“I’ll call you if there’s anything to tell,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll do the same.”
We hadn’t talked about it specifically, but Ned and I seemed to have fallen into an agreement. I’d have his back on this, and he’d have mine. Before we got to the parking lot, he stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s good to be on the same side,” he said. “I know I pissed you off for a while there, but it won’t happen again. That’s a promise.”
“Is this where we cut open our thumbs and shake?” I said. “Triple-dog swear, or whatever?”
Ned didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll pass,” he said. “I don’t know where that thumb’s been.” He grinned at me before he turned and started across the lawn toward his car. “But I will return your calls from now on.”
THE KIDNAPPER ALWAYS carried the little tape recorder with him on these pleasant hikes through the woods. You never knew when inspiration was going to strike, and it was good to capture the details when they were fresh.
Record.
“The first mile or so is just a little hilly. I can cover that stretch fast enough. Eventually, it starts to get pretty steep, up toward the ridge. That’s where I lose a little time, but I’m getting better at the climb.
“Theoretically, I could drive in from the other side, but that’s only going to happen once. By the time you’re done reading this, you’ll understand why.
“Meanwhile, I hike in the long way. Hell, maybe I’ll even lose some weight in the bargain. You can appreciate the efficiency in that, can’t you?”
Stop.
The book was coming along well. It was practically writing itself these days. Anyone with a pulse could tell you this was a huge story. Even bigger than he’d thought it was going to be at first. Interesting times, these.
He pocketed the recorder again and traded it for the recurve bow on his shoulder. The ground was getting scrubbier. It didn’t usually take long to spook something around here. He loaded an arrow while he walked and started kicking at the bushes, watching for prey, any movement at all.
Sure enough, just past the crest of the first hill, an eastern cottontail darted out.
It came right at him, God bless its tiny little brain, but then turned and bolted off in the other direction.
He let it get a good head start. Anything less than twenty yards was just fish in a barrel.
But then he raised the bow, drew back to the corner of his mouth, and let it fly.
The cottontail stumbled hard, ass over whiskers. It came to a stop in some tall grass and was still quivering when he got there. A quick snap of the neck finished it off. It took only a minute after that to truss it up with some twine, and he was moving again.
Going faster now, he jogged down the next slope and across a small ravine.
It took another twenty minutes to climb back up to the other side, where he stopped just before a line of giant spruce growing along the ridge.
Record.
“You’d never know it to look at these trees now, but they probably marked a property line at some point. Back when this was dairy country and not woods. Now it’s just our own little home away from home. It can’t compete with the White House, of course, but lucky for me, it doesn’t have to.”
Stop.
He stood among the trees for several minutes, scanning the area down below.
After he’d satisfied himself that it was safe to move out into the open, he broke through the line of evergreens and started down into the hollow, where the old farmstead sat moldering away to nothing.
THE FENCING WAS long gone. the
whole back half of the old house was sagging right into itself, almost like it was taking a final bow. And the driveway — what used to be the driveway — was just a long patch of goldenrod and buckthorn, with two ruts in the ground you couldn’t even see from a distance.
The barn was still standing, though. More or less. Thick brush and vines had made the back of the place nearly impenetrable. In front, someone had torn off the big double doors a long time ago, and the flap to the hayloft above that. With a few pieces of missing siding near the peak, the whole thing looked like a face with black gaps for orifices. He always thought of the entrance as the mouth.
Just inside, he untrussed the fat little rabbit and let it roll out onto the floor, right next to the last one. From his pack, he took a plastic travel container of granular lye and a small Poland Spring bottle he’d filled from the tap at home. He sprinkled both over the animal. The lye sped up the breakdown of tissue, and the water sped up the lye. It was an old farm trick, and a half-decent little insurance policy, too. Nothing said keep walking like a goopy carcass in your path.