Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds (10 page)

He remembered the picture the sheriff had shown him, the one with the tire tracks sliding downhill through the snow. Could this possibly be the place?

Avery charged through the shin-deep snow, churning it up before his knees. He hit the slope. Immediately lost his footing and slid back down. Tried again, thrusting his bare hands into the accumulation for leverage and scampering like an animal. He slipped again and again, but each time caught himself and struggled onward until he reached the top.

If there was a road beneath the snow, it wasn’t much of one. It was maybe ten feet wide and deeply rutted. His feet snagged on the matted vegetation that had grown up from the center hump and were now buried under the accumulation. No one must have driven on this road in quite some time for the weeds to have proliferated to such an extent. From behind him, he heard the sheriff ask the ranger if he’d come across this road before, but the wind drowned out his answer.

He looked over the side every few feet as he ran, until he reached a bend in the road and stopped. At the bottom of the slope was a thicket of scrub oak, its branches bare and thick with ice, and an enormous mound of snow nearly as tall as the trees themselves.

Avery threw himself down the slope. He slid sideways and lost his balance. Tumbled all the way down and climbed to his feet, his bare skin red and covered with snow, and scurried to the top if the mound. He frantically brushed away the snow. When he reached the ground, he leaned back and appraised it.

Nothing but dirt and weeds.

He rocked back onto his haunches and bellowed in anguish. He’d thought for sure he’d found Dylan’s Forester. The size and shape were just about right, and coupled with the sheriff’s photograph, which he’d interpreted as the point where the car must have slid off the road—

A tiny metal knob stood from the ground. It was maybe an eighth of an inch wide, topped with a silver cap, and half an inch tall, but he would have recognized it anywhere.

“Down here!” he shouted.

He attacked the ground with his bare hands, prying back the dirt and gravel with fingertips already cut to hell from doing the same thing earlier.

By the time the others again made their way down, he’d excavated the upper six inches of the car’s antenna and was kicking at the ground with his heels several feet away in hopes of finding the roof of the vehicle. He heard a hollow
thump
and saw the forest-green metal through the dirt. It was the work of five minutes to find the sunroof. He barely took a second to appraise it before stomping it repeatedly until it shattered.

He held out his hand to the sheriff.

“Give me your flashlight.”

Avery shined it down into the darkness, then stepped back, turned around, and lowered his legs into the car.

* * *

Dayton crouched beside the broken sunroof.

“What do you see?”

The way the vehicle was buried wasn’t natural. The earth couldn’t have swallowed the car whole in just seven years. Someone had to have deliberately buried it. He thought about William Coburn, the man who’d walked into the Alferd Packer Grill with his friend’s head under his jacket. They’d never found the rest of Todd Baumann’s body, or the remains of the men who’d accompanied them on their hunting trip. Nor had they found their vehicle. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was still up here, similarly concealed under a mound of dirt.

“It’s Dylan’s car! I’m sure of it!”

Dayton lowered himself to his belly and craned his neck to better see. The entire cab was covered with dust and absolutely riddled with spider webs. Insects had burrowed into the seats, leaving tiny holes in the foam. The seats were covered with moldering leaves and dirt. The smell of mildew was nauseating.

Avery shined the light across the dashboard. There was so much dust on the inside of the cracked windshield Dayton could barely see the earth packed against it. The light settled upon the glove box. Avery popped it open and dragged everything inside out onto his lap. He rummaged through it until he found a small folder with the insurance card and registration and shined the beam on it.

“This is it!”

He cast aside the card and folder, the owner’s manual, and a baggie of what looked like marijuana, leaving him with a folded map with writing on it, a pile of napkins from Taco Bell, and a lighter.

The barking grew louder, more insistent.

Dayton stood and turned toward the source of the sound. Seaver was facing in the same direction. The red beacon on his handheld monitor had returned and damned if it didn’t look like it was in the same place as where the dog was going on.

He tried his two-way again, but there was still only static. Maybe he’d be able to find a signal from the top of the next ridge. Thom should have made it back to the truck by now. Considering one of their own was in trouble, Search & Rescue would surely dispatch the chopper. It should be overhead any minute now, its spotlight streaking through the treetops.

Avery climbed out of the buried car and thrust his shaking hands into his pockets. They were bloody and raw and must have hurt something fierce.

“What are we waiting for?” he said, and started back up the hill.

“Yeah.” Dayton watched the man scrabble up the slick slope with his flashlight. “What indeed.”

“I don’t like this,” Seaver said.

“You and me both.”

“No, I mean, my old man and I used to hunt raccoons and bobcats back in Maine. We used a bluetick hound to tree them. That’s exactly how he barked when he did.”

Dayton drew his pistol, checked the clip, and slammed it back into the butt.

“Good. It’s about time.”

He holstered his weapon and picked his way up the hill, using Avery’s footprints as a guide of where to step and where not to. Avery was already scaling the hill on the other side of the road when he reached it.

Dayton found it hard to believe there could be any road in these mountains he hadn’t driven, and yet here was the proof to the contrary. A lot of circuitous trails had been created by horse-drawn wagons back during the westward expansion, many of them carrying the laborers who worked under abhorrent conditions to lay the rails that tunneled and wound through the Rockies. With as deep as the ruts were, he figured that was likely the case. He just couldn’t imagine how those kids could have gotten so turned around that they wound up all the way out here, fifteen miles as the crow flies from the highway. He’d follow the road back to its origin some other time; for now, he needed to stay moving, if only to maintain some semblance of warmth.

He crested the ridgeline and again tried to find a signal on his transceiver. Visibility diminished by the second. The valley below him disappeared into the clouds and the blowing snow to the tune of crackling static.

At least he knew Crowell was still alive. It wasn’t much as far as proof went, but the droplets of blood on the snow meant that she was still actively bleeding. After death, the blood stopped flowing and started clotting. It settled to the lowest point in the body and pooled in the capillaries and surrounding tissues. Theoretically, if they could find her and stop the bleeding, there might still be time to get her to the hospital.

But only if the infernal chopper showed up.

The barking grew louder with each step. The sound came from a fixed location. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Seaver just might be right, and he didn’t much care for the prospect of facing down a treed mountain lion that undoubtedly had a good thirty pounds on him.

The wind waned to a gentle breeze. His breath hung in a cloud around him. He blew into his hands, but only warmed them long enough to get them back into his pockets again. The darkness descended from the treetops and filled Avery’s tracks with shadows. He looked for the glow from his flashlight. Surely he hadn’t fallen so far behind that he shouldn’t still be able to see it.

All he could hear was barking. Zeke couldn’t have been more than twenty feet ahead. Just on the other side of a wall of junipers—

Dayton saw the silhouette just in time to keep from walking right into it. He drew a sharp breath in surprise. Avery spun around and shushed him before he could ask him why the hell he was standing there in the dark with the light off. The younger man’s eyes locked onto his and he inclined his head to the right. Dayton looked in that direction and through the junipers saw a clearing.

It was a swatch of snow maybe ten feet in diameter and positively dotted with footprints. Zeke turned in circles as he barked. One way and then the other. He intermittently stopped, jumped straight up, and then went back to pacing and barking.

Dayton parted the branches and was just about to step out into the clearing when he saw what had the dog so worked up. He let the branches fall back into place and drew his pistol.

His heart pounded so hard in his ears he could hear it even over the incessant barking.

Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.

He took a deep breath. Steadied his hands. Tried to swallow. Failed. Raised his gun and stepped out into the open.

Crowell was suspended from the upper canopy by her ankles. Her outstretched arms twirled a good foot above where Zeke jumped in an effort to reach her. The skin on her arms was pale and striped with dried blood. Her features were distorted by countless fractures that totally altered their shape. Her shirt was bunched against her chin and her crimson-streaked bra stood out against the bare skin of her abdomen, which had been torn from her pelvis to her—

Dayton averted his eyes, but not soon enough. He’d seen enough to know that not only was she not alive, she hadn’t been in quite some time. Blood never lied, though. That was one of the universal truths of crime scene investigation. Something had been bleeding onto the snow, but if not Crowell, then what?

* * *

Seaver watched the beacon on the monitor. It had stopped moving and only disappeared for a few seconds at a time.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

He couldn’t hear a blasted thing over the dog’s barking. It originated maybe twenty or thirty feet diagonally off to his left, but sounded like it was inside his head. Presumably, the sheriff was already there, although why he hadn’t silenced the dog was beyond him.

Seaver had struck off from Dayton’s trail when he got a true bead on the signal, which grew closer with each step. He watched the red dot pass through the inner ring on the monitor and approach the tiny crosshairs at the dead center.

There was a smell. Faint at first. Something like rotted cheese and spoiled meat. Like bighorn sheep during rutting season. The animalian, pheromonal stench of smegma.

Maybe something had recently rubbed up against the trunks around him to mark its territory. Elk and bear did that kind of thing all the time, although they usually left claw marks or bare spots where the bark was worn away by antlers.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

The transponder was maybe ten feet away now. Close enough he should have been able to see it.

There were no prints in the snow, which was accumulating so quickly that it could have easily concealed the collar.

Five feet.

There was an odd-shaped shadow on the ground ahead. No, not a shadow. A hole. It almost looked like a pine cone had fallen from one of the trees and passed straight through the snow.

He glanced down at the monitor.

Three feet.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

That had to be it. Whatever carried it all the way out here must have found a way to dislodge it and dropped it here.

Seaver set down the antenna and reached into the snow. It was strangely warm and wet all the way down to the ground, which was soft and muddy. The box from the collar wasn’t down there. Nothing was.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

The barking made it impossible to think. And the smell was making his stomach clench.

He caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and felt something strike his wrist.

There was a spatter of fluid on the back of his hand. He watched it slowly roll between his knuckles.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

He glanced at the monitor. At the beacon in the center of the crosshairs.

Another droplet struck the cuff of his jacket.

He looked straight up into the dark canopy.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

Seaver never had the chance to scream.

* * *

Through the bushes, Avery watched Crowell’s body twirl on the breeze. There was no doubt in his mind that the wounds on her abdomen could have only been inflicted by animals, but the damage to her face and the way she’d been hauled up by her ankles? Animals didn’t do that kind of thing. Only man was capable of such cruelty.

Woof…woof…woof…woof…

That idea had always been at the back of his mind, but it was one he was hesitant to explore. The thought of Michelle being hunted by someone through this godforsaken wilderness was more than he could bear.

He clenched his fists so hard the blood started flowing again. He’d finally found what he’d spent so many years searching for, what he’d sacrificed his entire life to find.