused.

“My boyfriend was arrested yesterday,” she said. Her voice quivered when she spoke. Mark took out a yellow note pad and a pen.

“Is he in jail now?”

“Yes. They won’t let us see him. I called George and he said that we should see you.”

“Have you tried to bail him out?”

“There isn’t any bail. We asked.”

“There has to be bail. Who did you talk to?”

“I don’t remember the name. He was a sergeant.”

“Where? At the county jail?”

“Yes.”

“He should know better than that.”

Mark swiveled his chair and picked up the phone.

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Bobby. Bobby Coolidge. It would be under Robert, I guess.”