more than the ceiling of that space.
Indecisive, I hung on the ladder, listening.
Finally I overcame my trepidation by reminding myself that any delay
could be deadly. After all, a humongous mutant tarantula was crawling
toward me from the pit below, poison dripping off its serrated
mandibles, fiercely angry because it hadn’t gotten me on my way down.
Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking
like a damn fool.
Emboldened, I quickly climbed past the first basement, to the main
level, into the office where I had left Orson. I was neither hammered
into mush by a blunt instrument nor shredded by giant arachnid jaws.
My dog was gone.
Drawing the pistol once more, I hurried from the office into the huge
main room of the warehouse.
Flocks of shadows flew away from me, then circled to roost in even
greater profusion at my back.
“Orson! ” When circumstances left him no alternative, he was a
first-rate fighter my brother the dog and always reliable. He wouldn’t
have allowed the kidnapper to pass, at least not without extracting a
painful toll.
I’d seen no blood in the office, and there was none here, either.
“Orson! ” Echoes of his name rippled across the corrugated steel walls.
The repetition of those two hollow syllables was reminiscent of a church
bell tolling in the distance, which made me think of funerals, and in my
mind rose a vivid image of good Orson lying battered and broken, a glaze
of death in his eyes.
My tongue grew so thick and my throat so tight with fear that I could
barely swallow.
The door by which we’d entered was wide open, just as we had left it.
Outside, the sleeping moon remained bedded down in mattresses of clouds
to the west. Only stars lit the sky.
The cool clear air hung motionless, as sharp with dire promise as the
suspended blade of a guillotine.
The flashlight beam revealed a discarded socket wrench that had been
left behind so long ago it was orange with rust, from its ratchet handle
to its business end. An empty oil can waited for wind strong enough to
roll it elsewhere. A weed bristled out of a crack in the blacktop, tiny
yellow flowers rising defiantly from this inhospitable compost.
Otherwise, the serviceway was empty. No man, no dog.
Whatever might lie ahead, I’d deal with it more effectively if I
recovered my night vision. I switched off the light and tucked it under
my belt. “Orson! ” I risked nothing by calling out at the top of my
voice. The man I’d encountered under the warehouse already knew where I
was.
“Orson! ” Possibly the dog had split shortly after I’d left him. He
might have become convinced we’d followed the wrong trail. Maybe he had
caught a fresh scent of Jimmy, weighing the risks of disregarding my
instructions against the need to locate the missing child as quickly as
possible, perhaps he had left the warehouse and returned to the hunt. He
might be with the boy now, ready to confront the kidnapper when the
creep showed up to collect his captive.
For a two-bit philosopher full of smug homilies about the danger of
investing too much emotional capital in mere hope, I was laboring
mightily to build another of those gossamer bridges.
I drew a deep breath, but before I could shout again, Orson barked
twice.
At least I assumed it was Orson. For all I knew, it could have been the
Hound of the Baskervilles. I wasn’t able to determine the direction from
which the sound had come.
I called to him once more.
No response.
“Patience, ” I counseled myself.
I waited. Sometimes there is nothing to be done but wait. Most times, in
fact. We like to think we operate the loom that weaves the future, but
the only foot on that treadle is the foot of fate.
In the distance, the dog barked again, ferociously this time.
I got a fix on the sound and ran toward it, from serviceway to
serviceway, from shadow to shadow, among abandoned warehouses that
loomed as massive and black and cold as temples to the cruel gods of