He lit a cigarette and dragged deeply on it, trying to numb his dizziness. He looked and the radioman and the deputy were turned to him, listening. How long had he been talking? Ten minutes it seemed, although it could not have been. His mind was skimming up and down in a smooth undulating pattern.
'Well don't stop,' Kern said. 'What about the girl? Did you find her?'
Teasle nodded slowly. 'Six months later. In a shallow grave off a side road about a mile from where the search originally ended. Some old guy drinking in a bar in Louisville made a few jokes about feeling little girls, and we heard about it. A long chance there was a connection, but we followed up anyhow. Since I had been on the search and knew the case, they had me question him, and forty minutes after I started on him, he came out with the whole story. How he'd been driving by this farm and saw this little girl splashing in a plastic pool in the front yard. It was her yellow swimsuit attracted him, he said. Grabbed her right out of the front yard and into the car without anybody seeing. He took us directly to the grave. It was the second grave. The first grave had been in the middle of the search area, and while the civilians had been wandering around screwing things up, he had come back one night and moved her.' He took another deep drag on his cigarette, feeling the smoke fill his throat, his bandaged fingers thick and numb holding the cigarette. 'Those civilians will screw things up here too. Word about this should never have been let out.'
'It's my fault. There's a reporter who comes around my office who heard my men talking before I could keep them quiet. I've got some of them herding all outsiders back to town right now.'
'Sure, and that bunch in the woods might get jumpy again and take a shot at your men. Anyway, you'll never round every one up. Tomorrow morning there'll be civilians all through those hills. You saw the way they've taken over town. There's just too many of them to control. The worst hasn't come yet. Wait until the professionals show up.'
'I don't know what you mean professionals. Who in hell are they?'
'Amateurs really, but they call themselves pros. Guys with nothing better to do than chase around the country to every place that has a search. I met a few of them when we were looking for that little girl. One guy had just come from the Everglades where they were tracking down some lost campers. Before that he'd been to California helping search for a family out hiking caught in a brush fire. That winter he'd been to Wyoming after skiers hit by an avalanche. Between times he went where the Mississippi was flooding or where miners were sealed off by a cave-in. The trouble is, types like him never work with the people in charge. They want the power of organizing their own groups and going off on their own, and before long they confuse the search pattern, interfere with official groups, run ahead to places that look exciting, like old farms, leaving whole fields unsearched —'
Teasle's heart suddenly fluttered, missed a beat, sped up, and he held his chest, gasping.
'What's the matter?' Kern said. 'You're—'
'Fine. I'm fine. I just need another pill. The doctor warned me this would happen.' It wasn't true. The doctor had not warned him at all, but this was the second time his heart had done that, and the first time a pill had brought it back to normal, so now he quickly swallowed another. He certainly could not let Kern know there was anything the matter with his heart.
Kern did not look satisfied with his answer. But then the radioman adjusted his earphones as if he were listening to a report, and told the deputy 'National Guard truck thirty-two in position.' He traced his finger down a list on a page, 'That's at the start of Branch Road,' and the deputy shoved one more red pin into the map.
The chalk taste of the pill remained in Teasle's mouth. He breathed, and the tightness around his heart began to relax. 'I never could understand why that old guy moved the little girl's body to a different grave,' he said to Kern, his heart relaxing even more. 'I remember when we dug her up, and how she looked from six months in the ground and what he had done to her. I remember thinking, God, it must have been a lonely way to die.'
'What just happened to you?'
'Nothing. Fatigue, the doctor said.'
'Your face matched the gray of your shirt.'
More trucks rolled by outside, and in their noise Teasle did not have to answer. Then a patrol car pulled up behind Kern, its headlights flooding him, and Teasle knew he would not have to answer at all.
'I guess I have to go,' Kern said reluctantly. These are the walkie-talkies to hand out.' He stepped toward the cruiser, hesitated, then turned back. 'Why don't you at least lie down on that bench and catch a little sleep while I'm gone. Staring at the map won't tell you where the kid is, and you'll want to be fresh when we start tomorrow.'
'If I get tired. I want to make double sure that everybody is where he should be. I'm in no shape to go into those hills with you, so I might as well be good for something here.'
'Listen. What I said at the hospital about the poor way you went after him.'
'It's done. Forget it.'
'But listen. I know what you're trying. You're thinking about all your men shot and you're straining your body to punish yourself. Now maybe it's true what I said — that Orval might still be alive if you had worked with me from the beginning. But the kid is the one who pulled the trigger on him and the rest. Not you. Remember that.'
Teasle did not need to be reminded. The radioman was saying 'State police unit nineteen in position,' and Teasle was dragging on his cigarette, watching intently as the deputy shoved another yellow pin into the eastern side of the map.
2
The map had almost no interior details. 'Nobody ever wanted a breakdown of these hills before,' the county surveyor had explained when he brought it. 'Maybe if a road goes through there someday, we'll have to chart it. But surveying costs a lot of money, especially in that kind of rough country, and it just never seemed practical to use up our budget on something nobody would ever likely need.' At least the surrounding roads were accurate. To the north they formed the top part of a square; but the road to the south curved like the bottom part of a circle, joining with the roads that went straight up on either side. Teasle's communication truck was parked on the lowest part of the south road's arc. That was where he had been found by the state trooper, and since the kid was last near there, it was the point from which the search was being directed.
The radioman looked at Teasle. 'A helicopter's coming in. They're talking, but it's not clear enough to understand.'
'Our two just left. None of them should be coming back this soon.'
'Motor trouble maybe.'
'Or it's not one of ours at all. It might be another news crew flying by taking pictures. If it is I don't want them to land.'
The radioman called it, asking for identification. No reply. Then Teasle heard the roar of the approaching rotor blades, and he rose stiffly from the bench, walking with difficulty to the open back of the truck. Next to the truck was the plowed field that he had crawled across that morning. It was dark, and then he saw the furrows, a harsh white as the searchlight on the bottom of the copter swooped down and across the field. It was the kind of searchlight the camera crew had used to take pictures earlier.
'They're hovering,' he told the radioman. 'Try them again. Make sure they don't land.'