13
Trenton Heck pointed the Walther up at the turbulent clouds and eased the ribbed hammer down. He put the safety on and slipped the gun back into his holster.
He handed the wallet back to the skinny man, whose hospital identification card and driver’s license seemed on the up-and-up. The poor fellow wasn’t quite as pale as when Heck had tapped the muzzle to his head a few minutes before.
But he wasn’t any less angry.
Richard Kohler dropped to his knees and unzipped the backpack Heck had tossed onto the grass before frisking him.
“Sorry, sir,” Heck said. “Couldn’t tell whether you were him or not. Too dark to get a good look, with you crouched down and all.”
“You come up on Michael Hrubek that way and he’ll panic,” Kohler snapped. “I guarantee it.” He rummaged inside the pack. Whatever was so precious inside-just a couple of bottles, it looked like-didn’t seem to be damaged. Heck wondered if he’d caught himself a tippler.
“And I’ll tell you something else.” The doctor turned, examining Heck. “Even if you’d shot him, he’d’ve turned around and broken your neck before he died.” Kohler snapped his fingers.
Heck gave a brief laugh. “With a head wound? I don’t know about that.”
“There’s apparently a lot you don’t know about him.” The doctor rezipped the pack.
Heck supposed he couldn’t blame the man for being pissed off but he didn’t feel too bad about the ambush. Kohler, it turned out, had been padding down the same path Hrubek must’ve taken earlier in the evening. In the dark, how was Heck to know the difference? True, the doctor was undoubtedly a lot punier. But then so are all suspects after they turn out not to be suspects.
“What’s your interest here exactly, sir?” Heck asked.
Kohler eyed his civvy clothes. “You a cop, or what?”
“Sort of a special deputy.” Though this was untrue and he had no more police powers than an average citizen. Still he sensed he needed some authority with this wiry fellow, who looked like he was in the mood to make trouble. Heck repeated his question.
“I’m Michael’s doctor.”
“Quite a house call you’re making tonight.” Heck looked over the doctor’s suit and penny loafers. “You did some fine tracking to get yourself all the way here, considering you haven’t got dogs.”
“I spotted him up the road, headed in this direction. But he got away.”
“So he’s nearby?”
“I saw him a half hour ago. He can’t’ve gotten that far.”
Heck nodded at Emil, whose head was up. “Well, for some reason the scent’s vanished. That’s got me worried and Emil antsy. We’re going to quarter around here, see if we can pick it up.”
The tone was meant to discourage company, as was the pace that Heck set. But Kohler kept up with man and dog as they zigzagged across the road and along the fields surrounding it, their feet crunching loudly on leaves and gravel. Heck felt the stiffening of his leg muscles, a warning to go slow. The temperature was still unseasonable but it had dropped in the last half hour and the air was wet with the approaching storm; when he was tired and hadn’t slept his leg was prone to seize into agonizing cramps.
“Now that I think about it,” Heck said, “you were probably better off tracking him without dogs. He fooled our search party damn good. Led us all in the opposite direction he ended up taking.”
Kohler once again-for the fourth time, by Heck’s count-glanced at the Walther automatic. The doctor asked, “Led you off? What do you mean?”
Heck explained about the false clue-dropping the clipping that contained the map of Boston.
The doctor was frowning. “I saw Michael in the hospital library yesterday. Tearing clippings out of old newspapers. He’d been reading all morning. He was very absorbed in something.”
“That a fact?” Heck muttered, discouraged once again at Hrubek’s brainy talents. He continued, “Then he pulled a trick I’ve only heard about. He pissed on a truck.”
“He what?”
“Yep. Took a leak on a tire. Left his scent on it. The truck took off for Maine and the dogs followed it ’stead of going after his footsteps. Not many people’d know about that, let alone psychos.”
“That’s not exactly,” Kohler said coolly, “a word we use.”
“My apologies to him,” Heck responded with a sour laugh. “Funny thing: I was just falling asleep-you know how this happens sometimes?-and I heard a truck horn. It just come to me-what he’d done. Emil’s good but following airborne scent of a man hanging on to a tractor-trailer? Naw, that didn’t seem right. For that many miles? I drove back to the truck stop and sure enough picked up his backtrack. That’s a trick of the pros. Just like he hid that clipping in the grass. See, I wouldn’t’ve believed it, it’d been lying out in the open. He’s clever. He’s fooled dogs before, I’ll bet.”
“No. Impossible. He’s never escaped from anything in his life. Not a calculated escape.”
Heck looked at Kohler to see if he could spot the lie. But the doctor seemed sincere, and Heck added, “That’s not what I heard.”
“From who?”
“From my old boss at the state police. Don Haversham. He’s the one called me about the search. He said something ’bout seven hospitals your boy’d hightailed it outta.”
Kohler was laughing. “Sure. But ask Michael which ones. He’ll tell you they were prison hospitals. And when he escaped he was on horseback, dodging musket balls. See what I mean?”
Heck wasn’t quite sure that he did. “Musket balls. Heh. We’ve gotta head through this brush here.”
They plunged down a steep dirt path into a valley below. Kohler was soon winded by the arduous trek. When they reached flat ground, he caught his breath and said, “Of course you don’t know for certain that he isn’t headed for Boston.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, if he was smart enough,” the doctor pointed out, “to fool you into thinking he was going east, maybe now he’s fooling you into thinking he’s going west. Double bluff.”
Well. This was something Heck hadn’t thought about. Sure, why couldn’t Hrubek just do the same thing all over again and turn east? Maybe he did have Boston in mind. But he thought for a minute and then told Kohler the truth: “That might be but I can’t search the whole of the Northeast. All I can do is follow my dog’s nose.”
Though he was painfully aware that this particular nose presently had no notion of where his prey was.
“Just something to think about,” the doctor said.
They followed the path through a valley beside an old quarry. Heck remembered in his youth, a solitary boy, he’d taken an interest in geology. He’d spent many hours pounding with a hammer in a quarry similar to this one, snitching honest quartz, mica and granite rocks for his collection. Tonight, he found himself staring at the tall cliffs, scarred and chopped-the way bone was gouged by a doctor’s metal tools. He thought of the X-rays of his shattered leg, showing where the bullet cracked his femur. Why, he’d wondered at the time, as he wondered now, had the goddamn doctor shown him that artwork?
The hound turned abruptly several times, paused then turned again.
“Has he got the track?” Kohler asked, whispering.
“Nope,” Heck replied in a conversational voice. “We’ll know when he does.”
They walked behind Emil as he snaked along the base of the tall yellow-white cliffs around pools of brackish water.
They emerged from the rocky valley and climbed slowly. They found themselves once again back at the disabled MG. Heck was grimacing. “Hell, back to square one.”