Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [115]
Chapter 44
That Same Night
West Virginia
Pauling saw the headlights through the cabin window. He got up from the stool and went through the rear door carrying the Glock 17 in his right hand. He’d left the aeronautical charts in the kitchen; no time to go back for them.
The rain had effectively stopped, leaving a fine mist in the air. Behind him, the sound of the flowing river provided a misleading sense of peace.
He stood on the top step and peered through the gap he’d created in the curtain. The approaching vehicle’s lights continued to flash into the cabin, then disappear as the car bounced over the bumpy, pitted road. He heard the engine, then its shutdown. A car door opened and closed. Another door opened; “Come on, come on,” a man’s voice said. The second door slammed shut. Foot-steps on the front porch, the door being unlocked, swung open with force; “Come on,” the man’s voice again. Would he notice the broken windowpane? Pauling wondered. Evidently not. The door was closed and the cabin was suddenly illuminated by two overhead fixtures suspended from rough-hewn beams in the ceiling.
Skip Traxler and Jessica Mumford stood facing each other in the center of the room. She wore a yellow rain slicker Pauling had seen her in many times before, part of her standard bird-watching gear. He searched her face for what she was feeling and thinking. He saw anger in her eyes. Pauling felt no such anger at the moment. He’d cleared his mind of anything and everything to make room for the decisions he’d have to make.
Traxler held a revolver pointed at the floor. Pauling had seen him in pictures in Jess’s apartment, never in person. This was “Scope,” an undercover FBI agent and her former husband. The question of why he’d done this came and went, unanswered. It didn’t matter. There’d be plenty of time for those questions. For now, disarming Traxler and getting Jess out of harm’s way was the only question to be acted upon.
Pauling sized Traxler up physically. Same height, squarely built, fit and strong was the assessment. Pauling had him outmanned when it came to firepower. The Glock was a semiautomatic, Traxler’s revolver less puissant.
They moved out of his view. He pressed his ear to the door but only the incessant flow of the river reached him. He considered going to the front of the cabin and looking through one of the windows, but Traxler might hear him. As he pondered his next move, Traxler said loudly, “What the hell?” Pauling looked through the gap in the curtain. Traxler stood by the front window Pauling had smashed. Traxler looked around, eyes wide, mouth determined. Pauling stepped off the side of the steps and crouched in the darkness. The back door opened. “Unlocked,” Traxler growled to himself. Pauling was certain he’d see the car beneath the trees, but if he did, he didn’t react. He slammed the door shut.
Pauling immediately straightened, went around the side of the cabin, stepped onto the porch, took careful, silent steps to the nearest of the two windows, and looked through it. Traxler had herded Jessica to the closed rear door. Her back was to him; his revolver was trained on her. Pauling strained to see what Traxler held besides the revolver. Binoculars? A book of some kind?
Pauling knew he had to act. It appeared that Traxler was about to take Jessica out through that rear door. If he went in the direction of the river, he’d see Pauling’s rental car. Pauling tensed until he saw Traxler open the door and push Jess through it into the night. He left the porch and hugged the side of the cabin until reaching the back corner. A full moon, obscured until now, cast light on the area between the cabin and the river, then was hidden again behind low-moving black clouds. But in that brief moment, Pauling saw that Traxler was prodding Jessica to the riverbank.