“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 obviously bad 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 stared, and the pump stopped. “You think?” she asked in the silence.

“Maybe they’re trying to find out who else knows.”

“Jesus, no. I don’t believe it

“

“We fucked up,” I said. “We’ve gotta get to the car and call the cops

Or maybe we can call them, Hill and St. Thomas. I’ll try to disguise my voice, tell them we know they’ve got Harold.”

I was headed for the path down the hill when LuEllen whispered, “Wait

wait. Here we go.” She waved me back.