Blaze

Hetton! They were surrounding Hetton House! Sure! And if he could get back to the cave, he’d be on the other side of them. Then, farther into the woods, maybe three miles, there was a logging road —

The Trooper had closed to twenty-five yards. Blaze sidled a little farther around the tree. If someone popped out of the brush on his open side now, he was dead-dog fucked.

The Trooper was passing the tree. Blaze could hear the crunch of his boots in the snow. He could even hear something jingling in the Trooper’s pockets — change, maybe keys. And the creak of his belt. That, too.

Blaze moved even farther around the tree, taking little sidle-steps. Then he waited. When he looked out again, the Trooper had his back to Blaze. He hadn’t seen the tracks yet, but he would. He was walking on top of them.

Blaze stepped out and walked toward the Trooper in large, soundless steps. He reversed George’s pistol so he was gripping it by the barrel.

The Trooper looked down and saw the tracks. He stiffened, then grabbed for the walkie-talkie on his belt. Blaze raised the gun up high and brought it down hard. The Trooper grunted and staggered, but his big hat absorbed much of the blow’s force. Blaze swung again, sidehand, and hit the Trooper in the left temple. There was a soft thud. The Trooper’s hat slewed around to the side and hung on his right cheek. Blaze saw he was young, hardly more than a kid. Then the Trooper’s knees unlocked and he went down, puffing up snow all around him.

“Fucks,” Blaze said. He was crying. “Why can’t you just leave a fella alone?”

He gripped the Trooper under the armpits and dragged him to the big pine. He propped the guy up and set his hat back on his head. There wasn’t much blood, but Blaze wasn’t fooled by that. He knew how hard he could hit. No one knew better. There was a pulse in the Trooper’s neck, but it wasn’t much. If his buddies didn’t find him soon, he would die. Well, who had asked him to come? Who had asked him to stick his goddam oar in?

He picked up the cradle and began to move on. It was quarter to eight when he got back to the cave. Joe was still sleeping, and that made Blaze cry again, this time from relief. But the cave was cold. Snow had blown in and put the little fire out.

Blaze began to build it up again.

Special Agent Bruce Granger watched Blaze come down the ravine and crawl into the slit mouth of the cave. Granger had been lying there stolidly, waiting for the hunt to end one way or another so someone could carry him out. His leg hurt like hell and he’d felt like a fool.

Now he felt like someone who’d won the lottery. He reached for the walkie Corliss had left him and picked it up. “Granger to Sterling,” he said quietly. “Come back.”

Static. Peculiar blank static.

“Albert, this is Bruce, and it’s urgent. Come on back?”

Nothing.

Granger closed his eyes for a moment. “Son of a bitch,” he said. Then he opened his eyes and began to crawl.

8:10.

Albert Sterling and two State Troopers stood in Martin Coslaw’s old office with their guns drawn. There was a blanket squashed up in one corner. Sterling saw two empty plastic nursing bottles, and three empty cans of Carnation Evaporated Milk that looked like they had been opened with a jackknife blade. And two empty boxes of Pampers.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“He can’t be far,” Franklin said. “He’s on foot. With the kid.”

“It’s ten degrees out there,” someone in the hall remarked.

Sterling thought: One of you guys tell me something I don’t fucking know.

Franklin was looking around. “Where’s Corliss? Brad, did you see Corliss?”

“I think he might still be downstairs,” Bradley said.

“We’re going back into the woods,” Sterling said. “The moke’s got to be in the woods.”

There was a gunshot. It was faint, muffled by the snow, but unmistakable.

They looked at each other. There were five seconds of perfect, shocked silence. Maybe seven. Then they broke for the door.

Joe was still asleep when the bullet came into the cave. It ricocheted twice, sounding like an angry bee, chipping away splinters of granite and sending them flying. Blaze had been laying out diapers; he wanted to give Joe a change, make sure he was dry before they set out.

Now Joe started awake and began to cry. His small hands were waving in the air. One of the granite chips had cut his face.

Blaze didn’t think. He saw the blood and thought ceased. What replaced it was black and murderous. He burst from the cave and charged toward the sound of the shot, screaming.

Chapter 22