under the bed, making no noise at all. She tied the red Pumas together, slung them around her neck. With her hand over the flashlight lens, she had a quick look around the room. Under the reddish light that escaped between her fingers she saw the stack of playbills still standing on the bedside table. Dial M for Murder was no longer on top. Ingrid leafed through: In fact, the Dial M for Murder playbill was gone.
Ingrid stepped around the chalked outline, crouched under the yellow tape, started downstairs, hand still covering the lens. Almost at the bottom, she heard a car pulling up. Then came a sound she was familiar with from Cops , Stacyâs favorite show: the crackle of a police radio. Ingrid hurtled down the last few steps, swung around the stair post into the long corridor. A powerful searchlight from outside was shining through the parlor window.
Ingrid raced down the corridor, into the kitchen, to the back door, broken glass crunching underher feet. She yanked the door open. At the same moment, she heard the front door opening at the far end of the corridor. A man called out: âHey!â
Ingrid sprang out the door, ran across the alley and into the woods, faster than sheâd ever run in her life. A searchlight beam cut through the night, just missing her.
The man called out: âStop! Police!â
But Ingrid didnât stop, couldnât stop. The searchlight beam angled through the trees, momentarily revealing a path ahead. Ingrid took it. The right path? The right direction? She didnât know. She just kept running. And she could run.
âStop! Police!â
The searchlight went out. From behind came the sound of heavy charging footsteps, ripping through underbrush, coming closer and closer. How was he doing that if he wasnât even using his searchlight? Ingrid realized her flashlight was still on, bobbing along like a lure. She snapped it off.
A tremendous crash not far behind her, followed by a cry of pain. A brief silence, except for her own panting breath, and then a police radio crackled through the woods. Ingrid kept going, slower now without the flashlight, but she left the cracklingsound behind. No one came after her, no one who made noise or aimed a light. Soon her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the path began to shine again like polished coal. She ran.
Ingrid could run. Running ran in the family. She ran until she could run no more, which must have been a long time. Shouldnât she have reached the big rock by now? Ingrid peered into the darkness, saw no sign of that looming shadow. She listened, heard nothing but a dog howling, somewhere up ahead.
Ingrid kept going, walking now and starting to feel a chill, her sweat cooling. Where was the big rock? The path suddenly split in two, two polished black tracks, forming a Y. Ingrid didnât remember any Y. Left or right? Right seemed best for no reason she could explain. Why hadnât she taken up the hobby of learning Echo Falls years ago?
Play to win, she told herself.
This path to the right had lots of twists and turns, twists and turns she didnât remember. The sound of the howling dog grew louder and louder, very near, then stopped abruptly. Ingrid stopped too. She took the risk of switching on her flashlight. There on the path, not ten yards away, stood a big dog, its eyes yellow and opaque.
âGood dog,â she said.
The dog growled.
Okay. This was probably the wrong path anyway. Her best bet would be returning to the Y intersection, trying the left-hand path. Ingrid started back. She heard the dog taking off after her.
Ingrid whipped around, aimed the flash in the dogâs face. The dog froze, one forepaw poised in the air, like one of those well-trained pointers. But this was not a well-trained pointer. Close up, this dog, collarless, turned out to be kind of fat and dumb-looking, with floppy ears and droopy eyes. Ingrid held out her hand. The dog wagged its tail and came forward. She
Catherine Gilbert Murdock