Part of the reason for this was practical. Those gunshots bothered him. There was no gun in this case, and the Hadley house was far too close to town to be a suitable site for hunting. It was the kind of detail that made him think, again, of that first kidnaping case, the kind of detail that made him feel that there was something right in front of him that he wasn’t seeing. Part of the reason for this was psychological, however, and Gregor was old enough to admit it. He needed to be away from Dale Vardan. It was ironic; it had been his idea to bring the man in to begin with, and he still thought that they needed a state police presence here in light of what had been happening. Dale Vardan, though, being who he was, provided only one advantage: the long-term cover of showing that they had done the right thing when they knew they were getting in over their heads. Unfortunately, the man tended to make the floodwaters surge higher. The ambulance would take the body to the hospital. Somebody would autopsy it there.
