“Tell Borman to shut his headlights off before he gets to the highway. We don't want our boy seeing him coming.”
Sally was a good dispatcher. She repeated exactly what I'd said into her mike. While she did, it occurred to me to try the little infrared searchlight that was a part of the scope. It only had a range of about twenty-five yards, but it made everything within that distance much clearer through the scope. It also drained the battery about four times as fast.
The beauty of the IR searchlight is that people can't see it without a night scope of their own. Wily, those Russians.
Sally had a hand on my raincoat as I slowly threaded my way into the ravine. The rocks, which had been slippery the other day, were like greased marble now. It was very slow going.
“I can't see shit,” said Sally.
“Good thing,” I said. “Stop here.”
She did. “What for?”
“He's got to be down the ravine from us,” I said.
“Let me watch for a few seconds. I think I should be able to pick up movement.” I must have watched for a good fifteen seconds, which seemed like forever. Nothing. No sound, no sign of Chester.
“See him?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
“Can I,” asked Sally, “take a peek at where we're going? It'd help.”
Good idea. As we were transferring possession of the night scope, there was a rattling among the rocks somewhere below us. We fumbled the scope, and I heard it hit what sounded like a wet branch, and then a sharp click as it struck a rock.
“Shit.”
“Sorry, I'm sorry,” said Sally.
“You got a flashlight?” I asked, disgusted with my self.
“Yeah, a Mini-Mag, in here somewhere… ” And I heard the sound of her raincoat being unzipped and pulled about as she tried to find a path to her utility belt.
“Not your fault,” I said, waiting for her to hand me the light. I wasn't going to move, because my only orientation for finding the night scope was the knowledge that it was just about straight down from my feet.
I saw the glow of her little flashlight still inside her raincoat. She must have hit the switch. She was about to cast light all over the place as she brought it out.
“No! Turn it off!” I whispered as loudly as I could.
She tried, she really did. I think she reached her other hand inside the twisted raincoat to try to turn the light off without fumbling it, too. In doing so, she lost her balance, and disappeared with a thud and a bump and a rush of raincoat against branches.
It was thunderously quiet.
“Shit, Houseman” came a faint voice. “I fell.”
“You okay?”
“No.”
I slowly bent my knees, hanging on to a branch. I had no idea whether I was on a large rock, or just a small one, and I sure as hell didn't think I'd help Sally if I came crashing down on her.
“What's wrong?”
“My butt hurts,” she said.
“You still got that flashlight?”
“Yeah.”
“Go ahead and turn it on,” I said. “We gotta get you up.”
The light came on right beneath me. She had fallen about four feet.
“Anything else hurt?” I asked.
“Just my butt,” she said. She slowly got to her feet, which brought her head to about the level of my knees. “Everything else seems fine.”
Although the rock I was standing on was pretty big, I was about three inches from the edge. I took about a half step back, and said, “As long as you're down there, see if you can find the scope.”
She shone the light downward, and said, “Got it.” She reached down and handed it up to me.
I laid it on my rock, and reached down with my left hand. “Grab hold, and I'll get you up here. Turn off the light before I pull, okay?”
She did. I counted three, heaved, and up she came.
I peered through the night scope as soon as she was stable on the rocks. It still worked. One thing about Red Army gear, it's known for being rugged. I panned down the ravine. Nothing.
“See anything?”
“Nope. Even if he didn't hear us, he's long gone.” I decided a little more noise didn't really matter. “See if you can reach Borman,” I said. “See what he's got down at the bottom of this ravine.”
She did. He reported that all he could see was what he thought was a car. I guessed he still had his lights off. At least he was getting better at following instructions.
“Tell him we're on the way down, and we think the suspect is ahead of us.”
She did, and we began moving down the ravine again. It took us about five or six minutes, but we made it to the bottom.
With my night scope, I could see the car Borman meant, along with Borman and his car about fifty yards up the road, off on the shoulder. There was no sign of our intrepid Mr. Chester. I looked back up the ravine, and over the parts of the bluff below the trees. Nothing.
“Tell Borman to come on over,” I said. I was disgusted with myself, and with the way things had turned out.
We checked on the car. A rental out of Jollietville, Wisconsin. No wants, no reports of any activity concerning it. Just a bland car.
We looked into the car from the outside, but there was nothing in the interior except a receipt on the passenger seat. I could see the header of the rental company on the pink paper. No name. The doors were locked. Lack of clutter was to be expected from a rental. None of us could read the information on the sheet through the rain-spattered window because the drops reflected our flashlight beams. In a moment of inspiration, I lifted the night scope to my eye, and hit the zoom button. No reflections, and the paper became twice as big. “William Chester,” I said. “Rented yesterday, at one-fifteen P.M.”
When such a simple thing as thinking to use the night scope makes you feel better, you know you're having a bad night. The fact that it was a rental though, and not stolen, confirmed in my mind that Chester definitely was not our vampire.
“Where the hell'd he get to?” asked Sally.
A very good question. My first thought was that he'd just climbed out of the ravine when I dropped the night scope, and had gone deep into the trees. Either that, or he knew about that private cable car arrangement.
In my experience, the most exotic explanation is just about invariably wrong. “Probably back over into the trees,” I said. Even with a night scope, there was no way that one or two of us would be able to track him down in the trees, the underbrush and the rain.
I looked at Borman. “Not one of our better nights,” I said. “How about giving Sally and me a ride back up to the Mansion? That's probably where he's headed.”
“Sure. You think he's really Peale?”
It was somehow reassuring that it had occurred to Borman, too. “Not now. This car isn't something snatched off the lot, it's a rental.”
“Oh.”
“But be damned careful. Somebody else could be doing some hunting tonight, too.”
“Right.” He sounded just a little unsure. Good. At least he'd keep his doors locked.
“Okay,” I said, “after you drop us off this time, come back down around here, and set up someplace where you can watch this car. If he sees us leave, I think he might try to leave.”
“Could he try to get back to the Mansion on us?” I liked that. It was the first time Borman had used “us,” and
