“Yeah, they’re here. You want them?”
“Looks like we need them. We’re not picking up anything out here,” he said. “We’ll head back down the mountain to meet them. You can truck them to our position on the three-wheelers.”
“We’re on it,” the sheriff said.
The ride down the path seemed longer than the ride up. I chastised myself for wasting time. The choppers flew above us, little radio chatter because we kept noise levels low, and they flew high to keep from tipping Evan off with the sound of their engines and blades.
In the distance, a pack of coyotes howled at the full moon. Without the sun to warm it, the thin air turned cool. It smelled of pine trees and dust. We emerged from the woods, and I glanced at my watch. Ten to one. My weary eyes burned. The day long, exhaustion weighed me down like a heavy shroud. And we were back where we started.
Forty-Five
The bloodhounds had jowls and ears that drooped, giving them as dour an expression as I’m sure I wore. Wide black mesh harnesses circled their chests. Two trainers held onto the ends of heavy rope leashes, letting the animals root around. The dogs in charge, we followed. They’d been exposed to the scent inside of Evan Barstow’s squad car. The dogs’ training had only one purpose – to hunt people.
This wasn’t something I’d encountered in my years in Dallas. I hadn’t used dogs on any of my cases. “What if Evan’s on horseback? Will they still be able to follow him?”
“Yeah,” Mullins said. “Out here in the boonies, we have to use dogs off and on, missing persons and such. The scent drifts down and settles. It’ll be harder with the scent of the horse mixed in, but they’ll get it.”
I looked over at the Alber PD detective and thought about how his attitude had changed. Finding the hanging body of a young girl with her throat slit had apparently been enough to convince him that we had evidence, not some misguided hostility against Evan Barstow. Was I too hard on Mullins? Perhaps. I wasn’t in a particularly forgiving mood.
We sauntered on the horses at the rear, while the trainers worked up front. The dogs scouted, noses to the ground, darting off into the trees and then circling back. We tracked them with our flashlights, and it gave the dogs a firefly appearance as they darted about in the shafts of light flickering between the trees. Twenty minutes passed. An hour. Nothing.
But then the dogs, one after the other, took off down a trail that cut into the forest, not unlike the one we’d traveled earlier. “We’ve got something,” one of the trainers shouted. We followed, hanging back, letting the dogs lead us in.
“Detective Jefferies, can we hold the dogs up?” Rodgers asked after we’d traveled a hundred feet or so into the woods. “Let me go a little ahead, see if I can find anything on the path.”
“Whoa,” I shouted to the trainers. “Pull them back.”
Reluctant, the dogs stretched their leashes taut. They considered this playtime. At the end of the trail, when they found their prey, there’d be praise and treats. But the trainers held the leashes tight, and our tracker rode his horse ahead. He scrambled down and walked in a ways. Wielding his flashlight, Rodgers knelt to examine the foliage and then called back. “Someone’s been on this trail. Broken branches. The grass is packed down. Looks like a horse, some footprints. Smallish ones. Women or kids.”
“Can you tell how long ago?” Max asked.
“Recently,” Rodgers said, holding up a broken branch. “This cut is still seeping sap.”
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
The dogs took over again. Meanwhile, I radioed the helicopters. “We’re heading your way,” one of the pilots said. Five minutes later, we heard the faint beating overhead. We rode on for another hour or so, the dogs darting into the woods off and on, and then coming back to the trail. Rodgers followed directly behind them, watching for more evidence that signaled we were on the right track.
“Hold up!” he shouted.
“Stop!” I called out.
Rodgers got off his horse again, looked around. He motioned toward us, and we all got off our mounts. “There’s something that looks like blood here, ground disturbances, something happened.”
“How long ago?” Mullins asked.
“Blood’s dry, but, from the state of the vegetation, compacted recently, I’m thinking not more than a few hours ago.”
Just then, Stef broke in on our radios. “Detective Jefferies?”
“Yeah, Stef. I’m here.”
“The pilots have a hit on something large up ahead. Could be a man on a horse.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Hold the dogs back,” Max ordered, and the trainers did. We gripped our weapons and doused our flashlights. All we had to light our way were the thin beads of moonlight from above, the dawn still nearly four hours off. I whispered a thank you for the full moon. “Radio silence. Let’s go in slowly, see what we’ve got.”
We scanned the woods as we ambled in on the horses, picking our way on the trail. The tracker and the trainers with the dogs took a position behind us. We watched, waited, suspicious of what was hidden in the woods. The landscape dark, the moonlight illuminated the trees in silhouette. Then I spotted the outline of a horse ambling listlessly fifty feet ahead. The mare had a saddle on. No rider.
“Wait here.”
The others fell back, and I moved forward. I dismounted and approached the horse. It had a sloping back, one that befitted an animal that had worked hard all its life and earned the aches and pains of old age. It neighed as I ran my hand over its neck. “What’s going on?” I whispered, as if the horse could answer. I searched around, saw no one.
“Just the horse. No rider. I’m not seeing anyone from here,” I said into the mic. I kept nervously scanning the trees. I
