1
Hank stood by the copy machine and watched as it started to spit out the brightly colored sheets. He grabbed one to double-check.
Dawn's photo looked grainy but that couldn't be helped. He'd enlarged it from one of the shots he'd taken when he'd tracked her down while Jeremy was in Creighton. The text said she was missing and offered a thousand bucks for any information leading to her discovery. He'd set up a special voice mail account for the calls. He knew a lot would be cranks, but he had plenty of manpower at his disposal to check them out.
He handed it to the nearer of the two Kickers who had accompanied him.
"This is what she looks like. This is who we're looking for."
The guy studied it for a few seconds, then handed it to his companion.
Later today he'd start handing out stacks of the flyers to the Kickers at the Lodge. They in turn would distribute bunches to all the Kickers they knew, who would spread them to all the Kickers they knew, and so on and so on.
He turned back to the newspaper he'd brought along. Still no report of the death of Jerry Bethlehem, or Jeremy Bolton. But he did find mention of an unidentifiable body dragged along the Thruway beneath a truck last night. Could that be Jeremy?
He shuddered. From now on, he wasn't traveling anywhere alone. He'd find a reason to have at least two Kickers with him at all times.
Just to be on the up and up, he'd filed missing persons reports with the NYPD on both Jerry Bethlehem and Dawn Pickering. Hank had been surprised at how seriously the cops had taken his reports. He later learned that their disappearance made them prime suspects in Dawn's mother's faked suicide. Hank had tried to glean more details but failed.
What a damn mess. The only upside was that he'd have both cops and
Kickers on the lookout for Dawn. His big worry was that she and the baby had died along with Jeremy. But he didn't think so. Through the night the tenuous link he'd had to Jeremy had been replaced by a link to the baby. He sensed it was alive and well. That meant Dawn was alive and well too. And thus findable. Hank was going to find her first. And then, just as in his dreams, the Kicker Man would snuggle that baby in its arms and protect it from all Enemies.