Hunting Season

by P. T. Deutermann

  She wondered if the two horse-holders were capable of “attending to” Edwin Kreiss. She thought idly about warning him.

  Edwin Kreiss had obtained a county road map at the Christiansburg Chamber of Commerce that morning, and he was now nosing his pickup truck down a dirt road five miles west of the town. None of the land around these first geologic wrinkles of the Appalachian foothills was horizontal, and he had to keep it in second gear on the rough and winding lane. He had found their truck unlocked last night at the rail spur branch and retrieved the registration. The vehicle belonged to one Jared McGarand, whose rural postbox address he’d finally found on a rusting mailbox at the head of the dirt road. He came around a final bend in the trees and saw a double-wide trailer at the end of the lane. There were no other trailers or houses nearby, but there were some large dogs raising hell from what looked like a pen behind the trailer. He had anticipated the

  possibility of dogs and had the cure in a plastic bag on the seat. But first, he would see if the dogs’ noise summoned anyone. It was the middle of the day, and the only other trailer he’d seen had been almost a mile back down the county road. It had looked deserted.

  He turned around and then parked his truck in front of the trailer, pointed back out the lane. Then he waited. The dogs, still not visible, continued to bark and howl, but after five minutes, they lost interest. The trailer was mounted up on cinder blocks at one end to level it. The place looked reasonably well kept, with some side sheds, a separate metal carport roof, an engine-hoisting stand, and what looked like a rig for butchering deer. The same pickup truck from which he’d obtained the registration was parked under a tree, but there were no junked cars or other hillbilly treasures stacked in the yard, and there was electric power and a phone line attached to the trailer. Whoever Jared McGarand was, he obviously had a job and was not just another member of the Appalachian recycling elite.

  Satisfied that no one was coming, he opened the door, grabbed the plastic bag, and went up to the front door of the trailer and knocked on it.

  This set off another round of barking from out back. When no one answered, he went around to the back door and tried that, again without result. Then he walked over to the dog pen, which was fifty feet back from the trailer, under some trees. He took out some sugar-coated doughnut holes, into each of which he had put two nonprescription iron-supplement pills. The dogs were some kind of mixed breed, with pit bull predominant, equal parts teeth, bark, and general fury. They were jumping and slavering at the sturdy chain-link fence. He pushed the doughnut holes into the chain link until he was sure each dog had eaten at least one.

  Then he went back to the truck and waited. The pills would not kill the dogs, but in about fifteen minutes, they would be feeling ill enough to lie down and whimper for the rest of the day. While he was waiting, his car phone rang. Ever since Lynn disappeared he had made a practice of having any calls that came into the cabin automatically forward to the truck if he was out of the house.

  “Kreiss,” he said, visually checking the trailer and its surroundings.

  The dogs had stopped their barking.

  “Mr. Kreiss, this is Special Agent Janet Carter.”

  “You have something on Lynn?” Kreiss asked immediately.

  “No. I wish we did, but no. This is something else.” She described the visitation of Bellhouser and Foster.

  He listened without comment, wishing he had been able to observe that little seance. Attend to me, would they? He took a deep breath to calm himself.

  “Mr. Kreiss? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m on my car phone. I appreciate the heads up, Agent Carter. I really do.”

  “You didn’t get it from me, Mr. Kreiss.”

  “Absolutely.” He paused for a moment, not sure of what to say next.

  He was picturing her face, and, after their last meeting, wondering why she was doing this.

  “Mr. Kreiss?” she said.

  “We asked you not to go solo on your daughter’s disappearance, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, let me reiterate that request. And of course, if new information does turn up, let me say again that you need to bring it to us.”

  How would two guys skulking around at night on a closed federal ammunition plant, setting man traps and shooting at people, strike you?

  he wondered.

  “Of course, Agent Carter.”

  “Yes. Of course, Mr. Kreiss.”

  “Thanks again for the heads up. I owe you one, Agent Carter.”

  “Hold that thought, Mr. Kreiss.”

  He grunted, clicked the phone off, and got back out of the truck. He positioned a small motion detector on the hood of the pickup, pointed down the lane in the direction of the county road. It would start beeping if anything came down the dirt road toward the cabin. He took a canvas tool bag out of the passenger side and went behind the trailer. The dogs were circled on the concrete floor of their pen. One was drinking lots of water, while the other two were nipping at their flanks.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was driving back out onto the county road.

  On the front seat beside him, he had some personal documents he’d lifted from a desk inside, enough to confirm that the occupant was Jared McGarand, a telephone company repairman. He also had taken a .357 Magnum he’d removed from the bedroom bureau’s top drawer. He had found a .45 auto in Jared’s night table but left that alone. The man liked big guns. He’d refilled the dogs’ water buckets before he left; they were going to be very thirsty later on. He had mounted a cigarette carton-sized battery-operated box on the roof of the trailer, out of sight behind two vent pipes, and installed a listen-and-record device on the lone telephone.

  He turned onto the county road and headed back toward Blacksburg.

  He had been tempted to tell Carter about the Ramsey Arsenal, except that he thought he could do a better job of finding Lynn than some posse of semi hysterical feds, at least until he knew what the connection was between these two midnight gomers and Lynn’s hat. He would have to find a way to pay Carter back for the favor of that warning; she absolutely did not have to do that, especially after having to take a meeting with Bambi Bellhouser and Chief Red in the Face. She’d probably called him because they pissed her off. He almost hoped they would be stupid enough to come out to his cabin, although he doubted a couple of horse holders like that would ever venture too far away from an office. In the meantime, he had some preparations to make before returning to the arsenal tonight. He wanted to get into the industrial area just at twilight, because those two had shown up the last time about an hour after sundown.

  This time, he wanted to be closer to that far end of the main street.

  Maybe he would be able to track them into a specific building.

  That evening, Browne and Jared were delayed by a traffic accident on the Route 11 bridge over the New River. It was almost eight o’clock before they got to the entrance of the arsenal. Jared was in a bad mood, having found his three hunting dogs sick in their pen when he got home from work.

  “Dog crap all over the place,” he complained.

  “Had to hose it for half an hour. Dogs sick as babies.”

  “All three? Must have been bad feed.”

  “They got the same as always. They still ain’t right.” He drove through the concrete barrels and down the fire road with his lights off. There was a sliver of new moon up, which gave enough light to see the road and the high fence.

  “You get that counter put up?”

  “Yep. It’s just inside the inner gates, waist-high.” He pulled the truck into their regular parking place, between four bushy pines.

  “With them side fences, won’t be no critters settin’ it off. I got a line on some more copper, but it’s gonna take some cash money.”

  “All right. We’ve got nearly thirty pounds of pressure in the truck tank now. I’ll be shifting over to the big pump at fifty psi.”

&
nbsp; They got out and stood at the edge of the trees to night-adapt their eyes. There was a slight breeze blowing pine scent at them, and the railroad tracks gleamed dully in the dim moonlight.

  “I did one other thing ‘sides that counter,” Jared said. His

  grandfather looked at him.

  “I set me up a deadfall along the main street—wire trigger.

  Left the wire down for now. We get something’ on that counter, I’ll set the wire when we come out.”

  “We get a hit on that counter before we even go in, we’re not going in,” Browne said.

  “I may come back tomorrow during the day and do some hunting. Can you get some time off? Bring your dogs?”

  “I can if there ain’t a lot of tickets up on the western lines. Don’t know about them dogs.”

  “All right,” Browne said, picking up the bag of food and water for the girl.

  “Let’s go check your toy.”

  They walked up the spur to the security gates, stopping a hundred feet out to watch and listen. Then they stepped through the flap of fencing and Jared walked over to the side fence and squatted down next to a high weed. He straightened back up and came back to where Browne was standing.

  “We’ve got us a visitor,” he whispered.

  “Counter’s showin’ one.”

  “And that wasn’t you leaving, after you set it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn,” Browne said, keeping his voice low. He had been hoping that the intruder the other night had been a onetime thing.

  “How far up is your wire?”

  “Between the ammonia plant and the shell-casin’ dip station. There’s two hydrants, face each other across the main street. Got some pipe stock racked up on the overhead steam pipe crossovers between them two buildings. He hits that wire, it’ll avalanche his ass.”

  Browne pulled out his gun.

  “You go up there, set your wire. I’ll follow, fifty feet behind you. Then we’ll back out, reset that counter to zero.”

  “What about the stuff for the girl?”

  “Not tonight. Not if there’s a chance there’s someone in there. Let’s see what your trap does first. We have to find out who this is, why he’s here.

  We’re too close for any mistakes now.”

  Kreiss was on the roof of the last building on the right side of the main street, listening to his cone. He was much closer to the power plant this time. The main street came over a low hill and turned slightly to its right as it approached the power plant, so he did not have a perfectly straight acoustic shot all the way to the rail gates at the other end. But if anyone came walking up over that hill, like they did the last time, he would be in position to hear their footfalls and then this time see into which building

  they went. There was enough moonlight tonight that he could use high magnification binoculars rather than a night-vision device. He had put the stethoscope up to his ears when he first heard the truck approach the rail gates over the hill.

  He’d been tempted to look around the complex of buildings when he first came in, right at sunset, but decided he would be better off getting set up in a good vantage point. Besides, there were nearly a hundred buildings, large and small, plus several wooden sheds that seemed to have been deliberately built down in circular earthen depressions. A methodical search would take hours, if not days. He was dressed out in a black one-piece overall, with the mesh head hood, gloves, and both packs. His plan was simple: watch to see where they went, creep that building to see how many entrances there were, close all but one, and then get the jump on them. The few buildings he had examined seemed to have only one human-sized door, but he had not had time to really look this place over.

  Besides, it didn’t much matter: These guys had shot at him, which meant they were doing something in here that they should not be doing. If Lynn had worn that hat into the arsenal, these were the guys who would know something about what had happened to her. He settled back down behind the roof parapet to wait some more. They should be coming pretty soon, he thought.

  Browne waited for Jared to pull the fence wire flap closed and to set the clips.

  “All right,” he whispered when Jared joined him.

  “If there is someone up there, he heard the truck. We have to make the truck sound like it’s leaving. You drive it out to the edge of the main gate plaza, then walk back in. I’m going to wait here and listen.”

  “This could take all goddamn night,” Jared said.

  “Let’s go back in there and find his ass.”

  “How? And where would you look? He could be anywhere. He could be wandering around, or he could be inside a building, waiting. No—we pretend to leave, he’ll move.”

  “What if he goes into the power plant? Or knocks on that door at the nitro building?”

  “Why would he knock on a locked door? All those buildings are shut tight, including the power plant. There’s nothing to see, especially at night. He’ll wait for a while, and then he’ll walk out. We were going to be out here until almost eleven anyway. This way, we have a chance of nailing him. We can’t let this go on, boy. Not now.”

  Jared grunted in the darkness.

  “Awright. I’ll move the truck. Where’ll you be?”

  “That pine tree over there. That deadfall going to make some noise?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “You hear it, come running, ‘cause I’m going back in if he trips it.”

  “We take him, what then?”

  “He goes into the acid tank where those boys went. Get going.”

  Kreiss waited for two more hours before giving it up. He’d heard the truck leave and that had bothered him. The last time, they’d shut the truck down and then come right into the complex. Tonight, they’d come, spent about half an hour doing something, and then left. The worst possibility was that they had driven the truck away and then walked back and were waiting for him to move. That would mean they knew someone was here. The best possibility was that they had left and he now had the place to himself. But why the hell would they do that? They were doing something in one of these buildings. Why come and then just leave? Had he left some sign of his intrusion? It was almost eleven o’clock. He was tempted just to curl up and go to sleep up on the roof. Put the motion detector on the parapet to catch anything coming down the street and set it to buzz rather than beep. Then search the place at dawn. But suppose they waited, too? Or came in, set up, and waited? He’d walk right into them at first light. Going in circles here, he thought. He decided to get off the building and look around.

  There were four large buildings at this lower end of the main street, which ended at the big power plant. He went down the ladder and set up the motion-detector box to point back up the street. He set the alarm to chirp like a cricket if it detected anything moving toward it. It wasn’t much protection, but better than nothing. Then he spent half an hour circling each of the large buildings, creeping from shadow to shadow in the faint moonlight. The buildings were connected by what looked like steam and other utility lines that ran in bundled pipelines over the street. The musty smell of old chemicals was everywhere. The only identification on the buildings was a number, under which was a name printed onto a white block of paint near the entrance. The four buildings were called Ammonia Concentration, Nitro Fixing, Mercury Mix, and Case Heating. Each of them had large steel industrial cargo doors on the front, with a human sized walk-through door to one side. None of them had any windows, and three of the four had a rail spur leading

  under the cargo door. He silently examined all the walk-through doors, but they were locked with massive padlocks. He didn’t even bother raiding them.

  Then he walked down to the power plant, keeping to the side, not wanting to make noise on those big metal plates out in the street. The power plant’s doors were also locked. He was once again struck by the fact that there appeared to be nothing living in the industrial area: He had heard no rats, mice, birds, or insects, and seen little vegetation
growing up through the cracks of the concrete. He concluded that not all of the nitro, ammonia, and mercury had remained in the buildings. There were parallel streets on either side of the main street, with more concrete buildings and pipe mazes running overhead. This was hopeless: Unless he could follow those people to a specific building, he could be here for weeks. He had located and identified one of the men, Jared McGarand;

  maybe he would be better off taking him down at his trailer and finding out what he knew.

  He gathered up his motion detector and started back up the street toward the rail gates. It was now 12:30, and the moon was setting. When his foot hit the taut wire, his instincts propelled him forward and down, since whatever was coming was probably coming from the sides. To his surprise, there was a roar of metal from above him, and then he was pounded flat by an avalanche of steel pipes. One of them connected with the back of his head and he blacked out.

  Jared dropped his grandfather off at his house in Blacksburg just after midnight and then headed home to his trailer. They’d waited until almost 11:30 before giving up, but nothing had happened up in the industrial area. He still thought his grandfather had been wrong about waiting outside.

  They should have gone in and rousted that sumbitch, whoever he was. Even if the guy tripped the wire, he could still get away if the pipe deadfall didn’t put him down hard enough. But he had learned the hard way not to cross the old man, and especially not now.

  He’d seen Browne McGarand focused before, but never like this. This whole bomb thing was all about William, of course. The old man was positively obsessed with William. That was how Jared thought about his father—William, not Father. Unlike the old man, Jared did not give two shits about William or what had happened to him. His mother, a swelling bride at seventeen, had decamped when Jared was only six, driven to desperation by the responsibilities of a motherhood aggravated by the fact that his younger brother, Kenny, has been born