They even brought Sascha along, hoping he could pick up the scent telepathically, but gave it up after a couple of hours of trying to lead a blind man through a forest at night. Ray broke away from the others after they’d heard a couple of gunshots in the near distance, but noises like that are notoriously difficult to track, especially in hilly, heavy forested terrain. Ray couldn’t do it.
He stumbled along in the dark. It was more luck than anything else that brought him back to the camp a couple hours before dawn. The whole area was quiet and secure. The Allumbrados, aces and numbnuts both, had all disappeared. Even their casualties. Camp administrators had the kids back in their bunks, fobbing them off with a story about a botched robbery. Ray and the men from the detective agency realized their best course was to get a couple hours of sleep, get up early and call for reinforcements, and then start the search in the morning when they could actually see what they were looking for.
Ray opened his eyes wide. He suddenly smelled coffee. The dwarf came into the cabin with two mugs and handed him one when he realized that Ray was awake. Ray sat up and took a sip. He grimaced. It was awful, but he didn’t care. It just felt good to be in the field again.
“Any news?” he asked.
“Creighton just showed up.”
“Alone?”
Elmo shook his head. “Didn’t have the kid, but he was with some guy. Also a joker, a little guy covered in fur.”
“Little guy?”
Elmo nodded. “About two feet shorter than me.”
Ray was about to crack a joke about that being really little, but caught himself in time. He was working on his sensitivity, and besides, he’d fought next to the dwarf the night before, and Elmo had done more than carry his own weight. Ray only nodded.
“The guy with Creighton was a local. In fact, apparently owns a lot of land around here, including the land the camp’s on. Knows it pretty good. He also has a team of these little jokers working for him, or something.”
“Doing what?” Ray asked, reminding himself again to refrain from the short jokes.
Elmo shrugged shoulders that would have been massive on a six-footer. “Got me. Maybe they gather nuts and berries for him. None of ‘em seem much bigger than squirrels, anyway.”
Maybe, Ray thought, short jokes are okay after all.
“They’ve been out scouring the forest since dawn. They’ll find the kid, if anyone can.”
“We should go, too,” Ray said.
“Creighton said to hang on for a bit. Ackroyd’s coming up from the city with reinforcements from the agency. Between us and this Brennan guy and his gang of munchkins, we should cover the area pretty good.”
Ray grunted. Ackroyd. He and the P.I. weren’t the best of friends, but what the Hell, that never stopped him from working with anyone before. “And the Allumbrados?” he asked.
Elmo shrugged again. “They may be out in the woods, but we haven’t seen ‘em or heard ‘em. Brennan has his gang keeping an eye out for them, as well.”
Ray nodded. “In the meantime, how about breakfast?”
“You read my mind. This way.”
Breakfast. It made Ray think of Angel. He wondered where she was, and if she was getting enough to eat.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New Hampton, New York: Onion Avenue
When the Angel finally arrived at New Hampton she discovered that there was no there, there.
It was on the map somewhere between Goshen and Middletown and Florida, but when she got there, she couldn’t find it. It was all just unmarked roads, many of them single lane, fields of lettuce, corn, pumpkins, and onions, and a few scattered houses. Even Florida, which she’d encountered when she’d gone too far down the quaintly-named Pulaski Highway (which was, at least, two lanes; one going each way), had a crossroads and traffic light. New Hampton, once she’d found it, proved to be devoid of such trappings of civilization.
She finally stopped at a small store on an unmarked county road where the bucolically named Onion Avenue branched off and wandered off to nowhere in particular. The sign outside the store said “Kaleita’s Groceries.” She went in to ask for directions. At least that was her intent, but she couldn’t resist first buying an ice cream sandwich from the old fashioned slide-top cooler which was humming like a berserk air-conditioner. She paid the proprietor and took a bite out of the sandwich as he searched through the register’s drawer for change. He was an old man who spoke English just like he was fresh off the boat from some old country. She wasn’t sure which one.
“Kid?” the old man repeated after she finally got his attention by asking the same question three or four times. Even then it was clear that he hadn’t really heard what she’d asked. “You’re looking for a kid? Not many kids around here. Mostly old people. Mostly old people.”
“No kids around here at all?”
“Nope,” the old man said. “No kids.”
The Angel frowned to herself. She was probably totally off the track. “Thanks.”
“There’s the kids at the camp, of course.”
She stopped. “Camp?”
“Yah. The summer camp up the road.”
“Road?” the Angel repeated.
“Yah. Lower Road. The road that runs by Snake Hill.”
The Angel told herself not to say “Snake Hill?”
“You can’t miss it,” the old man said. “Turn right out of the parking lot, go up the hill, take a right at the stop sign. You can’t miss it. It’ll be on your left after a mile or so.”
“Thanks,” the Angel said trying not to clench her teeth as she went out the door. She brushed by the guy who was waiting for her to go by so he could enter the store. The Angel looked at him suspiciously. He looked like a hippie. Like something off a 1960’s album cover, with ragged, holed bell bottoms embroidered with flowers and other designs, and bushy hair and a colorful silk scarf tied loosely around his neck. His shirt was outrageously colored and patterned and he wore tiny little glasses with purple octagonal lenses hanging on his long, narrow nose. The Angel didn’t have anything against hippies. Especially. She was just surprised to see one in this setting.
The hippie’s eyes were heavy-lidded. The Angel could smell fumes coming off him. It was some sweet smelling incense that made her eyes water. He smiled and nodded in her direction, and then caught sight of the SUV Ray had reserved at Tomlin International.
It was a 2003 Cadillac Escalade. The Angel had been distressed when she discovered that Ray had rented it, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. When she first got it out of the parking lot, it felt like she was driving a tank, but she quickly realized that it had a smoother ride, a much more comfortable seat, great air conditioning, and a killer sound system. It had a three hundred and forty-five horsepower V8 with four wheel anti-lock brakes, independent torsion bar front suspension, an AM/FM radio, cassette player, and in-dash six disc CD changer with eight Bose speakers, a pre-programmed equalizer, and a Bose subwoofer. It also had OnStar Virtual Advisor with e-mail access which, while the Angel thought was really excessive, she kept thinking that she should use when she was lost but wouldn’t because then she’d have to admit to herself that she was lost. She realized that it sounded like something Ray would do, but still... The transmission was a four speed electronically controlled automatic, but that was all right.
“Bitchin’ wheels,” the hippie said.
“Thanks.” She glanced at the beat up old VW van that was parked next to it, guessing that it belonged to the hippie. If it didn’t, it should have. “Your wheels are, uh, nice, too.”
“Thanks, man” the hippie said. “See you around.”