Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,56

rasp of the gravel under his shoes. They were apparently going to another building for some reason, so this direction and distance would be the most important information of all from an investigative standpoint, assuming anybody ever received it. With aerial photography you could cover thousands of square miles in a few hours, looking for two buildings of approximately XY and XY dimensions and separated from each other by Z distance in Z-Prime direction in a clearing in some pines, breaking them down into impossibles, possibles, and probables as fast as you could develop the film.

It seemed highly unlikely that the technological genius didn’t know this himself, so the fact that he didn’t seem to care was as chilling as the rest of it.

10

There were twenty-one steps in the pea gravel, and then he felt a header under his foot. Then five steps across hard-baked ground, and they were on gravel again. Top Kick turned him in a left oblique, and in three steps he felt concrete under his shoes, and simultaneously the sunlight was off his head. Left again, which should put them about ninety degrees from their original direction, and eight steps back. “Hold it,” Top Kick ordered. He stopped. Garage, he guessed, oriented in the same direction as the house and approximately fifty-five feet from it. He heard the creaking of springs as an overhead door came down. Right on.

“Interesting trip,” Paulette said beside him. “Like a sorority initiation, and about as intelligent.”

“Shut up,” Top Kick said. “And turn around, both of you.”

He did an about-face and heard Paulette turn beside him. Top Kick should be in front of him now, but another gun prodded his back. “Like the monkey said in the lawn mower, don’t make no sudden moves, ole buddy.” Tex. Somebody was throwing rope around his ankles, hobbling him. He thought of the photograph of his father and was swept with cold rage for an instant but controlled it.

“I’m still here, Romstead,” Top Kick said in front of him then. “All right, unlock the cuffs.” He felt the handcuffs being lifted. They clicked open. “Put your hands in front of you,” Top Kick ordered. He held them out. “You too, Mrs. Carmody.” The cuffs closed over his wrists again, and he heard another pair click shut beside him. The pictures, he thought. Realism, artistic detail, the director’s touch. Footsteps receded across the concrete. He heard the rustle of cloth somewhere.

“All right, turn them on.” This was the intercom voice, presumably Kessler. “And take off the blindfolds.”

There was a soft swishing of cloth right beside him. Tex, or whoever it was behind him now, was removing Paulette Carmody’s blindfold. He felt fingers working at the knot of his own. Then, from the middle distance somewhere in front, a feminine voice said, “You mean you really would ball that old thing?”

“What an adorable child,” Paulette said.

“Who-eee, would I?” It was Tex behind him, all right. “Be like ridin’ a Braymer bull.” He went on, in imitation of a rodeo announcer, “—comin’ out of chute number five on Widow-maker—”

“Get on with it,” Top Kick ordered somewhere off to his right. “For Christ’s sake, don’t you ever think of anything else?”

The blindfold came off then. He blinked, momentarily unable to see anything in the almost painful glare of light burning into his face. Then he could make out that there were four of them, high-intensity floods on standards, two in front and two off to his right. Everything beyond them was indistinct and shadowy, though he could vaguely make out the swing-up door of a two-car garage directly facing him. To his left was a car, a two-door sedan several years old, and on the other side of it, across that whole wall, was a backdrop that appeared to have been made from a cheap plastic dropcloth sprayed with a thin coat of green paint. He looked around in back and saw the wall behind them was covered the same way. He had to admit for the second time that for all their theatricality they didn’t miss a bet. They knew as well as he did that the second set of people to see these pictures was going to be a room full of FBI special agents, and they weren’t going to see a hell of a lot. No knotholes, no distinctive grain patterns, stains, old nails, or anything that would identify the place later.

He looked to the right. Tex or Top Kick was standing just far enough