As soon as they were out of the immediate area occupied by the fire crew, they stopped to confer about something—Winkler doing most of the talking, Madeleine nodding earnestly. Then they continued on, Winkler now in front, following a kind of passageway through the crowd opened by some security people for the evacuation of the animals.
This brought them within a few feet of Gurney.
Winkler noticed him first. “Hey, David—you want to make yourself useful?”
“Sorry. I can’t help you right now.”
Winkler looked offended. “I’ve got a significant emergency here.”
“We all do.”
Winkler stared at him, then moved on with a muttered comment that got lost under a peal of thunder.
Madeleine stopped and eyed Gurney curiously. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?” Even as he was speaking, the harshness in his voice was warning him to be quiet.
“Helping Dennis and Deirdre. As I told you I would be.”
“You need to get out of here. Now.”
“What? What’s the matter with you?” The wind was blowing her hair forward, around her face. With both hands on the halters, she was shaking her head to keep the hair out of her eyes.
“It’s not safe here.”
She blinked uncomprehendingly. “Because of the fire in the barn?”
“The fire in the barn, the fire in the arena, the fire in the flower booth …”
“What are you talking about?”
“The man I’m chasing … the man who burned down the houses in Cooperstown …”
There was flash of lightning and the loudest thunderclap yet. She flinched and raised her voice. “What are you telling me?”
“He’s here. Petros Panikos. Here, tonight, now. I think he may have seeded the whole fairgrounds with explosives.”
Her hair was still blowing in her face, but now she was making no effort to control it. “How do you know he’s here?”
“I followed him here.”
“From where?”
Another lightning flash, another thunderclap.
“Barrow Hill. I chased him here on Kyle’s motorcycle.”
“What happened? Why—”
“He killed Mick Klemper.”
“Madeleine!” Dennis Winkler’s impatient voice reached them from the place where he was standing, waiting, about thirty feet away. “Madeleine! Come on! We need to keep moving along.”
“Klemper? Where?”
“By our house. I don’t have time to explain it. Panikos is here. He’s blowing things up, he’s burning things down, I need you to get the hell out of here.”
“What about the animals?”
“Maddie, for Godsake …”
“They’re terrified of fire.” She glanced back in distress at her oddly thoughtful-looking pair of alpacas.
“Maddie …”
“All right, all right … let me just get these two to a safe place. Then I’ll leave.” She was obviously finding the decision a difficult one. “What about you? What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find him and stop him.”
Outright fear finally filled her eyes, and she started to object, but he cut her off.
“I have to do this! And you have to get the hell out of here—please—now!”
She appeared for a moment immobilized by her own frightening thoughts, then she dropped the halters, stepped toward him, hugged him with something like desperation, turned away without another word, and led her charges along the concourse to where Winkler was waiting for her. They exchanged a few words, then moved on quickly, side by side, through the corridor that had been cleared through the crowd.
Watching them for the few seconds until they were out of sight, Gurney felt the stab of an emotion he couldn’t name. They looked so goddamn domestic, so bloody compatible, like caring parents of little children, hurrying to find shelter from the storm.
He closed his eyes, hoping for a way up and out of the acid pit.
When he opened them a moment later, the strange little face-painted threesome had reappeared, seemingly out of nowhere. They were walking past him in the same direction taken by Madeleine and Winkler. Gurney had the unsettling impression—it could have been his imagination—that one of the painted faces was smiling.
He let them get about fifty feet farther along before he set out after them. The concourse ahead was a jumble of conflicting currents. Curiosity was pulling droves of the mindless toward the burning barn, while the security staff were doing their utmost to turn them back and to keep a channel open for the displaced animals and their handlers moving in the opposite direction to a series of corrals on the far side of the fairgrounds.
Beyond the radius of the fire’s visibility and primitive power of attraction, the threat of a downpour was persuading swarms of fairgoers to abandon the pedestrian concourses in favor of the exhibitor tents or their own cars. The reduced density was making it easier for Gurney to keep the trio in sight.
At the end of a massive thunderclap that reverberated through the valley, he realized his phone was ringing.
It was Hardwick. “You spot the fucker yet?”
“Maybe a possibility or two, nothing firm. What area have you covered so far?”
There was no answer.
“Jack?”
“Hold on a sec.”
As the seconds passed, Gurney found himself dividing his attention between the trio he was following and the giant video cube that dominated the center of the fairgrounds and provided an incessant country-music accompaniment to the nightmare in progress. As he listened for Hardwick’s return to the phone, he couldn’t quite tune out the Oedipal-creepy chorus of a song called “Mother’s Day”—about a hard-workin’, hard-drinkin’, pickup-drivin’ guy who’d never met a lady as lovin’ as his mama.
“I’m back.” It was Hardwick’s voice on the phone.
“What’s happening?”
“I’ve been tailing a rat pack, didn’t want to lose them. Dressed in scumbag couture. Couple of them got that paint shit on their faces.”
“Anything special about them?”
“There seems to be a core group, and then there’s sort of an outlier.”
“An outlier?”
“Yeah. Like he’s with the pack but not really part of them.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Right, but don’t get carried away. There’s always some kid in a group who’s a little out of the group. Don’t necessarily mean shit.”
“Can you see what’s painted on his face?”
“Got to wait till he turns around.”
“Where are you?”
“Passing in front of a booth selling taxidermied squirrels.”
“Jesus. Any bigger landmarks?”
“There’s a building down the concourse with a picture of a humongous pumpkin on the door, next to a video arcade. In fact, the mini-scumbags just went into the arcade.”
“What about the outlier?”
“Yeah, him too. They’re all inside. You want me to go in?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet. Just make sure there’s only one door, so you don’t lose them.”
“Hold on, they just came back out. On the move again.”
“All of them? The outlier, too?”
“Yeah. Just counting … eight, nine … yeah, all of them.”
“Which way are they heading?”