It was a prison of sorts. A minute didn’t go by that I wasn’t under lock and key. Every morning Hank showed up to take me and Joe to school. Hank was my “day-time” bodyguard. He watched over me all day at school, while Mr. Douglas, Mr. Brown, Mr. Stevens and Mr. Bishop, switched off guarding over the outside of the school building. At first the teachers didn’t like the idea. They said it distracted the other kids. But then Chief pulled them aside and had a talk with them. I don’t know exactly what he told them, but my guess would be that watching my guts spilled all over the classroom floor would be much more distracting, especially if one or two of the other kids got in the tiger’s way. They agreed to let Hank sit in on the classes, as long as he was quiet and stayed in the back. I felt sorry for him, though. He had already gone through the fifth grade, now he was stuck doing it all over again.

I saw next to nothing of Chief. Every morning Sergeant Moss (he said we could call him Mort) showed up for breakfast. Then they left together for Coach’s house to pick up the dogs. They spent all day in the woods tracking the tiger. Mike took to following Huey. Every now and again I’d spy him just outside the line of trees at the schoolyard. Huey didn’t know, though. Neither did Hank, and I don’t think I was supposed to know, but I overheard Chief give him the job the morning after Joe got in trouble and was sent to Chief’s office. Joe came back and I could tell he had just finished crying. He wouldn’t talk about it though.

The routine went on for weeks. After school I was passed from one person to the next like a hot potato– all our neighbors taking turns. I even had to stay at Minny’s folks a couple of days a week. I hardly ever saw TJ. Chief said it was because the O’Haras lived outside the city, and there were too many children in TJ’s family. I saw his point. He didn’t want to put anyone else’s kids in any danger. He knew that the tiger wouldn’t hunt in town.

The days spent at the Crawford’s were miserable at best. Minny would put to torturing me. She never wanted to do anything I did. Mostly wanted to jump rope and play with dolls and all that sissy stuff that bored the piss out of me. When her pa wasn’t watching she’d start in with the bad jokes at my expense. She always had several of her friends over to make her side bigger than mine. I took to myself as the Crawford days wore on, hiding out away from Minny as much as possible.

Every Wednesday I was sent to spend the afternoon with Mr. Porter. It wasn’t near as bad as with the Crawfords. We spent most of the time in his office. He even let me help with what he calls: “case-files.” He was always too busy to play games with me though, the way Billy did on Mondays and Saturdays; and the time spent with him, for the most part, dragged on. And, because he worked inside, I was stuck inside all day. One day when I got there, he decided I’d have a better time if I had a book to read. So, Mr. Porter drove us down to the Library in Berritts Hills. He rented me three books and ordered me to bring them when Hank dropped me off at his office each Wednesday.

Mr. Evers took me on Fridays. He was way more fun than any of the others (except for Billy and Coach). Mr. Evers worked in his fields from sunrise to sunset. He’d let me help him plow and dig, and even let me ride Danny Boy, his mule, on occasion. He’d quit early on the days I showed up, saying it was on account that, with my help, he got done a whole heap sooner. We’d play catch, or checkers or even Backgammon until Chief came by to take me home. Sometimes he took me fishingat a small stream right on his property. There wasn’t a lot of fish in it, but we had a good time going through the motions of fishing. Mostly we talked. Mr. Evers was a real interesting talker. The other good thing about staying there was that I got to bring Hoover, unlike the Crawford’s and Mr. Porter’s, where I had to leave him home, which I didn't like at all.

The dreams started coming every night. I had a hard time sleeping. The Dead Place had me scared. I no longer saw Joe in them, though. I was glad of that. I guess the tiger decided to let him pass.  But sometimes I saw Mike– that had me worried. I told Chief about it. I think it worried him too and I could see it was weighing on him. I didn’t want him going after the tiger worried over me, so I started fibbing and told him the dreams had stopped, and that I hadn’t seen the Dead Place each night. That seemed to set his mind at ease.

As the weeks went by, Chief came home later and later, always being one step behind the tiger. It was hard to pick up the trail in woods the size of those around Middleton. They went on forever, pert-near. Chief and Mr. Mort left early each morning and didn’t come by to pick me up until well after sunset each night. More than once they showed up after I already fell off to sleep. And more often than not, Mr. Mort would spend the night so’s they could get an earlier start the next day.

Chief looked real tired all the time. He stopped shaving altogether. His hair grew longer and he said he didn’t have time to cut it. His eyes always looked sad, like one of Coach’s hounds. Dark half-moons hung underneath. Mike started looking the same way from his spying on Huey. The tiger was wearing us all down.

It was Monday, the week of Chief and Miss Elly’s wedding that Hank was an hour late picking me and Joe up for school. Chief would go to the front door and spy out the window ready to see Hank pull up, but Hank let him down every time.

“That does it,” Chief said on his fourth trip to the window.

He came back to the kitchen where Joe, Mr. Mort  and I sat waiting. Mr. Mort was still sipping on his coffee. He looked up at Chief. “Still no show?”

Chief nodded. He took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. “Get your things together, kids,” he said to me and Joe. Then he turned to Mr. Mort. “We’ll drive by there on the way to Frank’s. See what’s keeping Hank.”

Mr. Mort nodded. “Sounds fine to me.”

He had been tracking with Chief for better than three weeks. But he didn’t look near as tired as Chief did. He always wore a crooked grin on his face. He knew some of the better jokes I’d ever heard. Once I told him about Minny, and the things she said to me. He gave me several suggestions to use on her. It was too bad for me that I forgot them by the time I saw her. He called them “put-downs” and he had some real humdingers. If I could have remembered them, I’m sure they would have put ol’ Minny in her place.

Chief loaded me and Joe into his truck and thirty minutes later ewe pulled into Hank’s driveway. He and Mr. Mort got out of the cab and after telling me and Joe to stay put, went up the steps to Hank’s front porch and knocked at the door. There was no answer. Both Hank’s truck and his car were parked in the drive, just ahead of us. Wherever Hank was, he didn’t drive there.

I started to get sick to my stomach as Chief’s banging went unanswered. He hollered Hank’s name a bunch of times into the heavy oak door, but nothing stirred. 

I’d had a dream that night. It was the first time in a long time that it wasn’t about the Dead Place covered in fog. It was about Hank and the picture Billy drew the day he was tried for Mary Lou’s killing. I was by the grandstands. The big black bird was there in this dream, too. It carried Sam’s cat, Major Pinkerton, to the tree and perched on a high branch. Like the last time I’d dreamt it, Billy sat on the bleachers drawing his pictures on scraps of paper he rescued from the trash bin.  The tiger showed up and cornered me against the tree and the bird dropped the blood and the Major on top of me. There was so much blood; more than could possibly fit in a cat. I was drenched. Then, Hank tried climbing out of his picture to save me. Before he could make it completely off the page, the tiger struck a match and caught the picture on fire. I saw Hank go up in flames. The tiger threw the picture at me then, to burn me, I suspect. But when I grabbed it the fire went out. All that was left of Hank was from his waist up. His legs were gone.

Chief banged on the door a final time before turning to Mr. Mort. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked and Chief pushed it open. Before going in, he turned to me and Joe.

“Kelly, Joe, get inside the truck and lock the doors,” he said and watched as we did as he asked. It wasn’t until he saw us lock the doors that he went inside. 

We watched the front of the Blackney house for a few minutes, when a knock on Joe’s window caused us both to jump at the same time. I expected to see the tiger, teeth dripping in Hank’s blood, but it was Mike that stared back at us.

Mike rolled his hand in the air and Joe rolled the window down.

“Where’s your father? Inside?”

“Yeah,” Joe answered. “Been in there long enough.”

Mike nodded. He motioned Joe to roll his window back up and then Mike, too, disappeared into the house.

*  *  *  *  *

Mike worked his way to the back of the house and ran into Chief and Sergeant Moss coming out of Hank’s room. There was no sign of Hank or his brother.

“What’s going on?” Mike asked.

“I was hoping you could tell us,” answered Chief.

“I waited down at the school for them to show, but they never did.”

“I guess the only thing left to do,” said Moss, “Is to search the place. There’s no sign of a struggle. At least that’s good news. Maybe there’s some evidence as to where the lad went.”

“They’re both gone,” said Chief. “Huey and Hank.” He turned to look at Moss. “That’s not good news.”

Mike stared at his boss. “You don’t think–” he started. “Shit, Chief. You think the kid led Hank out to his father?”

“I do think it,” Chief said flatly.

“Where do we start?” Moss broke in. “There is a hell of a lot of woods out there, Bob. He could be anywhere.”

Chief answered. “Huey is leading Hank to a specific place. One he had prearranged with his father.”

“How?” Mike asked.

“He must have met up with during the middle of the night. With Hank working, it would have been easy.”

“But Chief,” countered Mike. “I’ve been here nights.”

“All night?”

“Yes,” Mike said back. “I stayed until dawn, then left for the school in the morning.”

Chief stared at his deputy. “Mike, I thought we agreed that as long as Blackney was gunning for you, you would be careful.”

“I was careful,” Mike said quickly.

“You’d have to sleep sometime.”

“Do I look like I have?”

“No,” Chief sighed. Then he added, “We’ll talk about this later. Right now we have to figure out where Huey’s leading his brother.”

The three men searched the premises. Mort started with Fred’s room, Chief took Huey’s and Mike searched the back room.  It was an hour later when Chief found a piece of paper in Huey’s room that gave them a direction.

“Mort, Mike,” he called from the bedroom. “Come here and look at this.”

“What is it?” Mort asked when he and Mike arrived at the boy’s door.

Chief handed him the paper and both he and Mike studied it. 

“It’s a map of Fred’s trapping route.”

“This is the route you had us following since the beginning,” observed Mort. “You thought he was following it too, but we never found anything.”

“That route stretches over a hundred miles, Mort. It can’t be covered in a week, let alone a day. I had no way of knowing which part of it he was sticking to at any given moment. But that’s not the point. Look at this,” Chief pointed to a spot on the map. There was a small circle drawn around an area. Numbers accompanied the circle.

“It’s today’s date,” explained Chief. “And next to the date...”

“Hank’s name,” finished Mike. “Jesus Christ. Huey's leading him to slaughter. I don’t believe it." 

“Some people believe insanity is hereditary,” offered Mort. Mort looked intently at Chief. “I found something as well.”

“What’s that?” Chief asked.

Mort handed him an envelope. It was four inches by five, off white and heavily decorated.

Chief took the envelope and studied it. His name was written beautifully across the front in a delicate hand. He recognized the penmanship. “Where did you find this?”

“There’s a treasure trove in a cubby hole at the back of Fred’s closet.”

“Treasure trove–”

“Small things. Her things.”

Chief looked again at the envelope and his name written in Katherine’s handwriting. The decorations were hand drawings of clowns, balloons and even one of an elephant. He slid it open and glanced at the card it held. “He took it out of the mailbox. He hid it so he could be alone with her.” Chief shook his head. “We don’t have time for this.”

“She invited you to the party, like she said,” Mort told him. 

“Apparently.”

“At any rate, we better get after it, we have no idea how long ago they left,” Mort said quietly and headed for the door. “We can come back and clear out her things later.”

The others nodded and followed Mort out of the house. It was then that Chief remembered his children. They sat in the cab looking at him as he stepped onto the front porch.

“Damn,” he whispered as he left the steps.

Mort heard him and stopped short of the truck.

“Look, Bob, you and Mike know those woods a hell of a lot better than I do. You take Mike and go after Hank and I’ll take the kids to school and keep an eye on them.”

“You sure?” Chief asked.

“Yeah, I think it would be best. The two of you would have a better shot.”

“Thanks, Mort. I owe you one.”

“You owe me several, Bob... but who’s counting. Look if you don’t need that map–”

“No, I don’t. I know the spot.”

“Before I go to the school, I’ll swing back into town and give it to Doc. We may be too late, but if not, and Hank is still alive, he’s going to need a doctor.”

“You’re always thinking, Mort.”

“Tell that to that prick, Perkins,” he said and went to the front of the truck. Chief watched as Kelly unlocked the door and Mort slid into the seat next to her. They backed out of the drive, through the fence and disappeared behind the trees.

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