These eyes of mine see more than footprints. I see who this man is, and that it is indeed time for him to die. He is a newspaper editor for the local rag, a man using distilled spirits to fill up the gap between what he is and what he had intended to be. A writer. A novelist. A family man. That’s what he had hoped for, but instead he lives alone, hacking apart the words of other hacks and making them into the bland garble of modern journalism. He takes another drink.

Thirty-eight is young to die, but not young enough for this one. A depressive, an alcoholic, a loner, family off in Wichita, and friends… what friends, aside from that collie mutt?

Oh, you have chosen your victim wisely, a moody man who’ll be fired for not showing up before he is truly missed, who will be replaced by one of the clamoring young reporters who attack a job posting like piranha on bloody meat. The FBI would call this a lowrisk victim, a drunken man walking alone at night on an untraveled country road.

Except for the dog. I might have had to step out of time to do some orchestration, but you hesitate; you fear the dog. And well you should. A gap-toothed cracker such as yourself had first owned her and kicked her daily until she ran off. She might seem friendly enough, but once there’s a shout and a scream and blood, she’ll remember your kind and go for your throat.

Ah, though, that’s the key. The man has only this dog in all the world. The leash he holds does not so much keep the dog next to him as keep him next to the dog. Ambush them and kill the dog. Let him see you kill the dog. Use your gun on the dog, not the man, and then let him worry over the thing’s body. Or, better yet, it’s deer hunting season, and this fellow’s a budding author

– he has an imagination. He’ll put the pieces together. I whisper the idea in your ear. You are too disorganized to do anything but listen. There’s a deer path that heads off from the road here through that little stand of trees and out onto the access road. If you walk quietly along it…