The Hunt

“Thanks, Sheriff.”

“Good luck to you. Hope you find that son of a bitch.”

“Oh, I’ll find him. Count on it.”

Keegan looked out over the snow-drifted vista, beyond the mountains. Somewhere out there, Siebenundzwanzig was on the run. Now he knew someone was after him. By now, he had probably changed identity again. But Keegan was undaunted.

“Run, you bastard, run,” he said to himself. “I’ll be right behind you all the way. Don’t even stop to take a breath. If you do, you’re a dead man.”

Two days later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun.

Keegan sat in the back booth of The Rose. The table was covered with newspaper and magazine clippings. As he read them he moved them from one pile to another. There was a space for a third pile—possibilities—but that space was empty. He had hired two clipping services to scan periodicals, one east of the Mississippi, the other west, looking for murders, offbeat crimes, anything with the number 27. Each day thick envelopes would arrive and he would go through the clippings, looking for something, anything, that might give him a clue to the whereabouts or exploits of 27.

He recognized the tall, lanky man when he entered the bar, even though he was a mere silhouette, framed by the sunlight streaming through the door.

Smith.

This would be bad news.

Smith walked the length of the room and sat down. He motioned to Tiny. “May I have a glass of your best white wine, please?” he asked pleasantly.

“How did you dodge the twins?” Keegan asked.

“Hoover called them in. He’s so busy rounding up subversives he needs everybody he’s got.” He motioned to the clippings as Tiny brought his wine. “What’s this all about?”

Keegan explained the clippings to him.

“He’s not going to do anything to screw himself up,” Smith said.

“He’s not perfect,” Keegan answered. “Nobody’s perfect. He’s going to make a mistake and when he does, I’ll know it. If I don’t read it or hear, I’ll feel it. I can feel his heart beating. I can feel the sweat in his palms.” He nodded sharply. “I’ll know it.’

“Mr. Keegan, you’ve been after this guy for almost a year and you’re still no closer to him than you ever were.”

“Wrong, Mr. Smith. I was three miles away from him last week. I’ll tell you what I know about him. He’s six- one. Blond. Probably has green eyes. In excellent physical shape and a real charmer. And he’s got three bad wounds on his left cheek. We learned that from the pilot that flew him to Albuquerque. He carries a gold Dunhill cigarette lighter with a wolf’s head on the top. I have his fingerprints. We know he used the identity Fred Dempsey. The guy’s a chameleon. He can switch identities faster than you can switch hats. He’ll do anything to survive, Steal, kill, makes no difference. So far he’s killed at least eight people that we know about. When he runs, he makes it appear that he’s dead. He killed a forest ranger named Kramer, buried him in a lake and skied out of there—thirty- five miles, some of it through a blizzard. He killed a family of four, then skied another fifteen miles and paid some local stunt pilot a thousand dollars to fly him into Albuquerque, not Denver, which would have been the obvious thing. He doesn’t do the obvious. If we hadn’t been on his ass, he would have gotten away with it. He did the same thing in Drew City.”

“But he did get away, Keegan. By now he could be anywhere. In any disguise and with new papers. And . . . now he knows somebody’s on to him.”

“That’s not going to change him,” said Keegan. “He’s a classic psychopath, Mr. Smith. Hell, he kills when he doesn’t have to. He killed that family in Colorado, two kids, mother, father, totally unnecessary. Everybody in Aspen knew what he looked like.”

Smith shrugged. “He doesn’t like to leave tracks,” he said. “In the intelligence field that isn’t uncommon.”

“You mean it’s condoned?”

Smith scowled at the question, which he considered naive. “Nothing’s condoned, nothing’s forbidden. Those things go unsaid. Cut a man loose like that, his primary objective is survival. He’s got a job to do, an enemy agent loose two thousand miles from home in hostile territory. What would you do? Anyway, that question’s moot, Mr. Keegan. What do you do next? You’ve lost him.”

“I don’t know, but I promise you I know this guy better than anybody in the bureau. I know this guy better than anybody and if anybody can catch him, I can.”

“Hoover’s going to handle this in his own way and in his own sweet time,” Smith said matter-of-factly. “And frankly he regards the espionage angle as a joke. Right now his only interest in Twenty-seven is that he’s suspected of mass murder and unlawful flight.”

“So? Let Hoover put his face up in the post office and in the newspapers. Release the story. Really turn on the heat.”

“Not a chance,” Smith said, shaking his head. “If it turns out to be a false alarm, he’ll look stupid and Hoover would rather blow off his foot than look stupid.”

“Tell you the truth, it probably wouldn’t work anyway. I promise you this: Twenty-seven has a plan. He is never caught without a plan. Now that he knows he’s hot, I’m sure he’s got a plan for that, too.”

“Suppose he’s been activated?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know,” Keegan shrugged. “Hell, I need a break. If I don’t get one, whatever he’s going to do, he’ll do.