Praying for Sleep

head?”
    “They go behind the garage, down a path then out over to 106. They turn south.”
    Owen asked, “To 106? That’s the road to Boyleston.”
    “Sure is. He was to head down 106 on a motorcycle, he’d be there in forty, fifty minutes.”
    “Boyleston’s the closest Amtrak station, isn’t it?”
    The detective nodded. “That’s right. Notice we got said he was making for Massachusetts. They were thinking he’d gone on foot but, sure, he could take the train. Maybe he doubled back. Like a feint, you know.”
    “That makes sense to me.”
    The detective barked an order to a uniformed sergeant, telling him to notify the Boyleston police about the murder and to send two of their own cars south on 106. Immediately. As the cops turned back to the body and busied themselves with fingerprints and crime-scene photos, Owen stepped outside and strolled around the property, looking for tracks. He studied the estate’s rolling pastures, a horse stable and several small barns that had been converted into garages.
    “You see anything?” the detective called to him.
    “Nope.”
    “Say, Mr. Atcheson, we’ll need a statement from you. And I’m sure Attorney Franks, our prosecutor, will be wanting to talk to you.”
    “In the morning, I’d be happy to.”
    “I—”
    “In the morning,” Owen said evenly.
    The officer kept eye contact for a moment then chased to his wallet for a business card, which he handed to Owen. “You’ll call me then? Nine a.m. sharp?”
    Owen said he would.
    The detective, tours of duty aside, looked Owen up and down. “I understand what you’re going through, sir. I myself might be inclined to head off after him this minute, I was in your position. But my advice is for you to stay out of this whole thing.”
    Owen merely nodded and gazed south toward the ruddy haze of lights that would be Boyleston. He stepped aside as the medics brought the woman’s body out of the door. He stared at it, seeing not so much the dark-green bag as, in his mind’s eye, the bloody black strokes of the letters that had been cut into her chest.
    The words they spelled were forEVEr rEVEnge
     
    He lost the scent on the outskirts of Cloverton.
    Emil was once again quartering, zigzagging across the asphalt, his master in tow, looking for a trail he simply couldn’t find. Even Trenton Heck, who supported his dogs 110 percent, was having an uneasy time of it.
    The big obedience problem with tracking was that you never knew exactly what was in the dog’s mind. Maybe just as you lowered the scent article to his nose, the hound got a whiff of deer and with the shout of “Find!” he’d bounded off in pursuit of a big buck who’d trotted nearby hours ago. The hound would be doing exactly what he believed he’d been ordered to do, and woe to the handler who failed to slip him a Bac’n Treat just the same as if he’d treed the escaping convict. Yet Heck replayed the evening and didn’t see how Emil could be mistaken. Come on, boy, he thought fervently. I got faith in you. Let’s do it.
    Emil started toward a water-filled ditch but Heck ordered him back. It occurred to him that a man who’d lay traps would also poison water though Heck was more worried about natural contamination. It was his rule to let dogs drink only water from home. (When his fellow troopers would snicker at this and mutter, “Evian,” or “Perrier,” he’d tell them, “Fine, boys, just go to Mexico yourselves sometime and drink from the tap. See how you enjoy it. For your hound, anyplace that ain’t home could be Mexico.”) Tonight he took a jar from the truck and gave Emil a long drink. The hound lapped greedily. They started on the trail again.
    Far distant in the west, lightning flashed in mute bands at the horizon, and a misty rain had started falling. This, Heck supposed, was what had ruined the scent. Earlier he’d been welcoming the rain but that was when Hrubek was on foot. The madman was now on a bicycle and they were following a very different type of trail. Dogs detect three different scents—body scent in the air, body scent pressed into the ground, and track scent, which is a combination of crushed vegetation and smells released by whatever the prey might step on. Rain intensifies and freshens the latter two. But add a hard rain to airborne scent on asphalt—which is chock-full of chemicals that foul dogs’ noses—and you’ve got the worst possible combination to track over.
    “Come on, why don’t