But what now? If she slipped into the house to use the phone, the dogs would be all over her. Even now, their barking might scare Pearl away, prompt her to run again. Rearing up looking through the trees trying to make out the dark shape of Pearl’s car, Kit was uncertain what to do. Uncertain how to play this game, maybe a far more dangerous game, with Maudie’s life at stake, than any she’d ever tackled.
At last, shivering, she headed for Lori’s second-floor window. Leaping to the hood of Cora Lee’s car, scrambling up, she found the window shut against the cold night, shut and locked. When she tried Cora Lee’s windows, they were locked, too. Both rooms were dark. As she crouched, peering in, she saw the reflection of a soft light come on at the back of the house, the kitchen. She could hear soft voices there, too, and could smell chocolate; maybe the ladies were having a little before-bed cocoa. She had to find a phone without alerting these ladies who had no idea she could speak, had to call the department, tell them that Pearl had Maudie. Looking up at the high little bathroom window, seeing it open a crack, she made a flying leap, clinging and clawing at the sliding glass.
44
EAGERLY BENNY FOLLOWED Dulcie. He wanted to go home, he wanted his grandma, and apparently he had perfect faith that she would take him there, that she would save him, she thought, smiling. Little kids were like that, they believed in the wisdom of animals, the magic of animals. Well, she might not have all the magic skills the child found in a favorite fairy tale, but she could sure as hell lead him to where he could get help.
What she didn’t understand was why Pearl had kidnapped her own child. For money? For some kind of ransom? And if she’d wanted him bad enough to snatch him, why had she left him again so soon? Had he turned out to be too much of a burden? Benny would have slowed her down after the wreck, which Pearl must have feared would draw the cops to her. Whatever the cause, in her need to escape she had abandoned him, and Dulcie was glad for that.
But where were Kit and Joe? Kit had been there at Maudie’s when Benny vanished, but where was she now? She supposed Joe was somewhere out in the night with Rock and Ryan, following Benny’s trail. It was hard when they weren’t together, couldn’t talk, couldn’t help one another. She had no way to tell them that Benny was safe, they weren’t cops with their sophisticated electronic devices, able to talk to each other over long distances. Humans’ inventions were marvels of ingenuity; she wondered if humans realized how very special they were, that they could not only visualize such wonders but had worked out how to build them, how to make them real.
Hurrying uphill with the child close beside her, she headed not for Maudie’s house, which lay far to the right, but for the crest of the hill that towered above them. Benny might be lost, but she wasn’t, she knew where to find help. She left the road when it turned away to the left, leading Benny straight up through the woods, a hard climb for the tired, injured child through dense trees and tangled vines. Heading straight for the seniors’ house, she mewed her encouragement, wanting him to move faster as she leaped over fallen branches. Benny didn’t like pushing through the black, clutching woods, she could see that he was afraid, but still he followed her. Only once did he pause and whimper, but then he pushed on again bravely, trusting her, trusting that she would take him safely through the night to where help waited, where someone friendly waited.
THE TRACKING TEAM did indeed form a strange procession through the dark and empty streets, the silver-colored dog with his nose to the paving jerking Ryan along, Clyde and Dallas jogging behind her, the hurrying gray tomcat taking up the rear. An untidy line of runners tracking Benny’s scent, which clung to the long-since-vanished white Toyota. Sometimes Rock lost the scent in the wake of a passing vehicle and had to cast around to find it again. Twice he lost it so completely he had to double back, his nose lifting and then down to the macadam until he picked up the trail, alternately following airborne scent and sucking up the faintest odor that lay along the street. Joe wondered that Benny’s scent had remained so strong—almost as if the child had rubbed against the tires or maybe clung to the fender or bumper trying to keep from being forced inside the car. Joe had, some time back, given up dodging into the shadows whenever Dallas glanced back at him. The detective knew he was there, and though his remarks amused Joe, they were unsettling, too.
“Why the hell is the cat still following us?” Dallas grumbled, scowling at Clyde. “He’s like a dog out for a run, I never saw a cat that acts so much like a dog.”
Clyde laughed. “He thinks he’s part dog, always been like that. He liked to run the beach with Rube and Barney. Remember how they’d race? Now, with both the old dogs gone, he’s grown pretty close to Rock.”
“He thinks he’s part cop,” Dallas said, “the way he hangs around the station.”
“It’s the food he likes,” Ryan said, sucking in breath, pulled along by Rock. “Mabel spoils him, you all do, he’s really getting too fat.”
Joe gave her a look as he moved along at a gallop beside Clyde. Ryan shook her head imperceptibly as Dallas glanced down at him, frowning. “Part dog,” Ryan said, laughing. “Thinks he can do whatever Rock can do.” She was about done in, was beginning to think she wasn’t as young as she used to be, not a pleasant revelation. They’d been tracking for nearly an hour when Rock swerved suddenly up a hillside street, leaped ahead so violently he nearly jerking Ryan off her feet.
“The wreck,” Dallas said, watching the light reflection among the treetops. With a BOL out on the white Toyota, the responding officers at the crash scene had called through to Dallas as soon as they ID’d the wrecked car.
“Neither driver on the scene,” Officer McFarland had said. “Some blood on the seat of the Toyota, shoe prints over the skid marks, a woman’s shoes and the boy’s, but no one here now.”
“See if you can find Benny,” Dallas had said. “The woman’s wanted on several charges.” Dallas could have pulled Rock off the scent, taken him directly there, put him back on Benny’s scent at the scene of the wreck. He’d opted, instead, to let Rock find his way without interference. If they took the big dog off the trail, they might miss something. Maybe the kidnapper had stopped somewhere, maybe pulled the child out of the car, locked him up somewhere. This, plus the fact that he didn’t want to screw up the dog’s training by taking him off fresh scent—not when he was ramping ahead on the lead nearly choking himself.
They arrived at the wreck to find Kathleen Ray photographing the car and truck and taking blood samples. Neither driver nor passengers had been found. Before they reached the wrecked vehicles Rock brightened on Benny’s scent so powerfully that he nearly flew off the road, jerking Ryan downhill for a long way, and then into a tangle of bushes, sniffing at an indentation of crushed leaves, a little bed matted down into a child-sized nest. Huffing, drinking in the scent, he’d circled wide around it, his nose to the ground, and then headed uphill again, veering back and forth between two trails.
At the wreck again he gave a yip and tried to climb into the turned-over Toyota, sucking at the scent from within and around the hanging door that gaped open. Proudly Joe Grey watched his protégé, smiling at the success of his training.