41
The first hour slogged by. The second sloth-crawled.
The dogs alternated among sleep, flatulence, and a mellow, glassy-eyed torpor that evoked a weed-fragrant college dorm room.
Milo said, “Someone’s thinking right,” and closed his eyes.
I was wide awake and I was the one who saw.
Same place, different shape.
Taller than the dogs. Upright. Wearing something brown with a pale collar.
Moving forward. Stopping. Moving again. Stopping.
Facing away from us. So far, so good.
I nudged.
Milo roused, stared. Took hold of his gun, got out of the car, shut the driver’s door just shy of latching. Walked forward silently.
He stood, mostly concealed by weeds, as the man in the brown jacket trudged through the field. The man’s head stayed canted toward the ground. His pace was deliberate but jerky, broken by frequent stops that seemed to serve no function.
Like a poorly oiled machine.
Milo kept the Glock in his right hand and used his left to part the grass, crouched until he was as high as an average man, and stepped in.
I waited before lowering the car windows a bit more. Not enough for the dogs to get their heads stuck, but sufficient for good ventilation.
They remained drowsy.
I got out.
Backtracking, I mapped out a trajectory that would keep me perpendicular to Milo’s hunter’s prowl, aiming to cross the field in a way that kept me to the rear of the man in the brown coat, placing him at the apex of a human triangle.
As we converged on the target, Milo pushed forward, unaware of my presence. Then he saw me and froze. Shot me a long stare but made no attempt to wave me back.
Knowing it wouldn’t work.
The two of us maintained the same pace. The man in the brown coat kept trudging without an apparent goal. Head down, weaving, lost in some private world. His head was bare, pale, shiny. Shaved recently.
Milo and I got thirty yards behind him, then twenty. I stopped parting the grass and muting the scratchy sound. Making no attempt at quiet.
The man in brown kept pausing, searching the horizon to the north. Maybe because he was looking for the dogs and that’s where they usually headed.
Or he had his own incomprehensible navigational logic.
I picked up my speed, outpaced Milo. Milo saw it and stiffened and that gave me another few seconds of advantage.
I used them to rush behind the man in brown.
He continued to plod, thick shoulders rounded, hands jammed in his coat pockets. I kept coming, trotting now.
He stopped, raised the back of the coat, and scratched his rear.
Still not hearing me.
Then a patch of particularly brittle grass caught on my pant leg and when I pulled away the zzzip was audible.
The man in the brown coat turned.
Saw me.
He didn’t move.
I waved flamboyantly, as if meeting an old friend by chance.
The man in brown gaped. His flabby face quivered like uncooked haggis.
I moved in on him, waving, grinning. “Hey, Grant! Long time!”
His jowls tightened. Widening his stance, he planted his legs, flailed the air randomly.
Pudding-faced, snub-featured, unlined by contemplation, problematic abstraction, or any of the mean little demands imposed by sanity.
Terrified.
This was the bogeyman, the nightmare apparition, the cruel messenger in the dark who’d wreaked so much chaos and misery.
Now he was too scared to budge, remained frozen in his too-heavy shearling, fleece collar unraveling, brown suede greasy, mangy as the dogs, a misshapen tent of a garment that drooped over a white shirt and filthy jeans.
I got within arm’s reach. “Grant, my name is Alex.”
Windmilling air with both hands, he stumbled back.
“I’m not out to hurt you, Grant.”
His mouth opened. Formed an O. No sound came out. Then a squeak. The same sound mice made, mired in sticky traps, as my father’s boot rose above them.
Turning his back on me, he ran.
Straight into the arms of a big man with a gun.
Milo used his free hand to spin Huggler so that he was facing me again, twisted Huggler’s left arm behind his thick torso, got a handcuff around it. He’d linked two sets of cuffs together, standard procedure for a broad suspect.
Huggler sniffed. Began crying.
His right arm remained at his side. Milo, one hand on his weapon, struggled to bend the uncooperative limb.
“Behind your back, Grant.”
Huggler’s body sagged, as if ready to comply, but the arm stayed rigid.
I stepped forward.
Milo warned me back with a head shake, repeated the command.
Tears flowed down Huggler’s cheeks. His right arm was steel.
Milo holstered the Glock, clamped both hands on Huggler’s left wrist, twisted viciously.
Huggler’s left arm finally relented, twisting back and up. Milo tried to affix the second cuff but Huggler’s width and the bulk of the coat brought him a couple of inches short of the goal.
He pushed Huggler’s right hand toward its mate.
Huggler cried out in pain.
“It’s okay, Grant,” said Milo, lying the way detectives do.
Huggler said, “Really?” in a soft, high, boyish voice.
“Just a little more, son, here we go.”
Huggler’s right hand was a millimeter from capture when his shoulders shook like those of a rhino rudely awakened. The movement caught Milo off guard, caused his foot to catch.
For a second, his concentration shifted to maintaining his balance.
All at once, Huggler was facing him, had gripped the sides of Milo’s head with huge, soft, hairless hands.
Expressionless, he began twisting. Clockwise.
Milo’s optimal move might’ve been a quick grab of his gun but when vise-grip hands take hold of your head and try to rotate it and instincts tell you it won’t take much to sever your spine and drain your brain of life- maintaining, thought-engendering nectar, you go for those hands.
Anything to stop the process.
Milo’s fingers dug into the tops of Huggler’s hands, straining, clawing, drawing blood.
Huggler remained impassive, kept twisting.
