The enigmatic Paul Silas stood off to one side, tall and silent. Rivera wondered if he’d made the right choice in accepting his help. True, the man did have a faint air of the military about him. And as he looked out again over the dark salt marshes—thrashing in the wind, tatters of mist whisked along in the dying storm—he realized he had no desire to venture into that hell without guidance.
As he’d waited for the dog handler, he’d worked out the basic sequence. The killer, after first wreaking havoc in the town, had gone on to kill Chief Mourdock here on Dune Road, and then disappeared southward. With much loud baying the dogs had picked up the trail from the squad car and were even now beginning to follow it into the marsh.
Silas began following the dogs and Rivera hurried to catch up to him, Rivera with a flashlight, Silas with a headlamp. They were preceded by five heavily armed members of the SWAT team and an officer carrying a powerful beacon that shot a brilliant beam of light a hundred yards ahead.
The dog handler was a big man with a red beard, wearing a Red Sox cap and bundled in a slicker. His name was Mike Kenney and he seemed to know what he was doing. The dogs, too, looked like they meant business. Kenney had them both on long leashes and was firmly in control. The dogs were following the trail without hesitation, charging ahead confidently and pulling Kenney along.
Rivera continued following the SWAT team, Silas at his side. He had a waterproof GPS that promised to show them exactly where they were.
“Any idea where he’s headed?” Rivera asked Silas.
“He seems to be making a beeline across the marshes. Which would bring him out on Crow Island.”
“And what’s out there?”
“Nothing but scrub pines, sand dunes, some ruins, and a beach. Most of the island’s a wildlife refuge.”
“So what’s ahead I ought to know about?” He was staring at his GPS, but he couldn’t seem to translate the neat green-and-yellow map to the howling wilderness they were in. Kenney and the dogs had disappeared into a sea of salt grass, followed by the SWAT team, and he could hear the dogs baying up ahead. As they proceeded, the baying of the dogs seemed to ratchet up a notch.
“Well,” said Silas, “if he keeps up this line, he’s heading for the Stackyard Channel.”
“Which is?”
“That’s the main tidal channel of the marsh. The tide runs through there pretty hard. We’re at three-quarter incoming tide, which is when the current peaks. It’ll be running five, six knots.”
“Can we wade it?”
Silas gave a snort. “At this tide you can’t even swim it.”
“So he’ll be stopped? Turned aside?”
“If the killer came through an hour or two ago, say, the tide would’ve been a lot lower. So he maybe swam it. We’ll need a boat.”
Rivera cursed himself for not thinking of this before. He unhooked his radio and called the command center.
“Barber, I want you to get the two Zodiacs into the water, ASAP. Send them into the Stackyard Channel. You’ll find it on the survey map.”
He described what he wanted and, using his GPS, emailed waypoints to the command center showing exactly where they would need the boats. At least the team had brought a trailer with the two Zodiacs. They could be put in at the town landing in a matter of minutes, and—with their powerful engines and the tide in their favor—Rivera figured it would take less than ten minutes for them to reach the rendezvous point.
“Channel’s up ahead,” said Silas.
A moment later, Rivera and his men emerged onto the channel bank. He looked ahead across fifty feet of powerful, black, swift-moving current, its surface swirling with nasty eddies and upwellings. The wind howled across the water, lashing the cattails and bringing with it a gust of stinging rain. The beacon light pierced the gloom and illuminated the far embankment, where he could make out tracks in the mud.
“Looks like he swam,” said Silas.
“It’s going to be a bitch landing a boat along this embankment.”
Silas nodded.
“You got any idea why he’s heading out here? Seems he knows where he’s going.”
Silas shook his head.
Rivera gestured at the channel. “Any more like this?”
“Just a lot more marsh grass and a couple mudflats before you reach the scrub.”
Kenney was struggling with the dogs now, trying to pull them back from the edge. The dogs sounded almost insane with frustration at not being allowed to leap into the water. Kenney, who until now had been speaking to them in a low calm voice, was starting to lose his cool.
Rivera went over. “We have two boats coming. Zodiacs.”
“I hope to hell they get here soon,” the handler replied. “I’ve never seen the dogs so excited.”
More full-throated baying came from the dogs, who were pulling hard on the leashes. Kenney spoke to them sharply. The tide bore along, deep and powerful, between the banks; woe to any dog or man who was caught in it.
Rivera’s radio crackled. “About half a mile from your waypoint,” said the dispatcher. Rivera looked upstream and after a moment was able to glimpse, through the rain, a white light, flanked by green and red.
“Kenney,” he said, “you and the dogs get in the first boat. We’ll take the other.”
“Right.”