Case of the Glacier Park Swallow (6 page)

A
s she raced through the countryside she thought about Dinkins. Who was he? What was he doing? And why? Was he in this alone, or did he have other people working with him? Was he a scientist, or was he crazy? Or was he a little of both?

She missed Max terribly. Where was he? What had happened to him? Would he be there when she found the place?

She pushed harder on the accelerator.

The address was a farm on a small dirt road out in the country. She found it easily, because it was the only farm in the vicinity, and she knew it was the right farmhouse because of the footprints. There were two sets: they led from a pickup truck that was parked by the road, across a field, and up to the farmhouse. At that point the two sets of prints separated, and the dog's pawprints went toward the woods and the bootprints led to the door of the farmhouse.

She walked across the field in Dinkins' prints until she came to the place where Max had run off. She stopped there for a moment, and made a decision, and continued on toward the farmhouse.

Max was on his own now, and if he was on his own he would be fine.

She approached the farmhouse slowly, stepping on the hard snow as quietly as possible. When she was almost to the house, a swallow swooped her, and the fact that it was still in Canada didn't surprise her at all. Nothing about the birds that surrounded Mr. Dinkins surprised her any more.

She hesitated and studied the swallow. Everything about it, from the way it circled protectively over the house to the way it disappeared and returned, seemed normal.

There was only one thing wrong.

Something, or someone, had caused it to remain in the north in the winter.

She watched the swallow and realized that Max must have wandered quite far away, because if he was in the area he would be barking at it by now.

The bird disappeared behind the barn, and Juliet was left alone again. She went up to the barn and stopped and stood there for a long time.

He was inside. She knew that because his bootprints went in one direction only, and he was probably waiting for her. Most likely he had seen her coming across the field, and he was ready for her.

She was scared.

She remembered the cellular phone and for a moment she considered calling the police. But what if she was wrong? What if she couldn't prove anything? She didn't have the implant with her, and maybe this swallow had just chosen to spend the winter in the north instead of flying south. It was possible. There was nothing illegal about that.

She pushed the door open and peered inside. When she didn't see Dinkins she went in and stopped, looked around, and breathed deeply.

She started to cry from relief that he wasn't there, and because she was scared that he might be hiding inside somewhere.

After a few minutes she calmed down and looked around her. The barn was full of cages, and inside the cages were birds of all kinds. There were swallows and swans and geese and owls and eagles, and birds that Juliet had never seen before.

She tiptoed across the barn then and looked into the cages. When she came to the woodpecker she stopped. He was watching her, staring at her with strange glassy eyes, and when she reached inside and took him out she saw that he was drugged.

This was her proof. These birds were the evidence. She took out her phone and pushed zero, and while she waited for the operator to answer she walked over to the window on the other side of the barn.

She looked outside and saw that there were no new footprints in the snow, and she knew for certain now that the man was still in the barn somewhere. But where?

The operator finally answered and Juliet ran to the front door and went outside so that he couldn't hear her. She asked the operator to contact the police and she explained how to get to the farm, and then she went back inside.

For the first time she noticed a table at the far end of the barn, under the loft.

She went to it, and saw that it was covered with materials used for banding birds. And then she saw the implants, and the powder. There was just a bit of it, but she had read about heroin, and seen pictures of it, and she guessed that this white powder was heroin.

Suddenly she understood everything. The sand inside the two pieces of metal had been for a practice run. The man had been smuggling heroin across the borders, or maybe he was getting ready to.

Her heart began to beat very fast. She was scared now. She was very scared. She knew she should leave and hide in the woods like Max until the police came, but she was angry, too, and it was the anger that kept her there.

She didn't care if he heard her any more. She went to the cages and opened the doors, one by one, and stood back as the birds that weren't too badly drugged flew out of the cages and up into the barn.

She raced to the door then, and opened it, and some of the birds flew outside and up into the sky. But there were still about fifty left in the barn, and it was strange to watch them flying around up there together. She shooed most of them out and watched as they disappeared.

And still there was no sign of Mr. Dinkins.

She heard Max then. He was barking somewhere far away, probably at the birds, and then the sound of his barking sounded closer and closer, and then she realized that he was barking at a car.

She knew that it must be the police.

And still there was no sign of Mr. Dinkins.

The two policemen came inside and Juliet explained about the birds, and the implants.

“I think he's smuggling heroin,” she said.

One of the policemen went to a cage and took out a drugged swallow and examined it and said, “This one isn't full of heroin.” And Juliet said, “I know. That's a tranquilizer.”

“You'll have to come with us,” the policeman said.

Juliet motioned toward the door, and when they were outside she whispered, “He's in there.”

“How do you know?” the taller one asked.

Juliet pointed at the footprints, but the policemen didn't seem to understand.

“The prints,” she said. But they still didn't get it.

“They all lead in one direction.” Juliet was getting nervous now, and a little bit frantic. “They all lead into the barn, and there aren't any other prints anywhere else.”

They looked at her suspiciously, and it occurred to Juliet that they might think that all of the footprints belonged to her.

She had to find Mr. Dinkins.

She went back inside and stood there, looking around, and thinking.

He had to be in there. But where?

She thought about the birds, and the way they behaved, and she thought that a person who spent so much time with birds might begin to think and even act like one.

She wondered what a bird would do if it was cornered, and then she realized that he would probably sit in his nest and shiver.

This thought led to the next thought.

There was a nest in the barn, and it was big enough to hold a man.

She went to the door and called Max. He came to her and waited as she climbed up the ladder to the loft. The policemen saw her and watched her climb.

Mr. Dinkins was hiding in the corner of the loft, and he must have known it was no use, because he climbed down from his nest without saying a word.

“I haven't smuggled any heroin across the border,” he said. “I was going to, but I didn't. So you can't hold me on that.”

“He's right,” one of the policemen said. “But I can hold him for possession until we figure out what's going on.”

Juliet and Max followed the police car into Edmonton and signed some papers at the police station. By then Mr. Dinkins had identified his two partners, one of whom, it turned out, could be found in Mexico. And the other lived in Montana, directly across the Canadian/U.S. border.

Juliet was glad when it was all over. She and Max drove back to the bed and breakfast and went to sleep, and the next morning they drove back to Montana.

T
hat night, for the first time in weeks, she didn't dream. She slept straight through the night and woke up feeling fine.

She was very, very happy that it was all over.

Or was it? She had identified all of the pieces, but no matter how much she juggled them, they still didn't fit together.

These things were certain: Dinkins and his friends had been drugging the birds with tranquilizers or amphetamines, most likely to control their behavior in some way.

They were thinking of using the birds to smuggle drugs across the border.

But maybe they were going to smuggle other things as well.

The pieces slid into place then. She picked up the phone and called the Edmonton police, and when the detective came on the line she said, “How does this sound? Since Dinkins was controlling the behavior of the birds with drugs, he is responsible for transporting feathers across the border, and he has interfered with an endangered species, a bald eagle.”

“I'll call you back,” the policeman said.

He called back an hour later. “I talked to Dinkins,” he said. “And he's admitted it. They were not really in the smuggling business. It was more like an auxilliary smuggling business. He was in the business of controlling the behavior of birds so that they would be used later to smuggle anything from drugs to microfilm to their own feathers, and even themselves. Anyway, Dinkins will be in jail for awhile.”

Juliet said goodbye and went up to her room. While she was dressing to go to work, she thought about the birds. The amphetamines would speed them up and make them go farther and faster than they normally would. And the tranquilizers would slow them and bring them down earlier than normal. In time, Dinkins might have been able to establish just the right drug dosage to bring the birds down exactly where he wanted them.

Max stayed home that day. He seemed tired and listless and Juliet thought that he deserved a day in bed. She left him there, curled up on her pillow.

Cam was waiting for her. “I called early this morning to see if you were back yet,” he said. “Your mother said that you were still asleep.”

“It's nice to be back,” Juliet said, and she smiled because it was true.

Cam watched her and waited, and when she didn't speak he said, “Well?”

Juliet knew that he was waiting for her to tell him about Canada, and she didn't mind at all. In fact, for the first time she liked the idea of sharing her news with him. Maybe it was because the case was closed and she had solved it, or maybe it was because Cam had been the only one who had known about it from the beginning.

The only one except Max, of course.

When she was finished telling him the story, he went and stood by the desk with his back to her. He didn't say anything, and Juliet wondered what he was thinking. She hoped that he didn't resent her, but when he turned she saw that he didn't. It was something else.

“It's pretty bad, isn't it?” he said. “I wonder how many drugged birds there were?”

“Too many,” Juliet said. “But it's over now. And it wouldn't have worked anyway, not really. Birds were flying south long before man arrived on the planet, and they aren't going to alter their course that easily.”

Cam came back and sat beside her and said, “I think I said that I'd tell you when I couldn't do without you, remember?”

Juliet shrugged, and nodded, and turned away. Suddenly she felt shy, and a little afraid. She knew what he was going to say.

“Well, I can't do without you any more,” Cam said. “I missed having you around, and so did the animals.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said. “I'll be here until the spring. But I'd like to go back to Yellowstone in May.”

Cam nodded, and they went to work. They worked side by side for the rest of the day, giving injections, examining teeth, removing splinters, and cutting toenails. It was a pleasant day, and for the first time Juliet felt like they were partners.

Katie was waiting by the door when she came home. “Max is sick,” she said. “He won't eat, and he just stays there on your bed and sleeps. I've been thinking that he might have eaten one of those tranquilizer implants.”

Juliet ran upstairs and examined him. Katie was right. He seemed sleepy and lethargic.

“I told you,” Katie said.

Juliet took his temperature and looked into his eyes and his ears, and when she was finished she said, “He hasn't been drugged, Katie.”

Katie seemed annoyed. “How do you know that?” she asked.

“Look at his eyes. They're clear.”

Katie studied them, and then she looked up at Juliet and shrugged and walked away.

“He's sick,” Juliet said. “His temperature's up.”

She looked him over again, and found a raw cut in his back right paw. When she touched it, Max whimpered.

“It's infected,” Juliet said. “He needs an antibiotic.”

But Katie didn't appear to be listening. She was standing by the bookcase flipping through one of Juliet's books.

She has become just like I used to be, Juliet thought. She would rather be right than do a good job. How very strange.

She went to Katie then, and put her arm around her and said, “Will you go over to Cam's and ask him for an antibiotic while I stay with Max?”

Katie put the book away and wiggled out from under her arm and waited until Juliet had written the name of the antibiotic on a piece of paper.

She left then, without saying a word, which made Juliet feel both sad and a little angry. When Katie was gone, she went over to the bed and sat beside Max.

“You'll be all right in a few days,” she whispered. “But I'm afraid that it will take Katie a whole lot longer than that.”