The Devil You Know by Wayne Johnson

Author:Wayne Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307421944
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Penry got out first, shocked to find the doctor and his son and daughter, he had to assume, had made it out in their damaged canoe. He went up the ridge, and with a fear in him, almost total, and blocking the path, turned Stacey over in the now-thick, coagulated blood. He reached into Stacey’s pants pocket, and something like dark joy in him, palmed his wallet even as Munson came on, dropping the wallet down his shirtfront so it stopped at his belt. He made a big point of staying low, he couldn’t stand with the wallet there, making a production out of his grief over Stacey, when all he could think was he had to find the boy and his father and the girl. And he would run, later.

After Munson.

But he needed Munson now, he thought, and when Munson stooped to touch Stacey’s face, Penry got the wallet into his back pocket, his wallet already in his pack. He did this calmly, stealthily, as if he were rendering on the killing floor at Dysart, careful not to cut himself with a saw, and blood everywhere.

He did everything calmly now. Everything that had happened outside him had driven him to this moment, and he could face it if he thought about it that way, about himself that way, and he moved now with no remorse, like a man going about important business, even asking Munson to go down to shore to see if they’d left any sign of what direction they’d gone, while he went up to the tent site to see if, somehow, he could find the sheet of paper he’d lost in the phone booth, tore through everything, his hands quick, and powerful, scrabbling through the gear, the rods and reels, bait case, but there was no sign of it, and then he bundled the rest of it, a girl’s day pack, purple with flowers on it, and cans of stew, a shaving kit, toothbrushes, detritus, and with Munson’s help, they cleared the entire campsite, bundled Stacey and the rest of it in the tent, and weighted it with rocks, and sunk it far offshore, and were back, quickly, clearing away all the remaining signs that anyone had been there and, likewise, sunk that, and moved out past the island, and were stunned to see the three channels to the north, and the larger, wider channel to the south, the maze of lakes to the west.

“I say we split up,” Munson said.

He’d moved a fair distance from Penry, far enough out so that Penry, with his short, thick arms, could never catch him if they had a falling-out.

“What time is it?” Penry said.

“What difference does it make, if you don’t know when they left the island?”

Penry shook his head. “Daylight. How many hours do they have before daylight?”

Now Munson checked his watch. “It’s five after twelve. So they have six, almost seven hours of dark.”

They floated there, each in his canoe.

“Listen, you take the furthest west, I’ll take the middle,” Munson said.

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