Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [35]
Past the streambed the land rose again, changing to sandy loam that supported ferns beneath the pines. Graham worked his way uphill in the heat until he saw the light beneath the trees at the edge of the woods.
Between the trunks he could see the upper story of the Jacobi house.
Undergrowth again, headhigh from the edge of the woods to the Jacobis' back fence. Graham worked his way through it and stood at the fence looking into the yard.
The Tooth Fairy could have parked at the housing development and come through the woods to the brush behind the house. He could have lured the cat into the brush and choked it, the body limp in one hand as he crawled on his knees and other hand to the fence. Graham could see the cat in the air, never twisting to land on its feet, but hitting on its back with a thump in the yard.
The Tooth Fairy did that in daylight - the children would not have found or buried the cat at night.
And he waited to see them find it. Did he wait for the rest of the day in the heat of the underbrush? At the fence he would be visible through the rails. In order to see the yard from farther back in the brush, he would have to stand and face the windows of the house with the sun beating on him. Clearly he would go back to the trees. So did Graham.
The Birmingham police were not stupid. He could see where they had pushed through the brush, searching the area as a matter of course. But that was before the cat was found. They were looking for clues, dropped objects, tracks - not for a vantage point.
He went a few yards into the forest behind the Jacobi house and worked back and forth in the dappled shade. First he took the high ground that afforded a partial view of the yard and then worked his way down the tree line.
He had searched for more than an hour when a wink of light from the ground caught his eye. He lost it, found it again. It was the ringpull tab from a softdrink can halfburied in the leaves beneath an elm tree, one of the few elms among the pines.
He spotted it from eight feet away and went no closer for five min?utes while he scanned the ground around the tree. He squatted and brushed the leaves away ahead of him as he approached the tree, duckwalking in the path he made to avoid ruining any impressions. Working slowly, he cleared the leaves all around the trunk. No footprints had pressed through the mat of last year's leaves.
Near the aluminum tab he found a dried apple core eaten thin by ants. Birds had pecked out the seeds. He studied the ground for ten more minutes. Finally he sat on the ground, stretched out his aching legs, and leaned back against the tree.
A cone of gnats swarmed in a column of sunlight. A caterpillar rippled along the underside of a leaf.
There was a wedge of red creek mud from the instep of a boot on the limb above his head.
Graham hung his coat on a branch and began to climb carefully on the opposite side of the tree, peering around the trunk at the limbs above the wedge of mud. At thirty feet be looked around the trunk, and there was the Jacobi house 175 yards away. It looked different from this height, the roof color dominant. He could see the backyard and the ground behind the outbuildings very well. A decent pair of field glasses would pick up the expression on a face easily at this distance.
Graham could hear traffic in the distance, and far away he heard a beagle on a case. A cicada started its numbing bandsaw buzz and drowned out the other sounds.
A thick limb just above him joined the trunk at a right angle to the Jacobi house. He pulled himself up until he could see, and leaned around the trunk to look at it.
Close by his cheek a softdrink can was wedged between the limb and the trunk.
“I love it,” Graham whispered into the bark. “Oh sweet Jesus yes. Come on, can.”
Still, a child might