Or maybe, as Maude suggested, Leo White had emptied his coffers to leave the country. And maybe he hadn’t intended to leave alone. Maybe Sandy Lanier had used her yearly hiking trip as a cover for her plan to run away with her married lover.
And maybe I was wrong about all of it.
All I knew for sure was that Sandy Lanier was somehow connected to two people who had died violent deaths within the past week, and now she was missing. And this time I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. I had to take care of this one by myself.
Maude was minding the kennel when I arrived to drop off Ringo. She recognized him immediately and lost no time bustling him into a warm bath, a meal and a dry kennel. While I snatched up my search and rescue supplies, she gave me a brief and encouraging report on Uncle Roe. I ignored the nagging little voice inside that reminded me how many rules I was breaking by not sharing my information with the authorities, and concentrated instead on how important it was that my uncle not be exposed to stress from the office. Besides, it wasn’t information that I had as much as it was speculation. I wasn’t even sure, as Rick had repeatedly reminded me, that Sandy was in trouble.
“But I
am
sure,” I told Maude, swinging my pack over my shoulder. “Rick says she could have just changed her mind about hiking, but you know as well I as do she wouldn’t just leave Ringo out in the woods. Something had to have happened.”
“That would appear likely,” agreed Maude. “But I don’t know what you think you can do about it this afternoon. It’s been three days, with a rainstorm in between, and you don’t even know where to start.”
“Where to start is exactly what I hope to find out,” I said. “I know Cisco can’t track Sandy. But he
can
track Ringo backward from the place he was found at the campsite. I don’t know how far we’ll get before we lose the trail, but all I can do is try. And maybe, with luck, I’ll find something that will convince Rick to put together a full-fledged search.”
Maude screwed tight the lid on a thermos of coffee and tucked it into my pack as I headed for the door. “Good luck,” she said. “And for God’s sake, be careful.”
“Routine,” I called back to her, and raced across the yard to join Cisco, who was already waiting in the truck.
What Rick referred to as “Campsite Number Three” was one of the lower campsites in what we called a primitive area—that meant no toilets, no showers, no RV hookups and no tent pads. There were concrete picnic tables and a trash can near the road, and that was where I parked. From there, through the nearly naked branches of trees, I could see the glint of the lake at the bottom of the hill in the distance.
Cisco was trained to track human scent, and when he put on his tracking harness and SAR vest, that was what he did—for the most part. But, being a dog, he would also track whatever scent caught his super-sensitive nose, and was just stubborn enough to follow that scent until he either found the source or lost the trail. Some of his favorite things to track were deer, rabbits and other dogs. Naturally this unfortunate tendency to go off on tangents was something we tried to discourage in tracking class. Today, however, I was counting on it.
Because I didn’t want to confuse him, I didn’t put on his vest or harness. I snapped a light lead on him until we were away from the road, and let him sniff eagerly around the picnic tables. I could tell—I really could—by the way he held his ears and waved his tail that what he was now excited about was another dog, not a person. When he bounded off through the woods, I was positive of it.
The forest floor was damp, but that was good; it would hold the scent better. The cool air, deep in the canopy of the woods, would pool the scent close to the ground as well, hopefully concentrating it into something Cisco could easily recognize and categorize. He worked a zigzag pattern in a happy, springing gait, occasionally looking back at me to see whether I was following. When he saw me close, he would pounce off again as though hardly able to believe his luck. Usually when I followed him on one of his wild goose—or wild deer, dog or rabbit—chases through the woods, I was red-faced and angry, shouting for him to come back to me that very minute. This, for Cisco, was a day out of school.
As we moved downhill toward the lake, we left forest service land and moved into the wildlife management area. “Wildlife management” is not to be confused with “wildlife preserve.” In a wildlife management area, hunting is not only permitted but encouraged. Several dirt roads crossed the wooded area, and on one of them I saw a familiar black Range Rover parked. The vanity plate on the back read YOUNG1. Very cute. Wouldn’t you know that, a dozen miles from nowhere, the one person who would be sharing the woods with me would be a flatlander fool pretending to hunt.
I called Cisco to me and snapped on his lead.
It occurred to me that the road intersected with the lake trail about a hundred yards to the east. It was not entirely out of the question that Sandy might have decided to hike down to the lake . . . especially if she had a lover who had rented a cabin there.
I had not said anything about Leo White’s death to her, only Mickey’s. She might not have known that he was dead. She might have assumed that whatever plan they had made was still on. My mind balked at imagining that pretty, vivacious, dog-loving woman at the center of such a cold-blooded plot. In fact, I simply couldn’t do it. But Cisco
had
tracked Ringo this far.
Maybe it was a long shot, but I took Cisco down the dirt road until I spied the lake trail, littered with leaves and almost indistinguishable, curving off into the woods. I unleashed my dog.
Cisco galloped down the trail, occasionally sniffing the ground but giving no sign that he was finding anything of particular interest. Accustomed to being on the twenty-foot tracking lead, he rarely got more than fifteen or twenty feet ahead of me, and checked back regularly to make sure I was still there. But he gave absolutely no signs that he was on the trail of anything more fascinating than the occasional squirrel or raccoon who had darted up a tree sometime within the past hour or so.
I was about to call him and start back toward the dirt road when Cisco, perhaps fifteen feet ahead of me, suddenly skidded to a stop, ears and tail forward, and barked. It was a startled bark, as though he had seen or heard something unexpected in the woods, and I stopped still, looking around alertly.
In the sudden silence of a still autumn afternoon I could hear a leaf dislodge itself from a branch and float to the ground, brushing the passing leaves with a crinkling sound. And then I could hear something else—a sudden movement in the brush, sliding leaves and rattling branches, sticks cracking underfoot.
I called out, “Sandy?”
I turned around slowly, shading my eyes against the low-lying sun. “Sandy!”
Suddenly Cisco barked again, his greeting bark, his excited bark, and he dashed forward into the woods.
I cried, “Cisco!” and ran after him, but too late.
There was the crack of a gunshot, the high-pitched yelp of an animal in pain, and my world came to an end.
Chapter Fourteen
I remember screaming, a hoarse, inarticulate, terrified
“Noooo!”
I remember plunging down the trail, skidding, falling, scrambling up again before I hit the ground, splashing across a ditch, into the woods, falling to my knees beside my dog, who lay on his side, his eyes rolled back in his head, his beautiful golden fur dark and wet with blood.
I tried to stroke him but my hands were shaking convulsively. Strange sounds were coming out of my throat. I tore off my backpack, emptied it on the ground, pawed through it for the first aid kit, tried to think. Breathing, bleeding . . . I couldn’t remember the third “b” of the first aid protocol. I couldn’t remember the right order. I didn’t think he was breathing. I couldn’t get the first aid kit open. All I could do was kneel there with my hands cupping his sweet, still head, shaking and making choking noises that sounded like, “OhGodohGodohGod...”
There was a crashing sound, a man’s voice: “Are you all right? What happened?”
I whirled around, and there was Miles Young, in his ridiculous L.L.Bean canvas hunting pants and plaid jacket, deer rifle slung over his shoulder, stepping high to avoid the ditch as he came toward me. In a blur of fury I flung myself on him, screaming, “You shot my dog, you stupid son of a bitch! You shot Cisco! You shot him!” I was pounding at him with my fists, wasting precious energy, trying to get his face, his eyes, roaring at him inarticulately.
He caught my arms and shoved me away from him, his gaze going over my shoulder first in puzzlement, then swiftly darkening in concern. I tried to wrench away from him and he gave me a little shake. “Is he alive?” he asked in a voice that sounded too cold, too calm.
I gasped, “I don’t know.” And with those words all the fight went out of me, and I had no more time to spare for rage. I pulled away from Miles and went back to my dog.
A fierce calm seized me, a clear level-headedness. I placed my hand on Cisco’s chest and felt his shallow breathing. My hand came away wet and red. I found the roll of gauze in my first aid kit and quickly unrolled a wad, improvising a pressure bandage for the gaping wound I could see in his shoulder. I shook out the silvery space blanket and tried to get it around him, but it was slippery and hard to manage. I knew I couldn’t carry him like that.
I was barely aware of Miles Young standing over me until I said out loud, breathlessly, “It’s okay, boy, hold on, sweetie, I’m going to get you back to town.”
Miles dropped down beside me, holding out his red plaid jacket. “Wrap him in this,” he commanded. “I’ll carry him to my car.”
I hesitated, but for not even a second. Gently I secured Cisco’s muzzle closed with another strip of gauze, because even the sweetest dog will snap when disoriented and in pain, and tucked the heavy jacket under and around him. Cisco didn’t even whimper as Miles Young lifted him in his arms.
I don’t remember the trip down the mountain. I sat in the backseat of Miles’s Range Rover with Cisco’s head in my lap, mechanically giving directions to Doc Withers’s place, never taking my eyes off my sweet boy. It was close to dusk when we pulled up in front of the clinic, and they were getting ready to close up. But when Ethel saw me tumble out of the strange vehicle, covered in blood, the whole family rushed out to help. Doc was the only one who realized immediately that the blood was not mine, and he brought a veterinary stretcher.
I wanted to go into the surgery with them, but Ethel firmly closed the door against me. I knew she had dealt with hundreds of hysterical clients over the years and she was probably right, but I had never expected to be treated like a hysterical client. I had never expected to
be
one.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Crystal came out and sat on the hard wooden bench beside me. She said, “Daddy said to tell you he’s giving him oxygen and blood, and X-raying the shoulder, but he doesn’t think the bullet hit an organ. Mama said I was to go up to the house and get you a Coke or something. What do you want?”
I shook my head. My hands were clasped firmly between my knees to keep them from shaking, and I tried not to rock back and forth. That would make me look hysterical. “Nothing, thanks. I’m fine. I think I should be in there with him. Cisco would be calmer if I was there.”
She said, “Daddy’s already put him under for the X-RAY. He wouldn’t even know you.”
She stood up awkwardly. “Well, if you don’t want anything . . .”
Again I shook my head.
She nodded toward Miles Young, who stood beside the door, talking softly on his cell. I hated him. I had never hated anyone so much. “What about your friend?” she asked.
“No.” It was hard to speak through all that hate. “Just let me know what the X-ray shows, okay?”
“Okay.”
As she went back into the inner sanctum, Miles flipped his phone closed and came over to me. “Listen,” he said, “I can have a helicopter here in fifteen minutes to fly you to Clemson or the University of Georgia, two of the best veterinary hospitals in the southeast. You can even take your own vet along to watch him during the flight. Just say the word.”
I stared at him. “You think that makes it okay? Do you
really
think that makes it okay?” I couldn’t stand to look at him, and I jerked my head away. Then I couldn’t stand not to look at him, and I turned back. My voice was low and tight and much steadier than I would have thought possible. “I knew something like this was going to happen.From the first day I saw you, bumbling around in the woods with your idiot friends playing Big White Hunter, shooting at anything that moves . . . You wouldn’t know a deer if it jumped through your windshield, and you think you can just go out and roam the woods with a deadly weapon . . . He was a therapy dog! He saved lives! He—”
I caught myself suddenly with a broken sob that choked in my throat, and pressed both hands to my lips to prevent it from escaping. I had said
was
. I had talked about my dog in the past tense.
Miles Young looked down at me gravely. He said quietly, “I’m only going to say this once. I was a marksman in the Gulf War. I’ve been hunting since I was twelve years old. If I sight a deer, I bag a deer. And I did not fire my rifle today.”
I closed my eyes. I whispered, “He was learning how to dance.”
And because I knew if I sat there another minute I would burst into tears, and if I started crying I would never stop, I got up and walked outside. I stayed there, letting the cold wrap itself around me and the blue mountain shadows drape themselves over me, until Crystal opened the door of the clinic and told me her dad was taking Cisco into surgery.
Miles did not leave. I didn’t know why he stayed, but he sat there on one of the two wooden captain’s chairs that, along with the bench upon which I sat, furnished the waiting room, and he drank the coffee that Crystal provided from a paper cup. He didn’t try to talk to me. I gave him credit for that.