But the fact that it felt right didn’t mean it was right. There was no name on the mailbox; in fact, there was no mailbox. No street number adorned the front of the house. There was no identification of any kind to indicate the name of the person or people who lived here. But he had no time to lose. He had to find out fast if he was wasting his time, or if Martin Krall and Carli might be just a few dozen feet away, inside that bleak and dreary looking home.
Bill eased his way back into the reassuring cover of the forest and began making his way along the tree line toward the front of the house. He was careful to do everything possible to avoid detection despite the fact that every fiber of his body was screaming at him, Go, get Carli!
If this really was the home of the I-90 Killer, he would have to proceed slowly and methodically, to take every precaution possible to avoid becoming another victim. And right now, that meant staying out of sight, even though the big house across the yard appeared empty and deserted.
Built next to the house at the end of the driveway was an attached one-car garage. It had clearly been added some time after the original construction of the home, so it had suffered fewer years of neglect and seemed in considerably better condition. A small, foreign car was parked in front of the big aluminum door—which was closed—and Bill wondered what, if any, vehicle might be parked inside. It would stand to reason that Krall wouldn’t park the truck he used to kidnap girls outside in plain sight, even in as remote an area as this. Therefore the garage was the perfect place to start his search.
He moved north through the woods, emerging from the reassuring cover of the trees about halfway along the length of the garage. Two windows on the side wall facing the woods provided some light for the interior of the structure.
He stood at the edge of the clearing and took a deep breath. From this vantage point, he was shielded from the view of virtually the entire main house, but once he stepped past the tree line and began crossing the side yard he would be totally exposed. If anyone walked out of the house or, even worse, if someone was currently inside the garage, he would have nowhere to hide and nowhere to run.
Wind roared through the trees, and the loud crash of a significant-sized branch falling somewhere in the forest behind him testified to the legitimacy of his concern about getting conked on the head. It occurred to Bill that he might not be a whole lot safer here than he would be crossing the yard, and he sprinted toward the garage.
Fifteen seconds later, he eased up to the siding, pressing his body between the two windows and exhaling, only now realizing he had been holding his breath. He picked a window at random and peered into the dark interior of the garage. It appeared as empty as the house. The lights were off, and no movement disturbed the stillness.
Directly across the inside of the garage was a door to the main house, probably into the kitchen, or maybe a laundry room or mud room. Gardening tools stood against the walls, along with an assorted detritus of rural American life littering the garage, but Bill gave none of it more than a preoccupied, passing glance.
Of much more interest to him was the vehicle parked in the middle of the bay. It was Martin Krall’s truck.
CHAPTER 50
May 28, 4:02 p.m.
SPECIAL AGENT ANGELA CANFIELD cursed the remoteness of the road leading to Martin Krall’s home. Her Bureau Caprice leapt over a ridge, airborne for a moment before bottoming out as it landed, the car’s frame screeching and scraping over the cracked pavement of the narrow road. Angela didn’t know much about what sort of equipment was under a car but she doubted it would all survive the trip. She sped grimly on, hoping none of what broke off would be necessary for the continued operation of the vehicle.
There were no speed limit signs posted along this God-forsaken cow path, probably because they were laughably unnecessary. Any rate of speed above twenty miles an hour was nearly impossible to maintain, and right now, Canfield was somehow keeping it up near forty-five.
Things were going downhill fast—”becoming a goat-rope,” is how her partner Mike Miller would have described it, and while Angela wasn’t sure what a goat-rope was, or how a goat-rope was any worse than any other kind of animal rope, she couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. It really was a goat-rope.
She risked a glance at her watch. It was stupid to take her eyes off the narrow road at these speeds in these weather conditions, suicidal even, but she just couldn’t help herself. It was 4:02. Three minutes after she had last looked. Angela wondered how far behind Bill Ferguson she was. It mostly depended upon if Ferguson had jumped into his car and headed here immediately upon leaving Ray Blanchard’s office. If he had done that, she would likely be too late.
But what were the odds he would have come here immediately? Chances were he would go home and prepare. He would retrieve his gun, assuming he didn’t already have it with him, of course, and then probably toss some supplies into a bag. It was what she would do under the circumstances. If he had done that bit of prep work, then she figured she might have time to get there just before everything went sideways, not that it wasn’t already.
The right, front tire of the big Bureau-issued Caprice sank into the sandy shoulder, slewing the vehicle to the right, toward the massive trees of the thick, primeval forest. Instinctively, without even realizing she was doing it, Canfield babied the wheel to the left and eased off the gas, waiting until all four wheels had returned to solid ground—relatively speaking—before once again stomping on the accelerator and regaining much-needed speed.