The temperature seemed to be dropping by the second, and the initial layer of heavy, wet snow, which I had assumed would melt quickly away, was starting to freeze, and now more snow, lighter snow, the stuff that drifts are made of, was covering it over.
Under normal conditions it would have taken fifteen minutes to get to the Mountain. I was lucky to make it there in half an hour. Even in perfect weather these narrow, winding roads were unkind; today they were downright sadistic. And, of course, visibility was next to nil, though I did have the roads pretty much to myself, as very few others were moronic enough to go out in this.
I was, however, able to see the gate that closed off the driveway that started up the huge hill, disappearing into the thickness of fir trees that covered the slope, one or two thousand trees assembled on the hillside like little men waiting for something, this storm maybe, or maybe the Second Coming. I slowed and stopped and was able to make out the sign on the gate, reading MOUNTAIN LODGE, and then another sign, reading CLOSED, and a third, NO TRESPASSING. The gate was barnwood, and so was the fence that extended from either side of the gate, extending along the frontage of the Mountain Lodge property, down to where some non-fir trees separated the Lodge land from the beginning of the yard of a two-story, somewhat rundown clapboard farmhouse. Both the barnwood fencing, and the old farmhouse, looked rustically attractive in the falling snow, like something Hallmark set up for the front of a card. Only in this case it would have to be April Fool’s.
The farmhouse had a driveway, too, but it wasn’t blocked off by a locked gate. There wasn’t any gate, nor much of anything else, except the obviously deserted farmhouse, its windows Xed with wood slats, its paint beginning to peel, its yard overgrown to such an extent the several inches of snow couldn’t hide the fact.
I pulled into the driveway, which was loose gravel, and drove around behind the house, where the barn was. The barn was red faded to a coppery orange, except for the side facing the highway, and this at one time had been painted into a billboard for some product, but the lettering and the picture below the lettering were obscured by the years, and the snow.
I got out to see if the barn was locked. Snow kept tossing itself in my face, like handfuls of powdered glass, and the wind pushing me around had teeth in it. But I had on a quilted thermal jacket and an arm to put in front of my face and was protected, though it would’ve taken an Eskimo suit to really do the job. The nine-millimeter, with its silencer, was stuck down in my belt; the thermal jacket was short-waisted and if I wanted to I could slip a hand easily up onto the butt of the gun. I wanted to, and did. There was a possibility I might find Turner’s blue-gray Chevy parked inside the barn, and if so, I might be needing the gun. Soon.
The barn was unlocked. I took a look around, and found it warm, comparatively speaking, and obviously still in use: no expensive equipment in view, but plenty of hay. I would’ve been surprised had the barn not been in use: a farmhouse might logically be deserted, but the adjacent land wouldn’t be. Not in this part of the country. This was apparently one of the many small farms that have been swallowed up by larger ones, leaving the farmhouses vacant, although considering the nearness of the Lake Geneva and Twin Lakes vacation centers, the house was probably rented out in summer.
And possibly in winter, but not now. Not in the off season, in the spring, if this was spring: any robins in the neighborhood when the storm hit were frozen dinners by now.
Turner’s Chevy wasn’t in the barn. And there wasn’t any indication any other vehicle had been, either, with the possible exception of a tractor or something. I would still need to check inside the house itself, I supposed, but the likelihood of Turner being in there, without his car in here, was slight.
But he would be holed up in one of the farmhouses nearby, that I felt sure of. He wasn’t smart enough to scratch the hit, to get the hell out, which he should’ve realized was necessary last night, the moment I showed up at Wilma’s to hold a gun on him and get him talking. And now that he’d had a fatal confrontation with Wilma, the hit would seem out of the question; but then he should’ve been gone before the scene with Wilma had a chance to happen, but he hadn’t. The fucking jerk.
I knew how he was thinking. His reasoning would be that neither my showing up, nor the unpleasantness with Wilma, had anything directly to do with the hit, so why not go on as planned? All that would be needed was for him to relocate. He had probably already been using a farmhouse around here as a stakeout point; he’d only been using the room at Wilma’s to sleep and bang the niece.
So he’d be around.
Me too.
But I did have one nagging thought: suppose Turner was smarter than I gave him credit for. Or somebody in back of Turner was directing his actions and anticipating mine. I’d become convinced that Turner really was in the area to hit Castile, thanks largely to that magazine he’d left behind, with its conveniently dog-eared page cueing me to the Castile interview, which had seemed to confirm the story Turner told me, under the gun.
It had been that article that led me here: the octagonal ski lodge mentioned in the interview as the location of Castile’s new film was obviously Mountain Lodge, a resort that had gone bankrupt before it opened, just a year or so ago. There had been a lot in the press about the place, and anyone living in the area would have to know about it. Of course Turner had given me one misleading piece of information-saying the lodge was “back deep in a wooded place,” which wasn’t entirely accurate-but otherwise I had to ask: had I found my way here, or been led? What if this entire series of events had been planned, and set in motion? What if I were still Turner’s target, as I’d originally thought, and this was some screwball, elaborate way of getting me in the sights of somebody’s sniperscope?
At any rate, here I was: ready to scale the Mountain and make contact with Jerry Castile.