The Empress File

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 hesitatedbefore 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, headedback 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.
    “If they beat him up, and if he’s in obviouslybad shape, we want photos of him coming out with Hill. Maybe we could yell or scream or something, they wouldn’t know who we are, but they’d have to let him go.”
    “Jesus, that worries me. Our security could be fucked.”
    “Yeah, but—” It suddenly dawned on me what the sound was. Ooka-ooka. I half stood and stared down the hill. “Motherfucker.”
    “What?”
    “That’s the pump for the fuckin’ vacuum chamber. I bet that’s what it is.”
    LuEllen didn’t say anything but just