The Night Crew

dirt beneath their feet: like Wisconsin on a dry summer’s night, but with the special peppery pungency of the desert.
    ‘‘Don’t see your car,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Maybe he ditched it in town. Wherever he unloaded the kayak.’’
    ‘‘But then he’d have to transfer Pam.’’
    ‘‘Yeah . . . unless he killed her at your place, and left her in the car.’’
    Harper said it thoughtlessly, but the image of Pam curled in the trunk of the Toyota struck Anna with a vivid force, and she groaned, a soft exhalation.
    ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘God, if she’s dead . . .’’
    ‘‘Let’s cross behind the barn, check the outbuildings,’’ Harper whispered. ‘‘That’ll give us cover coming up to the house.’’
    ‘‘All right.’’
    They slid to the left, staying close to the underbrush as they moved into the opening around the house. Once away from the driveway, the land opened up into sparse pasture, dotted with clumps of brush. Anna used little squirts of light to guide them past the house to the barn, around the barn to the back, and then, crouching, with Harper’s rifle hovering over her head, into the barn itself.
    The barn was empty, but redolent with the odor of horse manure and hay. They checked the ground floor, found a range of horse-keeping equipment and stacks of feed supplement on a line of pallets.
    ‘‘All right,’’ Harper said. ‘‘Machine shed.’’
    They went out the back of the barn again, around the side, crept across a short open space to the machine shed, knelt by a window, listening. After a minute, Anna put her head up, peeked through the window. Could see nothing at all. Squeezed the flash, caught a quick glimpse of red.
    ‘‘I think it’s there, the car,’’ she breathed in Harper’s ear. ‘‘Something red in there.’’
    ‘‘Jesus . . .’’
    They slid to the front corner of the shed. Like the garage, the shed was old, probably pre–World War II, and the sliding doors hung from rusty overhead tracks. Harper reached around the corner and gave one of the doors a shove, and it moved a few inches. He pushed again, and got another foot.
    ‘‘We can get in. Move slow, stay low,’’ he said. He went around the corner, and Anna followed, watching the window in the house. When she was inside the garage, Harper slowly pushed the garage door back in place.
    Anna turned, wrapped her fist around the head of the flashlight, and turned it on: the beam caught the fender of her Toyota, played down the side. ‘‘That’s it,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s mine.’’ She played the beam across the back, onto the plates: ‘‘Yeah, that’s mine,’’ she said.
    ‘‘Kill the light.’’
    Anna killed the light and they both moved toward the car. Harper touched a window, opened the passenger door, slowly, carefully, felt in front and in back. Nothing.
    ‘‘Can you pop the trunk?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. We’ll have to go around.’’
    Anna scuttled around the car, felt up the door to the window. The window was down three or four inches, enough to get her arm through the gap. She stretched into the car, trying to reach the dome light.
    ‘‘What’re you doing?’’ Harper whispered.
    ‘‘If you open this door an inch, the light comes on,’’ Anna said. ‘‘I’m trying to shut it off.’’
    She fumbled with the switch, said, ‘‘I think that’s it,’’ and tried the door. No light. The trunk-opener lever was just in front of the seat, and she pulled it, heard the trunk pop, and crawled behind the car. Harper was pushing the trunk lid up, and Anna shone the flash into it.
    The trunk was empty, but Harper ran his fingers the width of it once, twice, then stopped, pressed, and lifted his fingers toward Anna. They were black in the light. He pulled them back, sniffed, and he said, ‘‘Blood. Not much. So she probably was alive when he took her out of here.’’
    ‘‘How do you know?’’
    ‘‘Why take her out if she’s dead?’’
    Anna nodded, and crawled toward a window facing the house. ‘‘So he’s here. Now what?’’
    ‘‘I was afraid . . . What’s that?’’
    Anna looked to the right, saw the splash of light off the brush beside the house.
    ‘‘Car coming up the hill,’’ she said. Anna heard the slide on the rifle as Harper jacked a shell into the chamber. She fumbled the pistol from her pocket as the lights grew brighter on the trees.
    Ten seconds later, a pickup pulled into the yard, and a woman hopped out and stormed