had steadied, and was not much more than a strong breeze. J.C. was in the lead, assuring us that he could now take us on a much more direct route back to the plane. Bob Thompson and the guards followed with Parrish, who seemed lost in his own thoughts — I hoped they were distressing visions of spending the rest of his life in prison. Bingle walked with me, while David and Ben took the first turn with the stretcher.
We reached the ridge between the two meadows — not far from where the coyote tree stood — and stopped to rest so that Andy and J.C. could take over the task of bearing the stretcher. We only planned to stop for a few minutes. But here, just after David and Ben had gently laid down their burden, two things happened that changed the course of our journey.
The first was that Nicholas Parrish said to Thompson, “I thought you would have shown more initiative, Detective Thompson. To find only one body, when my lovely tree surely tells you there are more here.”
After a moment’s silence, Thompson said, “Are you volunteering information, Parrish?”
“Do I need to say more than I have? Not all of my works are as enchanting as dear Julia — I do wish you’d let me have a peek at her. Her fragrance is so enticing!”
“Out of the question,” Thompson said, then reconsidering, added, “if you show me the other graves, I might be able to work something out.”
Parrish laughed. “You’ve made your forensic anthropologists frown at you, Detective.”
“He’s just stalling,” Duke complained.
Thompson nodded. “We’ll discuss your other victims when you’re back in your cell, Parrish.”
“Oh no,” he said. “It’s now or never.”
Thompson began pacing.
“You can count, can’t you?” Parrish said. “Count the coyotes.”
“A dozen. I know, I know,” Thompson said, still not decided. “If you knew there were more, why did you get rid of your lawyer? You know we can use everything you say to us against you.”
“He was boring. As you are becoming boring. I will show you another grave, Detective Thompson,” Parrish said, “but if we continue to hike, we hike away from it. We both know that I won’t be allowed to accompany you on another expedition, so as I said — now or never!”
“It’s a trick of some kind,” Manton said. “If there were more bodies, he would have negotiated for whatever he could get while his lawyer was still here.”
“Ms. Kelly,” Parrish said. “Can you understand why I don’t want my dear ones to be left behind?”
I thought I knew the answer, and why he asked it of the only member of the media he could appeal to at that moment. But I didn’t especially want to be involved in this decision; I was there as an observer. And the things I had observed — after looking into Julia Sayre’s grave — made me certain that I didn’t want to aid Parrish in any way, shape, or form. The others were looking at me, waiting.
It was Ben Sheridan who answered, almost exactly as I would have. “Mr. Parrish takes pride in his work. He doesn’t want it to remain hidden. That’s why we’re up here in the first place.”
“Yes!” Parrish said warmly. “You surprise me! You understand perfectly!”
Thompson was besieged by arguments for and against, mostly against.
It was then that the second thing happened, the one that decided the issue.
The wind shifted.
Later, I would look back at that day and wonder what would have become of our group had the wind blown in some other direction. But it shifted — shifted toward us — a stiff breeze coming off the other meadow, up one sloping end of it, to the ridge where we stood, and beyond.
Bingle raised his nose and then pitched his ears forward. He looked back at David. I had seen that intent look the day before.
“
Bingle turned back into the breeze, lifted his nose in short quick motions, sniffing, eyes half-closed, then brought his ears up again and stared at David. This time, the dog’s tail was wagging.
“What’s going on?” Thompson asked.
“Bingle is alerting,” Ben said.
Thompson turned back to Parrish with a gleam in his eye. “Maybe we won’t need you to show it to us! Maybe the dog is going to take us straight to it!”
Parrish shrugged in indifference.
“I thought we needed to get to that airstrip,” Manton said.
“Go ahead,” Ben replied. “We’re going to see what the dog is after.”
“Maybe he’s just smelling the body J.C. and Andy are carrying,” Manton persisted.
“No,” said David. “He’s finding it on the wind. The wind is coming up the slope, off that meadow. The wind isn’t in the right direction to carry scent off the body. And he’s not excited about that find now. This is something new.”
But Thompson’s certainty had been shaken. “What if it’s just a dead deer or something like that?”
“He won’t alert to nonhuman remains,” David answered, after commanding Bingle to sit quietly. The dog shifted on his front paws like a kid that needs to go to the bathroom, but obeyed. “He was interested in that meadow when we walked there two days ago. I’m going to check it out.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Ben said, then turned to Thompson. “Go on to the plane. We’ll catch up.”
