behind the snake’s head, killing it. He extended the rod and ejected the snake’s body to his right.
He probed the root ball again to see if there were any more nasty surprises, but nothing moved. He checked to see that the snake was actually dead and then eased himself farther down into the hollow where the tree had grown. There was now a slight mound of dirt between him and the creek bed. If he lifted his head, the tops of that green grass were just visible over the rim of the mound. The feeling that someone was watching out there returned. He knew he had to be invisible from the other side, but he sensed that this was not the time to stand up and take a look. Using the hooked end of the rod, he began to cut a small groove into the rim of the dirt mound, working slowly and making sure the rod stayed perfectly horizontal. When he had cut a six-inch-deep groove, he widened the outside of it into an arrow slit. Then he produced a long, thin telescope from his front pack. He pushed it through the groove and out into the first strands of grass.
He raised his head and the telescope just high enough to see down into the area of the creek bed. Then he scanned the tree line on the opposite bank, inch by inch, degree by degree. The front lens was hooded to prevent reflections, and the sun was partially behind him anyway. He detected nothing in the woods opposite, but the sense of danger was strong now. He turned the scope westward, into the huge pile of the logjam.
And then he saw it: a dull patch of color, a few feet inside the tangle of flood debris. He pulled the scope back and flattened himself into the root depression. Then he backed out of the hole and into the deeper cover of the woods, listening carefully and moving slowly enough not to scare up the birds. He angled back to the tree line, ten feet away from the root ball, and put the telescope back to the diamond-shaped eyehole in his head hood. He found the patch of color again and held his breath, hoping that he would not be looking into a set of binoculars. He focused the eyepiece.
It was a ball cap, snagged on a branch. He felt the blood coming to his face and his breath catching in his throat. The ball cap was
purple, with faded white lettering just barely showing. He thought he could make out one mud-splattered letter, the letter L. Lynn owned a ball cap like that.
She wore it all the time, perched high up on her hair, the way the kids did now. That same color. With LHS embroidered on the front, for Langley High School.
He resisted the impulse to break cover, dash across the fifty yards of open grass, and tear into that tangled mess to retrieve the cap. He forced himself to sit perfectly still instead and deliberately slowed his breathing.
It had to be hers. He pointed the telescope again, but now the cap was obscured. He closed his eyes and listened hard. Birds. Breeze. Crickets and other insects. Water splashing along the creek. No more vehicle noises. Now he had a decision to make.
He could go down there and get that cap, which is what he desperately wanted to do. But if there were people watching, he’d be at their mercy.
Or he could wait for dusk. But then, if the watchers had a night-vision device, and they also were willing to wait, he would again be at their mercy. He visualized the area of the creek bed again. It was lower than the surrounding woods. He could wait until it was full dark, when the creek bed would subside into even deeper shadow. A night-vision device was a light amplifier: no light, no vision. Not like the infrared devices he’d used when he was active, which worked on contrast between warm objects and colder background. The hat was just inside the tangle of trees and roots, and just to the left of the leftmost waterfall. He memorized its location, took a deep breath, and began looking for a spot to hole up.
He decided to climb into the dense bottom branches of a big pine for the rest of the afternoon and wait for sundown. He still couldn’t be positive someone was watching, but if they lost patience and came out of hiding, well, that would be all right, too. He couldn’t think of a reason for someone to be skulking through the woods on this abandoned installation, unless there was something illegal going on, something that might account for the kids’ disappearance. If that was Lynn’s hat, he reminded himself. Another part of his brain tried not to think of all the possible ramifications of that last thought. Every hunt was a sequence of decisions:
when to move, when to wait, where to watch, and when to sleep, which was as close to motionless as one could get. This was a time for sleep.
Janet Carter was finishing her lunch when the idea hit her. She had stopped for lunch after her Saturday- morning post doc seminar at Tech.
The place was a vegetarian street cafe. Janet, a devoted carnivore, visited the nuts and twigs scene once in a while to salve her conscience. The seminars weren’t terribly interesting, but at least they filled the beginning of the weekend. Over lunch, she had been thinking about Barry dark. The kid was an insolent, slovenly pup, and Kreiss undoubtedly had applied exactly the right kind of pressure to make the little shit talk. On the other hand, he was probably still immobilized, and perhaps an unexpected act of kindness on her part might spring something loose. So why not take a pizza over there and see if she could get him to tell her what he had revealed to the headless horseman the other night.
She gathered up the paper plate and her Coke. It had to have been Kreiss, of course. Big bad bogeyman in the dark; in and out without a trace, and the kid scared shitless in the process, paralyzed physically and mentally by an encounter that probably had taken all of ninety seconds. Professional bogeyman. He must have learned some interesting things from those people at the Agency. She dumped her table trash and went across the street to the pizza place, resisting an urge to get some real food.
Twenty minutes later, she was banging on dark’s door. It took him a few minutes to answer the door, and his appearance hadn’t changed much since the other night: dirty T-shirt, baggy shorts, flip-flops. His face was sallow and there were pouches under his eyes. The beginnings of a scraggly red beard covered his face. His arms still hung straight down at his sides, although he could move his hands now. He blinked at her for a moment, long enough for her to get a whiff of the apartment within.
“What?” he said, screwing up his face, as if the midday sunlight hurt his eyes.
“I’m Janet Carter,” she said.
“Still with the FBI. Brought you a pizza.”
He blinked again. He must have been asleep, she thought.
“Felt sorry for you,” she said.
“Want me to cut it up for you?”
“Damn,” he muttered.
“Yeah. Thanks. But, I mean, like, why?”
She took her last deep breath of fresh air, toed the door open, and stepped past him into the apartment. It hadn’t improved.
“Leave the door open,” she called over her shoulder.
“You need the fresh air. Where’s a knife?”
He followed her across the room. She stopped at the kitchen threshold and let him pry a knife out of the sink. He could pick it up in his fingers but not lift his arm.
“Why don’t we just wash that,” she suggested, taking it from his limp fingers and running it under some hot water. He just stood there. She cut the pizza into thin slices, scraped and washed a plate, and set him
up in the single living room chair. She put the plate on a stool in front of him and watched him eat hungrily, bending over the stool and slurping it up like a dog. The light streaming in from the open front door showed more of the mess than she wanted to see.
“Actually,” she said, “that’s a bribe.”
“Cops can do bribes?” he said around a mouthful. Now there was a hint of his previous insolence in his eyes. Must be the sudden carbo load, she thought. She no longer wanted any pizza.
“One-way rule,” she said.
“We can’t take bribes; but we can do bribes, especially for information, see?”
He kept chewing while he watched her.
“I still want to know what you told the headless guy the other night,” she said.
“Like I said—” he began.
“No, wait. See, last time I asked you what he wanted. That was the wrong question. This is a different question. What did you say to him? Exact words.”
He sucked another piece of dripping pizza into his mouth. His eyes were definitely wary now, seeking some advantage. She pressed him.
