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because I wasn’t sure how late I’d be out looking for what I needed. So I misted everything down real good, and covered it all with a dark mesh tarp.
    As it turned out, I had to drive quite a distance until I found the place I wanted. They’ve got a lot of those places in any city, and they all look alike—either the glass in the windows is all blacked out, or there’s no windows at all.
    The guy at the desk didn’t look up when I came in the door. That’s part of what buyers count on—same reason they don’t have security cameras.
    They wouldn’t need cameras for the usual reason, either. Every pro-level stickup man knows all the cash goes straight down a slot into a safe in the basement, and the clerk never knows the combination.
    I found what I was looking for easy enough—there was a big selection.
    I paid for what I bought the same way I paid for Dolly’s plants. I don’t have any credit cards, and I don’t have a checking account.
    Dolly didn’t say a word about how long I’d been gone. And she loved everything I brought for her. I took the other stuff down to my workshop.
    I knew who he was. Just like I knew Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t been his first one.
    I didn’t need his name, because I had his path. His kind, theyalways move in straight lines. You may not know where they’re going, but you can always track them from where they’ve been.
    The local paper puts the crime reports on a separate page. Not big crimes, like an armed robbery or a murder. Around here, something like that’s so rare it would make headlines. The “Crime Beat” page is just a printout of the entire police blotter. Drunk driving takes up most of it, with some domestic violence sprinkled in. Lately, a lot of minor-league meth busts, too. But you also see things like shoplifting, disorderly conduct, urinating in public … any petty little nonsense you could get arrested for.
    The paper says they were all “found guilty,” but I knew that was just code for “took a plea.” That’s why sentences for real crimes never seemed to match the charges. Who gets probation for sexual assault on a minor? I guess that’s why they call them “bargains.”
    The library has a complete archive, going all the way back. I read three years’ worth. Found seven little notices that qualified: five “animal cruelties”—no details; it wasn’t that kind of newspaper—and two fires they called “arson, under investigation.”
    After I marked the locations of those crimes on my close-terrain map, I used my protractor and saw they were all within a 2.3-mile radius of where Alfred Hitchcock had been tortured to death. You wouldn’t need a car to cover that much ground, no matter where you started from.
    That’s when I started leaving the door of my den open all the time, even when I wasn’t around.
    Under the bookshelves, there’s a cabinet. It has a lock built into it, but I sometimes forget to use it. You can tell that by looking—the key would still be in the lock, sticking out.
    The boys knew I kept magazines in there. All kinds, from
Soldier of Fortune
to
Playboy
, staying with the image they had for me. I’d added the stuff I bought on that last visit to the city.
    It only took a couple of weeks for one of those to go missing. Whoever took it would never notice that I had removed the staples and replaced them with a pair of wire-thin transmitters.
    Those transmitters were real short-range, but I was sure I wouldn’t need much. I knew he was somewhere close. And that he would never imagine anyone hunting him.
    D olly was asleep when I slipped out that night. Rascal was awake, but he kept his mouth shut. He gave me a look, so I’d know he wasn’t sleeping on the job.
    When I picked up the signal, I didn’t try to track it to the exact house—I wasn’t dressed for that kind of risk. All I really needed was the general area, anyway. The library had a city directory, and every high school yearbook, going back more years