"OK. I just thought I'd mention it."

"Good thought," she said.

"And listen. take care of John."

"Better'n he could possibly believe," she said.

LuEllen and I went to bed, LuEllen speculating about John and Marvel. Would they get married? Would it be a church wedding? Would Marvel wear a formal white wedding gown, and would that be right at her age? Would we be invited, and if we were, could we come?

She went on for a while, while I listened distractedly. Finally I got out of bed, picked up the phone, and called Bobby on a voice line. I outlined what we were doing and asked if he could monitor Dessusdelit's phones in the morning.

"We're putting a lot of pressure on her," I said. "If something goes wrong, or if she decides to run for it or figures out some kind of double cross."

"I'll monitor it," he said. "If anything happens, I'll get back to you."

"Why do you want him to do that?" LuEllen asked when I hung up.

"I don't know," I said. "It seems like a good idea."

I was sound asleep when the phone rang the next morning. I groaned, sat up, looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. I got to the phone on the fifth ring.

"This Kidd?" Bobby, his voice urgent, harsh, not waiting even for my "hello?"

"Yeah, Bobby? What's going on?"

"Get over to Dessusdelit's house," he snapped. "Something bad's happening."

"What?" I asked. LuEllen sat up, watching, roused by the tone of my voice.

"I was monitoring her line. About two, three minutes ago, the dogcatcher-"

"Duane Hill-"

"Yeah. He made a call. He was at her house. He called this St. Thomas guy, told him to get his ass over there, they had an emergency and he had to drive a car. That sounds like trouble to me. Hill wasn't even supposed to be there, was he?"

"No."

"Anyway, St. Thomas said he'd be right there."

"All right, we're on the way. Call John, try his motel and Marvel's place. tell him."

"OK."

Even when you're in a hurry, it takes a long time to get going. We dressed, rushing, but it still took six or seven minutes to get to the car. Add that to the two or three between the time Hill hung up and Bobby got to us. And I got us lost, trying to improvise a shortcut. We got tangled in a series of cul-de-sacs on the wrong side of the municipal golf course, and we had to go back out to my first wrong turn.

"What're we going to do when we get there?"

LuEllen said. "We just can't come busting up to the door."

"We could do that," I said. "Tell her we were in the neighborhood and just thought we'd stop by."

"She's too smart," LuEllen argued. "She'd make a connection. We're still strangers, too friendly too fast. Then Harold comes out of the blue."

"Maybe Marvel will think of something. When Bobby explains, all she'll have to do is call Dessusdelit, and say, 'Listen, we know you got him.' "

"Hope she does," LuEllen said. "Hope she does."

She didn't. And we were late. A white Ford turned out of the lane from the country club as we were approaching.

"That's the car Harold drove to Greenville," I said. We'd stood next to it for a few minutes, talking, before I left.

"Well, shit, maybe he's out," she said.

I accelerated, went on past the country club road, and closed on the Ford. There was a man inside, in the driver's seat. I couldn't see him that clearly, and closed further.

"No, no," LuEllen said. "Back off, back off. Take that turn."

"What, what?" I braked and swerved down a turnoff.

"That was St. Thomas, the guy who was killing the cats."

"Sure?" But I had no real doubt.

"Yeah, didn't you see the red hair?"

I hadn't, but I believed her and turned the car around, stopping at the highway, uncertain which way to go. "So where's Harold? In the trunk?"

"I don't know," she said. "What?"

I put the car on the highway, headed back toward the country club. I'd answered my own question. "If Harold drove that car to Dessusdelit's, he'd park either in her driveway or in front of the place," I explained. "If they whacked him, they wouldn't be carrying his body across the lawn to put it in the trunk."

"So."

"So look for Hill's panel truck. It's white, and it says 'Animal Control' on the side. A Chevy-"

"There it is," LuEllen said immediately, pointing back over my shoulder. The van was winding through the country club streets, still a block or so away, but moving toward the stone pillars that marked the entrance road. I slowed and took the first turn on the opposite side of the road.

"Now what?" LuEllen asked. The van hesitated before turning onto the highway, then accelerated away, after the white Ford.

"I don't know. Follow. See what happens. If we had a gun."

"If pigs had wings." Hill's van went past an obvious turnoff to animal control.

"Where's he going? Why's he going through town?"

"I don't know."

We found out five minutes later, after a nerve-wrenching job of tailing the white van through light traffic. On the northern highway business strip, just at the edge of town, the van slowed and turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot. We watched from the shoulder of the road as the van stopped at the front entrance. St. Thomas was waiting inside. He walked out and climbed in the driver's side of the van, which then started back out. By that time I'd made a U-turn and was parked behind the gas pumps in the Shell station.

"They ditched Harold's car in the Wal-Mart lot," LuEllen said.

"Let's call the cops."

"And tell them what?"

"That a guy was kidnapped-"

"We'll be on a tape-"

"Jesus, LuEllen."

The van went past on the highway, headed back into town. I waited a few seconds and pulled out after them.

"He's going out to animal control," LuEllen said.

"Yeah. Can't get too close out there. There's nothing else around."

I put several cars between us and the panel truck and, when there was no longer any question where it was headed, pulled over to a drive-up phone outside a convenience store. I dialed Marvel's place, then John's, and got no answer at either.

"Let's go," said LuEllen.

We continued on to the animal control complex and spotted the van parked outside.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know, but we can't go in," I said, continuing past the turnoff. We were on a gravel road that had some traffic, but not much. Even going by the place was a risk. "If they've killed him. or are planning to. there wouldn't be any reason not to do us."

"Maybe they're just talking to him," LuEllen said. She didn't believe it.

"Maybe Hitler was only kidding."

"All right. Let's ditch the car."

Four hundred yards farther on, a track left the main road to the right, away from the river, and a sign said LEVI CREEK PUBLIC HUNTING. It didn't look as if it had been used since duck season. I drove far enough down that a passerby couldn't see the car from the road, killed the engine, and we scrambled out. As I closed the door I noticed LuEllen's camera bag in the back seat.

"Bring the camera," I said.

"Got it," LuEllen answered. We jogged through the heat waves coming off the road, through some nascent wildflowers, toward the base of the hill we'd climbed on our last trip out. From this side a definite track wound up to the top. LuEllen, who is both in better shape and a better athlete than I am, led the way. When I came over the crest, she was crouched on the far side, peering down at the animal control building.

"Nobody around," she said.

I crawled up beside her and looked down. The van was twenty feet from the front door, which was closed.

"What is that noise?" I asked. Ooka-ooka-ooka. We'd heard it the first time we'd been there. It sounded like a broken pump.

"I don't know," she said. She opened the camera bag, took off the short lens she kept on the Nikon, and put on the biggest one she had, a 210mm zoom. Nothing moved. And the building stopped going ooka-ooka. Then started again. We lay on the bare patch, watching.