He knew in some inexplicable way that they were still alive, felt it deep within him as if when they died he would feel it as a death inside himself. Help was coming, right? Surely Flint and the psychiatrist would get someone. But what if they hadn’t? He tried desperately to think. They had been taken to the hydro plant, of that he was sure. Because he wants me to come after him. It’s a war game and Helen and Jessica are the bait.

Hank knew the woods, and he had a snowmobile. David prayed it was out of the shop by now. He would call Hank.

And then he would go after them himself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Hank Babcock peered out the windshield into the fiercely driving snow, every fiber in him concentrating on the task at hand. The old Cherokee plodded valiantly on, and he blessed its soul again as he had fifty times in the last few minutes. He had chains on the tires, but by this point the storm had dumped at least five inches of new powder on top of a road already laced with ice. It was definitely not a Sunday drive.

He wondered briefly why he had decided to come at all. He got the call from Pierce just as the Celtics-Lakers game hit the air, and he was settling into the La-Z-Boy to catch as much of it as he could before they lost power. Goddamn phone’s more trouble than it’s worth, he thought. But he was glad of it, all the same. Because no matter how hard he tried to deny it, he did feel a sense of responsibility towards the Pierces; after all, he had set up the house deal, and maybe they wouldn’t be in this pack of trouble if it weren’t for that.

But going out into a blizzard to help track down some crazy killer? Well, that maybe went just a little too far. Yet here he was. Never could turn down somebody who needs help, he thought, not without a sense of regret. It was a flaw he could live with, he supposed. Hopefully I can live with it through the next couple of hours.

He did believe Pierce’s story, as crazy as it seemed. It could have happened like this: Olmstead, maybe that little bastard Thompson too, find a lonely spot and a lonely guy and they leave him there with a bucketful of death, just to see what might happen. They’re probably a little nuts, but they do it. And after they lose contact with the caretaker and people start getting lost out there, they come up with the plan of hiring David and pinning the whole mess on him.