They followed the dogs, still short-lined because of the traps, only three miles east before Hrubek broke away and turned north, onto a small dirt lane. A hundred feet away they found a filthy roadside diner, which looked bleaker yet because of the sloppily taped X’s on the windows.

Thinking that Hrubek might be inside, Fennel sent the Boy around back and he and Heck snuck up to the windows of the streamlined, aluminum-sided restaurant. Cautiously they lifted their heads and found themselves gazing straight into the eyes of the cook, waitress and two diners, who, forewarned by the baying Labradors, were staring out the windows.

Heck and Fennel, feeling somewhat foolish, stepped through the door, bolstering their guns.

“A posse,” the waitress exclaimed, drops of viscous gravy falling from the tilting plate she held.

But, no, nobody here had seen Hrubek, even though to judge by Emil’s scenting he’d passed within feet of the window. Without an explanation, or a farewell, the men and the dogs vanished as quickly as they’d come. Emil picked up the scent once more and led them northeast along the dirt road.

Not two hundred yards from the diner they found the spot where Hrubek had taken to the fields. “Hold up,” Heck whispered. They stood beside a small grass-filled path-an access road for mowing tractors. The drive darkened as it passed through a dense stand of trees.

Fennel and Heck tied back the track lines until they were shorter than pet-store leads. They found, however, that they didn’t need the animals any longer; not more than fifty yards into the woods they heard Hrubek.

Fennel gripped Heck’s arm and they stopped short. The Boy dropped to a crouch. They heard a mad moaning rising from the trees.

Heck was so excited to have found Hrubek that he forgot he was a civilian. He began communicating to Fennel and the Boy with the hand signals law enforcers use when they silently close in on their quarry. Up went his finger to his lips and he pointed toward the source of the sound then motioned Fennel and the Boy forward. Heck bent low to Emil and whispered, “Sit,” then, “Down.” The dog eased to the ground, obedient but irritated that the game was over for him. Heck loose-tied him to a branch.

“I’ll take over from here, you want,” Fennel whispered in a casual way but with enough timber to remind Heck who was in charge. Heck was of course willing to yield the role of commander, which was never his in the first place, but no way was he going to miss the hogtying party; he didn’t want any argument about the reward money. He nodded toward Fennel and unholstered his Walther.

The Boy, who with his fiery eyes and a big automatic in his fingers didn’t look so boyish anymore, circled around to the side, north of the trees, as Fennel had indicated. Heck and Fennel went up the middle of the road. They moved very slowly; they couldn’t use their flashlights and the grove was darkly shadowed by the hemlocks, whose branches were dense and lay upon one another like ragged petticoats.

The moaning grew louder. To a man, it chilled their hearts.

When Heck saw the truck-a long semi, parked cockeyed in the shadows-he felt a burst of queasiness, thinking that the moaning was not Hrubek at all but the driver, whom the madman had attacked and gutted. Perhaps he was listening to a sucking chest wound. He and Fennel glanced at each other, exchanging this identical thought in silence, and continued their cautious approach.

Then Heck saw him, an indistinct shape not far away.

Michael Hrubek, so thick around the middle he seemed deformed.

Moaning like a moon-crazed dog.

He lay on the ground, trying to get up. Perhaps he’d fallen and hurt himself, or had been hit by the massive truck.

Maybe he’d heard the Labs and was feigning injury, waiting for his pursuers to get close.

Opposite Heck and Fennel, on the other side of the clearing, the Boy appeared in a crouch. Fennel held up three fingers. The young trooper responded by mimicking it. Then Fennel clicked the safety off his gun and lifted his hand above his head. One finger. Two fingers… Three… The men jumped into the clearing, three dark pistols pointed forward, three long flashlights pumping their dazzling halogen light onto the massive body of their quarry.

“Freeze!”

“All right, don’t you move!”

For the love of Mary, Trenton Heck thought, his legs weakening in shock, what’s happening here?

The madman, lying on the ground in front of the three lawmen, was shrieking like a bluejay. He suddenly split clean in two, half of him leaping into the air, white as death.

What is going on here? Heck trained the flashlight on the part of the madman that remained on the ground-the part that was now grasping about for something to pull over her ample breasts.

“Shit, son of a bitch!” the man’s upper half shouted in an edgy tenor. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

The Boy started laughing first then Fennel joined in and, if Heck hadn’t been so upset at losing his reward money, he’d have laughed too. The sight of the skinny man, searching desperately for his shorts, the long condom whipping back and forth as it dangled from his quickly shrunk member… Well, it was the funniest thing Heck had seen for a month of Sundays.

“Don’t hurt me,” the woman wailed.

“Son of a bitch,” the skinny man growled once more. Heck’s humor returned and he whistled the “Dueling Banjos” tune from Deliverance.

In a Kentucky-mountain voice Charlie Fennel said, “Naw, I want him. He’s a purty one.”

“Sooo-eee,” Heck called. “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!”

The woman wailed again.

“Oh, shit…” The young man fumbled with his pants.

“Calm down now.” Fennel shone the light on his badge. “We’re state troopers.”

“That wasn’t funny, I don’t care who y’all are. She wanted to do it. She picked me up at that diner up the road. It was her idea.”

The woman had calmed in proportion to the amount of clothing she’d pulled on. “My idea? I’ll thank you not to make me sound cheap.”

“I didn’t want-”

“That’s your all’s business,” Fennel said, “but it’s our business you’ve had a hitchhiker on the back of your rig for the past ten miles. An escapee.”

Heck too understood that this is what had happened and he was angry at himself for not thinking of it sooner. Hrubek had clung to the back bumper guard or loading platform of the truck. That was why the scent had been so weak, and why it had never wavered from the road.

“Jesus, that fellow at the truck stop in Watertown? The big guy? Oh, my everloving Lord!”

“You’re that truck driver?” Heck asked. “He asked you about going to Boston?”

“Shitabrick, maybe he’s still on the rig!”

But the Boy had already circled around and checked out the truck’s roof and undercarriage. “He’s not here, nope. And the back’s padlocked. He must’ve took off into the fields when the truck stopped.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the driver whispered reverently, “he’s a killer, ain’t he? Oh, Jesus, Jesus…”

The woman had started crying again. “This is the last time, I swear. Never again.”

Fennel asked how long the driver had been there.

“Fifteen minutes, I’d guess.”

“You love bunnies hear anything?”

“Nothing, not a single thing,” the driver said, eager to please.

“I didn’t hear anything either,” the woman replied, sniffling, “and I don’t like your, you know, attitude.”

“Uhn,” Fennel responded, then said to the young man, who was buttoning up his shirt, “Now I suggest you get back in that rig and take this lady home; and get on your way.”

“Take her home? Forget about it.”

“You prick,” she snapped. “You damn well better.”

“I think you ought to do that, son,” Heck said.