Heck had taken to reading a lot about bloodhounds and believed that Emil was the descendant (spiritual, there being no true lineage) of the greatest of all tracking bloodhounds, Nick Carter, who was run by Captain Volney Mullikin down in Kentucky at the turn of the century, a dog credited with more than 650 finds resulting in criminal convictions.

Emil himself had put a fair number of people behind bars. Much tracking work involves trailing suspects from crime scenes or linking weapons or loot to defendants. Emil, because of his AKC papers and his solid history of tracking, was a permitted “witness,” though he appeared on the stand through his spokesman, one Trenton Heck. Most of the dog’s assignments, however, involved locating escapees like Michael Hrubek.

Tonight in fact it was the anticipated triumph in tracking down the psycho and earning Heck his reward that preoccupied him as they pushed through the brush. He should have had his mind on what he was doing though for he didn’t see the spring trap until Emil stepped right onto it.

“No!” he cried, jerking back hard on the line, pulling the hound off balance. “Oh, no! What’d I do?” But Emil had already fallen sideways onto the large Ottawa Manufacturing trap. He yelped in pain.

“Oh, Jesus, Emil…” Heck dropped to his knees over the animal, thinking about splints and the emergency vet clinics, frighteningly aware that he had no bandages or tourniquets to staunch the flow of blood from a severed vein or artery. As he reached for his dog, however, his trooper instincts took over and he realized that the trap might be a diversion.

He’s waiting for me-it’s a trick!

Heck flicked rain from his eyes, lifting the Walther, and spun about, wondering from which direction the madman would come charging at him. He paused momentarily, debated and when he heard nothing turned back to Emil. He’d have to risk an attack; he wasn’t going to leave the dog unattended. Holstering the gun he reached for Emil, Heck’s hands shaking and his heart only now beginning to pulse quickly in the aftermath of the fright. But the dog suddenly shook himself snootily and stood upright, unharmed.

What had happened? Heck gazed at the animal, who, as far as he could tell, had landed square on the burnished trigger plate of the trap.

Then he understood-the jaws had been sprung before Emil stepped on the trigger.

“Oh, Lord.” He gripped the dog around his neck and hugged him hard. “Lord.” The dog eased back and shook his head, embarrassment now piled on top of his indignation.

Heck crouched down and examined the trap. It was identical to those at the shop on Route 118. Hrubek obviously had set it. But how had it been sprung? There were two possibilities, Heck supposed. First, that a small animal, its head lower than the steel jaws, had bounded onto the trigger and set it off. The second possibility was that someone had come by, seen the trap and popped it with a stick or rock. This, Heck decided, was the likely explanation-because next to the trap he saw several bootprints in the mud. One set was Hrubek’s. But someone else had been here as well. He looked closely at the prints and his heart plummeted.

“Oh, damn!” he whispered bitterly.

He recognized the sole. He’d seen these prints-of expensive L. L. Bean outdoorsman’s boots-earlier in the evening, not far from the overhang where he and Emil had picked up Hrubek’s westward trail, miles back.

So I’ve got some competition here.

Who is it? he wondered. A plainclothes trooper or cops maybe. Or more likely-and more troubling-a bounty hunter like Heck himself, seeking the reward money. Heck thought of Adler. Had he sent an orderly to find the patient? Was the hospital director playing a game of ends against the middle?

With the stake being Heck’s reward money?

He rose and, clutching his gun, examined the two men’s tracks carefully. Hrubek had continued south along the private road. The other tracker was coming from that direction and heading back toward Route 236. He’d done so after Hrubek-some of his prints covered the madman’s-and he’d been running, as if he’d learned where Hrubek was headed and was in pursuit. Heck followed the L. L. Bean prints to the highway and found where the man had stopped and studied a tread mark, left recently by a heavy car. The tracker had then sprinted to the shoulder of Route 236, where he’d climbed into a vehicle and hurried west, spinning his wheels furiously. From the tread marks it was clear that the man was driving a truck with four-wheel drive.

The scene told him that Michael Hrubek had got himself a vehicle and was probably just minutes ahead of this other pursuer.

Heck looked around the turbulent night sky and saw a distant flash of silent lightning. He wiped the rain from his face. He debated for a long moment and finally concluded he had no choice. Even Emil couldn’t track prey inside a moving car. Heck would speed west down the highway, relying on luck to reveal some sign of the prey’s whereabouts.

“I’ll leave the belt off, Emil,” Heck said, leading the dog into the pickup. “But you sit tight. We’re gonna waste some fuel here.”

The hound sank down on Heck’s outstretched leg, and as the truck sped onto the highway with a gassy roar, closed his droopy eyelids and dozed off.

Seven miles outside of Cloverton, along Route 236, Owen spotted the car parked by the roadside near a stand of evergreens.

Oh, you smart son of a bitch!

He drove past the old Cadillac then abruptly slowed and turned off the road, parking the truck in a cluster of juniper and hemlock.

He’d gambled, and he’d won.

About time, he thought. I’m due for a little luck.

Walking over the grounds at the murder site in Cloverton, Owen had noticed that two of the small barns near the house contained antique autos. He’d slipped inside and looked under the blue Wolf car covers to find an old ’50 Pontiac Chief, a Hudson, a purple Studebaker. In one building, a stall was empty, and the car cover was dropped in a heap on the floor-the only disorder in the entire barn. His inclination was to dismiss the possibility of Hrubek’s stealing such an obvious getaway car. But, remembering the bicycle, Owen yielded to his instincts and, after a search of the ground, he found recent tread marks of a heavy auto leading from the barn, down the driveway and then west on Route 236. Without a word to the Cloverton police he’d left the house and sped not to Boyleston but after the old car.

Now he climbed from the truck and walked back toward the Cadillac, the sound of his passage obscured by the steady rain and sharp slashes of wind. He paused and squinted into the night. Sixty, seventy feet away a large form stood with his back to Owen, urinating on a bush. The man’s bald head was tilted back as he looked up into the sky, staring at the rain. He seemed to be singing or chanting softly.

Owen crouched down, slipping his pistol from his belt. He considered what to do next. When it had seemed that Hrubek was heading for the house in Ridgeton, Owen had planned simply to follow him there and then slip into the house ahead of him. If the madman broke in, Owen would simply shoot him. Maybe he’d slip a knife or crowbar into the man’s hand-to make a tidier scene for the prosecutor. But now Hrubek had a car and it occurred to Owen that maybe Ridgeton wasn’t his destination after all. Maybe he really would turn south and make for Boyleston. Or simply keep going on 236 and drive to New York, or even further west.

Besides, here was his quarry, defenseless, unsuspecting, alone-an opportunity Owen might not have again, wherever Hrubek was ultimately headed.

He made his decision: better to take the man now.

But what about the Cadillac? He could leave his truck here, dump the body in the trunk of the old car then drive it to Ridgeton himself. Once there he’d lug the body inside the house and-