pausing for a break in the intermittent stream of cars, trotted across the road and climbed over the pasture fence. The Dobe hesitated at the fence for an instant, but when Train had the top strand of barbed wire held down, he snapped his fingers and Gutter cleared the fence in a single smooth bound. Train moved away from the road for about twenty yards and then hunkered down in the dewy grass to get his eyes further adjusted. The dog sat down next to him and waited.
The’night air was clear, but there was no moon yet. The trees bordering the paddocks looked like solid walls in the darkness. He tried to remember the layout of Karen’s place.
She had described it as a rectangle, divided roughly into four quarters.
Three of the quarters were pastures, and the fourth, nearest to Beach Mill Road, contained the house and its immediate grounds. He remembered that there was a state park that bordered the west banks of the river all the way down to the Great Falls cataracts. He could see the house clearly across the pasture because the cops had left the external lights on over the garage.
Train stood up then and started across the field toward the barn. The last phone message on her voice mail before his calls had been about feeding the horses. So if she had been snatched anywhere, it had been down at that barn, which, of course, was a great place to do it-out of sight of the road, so a car could be positioned in or near the barn.
Grab her, truss her, into the car, and then drive out easy as you please.
Damn, I wish you’d taken Gutter, he thought. They might have shot the dog, whoever this was, but there would have been one hell of a ruckus, and she might have made a run for it. Karen was certainly fit enough to sprint her way out of a problem if she had some warning. He closed in on the barn, once again stopping to hunker down in the grass, this time alongside the gate leading into the barn enclosure. The headlights out on the road were not so distracting in here, and he realized he could actually see better in the darkness.
The barn was entirely dark. The aisleway was a black rectangular mouth in the side of the building. Not going to just amble on in there, he thought. He sent Gutter instead.
The dog went into the aisleway like a torpedo, loping all the way through, and then came straight back to Train.
Okay, no humans waiting in ambush. He went in, with the dog at his heel, and quickly made a flashlight survey of the’ barn. The door to the tack room was closed and locked, as was the feed roomi The stalls were all empty, and the only other door led to that small hay room. As he was looking in there, Gutter made a noise. Train turned around to find Gutter circling the area around the door to the small hay room, sniffing hard at the concrete. He snapped on the Maglite. There were bits of hay on the floor. That was new.
“Whatcha got, dog? Find it, Gutter,” he called, encouraging whatever the dog was up to. Gutter gave a small yip and then trotted out of the barn, nose down, ears up and forward. Train hustled along behind him. The dog had a scent, but of what? Karen? He mentally kicked himself for not bringing the dog back down to the barn after his initial look. He should have done it right, given him a piece of Karen’s clothing and then turned him loose, crime scene or no crime scene. Dobes weren’t famous as scent hounds, but a dog’s nose beat the hell out of a bunch of cops tramping around in the weeds. The thought that Karen may have been hidden there all day gave him a cold feeling as the dog led him straight out from the barn into the third pastures Gutter hesitated at the twelve-foot- wide farm gate, circling anxiously until Train found the chain and opened it up. Gutter shot through, prompting him to rein in the. dog with a sharp command to walk. Train’s night vision was very well adapted by now, but it was still pitch-dark, and he was going away from houses and civilization, down toward the dark band of deep woods bordering the river. Not an area he wanted to run toward, especially if the dog was following someone.
Karen knew by the feel of the ground rolling beneath the cart where she was-or rather, where she was being taken.
The path was leading downhill, first across the relatively smooth turf of the back paddock, now along the much harder, rockier path that led into the woods along the river. She had walked and ridden along this path a thousand times, and she could almost plot her position as the cart bumped and banged over familiar ruts and rain runoff channels. It was about a third of a mile from the edge of her back paddock to the banks of the Pbtomeic. She knew the cart would be making some noise, but she could hear nothing, only feel.
She was wedged even tighter into the cart now that it was tilting downhill. Now that they were taking her somewhere, anywhere, the dreaded constrictions of claustrophobia had retreated, for the moment anyway.
Why the river? Were they just going to dump the bag into the current?
From the banks of the river adjoining her place, it was about a mile downstream to the first of the cataracts for which her neighborhood was named, and less than that to the reservoir diversion dam. The river would be in full spate, especially now with the spring snowmelts from the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. She imagined that she could feel it already, although she knew that wasn’t possible, and she certainly could not hear it. There was a rotor below the reservoir dam, where drowning victims’ bodies were often trapped for months.
That’s a feature a sweeper would like, she thought, and then squeezed that thought out of her mind.
She winced as the cart hit a bad pothole, banging her head through the rubber bag. Then she realized they had stopped suddenly, as if to listen for something. She jumped as hands grabbed both ends of her body and hauled her out of the cart.
Train followed the dog into the dark woods, stumbling along a rocky, hard-packed path through the forest. The footing was treacherous, with lots of small round rocks and six-inchdeep rain gullies. The woods were pervaded by the muddy smell of the big river somewhere down the hillside in the darkness. He gave a soft command to call the dog back to him, then proceeded more carefully. It was even darker here in the woods, although he could differentiate between the cleared area of the path, about six feet wide, and the dense tangle of new vegetation on either side. At one point, he stopped to listen, but he heard only the sounds of small animals or birds disturbing the undergrowth.
He got down on one knee, causing the dog to close in on him to see what he’d found. Shielding the Maglite with his closed fist, he twisted a red lens into place and then switched it on. He traversed the path with a dime- sized pinpoint of light, looking for fresh tracks or any other sign of recent human passage. At first, he saw nothing, but then in a soft patch of mud, he discovered the tread marks of what looked like a bicycle tire. A bicycle? The track was fresh, with little granules of red clay still balanced delicately along the edges of the depression caused by the tire. A bicycle-that would be a rough-ass ride down this path. Then he realized he was looking at the left side of the path. He traversed the light carefully across the path, finding a second tire mark three feet away. Not a bicycle. A cart or wagon of some kind.
And recently, very recently. He switched off the light and closed his eyes to readjust his night vision.
The dog growled then, low but distinctively. Train opened his eyes to see the dog leaning forward, looking down the path. A cart, heavily loaded, too, to make such a deep impression in this hard-packed dirt.
He hadn’t looked for any tracks when he followed the dog out, trusting in Gutter’s nose to follow whatever had caught his attention in the barn.
His mind conjured up an impression of a guy or a couple of guys grabbing Karen, tying her up, and then taking her through the woods to-what? Why go down to the river?
To a boat, dummy. Get her in a boat and take her either way, up or down the river, or even over to Maryland. The cops had assumed a vehicle.
They’d be watching the roads.
Nobody would be watching the river.
He got up, put away the flashlight, and hauled out the Glock. Now what?
They could be just ahead, or already down on the banks of the river.
Should he run down there, in the darkness? Yell at them? Dumb move. Send the dog.
Let the dog get ahead of you; then get down there.
“Gutter!” he called softly, and the dog looked expectantly at him, sensing his master’s building adrenaline. Train gestured down the hill.
“Schnell! Schnell!”
The dog was gone instantly, lunging down the path and instantly out of sight. Train waited about ten seconds, then followed, not sure how far he had to go to reach the river, although he sensed that it was only a few hundred feet now as the slope began to level off. He was slipping and sliding down parts of the path, careening against tree trunks and being whipped in the face by low-hanging branches. He only faintly heard a commotion ahead of him, then the clear roar of Gutter on the attack and a man’s voice yelling, “Look out I “
