The credit card slip came. I signed it. Catherine and I walked calmly and slowly toward the door.
Once through it, we ran to the car. We had our lead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I scanned the parking lot. Pratt was already gone, dammit. “Do you know where the stable is?” I asked.
“I know how to find it.” She took out a cellphone, dialed 411, and got the address from the operator. “There’s only one in the area,” she said. “Shit. I wish they hadn’t stolen my cell.”
“What’s that in your hand?”
“The bartender’s. He loaned it to me, without realizing he was loaning it to me. But I can’t use it to file a supplemental report. The number would turn up on his phone bill.”
I was feeling keyed up. “I’m sorry,” I said. “The answer we needed was sitting right next to me, and I didn’t realize it.”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s my job, not yours. Not that I found out a damn thing. All those boys wanted to talk about was the festival tomorrow. They’re worried that it may be canceled after ‘what happened today.’ I wasn’t sure how much they really knew, but they were being careful.”
I wondered what the festival would be like. If we destroyed the predator tonight—and did it quickly and cleanly—the town could have Christmas in peace: no more killings, no more people going crazy, no more burning buildings. Maybe there would be something nice I could pick up for Aunt Theresa and Uncle Karl. And maybe I could find a gift for Catherine, if—
“God, I hope we can finish this tonight,” she said. “I want to spend Christmas with my family. Was that man in the tan coat who I think?”
“That’s Pratt. He didn’t want to talk to you at all.”
She seemed to understand right away. “They’re like that. A lot of them. They live a couple of hundred years, and everything they knew about the world gets turned on its head. They see a black woman alone at a bar, talking to men she doesn’t know, and they immediately think
I didn’t know what “the Terror” was, but I got the point. “Do you know anything about him?”
“One of the other investigators said Pratt likes killing people, which doesn’t exactly set him apart from the crowd. He should have talked to me. Now I can’t even get a new report to him.” She sighed. “So, we’re going to check out the stables, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She started the car and we rode through the dark town. I wondered how late the stables would be open, and if we’d have to break in.
We headed toward the fairgrounds but reached the turnoff well before the festival banner appeared. There was a split-rail fence, a gate, and a sign that said CONNER STABLES. The gate was bolted and padlocked. I cut the padlock, opened the gate, let Catherine drive through, and closed it again.
She drove down the long path with the headlights off. Our plan was simple: Sneak in as close as we could without being spotted, just like the Wilbur estate. Locate the sapphire dog. Use the ghost knife on it, preferably from ambush.
Catherine wondered if we could use bright light to trap or stun it, but I didn’t trust that idea. Sunlight hadn’t bothered it at all, as far as I could tell. I suggested that its cage might have had special bulbs in it, and we agreed that we should have stolen a couple when we had the chance.
“Are you sure you want to come with me for this?” I asked. She gave me a look.
There were no turnoffs from the main drive where we could stash the car, so Catherine pulled all the way into the stable’s parking lot and backed into a spot. There were three other cars already there.
I was getting a lot of practice closing car doors quietly. We walked toward the gate as if we belonged there. I was keyed up and jittery, and Catherine seemed to feel the same.
The muddy lot was ringed with trees and heavy scrub. Ahead was a wooden rail that looked just like the one at the edge of the property. It could have been part of a set in a cowboy movie except that the gate attached to it was made of welded aluminum pipes and locked with another Yale padlock.
There were two fenced-in areas for the horses to ride in; one was a muddy circle about twenty-five feet wide with a tall fence made of more welded aluminum. A second, larger area was bordered with low wooden rails to make an oval about seventy-five feet long. Cedar chips had been spread over the ground, and obstacles—long window planters without plants and uprights with crossbars that formed an
Farther left there was a cluster of big, windowless wooden buildings decorated with pennants. I guessed those must be the stables.
I hopped the fence. Catherine climbed over it more slowly, but that was what I wanted. I had the tattoos and should be in the lead. I made my way toward the nearest stable. No one shouted a challenge at us. No waving flashlights came out of the darkness, no little squares of window light appeared in the distance. No one knew we were there.
There was a low, echoing rumble of thunder from somewhere nearby. It seemed to rebound against the mountains around us, coming from every direction and muffled by all the trees and brush nearby. Rain was coming.
I walked along the building. A lamp was shining on the other side of the stables, and we made our way by indirect light. The wind hissed through the branches, but aside from our footsteps, there was no other sound.
At the corner of the building I peeked out. There were three more buildings, all four set two by two facing an open area about thirty feet wide. A single light glowed above the open door across the way. I peered into the darkness, searching for a human silhouette. I didn’t see anything.
