John Saul (26 page)

Cursing under his breath, Bill Sikes raced out of the room and back down the stairs. He grabbed his, shotgun from where he’d left it by the kitchen door and started after the boy.

R
ick Martin was just about to let the dog out for the last time that night when the scanner in the kitchen came alive and he heard the dispatcher’s voice from the sheriff’s department in Challis, the county seat. “Unit 72–Sugarloaf, I have a report of a missing child at El Monte Ranch, end of Coyote Creek Road. Please investigate.” Her voice changed, shifting out of its impersonally official mode. “Tony, what’s going on up there? First a DOA and a critical injury, now this!”

His dog forgotten, Rick Martin hurried into the den of the little house on Pocatello Drive that he and Gillie had bought five years earlier, and switched on his radio. “Dispatch, this is Unit 71-Sugarloaf. I’ll take the missing child myself. Seventy-two, are you copying?”

“I’m already on my way, Rick,” Tony Moleno replied. “Any idea what’s going on?”

“I know I don’t like it,” Martin told him, remembering the strange lab report indicating that some unknown creature was prowling in the mountains above the valley, but unwilling to talk about it over the airwaves. “Call Frank Peters and have him bring his hounds up. Do we know who’s missing?”

“Joseph Wilkenson,” the dispatcher replied. “Age thirteen, about five feet tall, brown hair—”

“I know what Joey looks like,” Martin cut in. “We all do. I’ll see you up there, Tony. Seventy-one-Sugarloaf, standing by.”

Gillie followed him into the bedroom as he began changing back into his uniform, pulling on a pair of long johns before donning his pants and shirt. “I’m coming with you,”
she announced in a tone that said she would brook no opposition. Still, Rick felt constrained to try.

“What’s the point? This could be a long night, and there’s no point in your—”

“Sitting up, waiting to hear what’s happening?” Gillie finished for him. “Thanks, but no thanks. At least if I’m up at El Monte, I’ll know what’s happening. Besides, I can give MaryAnne Carpenter a hand. If she’s going to have a search party headquartered there, she’s going to need all the help she can get.” While Rick finished dressing, she went to the kitchen, found an empty shopping bag, and started filling it with provisions: the searchers would need sustenance. By the time Rick was ready to go, she already had her jacket on.

“King! Outside!” Rick ordered, opening the back door. The big police dog that had been stretched out in front of the kitchen sink, warily watching the goings-on, pricked up his ears. His tail high, he bounded out the back door, but a moment later his tail drooped when neither Rick nor Gillie let him into the black-and-white Jeep. Not bothering with lights or siren, Rick sped away from the house, switching on the radio and picking up its microphone with one hand as he spun the car onto Main Street with the other.

“Will you slow down?” Gillie complained, though she knew it would do no good. “How can you help out with Joey if you wreck the car before we even get there?”

As they left town, and Main Street curved slightly to the right as it became Coyote Creek Road, Rick pulled into the left lane to pass a Nissan sedan. “Shit,” he muttered as he recognized Milt Morgenstern’s car. “Where’s he think he’s going?”

“Now, I wonder,” Gillie mused with exaggerated sarcasm. “Let’s see—he’s the editor of the paper, and he’s got a police scanner, and there was just a report that Joey Wilkenson is missing.” She shook her head. “Nope, it’s too deep for me—he’s probably just out for a ride!”

Rick glanced at his wife sourly. “Smart-ass.”

“Come on, hon. He’s just doing his job, the same as you’re doing yours.”

“I guess,” Rick sighed. “Just try to keep him away from
me, okay? He’s been on me all day about the lab report on Foster, and I’ve been dodging him.”

Gillie’s teasing smile vanished. “Why? Is there something in the report you don’t want him to know about?”

Rick realized his mistake too late, but there was no way Gillie would let him off the hook now. As they approached the gate marking the entrance to El Monte Ranch, he quickly told her what the lab in Boise had come up with. “It’s got to be some kind of snafu,” he finished. “But unless Tamara Reynolds remembers something she hasn’t told me about, and I know what really attacked Foster, I don’t see any reason to let Milt Morgenstern cause a panic around here.”

Gillie said nothing for a moment, then: “What if it’s not a mistake, Rick? What if it’s something—” She hesitated, then went on. “Well, what if it really is something no one’s ever seen before?”

Rick pulled the squad car to a stop in front of the large log house at the end of the drive. He switched off the ignition and turned to face Gillie. “I don’t believe in crap like Sasquatches or Snowmen, and neither do you,” he said. “So let’s just leave that kind of garbage out of this, okay?”

“But—”

“Not a word!” With that, he got out of the car and then strode up to the front porch and rapped sharply on the door.

Olivia Sherbourne opened it a few seconds later, standing aside to let the deputy and his wife in. “Everyone’s in the kitchen.”

MaryAnne Carpenter, her face pale, was sitting between her two children, an arm wrapped protectively around each of them. Across from her, taking notes, was Tony Moleno, and Charley Hawkins was leaning against the counter, listening intently. As Gillie tried to smile encouragingly at MaryAnne, Moleno filled Rick in on what had happened.

“Has anyone checked on Sikes’s cabin?” Rick asked. “If he found Joey, and the boy was still acting strange, he might not have wanted to bring him back here.”

“I checked,” Olivia Sherbourne replied. “That’s the first place I looked. No one’s there, and if he came back now,
he couldn’t miss all the cars out in front—he’d be bound to come to the house.”

Rick grunted his agreement, his one hope for a quick resolution of Joey’s disappearance evaporating. When there was another loud knock at the front door, his expression hardened. “That’ll be Milt Morgenstern,” he warned. “Gillie and I passed him on the way up here. I’d appreciate it if all of you would say as little as possible right now. Just tell him the kids had a fight and Joey took off. I don’t see any point in telling him Joey was acting strange.” His eyes shifted to Alison, who sat huddled against her mother, her eyes still red from her tears, her complexion pale. “Think you can do that, Alison? I’m not asking you to lie—just don’t tell him any more than you have to.”

Alison hesitated, then made up her mind. “How about if I just go up to my room?” she asked. “Then I wouldn’t have to talk to him at all.”

“Perfect,” Rick said. “How about you, Logan? I know how hard it is to keep a story as good as this one a secret, but it’s important.”

“I won’t say anything,” Logan promised. Then: “Can I go help look for Joey with you?”

Rick Martin made a show of considering the idea, then shook his head. “You could help me more by staying here and taking care of your mother. Could you do that for me?”

Though looking slightly crestfallen, Logan agreed, and by the time Olivia let Milt Morgenstern in, Alison had disappeared upstairs. The editor listened to the simple story Rick Martin had concocted, then zeroed in on Bill Sikes’s absence. “You’re sure he’s out looking for Joey?”

“Both the kids saw him go,” Rick Martin replied. “Isn’t that right, Logan?”

Logan gazed steadily up at the newspaper editor. “He’s the one who found out Joey wasn’t in his room. He heard Joey and Alison yelling at each other, and came in to find out what they were fighting about. And when he went up to talk to Joey, Joey was gone.”

Before Morgenstern could press the matter any further, Frank Peters arrived, his two bloodhounds barking from the back of his pickup truck. The question of exactly what had
happened in the house was forgotten as Martin began organizing the search. With luck, they would find Joey and Bill Sikes together and on the way back to the ranch, but as they set out, Rick Martin had a clear feeling that tonight they were not going to have any luck.

He only prayed that they would find the boy and the caretaker still alive.

Bill Sikes moved steadily up the twisting trail, his breath only now becoming labored. He’d been away from the house for at least half an hour—maybe more—and most of the tracking had been uphill. Following Joey across the field had been easy: the boy’s footprints were clear in the soft ground, and even without the tracks, the trampled grass where his feet had fallen made a clear trail. But when he’d come to the woods, it had immediately become more difficult. At the spot where Joey had disappeared into the thick stand of lodgepole pines, there were no apparent trails at all. Yet Sikes had had little trouble following the boy, for Joey had still been running here, and every time his foot struck the ground, it left a deep heel print and disturbed the carpet of pine needles. Though his pace had slowed from what it had been across the field, Sikes was still able to move rapidly.

The land was no longer level. A hundred yards into the stand of trees, the floor of the valley had given way to the beginning of the mountainside. Here, though, Joey had stumbled onto a trail and begun following it. It was a hiking path—wide, and clear of pine needles—and if it hadn’t been for yesterday’s rain, Sikes surely would have lost the boy’s trail completely. But the rain had melted the hard-packed earth into sticky mud, and Joey had run straight up the center of it, leaving deep footprints with every step.

As he followed the trail up the mountain, Sikes broke into a run: he was gaining on Joey; he had to be. But then the trail had forked, and Joey had apparently taken the upper path, a much steeper and narrower track.

Sikes’s progress slowed significantly when portions of the trail led over wide patches of bare granite, the only sign
of Joey’s passage the clods of mud that dropped from his shoes.

For the last ten minutes Sikes had been moving on instinct alone, for the terrain had changed once again. The path threaded through a maze of immense boulders, some of them heaved up when the mountains had been formed millennia ago, others forced down from above by glaciation during the last ice age. Here, the topsoil had long ago been ripped away, scoured out by the advancing ice, the naked stone of the glacial moraine kept barren of any growth by the constant winds that swept down from the peaks above.

It was here that Bill Sikes finally paused, his heart pounding now, his breath coming in gasps after the long climb.

And yet he wasn’t even to the timberline yet. Far beyond the great rampart that loomed above him, the thick forest of pines still climbed steadily upward.

Could Joey be up there somewhere, moving through the trees?

Sikes didn’t know—couldn’t know—for there was no longer any way of tracking the boy.

“Joey?” he called out, his voice sounding tiny in the vast reaches of the mountains. “Joey, where are you?”

He held his breath as he listened for even the faintest reply, but there was none, and finally he began breathing again, filling his lungs with the cold night air, taking one deep breath after another as his pulse began to slow and his panting eased.

Suddenly he stiffened.

Had he heard something? He froze, holding his breath once more, straining his ears.

Seconds crept by.

Long seconds of silence, unbroken by any noise except a sudden gust of wind blowing through the trees at the top of the great granite rampart.

And yet, despite the silence, Bill Sikes was suddenly sure he was no longer alone.

The same sensation that had come over him earlier, that had brought him to the perimeter of the house, was upon him once more, setting his nerves on edge, making the
hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, setting his skin to tingling.

Something was out there in the darkness, not far away, watching him.

Joey?

But if it was Joey, why wouldn’t the boy have answered his call?

Apprehension growing, unable to believe that Joey would have kept climbing through the massive boulders—difficult enough in the full light of day, and almost impossible at night without so much as a flashlight to guide him—Bill Sikes started back down the way he’d come.

Somewhere, before he’d reached this desolate area of up-thrust rock, he must have lost the trail. Joey must have taken another direction, Sikes decided, must have found a path that he had failed to notice.

He worked his way back through the boulders, every one of his senses on the alert now, pausing every few steps to listen, expecting with each new turn in the narrow track to come face to face with—what?

A bear?

Not a bear. He would have heard the sound of a bear’s claws scratching on the rocks as it moved, heard it snuffling and grunting, heard the rattle of small stones as it pawed them aside while it searched for tiny creatures that might be hiding beneath them.

He moved out of the moraine, back into the more open area of the forest, breathing easier here, where he wasn’t trapped between massive boulders that would prevent him from fleeing an attack.

He continued downhill, keeping to the path, switching on the light every few seconds to examine the area next to the trail, searching for any signs that Joey had veered off, heading either up the mountainside or, more likely, back down toward the valley floor far below.

He was crouching, studying a disturbance in the soil a foot off the track, when he; heard it.

Though it was barely audible, the snarl of an invisible creature nevertheless sent a jolt of fear down his spine. He froze, listening for it to be repeated, but the silence of the
mountains closed around him once again. Even the wind of a few moments ago had died away, and now the quiet had taken on an eerie quality.

Sikes unslung the shotgun from his shoulder, flipped the safety off, and pumped a cartridge out of the magazine and into the firing chamber. He swept the area with the now-dimming beam of the flashlight, shutting it off when it revealed nothing. For a moment he was blind in the near pitch-blackness of the night, but then he realized that the cloud cover had thinned and there was a silvery glow of moonlight above. Certainly not enough for him to make out any details of the surrounding forest, but just enough that, by looking upward, he could see the break in the trees that marked the trail.