rows of corn, a shadow gliding among shadows. The corn rows made a gentle bend as he approached the creek, and he could just make out where the passage of the killer had knocked a few dry stalks awry. He turned sideways and slipped through the gap himself, and in another minute had reached the edge of the cornfield.
Below and beyond lay the bottomlands, the cottonwood trees along the banks throwing the creek itself into darkness. Pendergast moved forward along the edge of the cornfield, making the barest rustling noise, and in another minute gained the complete darkness of the trees.
He paused. The sound of the creek purling over its bed was barely audible. He checked his weapon once again, assuring himself there was a round in the chamber. Then he knelt and, cupping his hands carefully, turned on the light. The faint pool of yellow illuminated the tracks, now even clearer in the sand. They were still angling toward Gasparilla’s camp. He knelt and examined the prints themselves. They were the same as before: male footprints, size eleven. But in the fine sand he could see that around the embossing made by the ball of the heel and the big toe there was a series of irregular impressions and cracks, as if the feet were unusually horny and tough. He made a few quick notes and sketches and then placed the tips of his fingers in one of the depressions. The prints had been made about twelve to fifteen hours before—just before dawn that same day. The pace had quickened a bit here: now the killer was moving at a good walk, not hurrying exactly, but rather moving with purpose. There was no sense of urgency or fear in the way he moved. He was relaxed. He was satisfied. It was as if he were going home.
Gasparilla’s camp was straight ahead, no more than a few hundred yards away. Cupping his flashlight so that just enough light escaped to make out the prints, the agent crept forward with excruciating slowness.
He paused, listening intently, then moved forward again. Ahead, all was dark. There was no fire, no light. When he was within a hundred yards of the camp, he turned off the tiny ray of light and approached blindly. The camp was silent.
And then he heard it: a faint, almost indiscernible sound. He froze.
A minute passed.
There it was again, louder now: a long, drawn-out sigh.
Pendergast left the trail and circled around to the right of the camp, moving with exquisite care. As he approached the downwind sector, he smelled no smoke or food. There wasn’t even a glow from a dying pile of coals.
And yet there was definitely someone, or something, in the camp.
The sound of exhaled air again. Wet, labored, almost a wheeze. Yet there was something strange about it: crude, animalistic, not quite human.
Careful to make no sound, Pendergast raised his gun. The noise was coming from the middle of Gasparilla’s camp.
The noise came again.
Gasparilla—or whatever was making the noise—was no more than fifty feet away. The darkness was absolute. Pendergast could see nothing.
He leaned down, picked up a pebble. He then tossed it to the far side of the camp.
A sudden silence. And then a guttural sound, like the growl of an animal.
Pendergast waited as a fresh silence stretched on into minutes. All his senses were on the highest alert, straining to determine whether or not anything was moving toward him. Gasparilla had already proven himself adept at moving through darkness. Was he doing it again?
Slowly, Pendergast picked up another pebble, tossed it in another direction.
Once again, an answering snort came back: short, very loud, and in the exact same place. Whoever— whatever—it was had not moved.
Pendergast snapped on the light and squeezed the grip of his pistol simultaneously, activating the laser sight. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a human being lying on his back in the dirt, staring upward with huge bloodshot eyes. His face and head were completely covered in blood.
The red dot of the laser jitterbugged across the hideous face for a moment. Then Pendergast holstered the gun and took a step forward.
“Gasparilla?”
The face jerked back and forth. The mouth opened, blowing a bloody bubble of saliva.
In a moment Pendergast was kneeling over the man. It was unquestionably Gasparilla. Pendergast moved the flashlight across his face. All of the man’s glossy black hair and heavy beard were gone, ripped out along with the scalp; the margins of flesh showed the cut marks of some crude implement: perhaps a stone knife. Pendergast quickly examined the rest of his body. Gasparilla’s left thumb had been partly hacked through and then yanked off with a brutal tug that left behind a white nub of bone, a shred or two of cartilage. Beyond that and the hair, however, the man seemed physically intact. Except for the scalp, there was little loss of blood. The damage appeared not so much of the body as of the mind.
Pendergast bent closer. “It’s all right now.”
The eyes roved wildly, unable to fix on Pendergast or anything else. When they paused, they seemed to quiver violently, then return immediately to roving, as if the mere act of focusing was unbearable.
Pendergast took his hand. “I’m going to take care of you. We’ll get you out of here.”
He leaned back, flashed the light around. There was the place of attack: forty feet away to the north of the
