Seize the Night

next.

“I thought the window was locked, but it mustn’t have been,” Lilly said frantically. “Someone opened it, some sonofabitch, and he took Jimmy away.”

“Maybe it’s not that bad.”

“Some sick bastard,” she insisted.

The flashlight jiggled, and Lilly struggled to still her trembling hand as she directed the beam at the planting bed alongside the house.

“I don’t have any money,” she said.

“Money?”

“To pay ransom. I’m not rich. So no one would take Jimmy for ransom. It’s worse than that.”

False Solomon’s seal, laden with feathery sprays of white flowers that glittered like ice, had been trampled by the intruder. Footprints were impressed in trodden leaves and soft damp soil. They were not the prints of a runaway child but those of an adult in athletic shoes with bold tread, and judging by the depth of the impressions, the kidnapper was a large person, most likely male.

I saw that Lilly was barefoot.

“I couldn’t sleep, I was watching TV, some stupid show on the TV,” she said with a note of self-flagellation, as if she should have anticipated this abduction and been at Jimmy’s bedside, ever vigilant.

Orson pushed between us to sniff the imprinted earth.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Lilly said. “Jimmy never cried out, but I got this feeling… .”

Her usual beauty, as clear and deep as a reflection of eternity, was now shattered by terror, crazed by sharp lines of an anguish that was close to grief. She was held together only by desperate hope. Even in the dim backwash of the flashlight, I could hardly bear the sight of her in such pain.

“It’ll be all right,” I said, ashamed of this facile lie.

“I called the police,” she said. “They should be here any second. Where are they?”

Personal experience had taught me to distrust the authorities in Moonlight Bay. They are corrupt. And the corruption is not merely moral, not simply a matter of bribe-taking and a taste for power; it has deeper and more disturbing origins.

No siren shrieked in the distance, and I didn’t expect to hear one. In our special town, the police answer calls with utmost discretion, without even the quiet fanfare of flashing emergency lights, because as often as not, their purpose is to conceal a crime and silence the complainant rather than to bring the perpetrator to justice.

“He’s only five, only five,” Lilly said miserably. “Chris, what if this is that guy on the news?”

“The news?”

“The serial killer. The one who…burns kids.”

“That’s not around here.”

“All over the country. Every few months. Groups of little kids burned alive. Why not here?”

“Because it isn’t,” I said. “It’s something else.”

She swung away from the window and raked the yard with the flashlight beam, as though she hoped to discover her tousle-haired, pajama-clad son among the fallen leaves and the curled strips of papery bark that littered the grass under a row of tall eucalyptus trees.

Catching a troubling scent, Orson issued a low growl and backed away from the planting bed. He peered up at the windowsill, sniffed the air, put his nose to the ground again, and headed tentatively toward the rear of the house.

“He’s got something,” I said.

Lilly turned. “Got what?”

“A trail.”

When he reached the backyard, Orson broke into a trot.

“Badger,” I said, “don’t tell them Orson and I were here.”

A weight of fear pressed her voice thinner than a whisper: “Don’t tell who?”

“The police.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be back. I’ll explain. I swear I’ll find Jimmy. I swear I will.”

I could keep the first two promises. The third, however, was something less meaningful than wishful thinking and was intended only to provide a little hope with which she might keep herself glued together.

In fact, as I hurried after my strange dog, pushing the bicycle at my side, I already believed that Jimmy Wing was lost forever. The most I expected to find at the end of the trail was the boy’s dead body and, with luck, the man who had murdered him.

2

When I reached the rear of Lilly’s house, I couldn’t see Orson. He was so coaly black that even the light of a full moon was not sufficient to reveal him.

From off to the right came a soft woof, then another, and I followed his call.

At the end of the backyard was a freestanding garage that could be entered by car only from the alley beyond. A brick walkway led alongside the garage to a wooden gate, where Orson stood on his hind legs, pawing at the latch.

For a fact, this dog is radically smarter than ordinary mutts. Sometimes I suspect that he is also considerably smarter than I am.

If I didn’t have the advantage of hands, no doubt I would be the one eating from a dish on the floor. He would have control of the most comfortable easy chair and the remote control for the television.

Demonstrating my single claim to superiority, I disengaged the bolt latch with a flourish and pushed open the creaking gate.

A series of garages, storage sheds, and backyard fences lay along this flank of the alley. On the farther side, the cracked and runneled blacktop gave way to a narrow dirt shoulder, which in turn led to a line of massive eucalyptuses and a weedy verge that sloped into a canyon.

Lilly’s house is on the edge of town, and no one lives in the canyon behind her place. The wild grass and scattered scrub oaks on the descending slopes provide homes for hawks, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, field mice, and snakes.

Following his formidable nose, Orson urgently investigated the weeds along the edge of the canyon, padding north and then south, softly whining and grumbling to himself.

I stood at the brink, between two trees, peering down into a darkness that not even the fat moon could dispel. No flashlight moved in those depths. If Jimmy had been carried into that gloom, the kidnapper must have uncanny night vision.

With a yelp, Orson abruptly abandoned his search along the canyon rim and returned to the center of the alleyway. He moved in a circle, as though he might start chasing his tail, but his head was raised and he was excitedly sniffing spoor.

To him, the air is a rich stew of scents. Every dog has a sense of smell thousands of times more powerful than yours or mine.

The medicinal pungency of the eucalyptus trees was the only aroma that I could detect. Drawn by another and more suspicious scent, as if he were but a bit of iron pulled inexorably toward a powerful magnet, Orson raced north along the alley.

Maybe Jimmy Wing was still alive.

It’s my nature to believe in miracles. So why not believe in this one?

I climbed on my bike and pedaled after the dog. He was swift and certain, and to match his pace, I really had to make the drive chain hum.

In block after block, only a few widely spaced security lamps glowed at the back of the residential properties