slope and the beach below, turning every few steps to survey the territory between him and the house. He held the shotgun ready in both hands and conducted the search with military methodicalness.
Obviously, he had been through this routine more than once before. He hadn’t told me that he was being harassed by anyone or troubled by intruders. Ordinarily, if he was having a serious problem, he would have shared it with me.
I wondered what secret he was keeping.
19
Having turned away from the steps and pushed his snout between a pair of balusters at the east end of the porch, Orson was looking not west toward Bobby but back along the horn toward town. He growled deep in his throat.
I followed the direction of his gaze. Even in the fullness of the moon, which the snarled rags of cloud didn’t currently obscure, I was unable to see anyone.
With the steadiness of a grumbling motor, the dog’s low growl continued uninterrupted.
To the west, Bobby had reached the point, still moving along the crest of the embankment. Although I could see him, he was little more than a gray shape against the stark-black backdrop of sea and sky.
While I had been looking the other way, someone could have cut Bobby down so suddenly and violently that he had been unable to cry out, and I wouldn’t have known. Now, rounding the point and beginning to approach the house along the southern flank of the horn, this blurry gray figure could have been anyone.
To the growling dog, I said, “You’re spooking me.”
Although I strained my eyes, I still couldn’t discern anyone or any threat to the east, where Orson’s attention remained fixed. The only movement was the flutter of the tall, sparse grass. The fading wind wasn’t even strong enough to blow sand off the well-compacted dunes.
Orson stopped grumbling and thumped down the porch steps, as though in pursuit of quarry. Instead, he scampered into the sand only a few feet to the left of the steps, where he raised one hind leg and emptied his bladder.
When he returned to the porch, visible tremors were passing through his flanks. Looking eastward again, he didn’t resume his growling; instead, he whined nervously.
This change in him disturbed me more than if he had begun to bark furiously.
I sidled across the porch to the western corner of the cottage, trying to watch the sandy front yard but also wanting to keep Bobby—if, indeed, it was Bobby—in sight as long as possible. Soon, however, still edging along the southern embankment, he disappeared behind the house.
When I realized that Orson had stopped whining, I turned toward him and discovered he was gone.
I thought he must have chased after something in the night, though it was remarkable that he had sprinted off so soundlessly. Anxiously moving back the way I had come, across the porch toward the steps, I couldn’t see the dog anywhere out there among the moonlit dunes.
Then I found him at the open front door, peering out warily. He had retreated into the living room, just inside the threshold. His ears were flattened against his skull. His head was lowered. His hackles bristled as if he had sustained an electrical shock. He was neither growling nor whining, but tremors passed through his flanks.
Orson is many things—not least of all, strange—but he is not cowardly or stupid. Whatever he was retreating from must have been worthy of his fear.
“What’s the problem, pal?”
Failing to acknowledge me with even as little as a quick glance, the dog continued to obsess on the barren landscape beyond the porch. Although he drew his black lips away from his teeth, no snarl came from him. Clearly he no longer harbored any aggressive intent; rather, his bared teeth appeared to express extreme distaste, repulsion.
As I turned to scan the night, I glimpsed movement from the corner of my eye: the fuzzy impression of a man running in a half crouch, passing the cottage from east to west, progressing swiftly with long fluid strides through the last rank of dunes that marked the top of the slope to the beach, about forty feet away from me.
I swung around, bringing up the Glock. The running man had either gone to ground or had been a phantom.
Briefly I wondered if it was Pinn. No. Orson would not have been fearful of Jesse Pinn or of any man like him.
I crossed the porch, descended the three wooden steps, and stood in the sand, taking a closer look