He put his blocky head on my raised knee, encouraging me to stroke him
and to scratch his ears, one of which was pricked, the other limp.
We have been through a lot together. We have lost too many people we
loved. With equal emotion, we dread being left to face life alone. We
have our friends bobby Halloway, Sasha Good all, a few others and we
cherish them, but the two of us share something beyond the deepest
friendship, a unique relationship without which neither of us would be
quite whole.
“Bro, ” I whispered.
He licked my hand.
“Gotta go, ” I whispered, and I didn’t need to say that where I had to
go was down.
Neither did I have to note that Orson’s myriad abilities didn’t include
the extraordinary balance required to descend a perfectly vertical
ladder, paw over paw. He has a talent for tracking, a great good heart,
unlimited courage, loyalty as reliable as the departure of the sun at
dusk, a bottomless capacity for love, a cold nose, a tail that can wag
energetically enough to produce more electricity than a small nuclear
reactor but like every one of us, he has his limitations.
In the blackness, I moved to the hole in the wall. Blindly gripping one
of the steel fittings that had secured the missing bookcase to a
wall-mounted track, I pulled myself up until I was crouching with both
feet on the sturdy two-by-six bolted across the opening. I reached into
the shaft, fumbled for a steel rung, snared one, and swung off the
two-by-six onto the service ladder.
Admittedly, I am less quiet than a cat, but by a degree that only a
mouse would appreciate. I don’t mean to imply that I have a paranormal
ability to race across a carpet of crisp autumn leaves without raising a
crackle. My stealth is largely a consequence of three things, first, the
profound patience that XP has taught me, second, the confidence with
which I have learned to move through the bleakest night, third, and not
least important, decades spent observing the nocturnal animals and birds
and other creatures with whom I share my world. Every one of them is a
master of silence when it needs to be, and more often than not it
desperately needs to be, because the night is a kingdom of predators, in
which every hunter is also the hunted.
I descended from darkness into darkness distilled, wishing that I didn’t
need both hands for the ladder and could, instead, swing downward like
an ape, swift and nimble, gripping with my left hand and both feet,
holding the pistol ready. But then if I were an ape, I would have been
too wise to put myself in this precarious position.
Before I reached the first basement, I began to wonder how my quarry had
gone down the ladder while encumbered with the boy. Across his shoulder
in a fireman’s carry? Jimmy would have to have been bound at ankles and
wrists to prevent him from making a movement, either intentionally or
out of panic, that might dislodge his abductor. Even then, although the
boy was small, he’d have been a considerable burden and a relentless
backward drag that had to be diligently resisted every time the
kidnapper moved a hand from one rung to the next.
I decided that the man I was pursuing must be as strong, agile, and
confident as he was psychotic. So much for my fond hope that I was
chasing a soft-bellied librarian who, dazed and confused, had been
driven to this insane act by the stress of converting from the Dewey
decimal system to a new computerized inventory.
Even in the lightless murk, I knew when I had reached the gap in the
shaft where the basement elevator doors had once been, one floor below
the warehouse office. I can’t explain how I could know, any more than I
can explain the plot line of the average Jackie Chan movie, though I
love Jackie Chan movies. Perhaps there was a draft or a scent or a
resonance so subtle that I was only subconsciously aware of it.
I couldn’t be sure this was the level to which the kidnapper had taken