"Do you know where we're going?" I asked, once we were on a pathway that cut through a county-owned meadow. Bo did not answer. The overgrown, muddy path was sort of an off-road road. The Jeep wove around rocks and smashed back through someone else's fence before returning to a rural paved road that eventually intersected the highway leading northwest out of town. Maybe he did know where he was going.
We drove the next forty minutes in near silence. Carl's Trout Pond, High Country Auto Repair, and Blue Spruce all whizzed past. The road climbed until a sign swathed in tendrils of mist announced we were driving through national forest. At seven-thirty, we would have less than another hour of daylight. It was extremely unlikely that the police would still be at the campsite. When Tom had a team of investigators at the scene of a crime, they rarely stayed past a few hours, long enough to take photographs, make a videotape, and collect evidence.
At a dirt road where a collection of dilapidated signs stood propped like abandoned rakes, General Farquhar finally slowed. The rusty markers with their skewed arrows named a host of camps, picnic areas, and camp-sites that included Grizzly Creek. Grunting, Bo negotiated the razorback turn to get onto the dirt road. We jolted over a wooden bridge. Less than a foot below us, muddy, swollen Grizzly Creek teemed and foamed.
After crossing the creek, we wound swiftly upward through national forest. Occasionally, the fog cleared, revealing vistas of rock-strewn steppes and hillsides dense with evergreens. Stands of lovely white-skinned aspens randomly interrupted the green. We came into a narrow canyon where lodgepole and ponderosa pines stretched up bluffs on either side of the road. There were no cars, bicycles, or hikers. I dreaded the prospect of all the unknown territory out there - even more than I feared arriving at the campsite.
"You need to show me where you turned off," General Bo told Marla, and she pointed mutely to a still narrower, unmarked dirt road. We rocked through muddy ditches, turned and once again found ourselves next to Grizzly Creek, this time heading upstream. We paralleled the bloated waterway until it disappeared upward into a ravine. The water crashing over rocks roared so loudly we could hear it inside the car. We pulled up to a rough parking area lined with logs. Marla drew in a ragged breath. Arch leaned forward to peer outside.
Arch told General Bo to cut the engine immediately. My son said, "Carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust can destroy the scent at the site. All the rain will make Tony's scent stronger. A person drops individual bacteria and skin cells everywhere he goes," Arch added. "When there's little wind, no car exhaust, and a lot of moisture, the trail of a person's movement can be detected for a long time, even weeks." Even, as I had just learned, if he's gone into or through water.
My eyes skimmed the abandoned campsite. Because we had climbed from the main road, what had been a low-lying gray cloud just above us was now a mist drifting between the pines. A picnic table had been upended, either by campers or by the investigators. Bits of tissue, crusts of food, and torn paper plates spotted the mud. It looked as if the trash can had been emptied. My guess was that this had been done in search of evidence.
"Okay, I'm going to get out first," General Bo announced. He emerged stealthily from the Jeep and checked every corner of the campsite. His movements were hawklike, aggressive.
General Bo signaled to us to come. Jake began to snort excitedly. When Marla opened her door, I nodded to Arch, who hopped out with Jake in tow. I glanced at the cellular phone on the floor of the front seat. Call Tom now or later? I was going to call him, I was determined. I jumped out of the Jeep. Later.
Arch crouched next to Jake and murmured. Marla limped over to the creek and stood next to the raging water with her arms hugging her body. Arch reached into his backpack and pulled out his dog-handling gloves, then the working harness, which he snapped into place around Jake's powerful torso. My son's face was serious. I suspected he was beginning to understand the possible consequences of what we had done - or what we might find.
The general strode back to the Jeep and pulled out a large backpack on a frame. He hooked his arms through the metal support and fixed the straps around his waist. I took a deep breath of the cold, moist air and tried to think. Arch had told me that the record for a bloodhound tracking was one hundred forty miles in a day. Before darkness obliterated this fog, I doubted we'd go more than a tiny fraction of that distance.
At Arch's request, General Bo hauled out the bulging plastic bag that held Tony Royce's pants. Bo signaled to me to come, then handed Arch the bag and reached into his pocket for a tightly folded laminated map. In the gathering gloom we squinted at the map: Ragged red lines marked Grizzly Creek, Bride's Creek, Clear Creek; blue lines indicated the back roads; a double yellow line showed Interstate 70. To the west lay Idaho Springs; to the east, Aspen Meadow. Bo looked up and scowled.
"You ready?" I asked him. He nodded. In one fluid motion, Arch expertly opened the bag and clutched it from the bottom so that the open end was near Jake's nose. Don't ever overwhelm a bloodhound with scent, he'd told me. You just give him a whiff; and that's enough. Arch held up the bag and leaned toward his dog. Then I was startled to hear my son's mature command cut through the fog.
"Find!"
And off Jake went, glossy nose to the ground, long ears brushing the mud, long brown legs swaying from side to side. The hound cast around for a moment, then, tail curled up, ambled purposefully up the path away from the creek. Sensing that something was finally happening, Marla pulled away from her somber contemplation of the creek's edge. Thirty feet beyond, Jake made his way with determination up the hill. The dog tugged so hard on the leash that Arch's arms were straight and taut. Maybe I should have called Tom. But what would I have said to him? Arch and I are trying to pick up on the trail of a guy who might be dead. With us are a) my friend who's been accused of murdering the maybe-dead guy, b) her brother-in-law who was so crazy the Pentagon dumped him and you sent him to prison, and c) a bloodhound the police retired for being unreliable. Wish you were here! I sighed deeply and trotted toward the path. Marla called that she would follow at a slower pace.
Within moments the campsite was gone from view. I tried to recall the most Arch had tracked with Tom and Jake in a day. Two miles? Five miles? Far above the fog, the sun was beginning its decline to the west, and soon the light we did have would drain away. I wished I'd checked our exact location on the map.
My feet slipped on the dense, slick carpet of pine needles, and I stopped to wait for Marla. By the time she caught up with me, the mist was thickening to a light rain. Our scraggly company halted when Jake snuffled in an erratic circle. I hustled up in Arch's direction, then walked beside him as Jake scrambled over a cluster of rocks. Abruptly, the dog stopped by a pile of granite outcroppings.
"Pool scent," Arch muttered under his breath. "Maybe he or they sat down here."
Increasingly excited, Jake continued to wheel in a tight circle. I looked up into the pines. Every now and then the object of a search would climb a tree, as Arch's friend Todd had done on a trail only last week. The last thing I needed was to stare down the barrel of a gun aimed at me by Albert Lipscomb. But the lodgepoles and ponderosas were empty. The trees stood with perfect, eerie stillness in the swirling mist.
"Wait!" came General Farquhar's brusque command. He was peering at the ground. "Arch, pull Jake up." Arch obliged. "There's something here," the general insisted.
I walked carefully over the sodden ground to where Bo and Marla stood by the granite outcroppings. "Marla," I said as I stared at the ground, "would you reach into the pack and bring out the plastic bags?" Bo dropped down on his knees to make the backpack accessible, and Marla awkwardly unzipped the pack and dug around until she found the cardboard box of Ziplocs, which she handed to me. I impatiently opened the box, carefully removed one bag, and unfolded it over my hand. Then I reached down and snatched the object from the ground, folding the bag up and over, the way I had seen Tom do.
Jake started off again. General Bo stood quite still and looked at the plastic bag in my hand. Then he snared me in the spell of his eyes. In the fading light, I carefully maneuvered my hand around the article I'd picked up.
Marla stared at the bag in disbelief. I couldn't compute what was there. Any graduate of Med Wives 101 knows that, my inner voice reprimanded. What I held in my outstretched hand was a Vacutainer tube, the kind used in blood tests. The nurse sticks you with the hypodermic needle, draws out your blood, and it goes into a sterilized plastic tube. If you're in for a complete physical, first she fills one tube, then another. The tubes are labeled and capped: one to have your hemoglobin checked, another your thyroid, and so on.
But this was one plastic Vacutainer tube only, and it was broken. The shards were covered with dried blood.
17
Marla spoke first. "So what does all this mean?" she demanded impatiently. "Is that Tony's blood? Albert's? Or somebody else's?"
"Here's my best guess," I said. "This tube?" I pointed. "This is where the blood came from that ended up spilled all over the shirt in your trunk."
"But whose blood is it?" she repeated impatiently. Before any of us could answer, however, Jake darted off: away from the granite outcropping, up the hillside path. Tugged along by his dog, Arch yelled for us to follow. General Bo gave one quick shake of his head, leapt to his feet, and jogged up the path in pursuit. I held Marla's arm as the two of us struggled to follow.
The rain thickened to icy drops. Thunder rumbled overhead. The shaggy pine needles overhanging the path trembled as the chill rain pelted downward. I pulled up my jacket collar and looked anxiously up the trail for Arch.
"Safety alert," Bo called down to Marla and me. "We shouldn't be out in a forest, at this altitude, in a lightning storm." We mumbled assent, and Bo called for Arch to pull Jake up. Then Bo loudly summoned us to a retreat action. "Back to the Jeep, everybody! Time to get dry and look at the map!"
I made a U-turn on the path. No matter what you were doing, it seemed, the general wanted to be in charge. The rain leaked down my collar. My skin was chilling as fast as the thin membrane of ice that forms on Aspen Meadow Lake each November. Thunder boomed again, much closer this time.
I hustled up to Arch, who was unfastening the leash from Jake's working harness. Talking quietly to his dog, Arch then removed the harness itself. This was Jake's signal that the day's tracking was over. I held the working harness while Arch clipped on Jake's regular collar.
"You're done, boy, good boy," Arch murmured. "Dinner soon. I hope."
As we ran back toward the car, Jake's whines at being pulled off the trail almost rivaled the boom of the creek. Did I really want to find Tony? Yes, I said to myself as I gritted my teeth. I did. Dead or alive. I needed to know the truth.
"Lord," said Marla when we were all packed back into the car. "I'm an icicle in an orange prison suit."
I pointed to the storage area behind the back seat. "I brought a bag from your house. Extra sweaters, dry clothes." She mumbled a thanks but only hugged herself for warmth.
After snapping on both the overhead and dashboard lights, the general wiped the laminated map and offered it to me. He asked gruffly, "So what's the next part of the plan, Goldy? Now that both rain and night are falling?"
I tried to sound confident as I took the map. "Just give me a minute." On the seat between Arch and me, Jake shook himself and nudged closer.
Marla was immediately dubious. "What are we doing, a scavenger hunt? Or is this an off-road trip? How long do you think it's going to take the sheriffs department to swoop down on us?"
"Please relax," I said as I traced Grizzly Creek with my index finger.
Arch embraced Jake, who slobbered over his face in gratitude. General Bo turned on the engine and clicked on the heat.
"Do you think," Marla wondered aloud, "that the sheriffs department would take the investigation in a different direction, if we turned in that test tube?"
I snorted. "Do you want to risk the reactions of Hersey, De Groot, and Captain Shockley to what may or may not be evidence in your case? Especially now that you're an escaped suspect? It'll take them at least a week to run the tests to figure out whose blood is in your car. Matching with the stuff in the tube could take even longer. And then they'd have forty theories on what it proves."
She shook her head dolefully. I went back to the map. Rain pounded on the roof. The only other sounds were Jake's snuffles and the persistent roar of the creek.
I'm not great with maps, especially ones of the mountain areas that show elevations, streams, and roads. But this particular map was unusually complex. In addition to the main roads and towns, it depicted trails, campsites, four-wheel-drive roads, and historic landmarks. I had never heard of the Perdito Ghost Town or the Fallen Angel Mine. Making a mental note to check them out sometime, I searched for the Continental Divide. After a moment I made out Interstate 70, Clear Creek, Cottonwood Creek, and the Arapahoe National Forest.
